Islamic Theology in the Turkish Republic. By Philip Dorroll

Abstract

Islamic Theology in the Turkish Republic begins with a statement of origins: “Modern Turkish theology seeks to answer the question: what does it mean to believe in the One God in the context of modernity?” (17). A striking question considering the nearly century-long assumption that the Republic of Turkey represents a paradigmatic example of successful secularization in the so-called Muslim world. Instead, Philip Dorroll asks what it would mean to tell the history of modern Turkey from the perspective of its theological developments rather than from its ostensible marginalization and suppression of religion in public and political life. Moreover, Islamic Theology offers a cogent example of how to write about twentieth-century Turkish Islam in the wake of critiques of secularization by showing that Kemalism and secularism (which are often conflated to imply a single coterminous project) were not the only explanatory forces shaping Turkish discourses about religion. Islamic Theology provides an overview of the genesis, development, reformulation, and institutionalization of Sunni “systematic theology,” or kalām, within higher educational structures of the modern Turkish state. This constitutes an important intervention into the field of Ottoman-Turkish and Islamic studies. Although much has been written in Turkish about ilahiyat faculties, or faculties of divinity, Dorroll’s work contributes to a small but growing body of literature on the topic in the field of Turkish Islamic studies in English. Whereas most other studies have been primarily historical in focus, addressing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates about Islamic reform, Muslim modernism, the fall of the Caliphate, and the rise of Islamism, Dorroll tells a different story of Islamic theology’s development while remaining focused on the content and style of theological argumentation, an oft-ignored element in Republican historiography. In this way, the actual arguments of Turkish theologians take on a renewed relevance as contemporary thinkers working through the legacies of modernity (materialism, positivism, liberal humanism, etc.) and their various critiques, both theological and sociological. Ultimately, Dorroll argues that modern Turkish theology takes shape at the nexus of three interrelated traditions of thought that continue to impact it today: “1) the legacy of Sunni Ottoman systematic theology (kalām); 2) late nineteenth-and early-twentieth century Islamic modernism; and 3) late Ottoman and early Republican Turkish sociological theory” (17, 42). These three strands thus constitute the discursive “problem-space,” to borrow from the anthropologist David Scott, in which modern Turkish theology took form.