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The “Turkish Model” of Sociology: East–West Science, State Formation, and the Post-Secular

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Abstract

The field of sociology in Turkey has a history that is perhaps unique to Europe (and the “West”) in its co-founding with a modern nation-state, and yet its story is more central to the discipline’s general development than that of a marginal “outlier.” Positioned at an East–west crossroads, Turkey, and its sociological tradition, have been in an ongoing conversation between the two cultural poles. Drawing on Edward Said’s Orientalism, this article traces the discipline’s history through the lens of an East–west gaze. Touching on the lived public social questions that this story invokes, regarding ethnic relations, gender, migration, democracy-building, religion, and international relations, this article surveys the growth and present state of the discipline, including methodological trends and current issues.

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Notes

  1. It is important to remember that the Ottoman Empire was itself built on a defense of the region against European/Western imperialism—on the heels of the early Crusades, the Ottomans defeated the Orthodox Christian empire, Byzantium, centered in Constantinople, and the great onion-domed cathedrals were converted to mosques.

  2. Sources vary on the date of this first chair, ranging from 1912 to 1915.

  3. Parla explains that the Turkish left has blamed and the right has praised Gökalp for his racism and totalitarianism, but Parla disagrees that this is not true to Gökalp’s ideas—which could be described as “pluralistic corporatism” (1985, p. 120).

  4. Parla and Davison conclude that “. . . Kemalism offers a mixed discourse of equality and superiority wherein the Turkish nation is depicted as the progenitor of all humanity” (2004, p. 279) but that Gökalp “. . . envisioned ‘civilization’ as a shared sphere in which all nations participate in a common whole . . . .” (2004, p. 279).

  5. It should be noted that there was no single tradition of modernity in the “West”: witness the critical tradition that began with Karl Marx—a strain of sociology that did not historically resonate within Turkish sociology as strongly as the work of Durkheim.

  6. Prince Sabahhadin influenced Turkish sociology by inspiring more empirical research traditions, alongside the more theoretical stream that followed Gökalp.

  7. Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to U.S. President Carter, recently commented that two countries had a revolution from above in the past 100 years: Russia and Turkey; but Turkey, he added, was more successful (from the lecture “Putin’s Return and the U.S.–Russian Reset,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 23, 2012).

  8. The website for the Turkish Sociological Association is http://www.sosyolojidernegi.org.tr/.

  9. These researchers drew their observations after classifying 989 studies, which had been carried out by 75 sociologists across seven universities in Turkey. They grouped the results into 12 subfields.

  10. See, for example, the writings of Arus Yumul and Kenan Çayir.

  11. As of this writing, Sarkozy had lost his re-election bid to the Socialist Party candidate, François Hollande.

  12. In the meantime, controversy erupted in Algeria over the dispute. In January, 2012, Algerian Prime Minister Ouyahiya implored the Turkish prime minister to drop the references to Algeria. Other political voices, however, including some of Algeria’s oppositional political parties, criticized Ouyahiya’s statement, with one party calling for the government’s resignation over the issue (Kumova 2012).

  13. While there are journalists in prison in 2012 for their work on such matters, there are also academics and other members of Turkish society who are addressing these questions in open, honest debate, with no criminal or academic consequences. When the Turkish government canceled an academic conference to confront the Armenian question in 2005, which was to be held at a public university in Istanbul, two private universities in the city came to the fore and co-sponsored the conference, including Bilgi University, the site of the opening anecdote in this article.

  14. On the other sides of this controversy are officials, scholars, writers, and other Turks who do not deny the reality of the deaths, but claim either 1) comparable losses by Turkey, 2) the label of “civil war” rather than genocide, or 3) that this was a sin of the Ottoman Empire, not the current Republic of Turkey.

  15. See also the work of sociologist of religion José Casanova (1994) on the global move toward “deprivatization” of religion.

  16. Mardin has pointed out that a political party had arisen as early as 1945 displaying sympathies toward Islam and disaffection with laïcism, so the current party is not the first to challenge Turkish secularism (Mardin 2006, p. 280).

  17. While the Enlightenment thinkers were also harbingers of societal change, the field of sociology since that era has worked to demonstrate its scientism in many countries by distancing itself from a direct practical or policy role, most notably influenced by Weber’s call for value-free social science.

  18. See Helvacıoğlu (2000), who uses Turkey as a case study of globalization.

  19. While there appears to be some discrepancy between scholars quoted here on whether Turkish sociology is more theoretical versus more pragmatic, the consistent thread appears to be that even within the macro, theoretical works, the subject of those treatises is often decided by the workings in the public sphere at the particular time in history (e.g., theories of revolution, colonialism, etc.).

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to extend her appreciation to the following individuals who provided invaluable assistance through their suggestions and the provision of critical information: Kristen Biehl, Serife Genis, Tülay Kaya, Nora Fisher Onar, Anoush Terjanian, Antoine Terjanian, the anonymous reviewers from The American Sociologist, and editor Larry Nichols. Thank you to the members of the sociology department at Bilgi University. And I am also indebted to the Open Society Foundations for the opportunity to contribute to their Istanbul-based summer school, with particular appreciation to Rasjit Basi and Alex Irwin.

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  1. Department of Sociology, East Carolina University, Brewster 402-A, E. Fifth Street, Greenville, NC, 27858, USA

    Susan C. Pearce

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Pearce, S.C. The “Turkish Model” of Sociology: East–West Science, State Formation, and the Post-Secular. Am Soc 43, 406–427 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-012-9163-4

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