Ibn Haldun Academy, which was organized last year with the theme of “Aesthetics” and attracted the attention of undergraduate and graduate students from all over Turkey, continues on its way in its second year with the theme of “Diluted Times”.
In the first of the 6-week academy program held on Saturday, April 27, Ibn Haldun Academy's guest. Numan Kurtulmuş, President of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), with his speech titled How They Lived: Sabahattin Zaim under the roof of Role Model Talks.
Starting his speech by stating that the issue is not only to introduce Sabahattin Zaim, but also to ensure that personalities like him are taken as an example to raise the Sabahattin Zaim's of the future, Prof. Numan Kurtulmuş, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT), mentioned that Sabahattin Zaim was from the generation called “Evlad-ı Fatihan” and that he was a person who was connected to the Balkan lands and felt himself a member of the Ottoman Empire to the end. He said that Sabahattin Zaim, one of the precious pioneers who rolled up his sleeves for the development and progress of the country in a period when most of today's opportunities did not exist, was one of the most important professors in the fields of economics, social politics and labor economics and that the Islamic community was under serious pressure.
Prof. Kurtulmuş said that one of Zaim's important qualities was his social aspect. Describing Sabahattin Zaim's influential aspect as his academic competence and human serenity, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey emphasized that one of the most important things in our scholarly tradition is transmission and that science is glorified in our tradition because it is a value that is handed down from generation to generation. Kurtulmuş stated that he attached great importance to the Ibn Khaldun Academy in terms of revealing this quality of transmission, and concluded his speech by saying that he found this mission of the Ibn Khaldun Academy, one of the pillars of which this year was shaped on the value given to the promotion of exemplary personalities, extremely important.
Prof. Kurtulmuş stated that just as there were many academics fleeing from Nazi oppression during Nazi Germany, there are academics fleeing from Zionist oppression all over the world today. Prof. Kurtulmuş stated that he was addressing once again from Ibn Haldun University, which is a home of knowledge, and that Turkey's door is open to all faculty members with knowledge, wisdom and conscience from all over the world. Prof. Numan Kurtulmuş stated that the times when we got stuck in the form and forgot the meaning are over and emphasized that our nation has regained an understanding that can compete with the world on the roots of our nation.
Prof. Kurtulmuş stated that one of Zaim's important qualities was his social aspect. Describing Sabahattin Zaim's influential aspect as his academic competence and human serenity, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey underlined that one of the most important things in our scholarly tradition is transmission, and that science is glorified in our tradition because it is a value that is handed down from generation to generation. Kurtulmuş stated that he attached great importance to Ibn Haldun Academy in terms of revealing this quality of transmission, and concluded his speech by saying that he found this mission of Ibn Haldun Academy, one of the pillars of which this year was shaped on the value given to the promotion of exemplary personalities, extremely important.
The first week of Ibn Haldun Academy continued with Prof. Numan Kurtulmuş's speech as part of the Role Model Speeches series, followed by the seminar of Prof. Halil Berktay, Head of our History Department, with his seminar titled In the Shadow of Great Cases.
Addressing the question “Which great cases?” in the seminar, Prof. Berktay addressed the issue of right wing vs. left, which is a problem that permeates our entire culture when it should be a political culture. Pointing out that not only Turkey but also the whole world experienced a great crisis during the post-modernist, post-communist and post-industrial periods, Prof. Berktay examined the question of how left culture finds a place for itself beyond leftist politics. Enlightenment, French Revolution, Soviet Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, Tanzimat, Islahat, the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, Kemalist Revolution, Fascism and Nazism, Spanish Civil War, Greek Civil War, Cold War, National Liberation Wars in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam War, Referring chronologically to the great causes in the shadow of which we grew up and are now raising our children, such as the Russia - Ukraine War and now the Palestine - Israel War, Berktay stated that with the closure of the decolonization process, the great causes, except for the current wars and uprisings, came to an end.
Berktay also examined the question of whether Palestine, which was once the case of the left wing in Turkey, is now not embraced by the Left because it is now the case of the right wing. Berktay explained that two neighborhoods in Turkey never unite on a common denominator, using the example of the failure of the right wing and the left wing to unite despite feminism being the common cause of both neighborhoods.
Following Prof. Halil Berktay, the session was opened by our Philosophy Department Head Assoc. Prof. Enis Doko's After Virtue: The Search for Happiness and Meaning in the Age of Hedonism and Consumerism.
Defining today as the age of post-virtue, Assoc. Prof. Enis Doko stated that the biggest mistake of the Age of Enlightenment was to dismiss morality and that modern culture was reduced to laws and emotions or sentimentality, which led to a loss of meaning. He stated that the Age of Enlightenment, which could not satisfy spirituality, was lost after a certain point and bequeathed the concepts of “Emotionalism” and “Hedonism / hedonism” instead. Talking about the unhealthiness of reducing morality to emotions, Doko emphasized that this ideology, which cannot be labeled as lack of morality for someone who does not feel any remorse or pain from killing people, and hedonism, which accepts only the things that bring pleasure as good, have inherited humanity as distorted moral understandings after the Enlightenment.
In the last seminar of the first week of Ibn Haldun Academy, Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Dinç, with his seminar on How to Fall in Love.
Defining dilution as becoming superficial within the scope of the theme of Diluted Times, Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Dinç stated that the emotions of the people of the modern world are shaped through pleasure and fear. Summarizing our diluted times with the words “We know a lot of people little, we know a lot of things little by little, we want a lot of things little, we pay a little price for what we want a lot”, Assoc. Prof. Dinç answered the question “Should we really fall in love? Is there a need for such a thing?” with Yunus Emre's couplet “Hear, my friends, love is like a sun, a heart without love is like a stone”. Dinç stated that our problem in the adventure of falling in love is that we love too little, we love selfishly and our heart slips to another heart too quickly, and that love is also distant with the deterioration of our language. Defining love as a long-lasting strong love that affects the heart, Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Dinç talked about the 7 types of love expressed in the Western style as eros (sexuality), phila (friendship), ludus (love of entertainment), agape (love for everyone), pragma (ongoing love), philautia (self-love), storge (love for family) and mania (obsession), and 5 types of love expressed in the Eastern style as animal, natural, spiritual, rational and divine. In his speech, Dinç defined love with Ibn Sina's definition of “the indispensable element that regulates the hierarchy of all existence” and concluded his seminar on How to Fall in Love by stating that love is the greatest tool of discovery.
