The Political Theological Intervention to Utopias: Republican Civil Religion as the Source of Early Republican Utopias

Claiming that sacredness-producing systems generate utopian visions of the ideal society, this study analyzes two utopian novels written in the early Republican period: Yakup Kadri Karaosmano？lu’s Ankaraand Ahmet A？ao？lu’s Serbest ？nsanlar ülkesinde.Against the thesis that Islam impedes utopian writing in Eastern societies, the study extends the boundaries of the sacred beyond monotheistic religions and focuses on alternative political and civilian sacredness mechanisms. It shows that the utopian visions of both Ankaraand Serbest ？nsanlar ülkesindewere rooted in the republican civil religion, which created a number of cults and sacredness mechanisms in the early Republican period. Examining these utopias with the method of content analysis, the study argues that they were not only deeply affected by butalso actively contributed to this alternative sacredness