The Impact of Bergsonian Ideas on the Development of Republican Conservatism in Turkey

Abstract

The philosophy of major French thinker Henri Bergson had a massive influence on the development of modernist ideology in Europe by the turn of the last century. His approach of challenging positivist understanding of the notion of ‘the West’ was overwhelmingly popular among PostOttoman cultural elites starting by the end of the 1910s. It consequently inspired the development of an alternative conservative milieu in the early days of newly-established Kemalist Republic. Not being politically different from ruling ideology, Turkish republican conservatism stood for the liberal idea of modernity while rejecting European ideological rationalism. The paper touches upon the conservative modernist views of Turkish Bergsonians such as İsmayıl Hakkı Baltacıoğlu, Peyami Safa, Hilmi Ziya Ülken and Mustafa Şekip Tunç.