History, which has an important place in the social sciences, is a discipline that seeks to explain social change by incorporating data in an optimal way based on its own methodological principles. However, the results obtained are generally shaped by the perspective of the particular historian who studies a given topic. This is especially the case in modern historiography. While historical problems at all scales can be examined by incorporating multidisciplinary approaches to history in an interdisciplinary framework, the methodological richness and basic perspective of the historian come to the fore as determining factors. Again, versatile and consistent perspectives are needed to assess this inevitable situation reasonably. Modern historiography, which has a history of about two centuries, is now expected to reveal and examine issues that have been addressed from all perspectives. This field, which can also be described as intellectual historiography, naturally demands very special training and skills. Examples of this kind of historiography in the world are very limited. In the case of Turkish historiography in particular, whether addressing philological problems or issues at instrumental level, there are a wide range of handicaps, from extent of interdisciplinary approach to depth of judgment. Even when all such problems can be overcome, the findings thus obtained may remain unsatisfying in terms of historiography.

The historian Kemal H. Karpat was subjected to the assassination of silence in the field of historiography, like Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Oğuz Atay in the literary world and Kemal Tahir in the intellectual world, and systematically ignored. This negligence continued even after his death. With the exception of a gift made during his lifetime, no study of his historiography has been published. His death has also been quietly avoided, apart from one or two articles. Therefore, Karpat is an intellectual whose work merits additional attention. As a matter of fact, this issue belatedly caught the attention of the academy, and two studies were conducted on the subject before the death of Karpat. One of these studies was conducted by Lütfi Sunar, who argued that Karpat remained far outside mainstream social science in Turkey. This was mainly because, at a time when document-based historiography was in demand, Karpat generally preferred a social history perspective, which only later became popular and widespread.

In this sense, Karpat, as one of the leading historians of Turkey, produced important work in this area. Karpat was one of the greats among the latest generation of Turkey’s historians, undertaking highly sophisticated studies in political history, including the Ottoman and Republican periods, in economic history, and particularly in the social history of culture and intellectual life. Karpat made a significant contribution to understanding modern Turkey’s history in a comprehensive way, rather than simply providing another viewpoint on the history of Turkey’s modernization. It is quite regrettable in terms of historical understanding and historiography that Karpat’s work, the result of considerable labor as in every field of working life, has been coopted in contemporary speculations on Neo-Ottomanism and Moderate Islam. History, which tries to reveal the past of a given human community in a comprehensive way, must ultimately help to shed light on matters as they are today.