CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Cem Patrick Sili |
|---|---|
| Title | The Tradition of Sufism Among the State Elites in Turkey (1923-1960) |
| Summary | This research deals with the process of cultural transformation from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. Through the life of a versatile Ottoman intellectual named Veled Çelebi İzbudak, Turkey's 100-year period is discussed with various contrasts and entanglements. The life of this intellectual offers to offer a different perspective on the historical narrative of Turkey's modernization. Veled Çelebi grew up in a religious environment in Konya, a provincial city in the Ottoman Empire, and went through a traditional education. He received his education within the framework of the Mevlevi sect, one of the oldest sects in Turkey. Later, he started to work as a civil servant in the Ottoman bureaucracy and became a part of the modern system, but he did not break away from his religious/cultural environment. However, after a while, he started to have difficulties due to the conflicts between his conservative environment and his civil service life, and he moved to the capital, Istanbul. Veled Çelebi is an ambiguous character that combines many contrasts within the framework of modern understanding. He is a religious dervish, an educated civil servant, a traditional man of letters, and a modern Turkologist. Veled Çelebi's life is a representation of a cultural coexistence where the traditional and the modern collide or intertwine. The life of this intellectual, who can carry opposites together, is important to determine the place of the concept of ambivalence in the modernization of Turkey. Thus, Turkey's modernization is not thought of as a historical narrative ranging from the traditional to the modern, from backwardness to development, but as a culturally ambiguous versatility where different features can coexist |
| Supervisor | Wilson Brett |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/sili_cem.pdf |
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