KÖKEN KRİZİ VE MODERNLEŞME: SON DÖNEM OSMANLI DÜŞÜNCESİNDE GELENEKLE HESAPLAŞMA BİÇİMLERİ
THE CRISIS OF ORIGINS AND MODERNIZATIONS: FORMS OF CONFRONTATION WITH TRADITION IN LATE-OTTOMAN THOUGHT

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the experience of Ottoman modernization not merely as a series of technical, military, and administrative reforms, but within the broader framework of a “crisis of origins.” The crisis of origins refers to a profound transformation of consciousness resulting from the historical erosion of tradition’s three core functions: establishing social order, providing political legitimacy, and ensuring cognitive stability. From the sixteenth century onward, the dissolution of institutional structures, the disruption of the sharʿī–örf balance, political developments that undermined the traditional order, and the empire’s growing military-technical inferiority vis-àvis Europe collectively weakened confidence in inherited modes of tradition; by the nineteenth century, these pressures compelled Ottoman intellectuals to redefine the relationship between origin and tradition. In the article, the modes of reckoning with tradition in post-Tanzimat Ottoman thought are examined under four headings: A conservative stance advocating the preservation of tradition; a transformative approach prioritizing conceptual and methodological renewal (tecdid); a return-to-the-source perspective drawing a categorical distinction between the essential principles of Islam and their historical manifestations; and a radical modernist line proposing the abandonment of tradition altogether in favor of Western civilization. The study argues that the crisis of origins constituted the epistemic backdrop that made modernization conceivable, and that Ottoman modernity emerged fundamentally from the tension between the reinvention of tradition and the search for a post-traditional normative order.

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