Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, cilt.17, sa.4, ss.365-387, 2023 (ESCI)
The present study aims to trace the political theory of Michael Oakeshott, one of the leading critics of rationalism in politics in the 20th century, both in the founding stage of the Modern Republic and in the policies of the AK Party Government, as its final stage. Political rationalism, which Oakeshott is skeptical of, is an understanding in which the traditional is destroyed and a new political order and society is created rather than repaired. Political rationalism, which has an understanding of abstraction, universality and perfectionism, especially turns into a politics of absolute faith and becomes a unity of enterprise in which law and freedom are suspended through the unity of powers. From this perspective, the rationalist policies of the Atatürk and Erdoğan eras are analyzed. In particular, the transformation of the concept of unity of powers into the politics of faith, the existence of new political orders (Republic, Presidential Government System) and new social structures (Asım’s generation instead of Kemalist generation) reveals the importance of rationalism in politics in order to understand the structure of politics in Turkey.