What are the Historical Foundations of the Founding Philosophy of the Republic of Turkey?

Due Diligence:

"Turkish Science and Thought from Tradition to the Future" Workshop was held on 11/01/2018 within the body of Atatürk Higher Institution of Culture, Language and History. Here, together with my teacher Aygün Akyol, I shared our views about our work and our main concern in the field of Islamic Philosophy and Turkish Intellectual History at the Faculty of Theology at Hitit University.

Since our definition of philosophy is to share concerns and contribute to producing solutions to the problems experienced, first of all, we start the Logic course with the Language-Thought and Logic section of Farabi's work named "Count of Sciences" to teach philosophers chronologically. This work also provides a discipline and an overview in the mind of the student, as it is an Introduction to Islamic Philosophy and also gives a classification of sciences.

While giving philosophy education chronologically, we also focus on researching "The Philosophical Foundations of Turkistan-Turkey Relationship", which is our main concern. We do our systematic readings based on the project we call -Reterritorializing Philosophy in Anatolia. The primary goal of this project is to update the “Turkish Philosophy”. Because, as Nermi Uygur said: “Every Turk who really wishes for the well-being of Turkish Philosophy, in proportion to his power; It should lead the way in establishing an environment where philosophy teachers and philosophy learners, master and apprentice can grow together in the most convenient way for the development of philosophy. (Dimensions of Turkish Philosophy. YKY. 2nd ed. Istanbul. 2012, p.103)

• Philosophical Foundations of Turkistan-Turkey Liaison

Turks, one of the ancient nations with a continuous state tradition in history, conquered the lands on the Silk Road, which connects the East and the West and has been the axis of civilization for centuries, strengthened their sovereignty according to the conditions of time and space, and made every region they went to a "homeland" and a homeland. For this reason, there are many Turks (hands) in the world's political geography. When attention is paid to the migration routes of the Turks towards the West (via the Black Sea to the Balkans; today's Afghanistan-Pakistan line to the Middle East, and via the main silk road to the Turkestan-Khorasan and Turkey lines), it is seen that all of them have geo-political importance both in ancient times and today. .

Anatolia/Asian Asia, the place where the Republic of Turkey was founded, has always maintained its importance in terms of geo-political and geo-philosophy, due to its location at the crossroads of the ancient world. There is an Anatolian civilization that was influenced by the philosophies and civilizations of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elams and Kassites, Egypt and Ancient Greek philosophies and civilizations that developed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Before the ancient period, there were Hittites, Phrygians, Lycians, Ionians, Urartians and Persian civilizations. Alexander the Great brought together the Asian culture and the Ionian culture and created a Hellenistic conception of civilization. By adding African data to this culture, the Romans became the greatest power of the ancient world.

The Turks, who destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453, reshaped it with the knowledge, science and civilization imagination they brought here from the place they called Atayurt/Turkistan. Orkhon monuments (7th century), Kaşgarlı Mahmud's Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk (1072), Yusuf Has Hâcib's Kutadgu Bilig (1069) Edip Ahmet Yukneki's Atabet'ül Hakayık (12th century), Ahmed Yesevi 's Divan (13th century), The Book of Dede Korkut can be seen as the founding texts of Turkish and/or Turkish Philosophy in this context.

The immediate goal of this project is a call to read the first texts produced in Turkestan after Islam, within the framework of "creating Turkish Philosophy". We think that this will be possible by re-reading the philosophical knowledge brought from Turkistan and the ancient philosophical conceptions we found in Anatolia in the context of the project we call "Reterritorialization of Philosophy in Anatolia". Thus, it may be possible to examine the relationship of philosophy with civilization and culture, and to explain the continuity of Turkish thought and Turkish culture in Turkish history and geography, with the language of philosophy, with a power that can give universal messages to the world.

In this context, let's outline the philosophical foundations of our project:

• Reterritorializing Philosophy in Anatolia

It is a newly constructed analysis of units carrying what we brought from Turkistan and what we found in Anatolia (Arab, Persian, Byzantine and other cultures and philosophies). We are trying to re-territorialize the philosophies we found in Turkey, namely Asia Minor, in Anatolia, with the philosophical accumulation that the "Turkish" mind, which developed outside of the Arab and Persian cultural discourse, started to reveal in Turkistan, that is, Atayurt. This is an effort to provide an indispensable place for Turkish philosophy in universal philosophy because of its importance.

At this point, it is necessary to explain why we carried out the "Reterritorialization of Philosophy in Anatolia[1] project in the context of Islamic philosophy. First of all, if we say with the determination of our teacher Nihat Keklik, "Just as there are traces of Islam in our art, history and culture, the same traces on Turkish philosophers are also observed. r is available. Thanks to this, our great nation was able to practice philosophy in the sense that it is accepted today. For this reason, Turkish philosophy will and should be in parallel with Turkish art, Turkish history and Turkish language: Attempting to deny this fact is not different from trying to cover the sun with mud.

In this context, we see Farabi's work named "Count of Sciences", which is described as Muallim-i Sani after Muallim-i Evvel Aristotle, as the first classical source of the attempt to introduce philosophy and re-territorialize in Anatolia. We investigate the philosophical foundations of the Turkestan-Turkey connection by focusing on Ibn Khaldun's reason/race and lineage/religion conceptions of our asabiyyah, that is, our social belonging. Thus, we try to make geo-philosophy by prioritizing the process that develops outside the philosophical and theological negotiations that seek legitimacy for the Arab-Persian power conflict. Because if we want to increase the solution proposals for today's problems and enrich them with alternative suggestions, we must re-establish the thought-homeland relationship with the accumulation of thought we brought from Atayurt, paying attention to the cultural structure we found in Anatolia.

The fiqh dimension of this to Abu Hanifa; to Imam Maturidi the dimension of kalam and akaid; We direct the part of moving to the public to Ahmet Yesevi. We emphasize that the historical basis of the research of the technical/positive sciences part can also be with Birunî and his method.

As we mentioned above, following the historical process of the connection between language, thought and culture, what we call culture is actually a fabric of beliefs. This comes out with language. Especially when we think that it has been included in the Islamic cultural universe since the 10th century, it is natural that our way of thinking is the main source of Islamic Philosophy and the language of writing is Arabic for a long time. However, the permanent language of the Turkestan geography is Turkish. As a matter of fact, Orkhon monuments before Islam (7th century), after Islam, Mahmud's Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk (1072), Yusuf Has Hacib's Kutadgu Bilig (1069), Edip Ahmet Yukneki's Atabet'ül Hakayık (12) th century), Ahmed Yesevi's Divan (13th century), The Book of Dede Korkut can be seen as the founding texts of Turkish Philosophy and/or Turkish Philosophy in this context. Because these texts (except one) are in Turkish. Some of them were written in Göktürk, some in Uyghur and some in Arabic alphabet.

The reason why we put these texts in the center is that the Turks are geographically spread over a very wide area, they are in close contact with other civilizations and the cultures they have created, so they dominate those languages ​​and write their texts in Turkish instead of Arabic and Persian. Being aware of the intricate problems in determining the connection between geography, language and thought, we think that geo-philosophy will be possible with new readings of these texts. Thus, it will be possible to determine the elements of Turkish thought and philosophy, which are expressed in Turkish, no matter what alphabet it is written. In this context, we are working on the peripatetic tradition. We see Farabi as the founding philosopher and determine our way and method based on Farabi.