Competing Ideologies in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic : Selected Writings of Islamist, Turkist, and Westernist Intellectuals

Contents ## Acknowledgments vii This book has been envisioned as a continuation of my previous publications. It is a part of an ongoing research project that aims to shed light on late Ottoman intellectual history. My first book concerned the life as well as the political and social thought of Said Halim Pasha (1865-1921), a prominent Islamist thinker and Ottoman statesman. My second book focused on the political and social ideas of Islamist thinkers in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. The current book is more comprehensive than the previous two books. It not only contains the works of important Islamist thinkers but also presents the writings of intellectuals who represented rival ideologies that competed with Islamism in the political arena of the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. Here I would like to express my gratitude to those who supported me during the research and writing process of this book. In particular, I would like to thank my colleagues in the History Department of the University of Winnipeg. Enriching conversations with my friends and colleagues, Robert Byrnes in Winnipeg and Ared Mısırlıyan in Montreal, inspired me a lot during the writing of this book. In life, I consider myself particularly blessed by the undying and continuous support of my family. I owe a debt of gratitude to them, especially to my mother Sevin Orhon-Şeyhun, who has always sustained me with her prayers. I also would like to thank my dear sister Yeşim Çorluhan and my dear nephew Ömer Çorluhan; the emotional support I receive from each of them is very valuable to me. This book would never have reached this stage without the guidance and assistance of Rory Gormley of Bloomsbury, who helped me navigate through the final stages of my work. I also thank to Joseph Gautham for his valuable suggestions during the copy editing of my book and to Yasmin Garcha. I would also especially like to thank Cynthia Col, who painstakingly and carefully edited my manuscript. Last but not the least, my thanks go to Shokoufeh Ahmadi for her undying loving support throughout the writing of this book. the policies of Tanzimat eventually gave birth to conflicting ideologies in the Ottoman Empire. Islamism emerged out of Ottomanism. It was first advocated by Young Ottoman thinkers such as Namık Kemal (1840-88) and Ali Suavi (1839-78). Later, Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909) adopted this ideology. Moreover, he made it the pillar of his regime. He effected this consolidation by drawing on an ancient but long-disused institution: the caliphate. Sultan Abdülhamid II revived the caliphate and used it as a political instrument. The new and revived caliphate became the basis of the sultan's pan-Islamism. At home, Abdülhamid used Islamism to cement the multiple Muslim communities of the empire and create a new nation out of them: the Muslim nation. On the other hand, he used his pan-Islamism to enhance his prestige among the world's Muslims, and exerted his spiritual authority over the millions of Muslims who lived in the European colonies to keep Western colonial powers at bay. After the end of the Hamidian regime, Islamism continued to be one of the most important ideological currents. The Islamists of the Second Constitutional Period (1908-20) shifted Islamist ideology from the traditional institutions of the sultanate and caliphate to the institutions of the representative regime like parliament. During this period, almost all Islamist thinkers were constitutionalist and defended the parliamentary system. After the reestablishment of the Constitution on July 24, 1908, various political currents started to emerge that had been proscribed and hidden under the Hamidian regime. Under the new regime, many newspapers and journals were founded. Many of these papers were established as the mouthpieces of various ideological movements that were now competing to dominate the new political arena. The most prominent of these ideologies was Islamism. Other currents were Ottomanism, Turkism, Westernism, and liberalism. Islamism represented the politicization of Islam. Islamism is a political ideology that advocates the shaping of the state and society according to the rules of Islam. It is a modern movement that aims to regenerate Muslim societies by implementing the principles of Islam in every aspect of life. For political and social models, the Islamist thinkers turned to pristine Islam as practiced during the time of the Prophet and his immediate successors. Islamism of the Second Constitutional Period was definitely not a traditionalist understanding of politics grounded on the ancient institutions of the sultanate and caliphate. Although it was rooted in the past and had the goal of returning society to the golden age of early Islam, Islamism was really a modern ideology that was born as a response to the Western imperialist threat to the Muslim world during the nineteenth century. According to Bassam Tibi, Islamism "is an expression of a defensive culture. A cultural self-assertion vis a vis the intrusion of the West into the abode of Islam. " 1 Islamism is rooted in the activities of the grassroot Sufi organizations and influenced by the ideas of the Muslim revivalist thinkers of the eighteenth century like Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), the purist and Hanbali legist of central Arabia. 2 Islamism was the most important political movement of the Second Constitutional Period. It was represented in intellectual debates by several thinkers who wrote profusely in many Islamist journals on numerous issues. The topics these scholars wrote on ranged from family law and foreign policy to women's rights and education. These Islamist thinkers expressed their concerns about the gradual Westernization and secularization of Ottoman society. Hürriyet, which was established in London between 1868 and 1869. In these articles, Kemal advocates that a legitimate government is one that is freely elected by citizens; in Islamic political theory, he says people elect their ruler (imam) by pledging their allegiance to him (baya). Through this practice, the ruler is vested with authority. He states, "If the people of a town would congregate and elect a person for the sultanate and pay their homage to him, that person would be nominated as a sultan. " 6 This is based on ijmaa (consensus), which is one of the main pillars of Islamic law. Another Young Ottoman thinker who took an Islamist approach was Ziya Pasha (1825-80). Like Namık Kemal, he started his administrative career in the Translation Bureau. It was here that he came in contact with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Although a product of the same intellectual milieu, Ziya Pasha differed from Namık Kemal in many aspects. Unlike Kemal, who spent most of his life in exile, Ziya Pasha occupied important positions during his long administrative career. Besides, he was closely connected with the palace and identified himself with the imperial administration. These characteristics had an undeniable impact on his political thought, which is conservative in nature in comparison to Kemal's ideology. One of the most striking divergences between these two Young Ottoman thinkers lies in Ziya Pasha's aloofness to the concept of liberty (hürriyet). Notwithstanding Ziya Pasha's being convinced of the necessity of establishing a constitutional government in the Ottoman Empire, he Ziya Gökalp was a well-known Turkist and probably the main theoretician of Turkish nationalism. He summarized his ideology with the maxim of Türkleşmek, İslamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Turkification, Islamization, and modernization). In his view, these concepts complemented each other. Gökalp explained his theory by saying, "We are of Turkish nationality (millet), we belong to the Islamic religious community (ümmet), and to the Western sphere of civilization (medeniyet). " For Gökalp, these three elements of the Turkish nation were both complementary and distinct from each other: complementary because each constituted an aspect of Turkish society and distinct because they were not necessarily related. Adhering to the Islamic faith did not mean that Turks belonged to the sphere of Islamic civilization that Gökalp called Oriental civilization. Gökalp perceived Islam as a religion (din), not as a civilization (medeniyet), which he considered to be a combination of the Sasanian and Byzantine civilizations. According to Gökalp, over time the Turks moved from an East Asian (Chinese) to an Islamic (Oriental) civilization through their conversion to Islam; however, in doing so, they did not change their national culture. Thus, he asserted, Turks could adopt European civilization and still preserve their religion and national culture-just as the Japanese had. Gökalp divides the material and intellectual development of societies into two: (a) medeniyet (civilization) and (b) hars (national culture). Medeniyet is international but hars is national. Western or Islamic civilizations have been embraced by many different nations, each with its own national culture. 18 According to Gökalp, by ignoring Turkism and Islamism and instead by promoting the cosmopolitan Ottomanism, Tanzimat undermined the foundations of the Ottoman state. 19 Gökalp also argued that the Tanzimat statesmen committed "a fatal mistake" by adopting the national mores of the European nations; in his view, they wrongly considered those cultural norms as the components of European civilization. 20 Gökalp also argued that nations that had a strong ethnic culture without having an advanced civilization would prevail over highly civilized nations. He reasons that advanced civilizations would usually undermine the popular and ethnic culture of those nations. 21 Gökalp's ideas were criticized by Kemal Karpat who argued that Gökalp misunderstood the historical formation of the Turkish nation because of his superficial knowledge of the Ottoman history. 22 Karpat also rejected the clear-cut separation envisaged by Gökalp between high and low Turkish/Ottoman cultures. According to Karpat, throughout history, there was always an interaction between Ottoman high culture and popular Turkish culture. 23 Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935) was another main ideologue of Turkism. Akçura was a prominent pan-Turkist. Pan-Turkism was born in Russia and then was introduced to Ottoman intellectual circles by Tatar and Azeri Turk thinkers who emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. Berkes categorizes the pan-Turkist thinkers separately from the Ottoman Turkist thinkers such as Ziya Gökalp. For Gökalp, says Berkes, the essence of the Turkish nation is culture, whereas for the pan-Turkists like Akçura, it is the race. 24 In fact, Gökalp was also a pan-Turkist. In his writings, he expressed his desire for the realization of the Turan union. Nevertheless, Yusuf Akçura was the main exponent of pan-Turkist ideas. In his famous article "Üç-Tarz-ı Siyaset" (The Three Types of Politics), Akçura compares Turkism with Islamism and Ottomanism; of these three ideologies, he found Turkism the most viable. According to him, Ottomanism was an artificial construct inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution; it was modeled on Part I Young Ottoman Thinkers 1 Namık Kemal (1840-88) Biography Namık Kemal was born in Tekirdağ on December 21, 1840. His father was Mustafa Asım Bey who was employed as an astrologer at the court. At a young age, he lost his mother, Fatma Zehra Hanım, and was raised by his grandfather, Abdüllatif Pasha. His grandfather was appointed as governor to several provinces of the empire; in his youth, Namık Kemal toured Anatolia and the Balkans with him. Throughout these years, he was privately tutored. He learned Arabic and Persian. For a few months, he studied at the middle school (Rüşdiye) of Beyazid and Valide. He lived in Kars and then in Sofia, when his grandfather received appointments in each of these cities. In Sofia, he married Nesime Hanım and had three children with her. In 1857, Namık Kemal returned to Istanbul and entered the Translation Bureau (Tercüme Odası). Later he worked at the Customs Administration. Meanwhile, Kemal became involved with classical Ottoman poetry. He met and was influenced by a famous classical poet, Leskofcalı Galib. In Istanbul, Kemal also started to attend a poetry circle (Encümen-i Şuara). In 1863, Kemal resumed his work at the Translation Bureau. There he met Westernized Ottoman intellectuals like Sinasi Bey whose influence on Kemal was crucial. At the Translation Bureau he started to learn French and began contributing articles to the newspaper Tasfir-i Efkar. In 1865, when Sinasi left for Paris, Kemal assumed the administration of the newspaper. In Tasfir-i Efkar, Kemal began publishing work that severely criticized the government. As a result of his fierce political opposition, his journal was closed, and Kemal was sent to Erzurum as an aide to the governor. Instead of going to Erzurum, Namık Kemal fled to Paris and continued his intellectual and political activities there. In Paris he was financed by the Egyptian prince Mustafa Fazil Pasha who supported liberal movements in the Ottoman Empire. Then Kemal traveled to London; there, he began the journal Muhbir. Later, due to his disagreement with Ali Suavi, another Young Ottoman thinker, he left Muhbir and returned to Paris. As a consequence of Sultan Abdülaziz's official visit to France, the French government asked Kemal and other Young Ottomans to leave the city. Afterwards Kemal returned to London and began the newspaper Hürriyet (Freedom). Meanwhile, Mustafa Fazıl Pasha reached an agreement with the Ottoman sultan and ceased financing Hürriyet. As a result, Kemal and his friend Ziya Pasha, another Young Ottoman intellectual, tried to restart the newspaper on their own. Later, Kemal became embroiled in arguments with his colleagues and decided to return to Istanbul after receiving assurances from the authorities about his safety. "The second constitutional period of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Turkish republic were a hotbed of new and competing ideas which were to dramatically shape the development of the modern nation that followed. This book includes translations of and introductions to some of the key Turkish writers of the age, including Namik Kemal, Ziya Gökalp, Abdullah Cevdet and Ahmed Riza. The writings of these Turkist, Westernist and Islamist Ottoman and early republican thinkers are presented with contextualizing introductions which allow readers to access the primary texts which show the Turkish intellectual milieu out of which Mustafa Kemal's ideas were to emerge and ultimately dominate and will be of interest to students and scholars of Ottoman and Turkish History."-- Provided by publisher. The second constitutional period of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Turkish republic were a hotbed of new and competing ideas which were to dramatically shape the development of the modern nation that followed. This book includes translations of and introductions to some of the key Turkish writers of the age, including Namik Kemal, Ziya Goekalp, Abdullah Cevdet and Ahmed Riza. The writings of these Turkist, Westernist and Islamist Ottoman and early republican thinkers are presented with contextualizing introductions which allow readers to access the primary texts which show the Turkish intellectual milieu out of which Mustafa Kemal's ideas were to emerge and ultimately dominate and will be of interest to students and scholars of Ottoman and Turkish History. -- Provided by publisher Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Young Ottoman Thinkers Chapter 1: Namık Kemal (1840–88) Chapter 2: Hayreddin Pasha (1823–90) Part II: The Turkists Chapter 3: Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) Chapter 4: Yusuf Akçura (1876–1935) Chapter 5: Ahmet Ağaoğlu (1869–1939) Part III: The Westernists Chapter 6: Celal Nuri İleri (1881–1938) Chapter 7: Abdullah Cevdet (1869–1932) Part IV: The Liberals Chapter 8: Prince Sabaheddin (1878–1948) Part V: The Positivists Chapter 9: Ahmed Riza (1858–1930) Chapter 10: Lütfi Fikri (1872–1934) Part VI: The Islamists Chapter 11: Said Halim Pasha (1865–1921) Chapter 12: Ahmed Naim Baban (1872–1934) Notes Bibliography Index