In The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Niyazi Berkes bases his argument around the idea that the conflict surrounding secularism in Ottoman Turkey was between tradition and change, not religion and the world. The author’s conceptualization of “secularism”, therefore, is closer to the definition of “rationalization” or “modernization” than “irreligion”. Beginning from the intellectual standpoint that church and state were synonymous and inseparable at the beginning of the 18th century, Berkes’ overarching theme is that the development of secularism in the Ottoman Empire can best be observed and explained as a series of theoretical and pragmatic conflicts between “traditional” and “modern” (often meaning “Western”), where a distinction that formed between religion and politics slowly gained ground at the expense of older interpretations of the state. It is this transformation that the author attempts to chronicle.
Berkes’ story begins with the 1718 Treaty of Passarovitz, after which the Ottoman state decided that it needed to import Western military techniques and technologies in order to survive. Although the intent was to import only those advances related to warfare, military education underwent a secularization that spread to other segments of society, leading to the brief “Tulip Period”. During this era, Ottoman elites adopted cosmetic and cultural elements from the West, but this period ended with secularism’s first conflict, wherein religiously-based reactionary forces were able stymie the emergence of any meaningful societal or philosophical change. The next opportunity for reform came under Selim III, who believed that the empire’s survival was dependent not only on military advances, but civil innovation as well. This necessitated economy recovery, the introduction of modern methods, and the abolition of anything that could not be reformed. In this vein he promulgated a “New Order” and ushered in a period of secularization that was once again halted by reactionary forces, this time in the form of the Janissaries, who dethroned Selim III and replaced him with the more pliant Mustafa IV.
These efforts to reverse the course of reform, however, did not prevail for long. Mustafa IV was replaced, and later killed, by Mahmud II who was, by 1826, in a position to advance further reforms. The subsequent Tanzimat era, begun officially under Mahmud II’s successor Abdulmecid I, engaged in reforms designed to equalize Ottoman citizens before the law, loosen the grip of traditionalism on education, and generally “Westernize” the society and the economy. The reforms experienced only limited success, Berkes’ argues, because they failed to include a program for political reform or increase the involvement of the masses in politics in any meaningful way. Since the Tanzimat rejected Islam, millet rule, Turkish nationalism, and the interests of an economic class as the basis for sovereignty, a movement for constitutional rule soon emerged. By the time of Abdulhamid II’s ascension to the throne, the issue had become one of how to implement the constitution, rather than if it should be implemented at all.
Yet the eventual 1876 constitution was not framed by the people, but granted by the sultan, which meant that his rights were guaranteed and the document’s very existence was bound to his will. Furthermore, it rejected secularism, restrained its legislative organ as a consultative body at best, and was ignored by the West as a sham. Thus Abdulhamid’s reign, while serving as an arena where the sovereign’s pan-Islamism and Westernizing forces conflicted, removed political questions from intellectual life, allowing scholars to focus on cultural issues. During this era, three types of organized opposition movements emerged: secret societies in higher learning, international factional cliques, and army officers, the latter of which eventually included the “Young Turks”, who emerged as the most significant of these organizations.
The Young Turks agenda was one of union (Ottomanism) and progress (social and economic revolution), and was split into liberals (who wanted decentralization and independent millets) and unionists (who favored centralization and subservient millets). Eventually three schools of thought came to the fore, Westernist, Islamist, and Turkist, and Berkes’ next several chapters are spent exploring their ideological differences, their reactions to changes in the political situation, and their programs for progress through the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the rise of Mustafa Kemal. Kemal took the penultimate steps in separating religious and political institutions by abolishing the sultanate and then, soon after, the caliphate. The end result was the complete secularization of the state, which, Berkes argues, was not a process that opposed religion, but rather confined it to its own (private) sphere. Kemal’s secularism is defined by three legal limitations on religion: no formation of associations based on sect and order, no religious-based parties, and no investment of religious principles into laws.
Obviously there is much more content and nuance in Berkes’ work than a summary review can provide and, while Berkes’ work is excellent in terms of its comprehensiveness, depth, and intelligibility, it does have its issues. Perhaps the most significant of these is the author’s conflation of “Turkey” and the “Ottoman Empire”, which is confusing for the non-specialist and terminologically problematic for the scholar. He also writes from the perspective of modernization theory and often equates modernization and progress with Westernization, which can be problematic. Furthermore, the Arab provinces are either subsumed into his analysis of the empire as a whole or dismissed as inconsequential or unexceptional. Overall, however, The Development of Secularism in Turkey is unmatched in English in breadth and details, with the possible exception of Bernard Lewis’ The Emergence of Modern Turkey, and is an excellent alternative for anyone looking for a history of the empire that is somewhat (although minimally so) less Western-biased. Although far from a light read, it remains accessible to non-specialists and the wealth of information, though potentially overwhelming at times, will no doubt leave one returning again and again to this work as an invaluable reference.