Şerif Mardin’in Metinleri Bağlamında Yeni Osmanlılar ile Jön Türklerin Fikrî Derinliklerine Dair Bir İzah Denemesi

Abstract

Among the texts dealing with the modern period of Ottoman political thought, works bearing the signature of Şerif Mardin have a privileged place. One of the most striking claims of Mardin in his texts on the mentioned area is the thesis that the political ideas of the Young Turks contains much less speculative-theoretical content than the Young Ottomans’, who were the previous generation. This study evaluates Mardin’s comparison between the Young Ottomans and Young Turks, which has never been studied before, as a suitable starting point for a new aca - demic inquiry, and in this context, it criticizes the Eurocentric perspective, which is a dominant perspective in the historiography of political thought. By means of the comparison between Young Ottomans and Young Turks, it has been argued that as opposed to popular belief, more knowledge and more substantial comprehension on Western thought might not come up with deeper thoughts. Instead one should search for the intellectual depth in the composition of the different intellectual pro - posals and in the capacity of speaking to the society one belongs to.