Islam, according to this vision [Kemalism], would be allowed no influence whatsoever in society. “The boundary of religious consideration in Turkey,” wrote Recep Peker, the secretary general of the single-party Kemalist regime in 1936, “cannot exceed the skin of a citizen.” In other words, religion could exist only on the “inside” of citizens, and not in public life. There would be no religious education, no religious communities, no religious movements—and nothing like the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to protect such public expressions of religion from the state.
In just two decades, from 1925 to 1945, the Kemalist vision successfully dominated the “center” of Turkish society, which included the bureaucracy, the military, the judiciary, and the universities. The “purification” of the latter was realized by the 1933 “university reform,” in which professors who disagreed with the Kemalist ideology—including its pseudoscientific theories about the Aryan origins of the “Turkish race”—lost their jobs. At Istanbul University, almost two-thirds of the scholars were deemed “backward-minded” and were fired.
Since the “center” of society became so dominated by the secularists, Islam would be able to survive only in its “periphery”—the rural areas, small towns, and the lower classes.4 As a result, the more sophisticated Islamic tradition of the Ottoman elite disappeared, while religion became part of the culture of the less-educated masses. As a result, for many decades upper-class secular Turks considered that being a practicing Muslim was synonymous with being a köylü—a peasant.
Yet still, some of the liberal ideas developed by the Ottoman Islamic elite found their way into Republican Turkey. And no one was more influential in building this bridge than an exceptional Kurdo-Turkish scholar named Said Nursi.
In just two decades, from 1925 to 1945, the Kemalist vision successfully dominated the “center” of Turkish society, which included the bureaucracy, the military, the judiciary, and the universities. The “purification” of the latter was realized by the 1933 “university reform,” in which professors who disagreed with the Kemalist ideology—including its pseudoscientific theories about the Aryan origins of the “Turkish race”—lost their jobs. At Istanbul University, almost two-thirds of the scholars were deemed “backward-minded” and were fired.
Since the “center” of society became so dominated by the secularists, Islam would be able to survive only in its “periphery”—the rural areas, small towns, and the lower classes.4 As a result, the more sophisticated Islamic tradition of the Ottoman elite disappeared, while religion became part of the culture of the less-educated masses. As a result, for many decades upper-class secular Turks considered that being a practicing Muslim was synonymous with being a köylü—a peasant.
Yet still, some of the liberal ideas developed by the Ottoman Islamic elite found their way into Republican Turkey. And no one was more influential in building this bridge than an exceptional Kurdo-Turkish scholar named Said Nursi.
