Starting the 2024-2025 Academic Year with the Opening Conference!
As part of its tradition, the Scientific Studies Association (ILEM) is welcoming the new academic year with a thought-provoking opening lecture.
The Opening Lecture will be presented by Şener Aktürk, a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Koç University. His talk, titled “Soykırım, Nüfus Mühendisliği ve Batı Avrupa Merkezli Dünya Düzeninin Gelişimi” (Genocide, Population Engineering, and the Development of a Western Europe-Centric World Order) will take place on Friday, October 11, 2024, at 5:30 PM in the Prof. Dr. Raşit Küçük Conference Hall at Marmara University’s Faculty of Theology. The program will begin with refreshments for attendees at 5:30 PM, followed by the opening lecture at 6:00 PM.
Attendees of the Opening Ceremony will have the opportunity to learn more about ILEM’s newly launched Specialization Programs, the 13th Turkey Graduate Studies Congress taking place on December 4-6, 2024, and other ILEM initiatives at booths located in the foyer area. Additionally, students newly admitted to the ILEM Academy Program and Graduate Seminars will meet for the first time.
Genocide, Population Engineering, and the Development of a Western Europe-Centric World Order
What are the historical and political roots and reasons behind the systematic targeting and eradication of Muslims in the West? Are there examples of population engineering and genocide, often associated with the rise of modern nation-states, before modernity? When did a Western and European identity become closely associated with Christianity? This lecture focuses on explaining a historical development that answers these three questions collectively, but has not been examined comprehensively until now. As early as the 13th century, Muslims and/or Jews lived under Christian rule in regions corresponding to present-day Italy, England, France, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal, often making up a significant portion of the population in many areas. However, all Muslims and nearly all Jews in Western Europe were systematically eliminated in a process that began in the late 11th century, peaked in the 13th century, and concluded in the first quarter of the 16th century. This transformed Western Europe into the world’s most religiously homogeneous region. The populations of Western European states like France, England, Spain, and Portugal—states that would later colonize more than half of the world—were reduced solely to Catholic Christians. How was such extensive population engineering, spanning multiple states and centuries, accomplished? I argue that the mechanism enabling the elimination of all Muslims and nearly all Jews in Western Europe was the persistent pressure exerted by a supranational clerical class, led by the rapidly strengthening Papacy during the Gregorian Reforms, on ruling powers. The papal-led clergy punished, deposed, and even executed rulers who protected Muslims, Jews, or any minority outside Catholicism, replacing them with rulers who would ensure the elimination of religious minorities. The systematic exclusion and even eradication of non-Christians persisted beyond the Catholic Church's monopoly, even after it was broken by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and continued up to the present with additional racial, nationalistic, ideological, and even pseudo-rational justifications. This comprehensive population engineering, conducted centuries before the emergence of nation-states, shaped Western Europe’s demographic, political, religious, and cultural identity, as well as the modern world order in the long run. Today, the absence of supranational actors and powerful Muslim nations plays a significant role in enabling population engineering policies, verging on genocide, against Palestinians, Rohingya, Syrians, Ukrainians, and Uyghurs in regions outside the West.
