A MODERNIST IDENTITY

The Young Turks, the broadly defined movement that came to dominate Ottoman political and intellectual life after 1908, appropriated the voice of modernity, progress, and rationality. They praised themselves for being modern (asri), enlightened (münevver), and schooled in modern sciences (mütefennin). At the same time, they condemned their critics, particularly religious scholars and functionaries (ulema), for being conservative (muhafazakar), traditionalist (kudemaperest), and bigoted (mutaassıb). This dichotomy did not truly reflect the complex segmentation of late Ottoman society. Nevertheless, the perception of a chasm between two diametrically opposed camps was widely held and helped reinforce the group identity of the emerging intelligentsia and political class. The exclusive claim to modernity, scientific thought, and dynamism characterized the main opposition to the regime of Abdülhamit II (r. 1876–1909) and was embraced by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) leadership.⁶

Although the Young Turks were a diverse group in terms of ethnicity, social background, occupation, and political inclinations, they also had some important common characteristics. Erik Zürcher has pointed out that they were primarily male, Muslim, urban, literate offspring of state employees who were educated in modern schools. Many of them hailed from the European provinces, particularly the southern Balkans.⁷

The early biography of Ahmed Hilmi neatly corresponds to the profile of a typical Young Turk. He was born in 1865 in Plovdiv (Filibe) in present-day Bulgaria. His father was a consul in state service, which accorded him the family name (lakap) Şehbenderzade, literally the “consul's offspring.” Hilmi's birthplace was effectively lost to the Ottoman Empire in 1885, when Plovdiv became part of the virtually independent Bulgarian principality. Such territorial losses in the Balkans were a major stimulus to the politicization of many Young Turks and augmented their burning patriotism.

Like hundreds of thousands of other Balkan Muslims, Ahmed Hilmi's family migrated to Anatolia, settling down in the cosmopolitan port city of Izmir. Young Ahmed Hilmi's pursuit of education and a promising career soon brought him to Istanbul. He attended the Galatasaray lycée,⁸

which became a major site for educating the emerging Ottoman bureaucratic and intellectual elite in the late 19th century.⁹

The career path he followed after his graduation and his involvement in banned political activities mirrored the pursuits of many Young Turks during the Hamidian regime's closing years. Ahmed Hilmi entered state service and took on various junior bureaucratic positions in Istanbul and the provinces. Meanwhile, he also joined the clandestine opposition to the autocratic rule of Abdülhamit II in the late 1890s. At a certain point, he escaped to Egypt but was apparently pardoned and subsequently returned to Istanbul. Shortly thereafter, in 1901, he was arrested on charges of subversive political activities and banished to Fezzan. Along with other political exiles, he spent the following seven years in this remote Saharan province in present-day Libya.¹⁰

The proclamation of a general amnesty in the wake of the Young Turk Revolution ended his banishment. He returned to Istanbul in late 1908 with a burning ambition to become an influential voice in the capital's lively intellectual arena. Like many dozens of other intellectuals-cum-entrepreneurs in postrevolutionary Istanbul,¹¹

he founded a journal and began publishing his thoughts and commentaries on current events. This early venture soon ended in disappointment. His weekly, named İttihad-ı İslam, failed to attract sufficient readership and closed after only a few months. Little name recognition and severe competition hindered its potential for success. Hilmi therefore began submitting articles and opinion pieces to well-established newspapers, including Yeni Tasvir-i Efkar.¹² This popular daily was at the time close to the ruling CUP.

After only several months of publications in this and other leading journals, Ahmed Hilmi felt confident enough to relaunch his own newspaper in mid-1910. He entitled it Hikmet (wisdom, or philosophy). This time his success was immediate. Burgeoning subscriptions in Istanbul and in some provincial towns even enabled him to establish his own printing house after a few months.¹³

Through it the prolific journalist and writer published dozens of books and pamphlets, often marketed in the newspaper. By early 1911 he had become a well-known figure, and his reputation landed him an appointment as professor at the university (Darülfünun).¹⁴

Ahmed Hilmi took pains during this period to associate himself with the self-ascribed modernist camp and distance himself from traditionalist groups loathed by the Young Turks. In his writings he emphasized his modernist identity both by explicit statements and by the use of idioms and key phrases employed by the Young Turks. For example, he endorsed the supposed dichotomy between progressive intellectuals who had acquired modern education and backward traditionalists who remained ignorant of modern science and knowledge. Like many of his Young Turk contemporaries, he described conservatism as a harmful tendency of human societies that leads to negative effects because it contradicts historical laws of evolution and change (tekamül ve tahavvül).¹⁵

Referring primarily to the ulema, he therefore attacked those he labeled “medieval reactionaries” and “supporters of scholasticist tendencies that nourish reactionary views” for their negative impact on the Ottoman Empire's survival in a dangerous world of carnivorous nations.¹⁶ His thinking was imbued with Social Darwinist notions of “struggle for existence,” which at the time were very popular in Young Turk circles.¹⁷ He explained: Ahmed Hilmi shared the conviction of his Young Turk contemporaries that they were engaged in a desperate struggle for the survival of the Ottoman Empire and that their prospects for success were dependent on the marginalization and eventual annihilation of conservative circles in Ottoman society.

SUFI-INSPIRED ISLAMIC MODERNISM

The similarities between Ahmed Hilmi's views and the dominant current within the Young Turk movement ended when it came to religion and faith. Positivism, materialism, and antireligious ideas had a major impact on influential Young Turk intellectuals.¹⁹

Initially Ahmed Hilmi was also not immune to doubts about religion. He related in his writings how he stopped practicing the faith for a while and was searching for something else to fill the void in his mind and soul. His journey in pursuit of self-fulfillment took him to the trendiest Westernized clubs that were experimenting with necromancy and hypnotism, as well as to respected scholars of religion. None could answer his doubts about religion and faith or offer any alternative understanding and meaning.²⁰ Finally, however, he had a personal spiritual experience while in exile in the Sahara; he embraced faith anew and became a devout follower of the Sufi path. In light of the intensity of his feelings and his expressions of them, perhaps he may be termed a born-again Muslim.

Nonetheless, he did not shed his modernist identity and inclinations. Instead, he sought to synthesize them with his reaffirmed faith and create a hybrid form that would be neither scripturalist and conservative nor radically modernist. He continued to see himself as part of a vanguard modernist elite engaged in a crucial battle against a broad front of obstructionist conservative forces. He was also strongly critical of the new elite's irreligious leanings, however, and sought to reorient it toward an Islamic path.

His personal experience as a born-again Muslim informed his mission and belief in the feasibility of a synergic synthesis of modernism and Sufi devotion. In one book he describes how the Prophet Muhammad helped save him from the misery, doubt, and despair that had consumed him.²¹

The Prophet clarified to him that “true reality is everything,” and therefore it is manifested within him as much as in every other soul or thing. Ahmed Hilmi explains that the foundation of this truth is the doctrine of the “unity of being” (vahdet-i vücud), explicated most influentially by the Andalusian mystical philosopher Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi (1165–1240).²² While not completely rejecting Islamic jurists' authority, Ahmed Hilmi argues that the most important aspect of faith is the personal link between the faithful believer and the divine.²³

He similarly emphasizes that each believer's spiritual journey is personal and unique and thus does not have to follow a specific Sufi master or order. He expresses disdain for blind followers of Sufi shaykhs. Personally, he remained affiliated with the ʿArusiyya, which he joined while in exile in Fezzan.²⁴

This was a relatively small order with virtually no following outside of North Africa. Being the order's only follower in Istanbul was fine with him. He made no effort to establish a circle of followers and disciples or to build an institutional presence in the Ottoman capital. Instead, he concentrated on using the written word and the printing press to disseminate among the expanding Ottoman reading public his views on religion, spirituality, and other topics.²⁵

His semiautobiographical novel, Âmâk-ı Hayal (Profound Vision), became particularly popular after its publication in 1910. It has since been republished in several editions in modern Turkish transliteration and was also translated into German and English.²⁶

The novel follows the journey of Raji, a young Muslim male, from the depth of spiritual emptiness to the fulfilling realization of the true nature of the universe. The protagonist is a caricature of a typical Young Turk. He grows up in a devout family, but after graduating from a modern school and taking employment as a state official, he becomes filled with doubt and adopts a lifestyle of drinking, leisure, and entertainment. Emptiness soon consumes him.

Eventually, with the assistance of a Sufi ascetic, Raji experiences visions that gradually reveal to him truths in the doctrine of “unity of being.” In these fantastic visions he visits mystical places like “the Mountain of Qaf,” encounters mythical creatures like the phoenix (anka), and meets such past luminaries as Gautama Buddha and Zoroaster. He even participates in the final battle between the forces of light and the powers of darkness. The journey to the truth reaches its climax when the Prophet Muhammad is revealed to him and shows him that his message is the soundest, wisest, and most comprehensive truth offered to humanity by prophets, philosophers, and sages. Raji realizes that genuine Islam contains the wisdom of all religions and philosophies that preceded or followed it.²⁷

The role religion should play in governing human society, if any, became a major source of controversy during the closing decades of the Ottoman Empire. New ideas about science and secularism along with rapid political and social changes prompted calls for diminution or redefinition of the roles and meanings of religion. Within this context, Ahmed Hilmi was part of a reformist trend that sought to reconcile Islamic tradition with modern ideas and perceptions. Proponents of Islamic modernism sought to disprove any claim that religion in general and Islam in particular contradicted scientific thought and reason. The illusion that Islam, science, and modernity were mutually contradictory, they maintained, resulted from Muslim decline and corruption of faith. Therefore, a common component in their diverse agendas involved attacking traditional forms of interpretation and faith practice and advocating change. Islamic modernists believed that correcting past mistakes was necessary to secure Muslims' social and economic welfare and to defend against European colonialism. They were concerned that without reform, antireligious ideas emanating from Europe would capture the hearts and minds of intellectuals and officials and gain additional influence in the Islamic world.²⁸

Ahmed Hilmi shared these views, but he also differed in several important respects from many other Islamic modernists. First, he attended only modern schools and had no formal religious education. Second, he was well acquainted with European thought and philosophy and referred to it in his writings perhaps more than any of the Islamic modernists who were his contemporaries. Third, his criticisms of established traditions of Islamic learning in general and the ulema in particular were very radical for his time. Fourth, he was much more pronouncedly and enthusiastically a follower of the Sufi path of spirituality and practice than virtually any other prominent Islamic modernist of the time.

The burden of his criticism centered on religious orthodoxy associated with the ulema on the one hand and on admirers of European positivist and materialist ideas on the other hand. He criticized the former for being a major impediment to Muslim progress and the continuing vitality of Islam and the latter for leading modernist circles astray.²⁹

He advocated a spiritual approach to faith, albeit combined with worldly realism in natural and exact sciences, economics, politics, and so on. He insisted that science and spiritual reality should be viewed as complementary rather than contradictory.³⁰ He was concerned, however, that prospects for a synthesis between scientific thought and metaphysical realities were becoming increasingly slimmer because of radical modernists' antireligious stance and the ʿulamaء's obstructionism.³¹ He therefore sought to turn public opinion against both these trends.

The struggle against materialists, positivists, and advocates of scientism became a mainstay of his intellectual agenda. He did not simply reject their ideas as blasphemous, however, or seek to prove that they were opposed to Islam. In one place he explained that citing Qurءanic verses, hadiths, or theological arguments would be ineffective in the battle for the hearts and minds of modernist circles. In order to bolster his arguments, therefore, he made a conscious effort to denounce his materialist and positivist adversaries through philosophical critiques heavily borrowed from European thought.³²

For example, his book on psychology (İlm-i Ahval-i Ruh) was written in response to Ottoman intellectuals who promoted crude mechanistic materialism as the key to the human psyche.³³ Ahmed Hilmi argued that spiritual and metaphysical realities are an inseparable component of human psychology. He based his arguments primarily on the views of antimaterialist European thinkers.³⁴ Such an adaptation of European currents of thought into an Islamic framework fitted his advocacy of eclecticism and his strategy of deploying modern “scientific” arguments against admirers of European materialism.³⁵ The path he thus pioneered was followed after World War I by several prominent conservative Turkish philosophers and intellectuals.³⁶

Ahmed Hilmi took pains to prove that his criticism was thoughtful and logical and not the result of ignorance or unfamiliarity with European thought. He therefore analyzed and critiqued in detail influential European thinkers such as Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and Ludwig Büchner.³⁷

He argued that some ideas and concepts, particularly those of Comte, make sense within an Islamic framework. For instance, he remarked favorably on aspects of the division of human history into three distinct phases and embraced Spencer's social evolution. Yet, he criticized Comte, materialist thinkers, and their Ottoman admirers for their implied or explicit rejection of religious faith and metaphysical reality.³⁸

The religious establishment was also a favorite target for criticism by devout intellectuals, including Ahmed Hilmi. Two of the most serious accusations raised against Ottoman ulema were that they had adopted the harmful traits of an ecclesiastical organization and that they had spread ignorance that facilitated Europe's attack on Islamic lands.³⁹

Ahmed Hilmi was particularly harsh in his criticism. He argued that the ulema had become “a distinct social class” that caused a cultural, educational, and moral decline akin to the negative effects of the priesthood in premodern Europe. He explained that they were leading Muslims down a path that in Europe had brought Catholicism to the verge of moral and spiritual bankruptcy. He cautioned that although the ulema pretended to espouse progress, they actually advocated the most zealous traditionalism. He further emphasized that their obstructionist conservatism and stagnation had been instrumental in causing what he described as “the Ottoman decline” and that they were pulling Muslims toward destitution and religious collapse.⁴⁰ He therefore argued that devout and well-intentioned intellectuals like him should lead the rejuvenation and reinvigoration of state, society, and religion while the religious establishment ought to follow their lead or at least not hinder their initiatives.⁴¹

These views brought Ahmed Hilmi into confrontation with prominent ulema of the late Ottoman period. The disagreements heated up in late 1910, when he initiated a patriotic campaign to substitute donations to the Ottoman Navy League for the sacrifice of animals during the Festival of Sacrifice (Kurban Bayramı).⁴²

The campaign garnered much public support but also generated controversy. Donations began flowing from readers in Istanbul and the provinces. Among the campaign's many supporters were a few ulema and medrese students.⁴³ However, the senior ulema in Istanbul vehemently opposed the initiative. The mouthpiece of the Ulema Association described Ahmed Hilmi as an incompetent layman who sought to modify Islamic norms, practices, and doctrines despite his lack of any qualification. His adamant proclamation that the initiative was authorized by his own “self-inspired fatwa” (fetva-ı hatifi) hardly impressed his critics.⁴⁴ Ahmed Hilmi and likeminded would-be reformers were advised to concentrate on their fields of expertise and leave it to the ulema to interpret the faith and guide Muslims.⁴⁵ Sheikh ul-Islam Musa Kâzım Efendi eventually issued a fatwa that effectively rejected the initiative.⁴⁶ Ahmed Hilmi strongly remonstrated, but the controversy died down by early 1911 after he heeded warnings by state authorities to moderate the tone of his articles on pain of legal action.⁴⁷

The confrontation left Ahmed Hilmi bitter and even more determined to weaken the authority of the ulema.⁴⁸

He termed his detractors disingenuous guardians of Islamic law (yalancı şeriatçılar) and charged that they claimed undue monopoly on the faith despite the absence of priesthood in Islam.⁴⁹ He explained: He went on to suggest that for the time being the duties of the religious establishment should be contracted and partly relegated to an alternative moral and spiritual administration. The officials of this alternative administration, he explained, ought to be better trained than the ulema and freer in employing a creative interpretation of the faith (ictihad) in accordance with the laws of social life and the new knowledge and circumstances of the modern world.⁵⁰

Such radical proposals and hostile attitudes toward the religious establishment were hallmarks of more radical circles within the Young Turk movement. In fact, it may be argued that Ahmed Hilmi and likeminded Islamic intellectuals helped disseminate negative and essentialized conceptions of the ulema. Such a message, coming from the pen of a renowned Islamic littérateur, stood a better chance of acceptance by devout circles in society than the writings of Young Turks, who were associated with antireligious or “Westernist” inclinations.⁵¹

Ahmed Hilmi was at the same time, however, also engaged in a public campaign against irreligious ideas that dominated the self-described progressive circles of the Young Turk movement. He argued that an unfortunate situation had been developing in which the modernist elite was being misled by materialists and positivists, even as the vast majority of the population was kept ignorant by the ulema. He warned that modernist radicalism and ulema traditionalism might lead Muslims toward a disastrous European-like path of revolution and declining religiosity instead of a desirable road of evolutionary progress combining modernism and religiosity. Like other devout intellectuals of his day, he supported efforts to produce a new intellectual vanguard that would lead the transformation of state and society, but he believed that devout thinkers should lead the change rather than antireligious or secular-minded academics, journalists, and political activists.⁵²

EASTERNISM, ISLAMIC UNITY, AND TURKISH PRIMACY

Late Ottoman intellectuals generally agreed that the Ottoman Empire needed to imbue its citizens with a strong national identity and patriotic spirit if it were to survive European colonial pressures and the emergence of local secessionist movements. Ottomanism, Islamism (or Pan-Islamism), and Turkism were promoted as frames of reference for state identity and politics. Hardly any Ottoman thinker argued for one of these referents to the exclusion of others. Instead, major controversies revolved around what should be the prevailing component in the state's official ideology. The members of the CUP, the dominant political power, diverged in their views. The organization's leadership preferred interchanging Ottomanist propaganda, Pan-Islamic ideas, and ethnic Turkish appeal depending on times and circumstances. This official ambiguity left openings for heated debates about state identity and ideological and political orientations.⁵³

Ahmed Hilmi vociferously supported defining the empire as a non-Western Islamic state dominated by ethnic Turks. He advocated nurturing the sociocultural and political orientations he believed were tied to the identity of the state. Debates between supporters of European or universal identity and advocates of a non-Western, Islamic orientation of state and society became a common feature of late Ottoman intellectual life.

Ahmed Hilmi followed earlier Ottoman intellectuals in embracing the assumed ontological division between Orient and Occident but injected positive implications to the presumed binary between the West and the rest of the world.⁵⁴

He argued that although Orientals (şarklılar) were evidently behind Europeans in their technological, scientific, and economic progress, they were indisputably superior to them in their morality and social organization.⁵⁵ Similar distinctions between Western material supremacy and non-European spiritual superiority were developed in other non-European settings.⁵⁶ Ahmed Hilmi argued that “in order to be able to survive and compete with the advanced Europeans in both the political and economic arenas, Muslims must adopt Europeans' mentality and knowledge.”⁵⁷ At the same time, however, he emphasized that they ought to adopt only select aspects of Western civilization to alleviate their weakness and break their material reliance on Europe. He insisted that Muslims should maintain separate social and cultural underpinnings.⁵⁸

The question of gender relations and women's rights in the Ottoman Empire became all but inseparable from broader controversies about adoption of European influences. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, “feminist” ideas were often most vociferously advocated by male intellectuals associated with Westernization of the Ottoman Empire or with Turkish nationalism. Women became more prominently involved in advocating feminist views only after the Young Turk Revolution.⁵⁹

Not unlike their contemporaries in Europe, they faced a strong reaction from conservative circles—mainly, although not exclusively, from male writers.⁶⁰ Critics rejected feminism (feminizm) as a dangerous movement particularly unbefitting the Islamic East. Ahmed Hilmi and many other detractors opposed the assertion that men and women should be considered equal in every respect and were enraged with criticisms of Islamic practices of veiling and polygyny.⁶¹

Ahmed Hilmi distinguished himself among critics of feminism by his effort to delegitimize the movement on pseudoscientific assertions rather than simply on the authority of Islamic texts and traditions. He drew on views of French ultraconservative thinkers of the time to argue that feminism was anathema not only to Islam but also to nature itself. He published a series of articles on the subject, instructively entitled “Feminism: Against Religion, Reason, and Science.” He grounded his attack on Ottoman supporters of feminism within his broader campaign against the Westernization of society. He explained that Ottoman advocates of the movement misunderstood Islam and the peculiar condition of Eastern societies, and he charged that they promoted “Westernization of women's morality” as a step toward the Europeanization of Ottoman society. In his view, modern scientific thought proved beyond doubt that feminist ideas conflicted with science and progress. Drawing on Camille Bos (pseudonym of Marie Bœuf), the French conservative antifeminist thinker, he explained that feminism contradicted scientifically proven differences between the sexes and ran counter to historical laws of progress and evolution. To strengthen these pseudoscientific claims, he also drew on the authority of Théodore Joran, an infamous misogynist French writer.⁶²

Following Joran, Ahmed Hilmi argued that feminism was one of the greatest crimes against civilization because it disrupted the natural division of labor between man and woman, destroyed the family institution, and led to immorality and bestiality.⁶³

Ahmed Hilmi argued that required improvements in the situation of women should be introduced without leading to major changes in gender relations. He acknowledged that the situation of women in the East in general and among Muslims in particular was far from satisfactory. Like other Islamic modernists, he explained that their education and general conditions should be improved. He insisted, however, that any change should remain within the bounds of Islamic tradition and emphasized that it was undesirable to follow European ways. These general statements notwithstanding, he did not bother to articulate a detailed alternative vision for advancement of women in the Ottoman Empire.⁶⁴

The recurring theme of Eastern otherness did not stop him from incorporating into his writings some aspects of European thought that befitted his agenda. Current research on the late Ottoman period makes it difficult to assess how prevalent was adaptation of conservative European views by Islamic intellectuals prior to World War I. There is good reason to suspect, however, that even as many Young Turks adopted materialist and positivist views, some of their adversaries gleaned counterarguments from conservative European thinkers.⁶⁵

Ahmed Hilmi and likeminded Islamic intellectuals asserted that Islam and its traditions should be reemphasized as the foundation of the identity of the state and its sociocultural and political orientations. He supported the view that Islamic unity (ittihad-ı İslam) was essential if Muslims were to repel the European colonial onslaught on Islamic lands. At least, he argued, Muslims should strive for strong economic and cultural cooperation across political boundaries. His publications on the subject were regularly monitored by the British embassy in Istanbul and at times translated and forwarded to London. Aware of these colonialist suspicions, he publicly acknowledged that political union was impossible in the foreseeable future.⁶⁶

He also argued, however, that the interests of some local elites and ethnic, sectarian, and doctrinal divisions among Muslims hindered the realization of Islamic unity.⁶⁷

Like many of his contemporary Islamic modernists, he therefore called for redefinition of a common framework that would help eliminate such cleavages.⁶⁸ In the Ottoman lands, inter-Muslim sectarian tensions were particularly apparent in Sunni–Shiʿi divisions in the Iraqi provinces and in tensions between Sunnis and Alevis in Anatolia. The Hamidian regime failed in its efforts to eliminate divisions through propagation and enforcement of Sunni Islam, in particular the Hanafi school of law.⁶⁹

Ahmed Hilmi opposed any attempt to impose a monolithic form of Islam. He argued that Muslims should concentrate on core beliefs that unite them rather than engage in mutual denunciations because of details that separate them. On his part, he rejected accusations of heterodoxy leveled by many Sunnis against the Bektashis, a Sufi order closely associated with the Alevis of Anatolia. He wrote positive commentaries about them.⁷⁰

He emphasized that Muslims should realize that they either stick together or sink together in face of the multifaceted European onslaught on their lands, economy, and culture. He therefore urged stronger cultural and humanitarian cooperation among Muslims who already fell under colonial rule, a political alliance among the few remaining independent Islamic states, and communal bonding among Ottoman Muslims.⁷¹

Like many other Ottoman intellectuals and officials, Ahmed Hilmi assigned Turks a special leadership role among Muslims. In his view, the project of Islamic unity would help deflect centrifugal pressures on the Ottoman state and strengthen its Muslim–Turkish dominated regime.⁷²

He particularly took exception to what he described as Arab intellectuals' refusal to accept Turkish hegemony.⁷³ He clarified that in his mind they were brothers to the Turks and were fully equal to the dominant ethnic group in the empire. Nonetheless, he insisted that each ethnicity had a different function, just as siblings hold different roles in a family. The Turks were simply better qualified for leadership. He argued that Arabs' refusal to fully accept Turkish preeminence undermined Islamic unity and hindered effective resistance against European encroachments on Islamic lands.⁷⁴

He supported his claim for the ethnic superiority of Turks by injecting racialist views into his writings. In a series of articles, poems, and novels he emphasized the noble qualities of ethnic Turks in diverse fields such as political leadership, war making, science, and culture.⁷⁵

He claimed that the Ottomans suffered a cultural, spiritual, and educational decline because Balkan peoples who converted to Islam became the mainstay of the religious establishment. In his view, “the defeated peoples who submitted to the Ottomans have corrupted the Turks' pure religious belief and national virtues with their degenerate cultures.”⁷⁶ He suggested that Ottoman Turks would lead the regeneration of the East by serving as the linchpin of two vast and potentially powerful unions, one based on Turkish stock (Türk ulusu) and the other on Islamic brotherhood. What he meant by Islam did not need explication, but he did clarify his broad Turanian-like definition of the Turkish people. In a poem published in early 1910, he wrote emphatically,

The combined Turkish, Islamic, and Eastern identity, as defined by Ahmed Hilmi and likeminded Islamic intellectuals, remained an important hallmark of various circles of Islamic movements in Turkey through most of the 20th century. Only toward the turn of the millennium would important circles drop rejection of Europe as a key part of their political identity.⁷⁸

Meanwhile, the perception of a synthesized Turkish–Islamic identity with strong ethnic and racialist underpinnings, as advocated by Ahmed Hilmi, was embraced by some circles of the Islamic movement and remained influential under the republic.⁷⁹

POLITICS: CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE CUP

Ahmed Hilmi emerged as a prominent intellectual in the wake of the Young Turk Revolution, a period that witnessed the emergence of a new political regime dominated by the CUP. Restoration of the constitution, election of parliament, and maintenance of a multiparty political system were all hailed as important aims of the revolution. In reality, however, the CUP nurtured its clandestine powerbase in the civil bureaucracy and the armed forces, and actual power was monopolized by Unionist inner circles.⁸⁰

The secretive nature of decision making and the clandestine modus operandi of the Unionists helped nourish conspiracy theories about the CUP's aims and the driving forces behind it. CUP political opportunism and the habitual veiling of goals by Unionist leaders, coupled with increasing doubts about the CUP's commitment to Islamic values and norms, fed suspicions that the Unionist leadership was conspiring to lead the empire down a path of secularization and marginalization of religion.⁸¹ The Unionists rejected these claims and accused detractors of hindering the empire's struggle for survival by undermining Muslim unity under the CUP's leadership.

Ahmed Hilmi wavered during the period after the revolution between support for Muslim unity and suspicions about Unionist leadership.⁸²

His political dilemma mirrored the predicament facing many devout Ottomans who were impressed with Unionists' energetic leadership and their patriotic rhetoric but were concerned that secret societies and foreign political organizations were gaining control over inner circles of the CUP. The chief suspects were the Freemasons, followed by the Zionist movement.

Ahmed Hilmi supported the CUP during its early years in power but eventually parted ways with the Unionists following a schism within the CUP in 1911. A serious internal rift developed as a result of a clash of personal ambitions and increasing suspicions that an antireligious cabal was coming to control the CUP. The crisis deepened in March and April, when dissenters organized themselves as the “New Faction” (Hizb-i Cedid) and openly challenged the leadership's control of the secret organization. After backing the Unionist leadership against earlier opponents,⁸³

Ahmed Hilmi now supported the challengers and opened the pages of his widely read newspaper to their leaders and their views.⁸⁴ Consequently, when the Unionist leadership regained the upper hand and drove their detractors out of the CUP by late 1911,⁸⁵ they were determined to make him pay for his political stand.

Ahmed Hilmi's opposition spurred attacks on his reputation, harmed his livelihood, and ultimately led to his temporary banishment from the capital. As CUP leaders typically treated other political rivals, they orchestrated publication of hostile articles and letters against Ahmed Hilmi and organized and enforced a boycott of his newspaper. According to his own testimony, the loss of subscribers led to serious financial losses.⁸⁶

When he still did not budge, his newspaper was suspended a number of times by the court martial operating in Istanbul, and eventually he was arrested in October 1911 and banished to Bursa. He was pardoned only after officially vowing to refrain from political commentary or activity. After the CUP was temporarily dislodged from power, in July 1912, he resumed publication of his newspaper for a short time.⁸⁷

During this period, Ahmed Hilmi became convinced that a Freemason–Zionist conspiracy sought to diminish the Islamic character of the empire before partitioning it.⁸⁸

He was not alone in this belief. Opposition activists argued that Freemasons masterminded the CUP from behind the scenes, and some claimed that the Freemasons themselves were controlled by wealthy Jews and Zionists. Such views were expressed, for example, in the mouthpiece of the Ulema Association (Cemiyet-i İlmiye) in Istanbul.⁸⁹ There is hardly any question that various Freemason organizations and Zionist activists had indeed developed complex relations with the CUP, including efforts and schemes to manipulate the CUP for their particular interests. These contacts were not overly consequential, but they nourished greatly exaggerated and intricate conspiracy theories.⁹⁰ Ahmed Hilmi played an instrumental role in disseminating such theories through translation and publication of sensationalist French anti-Masonic views.⁹¹ These included, for example, the publication of the well-known hoax of Léo Taxil (pseudonym of Gabriel Jogand-Pagès), who for twelve years in the late 19th century deceived Pope Leo XIII and millions of Catholics into accepting his fancifully “revealing” books about the Freemasons, their satanic practices and beliefs, and their schemes to destroy Christianity and rule the world.⁹²

Ahmed Hilmi and his printing press thus served as an important conduit for spreading right-wing European conspiracy theories among the Ottoman-Turkish public. The expansion of print culture and the growing reading public helped such theories travel far and wide in Ottoman lands. A booklet written by Harputizade Hacı Mustafa and published by Ahmed Hilmi may serve as an interesting example of the diffusion of European conspiracy theories in Ottoman society. The author was a medrese professor from the small Anatolian town of Akşehir. He was elected to the first chamber of deputies after the revolution and later served for two brief periods as mufti of his hometown.⁹³

His book is mainly concerned with refutation of materialism. However, he also devotes a substantial part to a detailed description of a secret plan by European Jewry to dominate the world via their wealth and their control over the Freemasons. Harputizade cautions his readers that the conspirators are now setting their eyes on the Ottoman Empire. He clarifies that Ottoman Jews were apparently not involved in the conspiracy against the integrity of the state and its Islamic character but warns that there are worrying indications that they may soon become involved in this global plot.⁹⁴

After the partition of the Ottoman Empire, such conceptions served as the foundation for theories about a treacherous Zionist–Masonic scheme that led to partition of the Islamic state and abolition of the caliphate.⁹⁵

Some Islamic circles in Turkey have maintained the validity of such explanations ever since.⁹⁶

The premature end of Ahmed Hilmi's life, on the eve of World War I, has been similarly blamed on a Masonic plot against him. The exact details of his last months are quite obscure. He was briefly arrested following the Unionist coup d'état of January 1913, along with other well-known anti-CUP intellectuals and activists.⁹⁷

Whereas most of them were rearrested and banished to the provinces following the assassination of Grand Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pasha, in June 1913, Ahmed Hilmi apparently remained at large in Istanbul. He was probably excused because of his scathing attack on the CUP's opponents, in a well-publicized booklet entitled “Muhalefetin İflası” (“The Opposition's Bankruptcy”). The essay all but justifies the rationale behind the Unionist coup d'état and argues that it was a mistake to allow a multiparty parliamentary system after the revolution. Echoing Unionist arguments, Ahmed Hilmi explains that Muslim unity overrode the desirability of a multiparty parliamentary system. He argues that a full parliamentary system should be implemented only after people progress and mature politically.⁹⁸ He himself ceased any involvement in active opposition to the CUP and concentrated on his intellectual campaign against the influence of Freemasonry and materialist ideas on the Ottoman elite.

After Ahmed Hilmi suddenly died of poisoning in October 1914, at the age of forty-nine, many admirers attributed his death to a Masonic conspiracy to thwart his exposure of their malicious plans to eliminate the Islamic character of the Ottoman Empire. Reports that he actually died of accidental copper poisoning from unsuitable cooking utensils did not eradicate rumors about his assassination by poisoning.⁹⁹

It is difficult to ascertain whence and when these rumors originated, but they have persisted to this day. For example, in the introduction to a reissue of one of Ahmed Hilmi's books in 2004, two Turkish divinity professors say this about the subject: “Although it is claimed that he caused his own poisoning by copper, it is also possible that he was poisoned to death by the Freemasons because he was one of the first authors to write about Zionism and Freemasonry and warn the nation of their dangers.”¹⁰⁰ His ostensible martyrdom, and of course his numerous publications and the relevance of their topics, assured the continuing interest of scholars and activists in his intellectual legacy in the decades that followed his death.

LEGACIES OF THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD

The destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the secular Turkish republic did not eliminate the intellectual heritage of the late Ottoman period. In recent decades, the unraveling of the Kemalist modernization project increased even further the interest in prerepublican thought, ideologies, and cultural orientations.¹⁰¹

Islamic intellectuals and activists have been among the most active in seeking to preserve and nurture the legacies of late Ottoman writers whom they judge to be their spiritual or intellectual forerunners. Ahmed Hilmi, catalogued in retrospect as an Islamist (İslamcı), was recognized as an early exponent of views and ideas later embraced by Islamic intellectuals and activists in republican Turkey.¹⁰²

The Islamist designation, just as classification of some of his contemporary intellectuals and activists as Turkish nationalists, was not completely off the mark. Yet it clearly projected later developments and failed to fully account for important variations within the Islamic current. Ahmed Hilmi, for example, rightly saw himself as part and parcel of the group that came to be known as the Young Turks and was strongly critical of the religious establishment and traditions associated with it. At the same time, he detested the influence of materialist and irreligious ideas on many Young Turks and was deeply devoted to Sufi spirituality. Finally, although advocating unity and brotherhood among Muslims, he also adopted racialist views verging on Turkish supremacism. The literary critic Murat Belge remarked recently that it is hard to comprehend that Ahmed Hilmi could have been both the author of a Sufi tale of spiritual discovery and the creator of a violently militaristic epic.¹⁰³

These seeming inconsistencies are also mirrored in his insistence on the civilizational chasm between Europe and the East, and the need to maintain it in the social and cultural spheres even as he displayed frequent positive engagement with European thought and advocated intellectual eclecticism.

Such discrepancies are apparent in writings of many of his contemporaries. Questions of identity and sociocultural and political orientations were debated within the context of a highly unstable internal political situation and credible threats to the state's survival. The war with Italy in 1911—and even more traumatically the loss of the Balkan provinces and the consequent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in late 1912—reemphasized the dire situation of the struggling empire. In these precarious circumstances, Ahmed Hilmi and many of his contemporary intellectuals endeavored to suggest ideas that would save the state but also ensure the dominance of the sociocultural and political orientations they happened to favor. The wealth of available views and ideas combined with uncertainties and anxieties of the period often led intellectuals to adopt a complex set of standpoints that verged on self-contradiction. It gave them flexibility to maneuver in a confusing and trying period as the Ottoman state appeared to be undone and remade at one and the same time. Furthermore, the diverse intellectual repository created during the period, including by Islamic thinkers and activists, left their successors workable legacies that could support many sociocultural orientations.

The writings of Ahmed Hilmi alone can be interpreted as supportive of either militarism or spiritual pursuits, as backing maintenance of a clear differentiation between Europe and the East or as encouraging eclectic positive engagement with European thought and social developments. In fact, they have been interpreted in all these somewhat contradictory ways. Furthermore, although scholars often lump Ahmed Hilmi with the ulema under Islamism, his writings reveal an unmistakable tone of anticlericalism. His conceptualization of what he saw as the problem with the religious establishment was clearly influenced by antichurch views current in France during the early 20th century. Similarly, as much as he framed his rejection of feminism in terms of opposition to Europeanization of the Ottoman state, Ahmed Hilmi consciously mirrored the stiff opposition faced by feminist thinkers and activists in Europe. His ideas and those of likeminded Islamic intellectuals often echoed European conservative currents of thought, interlaced with specific Ottoman and Islamic perceptions. He espoused a consciously modernist path that sought to synthesize deep religious commitment, Sufi devotion, ethnic pride, and advocacy of qualified adoption and adaptation of European knowledge and institutions. At the beginning of the 21st century, prominent leaders and thinkers in Turkish-Islamic movements mostly uphold the vision of a combined modernism, Islamic devoutness, and Sufi spiritualism—even as they often forego or readjust some of the century-old assumptions, perceptions, and goals of earlier proponents, including Ahmed Hilmi.¹⁰⁴