Evaluation of Secular Thought/Laicism in The Context of Ul？m-？ ？ktisadiye ve ？？timaiye Mecmuas？ Case

Abstract Secularism and laicism are concepts covering a broad area in socio-economy, culture and sociology. In this respect, the definition of secularism, its historical development in Europe, and the mainstream thoughts that had given its origins are the primary focus of this study. Most significant one of these thoughts is positivism, which rejects all the metaphysical information and proposes that the truth can only be found by experimentation and observation. Materialism, evolutionism and liberalism together with positivism, had significant influence on the development of secular thought/laicism as well. Besides the process in Europe, the study also looks into the development of secular thought in The Ottoman State and makes an emphasis on the fact that this process had begun during the recession era of the State. In order to save the State, the governors of the time had begun to try the Western system and had made some reforms, which in some respects, caused the secular thought and laicism to be influential in Ottoman State. This influence, a new generation of people had also grown who adopted secularism deeply and perceived it to be the only way to save the State from its weak position. With the help of the press and the support of western states, these people had the chance to explain their thoughts in some newspapers and journals of the time. One of the significant ones of those journals was Ul？m-i ？ktisadiye ve ？？timaiye Journal, which had been published between 1908 and 1911. The main subject of this study is to show what thoughts had been re-addressed from the secular/laicism point of view in this journal. Summary Laicism and secularism concepts are broadly used in socio-economic, cultural and sociological domains. In this study these two concepts were defined and their development process were investigated together with the mainstream ideologies in Europe. These two terms are used interchangeably most of the time. While secularism insists on leaving metaphysics and focusing on material world, laicism refers to a system, thought or a person without religious influence. Laicism is mostly used to indicate the separation of religion and politics in government. In the early times, religious thoughts had significant influence on the government decisions and actions. However, during the 15th and 16th centuries this situation began to change. The enlightenment, renaissance and reform movement had paved the way for a new world order. The late 18th century ideologies started to question the legitimacy of the states and proposed that the authority