Paths to God within the poet: Necip Fazil Kisakürek (1904-83) and his mystical poetry

Abstract

Turkey has been undergoing a process of modernization and westernization for more than two hundred years, and not surprisingly a cultural and intellectual response to these concepts and their consequences has also long existed. When the Republic was established and its institutions applied the project of modernization and Westernization as a political issue, its opponents similarly began to respond by using political means. ‘Westernization’ was not an invention of the Republic, as the last two hundred years of the Ottoman Empire had witnessed struggles and discussions about the necessity for modernization. However, while the Republican state was trying to put an end to discussions on the subject, a response re-emerged on a social and cultural basis. The concept of Westernization was defi ned or described through a series of terms such as ‘reason’, ‘science’, ‘technology’, ‘progress’, and ‘well-being’. In the meantime, the other side preferred concepts referring to ‘the nonEuropean’ such as ‘East’, ‘tradition’, ‘past’, ‘religion’, and ‘morality’. The dramatic infl uence of modernizing ideologies shaped the course of literature and literary criticism, and the response began to be formulated with references to Islamic principles, notions and history. This movement laid a solid foundation for the defence of traditional ideas against Westernization. Its supporters inevitably became ‘traditionalist’ by nature, that is, concerned with everything related to tradition. Always bearing in mind the golden days of a distant but aesthetically brilliant past, they have taken advantage of twentieth-century Turkey’s rich cultural heritage consisting of a combination of Islamic and Ottoman elements.