D. Mehmet Doğan and "The Betrayal of Westernization"

An "International Knowledge Feast" lasting three days is being organized in Ankara for D. Mehmet Doğan, who passed to the Abode of Eternity a year ago. Many participants, especially from the Turkic World, are attending the Knowledge Feast, organized by the D. Mehmet Doğan Research Center, Memur-Sen, Eğitim Bir-Sen and the Ankara Governorship. The term "Knowledge Feast" (Bilgi Şöleni) is used in place of "Symposium," exactly in line with Doğan's sensitivities about Turkish. Doğan's life, with works that evoke powerful meanings in the minds of those in Turkey who think about language and culture, is a long life story devoted to reminding us of the value of Turkish, keeping the nation's memory alive, and strengthening anew the shaken foundations of culture.

Exactly a year has passed since he departed. Until a year ago he took part in what was being discussed in Turkey, contributed to debates, and could himself answer any question about himself. Only a year later we try to understand him by looking at a story now completed, by trying to read his completed text.

Even this dimension alone makes the experience of understanding D. Mehmet Doğan sufficiently exciting. The text is complete, but for whom, and how? Exactly 50 years have passed since the publication of his first work. Batılılaşma İhaneti (The Betrayal of Westernization) is an account of an era and in fact a very important text that opens the way to its enlightenment. This text, which he published when he was only 28, is an important act of resistance, perhaps a text of discovery, against those who tried to make us forget, to overlook, our last century of history. A discovery that would bring with it the flourishing of a new generation. The text courageously sheds light on a period in which an unparalleled and deliberate blackout had been imposed at the time it was written. Because of this illumination, which will be found audacious, it would secure for him, throughout his life, the privileged position befitting an intellectual in Turkey.

HOW CAN A NON-WESTERNER BE WESTERNIZED?

Westernization is one of the important currents, one of the directions of change, of our history of the last two centuries. How will it be possible for a non-Westerner to be Westernized? What else could such a policy, such a will, which on first reasoning would not be seen as ontologically possible, mean other than giving up oneself? When you give yourself up for the sake of Westernization, can one really become Western? Especially if for years you fought them calling them Crusaders, fought them again in the years of the National Struggle regarding them as the enemy, if they defeated you and occupied your country, if a case of blood and invasion has arisen between you, what else could Westernization mean other than trying to resemble your enemies? D. Mehmet Doğan would, without bending his words at all, call this conclusion, which everyone would reach on first reasoning but could not pronounce openly, "betrayal."

This book, which he published exactly 50 years ago (1975) under the title Batılılaşma İhaneti, undoubtedly set out courageously to rewrite the history of the early years of the Republic, which had been subjected to a great blackout, and played a very important role in the formation of the post-colonial or anti-colonial consciousness of an era.

I took part, together with Kurtuluş Kayalı, Necmettin Türinay and Turan Karataş, in the opening panel of the Knowledge Feast, chaired by Münire Kevser Baş. In my presentation titled "A Fresh Look at M. Doğan's Critique of Westernization from Today," I focused on what kind of space the book in question opened up within the official and ideological constraints of the official historiography of the Republic of Türkiye. Undoubtedly, the Islamic world has throughout history encountered very different civilizations, cultures and societies, and just as it gave them much, it also took much from them. Islamic civilization has had no complex whatsoever about taking things from other cultures and civilizations.

WHEN DID ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION BECOME CLOSED TO NEW THINGS?

Whatever the status of the authenticity of the hadith, the saying "seek knowledge even if it be in China," known as a hadith and having had its effect as such, has determined the margin of Muslims' taking things from other nations and civilizations. Of course, not this hadith alone, but maxims such as "the original state of things is permissibility" and "whatever is not explicitly forbidden is permitted" have granted Muslims great room for maneuver. But if what is taken concerns a people's identity, religion, or faith, this is not permitted. "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." It was this sensitivity that made İskilipli Atıf Hoca write "Frenk Mukallitliği ve Şapka."

Ibn Taymiyya's book "Sirat al-Mustaqim" (Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim) also draws up a detailed map of transactions concerning how far one should resemble other peoples and where one should differ.

When the West was encountered, against the Westernizers who wanted to cover up the vulgarity of their own imitation by placing all the responsibility for backwardness on Islam, the Islamists reacted by asking, "what did you want to take from science, technique, civilization, that was functionally necessary and useful, that Muslims prevented?" Indeed, in every encounter throughout history this breadth of Islam has been decisive. Marshall Hodgson in "The Venture of Islam" particularly underlines this habitus of adoption/inclusion of Muslims and dwells on the capacity of Islamic civilization to contain within itself a great many other civilizations.

In the face of Westernization too, although the attitude of the Islamic scholars or intellectuals was in fact not different, the Westernizers both went beyond in intent and direction, and in the final analysis it was not the internal dynamic of the Ottomans but actual occupation and colonization that put the final full stop on Westernization.

SEEKING WESTERNIZATION IN THE WARDROBE

This last point is very important, because it shows also the weakness in reading the event of some Islamists who say that when we take the West's technology, its culture and lifestyle come along with it. For they have ignored that Western culture came not through the road opened by technique, but through politics itself, that is, through the road of top-down imposition.

Indeed, during the Republican period state policies did not wait for the people to slowly adopt a Western culture by means of the technical and scientific tools they used, but intervened directly in the wardrobe by the most oppressive methods possible. They fell into a tragicomic delusion that once the wardrobe was Western the people would be Westernized as well. Yet all the steps taken for the sake of Westernization paradoxically underlined the Easternness of society all the more. For not only is the Westernization of an Easterner an ontological impossibility, but the reasons that really advanced the West, if there were any, were being sought in the wardrobe.

D. Mehmet Doğan's describing the current of Westernization directly as betrayal may seem very harsh, but when looked at from the standpoint of the Ottoman history, culture and mission, it is really not possible to interpret it as anything other than betrayal of that mission, culture and values.

On this occasion it is worth setting out a few fragments of Westernization, but later.