THE SECULARISING FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION AND THE STATE IN THE WORKS OF MEHMED FUAD KÖPRÜLÜ AND IRÈNE MELİKOFF MEHMED FUAD KÖPRÜLÜ VE IRÈNE MELİKOFF’UN ÇALIŞMALARINDA DİN VE DEVLETİN SEKÜLERLEŞTİRME İŞLEVİ

This study focuses on the works of scholars, particularly Mehmed Fuad Köprülü and Irène Mélikoff, who have made notable analyses of Turkish religion, culture, and literary history. Their studies have examined the ways in which religiosity and culture among the Turks have either separated or merged. However, Köprülü and Mélikoff’s explanations, which have built solid paradigms in the fields of religion, culture, and literature, have recently faced intense criticism. In contrast, these criticisms have not addressed the methodological approaches of these authors. However, the methods followed by both Fuad Köprülü and Irène Mélikoff in their works have enabled them to define, distinguish, and describe the fields of religion and culture. Moreover, these methods have allowed for clarification of how the religious domain and the secular cultural domain within Turkish society have been constructed, and how elements that lie between these two domains, or more accurately, draw from both, have been named. The study, which will focus on the works of these Turkologists, will argue that Köprülü’s endeavor has been made possible through the methodology he used. It will be demonstrated that the nonreligious cultural sphere of Turkish society has emerged from the remnants or transformation of Central Asian Turkish religion. In contrast, the claim that Islam, which influenced these societies from outside, began to form the religious sphere of Turkish communities, as suggested by Köprülü, will be analyzed. Like Köprülü, Mélikoff will also share the view that Central Asian Turkish beliefs are seen as the religious system at the origin of Turkish societies. However, while she shares this view, her approach focuses more on the state’s influence and particularly on the effects of institutionalized structures on the transformation of this religious system over time. In other words, the transformation of the Turkish religious beliefs originating from Central Asia will be explained through the influence of the state or institutionalized structures on them. According to the French Turkologist, sometimes nomadism, travelers, traders, and Sufi orders, and sometimes schools and states, will carry the influences that shape religiosity. The theological distinctions made between Alevi-Bektashi and Sunni communities will also be considered as the outcomes of such institutional developments.