Competing Visions of Morality in Politics: A New Perspective on the Ideological Currents of the Late Ottoman Empire

This article focuses on the debates about morality in the late Ottoman Empire and their lasting impact on modern Turkey. Studying different moral viewpoints offers the possibility of a new classification for the study of Ottoman intellectual history which, by relying on a political framework, has, to date, dealt only with certain ideological currents such as Ottomanism, Turkism, Islamism, and Westernism. Through a careful reading of the writings of Tevfik Fikret, Ziya Gökalp, Ahmed Naim, and Mehmet Akif, we focus on their different views of morality which can be classified as “universal morality”, “national morality”, and “Islamic morality”. Differing, even competing moral visions of morality were decisive in shaping the intellectual, cultural, and political currents of the time.