Author(s): Arif Olgun KÃZLEME
There was no Western type feudal system in the Ottoman social structure. The Ottoman society generally had a dual structure: the ruler and the ruled. The ruling class, consisted of palece officials, army commanders, civil servants, and scholars. All civilians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, also constituted the ruled class. The state and its rulers knew everything. The power and legitimacy of the ruling class stemmed from religion and tradition. They knew and practiced. The duty of the people was to obey it. This tradition began to be questioned and shaken after the Tanzimat. However, it was revived in the single-party period. What is right and what is in favor of the nation has decided the state as the sole authority. In this period, the source of legitimacy of the ruling elite changed to be secular education not determined by law. As the new elite, this new class was the only dominant power governing the state. Kemalism was the source of legitimacy for this new class. This was an understanding in which the cult of the individual, the nation-state, and puritan secularism were the main framework. With a jacobin understanding, a new nation consciousness was wanted to be created. To achieve this, the extreme secularist-elitist new class has made fundamental revolutions in relation to religion, which it sees as its main obstacle. However, the new ruling class, whose legal basis problem is uncertain, has not achieved its goals. The aim of this study is to try to reveal the formation of the secular statist-elitist ruling cadre of the one-party period, the source of legitimacy, the understanding of religion and the traces reflected in the later periods in relation to each other. The study has been dealt with a descriptive method based on literature review.
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