Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu

Institution: Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu is an interdisciplinary historian of ideas and narratives. His early research focused on the intercultural circulation of economic ideas, values, and concepts, exploring how they contributed to social change—particularly in the context of the late Ottoman Empire. This work deepened his interest in the power of ideas and narratives to shape collective imaginaries, eventually leading him to explore nationalism as one of the most pervasive and enduring narrative frameworks of modernity. He examines this theme in his recent book, The National Mind: Emotion, Cognition, and Nationalism, which focuses on the influence of nationalism on the human mind and culture. His current project investigates national(ist) narratives and sentiments in contemporary Turkish schoolbooks, with the aim of understanding how nationalism informs the cognitive and emotional formation of individual and collective subjectivities.

Reflections Upon “New Civilizationisms”

My research traces the entangled histories of nationalism, education, and civilizational discourse in Turkey. It began with a focus on late Ottoman economic thought, particularly how 19th-century intellectuals tackled questions of civilization, (economic) backwardness, and identity in an age of global transformation and imperial reform. In this early work, I encountered proto-nationalist narratives that sought to make sense of the empire’s perceived inferiority within a Westcentric civilizational hierarchy — often framed through debates over internal shortcomings versus external conspiracies. I realized that these narratives continue to circulate — in modified forms — throughout contemporary Turkish culture. This continuity drew my attention to the other end of the historical arc, where I now explore how canonical national narratives have evolved and what social and political functions they serve.

My ongoing research project examines the national(ist) narratives embedded in Turkish schoolbooks from 1980 to the present. It analyzes how these narratives are crafted to shape collective memory, reinforce social hierarchies — particularly along ethnoreligious lines — and cultivate the emotional regime of the national ideology. 

Recently, my research has turned toward a major shift in Turkey’s educational philosophy. In April 2024, the government introduced a comprehensive reform that redefines national education as a civilizational mission. From its spiritual terminology to its emphasis on moral renewal and historical continuity, the model signals a reorientation of education toward the imagined revival of a disrupted Turkic-Islamic civilizational heritage. This emerging discourse appears to respond, on the domestic front, to the secular-Republican project of building a Westernized nation-state — a project that disowned the Islamic cultural tradition. Internationally, it engages both with the legacy of a Westcentric civilizational hierarchy and with recent efforts to challenge it through alternative civilizational imaginaries. The model also seems informed by academic and political debates around postcolonialism and the decolonization of knowledge, reframing education as a vehicle for reclaiming suppressed or marginalized epistemic traditions. While public debate has often focused on its religious and ideological dimensions, my research examines its deeper intellectual genealogy and conceptual architecture. I explore how the model constructs a new temporality and subjectivity for education — one that casts students not only as learners but as heirs to a transhistorical civilization tasked with carrying its mission into the future.