İsmail Kara: Islamism and Modernism

Political science and political history fields in Turkey have been dominated either by Western theories or by domestic ideological propositions. In both cases, pure scientific observation and proper analysis have been undermined even at universities.

There are three kinds of writers who propose ideas on political history in Turkish thought circles. One is the column writer, who is generally a kind of a mentor to the politicians or the people, and pronounces certain opinions of the ideological sect to which they belong. Column writers are generally mere propagandists in Turkey.

Second there is the scholar, who has his or her favorite explanatory tool that is generally a Western political theory. The political science scholar in Turkey looks like a scholastic priest, who is not interested in the actual or historical reality of politics, or whether his or her theory can really explain the reality, but rather works on designing reality in order to fit paternal explanations relying on the so-called theory inherited by the scholar.

Third is the ideologist, who is the advocate of a certain ideology and makes his or her best attempt to justify it. The political ideologist does not give his or her attention to what has happened really, but they try to support their ideological post with convincing "truths."

However, there are some rare writers who view the realities of politics and read on political history for the sake of truth itself. İsmail Kara is one of them, thanks to his coldblooded and thorough analyses of political behavior of the Islamists in Turkey since the early 20th century.

Early life

İsmail Kara was born in 1955 in Güneyce, a village of İkizdere district in Turkey's northeastern Rize province. He is the youngest of three brothers. Mustafa Kara, who is known for his works on the history of Sufism, is his elder brother. His father Mehmet Kara, who was known as "Kutuz Hodja" by his fellow countrymen, was the imam of his village.

Güneyce village is located 40 kilometers from the shores of the Black Sea. The former name of the village was "Hacışeyh," due to the historical fact that Osman Niyazi Efendi, one of the caliphs of the Naqshbandi Sheikh Ahmet Ziyaüddin Gümüşhanevi, lived and had a Sufi circle there. Thus, İsmail Kara was born and raised in a religious atmosphere.

Kara revisited this atmosphere in some of his books including "Kutuz Hoca'nın Hatıraları" (Memoirs of Kutuz Hodja), which was a memoir of his father edited by İsmail Kara, and "Osman Niyazi Efendi ve Güneyce-Rize'deki Tekkesi" (Osman Niyazi Efendi and His Dervish Lodge in Güneyce-Rize"), where Kara introduces the sheikh of his village.

İsmail Kara is very loyal to his hometown and wrote and edited various books on the religious ambiance of Rize, including "İlk Rize Müftüsü Mehmet Hulusi Efendi," hajj memoirs of a mufti, and "Güneyce-Rize Sözlüğü" (A Glossary of Güneyce-Rize), which features the special lexicon and recollections of İsmail Kara's village.

İsmail Kara first attended school when he was just 5 years old. And when he was 10, he graduated from elementary school and began learning the Holy Quran. After two years of training he became a hafiz, a religious person who has memorized the Quran in full. After his hafiz training, İsmail Kara attended the Imam-Hatip School in Rize in 1967.

In 1969, İsmail Kara was transferred to another Imam-Hatip School in Istanbul, which his elder brother Mustafa was also attending. Both brothers were boarding students. They also visited the "Hareket" (Action) journal's editorial office where İsmail Kara met such prominent writers and artists as Nurettin Topçu, Emin Işık, Yaşar Nuri Öztürk, Ahmet Tabakoğlu, Halit Refiğ, Metin Erksan, Mehmet Kaplan, et cetera. "Hareket" was a right-wing political and cultural journal led by philosopher Nurettin Topçu and published by Ezel Erverdi.

A man with three hats: theologian, historian, political scientist

İsmail Kara worked as a teacher of religion for 15 years at Sainte Pulcherie French High School before he was assigned as a lecturer at the Theology Faculty, Marmara University in 1995. He became attending professor of Islamic philosophy in 2006.

İsmail Kara is mostly known for his works on Islamism. He initially collected significant Islamists' writings in three volumes, namely "Türkiye'de İslamcılık Düşüncesi: Metinler, Kişiler" (Islamism in Turkey, Texts and Persons). This three-volume collection has become a classical reference for academic studies on Turkish Islamists.

Kara also edited many older books for new readers.

According to İsmail Kara's approach, Islamism in Turkey is a reactionary mode of political philosophy and also politics within the range of Turkish modernism. He does not take Islamism as conservatism and traditionalism. Instead, Kara thinks that Islamism lacks such a historical and traditional depth. It is a social and political fact rather than a religious one. Kara continues lecturing at Marmara University and also writing and editing articles and books on modern Turkish political thought and the political behavior of the Islamists.