Ahmet Rıza Bey's Early Ideas (1892-1895)
Ömer AvcıAhmet Rıza Bey was an intellect and activist who guided Turkish modernization history through his ideas and political activities. His family also had significant roles in the high bureaucracy of the state. Ahmet Rıza Bey’s worldview was shaped by the modern philosophical movement of positivism, with the mottos of order and progress being key concepts in his ideas. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the intellectual background of Ahmet Rıza Bey’s early writings known as the Birinci Lâyiha [First Memorandum], Dil Akademisi Lâyihası [Language Academy Memorandum], and Mektub [Letter]. In this sense, no comparisons have yet been made between Ahmet Rıza Bey’s reports and those written by the Ottoman statesmen and intellectuals of the period. This article emphasizes the secular contexts of the topics Ahmet Rıza Bey addressed through a textual content analysis and literature review. These texts are unique examples in terms of being confined to the positivist doctrine in their ideological orientation. These texts were also conditioned to explain the rationale and method of an effort focused on saving the empire through education. His writings emphasized how reforms should be implemented gradually and within historical continuity by highlighting the importance of political and social stability. In this respect, he aimed to give public identities to the concepts symbolized as science, work, order, progress, morality, and education that shaped Turkish modernization history. Ahmet Rıza Bey’s early writings saw the concept of order as the focal point of reform proposals, with the concept of progress being a variable dependent on the concept of order. Therefore, Ahmet Rıza Bey had favored the continuation of the Ottoman monarchy over a radical regime change. He grounded his understanding of change not so much on the political level but on the establishment of a holistic and solidarity-based collective consciousness.
Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Erken Dönem Fikirleri (1892-1895)
Ömer AvcıAhmet Rıza Bey (1858-1930), fikirleri ve siyasal faaliyetleriyle Türk modernleşme tarihine yön veren bir düşünce ve eylem adamıdır. Kendisi, devletin yüksek bürokrasisinde önemli görevler üstlenmiş bir ailenin üyesidir. Dünya görüşünün şekillenmesinde modern bir düşünce akımı olan “pozitivizm” belirleyici rol oynamıştır. Pozitivizmin “düzen ve ilerleme” sloganı, onun fikirlerinin anahtar kavramlarıdır. Bu makale, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Birinci Lâyiha, Dil Akademisi Lâyihası ve Mektûb adıyla bilinen erken dönem yazılarının entelektüel arka planına ışık tutmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu anlamda, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in lâyihaları ile dönemin Osmanlı devlet adamları ve aydınları tarafından kaleme alınan lâyihalar arasında karşılaştırma yapılmamıştır. Metinsel içerik çözümleme ve literatür tarama yöntemiyle, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in değindiği konuların seküler bağlamları vurgulanmıştır. Bu metinler, ideolojik yönelimi itibarıyla pozitivist öğreti ile sınırlandırılmış olması bakımından özgün örneklerdendir. Söz konusu metinler, imparatorluğu eğitim yoluyla kurtarmaya odaklanmış bir çabanın gerekçesi ve yöntemini anlatmaya koşullanmıştır. Bu yazılarda, reformların tarihsel süreklilik içinde ve tedricî olarak hayata geçirilmesi gerektiği hususu; siyasal ve toplumsal istikrar olgusuna verilen önem üzerinden vurgulanmıştır. Bu bakımdan Ahmet Rıza Bey, Türk modernleşme tarihine yön veren “bilim, çalışma, düzen, ilerleme, ahlak ve eğitim” gibi sembolleşmiş kavramlara kamusallık kazandırmayı hedeflemiştir. Ahmet Rıza Bey’in erken dönem metinlerinde “düzen” reform tasarılarının odak kavramıdır. “İlerleme” ise “düzen” kavramının bağımlı bir değişkenidir. Bundan dolayı Ahmet Rıza Bey, radikal bir rejim değişikliğinden ziyade Osmanlı monarşisinin devamından yana olmuştur. Değişim anlayışını, siyasal düzlemden çok bütünsel ve dayanışmacı bir kolektif bilincin oluşturulması özelinde temellendirmiştir.
The Birinci Lâyiha [First Memorandum], Dil Akademisi Lâyihası [The Language Academy Memorandum], and Mektûb [Letter] form Ahemt Rıza Bey’s early period of texts and were based on positivism’s concepts of order and progress. These texts defined the idealized social structure within the framework of the concept of order as the social fabric and the concept of progress as the social dynamic. He embodied the societal realm of existence in the concept of order and social development in the concept of progress, presenting order as an indispensable condition for progress. Even though he created the impression that education was the fundamental issue, Ahmet Rıza’s early written works were unable to sufficiently cover the theme of education at the expected level and clarity. He discussed emphasis of the importance of education mostly over a principled framework, with a tremendously remarkable lack of any in-depth analysis of how the education system should be structured. Ahmet Rıza’s main aim was to organize the political, social, and economic order of the Empire by maintaining it in light of the needs of the time. Accordingly, education was a tool roughly equivalent to the stability and order of the Empire.
The system of discourse that referred to the history most frequently encountered in Ahmet Rıza’s early texts both contained a restorative role for reorganizing order as well as functioning as a source of inspiration to imbue society with self-confidence. In this sense, rather than perceiving time as cyclical, Ahmet Rıza Bey embraced a linear perception of time in his former texts, one that relied on continuity. This perception of linear time that had emerged from the concept of progress in positivism was the representation of a visionary point of view that affirmed the future. The motivation for progress was aimed at a gradual change in the order. This emphasized the importance of mobilizing public education en masse as the main driving force for change. He had concretely reciprocated the intellectual characteristic of positivism under the theme of education. In accordance with this, educational institutions should be public places where positive sciences are taught. The plan was to have scientific knowledge reach large segments of society through existing educational institutions. Thus, a person’s affiliation with citizenship would occur as a consequence of the collective consciousness in which scientific knowledge had emerged, namely as growth on a social plane. Ahmet Rıza Bey’s comprehension of citizenship with secular rather than its traditional content corresponded to the category of differentiation. As a result, his perception of progress reflected a strategy of alteration toward the dissemination of public education.
Unity in language was key to the state of the collective consciousness Ahmet Rıza Bey intended to specifically create regarding Ottoman citizenship. He had made the declaration in his memoranda that the Turkish language should be spoken throughout the entire geography of the Empire. The conception had been improved upon as an alternative to the idea of a nation system surrounded by traditional codes and was based on unity of language (i.e., Turkish) rather than religious-sectarian affiliations. These proposals aimed to have Turkish be widely used as an official language throughout the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, they aimed at preserving Turkish grammar from the impacts of Arabic and Persian, as well as at providing Turkish with a unique identity by removing foreign words from the vocabulary. Generally speaking, this strategic attitude was the leading alternative to the practice of nationhood.
Ahmet Rıza Bey was of the opinion that the Empire was supposed to be run by qualified experts. This staff of experts should consist of technocrats who had completed their higher education in positive sciences and were good at the French language. The influence of the French philosophers Saint Simon and Auguste Comte on the background of the leading role given to technocrats is quite apparent. Being frequently used in these texts, the positivist impact on the descriptions of nature was also comprehensively observed. Just as nature is subject to certain laws, social phenomena should also be expected to be subject to certain laws. As a result, Ahmet Rıza Bey strove to combine the laws of nature with the observable and predictable components of objective reality. He tried to discover the permanent mechanisms of the succession and similitude of these phenomena by subjecting social phenomena to the same laws. Therefore, Ahmet Rıza Bey’s framework of analysis with regard to social phenomena had obtained its meaning from a scientific point of view in terms of being based on observation and experience. In addition to this situation relying on a determinist outline, it was also teleological owing to how it had been revealed in the context of optimism. Social phenomena should also be comprehended through objective reality, because the area for discussing natural laws includes the world of objects (i.e., things).
