Secularization and modernization in Turkey: the ideas of Ziya Gökalp

Abstract

The pupose of this essay is to re-evaluate the ideas of Ziya Gokalp (1876–1924), the official ideologue of the Young Turk movement and holder of the first chair of sociology at Istanbul University (1912), whose significance within the history of secular political thought and practice in Turkey remains inadequately explored. Focusing on Gokalp's view of the relationship between nationalism, religion and modernity in the Turkish context, I offe both an account of existing Anglophone interpretations of Gokalp's ideas and an alternative intepretation. In the latter, I seek to identify a conceptual frame in Gokalp's thought: the set of concerns and historical developments which comprise what I call the secularization problematic of modernity and which has implications for understanding his view of the relationship between religion and modernity in general and between Islam and Turkish nationalism in the context of modernization in particular.