Was Ottoman Empire ruled by Shariah; is Turkish Republic secular?

When I talk to some Westerners, I observe that they have too many presumptions about Turkey. These presumptions are surrounding the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.

These strong presumptions create a constant barrier for understanding what really happens. This Sunday I would like to take a closer look at some of these presumptions. First of all there is this presupposition that Turkey before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a backward country that was under Islamic law. A second and equally incorrect presumption Westerners have in their minds is that the Turkish Republic was a brand new state that had no connection with the Ottoman Empire whatsoever. They think that basically there was an archaic state and political system and Kemalists abolished this system and replaced it with a new one that was in line with Western values. If your presumptions are wrong, your ideas and theories based on these presumptions are inevitably seriously defective. Let us look at the first presumption. On the basis of what criteria can we assert that the Ottoman Empire was a backward system in comparison with the newly founded republic? With the republic in Turkey we established a nation-state, but is this a step forward for an empire that was multinational and multiethnic? The fundamental mistake that Westerners make in this analysis is thinking that the Ottoman Empire was a state ruled by religious law, namely by Shariah. There is not one single example during the whole of Ottoman history of the sultan not being able to justify a move with the support of the Şeyhülislam, the top cleric. For the Ottomans, the state was the first and foremost concept, and everything else was in the service of the state and its presumed interests, including religion. Ottoman sultans were quite successful in covering all their actions with a religious cover. They even got approval from the religious authorities for the heinous crimes they committed, such as the slaughter of their brothers, which obviously in no way can be justified by the Quran, the holy book of Muslims. Therefore, in this sense Islam had never ruled the Ottoman system, but quite the contrary, Islam and religion were used by the Ottoman ruling elite as a strong legitimizing tool. Likewise, in the legal system Islamic rules were confined to the area of private law. In this context, we should understand that the “secularism,” which was strongly held to by the newly established republic, was not a tool to abolish “Shariah” but was part of an attempt to “create” a nation-state. The Ottoman Empire conducted its relations with its citizens through the congregations (including non-Muslim ones) to which these citizens belonged. Turkish secularism served two purposes in this sense. One, it broke the power of the Ottoman sultan, who was supposed to be the caliph, the religious leader of all Muslims. Secondly, the republic put an end to the Ottoman multiethnic, multi-religious structure by destroying relations between the state and congregations, including, of course, non-Muslim ones. Actually if you look at the history of the Turkish Republic you can observe clearly that the Turkish state assumes the role of “atheist” when it deals with its Muslim citizens and the role of “Sunni Muslim” when it deals with its non-Muslim and Alevi citizens. Secularism in Turkey has never been a liberalizing tool; to the contrary, it has been turned into an oppressive tool in the hands of the Kemalist elites. Some Westerners disregard the particularities of Turkey and try to understand it from an Orientalist viewpoint as a result of their misconceptions about the Ottoman state and political life in that era. The Ottoman Empire was not a backward Islamic state. Its imperial vision was much broader than the vision that has been in place for most of the time in the Turkish Republic. It was a mosaic of religious and ethnic diversity. After 80 years of the establishment of the republic, it is really difficult to say that, in terms of mentality, we are more advanced than the Ottomans. The other thing I would like to mention is that many things are still alive today that come from the Ottoman era; for example, the disease that emerged in the last decades of the empire, the Unionist mentality (Ittihat ve Terakki or “Union and Progress”), is still very much alive and continues to affect our lives very deeply. Consequently, it would be really difficult to understand today’s dynamics unless you break down well-known stereotypes about the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. What is advancement, what is destruction? Does Westernization equal pluralism and democratization? And there are so many other questions to be asked before engaging in an insightful discussion about Turkey. Have a good Sunday.