TURKEY BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Year 1998, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 0 - 0, 01.03.1998

Halil İnalcık

Abstract

Within the Islamic community of peoples, Turks have had a special state tradition from the time they entered and controlled the Islamic world in the eleventh century. Originating in the steppe empires, this tradition can be defined as the recognition of the state’s absolute independence of action and the upholding of the state’s absolute right to legislate on public matters. Thus, in Turkish states in the Islamic world, törü türe, tüzük , yasa or kanun, that is, a body of laws and regulations, existed independently from Islamic Law and led public life in the highest interests of the state and community, giving elasticity in formulating state policies and interpreting the stipulations of Islamic Law in the most liberal manner. The kanun regime was also instrumental in introducing reforms and innovations as required by the actual circumstances. The Ottoman ulema ingeniously interpreted the state’s independent action and legislation within the canonical principle of istihsan or maslahat.1 This principle said: what is necessary for the well-being of the Islamic community is to be preferred. It is to be added that more strict commentators of religious law contended that this liberal attitude leads to heresy and state laws approved by the liberal ulema were in fact innovations against Islamic Law. This contention gave rise to a prolonged struggle between the ‘official’ or bureaucratic ulema, supporting the state’s legislative power, and the ‘popular’ ulema, acting as a mouthpiece of the populace against the privileged. The Friday sermons in the mosques offered a strong propaganda base for the latter.2 In other words, liberal and strict interpretations of the divine law have given rise to a political, cultural and social contention in Ottoman-Turkish society since the middle of the sixteenth century and can be viewed in its earlier times as the initial phase of a fierce struggle between modernists and reactionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth century when the modernisation process gained momentum.