Science, religion, and the nation: de-scienticizing Nobel Prize scientist Aziz Sancar

ABSTRACT

This article examines the emergence of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar as a scientific persona model. After receiving the Nobel Prize in 2015, Sancar’s nationalistic tendencies and close relationship with incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) leaders opened up a wide range of discussions on how a scientist’s relationship with politics should be intellectually interpreted. Focusing on the case of Aziz Sancar, this article examines the specific contextual conditions in which a scientist expresses his identity and how it is interpreted by the public. To this end, the aim of this work is to present an in-depth analysis of the discussions that took place in Ekşi Sözlük, a popular social media platform acting as an online forum in Turkey, and news from the national media and to scrutinize how a scientific persona is conceived in Turkey and how Aziz Sancar has been ‘de-scienticized’ in the heavy polarized Turkish political atmosphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientific persona
• Aziz Sancar
• performance
• science
• de-scienticization
• nationalism
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘[W]ays to be and to behave’ as interpreted by Niskanen et al. (2018, 1).

2. See. Goffman (1959).

3. Persona studies have not yet taken its place in Turkey scholarly. There are few to no discussions as of 2021 that consider contemporary issues in the light of persona studies. This paper, in this sense, takes the scientific persona into account for the first time in Turkey. It is, as far as we know, also original in taking the online reception of a Turkish scientist into account.

4. For more studies on Ekşi Sözlük in English, please see Akça (2005), Soylu (2009), Oğuz (2011), Doğu et al. (2009), and Nefes (2015) esp. Chapter 2; and in Turkish, please see. Gürel and Yakın (2007), Öztekin (2015), Uzunoglu (2015), Yazıcı (2016), Hakan (2016), Kekeç and Taşcıoğlu (2018), Akkılıç (2018), Açer (2020), Huseyin and Oksuz (2020), Furman and Süngü (2021).

5. See. Fairclough (1989).

6. See. Chouliaraki, Lillie and Fairclough 1999.

7. Aziz Sancar was born in Savur, Mardin (a city in southeast Turkey, a disadvantaged area in terms of access to education and other living conditions). He received his undergraduate education in Turkey, being awarded a bachelor’s degree from Istanbul University, and then went to the US and studied at the University of Texas, Dallas. He received his doctorate in 1977. Currently, Sancar is a professor at the School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (The Nobel Prize, Aziz Sancar Facts).

8. One of the most quoted sayings of Atatürk.

9. As Karakas (2007, 7,8) states ‘the term “laicism” refers to an anticlerical world view and ideology that are based on secular processes. It provides for a strict institutional separation of state and religion, i.e., of political and religious authority. Accordingly, unlike under secularism, the laicist state keeps completely out of all religious matters’. For further reading about the concepts laicism, laiklik, secularism, see. Julia (2017).

10. See. Lüküslü (2016) and Kandiyoti and Emanet (2017).

11. See. Kaya (2015) for more information about this process.

12. From now on the entries in Ekşi Sözlük are referred to by entry numbers, the specific entries in Ekşi Sözlük can be accessed via putting # before the entry number when searching.

13. This can be considered a point related to Western double standards. Yet only if he did not use the term ‘infidel’. This term, in Turkey, refers to a religious and sometimes nationalist stance, othering non-Turkish and non-Muslim people. Although used occasionally in public to degrade those who are not like them religiously, it is not an acceptable use of language among intellectuals or public figures and is a clear insult.

14. Additionally, we think some further discussion is warranted on the fact that the Oxford Languages Dictionary regards the word ‘Gavur’ as slang and gives the first meaning as ‘non-Muslim person, Christian, European, Western’, whereas the Turkish Language Society (which is a government institution) does not consider it slang and gives the first meaning as ‘non-religious person’.

15. While Sancar visited Erdoğan in Turkey, the director of a zoo was appointed as an assistant manager to one of the significant units of TÜBİTAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). Critics mainly focused on his lack of reaction to that situation.

16. This entry, together with two more entries in the same section of the article are not accessible anymore, thus do not have entry numbers specified in the text. They were all collected on 20 October 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elif Gezgin

Elif Gezgin is a faculty member at the Department of Sociology at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Her interests include social exclusion and power, sociology of identity, inequalities and Turkish nationalism.

Argun Abrek Canbolat

Argun Abrek Canbolat is a post-doc researcher at the department of Philosophy at Middle East Technical University and he is a faculty member at the Department of Philosophy at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. His research areas include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of space-time.