Religion has become the most important source of Turkish thought since ancient times. Finding the opportunity to be a nation around the understanding of religion, Turks shape their understanding of politics within the framework of this understanding. This is the reason why Turks, who embraced different religions due to various motives, put forward a special Islamic understanding by Islamizing in line with the religious understanding they inherited in Islamization period. When we examine the ideas about politics in Turkish thought from pre-Islamic legends to works written in Islamization, Seljuk and Ottoman periods, it is understood that there is a common but implicit point of view that has certain basic assumptions and discourses that has not been put into a systematic form. The aim of the study is to compile this implicit point of view and put it into a systematic form as a theoretical basis. In this direction, the theory called the Religious Theory of Turkish Political Thought was shaped and the acceptance of this theory was tested in accordance with the works of Islamization, Seljuk and Ottoman periods. Within the scope of the theory constructed with the name of the Religious Theory of Turkish Political Thought, it is accepted that everything that concerns the political sphere from the existence of nation and state to the necessity of a ruler; from the legitimacy ground of the ruler to the nature of the ties that will keep the nation together and the existential beliefs that will make the state permanent, is shaped within the framework of the religious understanding of the Turks. This acceptance has been evaluated within the framework of highly representative works from the period of Islamization to modernization, and although the limits of the study have been kept wide historically, it is limited in terms of case studies. For this reason, case-oriented comparative analysis method was used in the study. As a result of the study, it is seen that Turkish political thought has become a tradition that has not been put forward in a certain order and continues this theoretical perspective that has not been put into a structural quality. In this direction, it has been determined that the ideas created within the framework of the Religious Theory of Turkish Political Thought reveals the thesis of the religious origin and centrality of Turkish political thought. |