Enlightenment and the Kemalist Republic: A Predicament

Abstract

The notion of enlightenment plays a crucial but increasingly contested role in the political intellectual discourse in the Republic of Turkey. The paper aims at reconstructing important elements of this discourse in the example of several representative texts and intends to demonstrate that the concept of enlightenment in Turkey while serving as the key element for modernity as defined in Kemalism continues to signify the Western ‘Other’, thus inherently diminishing the credibility of the argument by creating an orientalised and subaltern version of Turkey's ‘own’ history and tradition. The paper also tentatively investigates a ‘de-orientalising’ proposal of the historical process that may have caused the ‘forgetting’ of autochthonous traditions of enlightenment and the assimilation to the European strand.

Keywords:

• Enlightenment
• Identity
• Islam
• Kemalism
• Modernity
• Nationalism
• Turkey

Notes

1. For a sympathetic yet critical discussion of the enlightenment thesis of Schulze, cf. Knut S. Vik⊘r. “Muhammadan Piety and Islamic Enlightenment: Survey of a Historiographical Debate.” ISMM Team 6. Workshop Istanbul 3–5 July 1998 on Individual Piety and Society: 1–22.

2. This term is taken from the historiographical debate about the peculiarities of German history. Cf. Jürgen Kocka. “German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg.” Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988): 3–16.

3. Another example in this respect is how he hints at the allegedly intimate relationship of Westernisation and freemasonry in Turkey (Baykan 22).

4. The new law was introduced with the legislative reforms of 1 June 2005 and replaced Article 159 of the old penal code (Public Statement). Being in the centre of national as well as international criticism, this article was considerably reworded in April 2008. Yet the problem is not the existence of a vaguely formulated article alone but its frequent application against critical journalists, authors and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christoph Herzog

Christoph Herzog is Professor of Turcology at the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany. His research focuses on late Ottoman history and the intellectual history of Turkey