Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ISTANBUL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES-SOSYOLOJI KONFERANSLARI, sa.53, ss.3-27, 2016 (ESCI)
Sociology producing solutions for the problems of the modern societies in the West provides formulas for the modernization and the torment coming along with the modernization in Turkey. Starting with the Tanzimat Reform era in the Ottoman period, the modernization had to call the Christian West -which had been 'the other' for centuries and a historical actor that we had to struggle against-as 'the great powers' and put great effort in catching up with them. However, the intellectuals in the Tanzimat Reform era, Constitutional era, and early Republican era avoided from calling this process as the 'Westernization'. In the early Republican period, Turkish sociology began to measure the Turkish modernization while discussing the concept of the sociology and Turkish Revolutions. Following the declaration of the Republic, the intellectuals began to prepare a scientific ground for the Republic and the revolutions and set an ideological ground for the Turkish revolution. The topics for discussion were firstly explaining why we fell behind by describing the West and us, and then what we succeeded with the Turkish revolution. In this period, the modernization was minimized to industrialization and development, which made becoming 'Western' possible in a pragmatist and short way. The politics was the hot discussion topic which left no occasion to discuss the problems of the Turkish civil society that has quickly embraced the technology and the concepts which were not created by them. In the post-1980 period, Turkish sociology leaned toward the cultural problems of modern society triggered mostly by the capitalism on account of the global economic dynamics. The West was re-modernizing in a different manner and Turkish sociology was struggling to keep up with it. Globalization replacing the modernization was the topic for discussion in Turkish sociology. With the questioning of modernization and nation-state and pre-nation identities becoming visible in the public area, the sociology -the science of nation-state-started to discuss the transnational and the national components. This article studies how Turkish modernization took its shape in the historical transformation process of Turkish sociology trapped between universality and locality, within the frame of magazines where the intellectuals expressed themselves better both within and outside the academic arena.