Turkish-Islamic synthesis
The Turkish-Islamic synthesis ( Turkish: Türk-İslam sentezi ) is a politically right-wing Islamic - conservative ideologue that combines Turkish nationalism and Islam .
The term was coined in 1972 by the conservative historian İbrahim Kafesoğlu, who traced the Turkish-Islamic synthesis back to the first Turkish-Islamic dynasty of the Karahanids in the 11th century. Kafesoğlu viewed the contact of the ancient steppe culture of the Turks with Islam as a process of refinement. The “synthesis” was represented in the 1970s in the intellectual club Aydınlar Ocağı (literally “hearth of the intellectuals”), whose founder was Kafesoğlu. Representatives of the intellectual club explicitly formulated their thoughts and in particular their understanding of history in 1973 in the text Aydınlar Ocağı'nın Görüşü ("The view of the intellectual club"). The starting point was anti-communism and the endeavor to counter the Marxist ideology , which was perceived as a danger to Turkish values. The statutes of the association say:
- The aim of the association is to spread the Turkish idea of nationalism through the development of national culture and national consciousness, (and) to strengthen and promote the elements that make up our national existence, (this is achieved) by opposing the conceptual anarchy and the chaos of ideas, that are harmful to our national framework.
After the turmoil of the 1970s with bloody confrontations between political camps and the coup of 1980 , the junta tried to instrumentalize conservative Islamic ideas and values to restore order and a sense of belonging , despite reservations about religious fundamentalism (Turkish irtica ). At that time, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis was considered an official ideology (tr. Resmi ideoloji ) by many . Thought leaders of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis assume that the Turks played a prominent role in the spread of Islam and in the process developed their national identity as part of the Islamic umma . According to this conception, being Turkish is only possible in connection with Islam.
In the late 1980s the notion of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis lost its popularity. In circles of the Ülkücü movement , the idea of a Turkish-Islamic synthesis is still very popular. For representatives of the Turkish left , the Turkish-Islamic synthesis is a hot word .
literature
- Dagmar Zeller-Mohrlok: The Turkish-Islamic synthesis: a strategy for channeling internal political and economic conflicts in Turkey in the 80s . Bonn: Holos-Verl. 1992.
- Bilir Ünal: Turkish Islam as a political and religious worldview in its historical context from the 2nd Mesrûtiyyet period to the present . Dissertation Universität Hamburg 2004. Chapter 3 The "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis". Pp. 41-71.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner Ende and Udo Steinbach: Islam in the Present. Munich 1996, p. 236
- ↑ Quoted from Bilir Ünal: The "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis" ( PDF ( Memento of the original from April 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and remove then this note. )
- ^ Judith Hoffmann: The rise and change of political Islam in Turkey. Berlin 2003, p. 25f.
- ↑ Radikal newspaper, May 28, 2006
