INTELLECTUAL POWER OF THE WEST AND TURKISH MODERNIZATION

One of the most important foundations of the West’s sovereignty ongoing for a few centuries in global scale is the intellectual power that it has had. The West determines the thought forms, the perspectives and conceptual tools used in the approach to the problems through the intellectual hegemony that it has built, thus it fortifies its power and makes it permanent by discourse superiority that it holds. In this context, Orientalism also appears as one of the important tools of the West's intellectual power. The local intelligentsia is equipped with a function of production of legitimacy of the Western-oriented modernization, development and culture movements in the framework of Orientalism. Overcoming the intellectual dependence caused by West's intellectual power preceding its superiority in political, economic, military and other areas, requires the disclosure of functioning mechanisms of the mentioned power through a critical analysis. This study, through the example of Turkish modernization, meets the need of such a disclosure by discussing implications of orientalism in Turkish modernization and the attitudes and behavior of the local intelligentsia, as well.