The first session of the Islamic Political Thought Workshop was chaired by Bekir Berat Özipek from Istanbul Medipol University and was followed by dozens of academics specialized in the field of Islamic Political Thought as well as doctoral and graduate students. The first speaker of this session, Ömer Türker from Marmara University, made a general introduction to the subject with the title “How Should Islamic Political Thought be Read?” and drew a framework for the discussions. The other speaker of the first session, Haluk Alkan, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Istanbul University, in his presentation titled “Authority in Islamic Political Thought”, discussed “authority”, one of the basic concepts of Islamic political thought, and touched upon the conceptual debates in Islamic political thought.
In the second session chaired by Tahsin Görgün from 29 May University, the first speaker was Şenol Korkut from Eskişehir Osmangazi University. Korkut focused on politics and political philosophy from the perspectives of Farabi and Ibn Sina, important names of Islamic Philosophy, in his speech titled “Felasifa'nin Siyaset Nazariyesi”. The second title of this session, “The Conception of Politics in the Politicnāme-Nasihatnāme Genre as a Source of Political Philosophy” was given by İlker Kömbe from Istanbul Medeniyet University. Kömbe discussed politics in politicnāme and nasihatnāme, which have an important place in classical Islamic thought, and the impact of the political imagination on Islamic political philosophy.
The third session of the Islamic Political Thought Workshop was chaired by Istanbul Şehir University Faculty Member Hızır Murat Köse. The first speech of the third session was titled “Introduction to Political-Fijhical Provisions: Determinations on the Fiqhi Sources of Islamic Political Thought” by Özgür Kavak from Istanbul Şehir University. Kavak argued that contrary to the dominant opinion in the existing literature, Islamic political thought can be deduced from the sources of fiqh and the provisions therein. The second speaker of this session, Abdullah Taha İmamoğlu, a lecturer at Trakya University, examined the role of hadiths in the formation of political thought in his presentation titled “The Issue of the Source and Sanity of Hadiths Used in Islamic Political Literature”.
The last session of the workshop was chaired by Murat Çemrek, Head of the Department of International Relations at Konya Necmettin Erbakan University. In this session, Ahmet Okumuş, Lecturer at Istanbul Şehir University and President of the Science and Art Foundation addressed the basic questions of Islamic political thought, such as the existence of the ruler-governed distinction, the nature of the political, and the character of the good regime. The second speaker of this session and the last speaker of the workshop, Süleyman Güder, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association for Scientific Studies, discussed contemporary interpretations of Islamic political thought through the structure of post-1960 liberationist political-theological movements in his presentation titled “Comparison of Islamic and Western Liberationist Political Theologies”.
The Workshop on Islamic Political Thought concluded with the presentation of Taşköprülüzade's corpus to the participants. Conferences, workshops, and symposiums will continue within the framework of the Islamic Political Thought Project.
