Sociology must not be neglected

We have made this same statement on many occasions before. I even remember using it as the title of an article: sociology is the mother of the modern sciences. When the modern positive sciences were being classified in the nineteenth century, sociology was placed at the very top of the hierarchy. The reason was that it could view, within a broad framework, all the changes that great social transformations had brought about in social institutions, and the idea that every field of knowledge needed for managing that change could be directed from this perspective.

Of course, the role that Auguste Comte attributed to sociology in his classification of the sciences and his hierarchical scheme was exaggerated, but it was not entirely empty either. In the end, from within the sociology he designed as a kind of engineering, very different ideological tendencies emerged: alongside the possible "positive" roles of sociology, there were also examples that were incapable even of naming what was happening and that, once things had happened, regarded them like a neutral observer. Even so, sociology as a science kept, and even developed, its capacity to serve as a source for different disciplines and, beyond a certain stage, to coordinate among the disciplines that had emerged.

Sociology cannot be neglected. We need to see and understand in greater depth where the dizzying developments we are living through are taking us, and what, along the way, they are taking away from us, from our families, our politics, and our institutions of education, religion and economy, and what they are bringing to them. You may say that we go on living without understanding, but if we have fallen into a position where we can say that, it already means we have become dry leaves tossed about in the winds of this change.

Or we may have reached the point where we should reflect on the answer given by Çevik Bir, the famous and mighty pasha of the February 28 period, when he was warned about what kind of disaster the work they were doing was leading themselves and the country into and was asked, "Why don't you consult sociologists?" Çevik Bir said: "When we ask sociologists, our minds get confused, and we cannot maintain our resolve." But what if that thing we take for resolve is in fact a mistake we ought to avoid, a mistake we ought to turn back from while it is still near? In that case, would it not be a good thing for the sociologist to confuse our minds?

Indeed, according to an engineering assessment that the pasha made by neglecting sociology, the measures they took were supposed to prevent Imam-Hatip graduates from coming to power in this country on their own within 10 years. Yet thanks to the measures they took by neglecting sociology, an Imam-Hatip graduate came to power on his own in this country not after 10 years but after only 4 years.

Sociology cannot be neglected. This is precisely why the AK Party became the actor of a serious political change in the country: it listened carefully to those confusing sociologists at its founding and did not neglect them. We can say that one of the AK Party's greatest strengths, both at its founding and in the politics it has pursued over the years, was that it took the sociology of the country into account. By God, it was also in this period that, for the first time, a large area opened up for sociology as a profession in terms of employment in official institutions.

SOCIOLOGY IS BEING NEGLECTED NOW

Sociology really cannot be neglected, but now it is being seriously neglected. Although for the first time in the AK Party era sociologists are being assigned to certain institutions, their personnel rights are highly problematic. In many fields where they could be employed under similar conditions, they are practically crushed under other professional groups.

Although many ministries badly need sociological knowledge, perspective and practice in their staff recruitment, sociologists are still not included in the 4/B contracted personnel schedule.

A sociologist asks: "Does the fact that the Ministry of Health did not include sociologists in its recruitment of 6,000 staff mean that health is not a social issue?!.."

The family is a thoroughly sociological institution, and sociologists have been trained to see best the dimension of the family's interaction with other institutions and with social processes.

In fact, sociologists, who by their curriculum also study philosophy, social work and psychology, are hired at such a low level not because there is little work for them to do, but because there is no serious division of labor among professions and no fair balance.

Of course all professions are valuable, and the aim is certainly not to set professions against each other, but here what is being broken is sociology, and the price is paid not only by sociologists but by the entire society that neglects sociology. Unfortunately, in the Ministry of Family and Social Services' latest recruitment, the number of sociologists was kept strikingly small compared with professions whose curriculum and accumulated expertise suit family services far better, and this is a serious neglect.

It is quite clear that an urgent regulation is needed on the employment of sociologists. The ministries first need to see the importance of the sociological perspective in their recruitment. I am afraid there is a serious problem in the general perspective guiding the recruitment, and there are also serious signs that the inclinations of certain professional groups on this matter are decisive.

This needs to be corrected as soon as possible, because neglected sociology is like neglected health. That is as much as I can say.

OUR UNIVERSITIES ARE CERTAINLY NOT MERE NESTS OF JAHILIYYA

Because of my last article, titled "If Our Universities Become Nests of Jahiliyya, Who Will Stop Islamophobia?", I received complaints from some of my academic colleagues that I had been unfair by generalizing against all universities.

Truly, it would never cross my mind to cast suspicion on the whole academic world, of which I am myself a part. Of course I cannot say that all university professors use the university chairs like a weapon of "intellectual genocide" against certain ideas.

Personally, I have always had students of every kind of idea. I never thought of changing any of their political views, or of purifying their views in order to impose my own political view, and I also know many university professors who do not attempt this either. I do not, of course, conceal my own view, but I consider it a disgrace to use my position as a teacher as a tool of intellectual pressure on my student.

At the university, what is fundamental is freedom of thought. But should an example not be put on the table, one who, from the Mülkiye chair, boasts glowingly about the work he does, namely "purifying of their unscientific views most of the students who enter Mülkiye equipped with knowledge of the sharia," and who receives applause from the entire hall while doing so?

And should this not be done not in the name of politics but entirely for the sake of the well-being of the academy? What is this "knowledge of the sharia" here? What is "purifying" someone of it, and by what mechanisms is it done? Is its method not a kind of intellectual genocide? And does an academic have such a mission? I wanted to use this occasion to ask these questions. Otherwise, of course, in our academy there are many fine academics, truly free in thought and conscience, who are far from such genocidal attitudes.