The possibility of separating technique from culture in development

In trying to determine the position of religion as a social actor in the process of social change, there is a question that, in the specific case of Turkey's development history, one is compelled to confront: Can you break the West into pieces, take the parts you want and leave the parts you do not? Can you take its technology and leave its culture and morality?

The historical and sociological context of this debate actually goes back to the last days of the 19th century.

The late 19th century was a period in which the Ottoman Empire's military, administrative and social reforms were slowing down, while, in return, cultural influence was steadily increasing. The influence showed itself in literature, in art, and gradually even in religious understanding. Muslim travelers or students, and technical men, who went to Europe and came back enchanted by the progress they had seen, formed the intelligentsia of this period and launched the movement called the Young Turks. This movement would later also constitute the first initiative of currents such as Islamism, Turkism and Ottomanism. From this period onward, a vital question was also on the agenda throughout the entire Islamic world: Why has the Islamic world declined? Or why has the Islamic world fallen behind while Europe moved forward?

In the course of time, those segments that had thoroughly internalized Westernness answered this question by openly holding religion, that is, Islam, responsible. Yet Muslims, whether modernist or not, came up with an extremely naive answer to this question. The answer was "Muslims have drifted away from their religion." In that case, an answer had to be found to the question of "how Europeans, although they are Christian, were able to progress." This answer was equally naive: "Because they too drifted away from Christianity, that is why they were able to progress." That is, while Christians' drifting away from their own religion led to their progress, paradoxically it was drifting away from Islam that caused the decline of Muslims. For according to the Muslim reformers, Islam was in its essence progressive, whereas Christianity was regressive.

What needs to be seen here is that both the ulema and the Muslim intellectuals characterized as modernists shared the fundamental premises of modernization, for example the idea of change and progress. In that respect, there was in fact no very noteworthy problem of irreconcilability between religion and modernity in this period. The adoption of Western institutions and techniques had been legitimized, as far as religion was concerned, to the necessary degree. Because these institutions were deemed necessary for the strength of the Ottoman Empire, which was an Islamic country. Therefore, the supposed "irreconcilability" between religion and modernity is in fact a very late premise.

The identification of Islam with a conservative reaction against change is to some extent an expectation of an internalized Orientalist perspective. With the Westernist modernists in Turkey taking over power, this perspective became widespread as the familiar Enlightenment view that regards religion in every case as a reactionary element. But the truth is that resistance to change was not the typical attitude of the ulema, who were able to act competently in the name of Islam when the political benefit of the Ottoman Empire required the adoption of certain Western styles. Indeed, it is even a fact that, when the guiding motive was the survival of the state, the first will to modernize was initiated by the ulema. In short, the idea that modernization and religion are opposites is a late premise, and it has been nurtured in order to serve the legitimation of the religion-related policies after the Republic.

At the same time, when it came to imitating the Frankish world, the Christian world, religiously and culturally within the substance of this modernization, the same ulema and Islamist circles did not remain unresponsive to it. For that reason, the tension between Islamist circles and other circles over modernization was not between being against the modernization process or being in favor of it, but rather between two options: this modernization with its cultural dimension, or without it.

At the same time, the transformation of modernization into blind imitation and admiration of the West set off the Islamist reaction more easily. The analyses of Said Halim Pasha, for example, one of the last grand viziers of the Ottoman Empire and at the same time one of the most important representatives of Islamist thought, were against the blind imitation of Western institutions through word-for-word translation without taking into account the differences in Turkish society. His writings explaining why constitutionalism did not suit Turkish society expressed an objection not to modernization but to the manner of modernization.

The Islamist Sebilürreşad circle, led by Mehmet Akif Ersoy, had already expressed the solution on this issue with a quite simple formula: We should take the West's technique and its useful knowledge, and leave its culture to them. Later, this formula was heavily criticized by Islamist intellectuals after the seventies. At the basis of the criticisms lay the assumption that technique and culture cannot be separated from each other, that a culture creates technique, and that once technique is taken, culture too will necessarily come.

In my view, there was no problem in the selectivity displayed by the Sebilürreşad circles. That selectivity was never able to be tested fairly. That thesis was never given a chance, because even before the West's technology had entered Turkey and the Islamic world, the culture that Western colonialism deemed fitting as an ideology was imposed through the dictation of politics. Western culture in the Islamic world was not a consequence of Western technology; it was formed through the imposition of direct or indirect colonial politics, and therefore this culture is even more inhuman than the one in the West.

The Republic, as a political will, resulted in those who embraced modernization as a total Westernization project purging the others. From this point on, there was in any case no political will left that could pursue the option of importing technology without culture.