In this work, four thinkers and scholars from the late Ottoman period (M. Sadık Rıfat Pasha, Mustafa
Reshid Pasha, Said Halim Pasha, and Filibeli Ahmet Hilmi) and three from the Republican
period (Erol Güngör, Cemil Meriç, and Nurettin Topçu) have been selected to understand Turkish thought within the context of modernization.
A mere look at the aforementioned thinkers and their ideas reveals the immense richness of our intellectual world. In the history of Turkish thought, the comprehensive knowledge of these thinkers has been addressed through their roles as social scientists to evaluate their perspectives on modernization and Westernization. The authors and thinkers discussed in the book are not disconnected from their root civilizational tradition; rather, they are figures who have contributed to Turkish-Islamic thought by taking this tradition seriously and emphasizing the necessity of being nourished by it. Due to both their official duties and their roles as thinkers and intellectuals, their writings are significant, and by understanding the last hundred and fifty-plus years and proceeding from a sound assessment, we can strive to accurately understand both ourselves and the West in the 21st century. Although the 19th and 20th centuries are often viewed as weak periods for Turkish-Islamic thought and subjected to criticism, they actually bore witness to a wealth of thinkers, intellectuals, and ideas. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, figures such as Babanzade Ahmet Naim, Yusuf Akçura, Ziya Gökalp, and Mehmet Akif Ersoy; and after the 1940s, intellectuals such as Seyyid Ahmet Arvasi, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Yahya Kemal
Beyatlı, Semiha Ayverdi, Peyami Safa, Sezai Karakoç, Cahit Zarifoğlu, and
İsmet Özel, who contributed to Turkish-Islamic thought, should also be examined within the context of modernization. Particularly if we can understand 19th and 20th-century Turkish thought, we can establish our political, social, cultural, and scientific ideology in the 21st century on firmer foundations. As Descartes said, if we can find solid rock, we can build a sturdy structure (idea-civilization) upon it.