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)

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# #* sws ^ a% Visit the Taylor & Franciss Web WeD site site atat informainforrrnformllllllllln fa m http://www.taylorandfrancis.comicis.com Taylor & Francis Group and the Routledge Web siteite at at 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. The Secularism of the T anzimat 155 THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT 155 CODIFICATION AND JUDICIAL INNOVATIONS 160 ENCROACHMENT UPON THE ~ERIAT 169 PROGRESS AND PITFALLS IN EDUCATION 173 THE BABEL UNlVERSITAlRE 188 SEEDS OF NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM 191.

7· The Constitutional Movement 1.01 THE ORIGINS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT 1.01. THE YOUNG OTTOMA."f IDEOLOGY 1.08 x PROGRESS AND WESTERNIZATION 21 5 REACTION OF ISLAMIC NATIONALISM 218

8. Constitution of 1876 223

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSIONS 226 PORTRAITS OF CONSTITUTIONALISM 23 2 FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION 241 THE MAJOR PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION 246 THE FATE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT 248

THE REACTION 1878-1908

9· Constitutional Absolutism 253 THE MUSLIM WORLD AT ITS THIRTEENTH CENTENNIAL 253 PORTRAIT OF THE HAMIDIAN REGIME 256 OFFICIAL TRENDS OF THOUGHT 261 REALITIES BEHIND THE ILLUSIONS 27 1 THE UNDERCURRENTS 27 6 TWO SIDES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION DISTINGUISHED 281

10. The Reactions against the Reaction 289 THE REVOLT AGAINST RELIGION 29° TURNING TO THE WEST 296 THE YOUNG TURK MOVEMENT 30 4 GLIMMERINGS OF TURKISH NATIONALISM 313

SEARCH FOR A FULCRUM 19°8-19

1 I. The Me~rutiyet 325

UNION AND PROGRESS 32 5 POLITICAL AWAKENING OF THE TURKISH ELEMENT 32 6 DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF UNION 329 EUROPE FOR DISUNION 333 THE BIRTH OF ECONOMIC NATIONALISM 335 THREE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT 337 xi 12. Three Proposed Roads to Reconstruction 347 QUEST FOR A REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE 347 CAUSES OF DECLINE 348 WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND WESTERNIZATION 352 BALKAN WARS SPUR MORE CONTROVERSIES 356 ISLAMIZATION, TURKIFlCATION, AND WESTERNIZATION 359

13· Reforming the Institutions 367 THE STATE 367 RELIGION 377 THE FAMILY 385 THE ECONOMY 393 EDUCATION 400

14· The Secularism of the Me~rutiyet 411 SECULARIZING REFORMS THROUGH TURKIST INFLUENCE 411 TOWARDS A NATIONAL ECONOMY 42 3 TURKIST ROMANTICISM 427

THE STRUGGLE FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF A SECULAR NATION-STATE 1919-39

15· The Birth of a Nation under Fire 43 1 THE TEMPESTS STIRRING THE ASHES 432 THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION 435 "SOVEREIGNTY BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE" 443 CALIPHATE WITHOUT SULTANATE? 446 THE CHILD IS NAMED REPUBLIC 450 THE DEMISE OF THE CALIPHATE 457

16. The Kemalist Reforms 461 THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULISM 461 KEMALIST WESTERNISM 463 REMOVAL OF THE DEBRIS 465 SECULARIZATION OF THE CIVIL LAW 467 EXTENSION OF THE SECULARIZING REFORMS 473 xii 17. The Secularism of the Kemalist Regime 479

UNIFICATION VERSUS BIFURCATION 479 THE R,ELIGIOUS QUESTION 48 I THE RATIONALIST APPROACH TO RELIGION 483 THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH 490 THE FORMALIZATION OF SECULARISM 495 THE SECULARIST VIEW OF NATIONAL HISTORY AND CULTURE 500

Conclusion 50 7

Glossary 5I I

Author Index 517

Subject Index 52 3 This page intentionally left blank new Niyazi Berkes (1908-1988): introduction the Education of an Intellectual by Feroz Ahmad

Niyazi Berkes died on 18 December 1988. He had been living in the southern English town of Hythe (Kent) since his retire­ ment in 1975 from the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. He was quite isolated from the academic life to which he had become accustomed during his twenty-three years at McGill and had no contact with the British universities where Turkish studies were taught; only some Turkish students in London and at the University of Kent visited him to hear him converse on Turkish history and politics. It was such conver­ sations which persuaded him to write his memoirs about his eventful life from his birth in Cyprus to his dismissal from the University of Ankara.] Niyazi Berkes was born in Nicosia soon after the Young Turk revolution of 23 July 1908 in the Ottoman Empire, which was marked by the restoration of the 1876 constitution. Under nor­ mal circumstances he and his twin brother would have been given classical Muslim names like Ahmed and Mehmed. But, with the momentous events going on in Istanbul and the ex­ citement tbey were causing even in Cyprus, the boys were named Enver and Niyazi after the so-called "Heroes of Liberty": these two military officers led the uprising in Macedonia which forced Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) to restore the constitution he had shelved in 1878. These names - Enver and Niyazi­ proved important in the development of the two boys for they symbolised something of great significance in the Turkish Cypriot community and therefore heightened the historical consciousness of the boys as they grew up. Pictures of the "Heroes of Liberty" were everywhere, in newspapers and magazines, in shops, and especially in the family home. The Turkish community in Cyprus (under British rule since 1878)

I Niyazi Berkes, Unutulan Ylilar, ed. Ru'}en Sezer, Istanbul 1997. I have drawn heavily on these memoirs and on information kindly provided by Mrs Anice Berkes to write this profile.

xv NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD felt the excitement generated by the liberal atmosphere that came in the wake of the revolution in Istanbul. Niyazi grew up in this atmosphere, although he was too young to make any sense of the tumultuous events which led to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The war in which Ottoman Turkey and Britain were enemies left no mark on his memory. The earliest memories that were etched into his mind for the rest of his life were the shouts of a Greek Cypriot newsvendor who recounted the successes of the Greek army as it advanced into Anatolia following the Greek invasion in May 1919. Niyazi was by then eleven and acutely aware of the fears of his community that Greek successes in Anatolia did not bode well for its own future on the island. He never forgot how he and his brother would hear his mother mutter her prayers: "0 God, give strength to our soldiers, have pity on our nation, don't make us slaves." That is how his national and political consciousness was awakened. God seemed to answer the mother's prayers when the Greek army suffered a crucial defeat at the Battle of Sakarya on 24 August 1921. This battle marked a turning-point in the Turco­ Greek war, and the Greek army never regained the initiative until it was finally defeated in September 1922. The morale of the Turkish Cypriots was revived, and Enver and Niyazi expressed their delight by demanding that they be allowed to complete their schooling in Istanbul. This had been the usual practice among middle-class Turkish families till the World War, and the family merely continued it when it left for the Ottoman capital in 1922. While Enver was sent to a high school for budding engineers, Niyazi enrolled at the school that is now known as the Istanbul Lycee for Boys, and on graduating in 1927 he entered the Law Faculty ofIstanbul University. This proved to be a dreadful experience for the idealistic Niyazi: he found the academic environment totally anti-intellectual with no encouragement for rational thought. He later wrote: "In those days the Law Faculty was a kind of factory producing students. Most of them did not attend their lectures as they were forced to work to make ends meet. They passed their examinations by learning the professors' notes duplicated on machines." Nevertheless, Niyazi passed his courses with high marks and

XVI Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

decided to transfer to the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters. There too he was disappointed because the curri­ culum had no relevance for an understanding of the post­ war world and the new Turkey that the Kemalist regime was struggling to create. Most professors were living in another age, totally out of touch with the modernist trends in philosophy. However, the philosophy department provided greater latitude for independent study than the Law Faculty had done, and Niyazi was able to broaden his intellectual horizons on his own. He began to read widely and devoured books on the history of philosophy, cultural history, economic history and whatever else caught his fancy. Living in Istanbul during the early years of the republic, he realised that there were now three Turkeys existing side by side with little mutual interaction. There was the Turkey of Istanbul whose elite remained largely unaffected by the Kemalist/nationalist movement and whose intelligentsia in the University looked with disdain and con­ descension upon the entire Kemalist venture. (Mustafa Kemal was aware of Istanbul's hostility and did not set foot in the city till 1927, having left it in May 1919!) There was the Turkey represented by Ankara, the capital of the Republic, where the Kemalist experiment was in full swing but in splendid isolation. And finally there was the Turkey of the people which embraced the rest of Anatolia and was beyond the compre­ hension of both elites. Niyazi graduated with a degree in philosophy and began applying for a university post. But he drew a blank wherever he applied since he lacked patronage in both the University and the Ministry of Education. A friend recommended him for a post in the recently opened People's House in Ankara, an institution whose purpose was to inculcate the ideology and values of Kemalism in the people of Anatolia. The director was looking for someone with an "understanding of books" who would organize the library in time for the Tenth Anniversary of the Republic in October 1933. Niyazi applied for the position and got it, much to the dismay of his friends in Istanbul who considered a posting in Ankara a form of exile and hardship. But for Niyazi his stay in the new capital which was being built brick by brick proved invaluable for his intellectual development. There he met intellectuals who, unlike their counterparts in

XVII NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD

Istanbul, were committed to the creation of the new Turkey. The People's House was a place where they congregated: that is where Niyazi met people like ~evket Siireyya Aydemir who were engaged in formulating a radical version of Kemalism through their monthly journal, Kadro. He also met conservative Kemalists who were suspicious of anything that could be remotely associated with the Soviet Union and Karl Marx. They regarded the experiment in Mussolini's Italy and later Hitler's Germany as having more relevance for Turkey. Niyazi was introduced to political ideologies in Ankara, but he failed to join any group. He did not even join the ruling Republican People's Party whose membership was the most obvious path to patronage and promotion in the education bureaucracy. This was the system in which party and state were coalescing. Niyazi was politically naive but a man of principle; by not joining the ruling party he not only failed to further his career but found himself totally isolated when he got caught up in the anti-communist witch-hunt after the Second World War. While he worked in Ankara in the early 1930s, Niyazi took the opportunity to visit a nearby village. Even though Mustafa Kemal wanted to change prevailing attitudes towards the peasant, the urban elite continued to view the Turkish peasant as lazy, set in his ways, fanatical and reactionary. Few had bothered to investigate the reality of village life in Anatolia and the dreadful, primitive conditions of the peasantry. Niyazi's brief introduction to the peasant destroyed the stereotype of the lazy and ignorant country bumpkin he had inherited from his elite environment. He wrote: "My great gain from this first introduction to the peasant was to learn that he was the most sensible person in the land .... The Turkish peasant (perhaps like peasants the world over) is not reactionary. There is no peasant who says: 'I don't want to change, it is a sin to make progress.' The ones who say this are the true reactionaries and liars."2 This fleeting acquaintance with a few peasants sparked a lifelong fascination with village life, and Niyazi often returned to investigate the predicament of rural Anatolia after he settled in Ankara. The result of his fieldwork was published in 1942 by Ankara University as Bazz Ankara Koyleri

~ Ibid., 93.

XVIll Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

Uzerinde bir Ara~tzarma (Research on Some Ankara Villages). Later his continuing interest in this subject led to his marriage to Fay Kirby, an American educationist and anthropologist who had similar political and academic interests. Niyazi's position with the People's House ended once the Tenth Anniversary celebrations of the Republic were over. The future was no longer bleak now that he had a patron in Nafi AtufKansu, a medical doctor and intellectual who had come to appreciate his talents and integrity. As head of a newly-created body called the Education Society, Dr Kansu offered Niyazi the directorship of a Turkish-American experimental high school founded by the Turkish Society of Education in collaboration with the American Friends of Turkey. The school was to be run on principles expounded by John Dewey, the American philoso­ pher and educational theorist. Dewey had sent a Dr Beryl Parker to advise the school on his method, and Niyazi collabo­ rated with her. However, the collaboration did not last long since both of them resigned when they found that the school's purpose was to serve the children of the Kemalist elite in the capital. In their discussions on education, Niyazi had argued that it was not possible to bring about social change in Turkey merely through education based on Dewey's principles; one had first to study and understand Turkish society and then introduce an educational system which suited its needs. These ideas impressed Beryl Parker, and when she returned to America she related them to other sociologists at the Uni­ versity of Chicago. This led to Niyazi being offered a fellowship in the sociology department there. But first Niyazi returned to Istanbul, where the University had undergone a radical reformation marked by the purge of faculty who were unable to work with the Kemalist regime. They were replaced by younger men who were enthusiastic Kemalists as well as a number of German professors who found refuge from the Nazis in Turkish universities. Niyazi, whose family adopted the surname Berkes in 1934, was appointed asistan or lecturer in sociology. He worked alongside some of the German professors like Gerhard Kessler who introduced new ideas into the curriculum, including the writings of Marx and Engels. Kessler, who was a Christian and not a Marxist socialist, gave a seminar on the Communist Manifesto, much to the surprise of

XIX NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD the faculty. Everyone bought and read the Manifesto in German, French or English since there was not yet a Turkish translation. In those days it was possible to purchase Marx's writings in Ha§et (Hachette), the French bookstore; later such works were proscribed until the liberalisation of the 1960s. Niyazi was never a Marxist although he read Marx, whose writings convinced him of the need to increase his knowledge of history and economics in order to understand society. This was an important step in the making of a historical sociologist. In 1934 Niyazi and his twin brother Enver were called up for military service as reserve officers. They could have sought exemption because of their birth in Cyprus but chose not to do so: it seemed unfair to take advantage of an accident of birth, especially when colleagues in the University were being called up. He returned to the University after serving in the army for a year and found a letter from the sociology department of the University of Chicago offering him a fellowship. In those days the United States was not a popular destination among Turkish students wishing to pursue a higher degree abroad. Universities in France, Germany and Switzerland were pre­ ferred, largely because French and German were the languages taught in the high schools. Berkes, with his early schooling in Cyprus, had acquired some English and felt very comfortable accepting the Chicago offer. He left for Chicago with his wife Mediha Hamm during the summer of 1935, travelling by train through Central Europe and Germany to Hamburg, where they boarded a liner. He had already heard much about Hitler and the Nazi dictatorship from German professors in Istanbul, and now experienced a fascist regime at first hand during his five days in Berlin. A congress of Nazi organisations was taking place, and the city was full of people sporting swastika armbands. Many of the visitors were staying in the same hotel, and the Berkeses were forced to endure a great deal of 'Heil Hitlering' everywhere they went. The atmosphere was suffocating, especially because of the increasing anti-semitism which they occasionally con­ fronted as foreigners who did not look German let alone Aryan. In one of his strolls around in the city, he was approached by a prostitute; Berkes the sociologist realised that, despite

xx Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

their professed puritanism, the Nazis had failed to put an end to this age-old profession. For Berkes the voyage from Hamburg to New York was uneventful and monotonous. Though born on an island, Cyprus, he had no love for the sea. He described the Mediterranean as frightening, but the Atlantic with its cold harshness and huge black waves was awe-inspiring. There must have been plenty of social activity on board the liner but he spent his time in the ship's library absorbed in an Italian biography of Leonardo da Vinci which he read in translation. They were glad to arrive in New York where Beryl Parker was waiting to meet them. They saw the sights of the great metropolis, but it was the 'soup lines' which caught their attention and made a lasting impression. In 1935 America was still in the grip of the Great Depression; the unemployed masses, unable to find work, were fed and kept from starving by the soup kitchens. From New York they boarded a bus and made their way to Chicago. They would have preferred the more comfortable train, but the bus was cheaper and they were running short of funds. Besides, if they travelled by bus they would be able to go via Niagara and see the famous Falls, an attraction his wife did not want to miss. They arrived in Chicago just before the start of the academic year and soon settled down. The next four years were crucial in the intellectual develop­ ment of Niyazi Berkes and in his formation as a sociologist. His extensive reading and the courses he attended convinced him that a deep grounding in history was crucial if he was to become a good sociologist. He also learned the importance of statistics in the social sciences and mastered that skill during the four years. Thereafter, both history and statistics informed his scholarship and provided a depth lacking in the writing of so many other sociologists. Chicago also increased his awareness of socio-economic issues, an awareness he had acquired in Turkey as a result of the Kemalist revolution. There he had seen a great disparity between town and country, especially after visiting a village. But in Chicago it was urban problems that plagued the city, and the University found itself in the middle of them. However, the University of the 1930s was not the conservative institution it became later, associated with the name of Milton Friedman, the guru of free-

xxi NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD

market economics, and the so-called "Chicago School" so influential in the 1980s throughout the world. In those days its faculty were considered radical by American standards and would have been denounced as "extreme leftist", even communist, by the establishment in Turkey. Chicago was one of the cities most adversely affected by the Great Depression, and was ~herefore the city most interested in the successful implementation of President Roosevelt's New Deal of social and economic reforms designed to resolve the crisis. The university was an active participant in the New Deal reforms, and many of its faculty, especially in economics and the social sciences, were often in Washington advising the administration. The years passed pleasantly enough in the environment of the university; Berkes also made contact with the Turkish community of workers who had emigrated to America during the late years of Ottoman Empire. But the news of Atatiirk's death (10 November 1938) depressed him and he began to find life in America difficult to bear. Moreover, his wife was homesick and wanted to return to Istanbul more than he did. To make matters yet worse, he began receiving letters from the Ministry of Education demanding that he return to Turkey post-haste -letters, he later learned, sent by people hostile to him. Berkes therefore left Chicago with his doctoral thesis uncompleted, hoping to return soon to obtain his degree. The Second World War put an end to such hopes and he never obtained a doctorate; years later, in 1974, his thesis was published as a book which became very influential under the title Turkiye'de 9agda#a§ma (Turkey's Coming of Age). Berkes arrived in Istanbul in August 1939. The atmosphere in the country was tense in. antic~pation of a European war. Lacking Atatiirk's charisma, Ismet loonU, who had only recently succeeded Atatiirk as president of the republic, was in the process of establishing a regime which revolved around his person. He had already declared himself the "National Chief' (Milli ~eJ) in the style of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, and his regime had adopted the fascistic form with the slogan "one party, one nation, one leader".3 In an atmosphere marked by a

:< Berkes describes this period vividly but with much bitterness. For a historian's account of these years see Cemil Kocak's ex­ cellent monograph Milli fjef Diinemi (1938-1945), Ankara, 1986.

xxii Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

"bureaucratic feudalism" in which party barons dominated the various ministries, Berkes hoped to return to his former post in Istanbul, only to learn that it had been given to someone else's protege; his department had virtually forgotten about him and saw him as an outsider no longer part of the "old boy" network. Unable to find work in Istanbul, Berkes went to Ankara. There the recently-established Faculty of Language, History and Geography had just opened a Philosophy Department which was recruiting new faculty. He was fortunate to find a patron in Hasan Ali Yiicel, his high school teacher, soon to be Minister of Education. After some political manoeuvering, he was appointed asistan but given no credit for his earlier experience or his years in Chicago; he found that people who had been his students when he was teaching in Istanbul four years earlier were placed above him. The war made the political regime more authoritarian although Turkey remained neutral. The pro-fascist element in the Republican People's Party became increasingly vocal following Germany's invasion of the Balkans and the occu­ pation of Greece and Bulgaria, which brought the Nazis to the very borders of Turkey. Hitler's invasion of Russia gave heart to the pan-Turkist movement and led to the rise of racism. Berkes gives a graphic description of these years in his memoirs; he says they have become the "forgotten years" (the title of his book) which he wants to be remembered as they were. He discusses the emergence of a dissident move­ ment against these reactionary trends. Some journalists and junior academics began to analyse and criticize fascist ideology, to question the one-party system, and to call for democracy. Berkes contributed to some of the new journals like Yurt ve DUnya ('The Homeland and the World"), and his name became associated with the small dissident movement although his articles tended to be more sociological than political. He wrote on a variety of subjects: on sociology, on Namlk Kemal' s understanding of laicism and reform, on the village question about which he published a book in 1942, on Western civilisation and modern Turkey, on marriages outside civil law and the status of children from such marriages, on education and the problems of Turkish youth, and on problems in post-war Turkey. There was only one article, on "Race and Racism", which was

xxiii NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD explicitly political; it examined the racist ideology of pan­ Turkism which had become extremely worrying for liberals in Turkey. During the period 1940-6, before the state began to prosecute the dissidents, Berkes wrote about fifty articles in periodicals and daily papers like Vatan (Fatherland) and Tan (Dawn). He also wrote two books: one on propaganda in 1942 and the other on political parties in 1946. Thereafter he published nothing till 1953, after his arrival in Canada. These were barren, wasted years during a productive phase of Berkes's life. In 1941 Niyazi Berkes was asked to do military service for a second time. He was sent to the Ministry of National Defence as head of the Translation Section and liaison officer to the British Military Mission in Turkey. During the years 1940-4 he also lectured at the Police Institute of the Interior Ministry on public opinion and propaganda. Berkes's years of anguish began in December 1946 just as Turkey entered the era of the Cold War. The government felt isolated and threatened by the victorious powers following its ambiguous role during the war when its neutrality was viewed by the Allies, especially Moscow, as being benevolently disposed towards the Nazis. It therefore threw all caution to the winds and embraced the pro-American, anti-communist cause. Ankara was inadvertently aided by Stalin, who failed to renew the Turkish-Soviet Treaty of Friendship unconditionally; this allow­ ed the regime to create an atmosphere of hysteria around a Soviet threat to Turkey, which was allegedly supported by indigenous communists. The government-controlled press seemed to find communists everywhere, especially in educa­ tional institutions, and a witch-hunt was launched to purge the left. The most notorious case concerned four dOfents (the rank of senior lecturer/reader or associate professor) in Ankara University: Pertev Naili Boratav, Behice Boran, Adnan Cemgil and Niyazi Berkes. The controversy began when right­ wing students belonging to the nationalist students' union demonstrated against these faculty members for their articles in journals like Yurt ve Dunya and Tan, and for disseminating communist propaganda through their lectures. Other students came out in support of the beleaguered professors but to no avail. The tension in the University and in the streets was

xxiv Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

sufficient to provide the Minister of Education, o?emseddin Sirer, with an excuse to suspend the four without a hearing. The matter went before the Supreme Administrative Court, which reinstated the four. The minister then asked the Senate of Ankara University to dismiss them and the Senate did so on 10 January 1948. This time the Inter-University Board, the academic body which examined disputes involving faculty members, intervened and overturned the Senate's decision because there was no evidence that the dOyents had engaged in communist propaganda. o?emseddin Sirer turned to the legislative assembly and had it pass a law cutting the funds for the courses taught by the four dOyents from the University's budget, thereby making them redundant. 4 Matters did not end there and three of the four - Boran, Boratav and Berkes - were brought before a criminal court. The case dragged on until on 10 February 1950 the three were sentenced to three months in jail. Thereafter the press took no more interest in the case and people assumed that it was all over. In fact the sentence was overturned on 6 June 1950 by the supreme court of ~ppeal, which then reviewed the case and found all three defendants not guilty and acquitted them. However, the damage was done and they were never able to return to the University; Behice Boran remained in Turkey and played an important role in left-wing politics after the military coup of May 1960, Boratav migrated to Paris and taught folklore at the Sorbonne, and Berkes went to Canada. In the Cold War climate prevailing in Turkey during the 1950s, it was difficult for independent-minded intellectuals to find work and survive. Sabahattin Ali, a left-wing author, had been murdered by his guide while escaping to Bulgaria; NaZlm Hikmet, the communist poet, escaped to the eastern bloc and died in exile. Berkes was also advised to get away to America and teach. In America in those days there was a resurgence of interest in Turkish affairs, largely because of the Cold War. Turkey had been included in the Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947), where by the President of the United States pledged American support for 'free people who are resisting subjugation

4 Kemal Karpat, Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Pam Svs1em, Princeton, 1959, 272-3.

xxv NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD by armed minorities or by outside pressures'. In 1950 the recently elected Democrat Party government sent troops to Korea to fight alongside the United Nations forces, and two years later Turkey was allowed into NATO. The victory of the Democrat Party also stimulated interest in Turkish affairs since it marked a peaceful and democratic transition from twenty-seven years of one-party rule. The trans­ ition to democracy also resulted in what Western observers at the time described as an "Islamic revival" or "resurgence of Islam", a reaction against the militant secularism of the Republican People's Party. These factors ought to have made a scholar like Niyazi Berkes most desirable for any American university wanting to strengthen its Turkish studies pro­ gramme. There were a number of such institutions which had centres of Near and Middle Eastern studies, and they would have been ideal places for a sociologist with Berkes's background, especially because of the familiarity with the American system which his earlier studies there had given him. But there was also an anti-communist hysteria and witch­ hunt going on in America, launched by Senator Joseph McCarthy in February 1950, and under those circumstance he was unlikely to find a place in an American university. In 1952 Niyazi Berkes was appointed visiting professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. He was granted tenure in 1956 and promoted to the rank of associate professor. At McGill he had to reinvent himself and become, in academic terminology, an "Islamist". This required little effort - he had always been an avid reader with an inquisitive mind open to new ideas and methodologies, and he already possessed an interest in Islam which perhaps originated from his childhood in Cyprus where the Greek and Turkish comm­ unities had been divided along religious lines. Moreover, his father may have been a follower of the unorthodox syncretic order of dervishes, the Bektashis, while his mother Dervi§ Hamm was a devout Muslim. In Turkey he witnessed the implementation of a radical programme of reform whose aim was to secularise society. Islam as ideology remained an abiding interest and in 1943 he wrote his first essay on the "Development of Secularism in the Turkish Revolution". At McGill he broadened his interest to areas outside the central

XXVI Niyazi Berkes: the baucation of an Intellectual

lands ofIslam and was able to do so in the company of scholars like Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Fazlur Rahman and Charles Adams. McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies had, and continues to enjoy, an excellent reputation in the field for both its teaching and scholarship. But it has always been on the margins of the field and as a result its scholars tended to be marginalised as well; to establish their reputations, they had to move to univer­ sities in America, as did Professor Smith when he moved to Harvard and Professor Rahman to Chicago. Berkes was also marginalised in this way, but seems not to have made any attempt to migrate to an American university. Consequently, he was never very visible either on the lecture circuit or in academic journals, at least not to the extent that a scholar of his stature ought to have been. He did not join any network which would have led to regular invitations to read papers at the various centres of Middle East studies or to contribute articles to journals and edited works. To the best of my know­ ledge, he spoke at Harvard's Center of Middle Eastern Studies twice during his McGill years: once in 1955 and the second time in 1969, when I heard him read a paper on "The Transformation of the Kemalist Regime", which has never been published. Berkes had never been a ')oiner"; he had not become a member of the Republican People's Party while it was in power or the opposition Democrat Party when it was formed in 1946. He did not fall in with any group in the field of Middle Eastern Studies either. But he spent a year as visiting Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies, Muslim University of Aligarh in India, and lectured in Pakistan, Indonesia and Japan. The list of publications given in his festschrifl ,. and in his memoirs suggests that he was not often invited to review books although he had been an avid reviewer in Turkey. Between 1954 and 1964 he reviewed only fourteen. Eight of these were books in Turkish, for which it would have been difficult to find competent non-Turkish reviewers. That is why so few books in

5 FS.WlJS (In Islam;" Civilizatwn i're."mtfri to NivflZi Ber/ws. eel. Donald P. Lillie. Leiden 1!l76. The list of Berkes's p{lblicatioJ1s in this volume COWl'S the period to 1!l76 and the hook reviews to 1!l64. The list in the mellloirs is a lillie lillIer hill both lists are incomplete.

xxvii NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD

Turkish, Arabic or Persian are reviewed in Western journals. Eight of his reviews appeared in Orient, the quarterly published in Germany, and the other six in International Journal, Middle East Journal, Muslim World, Journal of Religion, Middle Eastern Affairs and Pacific Affairs. Berkes's list of articles published in English is equally limited: nine appeared between 1953 and 1974. There was a reason for this paucity: after the military intervention of May 1960 he began to concentrate on books and articles for the Turkish reader. Before 1960 there had been an unofficial boycott of his writing in Turkey and he published only a series of four articles on "Arnold Toynbee's Philosophy of History", which appeared in Vatan in 1954 and 1955 as new volumes of Toynbee's A Study of History became available. But the quality of his written English is always high; Berkes did not publish just to see his name in print. Some ofthe articles were seminal and of such enduring quality that they continue to be read with pleasure and profit. He was also versatile, being able to write with authority on subjects as diverse as Ziya Gokalp and Turkish nationalism, the problems of secularism, the Turkish novel and literary developments in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic, ethics and social practice in Islam, and a comparison of religious and secular institutions. During these years, Berkes was also engaged in translating selected essays of Ziya Gokalp, which were published in 1959 under the title Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization. 6 Until the Berkes anthology appeared, neither Gokalp nor his writings were well known in the West; only the Israeli scholar Uriel Heyd had written a monograph on his contribution to the development of nationalist ideology in Turkey. Gokalp's essays, available in English for the first time, revealed how he had attempted to present a synthesis of nationalism, Islam and Western civilisation in a systematic way and how he had attempted to accommodate creatively the non-Western culture of the late Ottoman Empire with Western ideas. Apart from scholarship, Berkes devoted much of his time and energy to the cultivation of students. He was a natural

(i This anthology was published by George Allen and Unwin in England and by Columbia University Press in the United States.

xxviii Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

teacher and by all accounts he enjoyed the students' company. That is why they came to him when they had research or intel­ lectual problems to resolve. He was a man with encyclopae­ dic knowledge, especially about Turkey and the world of Islam; but he was equally at home with the humanities and the social sciences. Students who came to know him at McGill tell sto­ ries of his rich conversational gifts and his ability to hold a group enthralled for hours with a rich profusion of historical anecdotes. I shall never forget my own last encounter with him in Chicago in November 1973. The occasion was a conference to evaluate the Republic of Turkey on its fiftieth anniversary. It was a three­ day affair with two panels a day with papers read by the best scholars in the field from around the world. The afternoon session ended around 5 o'clock, after which we all dined at the University's convention centre where we were staying. After dinner we broke up into small groups and people went off to entertain themselves by going to a local bar and more conver­ sation, or to a jazz and Blues club for which Chicago is famous. I would have done something similar had I not run into Niyazi Bey in the lobby. We began with the usual small-talk about the weather and the conference, but our talk developed into a conversation, with Niyazi Bey doing the talking and I the listening. Apart from our interest in Turkey we also had some­ thing else in common: an interest in India, where Niyazi Bey had spent the academic year 1958-9 at Aligarh University as visiting professor. The conversation continued into the night and I realised that I had acquired a better understanding of some of the problems of modem Turkey in the few hours with Niyazi Bey than I had through years of reading. I perfectly understood how students felt after they had spent time in discussion with him. The year 1960 was a turning-point for Turkey and for Berkes. The revolution brought down the Democrat Party government and introduced a liberal constitution with provisions for civil rights of which Turks had been starved for so long, rights like freedom of the press, autonomy for the universities, and the right of workers to strike and bargain collectively. As a result, the press and the book trade flourished. The unofficial ban against Berkes was lifted and his articles began to be read

XXIX NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD

again. He was even able to visit Turkey and attend conferences, where he was warmly received, but he was not allowed to return home although he tried. He kept on trying and was about to do so in 1971, but the political climate changed after the military intervention there in March of that year, and he finally aban­ doned the idea of returning and living under an oppressive regIme. Reading his Turkish writings of the post-1960 period, one gets the impression that Berkes did not merely want to understand Turkish society, but wanted also to help it change. He wrote on topics which were being hotly debated in the country, and participated in the debate. He discussed the new constitution, the relationship between intellectuals and the people, the peculiarities of Turkish intellectuals, the question of socialism and Islam, and the historical reasons for underdevelopment. He acquired a loyal readership, and his ideas became influential and were widely quoted. Apart from his journalistic writings, Berkes also wrote a number of books on Turkey's problems. His first one asked the question "Why have we been stumbling ~ilong the road to modernisation for two hundred years?" (Ikiyuz ytldzr Neden Bocalzyoruz?, 1964). This was followed in 1965 by Batzczlzk, Ulusculuh ve ToplumsalDevrimler (Westernization, Nationalism and Social Revolutions). Then came Islamczlzk, Ulusculuk, Sosyalizm (Islamism, Nationalism, Socialism) and Amp Dunyasznda Islamiyet, Milliyetfilik ve Sosyalizm (Islamism, Nationalism and Socialism in the Arab World) in 1969. These essays were followed by a two-volume popular economic history of Turkey (Turkiye Iktisat Tarihi) published in 1969 and 1970, Turk DflJununde Batl Sorunu (TJ1e Western Question in Tur­ kish Thought, 1973). Turkiye'de 9aif;daslasma (Turkey's Coming of Age, 1974), and A ...ya Mehtuplan (Asian Letters, 1976). Berkes wrote no more books after he retired from McGill in 1975 and settled in England, but he continued to write for the Turkish press. His essays were so popular and so much in demand that publishers realised there was money to be made from printing anthologies. Thus his essays and articles '",ere collected and published in three volumes: Ataturk ve Devrimler (Atatiirk and Revolution) appeared in 1982, Teokrasi

xxx Niyazi Berkes: the Education of an Intellectual

ve Laiklik (Theocracy and Secularism) in 1984, and Felsefe ve Toplumsal Yazzlan (Philosophical and Social Essays )in 1985. Berkes's Turkish writings are known in the West only to those who know the language and are in the field of Turkish studies. His reputation outside Turkey rests on his magnum opus, The Development ofSecularism in Turkey first published in 1964. McGill University Press produced a most elegant edition of only 1,500 copies, its binding decorated with a pattern of blue tulips from sixteenth-century Ottoman tapestry, and printed on a large page with a generous margin around the type area. It is a pleasure to handle such a book. But once the 1,500 copies were sold, it went out of print and was never reissued; it became a bibliophilic rarity and a collector's item. Since there was no paperback edition, the book was not used as 'required reading' in courses, although it was always on every reading list. Berkes's Secularism is one of the most important books on modern Turkey. It analyses the country's transformation from a traditional, religion-based state and society to a modern, secular one. It does so in the context of a complex relation­ ship between economic and technical changes, as well as political and religious ones. It was the first book to explain the importance of the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Treaty of 1838 in integrating the Empire into the world economy and the impact this had on almost every aspect of Ottoman history. After Berkes this treaty could no longer be ignored by scholars and it became the cornerstone of most historical analysis of the late Ottoman Empire. Mter Niyazi Berkes retired and settled in England, he vir­ tually disappeared from the world he had previously occupied. Cambridge University showed an interest in him and he was offered an honorary position at Caius College. The Berkeses were so sure of moving to Cambridge that they even looked at property in the vicinity. However, the offer was withdrawn on the objection of another professor there. McGill University honoured him with a festschrift of essays by his friends, colleagues and students and he was made emeritus professor. But apart from this honour he did not receive the recognition he deserved from the field he had served with such distinction. He was never made an honorary fellow of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), the foremost

xxxi NEW INTRODUCTION BY FEROZ AHMAD

association in the field, although it has so far honoured other scholars such as Halil Inalcik, Charles Issawi, M.yid Khadduri, Ann Lambton, Andre Raymond, Maxime Rodinson, Annemarie Schimmel and W. Montgomerie Watt. Nor did the Turkish Studies Association, an affiliate of MESA, do anything to honour, the scholar and the man. Yet in Turkey, the country whose government forced him to live and die in exile, he is remembered by each new generation of students. Mrs Anice Berkes lamented the fact that students in the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University now get their degrees without even knowing his name.7 There may be odd individuals like that but they would be few and far between. In fact Berkes's name is familiar not only to students but to the reading public in Turkey because his books live on. At the time of this writing, Turkiye'de 9agdaslasma is about to appear in a new edition. The publication of The Development of Secularism in Turkey after a generation will revive the Berkes mystique among people in the Western world who know the man and his book only by reputation. They will have the opportunity, in reading the book, to see the history of modern Turkey in a new perspective.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-BOSTON, Feroz Ahmad JUNE 1997

7 Milliyet (Istanbul), 22 December 1988. The view of Niyazi Bey's character expressed by Mrs Anice Berkes in a recent letter is surely worthy to be recorded; "I had the very highest opinion of Niyazi. He was 100% gentleman - cultured, kind, humorous, generous, humble and humanitarian."

XXXll INTRODUCTION This page intentionally left blank introduction

A STEADY TREND toward secularization in traditional institu­ tions is a feature of Muslim societies facing the impact of modem civilization. The Muslim peoples have different ethnic origins, geographic situations, historical backgrounds, and present-day conditions; the changes occurring among them differ in scope, intensity, and velocity. Still, one cannot avoid noting certain similarities in their experiences of social change. The disparity between the new and the old is perhaps to be found nowhere so clearly as in the lives of these peoples. Tradi­ tional patterns are in the process of dissolution, and new forms have not yet become established. There are cleavages in almost every department of life-in ideas, in institutions, between gener­ ations, and among classes and communities. Such a condition of flux is an unmistakable sign of internal change in the value system of a society; and this change is unavoidably followed by some degree of secularization. The process is universal, but the attitude towards the problems created by it differs in every case. The acceptance of a secular outlook on religious, political, social, and cultural matters is far from universal. That such an outlook is warranted or even relevant. under the present conditions of flux is far from being generally recognized, let alone accepted. It will be useful to make a distinction between the process of secularization and the doctrine of secularism. Secularization is a sociological process which takes place as a result of factors beyond the control of individuals. A doctrine of secularism involves indi-

3 INTRODUCTION

vidual ideas, attitudes, beliefs, or interests. The two are often interrelated, but the latter is not a necessary accompaniment or a necessary product of the fonner. Among the Muslim countries it was in Turkey that, prior to 6 . World War II, a secular concept of state, religion, law, education, and economy was first promoted, and a definite doctrine of secu­ larism implemented as a political, constitutional, educational, and cultural policy. This policy has not, however, won the approval of all Muslim nations or of most individual Muslims. The doctrine is being challenged even in Turkey. Many claim that Islam is incompatible with such an attitude. Although such claims are based on differing considerations, all amount to the belief that Islam cannot be merely a faith for the conscience of the individual, that it is, on the contrary, the foundation of an entire social system, and that in Islam religion is so fused to every social institution that the existence of anyone is endangered by the attempt to separate it from religion. The opponents of secularism are made up of two equally opposed groups: the traditionalists, who look back to medieval Islam as the one true polity, and the modernists, who reject medi­ eval Islam in favour of a "real" or "pristirle" Islam. This modern­ ist view arose as a reaction to a clear policy of secularism and drew much of its inspiration from the desire to develop a totalitarian ideology that would serve as a substitute for European forms of totalitarianism. The anti-secularist view represents a challenge to modem trends in all Muslim countries and invites objective study of secularization as it involves fundamental changes in society as well as minds. It will be our object to survey the rise and development of secularism in Turkey in order to evaluate the policy on factual grounds and to see what are the implications of secularism for the social and, especially, the religious and moral values in Muslim society. We shall do this in terms of the transformation of the social context provided by Turkish history. We shall examine historic­ ally the process of secularization which reached its clearest culmi­ nation as a result of the radical reforms undertaken between 1927 and 1937. These reforms were the definite signs of a final rupture with the basic institutions of medieval Islamic tradition as manifest in the history of the Ottoman-Turkish state from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. INTRODUCTION

Two Concepts of Secularism

The use of the term "secularism" in connection with the deter­ mination of relations between spiritual and temporal authorities 5 give!:' the impression that the condition to which the term refers is found only where such distinctly institutionalized authorities co­ existed. In this narrow concept, secularism appears to be merely a matter of separating the respective areas of jurisdiction of two institutions of authority. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the term was used in the West to refer to a specific policy of separating church from state. The word was derived from the Latin saeculum, which meant originally "age" or "generation" but which came to mean in Christian Latin "the temporal world." The word "secular" has been used with this meaning in all the major Protestant countries. The policy of secularism in Catholic countries is more often ex­ pressed by the term "laicism," which derives from the Greek laos (the people) and Jaikos (the lay). While the underlying emphasis in the word "secularism" is on the idea of worldliness. the term "laicism" emphasizes the distinction of the laity from the clergy. Both terms, however, refer to two aspects of the same thing. They were used in connection with the problems of duality, opposition, or separation of church and state. The church represented the highest authority over the spiritual sphere and the state the highest authority over temporal matters. Secularization or laicization meant the transformation of persons, offices, properties, institu­ tions, or matters of an ecclesiastical or spiritual character to a lay, or worldly, position. It has been usual to designate as "secularized" or "laicized" any institution withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the religious authority. In Christianity, the two realms, spiritual and temporal, were separate from the beginning. However, relations between the two, or attitudes of one towards the other, varied with time. Christian thinking had to cope with the difficulty of maintaining relations between two established institutions and authorities. The solution in Eastern Christianity was found in the creation of a state church. Western Christianity aspired to a universal Christian civilization in which the church would be ascendant over temporal authorities. After the Reformation the universal supremacy of the church was denied. In modern times, keeping the two spheres apart has become a more or less established principle in Western Europe and North INTRODUcnON

America, although the mechanisms developed for the maintenance of a modus vivendi between the two vary from one political regime to another. Owing to unique historical circumstances, the establishment of 6 a church above, or subordinate to, or parallel with, the state was peculiar to Christianity; it constituted an exception rather than the rule in relations between the state and religion. This existence of the Christian church as a political power in its own right has tended to focus attention mainly on the political aspects of secu­ larism. In a non-Christian state such political considerations are not necessarily of primary importance. To understand the process of secularization in a non-Christian society, one must examine the extent of the domination of religious rules over all areas of life and discover whether or not this domi­ nation is either implemented or supported by the state. Further, one must estimate the extent of this domination and also try to ascertain the degree of separation between the religious life of the people and the other aspects of their lives. In this matter of separ­ ation, the relationship of religion and economic life is often of primary importance. The basic conflict in secularism is not necessarily between religion and the world, as was the case in Christian ~xperience. The conflict is often between the forces of tradition, which tend to promote the domination of religion and sacred law, and the forces of change. Such a struggle can take place in a society where there is no organized church authority. Perhaps the best example will be found in this work. In a society governed by a tradition which carries the sanction of the dominant religion, secularization will inevitably involve a major upheaval. Yet once the tradition has been challenged and new conditions result, the traditional order often faces an increas­ ing number of such challenges. In such a process the emancipation of political institutions has tended to appear the most vital, but there are cases in which secularization has appeared first in other areas with startling results. The process may lag behind in various areas, including the political, and there is no evidence to support the view that secularization occurs proportionately in every area of social action. The term "secular" is currently used in socio­ logical literature for the state of a society that is normally capable of maintaining a degree of differentiation and flexibility in its value system. In this wider concept of the term, "secularism" can include the behaviour of individuals and groups within the state and can Two Concepts of Secularism be manifest in economic and other major fields of social action as well as in the political sphere. From a sociological viewpoint, secularization may be observed in the differentiating of social values into areas removed from the authority of tradition. Changes take place in the relationship 7 between what is "sacred," or "unchangeable," and what is taken to be "profane," or neutral to tradition. In the non-secular or traditionalist system, there is no room for the idea of change through the agency of state or any organ of society or individuals, whether by legislative or by other means independent of the fixed traditional prescriptions. Stability and order are given the highest value. Change is associated with disorder and evil. The absolute principles of the tradition are not subject to fundamental modi- fication; they can only be interpreted by definite groups of men in accordance with definite rules. In contrast to this type of tradi- tionalist society, secular societies exhibit greater dynamism, by which various sectors of social life are freed from the domination of sacred rules. This condition emerges in all major social institu- tions; it is particularly manifest in economic and scientific-techno- logical behaviour. Rational behaviour, as the epitome of secularism, seems to appear in these areas first. The religious system of the society ceases to be the supreme provider of values, or a greater degree of freedom is recognized to individuals or groups to inter- pret these values in terms of exigencies. In the present work, "secularization" and "secularism" will not be used in the narrower sense, referring merely to the relationship between the church and temporal authorities; at times they will have connotations transcending the purely political. This broader use of the terms is necessitated by the nature of the case under investigation. The core of the tradition which we find being challenged in Islamic countries by the forces of modem civiliza­ tion (by no means unrelated to the rise and development of Western secularism) was Islam. One of the distinguishing marks of this tradition was the relation of religion and state. In Islam there were no concepts of church and state as specifically religious and political institutions. Religion and state were believed to be fused together; the state was conceived as the embodiment of religion, and religion as the essence of the state. It is this feature, partly misinterpreted under modem conditions by certain modem Muslims, which has given rise to the opinion that the concepts of secularism and secularization are irrelevant to the study of Muslim societies. There is not even any term, it is INTRODUCTION

claimed, to express these words in the languages of the Muslim peoples. We shall see in this work how far the assertion is tenable; but we would like here to note the fact that even in the West the term 'secularism" has a history of barely a century. 8 The modernist Islamic view, valid if secularism is understood in its more limited meaning, does not bar the study of secularization in Muslim societies when the process is understood in its broader sense. The distinction between the Christian and Islamic experience lies in the differences in the institutions and hierarchies within the religion, which influenced the relationship between the religious and political authorities. Despite the differences,- however, there were common features in the medieval development of both Chris­ tianity and Islam when each showed tendencies opposed to secular conditions. Both religions were conceived as systems striving to include the spiritual and the temporal, and within which the two spheres would be subordinated to the rules of tradition. This simi­ larity did not exist simply because a religion was involved in each case. Just as in Islam, so in Christianity, secularism remained irre­ levant as long as the religious outlook remained loyal to the medieval view of life. This was true even when the claim of the Universal Church was rejected by the leading representatives of the Reformation. Secularism within Christendom came in its real sense, not with the separation of state and church, but with the collapse of the medieval concept of society. There was no secu­ larism so long as the medieval concept continued, although in Ouistianity church and state existed side by side while in Islam one stood inside the other. In either case, the church or state, or amalgam of the two, found it hard to co-exist with the political, economic, scientific, and cultural institutions produced by a secular view of society.

The Medieval View of Society

Like all medieval societies, the Ottoman-Turkish polity differed fundamentally from modern political systems. Perhaps the most striking point of contrast is in their views of society as a whole. The first distinguishing mark of the medieval outlook was its all-pervasive religious spirit. This spirit even affected those areas that were not governed directly by religious injunctions or beliefs. Because of the deeply religious colouring of medieval Christian The Medieval View uf Society and Muslim societies, each saw the other primarily as a religious community. For both there were only Christians, Muslims, Jews, idolators, and heretics. A Turk of medieval times never called himself a Turk, and when ;1 European used this word, he meant, in fact, a "Mahometan", or "infidel"-just as the Turk used such 9 non-religious terms as Ram (Roman) for a Greek Orthodox Christian and Frenk (Frank) for a Latin, or Western EUropean, Christian. As a corollary, all Muslims who were not excluded as heretical were thought of as constituting a community called in Arabic umma. In Turkish usage this was iJmmet, the community of Islam or of Muhammad. For one to be considered a part of this community, it was sufficient not to be a Christian, a Jew, or a heretic, and to bear witness as a Muslim. The fact that an indivi- dual's national beliefs, practices, customs, and institutions were quite different and on some points even contrary to the Turks' did not disqualify him from the Islamic community in the medi- eval outlook, when the interplay among the various Muslim soci- eties was limited. No distinctions were made between the religious and non-religi­ ous in the present understanding of the terms. The distinctions were made among what conformed to the Sbari'a, that is, to the body of rules regulating the conduct of the Muslim, what devi­ ated from it, and what was irrelevant to it. An aspect of life had religious significance only if it had traditional recognition accord­ ing to this body of rules, which covered not only belief and ritual but also matters of custom and law. These rules were studied, administered, watched over, and, especially when new situations arose, interpreted by a specially trained body of academicians called Ulema. Their ultimate aim was to achieve harmony, and even unity, between the provisions of this system of rules and the conduct of worldly affairs. Traditional Ottoman polity was fashioned essentially by a patri­ monial authority called Sultanate, Islamized by recognizing the Shari'a, which the Turks spelled as ~riat, as the sacred law of the Muslims, and by assuming the charismatic title of Caliphate, which was believed to be a succession to the Prophet's headship of the community of Islam. More than any other medieval Islamic polity, the Turkish one, headed by the Ottoman dynasty, char­ acterized that combination of temporal and religious attributes implied in the combination of the words Sultanate and Caliphate­ a combination believed to be typical of the Islamic form of polity. In Turkish history, the concept of unity of state and religion INTRODUCTION

(d~u-devlet) was applied through an imperial system which gave unity and order to a great multiplicity of religions, sects, profes­ sions, and social classes. However, this system reflected a different understanding of the unity between religion and government than 10 that implied in the classical Islamic theory of imamah which simply meant, to the exponents of this theory, leadership or headship of the community of believers. In the medieval concept, headship shifted from the leader of the community, conducting the religious acts of the believers, to a sovereign ruler whose chief function was to maintain unity and order through the application of power. The medieval Muslim political view, like the Christian, was permeated by belief in a social structure based on distinct orders and estates. Unlike the il:mmet in which all Muslims were brothers and equals, a polity composed of these orders was seen as an organism pyramidally stratified and hierarchically arranged, fash­ ioned and governed by the Creator. Important elements in this view were the emphasis on non-equality, on a rigid differentiation according to economic and political functions and religious differ­ ences, and on the need for a power with which to oversee and hold the separate units together. Naturally, just as the view of society differed from that of the modem world, so the concept and mode of applying justice differed from those generally followed today.

The Ottoman-Turkish Hierarchy

According to the Ottoman-Turkish view, the ruler, known in the West as the Sultan and commonly called by the Turks Padi~ah, was appointed by God to hold together the estates of the society which constituted its order. Directly under him came his vicar called Sadrazam (a contraction of sadr-t a'zerm, the highest rank) known in Europe as Grand Vizir. He was the chief of the ruler's administrative, military, and judicial staffs. Beside these stood the Ulema, the corps of the learned, distinct from the military and civil estates. Finally, there was the great bulk of the body politic, the common people ('awamm), the ruled. The most important part of the people was the ra'iyya (known in Turkish by its plural, raaya and in English as rayah, which latter term was applied by the Europeans only to the Christians under Turkish rule). These were the primary producers, most of them peasants. The artisans and traders constituted another category and the least worthy in The Ottomtm-Turkish Hierarchy

the eyes of medieval writers. Besides this differentiation by eco­ nomic function, the radya were also differentiated into Muslims and non-Muslims. While the first constituted a politically amor­ phous community, the second (Jews and Christians) were differ­ entiated according to their ecclesiastical affiliations and not accord­ 11 ing to their ethnic or national differences) in spiritually auto­ nomous religious communities called millets. The function of the ruling estates (the administrative, the military, and the learned, including the judiciary) was to maintain the order as an unalter­ able tradition by securing to each category of the ruled no less and no more than it deserved according to its function or station. This was the meaning of justice. Through the application of certain principles implied in this concept of society, a great degree of unity was realized over a long period of time. Disorder broke out only when the principles ceased to be applied or to be applicable and the various groups began to develop tendencies that were incompatible with these principles. In the following chapters we shall see how some of these groups disappeared, some were transformed into occupa­ tional groups or social classes, and some developed into nationali­ ties. Since God created every particle of the social universe for specific purposes and, thus, every individual should remain as God willed, the first principle was traditionalism. Anything deviating from the established tradition, whether or not it was derived from religious sources, was contrary to a supposed Ancient Law (ktmun-u kadtm) , which the ~eriat was invoked to sanctify. Many ordinary practices became not only lawful but also religiously sanctioned by becoming a part of the tradition. The second principle was that each group should be protected from influences which might upset the order. This was applied in the policies of segregating a group by assigning to it a separate status. These policies encouraged corporate groups which some­ times enhanced communal or "national" differences and sometimes emphasized the inter-confessional or international nature of the Turkish empire. Each was recognized by the ruler and possessed privileges granted by his favour. In each there was some authority recognized as partial delegate of the supreme holder of power. For example, heads of the guilds or of the Christian and Jewish millets had administrative and juridical rights and duties. (The Turkish system found a place for the non-Muslim communities in its medieval structure, without segregating them into ghettos or INTRODUCTION

resorting to expulsion or extermination, by according right of jurisdiction to their respective ecclesiastical authorities-a method which invited praise from Arnold J. Toynbee.) Each group had traditions as to titles, grades, recruitment, ceremonies, discipline, 12 but absolute loyalty to the supreme ruler. Shifts from one to another were rare (proselytization was not normally encouraged). Remuneration for· duties was only partially monetary-in many cases prebends or benefices were assigned to a position as a source of income to its holder. Since there was no equality among the various orders and groups and since each had a separate function and status, each tended to form a closed group. This led to the third principle according to which each individual and category should remain where and as it traditionally was. To discourage discontent and migration each individual was accorded the means best suited to his function and station. No one was assigned, or allowed to perform, the functions of another category. For example, tillers were not expected to be soldiers and soldiers were not intended to possess artisan skills. No lower order was permitted to arouse discontent by encroaching upon the rights and prerogatives of a higher order. Above all, the privileges granted to the ruling estates were not available to the lower orders. The moralists and the writers of books on statecraft were particularly concerned with this last point and warned the rulers of the evil consequences of possible changes. One exception was made to the third principle and this exception itself became another ruling principle. It was that while all other orders had roots in their group, religion, family, and occupation, the military and administrative orders of the central government should possess no roots in society and should bear allegiance only to their ruler. The respective positions of and relations between the rulers and the ruled differed from modem conditions. While in a modem democracy the aim is to make the political authorities of the state as accessible to the bulk of the people as possible with no demarcation between the rulers and the ruled, in the medieval system the ideal was exactly the opposite. The rulers were sup­ posed to be separated from the ruled. They could be recruited from among certain categories of the ruled, but the recruits were detached from their original social classes. The system was be­ lieved to have collapsed when the common people entered the ranks of the administrative, military, and clerical orders, and when they were no longer divested of their original social identity. Tbe Ott~TUTk;sb Hiertlrcby

The fifth ruling principle, the "law of nature" of this system, was the preservation of order, called niz4m. This meant maintaining a proportional distribution and, hence, a balance among the various status groups. This principle derived from the belief that all the prerogatives and privileges granted to the groups were bestowed 13 by the grace of God for the sake of the happiness and order of the world (nizam-, diem). The modem concept of natural rights and equality of citizenship had no place in the medieval system since there was no idea of individual freedom or popular sovereignty. Since each order had its unique function and position, like the organs of a body, there was no equality among them. The relative status assigned to a particular category was dictated not by the utility of the function performed, but by the value of that func­ tion, that is, by the assumed proximity of the category to God. The sixth principle, therefore, was the maintenance of order and the distribution of prerogatives according to a hierarchy of values. Value was vested not in the individual but in his position. The value was designated not according to rational norms but according to the moral and religious purposes of the order created by God.

Padifah and Ulema: Temporal and Spiritual Authority

Naturally, the position of the Padi~ah ranked highest in the hierarchy. He was the direct representative or shadow of God in the world. The title Khalifa (Caliph) was understood in this sense; in other words, it did not imply successorship to the Prophet who was never imagined as a ruler. The Ottoman ruler did not claim divine nature or any prophetic attribute; but he was viewed as being different from other mortals since he held the highest posi­ tion in the divine arrangement of the world. Here also not the person but the position was invested with value. The Padi~h had no personal charisma, and! when he was deposed (a number of them were deposed and one killed) he simply did not exist socially. How far the Padi~hs, before the eighteenth century, were absolute and their rule autocratic or theocratic may be judged by considering the nature of the relationship between the temporal authority and the ~riat as the supreme manifestation of the re­ ligion, because this relationship was believed to have expressed INTRODUCTION

the unity between the two areas of life and formed the link across the gulf between the ruler and the ruled. Since the rulers and the Ulema as the representatives of the ~eriat played great roles in the entire course of the transformation from this traditional system 14 which we shall survey, we shall dwell a little more upon both. The area left to the will (irdde) of the ruler was free from the limitations of the ~eriat. He could enact laws (kanun) in various forms, according to, but outside the realm of, the ~eriat on the basis of his right (recognized by the ~eriat) of discretion and censure (takdtr and ta'zir). The discretionary prerogative of the ruler was not subject to legislative or legal control on the part of the ruled. There was no conception of legislation as distinct from the administrative and judicial branches of government. Legislative, executive, and judicial powers belonged to the ruler who delegated these to his vicar, the Sadrazam, from whom all functionaries in these fields received their authorities. In theory, applicable in other Muslim states as well, the ruler was limited in the exercise of his authority only by the ~eriat. In reality, threats to his power came from his temporal officials. There were three principal means by which the Padi~ah protected his unique authority from division: (a) through an administrative staff called the "servants of the porte" (kap~ kulu), which was bound unconditionally to the ruler, and detached or uprooted from social classes; (b) through a military force called Janissaries (Yeni~eri, new soldiers) also completely detached from their social origins and directly bound to the ruler; and (c) through the granting of fief benefices (timar) for tested service in war; the holders of these grants were called sipahi, the cavalry men; they too were subject to the favour of the ruler; they did not constitute a feudal class. By these methods a highly centralized power was established. As long as these institutions continued to function, the ruleT held onto his power; feudal tendencies were kept under control. The Ulema, the corps of the learned men of religion or of the ~eriat, maintained the continuity of law and tradition and com­ batted the anti-authoritarian, anti-traditionalist religious tendencies which manifested themselves, particularly in the seventeenth cen­ tury, either in the form of the fundamentalism of the pious or the antinomianism of the mystic (sufi). Occasionally fundamentalists and antinomians were sentenced as heretics; but moderates in both groups were tolerated when they formed religious or spiritual orders. Particularly, the mystic orders were favoured by the offi- Padifah IlJld Ulema cial Ulema and were influential in tempering the zeal of the funda­ mentalists or popular fanatics. The uniqlle feature of the pre-modem Turkish policy of din-u­ devlet can be understood more clearly by noting the function of the Ulerna in tIlls polity. The word is the plural of dlfm which itself 15 derives from the Arabic 'ilm (knowledge), presumably religious knowledge. The sum total of the men having acquired this knowl- edge does not, however, signify Ulema in the Turkish sense of the term. A man might be erudite in 'religious knowledge and yet not be a member of the Ulema estate. Members of the Ulema were drawn from institutions of education called medreses; these were not monastic or cathedral or guild schools but colleges founded and financed by the rulers. The emphasis in the curricula was on law and theology. Graduates holding various degrees were regi~ tered in official Ulema ledgers as soon as they received appoint- ments; one might be appointed as a minister of religion (imbn), as a juristconsult (mufti), or as a judge (kadt or Arabic qUi). The last constituted by far the most important category in the Turkish system in so far as the administration of justice, accord- ing to ~eriat and kanun, served the maintenance of order. However, the second of the three groups mentioned above had greater significance as it played a special role in maintaining the link between din (religion) and devlet (state). Its function was to interpret the ~eriat when new cases arose. This interpretation was called ifta, and the statement in which an interpretation was given was called a fetva (from Arabic fatwa). When a statement con­ cerned a technical legal matter, the mufti who passed the judgment was nothing but an ordinary juristconsult, advising the judge as well as the public. But when the case involved something which had special religious or political import, the mufti assumed an unusual importance. Because of this, the highest ranking mufti, called the ~eyhul-Islam, became the highest religious authority, almost equal in power to the Sadrazam in state affairs. His official statements related not only to matters of religious policy, but also such major concerns of the state as declarations of war, relations with non-Muslim states, taxation, and innovations such as the use of coffee or tobacco and the introduction of inventions such as the printing press. While originally a fetva had no official authority, the Turkish system gave to it an official political sanction. Still, the office of ~eyhul-Islam remained somewhat ambiguous in the political struc­ ture. The ~eyhul-IsIam was appointed by the Padi~ah from among INTRODUCTION

the highest ranking Ulema and could be dismissed by the ruler's ':Vill, but a fetva of the $eyhul-Islam could depose the Padi~ah. However, the $eyhul-Islam had no power to carry out his judge­ ment and, therefore, had to rely upon the administrative and mili­ 16 tary orders. As long as he and the Ulema sided with the ruler and legitimized his decisions, other holders of power were kept at bay. When the Padi~ah attemptoo to introduce an innovation not sup­ ported by ::he Ulema he was powerless and in most cases lost his sovereignty. The Ulema order differed from the Christian clergy in its nature, function, and organization. The hierarchy which developed within that order bore no resemblance to the Catholic or Orthodox clerical hierarchy. They did not constitute a spiritual corps or­ ganized through a church. Religious matters were organized not through an autonomous church but by the state through the order of Ulema which constituted an official and temporal body. Only the mystic orders, referred to above, remained outside this regi­ mentation and close to the artisan corporations and to the people. Only these constituted specifically religious institutions indifferent to temporal affairs. The Ulema's specific concern was to see that the ruler's legislation, administration, and justice agreed with the $eriat. As such their supreme aim was the preservation of the tradi­ tional order, not change or reform. Their emphasis on order (nizam) was so influential that eventually those attempting reforms (for which no generally established term came into being) were forced to claim that they were attempting to restore the nizim. As we shall see later, the major reform attempts were called by such terms as New Nizmn, Tanznnat, nizamat-l esasiye, which were all cognates. Political power was completely detached from all social strata. The peasantry, artisans, and merchants were outside the elite (khawass). Not only the masses of people ('awamm), but even the elite had no legally defined position in the constitution of the state; their status was held only by tradition. The doctrine of election (bai'a, or in the Turkish form blat) of the Padi~ah by the "men of binding and loosening" (ahl al-'aqd 'iDa ai-ball) was maintained only as a traditional ceremony of allegiance. There is no evidence to show that those in attendance at the ceremony represented the people or the estates; the people played no role in the appointment of the electors. The exclusion of the people from the government was not incompatible with the $eriat. Long before the establishment of the Ottoman-Turkish state at the end of the Padifah IlJld Ulema

fourteenth century, conditions had tended not only to systematize the ~eriat as a private law based on the tradition of the Islamic community sanctified by the authority of the Kur'an, the holy scripture, and Sunna, the tradition of the Prophet, but to further a political authority that did not derive from the religious tradi- 17 tion. The acceptance of the Sultanate, the patrimonial rule, as the legitimate state authority with the ~eriat as a non-political law ruled out the possibility of legislating political constitution. Thus, neither the Ulema and the ruling orders nor the social classes such as peasantry, artisans, and merchants developed con­ stitutional rights to limit the ruler's power or to extend their own. This did not mean, however, that the Padi~ahs became more auto­ cratic or absolute with the disruption of the traditional order and balance. Had this been the case, there might have been better chances for modern reforms in the military, political, fiscal, com­ mercial, and scientific fields such as occurred earlier under the absolute monarchs of some Western European countries. Apart from a few capable rulers who tended to become absolute auto­ crats, the actual power of the Padi~ah had almost entirely disinte­ grated by the end of the eighteenth century. By then the struggle for power was waged among groups that were traditionally sub­ servient to the ruler and detached from the social classes and knew no law other than tradition, whose sanctity was waning.

Breakdown of the Traditional Order

When the traditional order reached the stage of complete dis­ order at the end of the eighteenth century, as we shall see later in more detail, there were some efforts to establish a legal definition of the relationship between the Padi~ah and the Ulema, the army and the feudalized landed power holders. The aim was never to limit or alter the supreme authority of the Padi~ah. Therefore, while a document of 1809 defined contractual relations between these groups in legal terms, the Padi~ah was not seen as a party to the pact. The document, thus, in no way resembled a constitution, nor did it ever serve as a step in the development of constitutional govemment. It is, therefore, not possible to see a genuine transformation from a traditional to a legal constitutional system until much later INTRoDUcrrON

.times. We shall trace the steps in this direction during the nine­ teenth century. Any such transformation is usually initiated by the disintegration of the medieval estates and their evolution into social classes. In Turkey this pattern, common in Western Europe, 18 was missing largely because of the continued existence of a tradi­ tion of sovereignty based on the unity of religion and state. How far can a traditionalist system allow change? Although anythir\g which deviated from the Sunna, referred to above, was considered a novelty (bid'a or in Turkish bid'at) and rejected, the Ulerna were free to accept what they regarded as "good or praiseworthy" innovations. Many such innovations which had be­ come part and parcel of the medieval order and civilization were approved by the Ulema as necessities of the time. They exhibited a good degree of elasticity within the limits of the order and tradi­ tion. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the order began to feel that it was being shaken, there developed the type of fundamentalists, referred to before, who regarded any innovation as contrary to the ~riat. These came mostly from the lower ranks of the Ulema or outside that order and regarded it as a mere interest group, corrupt, mundane, and no longer genuinely representative of religion. These fundamentalists opposed not only all contemporary and future changes but even those innovations introduced in the past. They no longer cared for the temporal nizdm of the Ulerna and the kanlin of the rulers; they preached a return to the pristine injunctions of the Kur'an and the Sunna of the Prophet. The opposition of the fundamentalists to any form of innovation drove a wedge into the medieval union of religion and state and contributed to the rupture between the two, which finally occur­ red in the nineteenth century. But already at the end of the seven­ teenth century, no level of religiosity remained untouched by the effects of the disruption of the traditional order. While the funda­ mentalist upsurge agitated popular fanaticism, the religious life of the urban and rural masses turned increasingly to magic and super­ stition. The mystic orders, which so far remained outside ~e influence of the political powers, skidded more and more towards antinomianism and free-thinking, and this, in turn, furthered the fundamentalist reaction against rational or spiritual liberalization. The earliest symptoms of the disruption of the traditional order coincided with the approach of the Muslim millenium (corres­ ponding to 1590 A.D.). Its coming had l()ng been anticipated with grave apprehension. Many expected the event to signal the end of Breakdown of the Traditional Order the world. The signs of disorder following the tum of the mille­ nium confirmed such fears and produced a psychological state which lasted far beyond the event itself and hampered all ideas of reform or progress. These were looked upon as vain and doomed. In the seventeenth century, Turkey began to be exposed to the 19 early effects of the changes occurring in the Western economy, and contemporary Turkish statesmen and writers were able to note down the political symptoms of these effects upon basic institutions of the traditional order.1 Unaware of the novelty of the new forces from which the influences originated, they made a series of recommendations for political reform. These invariably insisted upon the retention or the restoration of the traditional institutions.

1 Most famous of these were Kavantn-i Al-i Osman by Ayn-l Ali written about 1607, Risale of KOlri Bey written about 1630, DiistUr-iil Amel by Katip <;elebi written about 16jZ. But there were others written both before and after these. See A. C. Barbier de Maynard, "Considerations sur l'Histoire Ottomane, d'apres un document turc," Nouveau Melanges Orientaux, Memoires et Textes et Traductions (Paris, 1886), pp. 51-75. This page intentionally left blank THE GLIMMERINGS 17 18- 1826 This page intentionally left blank