Comparative Republican Religion: Eighteenth-Century France and Twentieth-Century Turkey

Abstract

In recent years, scholars of Turkish history have focused on the never-ending conflict between religion and secularism in Turkey since the Turkish Independence War in 1919. However, many of them failed to identify the origins of secularism and the influence of the French Revolution on the Turkish Revolution. Turkey seems to be one of the Muslim states practicing secularism; yet, as a state, it constantly blurs together religion and politics, giving rise to continual conflict, raising many questions as to whether or not the French Revolutionary concept of secularism is applicable to Turkey or other Muslim states. Therefore, scholars must question Turkey’s understanding of secularism, and a comparative study of the French and the Turkish Revolutions makes this possible. The French Revolution altered the relationship between religion and politics. Similar to Old-Regime France, the clergy were also royal subjects in the Ottoman Empire and had more or less extensive authority over the middle class and the peasants. In eighteenth-century France, revolutionaries challenged their authority. Later, in the twentieth century, Turkey experienced seemingly similar changes; the Turkish clergy was suppressed, exiled, and sometimes even executed. In this paper, I analyze the influence of the French Revolution on Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturks’s Revolution in the religious context. By comparing the two revolutions, I flesh out whether Turkish secularism has failed or if the country needs more time to achieve it, if possible at all.