Abstract:

With transition to Constitutional Democracy during Ottoman Era the idea of decentralization has strongly been defended by Prince Sabahaddin Bey, one of the founder of Ottoman Liberal Party (Ahrar Fırkası). What kinds of results may have been emerged by decentralization depicting progressive democratic standarts in western political models has been debated a lot. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960) was one of defenders claiming that it would result dissolution of Ottoman state by provoking especially Kurdish ethnicity as well as others. He mentioned that replicating blindly western traditions and practices for everything cannot be reasonable due to of Ottoman society spreading in large geography. After Ottomans defeating in WWI, an autonomy by mutually Armenian and Kurdish was offered in the Paris Peace Conference. Majority of Kurdish intellectuals, scholars, saints including Said Nursi firmly rejected it. Nursi especially had an dream of university called Medresetüzzehra which a model of combination of mektep (modern school)-medrese (classical religious school)-tekke (school of suffi)- by aiming strong loyal integration and entity of Kurds with Ottoman State in east and southwestern east. He saw this project as a kind of solution to prevent ignorance, racism, and atheism. He advised it to government during Republic era for the same reasons but planned to establish in Urfa city which was located a strategic centre of Anatolia, Arabian, Caucasia, Iran and Kurdistan. He was proponent of unitary and participatory democracy but firmly against decentralization. He aimed to strength the role of Turley in Middle East by considering historical, religious, ethnical and cultural features of cities like Van, Diyarbakır and Urfa. Therefore, he estimated Medresetüzzehra as a project servicing a peace for İslamic world as well as Westerns in the Middle East by Turkish leadership. In this study, the subject has been elaborated by holistic methods considering all writings of Nursi including Ottoman, Arabic, Kurdish languages, letters of prisons and exile, dissertations in courts.

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