Looking at Ziya Gokalp from Samiha Ayverdi

Abstract

Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924) with his political preferences and ideology was discussed a lot during his life and after his death. Samiha Ayverdi (1905-1993) also participated in this debate during the Republican era. She is a witness of both Gokalp's Turkey and its aftermath. She lived in the last years of an empire and yet wrote her works in a nation-state. The special conditions of his family environment were decisive in shaping her national identity. While Gokalp dealt with the issues from a sociological point of view, Ayverdi on the other hand approached the issues from a historical perspective. This approach stands out in her book Turk Tarihinde Osmanli Asirlari 'Ottoman Centuries in Turkish History' which was written in the 1950s. While the empire was falling apart, Gokalp was not content with a goal to protect the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Ayverdi found Gokalp's defense of the idea of Turanism in the devastation of World War I inaccurate, and discussed the effects on the youth of the period he lived in. She believed that Gokalp's idea of giving Turkish nationalism a secular form was wrong. She adopted the idea of Turkishness based on an active understanding of religion and faith, she did not approve of excluding the high culture produced in the pre-Republican Ottoman period from Turkish culture, and embraced all layers of Muslim-Turkish culture. She emphasized the importance of the Seljuki and especially the Ottoman past in Anatolia and Rumelia for the Turkishness of Turkey. She rejected Gokalp's distinction between civilization and culture. She argued that civilization has external and internal dimensions, considered the contrast between matter and spirituality in the modern world as a great danger for the future of humanity, and evaluated the East-West distinction in these axes. For the peace of humanity, she suggested that both civilizations enter into an exchange to make up for their deficiencies.