Erkan's field diary

 Turkish Exceptionalism: Q&A with Serif Mardin

 By Manal Lotfi

Istanbul, Asharq Al-Awsat -

Turkish thinker Serif Mardin is considered a star in Turkey; his books fly off the shelves and he enjoys a wide renown among the Turks. He was the man who coined the concept of ‘Turkish Exceptionalism’ in his attempt to analyze and elaborate upon the reasons behind the different manner by which the Turks dealt with Islam and their vision of the state.

For Mardin, the separation between religion and the state in Turkey was not born out of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s movement to found a Turkish republic following the end of the First World War and the war for independence; in fact, Mardin maintains that this secularism and separation between the state and religion began with the Ottoman Empire......

And also check out Mustafa Akyol's piece how Prof. Mardin is approached by some circles of higher education:  

The Scandal of The Kemalist Mind

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News] I, unluckily, made a lot of people upset with my piece in last weekend's edition of the Turkish Daily News, “The gospel according to Atatürk.” A few dozen readers sent fuming emails, which rebuked me for daring to criticize the level of veneration shown in Turkey to its founder. If you have been reading the “Letters to the editor” section, you might have come across two of these reactions, which came from two Turkish readers living in the United States. The one from New Jersey noted that he was “shocked” by my piece, and added, “someone should tell Akyol that he is dead wrong.” The other one, a lady, expressed “anguish” at me and my “very naive look.” I, she also argued, “cannot be a Turk.” In response, I am sincerely thankful to such critics, because they present nice case studies of what I have been talking about. I said that there is a popular “cult of Atatürk” in Turkey, whose followers have a “strict mental blueprint” that leads them to “detachment from reality.” And that's precisely what you can find in these annoyed comments.