Wednesday, 12 July 2017, 6.00 pm - 7.30 pm |
Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin

Reading Sayyid Qutb in Kemalist Turkey

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün
(Istanbul, EUME Fellow 2016/17)

Chair: Nora Lafi
(ZMO, EUME)

Abstract
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the controversial Egyptian figure often considered as the godfather of Islamism, along with the indo-pakistani journalist Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati, had a formative influence on the rebirth of Turkish Islamism. Especially during the 1970s, translations of his works became the founding stones of a new anti-nationalist, revolutionary, and cosmopolitan Islamist discourse in Turkey. Although the first “sanitized” translations of his works in the 1960s were sponsored by the Kemalist state to counter the formidable influence of socialism on the Turkish youth, the enthusiastic reception of Qutb arguably accelerated the translation wave that helped to entrench a small but quite influential group of Islamist intellectuals. For decades, they clashed with the nativist, conservative, and Ottoman nationalist interpretations of political Islam only to be reconciled with it again under Erdoğan’s undisputed patronage after the AKP’s post-2011 turn.

In this presentation, Yenigün will seek to elaborate how Qutb was received by the Turkish audience, in particular among the rising religious youth of the 1960s and the 1970s. The formative influence of his works on the revolutionary and cosmopolitan Islamism of the 1970s amidst the controversies of “Rabitat” (Muslim World League) sponsorship will also be explored. The Intra-Islamic rift between this anti-nationalist and cosmopolitan Islamism against the nativist and nationalist religious communities will be of particular focus to elucidate the subsequent trajectories of Turkish Islamism on the ideological landscape of Turkish society.

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün is a former Assistant Professor at Istanbul Commerce University, who was dismissed in February 2016 as a result of his signature on the Petition for Peace. He has also worked in the POMEAS (Project on the Middle East and Arab Spring) at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center. His research is focused on political ontology, political theology, and contemporary Muslim political thought. More recently, he is also researching religious social movements and youth movements in Turkey and Egypt. He received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Virginia's (UVA) political theory program. From 2006 to 2010, he was the managing editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS). He spent the academic year 2007-8 as a Malone & Gallatin research fellow at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Apart from his academic articles, Yenigün also gave interviews to newspapers and magazines in Turkey about the contemporary Muslim political thought, Turkish Islamism, and Turkish democracy.
Following his dismissal, Yenigün gave several invited lectures at North American universities on the current state of Turkish academia and democracy. He is also involved in several NGOs in Turkey, which work on human rights, social justice issues, and free circulation of ideas.