Book examines rise of militant Turkey

Hakan Ozoglu may have failed history in high school, but with the release of his second book, "From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic," Ozoglu is ambitiously hoping to rewrite history.

Ozoglu joined UCF in 2007 and is now the director for the Middle Eastern studies minor in the history department.

Growing up in Istanbul, Turkey, he studied social anthropology at Istanbul University while serving in the military. Ozoglu came in contact with the Kurdish people and was intrigued by how they formed their own national identity. Inspired by this study, he chose to pursue history at Ohio State University because of the more analytical approach it allowed over anthropology.

In 2004, Ozoglu published his first book on Kurdish nationalism and identity. He has also published many articles both in the United States and Turkey on this and related topics.

On Wednesday, Oct. 19, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the UCF Library, Room 223, Ozoglu will be the first author to present in the History Department's Author Series, organized by Dr. Luis Martínez-Fernández.

Ozoglu sat down with the Central Florida Future to discuss his newest book.

Central Florida Future: What was your inspiration for this book?

Hakan Ozoglu: Actually, I wrote this book before I wrote my first book. The inspiration was that when I was studying and looking at the primary documents, I found some documents that contradicted what I learned in all [the] education that I had. And I started questioning that perhaps what we learned needed to be modified.

CFF: What is the main focus of your new book?

Ozoglu: The new book is about how a transition is made from an Islamic empire to an entirely militantly secular state.

I look at the inner dynamics of this change. Ottoman Empire was the last Islamic empire, which housed the caliphate. The caliphate is the leadership of the Islamic world.

Within less than a decade, the empire after World War I collapsed. And a very secular, in fact a militantly secular, Turkish republic emerged. Now up to this point, what we learn is that this transition was very smooth, although it's a huge radical transition.

CFF: What do you believe is the relevancy of this topic today?

Ozoglu: It is very timely because now in the western world there is the idea that Islam is going wild. I have my disagreements with that, but at least this book can provide an insight of it.

The fear in the west is that Islam, the radical version of Islam, will take over. This book is relevant to show that it's not necessarily so, there are ways that Islam and state interact and perhaps Islam could be tied to state.

CFF: What kind of impact are you hoping to make with your book?

Ozoglu: When we talk about Turkish studies in the United States, most departments employ scholars who do 16th, 17th, 18th century Ottoman Empire. Modern Turkish studies are very new.

This book is one of the very few books in the field of history written on the Republican period; not as a political scientist or anthropologist, but as a historian. And in that sense it's a contribution in itself; that anyone who wants to study this period in the Middle East can go and look at it.

I'm hoping that people, by reading this book, will have an idea how a religious empire or an empire that has some religious identity transitions to a more secular way. In other words, people might be interested in this book in the United States to see if so-called Islamic radicalism can be transferred into a more secular version of administration.

They can use Turkey as a model to which other countries, Egypt, Iraq, or whatever country that you find in the Middle East that westerners think is under Islamist threat, can be compared to.

CFF: As a professor here at UCF, what is the larger concept that you hope students take away from your classes?

Ozoglu: Be critical. Don't believe what they say. Don't take what even your professor says at face value. I ask them to question what I say. What I want them to know and to learn, to get out of my classes, [is that] they have to know both sides of the story, that's extremely important. Whatever they subscribe to is completely fine. There is this tendency if you believe in one thing, you entirely disregard the other position. I think it is a grave mistake. The issue is you have to appreciate, understand what they are saying.