Origins of Turkish Islamism 1 Young Ottomans were the first generation of students that were sent to study in Europe in the nineteenth century so that upon their return they would help reform the Ottoman State. They were trained in modern secular European and Ottoman bureaucratic schools, knew European languages, and lived in European capitals such as Paris and London for some years. They had a respect and admiration for Western democratic and secular political institutions, and they strongly believed that the state would never be modernized unless it adopted a democratic government and a constitution. 2

Upon their return to Ottoman Turkey, they demanded a constitutional government, a parliamentarian regime, and a political system based on human rights with an Islamic foundation. 3 They tried to justify these Western institutions with Islamic concepts such as shura (consultation). They instrumentally used Islam not to justify their cause, but also to mobilize the masses against the very powerful Sultan. These reforms were not so easy to implement by Ottoman rulers for a variety of reasons, and thus, the Young Ottomans found themselves in opposition. This first Islamist generation was not from the periphery, and in their private lives, they were not observant Muslims even though they were proud of their Islamic culture. These aspects of these Islamists are important since they have played a role in Turkish Islam’s non-violence, non-radicalism, and moderate nature. 4

Young Ottomans were top-down, state-centric, Jacobinist social engineers like the Tanzimat elite and the twentieth-century Islamists. Their utilitarian use of Islam had an aim to mobilize Muslims and construct a new Islamic unity and solidarity to be used against imperialism. 5 In other words, they politicized Islam and used it for political ends. Their Islamism and the emergence of Turkish national consciousness were not entirely separate processes since they were both “manifestations of a reaction to Ottoman disempowerment in the face of rising European imperialism”. 6 The Islamists of the Republican period would always keep this nationalist consciousness part of their Islamist discourse.