The Development of Secularism in Turkey This page intentionally left blank The Developm.ent of Secularism. in Turkey NIYAZI BERKES with a new introduction by FEROZ AHMAD ROUTLEDGE New York Published in 1998 by Published in Great Britain by Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10017 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon 0X14 4RN © 1998 by Mrs Anice Berkes Introductory essay "Niyazi Berkes (1908-1988): the Education of an Intellectual" © Feroz Ahmad, 1988 Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-91982-7 (Softcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-91982-1 (Softcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Catalog record is available from the Library of Congress # #* sws ^ a% Visit the Taylor & Franciss WebWeD sitesite atat informainforrrnformllllllllln fa m http://www.taylorandfrancis.comicis.com Taylor & Francis Group and the Routledge Web siteite atat is the Academic Division of InformaInform.lforma pic. http://www.routledge-ny.com:om preface mE OBjECf of this work is to acquaint the English-speaking reader with the evolution of the Turkish transformation whose beginning goes back as far as the early part of the eighteenth century. A study of this transformation may contribute to an understanding of present-day political conditions in many Muslim countries; but, apart from this, it will be helpful to thos,e who are interested in the comparative study of political and religious trans­ formations in non-Western societies. The discussion is focused on the question of the 1'elationship between religion and state, but the scope of the work is broader for two reasons: first, in order to present the context of the pro­ cesses affecting relations between state and religion, and, second, because those relations had a wider connotation in the case of Islam than in that of Christianity. Thus the process of seculariza­ tion has been axamined here as it affected many aspects of society. This examination leads to the discussion of a doctrine of secularism that emerged on the eve of World War II as the basis of a policy of government and religion. The survey will deal largely with the development and changes in ideas and values rather than with economic, demographic, or other material conditions of change although references will be made to them when necessary. It should not, however, be taken as a history of religious, scientific, political, educational, or legal ideas in Turkey. These have been described only insofar as they serve as indices of social change and the evolution of views, especi­ ally in the secularization of thought. v PREFACE Readers unacquainted with the technicalities of Islamic and Turkish history and institutions are cautioned against conceiving these as analogous to those of the modern West. Terms for insti­ tutions such as the state, religion, and law, which are basic to our survey, should not be interpreted in their present Western sense. It is to avoid such associations that Islamic or Turkish words have frequently been used, although an effort has been made to limit their number. The concepts and institutions to which these terms refer have been described briefly in the Introduction. The reader, however, will best understand their original meaning in the medi­ eval pattern by seeing them challenged by forces of change-just as one can see how a pattern was woven by watching the fabric being unravelled. Although most of the Islamic and Turkish terms used in the text are defined either directly or contextually, and in many cases used as indices showing the changes in institutions and ideas, some which have not been so defined are grouped into a glossary at the end of the book. Modern Turkish orthography has been used for words that are now a part of the Turkish vocabulary, irrespective of their origin or original spelling. (The following letters in modern Turkish are pronounced as indicated: c, English j; f, English ch; it, almost English y; 0, German 0; u, German u; f, English sh; and t, the actual sound value given to the vowel in English tion in action or ton in carton. The mark A indicates where a syllable contains a long vowel; in most cases these are found in Arabic words or those derived from Arabic.) Very frequently used words like "Ulema" and "Tanzimat" have not been italicized or given in Arabic trans­ literation. The Arabic Sharz'a has, for the most part, been used in the Turkish form "~eriat" to mean a body of traditional reli­ gious rules (it has been rendered feriat in such contexts as "feriat courts" to avoid an overlapping of unfamiliar words such as the adjective ~er'i). "Ulema" (which is 'ulamd in Arabic, and the plural of 'dUm, a learned man) is used as a generic name for a class of people who constituted a corporate body in the Ottoman-Turkish polity; ulermt has been used to denote a number of persons having had the traditional Islamic religious education but not necessarily belonging to the Ulema organization, which disintegrated and disappeared imperceptibly from the middle of the nineteenth century and parallel to the gradual transformation of the medieval polity into a new order. Three persons representing three import­ ant institutions have been designated by their Turkish rather than their Anglicized or original Arabic or Persian titles: "Padi~ah" Vi PREFACE rather than "Sultan"; "Sadrazam" (the contracted form of sadr-i a'zrtm) rather than "Grand Vizir"; and "Seyhul-Islam" rather than "Shaykh ul-Islam." The English "caliph" and "caliphate" are generally used, but their Arabic equivalents khaUfa and khi1atat are preferred where the reference is meant to convey the pecu­ liarly Islamic qualities of the institution. One difficulty likely to confuse some readers is the transposition of Islamic and T~kish dates. The Muslim or Hijrz calendar (de­ signated by A.H.) dates from A.D. 622, the year of the Prophet Muhammad's emigration (hijra) from Mecca to Medina; but its equivalents in the Gregorian calendar cannot be found simply through arithmetical addition because the Hijrz calendar is a lunar calendar. To make matters worse, the so-called Malt (fiscal) calen­ dar, having a Julian base with Hijrz numerals, was used in Turkey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until the adoption of the Western calendar in 1926. To avoid the confusion of three systems of dates and to relieve the reader from using conversion tables, all dates have been given according to the Gregorian calendar; the dates of the Turkish writings referred to in the notes have, there­ fore, been converted to that calendar as closely as possible. The writing of this work was completed before the publication of three books, one by Professor Bernard Lewis entitled The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, 1961) and the other two by Dr. Serif Mardin on The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, 1962) and Robert Devereux on The First Ottoman Constitutional Period (Baltimore, 1963), and it has not been pos­ sible to benefit from their contributions. The latter two will be particularly useful to readers of this work as they deal in greater detail with the material covered in Chapters 7 and 8, respectively. I am deeply grateful to many persons whom I cannot enumerate here. lowe special gratitude to the authorities of McGill Univer­ sity and to the Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University for encouragement and support as well as for the grant made by the latter for the publication of this work. My thanks are due to Mr. William J . Watson, the librarian of the Institute, and Miss Margery E. Simpson of McGill University Press for their invalu­ able suggestions for the improvement of the text. Above all, I feel a particular debt of gratitude to my wife without whose constant help this work would not have been completed. Niyazi Berkes MONTREAL, 1963 Vll This page intentionally left blank contents Preface v New Introduction by Feroz Ahmad xv Introduction 1 TWO CONCEPTS OF SECUlARISM 5 THE MEDIEVAL VIEW OF SOCIETY 8 THE OTTOMAN-TURKISH HIERARCHY 10 PADI~AH AND ULEMA: TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 13 BREAKDOWN OF THE TRADITIONAL ORDER 17 THE GLIMMERINGS 1718-1826 I. Silhouette of a Renaissance 23 TURKEY AND THE POWERS OF EUROPE 23 NEW WORLDLINESS 26 RECOGNIZING THE NECESSITY OF CHANGE 30 DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD 33 THE FIRST INNOVATION 36 OBSERVATIONS OF EUROPEAN POLITIES 42 ENTRY OF MODERN SCIENCE AND MILITARY METHODS 4!J 2. Reaction against Innovation !Jl THE LIMITATIONS OF THE REF()R~llSTS 53 THE NEW REFORM EFFORTS 56 IX THE POWER OF THE CONSERVATIVES 61 FRANCE: IMAGE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 64 3· The New Order and its Fall 71 PROPOSED REFORMS 71. TOWARDS A NEW ORDER 74 THE FALL OF THE NEW ORDER 81. THE BREAK-THROUGH 1826-78 4- Foundations of a Secular State 89 THE CURTAIN CLOSES ON THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM 90 BEGINNINGS OF A NEW ERA 91. FOUNDATIONS OF A NEW STATE 97 A NEW CONCEPT OF EDUCATION 99 BIFURCATION IN EDUCATION 106 HIGHER LEARNING FOR SECULARIZATION 110 WESTERNIZING REFORMS I1.1. APPRAISAL OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION I1.8 THE STATE AS THE AGENCY OF TRANSFORMATION 13Z 5· T anzimat: The Economic and Political Impact of the West 137 FORCING THE DOORS WIDE OPEN 137 THE TANZIMAT CHARTER 144 C01:lrFLICTING VIEWS ON THE TANZI MAT 148 THE REFORM EDICT AND AFTER ISZ 6.