The TÜBA award to Şerif Mardin

The Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) 2016 awards were presented to their recipients at a ceremony held on 2 February at the Presidential Complex. The grand awards went to Prof. Dr. Şerif Mardin, a faculty member at Şehir University, in the Social and Human Sciences category, to Prof. Dr. Mary-Claire King, a faculty member at the University of Washington, in the Health and Life Sciences category,

and to Prof. Dr. Omar M. Yaghi, a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Science and Engineering Sciences category.

Truth be told, amid an agenda crowded with the Constitution, the US and developments in the region, these awards could not take the place they deserve. Among this year's awards, the one presented to Prof. Dr. Şerif Mardin in particular by President Erdoğan himself is not of the kind to be passed over quietly. The relationship between the names TÜBA and Şerif Mardin has been a typical form of relationship that also recalls a series of debates in the history of science in Turkey and a series of tensions along the science-politics-ideology axis.

Mardin is undoubtedly a name that holds a very exceptional place within Turkey's social science tradition. Thanks to the serious and, in its own way, quite consistent methodology he put forward in social science research, he has shown an unquestionable respect and competence among all social scientists, and on certain subjects his works have been among the indispensable and unignorable references.

In the sixties, when everyone was busy grazing their own theory, he concentrated on the mental worlds of the people in the field of research, set about analyzing their mental patterns, concepts and conceptions, and for this concentrated, in what can be called a rather laborious way, on thought, ideology and culture.

He not only studied mental worlds, which were perceived as a superstructure field and considered unnecessary or even disdained, but also examined

"The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought"

and from there went on to

"The Political Ideas of the Young Turks."

He produced works on the nature of the relations between

Religion and Ideology

and their formation in Turkey, which were at first met with great indifference. In fact, in those years when Marxist sociology had a serious hegemony in Turkey, the closer he came to the reality of Turkey through the sociology practice he put forward in the Weberian understanding-interpretive style, the further he moved from the agenda of those who made the most noise.

Mardin's real great offense was to be committed through a study he would make on Said Nursi and the Nur movement. In the eighties, Mardin, whose worth was in fact gradually coming to be understood in Turkey, was on the verge of receiving, with this study, the great acceptance he fully deserved in the social science community, but instead suffered a great excommunication. The Nur movement, which has become a social reality in Turkey one way or another, whether you like it or not, whether you love it or not, cannot be ignored by you as a social scientist. In the Western social science tradition even the mental world of enemies, even if for the purpose of taking measures against them, is researched and examined in the most realistic and comprehensive way. In our case, proper Russia studies, Iran studies, or at times studies directed at the Arab world never emerged. Unfortunately, understanding-oriented studies on the Kurdish problem, free from certain prejudices, have only recently begun to emerge. That social scientists become the object of judgment because of their fields of research is of course not unique to Turkey, but the experience in Turkey is rather more instructive.

Mardin's having been subjected to judgment, even to execution, merely for having studied Said Nursi and the Nur movement is an important knot in the history of Turkish social science. Precisely for this reason, although it came up many times, and as far as I know without his himself applying, his membership in TÜBA was rejected each time.

The then TÜBA president

Prof. Dr.

Yücel Kanpolat

in defending his decisions of rejection, cited as the grounds not his having studied Said Nursi, but

"his having polished Nursi or not having criticized him enough during his study"

His excuse was truly worse than the offense. That is, what was expected was to criticize and even demonize him, whereas a social scientist has no mission of criticizing or demonizing the people whose mental map, thoughts or practice he is trying to lay out. Besides, the portrait he puts forward with his own way of conceptualization probably also gives some clues about the social scientist's own mental world.

For that reason, what Mardin or anyone else expects from Said Nursi when studying him, what meaning he attributes to him, also gives him away, in that

Mardin's world and Nursi's world are two worlds that can never meet each other.

It is precisely this situation that has made Mardin's effort to understand Nursi so valuable and meaningful.

Second,

Nursi did not need to be polished by Mardin. As a case, Nursi stands before us as a question with many followers, waiting to be understood, interpreted and explained through his texts, his teachings and his practice of forming a community. Remaining indifferent to this can only be a shame of the social science tradition.

Personally, although I find Mardin's study of Nursi very valuable as a social science practice, I do not find it that

successful.

But as I see that he also had a separate awareness of the limits of his own effort, his esteem in my eyes as a social scientist has increased even more.

What Mardin wrote on

center-periphery relations

is also, without doubt, very important reference texts. But their being reference texts does not mean they are correct.

I can say only that writing texts that can form a reference in social science, producing concepts, is valuable in itself. Indeed, it must be admitted that the concept of neighborhood pressure that he put forward after 2007, despite all its unpleasant implications, is successful as a conceptualization. Provided that one does not see that concept as a mechanism valid only among conservatives or applied only by them, the concept describes a form of social relation very well.

Mardin, whose membership was repeatedly rejected by TÜBA, being deemed worthy of the grand award today by the same TÜBA is, in my view, primarily an important gain not on behalf of Mardin but on behalf of TÜBA. For this

I congratulate TÜBA President Prof. Dr. Ahmet Acar and his team.

The award's having been presented by the President can be seen as a belated debt of loyalty paid to a value like Mardin.

In the midst of the struggle against FETÖ, there are also a few words to be said on this occasion to those who try to find or suggest connections between Mardin and Gülen. Of course in the next article.