A criticism to construction of modern identity in Turkey: The case of Hilmi Ziya Ülken

The identity is the total of the answers those when asked to someone who are you? After 18. century the answers, which have been given to the question that who are you?, have firstly started to change in the West. The change, different from the traditional term, has leaded to that the people have identified with a particular idea themselves. This particularity has pointed to a single nationality, a single belief and a single methodology (positivism). As a result of the change, which is at the core of the particular one, the fact of modern identity has come out. In the process of transformation from traditional identity to modern identity, some issues has occured both West societies and East societies. In this respect, in the late Ottoman period and in the early Republic period, even if it has been tried to constuct a single identity, those efforts have turned out an identity which is compressed between tradionality and modernity, in other words it has made a crisis of identity. The efforts to save the state which is started in the late Ottoman period and which is continued in the early Republic period are one of the pointer of the crises of identity. Because of the dilemma of the identity, which is lived in both late Ottoman period and early Republic period, a clear answer couldn't have been given to the question that who are you? Though the efforts to construct the modern identity proceeded, these efforts have made deepened the crisis of identity. Hilmi Ziya Ülken has panned the crisis of identity which developed in both late Ottoman period and Early Republic Period. Ülken has stated that the crisis of identity could not have been coped with neither just spiritualist methodology of Ottoman nor just positivist methodology of the Republic. According to Ülken, both the two methodology (spiritualism and positivism) must have been used concertedly in order to wipe off the cirisis of idetity. Ülken, who has made Late Ottoman Period and Early Republic Period clear with the center of fear ethics, has centralized love ethics in the organisation of Domination Utopia and Anatolia Asabiyyah that constitued by himselves. Ülken, who has imagined an Anatolia utopia which has love ethics has stated the contruction of Anatolia Asabiyyah as the cure of the crises of identity.