In Erol Güngör’s Thought, National Culture as the Element That Makes Real Modernization Possible

Sedat Gencer

Abstract: Erol Güngör is one of the leading figures of the nationalist-conservative community. His intellectual activity, which began in the mid-1950s, continued until the early 1980s. Erol Güngör has been quite influential as an intellectual through his books outside academia, as well as his articles and essays in magazines and newspapers. He responded to the rise of leftist thought in Turkey in the 1960s and the approach of this tradition, which evaluated the country’s issues by giving priority to politics and economics, with a sociological perspective that emphasized culture and history. He analyzed the process of modernization around the concept of culture. The point he constantly emphasizes in his works is that a national culture has not been established in Turkey as a result of the long modernization experience. This article attempts to comprehend his interpretations and ideas on culture within their historical development. Another aim of this study is to demonstrate his holistic approach to culture. The article does this by comparing Erol Güngör with the references of the tradition he followed and also with the literature that overlaps with his approach. As a result, this article was written to show that an intellectual who drew attention to the capacity of culture to create civilization throughout his life still maintains his importance in today’s conditions.

Keywords: Culture, Nationalism, Modernization, Westernization, Intellectual

Sedat Gencer
DOI: 10.29224/insanveinsan.1460922
Year 11, Issue 38, Summer 2024


Tam metin / Full text
(Turkish)

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The “Political Culture” Dimension of the Military Coups in Turkey on the Axis of May 27 Officers

Cengiz Sunay

Abstract: The influence of social culture on the formation of political culture is widely recognized. The present analysis focuses on the political culture assimilated by military officers, who can be characterized as a subcultural cohort within Turkish political culture that is shaped by Turkish social culture. This examination is conducted within the context of the officers involved in the May 27 coup d’état. The group responsible for orchestrating the May 27 coup encompasses individuals who were affiliated with the National Unity Committee, as well as those who were not appointed to the committee but gained recognition for their leadership in facilitating the coup. This analysis aims to examine the May 27th Mayors as a collective of individuals who have acquired political culture, which has fostered and manifested political inclinations towards a coup d’état. Additionally, it seeks to uncover the shared sentiments, thought processes, and diagnoses that have emerged within this framework among the officers involved in the coup. The analysis focuses on the officers’ perception of their social standing in relation to their professional functioning, their emotional responses to political decisions made by the political power, and the values they ascribed to the interplay between religion and politics.

Keywords: Culture, Political culture, Officers, May 27 Coup, National Unity Committee

Cengiz Sunay
DOI: 10.29224/insanveinsan.1460186
Year 11, Issue 38, Summer 2024


Tam metin / Full text
(Turkish)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Power of Culture: Religious Conservatism and Cultural Sovereignty

Göksel Aymaz

Abstract: In this article, the issue of “cultural power”, which is constantly kept on the agenda by representatives of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) at various levels, is examined. This issue expresses the AKP’s desire to carry its power in the political field to the cultural field. The desire for cultural power finds its explanatory universe in the process by which the AKP, whose frame of reference is the “religious conservative”, consolidates its political position in Turkey’s recent history determined by secular modernization. In the article, it is stated that the conservatism of the AKP, integrated into the capitalist world order, has led to a significant cultural habitus transformation, especially among the urban religious people, and has made daily life conservative to a certain extent, but it has not been able to achieve similar results in the part of the cultural field that emphasizes artistic production such as literature, cinema, theater and music, and that this situation It was emphasized that it made the power debate important for the opposition as well. Based on these, it is concluded that culture, which is actually the field of conflicting attitudes and values, can be an area of dialogue between religious conservatism and secular modernity.

Keywords: Cultural ower, Religious conservatism, Secular modernity, Cultural conflict, Cultural opposition

Göksel Aymaz
DOI: 10.29224/insanveinsan.1459771
Year 11, Issue 38, Summer 2024


Tam metin / Full text
(Turkish)

164 Downloads


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.