Mehmet Özay 16.07.2025
The process of nation-state building has a dimension of Western Europe and the so-called 'others'. And this situation is as crucial today as it was yesterday.
Among the others, the overwhelming majority of Muslim societies have not been able to make a healthy development before their discussions on this political system, nor have they been able to revise and strengthen it afterwards, perhaps in such a way that its foundations can be renewed.
There is no doubt that the state order that Muslim societies have developed or want to develop as an alternative, let us say as an artifact of historical thinking or memory, has a direct correlation with being against and in opposition to the nation-state.
At this point, taking into account national independence in different geographies, from East to West, we can talk about independent Muslim-majority nation-states that have been independent for fifty to a hundred years.
However, little attention is paid to what kind of political system and social structure these societies had fifty to a hundred years ago, and which of these formations set an example for the others.
Maybe one exception...
Although it can be said that the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the only example of such a political exemplary solidarity among themselves, there is ample evidence that other Muslim societies, even in this situation, are still developing an idea in a kind of political illusion.
It is justifiable that these Muslim societies were free to develop a political illusion for themselves, especially in the context of the so-called 'colonialism'.
Even in this case, the poverty brought about by the lack of knowledge about what the system that is thought to be an alternative to the conditions that one wants to get out of corresponds to, should be recognized as the main factor in the emergence and existence of political illusion.
At this point, it is worth taking a brief look at the structure that is the object of political illusion.
Ultimately, beyond the evaluations of the Ottoman Empire, the Western states, especially the "mighty powers" as the Ottomans themselves called them, and the elements that constituted them, the political, social movements, movements that emerged within the Ottoman Empire itself, or the scientific and political evaluations of individual intellectuals give us a good idea of how exemplary Ottoman society and politics can be, and how well equipped, stable and reliable they can be in this sense.
In the face of the tendencies of other Muslim societies to think that they can be modeled after the Ottoman Empire, it is worth raising the question of why and why, for example, the small and large, if not large and small, site states, which consider themselves independent, do not bring themselves to the exemplary ground to one extent or another.
In this case, on the one hand, for the relevant period, say, the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, and on the other hand, how to make sense of the fact that the relevant small site states have melted/joined under the umbrella of nation-states and - if not in practice - remain far away from exercising a mind, even though they continue to exist mentally and feelingly, as political intellect.
We can say that this exercise corresponds to a kind of freeze and that minds and feelings are still stuck in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
It would not be wrong to say that this situation corresponds to an important problem regarding the religious structure in which these societies find themselves, that is, what Islam corresponds to, and how they are able to relate the structure of thought and action of this religious structure to their own field.
It is obvious that it is difficult for Muslim societies, which create an excuse for themselves by associating, postponing and excluding the problem with the notion of the nation-state, to produce meaningful, holistic solutions to overcome the problems they are facing.
English and Indonesian versions translated with DeepL AI
