Davutoglu likes Sinanoglu

TR Sec. State Davutoglu is a close follower of Dr. Oktay Sinanoglu, a scientist, anti-American, and nationalist firebrand whose books were quite popular in some circles during 90s. Traces of the same kind of shallow nationalism in Sinanoglu’s book are also present in Davutoglu’s thinking. There are thoughts patterns copied almost verbatim from Sinanoglu by D.

I say nationalism, but it is hard to distinquish at times though how much of Sinanoglu’s nationalism stems from his anti-Americanism – one can argue that most of it is. It might very well be that for this reason his strongest arguments revolve around / against Pax-Americana (rebranded in 90s as globalization). Hence Sinanoglu was one of the few people who swam against the current when most in his country were going ga-ga on everything American.

His analysis on the importance of mathematics education (rather than teaching everything in a foreign language -English-) was also dead-on. On these topics Sinanoglu is aligned with the needs of the 3rd wave, he only lacked the foundation on the social ramifications resulting from the knowledge age, and the importance of the methods of production, that is why he could not bring his analysis to its ultimate conclusion. Because his nationalism is a form of anti-Americanism, he glosses over historical, cultural issues of his country, and finally arrives to a backward modernist, centralized, standardized 2nd wave nation-state which is all but defunct in today’s world.

Sinanoglu’s effect on a Turkish conservative such as Davutoglu could simply be a result of “here is someone from the West [1] and saying nice things about my history”. The formation and the following of intellectual leaders in Turkey is sometimes that simple. Turkish people like their thought leaders as all-knowing, narsisistic, boasting [2], and Sinanoglu certainly fits this description (in one book, he claims to have singlehandedly started the Women’s Lib movement in America for instance).

In conclusion, Davutoglu’s strengths and weaknesses resemble Sinanoglu’s: right on being against Pax-Americana, wrong on nationalism as well as trying to protect some kind of Turkish identity just so they can “feel good” about something in their past, and making that a necessity for any future success of their country.

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[1] Sinanoglu taught at Yale for many years.

[2] Akin to a God-like Roman emperor image perhaps, or a “father” in a paternalistic society, as in “father knows best”. People of today’s Turkey lived under a Roman rule one way or another, starting from the 1st, up to the last, the Ottomans. People of Turkey have one of the worst historical baggage any country can have.