Muslim Selbstverständnis: Ahmet Davutoğlu answers Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences

In formulating his understanding of Islamic history, thought and politics, the Turkish Muslim thinker Ahmet Davuto?lu approves and adopts the German philosopher Edmund Husserl's formulation of phenomenology — or, philosophy of consciousness. Both Husserl and Davuto?lu perceive a crisis in humanity and identify its causes in scientism and logical positivism, against which they develop their respective phenomenological alternatives. This article places in parallel Husserl's stylised history of Western thought and Weltanschauung method with that of Davuto?lu's Muslim worldview, in order to illuminate the latter's putatively comprehensive interpretation of Islam, diagnosis of the ills of secularism, modernisation, and crisis of values he finds in Muslim societies; and his prescribed treatment for those ills: the privileging of ontology over epistemology, and the full unfolding of core theological concepts of revelation, monotheism, and prophecy. Davuto?lu seeks to reconcile tensions and disputes within Islamic intellectual traditions concerning the nature of God and God's attributes, and the tension between mysticism and rationalism, and the historical and the atemporal. In summary, Davuto?lu's intervention in Islamic traditions is interesting in the effort it makes to appropriate elements of both Husserl and GWF Hegel for the purpose of reconciling a phenomenological reading of Islam with established Islamic authorities and commitments.     

Ethnic and Islamist populism in Turkey and its impact on Kurdish nationalism

Rather than addressing the Kurdish conflict in Turkey directly, this study focuses on how the rising nationalist populism bears on Kurdish voters supporting the pro-Kurdish party HDP. There are very few studies on how Kurds are affected by the nationalist populism often expressed in Turkey by the governing People's Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı) with its slogan “domestic and national,” even though the literature offers a broad variety of studies on the Kurdish conflict. To fill this gap, this study is supported by focus group discussions with the Kurds in Turkey who support the HDP, based on a sample of the Kurds living in Istanbul, which is sometimes referred to as the “largest Kurdish city.” This study claims that the populist slogan of the “domestic and national” not only marginalises the Kurdish interviewees but also weakens their sense of belonging to Turkey, thus encouraging them to establish their own national identities. An important result of the focus group meetings is that AKP's polarising policy not only causes polarisation among Turks but also among the Kurds.     

The philosophy of westernisation: Ahmet Ağaoğlu on civilisation and culture

This article seeks to explore Ahmet A?ao?lu's understanding of the concepts of ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ and his approach to the question of Westernisation, with the aim of shedding light on the intellectual background of the westward transformation of Turkey. A?ao?lu attempted to define and describe these concepts at a time when a nation-building process was taking place in Turkey. The study traces the evolution of, and the relationship between, A?ao?lu's later Westernist and nationalist ideas which were in constant interplay with each other, and concludes that A?ao?lu saw a symbiotic relationship between one's changing civilisation and cultural enrichment.     

The anxiety of cultural authenticity in Turkish communitarian thought: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Peyami Safa on Europe and modernity

The uneasy tension between ongoing disputes about Turkey's Europeanisation and an emphasis on cultural authenticity has characterised much of Turkish social and political thought over the last two centuries. This article explores conceptions of Europe, modernity and tradition contained in the writings of two twentieth-century Turkish writers, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962) and Peyami Safa (1899–1961) whose writings express an anxiety of cultural authenticity. Varieties of communitarian thinking, coupled with an emphasis on a ‘synthesis’ between past and future, tradition and modernity, Turkey and Europe, had been invoked and advocated by many writers and scholars who sought to come to terms with the challenges surrounding Turkey's Europeanisation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tanpınar and Safa are widely considered to be among the most influential representatives of this deeply rooted communitarian tradition in modern Turkish social imaginary. By drawing on Tanpınar's and Safa's essays on politics, society, culture and the East–West distinction, this article demonstrates the radical divergences between their perspectives and draws out the political implications of their views of Europe, modernity and tradition. Although he appears to be one of the advocates of Turkey's Europeanisation and the idea of a civilisational synthesis, Safa's conservatism is based on a sketchy theory of radical particularity and cultural essentialism that reflects a repudiation of universalism and cosmopolitanism, and which shows a tendency bordering on a celebration of all collectivist self-assertions and struggles against liberal democracy. Tanpınar's communitarian vision, on the other hand, with its emphasis on ‘tradition’ and ‘continuity’, aims to reconcile the political ideals of European modernity with a restored cultural tradition. One of the primary purposes of this article is to fully work out the originality of Tanpınar's thought by highlighting the intimations of a distinctively hermeneutical dimension that figure prominently in his writings, and which have largely gone unnoticed.