Ibn Haldun Academy, organized for the second time this year, has left 5 weeks behind with the theme of the year “Diluted Times”. The day-long sessions of the academy, which was held with face-to-face and online participation from various universities; Ayşe Böhürler, Tayfun Amman, Nagihan Haliloğlu and Taha Burak Toprak witnessed seminal speeches by well-known and appreciated names in their fields.
“Psychotherapy and Beyond: Which Human, Which Method?” in the first of the seminars titled ‘Psychotherapy and Beyond: Which Human, Which Method?’, our University Psychology Department Faculty Member Dr. Cli. Ps. Taha Burak Toprak, in his speech, focused on the science of psychotherapy, which has a certain understanding of human beings in terms of its emergence and development and uses certain methods depending on that definition. In his seminar, which touched on the discussions questioning the compatibility of psychotherapy methods with the classical understanding of human beings of ancient thought, which also centers Islamic thought, Toprak also sought answers to the question of whether an understanding of human beings beyond psychotherapy is possible and whether it works in practice. In his speech, Dr. Toprak mentioned that as we get older, we understand with our experiences that the understanding of an unbreakable, durable and superior human being is not real, and ended his speech with a question and answer session in which he stated that we cannot go beyond psychotherapy in the period we are in, so to speak, we always live in that red room, and this is due to the fact that we constantly refer our traumas to parental behaviors and upbringing styles.
After Dr. Cli. Psk. After Taha Burak Toprak, Dr. Nagihan Haliloğlu, Lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature of our University, took over the 2nd session of the academy with her speech titled “Time and Space in Tanpınar and Halide Edib”.
Underlining that the concept of “chronotrope”, which has a deep and widespread meaning in the literary literature and is directly related to the concept of time, Dr. Haliloğlu stated that the word chronotrope mirrors a perspective on how time and space affect each other in the literary dictionary. Mentioning that Halide Edip and Tanpınar had similar characteristics in terms of being born and raised in the Ottoman period and dying in the republican period, Haliloğlu stated that Adıvar gave very satisfactory answers to the question of how space and time are perceived in war and on the front through his famous novel “Ateşten Gömlek”. Haliloğlu stated that the novel Ateşten Gömlek is a good example of the concept of chronotrope in terms of describing to the reader with all its reality how the city turns into a place when there is a place called the front, and that the novel is a reflection of Halide Edip's own life.
Following Dr. Nagihan Haliloğlu's seminar, Sakarya University Faculty Member Prof. M. Tayfun Amman addressed the academy participants with his conference titled “Our Civilization Issue from Past to Present”.
Prof. Amman started the conference by stating that everyone can contribute to culture, but only the elite people within that cultural circle can contribute to civilization. What is the name of our civilization? Seeking an answer to the question, Prof. Amman stated that Islam, Turkish, Turkish-Islam, Ottoman, Mediterranean Civilization are all valid naming options and underlined that one should look at the name, not the name. He stated that if we are going to talk about the tribal qualities of the Turkish nation by focusing on the effects we brought from Central Asia, it is correct to call it Turkish; if we are going to focus on the effects of Islam on this civilization, it is correct to call it Islam; if the differences between our civilization and other civilizations such as Indian Islamic Civilization, Arab Islamic Civilization are to be emphasized, it is correct to call it Turkish Islamic Civilization; if the subject is the effect of the Ottoman Empire on this accumulation for 600 years, it is correct to call it Ottoman Civilization; if the contribution of geography is to be taken into consideration, it is correct to call it Mediterranean Civilization. Stating that the most risky name in his opinion is Islamic Civilization, Amman underlined that Islam is the name of a religion, while civilization is a secular, worldly concept, and stated that there can be Islam without civilization. As an example, Amman stated that Eskimos may be Muslims, but they are not in a geographical position where civilization can be built in terms of the geography they live in, and emphasized that the nomenclature is actually not Islamic civilization, but the Civilization of Muslims who have created a culture and civilization vision for centuries with Islamic ideology. Prof. Tayfun Amman concluded his lecture by reminding us of the danger that if we fail to understand the metaphor here, civilization will turn into something that is sanctified and therefore unquestionable, despite being a human creation.
Prof. M. Tayfun Amman was followed by Ayşe Böhürler's “Role Model Talks: How They Lived” series, commemorated the late writer Alev Alatlı.
In her speech, Ayşe Böhürler stated that Alatlı often mentioned that as Muslims we need to know the Christian tradition, their world of thought and therefore their intellectual structures. She added that Alatlı also mentioned that our God and the God of the Jews, Jehovah, are not the same, and therefore Jews cannot be understood without understanding their conception of God. Böhürler stated that Muslims should also learn physics and that if physicists and theologians join hands, then we will have something to say in the world arena. Böhürler concluded his speech with a question and answer session, adding that since history does not progress in a linear line, the literary novels written at that time made a great contribution to sociology by revealing the thoughts and feelings of the people behind the historical events and gave great clues about important details.
The 5th week of Ibn Haldun Academy with the theme of Diluted Times ended after Ayşe Böhürler's speech.
