From the Ottomans to the Republicans: Accommodation of the Kemalist Content in Between the Spiritual and the Temporal

Abstract

The temporal in the kemalist content, resulted from the positivist ideology, especially as it relatedto the kemalist principle of secularism during the single party period. Consequently, even though the Ottoman “theocracy” had been a special case, the kemalist content in its opposition to the Ottoman State, opposed as well the spiritual element in public sphere. The reintegration of liberal Islam in public corresponded on the other hand,tokemalismbeing transformed. The article proposes that the kemalism as a process could transform in relationship to different historical contexts. In turn, the accommodation of the kemalist content in between the temporal and the spiritual depended on kemalism’s getting reinterpreted. This,while attributed a new role model to Turkey on the international scene, obeyed nevertheless the status of religion since the Ottoman Empireas submitted to State. The article concludes that kemalist accommodation to the spiritual has only been possiblewithin the reinterpretation of kemalism because the kemalist ideology, as an open ended process, permitted it.