Talk:
\n\u201cThe Predicament of Islamic Decoloniality in Turkey: Sufi Political Thought and the \u201cGreat East\u201d Project of Necip Faz\u0131l K\u0131sak\u00fcrek\u201d
\nby
\nAlev \u00c7\u0131nar
\nProfessor of Political Science
\nBilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
\nalevc@bilkent.edu.tr<\/p>\n
In Hybrid Format:
\nRoom Info:
\nTuesday, March 14, 2023, 12:30 p.m.
\nA-130<\/p>\n
To obtain online event details please send a message to department.<\/p>\n
Abstract:
\nAfter winning its battle against the occupying colonial powers during The War of Independence in 1919-1922, Turkey set on a secular, Westernizationist path toward modernization under Mustafa Kemal\u2019s leadership. Turkey spent what can be referred to as its postcolonial period under its founding ideology, Kemalism, which launched a West-oriented secular modernization project that framed the Ottoman system and Islam as inferior, backward, and uncivilized. First forms of what I refer to as \u201cIslamic decolonial thought\u201d emerged against this backdrop in the 1950s, which later developed into a collection of diverse intellectual movements constituting the current Islamic intellectual field (IIF) in Turkey. A constitutive feature of this field is the desire to break what is perceived as the hegemony of European intellectual paradigms, as well as the Kemalist project that has been termed as \u201cself-colonization\u201d by some of the Muslim intellectuals, and establish in their place alternative Islam-based systems of thought and knowledge. This study examines the Sufi-based political thought of Turkish Muslim poet and writer Necip Faz\u0131l K\u0131sak\u00fcrek (1904-1983) as one of the pioneers of Islamic decolonial thought in Turkey. Necip Faz\u0131l, who is current President Erdogan\u2019s main ideological inspiration, was the founder and lead writer of the The Great East (B\u00fcy\u00fck Do\u011fu) journal published in 1943-1978, which is considered to be Turkey\u2019s first Islam-based political journal that was instrumental in inspiring numerous political and intellectual movements currently active in the IIF. This study demonstrates that Necip Faz\u0131l\u2019s work has been one of the first attempts in establishing an Islam-based decolonial intellectual paradigm and a political project that stands as an alternative to Eurocentric knowledge systems and modes of modernity. Necip Faz\u0131l referred to this political project as \u201cThe Great East Revolution,\u201d which sought to establish a totalitarian Sufi (Naqshbandi)-based political system that was introduced in The Great East journal and developed further in his book, Western Thought and Sufi Islam (1982), which provides a critical commentary on key names of Western thought from a Sufi perspective. Based on the analysis of these sources, I argue that while Necip Faz\u0131l builds his thought on the emancipatory promise of decoloniality, his attempts to establish an Islam-based alternative intellectual paradigm reproduces the hegemony that it seeks to overthrow by offering in its place a totalitarian system that will suppress or eliminate rival Islamic as well as secular movements.<\/p>\n
Bio:
\nAlev \u00c7\u0131nar is Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University, Turkey. She received her BA in Psychology and MA in Sociology from Bogazici University, and her PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked as a research fellow in Urban Studies at the International Center for Advanced Studies-NYU; in Women\u2019s Studies at the Five College Women\u2019s Studies Research Center-UMass at Amherst; as a \u201cFulbright Visiting Specialist in the Muslim World\u201d at Bryn Mawr College; and at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Sciences. Her current research interests include the intellectual foundations of politics; Islamic thought; political Islam; state-building and nationhood; modernity and decoloniality; gender and patriarchal statehood; nation-building, modernity, gender, urban space, secularism, and Islam in Turkey. She has received various awards and grants from different institutions including Fulbright, Ford Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Mellon Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, Institute for Advanced Study membership, and she received a Distinguished Teacher Award from Bilkent University in 2008, and the Bo\u011fazi\u00e7i University \u00dcst\u00fcn Erg\u00fcder Research Award in Political Science in 2017. She is currently conducting a research project titled \u201cThe Islamic Intellectual Field and Political Theorizing in Turkey,\u201d under an EU-H2020, MSCA-Global Fellowship (2021-2024) at Stanford University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talk: \u201cThe Predicament of Islamic Decoloniality in Turkey: Sufi Political Thought and the \u201cGreat East\u201d Project of Necip Faz\u0131l K\u0131sak\u00fcrek\u201d by Alev \u00c7\u0131nar Professor of Political Science Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey alevc@bilkent.edu.tr In Hybrid Format: Room Info: Tuesday, March 14, 2023, 12:30 p.m. A-130 To obtain online event details please [\u2026] <\/p>\n