Universities in Turkey: Changing politics and science

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Şenol Durgun
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2184

ACADEMIC PAPER

Universities in Turkey: Changing politics and science

S¸enol Durgun

Political Science and International Relations

Department, _

Istanbul Gelisim University,

Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence

S¸enol Durgun, Political Science and

International Relations Department, _

Istanbul

Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Email: sdurgun@gelisim.edu.tr

Throughout the history of modernization, universities have been one of the critical

topics of debate of Turkish political life. Especially in the Republican period, universi-

ties continued to occupy the political and social agendas in line with their relations

with politics in the context of both organization and caderization and the mentality

they brought forward. In the process from the beginning of the Republican period to

the present day, the reorganizations made again and again in universities under the

name of reform in the direction of the prevailing understanding of power both

brought about the liquidation of existing cadres and hindered the formation of a

scientific tradition. In other words, the scientific understanding in Turkey has always

remained young throughout the history of the republic. This, in turn, rendered univer-

sities and Turkish intellectual life more open to international influences. Such an

understanding of university acted in line with the political institutions' preferences in

the international arena rather than determining the internal and external agenda of

the country; thus, university became an institution, which acted with the understand-

ing of eclecticism rather than production. That the change in the understanding of

science was parallel to the preferences of the institution of politics, also rendered

science–politics relations and the qualifications that academicians should have debat-

able. The present article aims to address these discussions about the Turkish univer-

sities in the context of the changing political and scientific mindset in the Ottoman-

Turkish modernization process, especially during the Republican period, and to ana-

lyze how the organizational structure and mentality of scientific institutions have

been shaped.

While the 19th century understanding of science was universalizing

Western contradictions, it was also trying to impose the belief that

current world problems would be solved within the prevailing positiv-

ist science mentality. In this respect, in line with the understanding of

the universality of science, not only was it tried to be described how

“legitimate knowledge”should be but also the knowledge that did not

comply with this understanding was considered invalid. Therefore,

Eurocentric solution proposals were brought to the agenda as a gen-

eral world view in the 19th century. This situation gave the Western

world a pioneering role in solving social problems. As such, the prob-

lems in the non-Western world were handled in accordance with

Western solutions due to the universal understanding of science. This

situation produced no effect other than the establishment and

strengthening of Western sovereignty in almost all areas. The changes

that emerged in the field of social sciences in Turkey together with

the modernization process were in line with the political relations with

the Western world. Therefore, the developments taking place in the

Western world in this period began to be accepted as universal truths

in Turkey and to be adopted as they were for the development of the

country. This led to the development of our understanding of science

in a way that is dependent on the politics aiming at Westernization.

We see that the changes seen in the social sciences in the process of

modernization occurred only as a result of Turkey's relations with dif-

ferent countries of the West. One of the most important reasons for

this is the fact that the value of social sciences in Turkey was largely

determined by the search for solutions to current problems. Since the

Western world was regarded as the place where solutions to

the problems experienced in social and political fields need to be

Received: 18 April 2020Revised: 6 May 2020Accepted: 9 May 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2184

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2184.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd1of14

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2184