This is the introductory chapter I co-authored with professor Kaya Sahin for our edited book, Political Thought in the Ottoman World (oxford University Press, 2024).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unsettling the Canon of the Theatre of the Absurd:Halide Edib's Masks or Souls? and Its Other LivesHülya Adak (bio)A few years prior to Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros (1959) and concomitant with the Paris premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (January 5, 1953),1 a famous woman novelist, journalist, and feminist activist from Turkey, Halide Edib Adıvar (1884–1964),2 published an absurdist play in English, entitled Masks or Souls? (1953).3 As Martin (...) Esslin and other scholars started theorizing on the "Theatre of the Absurd," they explored only a Western European male canon of works, dismissing all other playwrights. Even though Halide Edib had written two versions in Turkish and published the work to be discussed in this article in English, because she was a Turkish woman playwright, her works did not receive much theoretical discussion in Turkey or in the Euro-American context prior to 2013.4 In this essay, I problematize the Euro-male-centeredness of the early theories of the theatre of the absurd, while proffering new guidelines and trajectories for absurdist drama in the Turkish and European literary and dramatic canons. I argue further that European absurdist plays, with the additional example of Halide Edib's Masks or Souls?, should be analyzed for their political critique, unsettling claims that describe post-World War II absurdist theatre as apolitical. I start with an analysis of Halide Edib's works, which will be followed by an exploration of the various versions of Masks or Souls?, focusing particularly on the political content. In the last section, I provide new trajectories (within the European and Ottoman Turkish contexts) for studying absurdist drama and contextualizing the noncanonical Masks or Souls? [End Page 275]Aesthetics and Politics in Halide Edib's WorksThe feminist, nationalist, and bilingual journalist, novelist, and playwright Halide Edib's works have not been studied systematically for their political content. Her works include twenty novels, a few of which were translated into a total of ten languages, a two-volume autobiography in English (Memoirs of Halide Edib and The Turkish Ordeal: The Further Memoirs of Halide Edib, respectively), scholarly works on history, politics, and Turkish culture (Turkey Faces West, Conflict of East and West in Turkey), a travelogue on India (Inside India), and countless articles and essays in journals and newspapers.5Critics have often ignored her works on political history (Turkey Faces West, Inside India) and the history of culture (Conflict of East and West in Turkey) as well as the profound political repercussions of her fiction. As a young Ottoman woman writer, she was among the first women to discuss suffrage and the shortcomings of the Union and Progress Party (i.e. CUP, established in 1908) in a utopia she wrote in 1912, entitled Yeni Turan6 (New Turan). Her national romances, including Ateşten Gömlek (The Shirt of Flame) and Vurun Kahpeye (Thrash the Whore), propagated the secular values of the Kuva-yi Milliye (National Army).7 Her novel The Clown and His Daughter (1935) and its Turkish version Sinekli Bakkal (The Fly-infested Grocery Store, 1935) is critical of the rapid secularization processes of the early Republic.8 Halide Edib was close to Unionist circles before she started criticizing the militant policies of a few of the Unionist (CUP) leaders in 1916. Halide Edib was also close to Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) (1881–1937) and to the Kuva-yi Milliye leaders during the Greco-Turkish War9 (1919–1922) as she supported the Turkish struggle against the Greeks in Anatolia. After all opposition was silenced in 1925, she went into exile, and criticized the Kemalist regime in her works in English, including The Turkish Ordeal: Being the Further Memoirs of Halide Edib, Turkey Faces West: A Turkish View of Recent Changes and Their Origin, and Conflict of East and West in Turkey.Between 1950 and 1954, Halide Edib was a member of parliament for the Democratic Party10 (DP), during which time she published Masks or Souls? In her "Siyasi Vedaname" (Farewell to Politics), she described these years in Turkish politics as a period of utter disillusionment.11 Hence, [End Page 276] within the... (shrink)

This chapter is an attempt to resolve two sets of disagreements on Fichte’s theory of right. One disagreement concerns the content of Fichtean property rights, and the other is about the role of coercion in the formation of the Fichtean social order. With respect to the first disagreement I argue that it stems from the mistaken assumption that Fichte is committed to a particular universally applicable right to property. Once this assumption is dropped, it is possible to appreciate the variety (...) of such rights that his theory can support. With respect to the second disagreement I argue that Fichte does not see a necessary conflict between coercion and freedom; in fact, he believes coercion is conducive to the formation of rightful relations among free persons. (shrink)

The epistemic basic structure of a society consists of those institutions that have the greatest impact on individuals’ opportunity to obtain knowledge on questions they have an interest in as citizens, individuals, and public officials. It plays a central role in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in ensuring that people have the capability to assimilate this knowledge. It includes institutions of science and education, the media, search engines, libraries, museums, think tanks, and various government agencies. This article identifies (...) two demands of justice that apply specifically to the institutions that belong to it. First, the epistemic basic structure should serve all citizens fairly and reliably. It should provide them with the opportunity to acquire knowledge they need for their deliberations about the common good, their individual good, and how to pursue them. Second, the epistemic basic structure should produce and disseminate the knowledge that various experts and public officials need to successfully pursue justice and citizens need to effectively exercise their rights. After arguing for these duties, I discuss what policies follow from them and respond to the worry that these duties have illiberal implications. (shrink)

The women’s movement has become increasingly entangled with the “secularism versus Islamism” debate in today’s Turkey. While secular feminists believe that escalating authoritarianism and Islamic revivalism threaten gender equality and the gains of the women’s rights movement, Islamist women contest the “western/secular” ideal of gender equality on account of its being antithetical to the Islamic canon. The mutual marginalization by feminists and Islamists, mainly fueled by partisan politics, harms the much needed solidarity among women’s groups to solve the problems women (...) face in Turkey, such as violence and unequal political participation. Moreover, this polarization has the harmful effect of reinforcing patriarchy: men, therefore face no challenges and simply continue to remain the sole producers and controllers of socio-political policies and epistemic resources. Hence, there seems to be a pressing need for secular feminists and Islamists to start a dialogue and focus on problems and issues they share in common, so as to seek urgent solutions to them. This article inquires into the viability of such an alliance through the proliferation of deliberative platforms where civil society organizations can meet at a safe distance from partisan politics and enter productive dialogue and generate policies to resolve the crucial problems women are facing in Turkey. (shrink)

According to the conventional wisdom, Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions played a major role in the demise of logical empiricism by demolishing its key tenets and replacing them with an alternative picture of science that has virtually nothing in common with them. However, the relationship between Kuhn’s views and LE is not at all as straightforward as this claim suggests. While is undoubtedly correct, the revisionist historiography of LE in the last two-and-a-half decades documented that is far from truth. (...) In this chapter I highlight the major findings of this historiography, focusing on “the Carnap-Kuhn connection”. In section 2 I summarize and evaluate Kuhn’s critique of LE and then present his alternative account in SSR. In section 3 I compare Carnap’s conception of science with that of Kuhn’s, limiting myself to the SSR. In section 4 I expand my comparison by taking into account Kuhn’s later views. In section 5 I briefly mention some of the other logical empiricists’ views that are in company with Kuhn’s. In section 6 I turn to the fundamental differences between Kuhn and Carnap. (shrink)