RELİGİON AND LAİCİSM IN THE WRİTİNGS OF KILIÇZADE HAKKI

Westernism, one of the currents of thought of the II. Constitutional Era, was born from the belief in the necessity to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and to pass through the stages of the European states in order to achieve their level of development and to adopt their material and spiritual civilization. Its main aim was to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire through westernization. Kılıçzade Hakkı, who is one of the advocates of the view, started his writing career in the İçtihad Journal, owned by Abdullah Cevdet, which defended westernist ideas. He was under the influence of the idea of biological materialism. His first article “Pek Uyanık Bir Uyku” [A Sleep Very Awake] had attracted attention. In his later writings, he attributed the backwardness of the Ottoman Empire to the religious ignorance that the dervishes and religious fanatics were trying to impose on society. Asserting the necessity to separate religion and state, he argued that Latin letters should be accepted instead of Arabic letters. Because of his ideas, he got reaction from the religious circles and the Committee of Union and Progress. He openly asked Mustafa Kemal whether the new state would have a religion in İzmit Press Conference held at the beginning of 1923. Although he could not get the answer he exactly wanted, Kılıçzade, who was very pleased that many innovations he wrote as a dream came true with the proclamation of the republic, advocated the diminishing effect of religion on society and the realization of secularism in Hür Fikir Newspaper published in İzmit. His main objective in life was to struggle against false religious fanatics and dervishes. In most of his writings, he defended reverting to the essence of religion, freeing of religion from superstition, not adopting the Arab culture in the name of religion, and placing secularism in the context of state and society.

Keywords

Kılıçzade Hakkı, Westernism, Laicism, Religion, Constitutionalism