No description available.

The key to understanding Islam and civil society is the state. However, this key issue has been decentered due to the prevailing focus in the literature, that is the compatibility/incompatibility between Islam and civil society. The findings of this thesis reveal emergent Islamic sensibilities and capacities that lead to transitions in state-Islam interaction. These findings call for a rethinking of the theories on civil society and Islam. / The study is based on an extended empirical research project undertaken in Turkey and Kazakhstan between 1997--1999. It focuses on the leading Islamic community-movement in Turkey, Gulen Community, which is not only national(ist) but also internationally organized in numerous countries. Gulen Community aims to reconcile Islamic ways of lives and faith with the secular institutional milieu. Gulen accomplishes its goal mainly (yet not only) through education, i.e., its numerous high schools and universities in Turkey and all around the world. / The main finding of my research contrasts with the juxtaposition of Islam and the state in the literature: Gulen creates the alternative pathways of engagements with the state. The engagements range from domestic symbolic politics and negotiations to international alliances. The thesis examines the engagements in three distinct spheres, i.e., the national education, international undertakings and the gender order. As ethnographic research in Istanbul and Almati revealed, the domestically uneasy interactions between Gulen and the state take the form of overt alliances at the international level. I argue that Gulen's strong identification with the 'nation as the state' facilitates its engagements with the is Republic. Moreover, Gulen's inheritance of the gender strategies of the founding fathers of the nation contributes further to the congruence between Gulen and the state. / My argument is that the engagements can largely be explained by the elective affinities between Islam and the nation-state, which are analyzed at three levels: identity, state and the international world order. The thesis reveals that further research has to be done on the following question: Is the Turkish state in the process of creating a nationalist, non-threatening and pro-state Islam?

This dissertation is a study of the political career and thought of Said Halim Pasha (1865--1921), a prominent Islamist thinker and eminent Ottoman statesman, set against the historical and ideological background of his time. / The period covered in this study extends from the twilight of the Hamidian era to the end of the Ottoman Empire (1900--1922). During these two crucial decades, the Ottoman Empire, prior to its demise, went through an immense transformation. The establishment of the Constitutional regime in July 1908 allowed several ideological currents to circulate freely on the political scene and to compete in filling the vacuum created by the fall of the ancien regime. Among these ideologies, three rose to prominency: Westernism, Turkism, and Islamism. Said Halim Pasha, one of the best representatives of the Islamist school, made important contributions to the ideological debates which were raging. In his writings that appeared between 1910 and 1921, Said Halim Pasha advocated a thorough and radical Islamization of the Muslim world in order to halt its decline and to ensure its progress. With regard to his political career as Grand Vizir of the Ottoman Empire, Said Halim Pasha proved himself to be a mastermind of diplomacy. Until his political isolation and deprivation of power by the Turkist wing of the CUP Government, he kept at bay the aggressive imperialist Powers and frustrated their plans to partition the Ottoman Empire.

No description available.

Note:

No description available.

No description available.

This study asks how national power capacity and state structures are reconfigured when faced simultaneously with the power diffusion impact of political globalization---defined as a consensus of ideas and subsequent pressure on states for further democratization and liberalization---and the power maximization demands of internal and external security dilemmas. Hypothesizing a resulting bifurcation of such state structures, this study identifies and explores the transformation dynamics of states being pressured by these two forces through an in-depth analysis of the Turkish case. First, the roots of the two pressures are explored from the late Ottoman and early Republican eras, and a pendulum period is observed, in which the incompatibility of the two drives becomes accepted. As the inevitability of the transformation from more authoritarian to more liberal regimes is realized, a resulting gradual development and institutionalization of a dual state structure into hard and soft agendas and, eventually, realms is shown. Within such a structure, a compromised governance system emerges, in which both a form of democracy and democratization is maintained for legitimacy purposes, and a strong power-holding mechanism, unaccountable to the public, is preserved as an ultimate guard to maintain control over the transformation process. An analysis of changes in the Turkish constitutions is used to reveal traceable reflections of the gradual expansion and consolidation of the hard realm. The actual workings of a dual state structure, revealing the realms' actors, their domestic and external allies, their positions, arguments and rhetoric, is provided by focusing on the clash in the Turkish case over the issue of minority rights in relation with the country's application process for European Union membership. The study identifies the new security dilemma of these countries as being the challenge of securing the inevitable transformation, including the

No description available.

This thesis studies three novels of the Turkish writer Halide Edib (1884-1964) written between 1908 and 1912, and examines this historical period and her life during it. The thesis deals with the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, the '31 March Incident' and the Turkist movement, as reflected in her novels, as well as independently through secondary sources. The examination of Raik'in Annesi (1980) reveals Edib's ideas on 'ideal womanhood,' morality and divorce. Seviyye Talib (1990) includes her views on the Constitutional Revolution, women's modernisation and the '31 March Incident.' The study of Yeni Turan (1912) reveals much about Turkism, or Turanism, and its political opponent in the novel, Ottomanism. From these novels Edib's main ideas are brought out and examined. Among the recurrent themes analysed are her strong admiration for the Angle-Saxon culture, her understanding of Westernisation, her approach to Islam, and her views on women and family.