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When İsmet Özel published a poem announcing his conversion to Islam in the 1970s, he immediately gained the attention of conservative circles and the respect of the left (at least until the early 1990s). In a few years, with his strong critique of imperialism, capitalism and the Turkish modernisation process, he became one of the most popular Islamist authors. The 28 February Process and the emergence of a pragmatic Islamist movement, however, abruptly marginalised Özel, who became even more radical in his religious nationalist views. This article will analyse Özel's political ideas and the major polemics that accompanied his career. The analysis will help us in understanding the main issues and contradictions that surround the recent evolution of Islamism in contemporary Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the nineteenth-century, intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire were deeply influenced by West­ern political thought and technology. That said, the West represented not only a military threat, but also a cultural menace for Ottoman intellectuals. Imperialism was indeed advancing in Mus­lim lands, carrying with it and legitimizing itself by a strong belief in its civilization's supremacy. Ottoman plans to acquire military technology and reform its administration proved insufficient in countering Western claims of genetic and cultural superiority. This European attitude generated anti-Westernist reactions in the Ottoman Empire as well as in many other non-European socie­ties, such as that in Japan. In the Muslim world, however, anti-Westernist reactions and attempts to rewrite a glorious Muslim history were at the base of Islamist thought. This paper intends to analyze the responses of two notable early Islamist writers of the Ottoman Empire to a cultural aggression directed against Islamic civilization by the French Orientalist Ernest Renan. Namık Kemal's 'Renan Müdafaanamesi' and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī's 'Réponse à Renan' and 'al-Islām wa al-'Ilm' are particularly interesting because they give an insight into their perceptions of Impe­rialism's cultural menace to Islam and their attempts to give a new rational image of religion. Fear of European cultural/military threats and a rational image of Islam were the first component of the ideology that, later, would constitute the backbones of Muslim political ideas in the twentieth-century and of Islamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though reaching a conclusive point seems impossible, debate on the relation between Islam and democracy is one of the most foundational discussions in politics today. Turkey is frequently seen as a positive example demonstrating the compatibility between Islam and democracy. Especially after the democratic reforms undertaken by the Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan and his effective governance. Erdoğan's party, the Justice and Development Party, seems to represent the Turkish Islamist intellectuals' political response to international and internal pressure toward democracy. Although it is true that the majority of contemporary Turkish Islamists have accepted liberal democracy, their devotion to its values has only been in form of a very pragmatic and functional approach rather than a true commitment to democracy. This paper will briefly focus on the international and internal pressures on conservative intellectuals toward democracy. More extensively, Ali Bulac and Hayreddin Karaman, two living Islamist authors, their intellectual careers, interpretations of democracy and their problematic approach to democracy will be thoroughly discussed. The two authors defend democracy and civil rights. However, democracy is only taken as a set of representative institutions and a free electoral system, and not pluralism, civility and tolerance. Yet at the same time, it is this contradiction that has been one of the major obstacles to the development of a true democracy in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which attempts to reread the abolition of the Caliphate through the life and works of Seyyid Bey, one of the main advocates of the development in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA). Here, the researchers analyze the life and career of Bey, then his perception of the Caliphate after the National Independence War, and his famous speech during the debate in the TGNA. Bey represented the moderate Islamist wing of the party in the Ottoman Parliament and defined himself as an unusual person.

Through an analysis of the interpretation of three events by the secular and Islamist press, this essay shows how widespread the "Sèvres Syndrome" is in Turkey, tracing the reasons for and origins of this "siege paranoia." The premise of the study is that the Sèvres Syndrome inevitably compromises Turkish intellectuals' perception of reality and influences their ontological understanding of politics and world affairs. This paranoia also inevitably leads to irrational overreactions and apparently irrational behaviors by the masses and by politicians. Failing to understand this paranoia prevents a full comprehension of contemporary Turkish politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]