Browsing by Subject "Secularism"

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Ateş yılları
(1996) Günel, Burhan
Open Access
A different story of secularism: the censorship of religion in turkish films of the 1960s and early 1970s
(SAGE, 2012) Mutlu, D. K.; Koçer, Z.
This article extends the discussion of Turkish secularism from political history to cultural history. It examines censorship of religious elements in Turkish films of the 1960s and early 1970s based on the reports of the Central Film Control Commission in Ankara, responsible for inspecting domestic films from 1939 to 1977. The article argues that the censorship commission, as an extension of the state, functioned as a guard of Kemalist secularism and a 'true' Islam (a private, enlightened, apolitical, national and Sunni Islam). This ambivalent attitude towards religion underlines the complexity of Turkish secularism, which distinguish it from western models of secularism. The article concludes with a discussion of two inspection cases in 1970, which point to a significant shift in the commission's attitude towards religion in films and prove that the founding principle of secularism and its later politics in the 1960s did not distance the country from its Islamic heritage.
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Geçmişten günümüze Türk Medeni Hukuku'nda kadın statüsü
(Bilkent University, 2018) Akçay, Serdar; Arıcı, Cemali; Kasap, Beril; Özcan, Can Sarp; Özyapı, Sena
19. yüzyılın sonlarına gelindiğinde Osmanlı Devleti birçok alanda olduğu gibi kadın hakları konusunda da Batılı devletlerin gerisindeydi. şeriat hukukunun uygulandığı ülkede kadın adeta ikinci sınıf vatandaş konumundaydı. Osmanlı’nın en kapsamlı medeni hukuk kodifikasyonu olan Mecelle bu alanda yapılan ilk değişikliklerdendi. İsviçre’den iktisap edilen ve 1926 yılında yürürlüğe giren Türk Kanun-u Medeni’si ise Türkiye’de kadın hakları bakımından en köklü değişimi ifade ediyordu. Döneminde halkın gerçekleğinin ilerisinde olan bu kanuna toplumun adapte olması zaman aldı. 1990’lara yaklaşıldığında ise artık karışımızda sosyal şartların gerisinde kalmış bir kanun bulunmaktaydı. çağın gereklerine uygun olarak kanunun değiştirilmesi yönündeki talepler her geçen yıl artmaktaydı. Bu süreçte kadın hakları aktivistleri, sivil toplum kuruluşları ve halk aktif bir mücadele verdi. 1 Ocak 2002 tarihinde yürürlüğe giren yeni Türk Medeni Kanunu kadın hakları bakımından önemli değişiklikler getirdi. Bu projede Mecelle’den günümüze kadar geçen zamanda Türk medeni hukukunda kadının statüsünün nasıl bir gelişme izlediği incelenmektedir.
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How secularism affected religious education in schools in Turkey from 1920-1930s and 1950-1990s?
(Bilkent University, 2024) Fatima, Maham; Amin, Mubeen; Rajwana, Abdullah; Awan, Rahem; Qureshi, Musa
The historical revolution of secularism in Turkey affected religious education in schools in two key time periods: 1920s – 1930s and 1950s – 1990s. The first period saw further development of secularism after the establishment of The Republic of Turkey and the unification of the education system. The dual system of education was changed, and following many curriculum changes, religious education was removed from all schools in 1939. The next period focuses on the efforts to integrate religious education back into the system and public reactions to these efforts. The formation of Imam Hatip schools and Turkish-Islamic synthesis were the results of these efforts. This research paper also analyzes the laws made in the late twentieth century to bring back religious education and the changes in the curriculum through which religious and moral education was made compulsory in schools. Furthermore, heated debates regarding this decision will be analyzed. This research paper aims to focus on the changes that secularism had on religious education while discussing how religion was brought under the control of the state instead of being made separate from the state, which was the initial motive stated in the Kemalist era.
Open Access
Ir theory as an 'areligious' research field: the sources of and critical prospects to overcome the intellectual failure
(Marmara Üni. İktisat Fakültesi, 2016) Sula, İ. Erkam; Lüleci, Çağla
This study is built on an observation that ‘religion’ along with many other factors has a significant impact on international relations. However, religious factors are not incorporated in International Relations (IR) theoretical analysis. Hence, it is deemed necessary to ask: ‘When did IR scholars lose the track of religion in their theories and how to bring religion back in?’ An answer is provided through an analysis of the literature to find out the sources of such neglect and possible ways to overcome it. The study does so in two parts. First, it is argued that the adoption of natural sciences’ methodology in IR- the so-called ‘Behavioralist revolution’- has been quite influential in the lack of interest on religion. Secularism has been an unquestioned part of Behavioralism - the ‘positive science’ update package adopted by scholars of IR theory. The end of the Cold War brought ideational variables back in to the study of IR theory. This process is directed mainly by the emergent ‘Critical’, ‘Constructivist’ or ‘postpositivist’ turn in IR. Therefore, the second part focuses on the critical approaches to IR theory in the post-Cold War era with a specific focus on Critical Theory (CT) in order to develop a possible way to incorporate religion in IR theoretical analysis.
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Is authoritarian modernization effective? a case study of socio-political divergence between Türkiye and Iran as a consequence of the twentieth-century modernization movement
(Bilkent University, 2024) Hamidova, Ayan; Lassem, Nima Kamali; Shadurdyyeva, Leyli; Shukurzade, Murad
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Reza Shah led their nations, Türkiye and Iran, through unstable periods, in means of establishing the modernized Turkish Republic and the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran. This paper discusses the major factors that led to the distinctive pathways of the two countries throughout their history of modernization. Both leaders implemented the patterns based on their politically strategic campaigns, which were mainly under the concepts of secularism, nationalism, and revolutionism. However, Atatürk's additional focus on the interests of the population to gain support for the republic contrasted with Reza Shah's more strictly authoritarian methods, leading to differing outcomes. Distinctive religious sects, Sunnism in Türkiye and Shiasm in Iran influenced the two nations’ reaction to the political reforms. Although Türkiye and Iran followed a similar pattern of diplomatic treaties, the latter experienced obstacles, slowing the pursuit of authoritarian modernization. Thus, differing strategies of regimes, religion, and diplomatic relations, as well as the structural environments based on the history of the two states, diverged Türkiye and Iran in their paths of modernization, in which Türkiye succeeded under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's leadership, while Reza Shah’s efforts for Iran failed.
Open Access
Islam and democratization in Turkey: secularism and trust in a divided society
(Routledge, 2009) Grigoriadis, I. N.
The history of Turkish modernization has been inextricably linked with the question of secularism. From the advent of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Islam was held responsible for the underdevelopment and eventual demise of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the laïcité of the Second French Republic, the secularization programme of modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Atatürk, entailed the full subjugation of Islam to the State, its eradication from the public sphere and its limitation into a very narrowly defined private sphere. The transition of Turkey to multiparty politics in 1946 was linked with a rising role of Islam in the public sphere. Islam became a crucial element in the political vocabulary of peripheral political forces which challenged the supremacy of the secularist, Kemalist bureaucratic elite. While a number of military coups aimed - among other things - to control religion, Turkish political Islam showed remarkable resilience and adaptability. Most recently, the transformation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) into the strongest proponent of Turkey's European Union (EU) integration brought Turkey closer than ever to EU membership, challenged the monopoly which the Kemalist elite enjoyed as the representative of Western political values and suggested a novel liberal version of secularism. Yet Turkey has been embroiled since 2007 in successive political crises which had secularism as their focal point. This article argues that the transformation of Turkish political Islam has produced an alternative, liberal version of secularism; yet, it has not resolved deep social divisions. Building a liberal consensus between religious conservatives and secularists is imperative for the resolution of deep social divisions in Turkey. The European Union as a guarantor and initiator of reform could play a major role in building trust between the secularist and the religious conservative segments of society. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.
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Milenyum öncesi Türkiye kadın hareketi ve medyaya yansımaları
(Bilkent University, 2020) Erdoğan, Zeynep Hayal; Bozkurt, Ekrem; Atay, Bilge; Uyar, Zeynep Dilbe; Yılmaz, Şevval
15 Şubat 1997'de gerçekleşen Şeriata Karşı Kadın Yürüyüşü doksanlı yılların anti-laik politikası ile kadının sosyal ve hukuki alanda geri kalmasına yönelik önemli tepkilerden biridir. Bu araştırmada öncelikle yürüyüşe zemin hazırlayan doksanlı yıllardaki siyasi, sosyal ve hukuki durumu anlatılmıştır. Yürüyüşte yaşananlar, yürüyüşün Tertip Komitesi Başkanı Şenal Sarıhan ve Tertip Komitesi üyesi olan Selma Çiçekçi ve yürüyüş katılımcılarından dönemin TBMM Başkan Vekili Uluç Gürkan ile yapılan röportaj sonucunda elde edilen bilgilerle ayrıntılı olarak anlatılmıştır. Röportajın yanı sıra dönemin gazete haberleri analiz edilerek yürüyüşe farklı ideolojilerden gelen tepkiler araştırılmıştır. Makalenin son kısmında yürüyüşün siyasal, toplumsal ve hukuki açıdan etkileri ele alınmıştır.
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Muammer Aksoy: hayatı ve suikasti
(Bilkent University, 2021) Mocan, Ahsen Yalın; Penahi, Arzu Ece; Eryürekli, Hasan Zorbey; Özkızıklı, Hazal; Unutmaz, Yusuf Ensar
1946 sonrasında Türkiye çok partili döneme geçmişti. Bu dönemde Kemalizm’e karşı eleştirel tavırlar artmış, 12 Eylül 1980 darbesiyle ise Kemalizm’in ana fikirleri yeniden şekillenmeye başlamıştı. Muammer Aksoy, Kemalizm’i, Atatürk ilke ve inkılaplarını kendine temel alan önemli aydınlarımızdan biridir. 31 Ocak 1990’da siyasi ve ideolojik sebeplerden dolayı faili meçhul bir cinayete kurban gidene kadar 73 yıllık ömrünü araştırmalar yapmaya adamış ve bu kavramları en iyi şekilde korumuştu. Bu araştırmada Aksoy’un yazdığı kitaplarından, oğlu Işık Aksoy’dan öğrenilen kişisel hayatına dair bilgilerden, hem kendisi hem de dönem hakkında yazılmış gazete yazılarından ve yayımlardan bahsedilmiştir. Çok partili döneme geçiş, 1980 darbesi ve sonrasındaki siyasi iklimi incelemek Aksoy’un yaşamı ve suikastini anlamak için önem arz etmektedir. Bu araştırmada Muammer Aksoy’un kişisel hayatı, siyasi kimliği, içinde bulunduğu kuruluşlar, suikasti ve laik Türkiye Cumhuriyeti için gerçekleştirdiği çalışmalar işlenmiştir.
Open Access
The political economy of Kulturkampf: evidence from imperial Prussia and republican Turkey
(Springer New York LLC, 2018) Grigoriadis, Ioannis N.; Grigoriadis, T. N.
This paper analyzes the political incentives of Kulturkampf and the implementation of secularization in imperial Prussia and republican Turkey. A game-theoretic model defining Kulturkampf as a static game between priests and the executive is proposed. The willingness of priests to accept the government’s offer and be transformed into bureaucratic experts varies. Individualist priests are easier to recruit as they care more about their personal welfare than social distribution by the church, whereas the reverse holds for collectivist priests. Nevertheless, the long-run success of the Kulturkampf depends on the effective recruitment of collectivist priests and their entry into formal politics in favor of the executive.
Open Access
Search for an ethno-secular delimitation of Turkish national identity in the Kemalist era (1924-1938) with particular reference to the ethnicist conception of Kemalist nationalism
(1998) Yıldız, Ahmet
This study deals with the search for the creation of an ethno- secular Turkish national identity with particular reference to the ethnicist conception of Kemalist nationalism espoused by a group of bureaucratic- intellectual elites over three distinct periods in the years between 1919- 1938 with an historical perspective. In the period of 1919-1924, nationality was defined by religion, and hence, Turkish national identity had a predominantly religious character. As a reflection of this state of "forced" pluralism, official political discourse considered ethnic diversity as a given social condition. In the second period (1924-1929), a radical rupture from the religious definition occurred with the adoption of Republicanism consisting of legal and political components. The legal component of the republican definition was overwhelmed by its political component, however. The motto of this definition was the "unity in language, culture and ideal" The third period (1929-1938) of the delimitation of Turkish national identity in the Kemalist era was characterised by the efforts of a group of bureaucratic-intellectual elites who adopted the ethnicist conception of Kemalist nationalism to articulate racial motives, which defined national community at the basis of Turkish ethnie and structured around the sense of common origin, into the republican definition. The symbolic reflection of this articulation was the motto of the "unity in language, culture and blood" The emergent definition of "ethno-secular Turkish man" within the evolution of the parameters of Turkish national identity during the Kemalist era(1924-1938) was that the complete, genuine, or pure Turk was the one who embraced the cause of the Republican ideal, devoted to Westernised Turkish culture, spoke Turkish and descended from Turkish origin. Those who lacked any of the said parameters had to be compensated for. Aloofness to religiosity, the adoption of Turkish not only as official language but also as the mother-tongue, devotion to the monolithically defined Westernised Turkish culture intermixed with the political ideal preached by the new Republic, and the attainment of purity and strength of race were the suggested "compensators." Ethnicism and Turkification policies were the two natural corollaries of the ethnicist conception of Kemalist nationalism. Being constituted as such, the "other" of this nationalism involved religious Turks, non-Turkish Muslim ethnies, and non-Muslim minorities.
Open Access
Secularism and islamic modernism in Turkey
(Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa, 2006) Cinar, A.
This paper focuses on the institutionalization of secularism in Turkey through the establishment of a Directorate of Religious Affairs as a state office, vested with full authority over Islamic thought and practice. It explores the ways in which the state promoted this Directorate as the only legitimate Islamic authority in Turkey and how, in the 1990s, alternative voices representing Islamic thought and practice gained salience and challenged the authority of official Islam. It is in such a context that the Islamic modernizers emerged as a new political movement around AK (Justice and Development) Party, which broke off from the former Islamist party Refah/Fazilet, and won a major victory at the 2002 general elections. The paper addresses the emergence of AK Party and its policy toward secularism, political Islam and nationalism.
Open Access
Secularization and international relations theory : the case of Turkey
(2001) Helicke, James C.
Traditional realist and structural neorealist approaches to international relations have largely made a "secularization assumption" by approaching states as static givens without looking at the ways in which states have become constructed as "secular." States' adoption of secularization differs according to domestic context and often creates tensions through the reconstruction of "religion." In the Turkish context, the construction of new politics and an apolitical religious sphere were central elements in the building of a Turkish nation state. This reconstruction, however, occurred at the particular expense of non-Muslims in the republic, whose religious difference became reconstructed as national difference. The purpose of this study is to suggest a constructivist framework for interpreting secularization, to trace its development in the Turkish state, and to ascertain its implications for non-Muslims in the republic.
Open Access
The securityness of secularism? The case of Turkey
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2008-12) Bilgin, P.
Secularism is frequently portrayed as a security referent in present-day Turkey. But, what is it that makes secularism a security issue? Where are we to locate the `securityness' of secularism? Against prevailing accounts that privilege the domestic dimension, this article argues that the securityness of secularism in Turkey should be located in both the domestic and the international. This is not to suggest that secularism can be reduced to security, but it is to suggest that efforts to portray Turkey's secularism merely as a constitutive principle and an outcome of the project of Republican transformation, or as a means of safeguarding a particular vision of transformation through controlling religion, or as an instrument of national economic development, while rewarding in themselves, nevertheless miss an important set of dynamics that help to explain secularism's centrality to Turkey's politics. The article locates this latter set of dynamics in the international realm and ultimately proffers the argument that secularism was in part a response to European/international society's ambivalence towards Turkey's `difference' and the insecurities this entailed. The conclusion suggests that the present-day centrality of secularism in Turkey's politics and the apparent securityness of such centrality could be considered as a response to particular remembrances of the past and interpretations of the present vis-à-vis such ambivalence.
Open Access
The state elites and secularism with special reference to the military : the case of the 1980 military intervention
(2002) Yılmaz, Mehmet
The study aims to analyze the policies and attitudes of the military leaders of the 1980 Intervention towards religion. The state elites in the Ottoman-Turkish history have been the principal agents behind the secularization reforms and the maintenance of the established secularity tradition since the adoption of the modernization reforms in the nineteenth century, which initiated a process of social and political changes that culminated in the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Yet, the affirmative approach of the military leaders of the 1980 Intervention denotes a notable break from the previous tradition. The military leaders of the 1980 accentuated that religion was one of the indispensable components of national culture, and promoted it in cultural area through various policies and practices. This study tries to comprehend the implications of this change for the established secularity tradition in Turkey.
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Was Turkey’s attempt for modernization a disguise for de-islamization?: between 1920-1940
(Bilkent University, 2021) Özeren, Çağla Burcu; Abbas, Muhammad Zain; İjaz, Qandeel; Ahmad, Mirza Usama; Nafae, Abdul; Ali, Mahed
Whether Turkey's search for modernity and attempts at Westernization led to de-Islamization or not is a huge debate. Events that are relevant to the scope of the research cover the period between the beginning of the 1920s until the end of the 1930s. The aim is to unfold the policies and reforms made by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - as the president of the Turkish Republic - and the extent of their effect on the deIslamization of Turkey. The relation between modernization and de-Islamization in Turkey is based on various factors consisting of the idea of secularism, education, power of women, changes in the lifestyle of the people, and suppression of Islamic practices. It is important to recognize the influence of modernization attempts on the pre-existing ideologies of Islam and the way of living in Turkey. In order to assess the effect of the modernization attempts in Turkey on Islam through different perspectives, this study will also take the approach of comparing the situation through the eyes of the western and eastern media.