Türk Düşünce Tarihinde Oryantalizm Eleştirisinin Alımlanışı
The Reception of the Critics of Orientalism in the History of Turkish Thought

Summary/Abstract: The basic aim of this article is to analyse the reception forms of the critics of orientalism in Turkey. The term critics of Orientalism is a concept which expanded and for the first time gained a large theoretical framework after the publishing of a book in 1978 titled “Orientalism: Eastern Perceptions of West” by Edward Said. Since 1978, along with other intellectuals in the world, Turkish intellectuals has been faced Saidian thesis in some way and there has been intellectual interactions to a certain degree. This article is dealing with a question that how Turkish intellectuals recieved the critics of Orientalism propounded by Edward Said? Following the question, seven prominent Turkish intellectual’s (Şerif Mardin, Meltem Ahıska, Hasan Bülent Kahraman, Taner Timur, Jale Parla, Aslı Çırakman and Mahmut Mutman) articles and texts on the subject are analysed with a comparative perspective. As a matter of fact that the modernization history of Turkey is a history of westernization movements and therefore in Turkey the echoes of the critical orientalism study of Edward Said which radically reappraises the ways of relationships between the western and the non-western worlds are important in itself. One of the main consequences of this article is that Turkish intellectuals acknowledge Said’s theoretical framework and apply it for the social and political history of Turkey. But another consequence derived from the article indicates that some of these intellectuals also criticize Said severely and remain distant to him. Especially the absence of Ottoman Empire in Orientalism and methodological deficits of the book are evaluated by Turkish intellectuals.

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