Evaluations on the political and social theories of the Şinasi and the Young Ottomans

Şinasi and the Young Ottomans are the creators of many concepts and theories that set the milestone for Ottoman modernization. To understand these concepts and theories they put forward, it is necessary to understand the environment they live in. The modernization movements that started in the military field due to the increase of land losses, spread to the political and social sphere with the Tanzimat and Islahat Edicts, which caused changes in many Ottoman institutions, especially social structure. The conceptualizations and theories they developed are to reveal the dilemmas caused by these changes in Ottoman politics and society and they offer solutions. The spread of modernization among the public was possible with the birth of the printing press and especially private journalism in the Ottoman Empire. The first private newspaper published by people with a Turkish and Muslim identity is the Agah Efendi and Şinasi's Tercüman-ı Ahval. Thanks to this newspaper, modernization, which was previously carried out in the bureaucratic field, has been transferred to the civilian area with the formation of public opinion. The most important contributions of Şinasi to Ottoman modernization are that published the first private newspaper and used it to educate the public, defended the necessity of simplifying the language to create public opinion, gave more importance to reason and science than religion, and added changes to Turkish literature. Especially newspaper and its literature provide us with information about his political and social theories. Young Ottomans, which can be considered as the first civilian movement led by Mustafa Fazıl Pasha, Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi and Ziya Pasha, on the one hand followed the path opened by Şinasi on the other hand influenced the thinkers and writers after them by producing their own political and social theories. The main themes that this group, which has quite different views in terms of the purposes and methods chosen individually, develop common theories in terms of Ottomanism, synthesist and conservative modernization and constitution in accordance with Islamic rules. In summary, this thesis prepared using historical research method, it is aimed to evaluate the theories of Şinasi and Young Ottomans in terms of Ottoman modernization, the newspapers they published and their literary works.