Cemil Meriç and the Dialectics of Escape ( Kaçış ) and Search ( Arayış )

Abstract Cemil Meriç was a key intellectual figure of the twentieth century in Turkey. In his oeuvre, he discusses a wide range of issues, yet a continuous theme is the nature of intellectuals under the impact of westernization in the late Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Critical of their “escape” from their historical roots and common people, Meriç called for a new Turkish intelligentsia that searched for authentic self-identity. Yet he recognized that the process of westernization had so altered society and intellectuals that this search was bound to take place under inauthentic conditions. Meriç believed that the paradox of the search for authenticity in an inauthentic age required a dialectics of escape and search. The Turkish intelligentsia must search for themselves while escaping to avoid Orientalist and/or Western-centric identities that deny their historical particularity and escape themselves while searching to avoid self-enclosed, nativist identities such as that of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis claiming to authentically express an unchanging national essence to be defended against all external influences.