Seyyid Bey'e Göre İslam Düşüncesinde Siyasal Otorite

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Abstract (En)

Abstract: In Islamic thought, political authority is largely met with the concept of caliphate, and this issue is dealt with and analyzed in classical sources in the books of Kalām (theology) on imāmah or in fiqh books such as al-ahkām al-sultāniyya. The caliphate did not always exist in the same way after the Prophet but sometimes witnessed the existence of different caliphs in the same period, and sometimes there were periods without caliphs. As it is known, in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, constitutionalism was introduced and some of the powers of the caliph were restricted in time. This led to debates on whether the caliph's powers could be limited in the first place. With the Republic, the caliphate was first separated from the sultanate and the caliph was elected by the parliament, but after a while, it was stated that there was no need for the caliphate as it caused double-headedness and the caliphate was terminated. Seyyid Bey, a scholar and statesman who lived during the period of the debates on the caliphate, wrote important works on this subject. In this context, he analyzed the nature of the caliphate, whether the caliph could be limited to certain conditions, whether the caliphate was a religious or worldly matter, and finally, whether there was a need for a caliph in a society where there was a government. Seyyid Bey presents his views on the subject in three works he published in the fields of Islamic law and Islamic legal methodology. Although the dates of these works are close to each other, they are products of different political conjunctures in terms of realpolitik. In his work Madhal, written in 1917 during the Second Constitutional Era, he discusses the caliphate by taking into account a period when the caliphate and the sultanate were united in a single person. In his treatise Hilāfet ve Hākimiyyet-i Milliyye, published in Ankara in 1923, at a time when the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) decided to abolish the sultanate while maintaining the caliphate as a symbolic institution, he examines whether the separation of the sultanate and the caliphate would pose a problem from the perspective of Islamic law. Finally, during his tenure as Minister of Justice, he delivered a speech in the Grand National Assembly on March 3, 1924, during the abolition of the caliphate, which was later published under the title Hilāfet’in Mahiyyet-i Şer’iyyesi. In this speech, where he shared his final thoughts on the caliphate, he argued that the caliphate was essentially a form of government, and since there was already a functioning government in place, there was no longer a need for a caliph. In this study, Seyyid Bey's idea of caliphate will be analysed by taking these three main works into consideration, the development processes of his thought will be followed, and thus it will be revealed on what kind of ground the political and legal debates that came to the agenda at that time were discussed.

Keywords: Islamic Law, Seyyid Bey, Caliphate, Political Authority.