1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:07,230 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Friday seminar series of the fourth week of Michaelmas term. 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:16,140 As many of you will will know, our theme for this term has been on contemporary Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. 3 00:00:16,590 --> 00:00:23,100 Those of you who came last week will not know that we hosted Stefan LaCour speaking about Salafism in Egypt. 4 00:00:23,940 --> 00:00:32,370 This evening, we move our attention to focus on Turkey, and we are very pleased to welcome our friend and colleague, 5 00:00:32,370 --> 00:00:40,110 Dr. Katharina DELACOURT Katharina, Associate Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 6 00:00:40,770 --> 00:00:46,499 And she is a leading authority on the role of Islam and Islamism in the international relations. 7 00:00:46,500 --> 00:00:54,000 As her last two books attest. Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights Implications for International Relations, 8 00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:01,230 which came out in 2007 and then in 2011, Islamist terrorism, democracy in the Middle East. 9 00:01:01,620 --> 00:01:05,069 And we are very privileged to welcome her here this evening. 10 00:01:05,070 --> 00:01:11,070 Talk about her latest project for which she has secured a major research fellowship from a lever HUME Trust. 11 00:01:11,340 --> 00:01:20,690 Now, anybody who knows about getting research grants and the people who trust it, this is the golden, golden buzzer of the grant. 12 00:01:20,790 --> 00:01:30,389 If you get one of those, you get a three year fellowship and they are very tough to get on only the top and most impressive researchers get that. 13 00:01:30,390 --> 00:01:37,440 So we can see that you've got this, Catarina, that we really are getting the absolute top notch, cutting edge researchers we're delighted with. 14 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:39,660 Catherine is actually in the midst of this project. 15 00:01:39,900 --> 00:01:45,720 So we're particularly pleased that she gave time out from that to come and talk about the ongoing project. 16 00:01:47,010 --> 00:01:51,270 Now, the project she's working on is one of an intellectual, intellectual history, 17 00:01:51,570 --> 00:01:57,240 but she wants to engage in various aspects of international relations, particularly the idea of global eye. 18 00:01:58,170 --> 00:02:03,660 And she's looking at it through the international thought of the Islamist movements and Islamist thinkers in Turkey, 19 00:02:04,050 --> 00:02:13,710 indeed is the title of the project. And tonight's lecture states the international thoughts of Turkish Islamists history, civilisation and nation. 20 00:02:14,130 --> 00:02:23,070 Catarina. Thank you very much for the kind invitation. 21 00:02:24,620 --> 00:02:29,250 I was going to talk a little bit about my past myself, but you've covered some of that. 22 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:36,000 Michael I just want to make one point before starting that. 23 00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:39,690 Over the past seven years or so, 24 00:02:40,290 --> 00:02:51,480 I decided through my own work to make a shift away from international relations to something more akin to Middle Eastern studies. 25 00:02:51,870 --> 00:03:03,660 And of course, my work has always been at the intersection of these two broad areas, but language has been the key issue here. 26 00:03:03,930 --> 00:03:08,670 And I have started learning Turkish in order to be able to do this kind of project. 27 00:03:09,330 --> 00:03:15,120 And I have pursued it through more detailed empirical research compared to what 28 00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:19,320 I was doing in the past within the broad field of international relations. 29 00:03:19,330 --> 00:03:24,750 So this has been an intellectual journey for me, which is something I have been wanting to do for. 30 00:03:27,740 --> 00:03:36,770 Now what I'm going to do in this lecture is talk to you about the project I'm engaged in. 31 00:03:38,120 --> 00:03:46,820 I will say a little bit, a little bit about the theoretical framework and my methodological approach. 32 00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:59,210 And I will focus mostly on the empirical side of what I'm doing, and in particular on the work I have completed in the first year of the project, 33 00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:04,710 which has just finished up now in the second year, which is on history and historiography. 34 00:04:07,530 --> 00:04:12,870 So the broad context for the project is the theoretical context. 35 00:04:13,050 --> 00:04:20,700 If you want to say it is what is nowadays called global international relations. 36 00:04:22,370 --> 00:04:31,490 The term I find is very contested and I see that there is a fault line between two camps when it comes to this term. 37 00:04:33,390 --> 00:04:43,200 Those who see the global as a unified entity with underlying interconnections, making it fruitful to study is one thing, 38 00:04:45,030 --> 00:04:56,490 and those who see the global as fragmented and specifically between Western and non-Western thought or Western and non-Western are all. 39 00:04:58,720 --> 00:05:07,720 I'm very much of the first camp. I find the terms Western non-Western when it comes to international relations very 40 00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:16,690 problematic and reductionist and not leading us anywhere really in our debates. 41 00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:25,450 And my knowledge of Islamist thought in Turkey has made me question these categories even more. 42 00:05:27,010 --> 00:05:41,020 So the aim of the study is to provide empirical data and to back up this idea that perhaps when we talk about West Northwest, 43 00:05:41,650 --> 00:05:52,710 it doesn't make very much sense. So when we come specifically to Islamist support in Turkey, which is my area of focus. 44 00:05:54,320 --> 00:06:06,580 I find that the commonalities between the western wild west of modern frames and concepts that straddle across societies. 45 00:06:08,340 --> 00:06:15,420 The intellectual context in which Turkish Islamism developed was shaped by Western 46 00:06:15,540 --> 00:06:21,210 Muslim and other philosophical and political debates in terms of thought. 47 00:06:23,070 --> 00:06:29,280 So there are parallel developments and influences with global intellectual trends through all these triggers. 48 00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:39,929 And it was thought in the Republican period, for instance, the shift of Turkish Islamism to conservatism and authoritarianism from the 1930, 49 00:06:39,930 --> 00:06:45,660 it's always reflected the decline of Islamic modernism in the Middle-East. 50 00:06:48,490 --> 00:06:56,890 And it's a shift away from secular nationalism towards socialism and even fascism. 51 00:06:59,390 --> 00:07:04,280 Simultaneously. It echoed the rise of conservative and fascist Spencer. 52 00:07:06,580 --> 00:07:14,890 In another example, in the 1970s and eighties, Turkish Islamism reflected the rise of identity politics, politics globally, 53 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:24,220 the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism on the list, and simultaneously the post-modern critique of progress, reason and modernity. 54 00:07:26,110 --> 00:07:36,459 A third period is the 1990s in which the third way of Turkey's Islamists came about as they became increasingly 55 00:07:36,460 --> 00:07:43,870 engaged with their global counterparts and endorsed universalist ideas such as democracy and human rights. 56 00:07:45,820 --> 00:07:54,250 However, Turkish Islamist parties, and especially the AKP, continue to have close links with Arab Islamist organisations. 57 00:07:55,260 --> 00:08:01,950 So this is the project that I'm doing. In its broad theoretical context. 58 00:08:02,580 --> 00:08:08,129 So I was interested in Turkish systems. And I started off by placing it. 59 00:08:08,130 --> 00:08:18,210 And this is what the project can do by placing it in this international relations context called global air. 60 00:08:18,690 --> 00:08:21,599 So there is if you want to stay with that thought, 61 00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:32,970 there is there is a concern that I have within the discipline of international relations that I want to speak to while doing this project. 62 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:36,780 So this is the first part of what I want to say. 63 00:08:38,670 --> 00:08:50,190 Now, what this means in methodological terms is that I examine who has influenced Turkish Islamist thinkers. 64 00:08:50,700 --> 00:08:59,160 To put it very simply, I inquired how Turkish Islamists are situated within transnational networks. 65 00:09:00,600 --> 00:09:05,250 And to put it even more simply, who it is that they are reading. 66 00:09:05,910 --> 00:09:15,450 So a lot of the empirical work that I'm doing is actually looking at the sources of knowledge of various Turkish Islamist thinkers. 67 00:09:17,410 --> 00:09:21,430 Now. The project is a broad based historical project. 68 00:09:21,490 --> 00:09:26,620 It starts from 1923, covers the whole Republican period. 69 00:09:26,650 --> 00:09:31,630 This is the aim and it is a work on intellectual history. 70 00:09:32,890 --> 00:09:41,770 So I'm not looking at the sources of Islamist ideas and I'm not looking at the impact of these ideas. 71 00:09:41,800 --> 00:09:48,610 I'm not looking at foreign policy, for example, of any of the other Islamist actors. 72 00:09:48,640 --> 00:10:02,440 I'm just looking at ideas in the abstract. And of course, as the author, I am able to narrow this down to the particular focus. 73 00:10:05,090 --> 00:10:07,940 I focus on individual thinkers. 74 00:10:09,350 --> 00:10:23,780 I situate those thinkers in the broad intellectual context, which is often defined by the Sufi tarot card audience in Turkey and the Dumont as well. 75 00:10:25,160 --> 00:10:34,970 And within the Ottoman tradition, the legacy of Islamic thought, which is very, very important still in Turkey in many different ways. 76 00:10:36,650 --> 00:10:42,980 The way I have chosen to do this work is by studying texts. 77 00:10:44,150 --> 00:10:54,110 So I'm looking at what Islamists have written and the discourse and insofar as they are alive. 78 00:10:54,500 --> 00:10:58,190 I'm also trying to interview as many of them as possible. 79 00:11:00,010 --> 00:11:06,610 I rely extensively on my two excellent research assistants, one of whom was here, Marksman Winner. 80 00:11:07,090 --> 00:11:13,840 And to use this in Turkey, because I do have Turkish, as I was saying earlier, 81 00:11:14,170 --> 00:11:23,320 but not enough to cover the reams of text, which is often the production of these Islamist thinkers. 82 00:11:25,310 --> 00:11:34,980 Now. I've travelled to Turkey a lot and I will be travelling more, going back and forth in the coming to use of the project. 83 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:46,140 As I've said, I've completed the first year. How this has worked and this is interesting with regards to the fellowship as well, 84 00:11:46,710 --> 00:11:51,990 is that in the build up to the application for this fellowship, for this grant, 85 00:11:53,280 --> 00:12:04,350 I constructed very carefully a network of connections in Turkey, and I tried to draw these connections in order to, 86 00:12:04,950 --> 00:12:11,460 first of all understand the topic, but also gain support for the applications. 87 00:12:13,690 --> 00:12:17,770 To date in the first year of the fellowship, 88 00:12:18,820 --> 00:12:28,240 I have conducted about 14 interviews with Islamist thinkers and have additionally talked to about 25 academics, 89 00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:33,550 journalists, people who are studying Islamism in Turkey, but also. 90 00:12:33,880 --> 00:12:44,470 But here I don't want to create the impression, however, and I know I'm talking to people who are writing things from the master's dissertation. 91 00:12:44,470 --> 00:12:48,430 So it could be these it could be any of that. 92 00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:58,660 I don't want to create the impression that fieldwork and primary research are the only or the most important things that I'm doing. 93 00:13:00,490 --> 00:13:09,730 A large percentage of my time is being spent on the secondary literature, of which there is a tremendous amount. 94 00:13:10,090 --> 00:13:20,229 When it comes to Turkish Islamism and I have spent a lot of time this past year trying to map the various schools of thought within 95 00:13:20,230 --> 00:13:32,710 Turkish Islamism and often tearing my hair out about the different sort of strands and how they really relate to one another. 96 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:40,070 So I've talked a little bit about the frame of the project globally, 97 00:13:40,370 --> 00:13:48,320 and I've told you a little bit about the methodology or the methods I'm using, the way I've decided to do that particular project. 98 00:13:49,730 --> 00:13:57,080 So now let me move to the third and really the bigger part of the lecture, which is about the empirical part of the project. 99 00:13:58,990 --> 00:14:10,750 It consists of three sections history and historiography, civilizational culture, nationalism and the state. 100 00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:15,080 In all three cases. 101 00:14:15,320 --> 00:14:26,720 I am trying to outline how Islamists think about these topics and indeed how they think about them when it comes to the international realm. 102 00:14:26,900 --> 00:14:36,350 This is not a project about domestic politics, but it's about the the sort of broader global context. 103 00:14:37,970 --> 00:14:42,050 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk first about culture and civilisation. 104 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:47,420 Briefly then about nationalism, the nation and the state. 105 00:14:48,380 --> 00:14:57,410 And then I will talk about historiography and history, which is the bigger part of what I want to just say. 106 00:15:00,790 --> 00:15:10,660 Cultural civilisation of 19th century concepts, which became defining aspects of how modern individuals thought about the world. 107 00:15:12,460 --> 00:15:18,610 And what we see in the case of the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 19th century. 108 00:15:20,020 --> 00:15:32,110 There arose a distinction between civilisation in the universal sense and particular civilisations European, Islamic, Asian and so on. 109 00:15:33,340 --> 00:15:43,690 A group of thinkers of young Ottomans were instrumental in introducing the idea of the Muslim world into the Ottoman public discourse, 110 00:15:44,320 --> 00:15:52,600 an idea that then Sultan Abdul Hamid adopted, adopted and adapted to his own political purposes. 111 00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:59,980 Now, by the time of the establishment of the Republic, the distinctions between East and West, 112 00:16:00,370 --> 00:16:06,130 European and Islamic civilisation had become hardened realities, 113 00:16:06,820 --> 00:16:19,930 not least in the Kemalist elite that ruled the new state and also in the Islamist opponents of this new state. 114 00:16:21,460 --> 00:16:22,060 For them. 115 00:16:23,520 --> 00:16:34,500 The essentialist approach and idea that there was such a thing as an Islamic civilisation which spoke to the authentic culture of the people, 116 00:16:35,430 --> 00:16:43,020 became really an acceptable the sooner form of what they have to say. 117 00:16:44,230 --> 00:16:58,710 Now there are some exceptions here, such as is mademoiselle one thinker who defied this consensus and talked about civilisation in rejectionist terms. 118 00:17:00,820 --> 00:17:06,040 So in the project I'm examining how Islamists such as, for example, 119 00:17:06,910 --> 00:17:15,070 natural team overcome and his militarist movement and many others distinguish between the different aspects of civilisation. 120 00:17:16,300 --> 00:17:23,590 Crucially, the material and the moral aspect, and try to think through their respective benefits, 121 00:17:25,150 --> 00:17:32,950 typically by arguing that Muslims must adopt the material aspects of Western civilisation or European civilisation, 122 00:17:33,910 --> 00:17:41,260 but retain the moral aspect which was of course superior to this material aspect. 123 00:17:43,420 --> 00:17:51,450 Now Turkish Islamists believe that the Islamic or Muslim civilisation is the creation of Islam, 124 00:17:51,460 --> 00:18:00,700 the religion, and often use the two interchangeably, even though civilisation is a secular idea. 125 00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:06,250 This is a tension that I use as background to my analysis. 126 00:18:07,840 --> 00:18:14,530 Different generations of Islamist thinkers approach the subject of civilisation very differently. 127 00:18:15,610 --> 00:18:24,340 So earlier thinkers such as the Deposit of the Sacred saw civilisation as being in perennial clash. 128 00:18:24,860 --> 00:18:28,690 So the Muslim and the Western, but also of the civilisations. 129 00:18:30,370 --> 00:18:41,380 In a more recent wave of thought in the 1990s. People like Ahmet Davutoglu, Ibrahim Kalin rejected the idea of the clash. 130 00:18:42,430 --> 00:18:50,650 But in my studies have found that they are still very essentialist in how they think about Muslim and European civilisation. 131 00:18:52,700 --> 00:19:04,520 Now, I believe, and I'm hoping to show that this essentialism hides from our view a more profound underlying reality. 132 00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:15,350 But the very categories of culture and civilisation are more than categories, as I said, emerging in the 19th century. 133 00:19:16,580 --> 00:19:22,250 And that, in fact, they are shared across the board between Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers, 134 00:19:22,580 --> 00:19:29,120 allowing for a conversation, even if not for agreement between. 135 00:19:32,770 --> 00:19:43,510 Now let me move to the second, uh, uh, uh, to the second, to the second empirical section of my project. 136 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:47,590 This is about nation and state. 137 00:19:48,130 --> 00:20:02,610 Thank you. Now, clearly the subject of nation and state has preoccupied Islamist thinkers for the last hundred years of the republic. 138 00:20:03,900 --> 00:20:07,050 But here again, the story goes back to the 19th century. 139 00:20:08,650 --> 00:20:15,970 This is a time described by many historians as the age of nationalism, and it is certainly the age, 140 00:20:16,060 --> 00:20:21,100 the 19th century during which the state emerged as a set of institutions. 141 00:20:23,850 --> 00:20:33,810 Now it is common knowledge that one of the defining elements of Islamism is the belief that the Ummah, the community of believers, 142 00:20:34,710 --> 00:20:47,520 was artificially divided by nationalist ideology and that Muslim loyalties must supersede state identities and overcome the divisions of ethnicity, 143 00:20:47,760 --> 00:21:00,830 race and language. At different schools of Islamists within Turkey have worked out the relationship between the nation and the Ummah very differently. 144 00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:13,620 Although this inquiry. Just as the project as a whole is about the international role. 145 00:21:14,070 --> 00:21:23,100 As I've just said, there are also close connections with how Islamist thinkers think about nationalism domestically. 146 00:21:23,100 --> 00:21:25,260 And here I want to mention the Kurdish issue. 147 00:21:25,950 --> 00:21:35,940 And of course, there are many, many linkages between how Islamists approach the Kurdish minority and how they see the role of nationalism. 148 00:21:36,310 --> 00:21:49,430 But beyond the Turkish borders. Now, Turkey, as we all know, is a country with a very robust and deep seated sense of national identity. 149 00:21:50,630 --> 00:22:02,030 It's also a country with an imperial past which for its Islamist ideologues, confers the role of central player in the Muslim world. 150 00:22:03,530 --> 00:22:14,450 So Turkish Islamists of the militarist movement, for example, was shaped by this very potent sense of nationalism in recent years, 151 00:22:15,350 --> 00:22:23,750 even though those have moved away from militaries continue to operate within the Turkey centric world. 152 00:22:25,580 --> 00:22:33,530 And we see from 2002 onwards that the AKP has tried to put into practice this Turkey centred view. 153 00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:46,399 Now, naturally, many Islamists in Turkey have rejected this hypocrisy that many see of proposing an Ummah 154 00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:53,840 centred ideology while at the same time retaining a nationalist turkey centred position. 155 00:22:55,130 --> 00:23:04,490 Now there were strong reactions to it by revisionist reformist renewal list Islamist thinkers who from 156 00:23:04,490 --> 00:23:12,950 the 1980s onwards became influenced by broader Islamist ideas in the Middle East and South Asia. 157 00:23:12,950 --> 00:23:22,460 And we see a wave of translations actually causing a lot of this revisionism and the reaction to nationalist programs. 158 00:23:24,540 --> 00:23:30,239 Islamists of all hues in Turkey have attempted to think of specific ways in 159 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:36,900 which the Ummah can work in tandem and Muslim unity can be achieved in practice. 160 00:23:38,490 --> 00:23:44,910 Mostly these have been about political cooperation and the establishment of alliances in the international system. 161 00:23:46,230 --> 00:23:56,190 Another way this is worked out is through proposals about the global financial system and the workings of the economy more generally. 162 00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:08,070 So we see a number of schemes coming from various Islamist schools of thought with regards to the workings of the international economic system. 163 00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:16,240 No. Let me move to the third and final empirical part of the project. 164 00:24:18,050 --> 00:24:26,450 This is on history and historiography. This is the part of the project that I mostly completed the work on. 165 00:24:27,710 --> 00:24:30,860 I started with it because it was new to me. 166 00:24:31,190 --> 00:24:40,640 Newer than the others. So it was a very steep learning curve in order to achieve a satisfactory level of knowledge. 167 00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:50,310 So as I good bye is my career and other historians interpret. 168 00:24:51,890 --> 00:25:01,400 Before the 19th century, Ottoman universal histories began with the idea that there was a moment of creation of the world. 169 00:25:03,170 --> 00:25:10,550 Then they moved on to the rise of Islam and offered more detail about Ottoman history, 170 00:25:12,530 --> 00:25:18,770 which was thought to be the last a major chapter in the history of Islam. 171 00:25:20,260 --> 00:25:32,889 So history was framed within a religious context and it was thought often to be advancing, 172 00:25:32,890 --> 00:25:39,459 if not necessarily progressing towards Judgement Day and non-Islamic people. 173 00:25:39,460 --> 00:25:47,960 So societies featured very little compared to this Islamic centre view and indeed Ottoman centred you. 174 00:25:49,910 --> 00:25:56,900 Now would be seen again during the crucial century, which is the 19th century. 175 00:25:58,290 --> 00:26:10,199 Is a shift away from that, as realities of power forced the Ottomans to acknowledge Europe as often, 176 00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:17,880 the centre of power and with the realities of power change historical approaches. 177 00:26:19,470 --> 00:26:30,540 As a result of these shifts, there's a new periodisation of history going back to the Phoenicians, to the Assyrians and other civilisations. 178 00:26:31,910 --> 00:26:38,340 Now this historical framework became widespread in Turkey after the establishment of the Republic, 179 00:26:39,210 --> 00:26:47,130 and it is within this context that Turkish Islamists must be situated, and it is to this that they are reacting. 180 00:26:50,660 --> 00:27:00,230 Now what I have done for the purposes of writing this chapter or section of the book and for the purposes of presenting it to you as well, 181 00:27:01,550 --> 00:27:09,800 is focus on four themes. The first is agency who drives history. 182 00:27:12,090 --> 00:27:20,100 The second is period of ization. What are the starting points, the major turning points of history? 183 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,980 Thirdly is the idea of change and the direction of history. 184 00:27:27,550 --> 00:27:33,280 Is history progressing? And what is the relationship between present and past? 185 00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,740 And fourthly, what is the centre of history? 186 00:27:38,110 --> 00:27:43,060 The core geographically, but in other ways as well. 187 00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:57,910 Now what I'm doing is tracing the answers given to these questions of themes by different Islamist thinkers and Islamist schools of thought. 188 00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:05,920 So I spend a lot of time in the past year trying to talking to people, reading the work, 189 00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:12,160 trying to understand what are the answers that they're giving to these four issues. 190 00:28:12,250 --> 00:28:20,120 When it comes to history and historiography. Now on the first one agency. 191 00:28:22,450 --> 00:28:26,970 The basic question is very simple. It's who drives history? 192 00:28:28,270 --> 00:28:31,990 Is it God or is it human beings? 193 00:28:34,140 --> 00:28:38,460 The traditional idea is that God turns everything. 194 00:28:39,540 --> 00:28:44,580 But I have not come across many Islamists who actually think in this way. 195 00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:51,240 There is no absolute such a view. There are differences of degree. 196 00:28:51,930 --> 00:28:56,520 When you start looking at the total picture, so to speak. 197 00:28:58,490 --> 00:29:05,840 But humanism tends to be rejected as a Western import and a very problematic one. 198 00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:14,720 What happens more often than not is that there is not an acknowledgement. 199 00:29:14,780 --> 00:29:20,510 But isn't this thinking that God determines everything? 200 00:29:21,710 --> 00:29:28,820 But then the real discussion is about the nature and the degree of human responsibility. 201 00:29:30,230 --> 00:29:39,709 This is a very familiar. Now, there are many examples of how the question of agency connects with historical perspectives. 202 00:29:39,710 --> 00:29:52,760 More specifically. A number of theologians explore how the theological idea of heat unity of thought influences perspectives on history. 203 00:29:54,850 --> 00:30:02,169 There's a connection between ideas on history and predestination at the moral 204 00:30:02,170 --> 00:30:08,920 individual level with implications for what happens at the collective level. 205 00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:20,260 Another example is the issue of leadership. Is history driven by the strong individual or by society collectively? 206 00:30:22,250 --> 00:30:28,460 Islamists often focus on the strongmen model and interpret historical change through it. 207 00:30:30,380 --> 00:30:44,180 Now the idea of Muslim victimhood and also nostalgia for the past, for a great past, but very often can also be linked to ages, 208 00:30:45,650 --> 00:30:53,180 according to Hari Cavusoglu, for example, who's a well-known progressive Islamist in Turkey. 209 00:30:54,800 --> 00:31:04,070 This idea of victimhood allows Muslims to evade historical responsibility for their own issues and problems. 210 00:31:05,090 --> 00:31:11,330 And connected with it is the idea that conspiracies occur. 211 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:15,710 This is also linked to a sense of lack of agency. 212 00:31:19,150 --> 00:31:29,050 I drew a connection in this work between historical agency about historical debate about agency 213 00:31:30,340 --> 00:31:37,870 and the discussion in Turkey at the moment within the bounds of Islamism over historicism. 214 00:31:40,010 --> 00:31:46,909 This is a discussion around people like Mustafa and others from the Ankara Theology School who 215 00:31:46,910 --> 00:31:54,080 are influenced by more Rahman and have commonalities with contemporary modernists in Egypt, 216 00:31:54,710 --> 00:32:01,790 such as Hassan Pahlavi and people from Iran such as Abdul Karim. 217 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,610 So who's. Now. 218 00:32:04,650 --> 00:32:16,980 Historicist argues that the text and in particular the Koran, must be interpreted within the boundaries of the historical moment in which it emerged. 219 00:32:19,370 --> 00:32:23,330 This implies because humans have to do the interpretation, 220 00:32:24,650 --> 00:32:37,250 that human beings have the ability to do that and that therefore they're agents of their own destiny rather than following the Word of God. 221 00:32:38,750 --> 00:32:44,360 And it goes against the idea that God intervenes directly in history. 222 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,870 I can return to this in the Q&A, if you wish. It's a complicated issue. 223 00:32:51,890 --> 00:32:57,320 And historicism in Turkey connects with many other different schools, 224 00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:06,770 reformist schools of thought of the sort of differences and similarities there, including what some people undo. 225 00:33:07,310 --> 00:33:11,750 For example, how it has called Salafism within the Turkish. 226 00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,530 Periodisation is another thing. 227 00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:32,120 The second theme around which I organise the material now for the most part, is the belief that history begins with art. 228 00:33:33,260 --> 00:33:37,940 This has implications for how they view, for example, evolution theory. 229 00:33:38,390 --> 00:33:47,660 Those of you who follow Turkish politics will know that there's a big debate and a big problem in many ways around how evolution theory. 230 00:33:49,740 --> 00:34:00,360 But again, I found that many Islamists actually do not completely reject evolution theory and they try to 231 00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:08,700 find ways of reconciling the beliefs that history starts with and with the idea of evolution. 232 00:34:11,550 --> 00:34:23,430 There are other questions here. For example, the importance of seventh century Arabia, the moment in which Islam appears in the world. 233 00:34:24,330 --> 00:34:33,690 How does this relate to other periods and other important perhaps areas of history? 234 00:34:36,550 --> 00:34:47,800 More particularly thinking about periods such as feudalism and modernity and the extent to which they are appropriate for Turkey. 235 00:34:49,330 --> 00:34:53,969 It is something that is raised time and again within those debates. 236 00:34:53,970 --> 00:34:56,770 So someone like Mustafa Ahmad, for example, 237 00:34:57,310 --> 00:35:08,170 questions these historical periods and says that they are completely unfit to explain what has happened in Turkey. 238 00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:11,980 The connections here with ethnic conceptions of history. 239 00:35:12,310 --> 00:35:18,280 These are debates within Turkish historiography that have been going on in various forms for. 240 00:35:20,430 --> 00:35:28,930 Now, the most significant issue in my mind is about the theme or the theme about the direction of history, 241 00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:33,430 and specifically the idea of change and progress. 242 00:35:36,070 --> 00:35:43,900 As I mentioned already, in traditional theological terms, the end of history is thought to be Judgement Day. 243 00:35:45,100 --> 00:36:00,550 But this obscures a number of disagreements between Islamist thinkers and especially about how present day society should relate to its past. 244 00:36:01,250 --> 00:36:03,850 So someone like a classroom of children, for example, 245 00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:14,410 would argue that the Muslim world must end its romance with the past, which has blocked progress in a variety of ways. 246 00:36:14,860 --> 00:36:25,300 So he criticises those other Islamists who idealise, for example, some century Arabia or even the Ottoman period, 247 00:36:26,050 --> 00:36:35,710 and argues that this is a very problematic way of relating to the past which should be overcome within the boundaries of Islamist thought. 248 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:47,210 Again, there's a difference between abstract thinking and the actual views of Islamist thinkers. 249 00:36:49,100 --> 00:36:54,830 Indeed, some view 17th century Arabia as a model, 250 00:36:55,490 --> 00:37:08,180 but they use it loosely as such and tried to draw broad principles for it as opposed to literal guidance about how a society should be run. 251 00:37:10,730 --> 00:37:17,000 Often they use the metaphor of the spiral to reconcile progressive thinking, 252 00:37:17,690 --> 00:37:28,600 expectation about change and improvement, and the classical idea that as a result, that should be sort of trying to. 253 00:37:31,070 --> 00:37:38,299 Well, there's another group of Turkish Islamists, the most nationalist oriented of them, who are, 254 00:37:38,300 --> 00:37:47,390 in fact, the majority in Turkey, who see the Ottoman Empire as the pinnacle of Islamic history. 255 00:37:49,030 --> 00:37:57,700 Now this is straight forward. I will not sort of spend too much time with it, except to say that even within those ultimate lists, 256 00:37:58,780 --> 00:38:06,429 there are different interpretations about what was valuable in the Ottoman Empire and what principles 257 00:38:06,430 --> 00:38:14,770 should be derived from looking at the Ottoman Empire as the pinnacle of Islamic and indeed world history. 258 00:38:16,300 --> 00:38:25,060 So the key here is not which posture you relate to, but also how you relate to the past. 259 00:38:27,930 --> 00:38:32,250 Now finally, there is the question of the centre of history. 260 00:38:34,110 --> 00:38:42,240 This is a particularly poignant one in Turkey for the reason I just mentioned, which is its imperial past. 261 00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:53,200 The first disagreement over this is between those Islamists who see the Ottoman Empire as, as I said, 262 00:38:53,200 --> 00:39:02,530 the pinnacle of Muslim history and others who view the seventh, seventh century Arabia as that pinnacle of Islamic history. 263 00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:12,160 So one can describe this as a turkey centred versus an Arab centred debate or two views. 264 00:39:12,670 --> 00:39:20,320 Take yourself into the Arab centres and there are of course other parts of the Muslim world Iran, 265 00:39:20,650 --> 00:39:31,480 South Asia and Southeast Asia, which can play a part in this debate and taking into account. 266 00:39:33,310 --> 00:39:44,980 But last but not least, there is a conversation about Europe and the West in general in the modern period. 267 00:39:46,660 --> 00:39:52,000 So you're all familiar with the debate on Western centrism or eurocentrism? 268 00:39:52,270 --> 00:39:56,530 It's a big thing nowadays within the boundaries of international relations. 269 00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:10,660 It is raging in Turkey. It is it is absolutely very much at the top of the agenda, not just of speakers, but, of course, worldwide. 270 00:40:12,500 --> 00:40:23,540 Now it has become part of a small industry, I would say, sort of provided for by the act itself. 271 00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,070 So for those of you who are interested in the material production of knowledge, 272 00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:39,200 Turkey is a fascinating case because you actually see how if you if you have the material means the money and the will and the power, 273 00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,490 you can begin to promote and build a new world. 274 00:40:44,660 --> 00:40:51,680 And and this is very much something that the AKP has done in its 25 years in power. 275 00:40:52,400 --> 00:41:01,010 But this is, of course, not to say that there isn't really also a valid debate about eurocentrism. 276 00:41:03,770 --> 00:41:08,600 Okay. Let me conclude by trying to summarise very briefly. 277 00:41:09,290 --> 00:41:17,900 Um, what I have, um, uh, what I have said and I'm trying to do in this work. 278 00:41:20,770 --> 00:41:27,360 So there are two objectives. And the work itself can be read on two levels. 279 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:34,410 And hopefully when the book is produced, written and produced, it will be read by two different types of audiences. 280 00:41:36,650 --> 00:41:47,780 First. It's a work on intellectual history and specifically on how Turkey's Islamists in all their diversity approach the international world. 281 00:41:49,660 --> 00:41:58,480 And this is done in terms of ideas rather than policy through the three themes that I have selected. 282 00:41:59,290 --> 00:42:10,540 So what the book is hoping to achieve is of new material about about or new knowledge, 283 00:42:10,570 --> 00:42:18,460 new empirical knowledge that I have gathered and I will be gathering over the three years. 284 00:42:19,660 --> 00:42:28,180 Now, some parts of this project, for example, the history and historiography I want to talk to you about, are much more lacking. 285 00:42:29,260 --> 00:42:36,400 There's this clearly something that people have worked on with civilisation nationalism. 286 00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:40,350 Of course, there are more familiar topics and more has been done on them. 287 00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:46,030 But always the question here is how you present a particular topic. 288 00:42:48,070 --> 00:42:56,379 One example is the following I talk to you when when I came to history of historiography 289 00:42:56,380 --> 00:43:01,480 about the four themes through which I'm presenting the materials that I've. 290 00:43:03,010 --> 00:43:07,540 This is, in fact, the fourth version of this chapter. 291 00:43:09,010 --> 00:43:16,630 And the fourth way of organising this chapter that I reached after a lot of work. 292 00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:27,100 Starting first with a chronological approach, then going on to a way of organising it, which was about schools of thought. 293 00:43:28,660 --> 00:43:40,390 Then the third one was focussed on us through Sadat and the Turkish centred versus Arab centred way of looking at the debates. 294 00:43:40,990 --> 00:43:47,600 And then finally I reached the four themes way of organising the chapter. 295 00:43:49,870 --> 00:43:58,570 As always, when you move away from chronology and you go to a thematic approach, it's a lot of work for the author, but it pays off. 296 00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:00,639 I think ultimately, 297 00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:12,400 because you can convey something in in a new way that perhaps is easier for the reader to digest and hang on to at the end of the day. 298 00:44:14,500 --> 00:44:19,930 So this is the empirical level, the first part, the first purpose of this project. 299 00:44:21,390 --> 00:44:34,799 The second is to offer an empirically grounded view of what global oil needs to move the debate away from 300 00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:47,010 forward in a field which is sometimes very general in its aspirations and sort of and more about aspirations, 301 00:44:47,010 --> 00:44:55,080 actually, than delivering the detailed material to show something persuasively. 302 00:44:56,910 --> 00:45:07,229 So my argument here is that because the concepts that pervade Islamist thought in Turkey, such as civilisations, 303 00:45:07,230 --> 00:45:20,639 such as national, the nation, nationalism, progress, the Muslim world, all these are mostly 19th century modern concepts. 304 00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:31,590 There's a lot of work on that in our which allow for a conversation, a kind of mutual understanding, if not agreement between different settings, 305 00:45:31,590 --> 00:45:45,540 between different societies, that in fact there's much more commonality here than, for example, the idea of Western non-Western life. 306 00:45:45,930 --> 00:45:52,470 So when I look at these authors, when I look at the notes, the footnotes, when I look at their bibliographies, 307 00:45:52,800 --> 00:46:06,120 when I talk to them, they have read all kinds of Middle Eastern European, South Asian intellectuals. 308 00:46:06,900 --> 00:46:15,150 And it's very difficult to separate and say, oh, this is just about the West or just about about the Islamic context. 309 00:46:15,660 --> 00:46:21,520 So when you when you look at the detail, I think the categories of Western and non-Western. 310 00:46:23,580 --> 00:46:37,100 Thank you very much. Thank you very. Thank you very much for the presentation and thank you very much for coming. 311 00:46:37,100 --> 00:46:44,220 Talking at a project through its half way through and and guiding us through your thought processes and how you put the project to light again, 312 00:46:44,240 --> 00:46:49,069 which is very valuable. Often we hear people when things are is it completely finished? 313 00:46:49,070 --> 00:46:53,420 Which doesn't get a sense of how and why and in what ways approach your project. 314 00:46:53,420 --> 00:46:54,580 And I found that was fascinating. 315 00:46:54,590 --> 00:47:00,750 Thank you for being quite honest about the challenges of coming on that, which is something we love and I think we all that. 316 00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:07,070 But that's a really important part of research. And I know we've been talking to the students, but thank you for that one. 317 00:47:07,150 --> 00:47:12,620 One thing that I was very interested by this, your approach to take looking at Periodisation, 318 00:47:12,620 --> 00:47:17,990 because I think Periodisation really gives us an insight to how people view world and how they view history. 319 00:47:18,620 --> 00:47:25,729 And you talked obviously about the centrality of how the Ottoman Empire I thought you said you're coming across about 320 00:47:25,730 --> 00:47:33,020 how Turkish Islamists paradise for post Ottoman period because it's probably going to be rather different than, 321 00:47:33,020 --> 00:47:41,740 say, Islamists elsewhere. Look at it. Or is it all have you got a sense of or is that a period that they don't really paradise? 322 00:47:41,750 --> 00:47:46,550 It really might be. The end of the empire is the end of the last significant period. 323 00:47:48,790 --> 00:47:56,460 Um. Actually, I'll go to the market. So it's very difficult for me to answer that because. 324 00:47:58,970 --> 00:48:10,730 That tends to be that tends to be a feeling of, well, an embattled and embattled feeling. 325 00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:22,219 And and and this has translated into many Islamist thinkers attempting to reject 326 00:48:22,220 --> 00:48:30,710 the Republican narrative about who the Turks are when their history started. 327 00:48:33,410 --> 00:48:50,780 They have tried to. Well, they've castigated the Republicans, the communists, essentially, for cutting off the republic from its roots. 328 00:48:51,860 --> 00:48:58,910 And they have argued that as a result, Turks have been impoverished by this by this decision. 329 00:49:00,410 --> 00:49:05,750 And this decision had practical and sort of it was built on the basis of practical steps. 330 00:49:05,750 --> 00:49:10,390 But it was also a conscious intellectual. Decision. 331 00:49:12,070 --> 00:49:17,680 So there's no there's no there's no periodisation post 1923 such. 332 00:49:17,860 --> 00:49:25,300 That's the last big division. Yes. Yeah. And there is. 333 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:32,959 And now I will say something that I didn't perhaps touch on as much. 334 00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,620 I didn't I didn't have time to lecture, which is that. 335 00:49:38,390 --> 00:49:46,700 There is there's really not much positive historiography writing. 336 00:49:47,030 --> 00:49:54,290 There's not this there's not much production which has which has followed the critique of that. 337 00:49:55,580 --> 00:50:03,980 So a lot of my time over the past year has been spent trying to find Muslim historians who. 338 00:50:06,250 --> 00:50:16,570 Not Muslim and not Islamist intellectuals. But Islamist and Islamist historians, there's a very big difference. 339 00:50:17,110 --> 00:50:26,860 I was trying to look at people who have written about who are properly historians, but who come to this from an Islamist point of view. 340 00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:33,500 And I have not been able to find. Anyway. 341 00:50:36,180 --> 00:50:44,190 There are people like, for those of you who know, is my current mansion in Maryland, but he's the historian of Islamist thought in Turkey, 342 00:50:44,190 --> 00:50:53,430 which is very different from an Islamist historian who wants to revisit the big questions 343 00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:58,350 and who we are and where do we belong and how do we relate with other Muslims. 344 00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:09,000 And this work has not been done yet. Now, in my in my desperation and of course, as I became curious how I was trying to find, 345 00:51:10,350 --> 00:51:20,280 for example, Egyptian, Egyptian Islamist historians, but there again, oh, there's not a much. 346 00:51:20,850 --> 00:51:24,600 Of course, it's not my area. It's difficult to get to this information. 347 00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:31,650 But but you find actually very little of the positive as opposed to the critique of which there's plenty. 348 00:51:32,070 --> 00:51:42,510 So in terms of my methods, what I've decided to do is tease from the work of Islamist intellectuals, 349 00:51:42,510 --> 00:51:52,710 the broad work to tease out the implications of that broad worldview, that broad work for history. 350 00:51:53,910 --> 00:52:01,980 But but I've had to do that as opposed to relying on something that would be readymade, so to speak. 351 00:52:02,020 --> 00:52:07,770 Yeah, that's fascinating. And the the absence says something quite clearly, which is very, very interesting. 352 00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:22,800 And even when it comes to Islamic historiography, again, I have tried very hard to find those 19th century. 353 00:52:27,510 --> 00:52:39,239 19th century stories. But. But what happens is that Muslim historians from the 19th century onwards become modern historians. 354 00:52:39,240 --> 00:52:48,570 So they become historians of Egypt or of Turkey or other specific nation states, but not of the Muslim world. 355 00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:51,950 This, this, this. This is very difficult to.