Medeniyetler sosyolojisi: İbn Haldun’un umran kuramı açısından medeniyetler arası ilişkilerin geleceği

According to Ibn Khaldun (808/1406), a product of a society that experienced many civilizations at one time, in his “National System” that was prepared on the basis of Islamic jurisprudence, madaniyyah (civilization) and ‘umran (the nation) are synonymous concepts. According to Ibn Khaldun, the world is in the shape of a globe; half of this globe is covered with water while a large portion of the other half that forms the land is not conducive to settlement. The people residing in the areas that are conducive to settlement, despite possessing some different characteristics, have established civilizations which demonstrate similar behavior. Thus Ibn Khaldun defined civilization as a “corporate social actor”, turning it into an individual discipline, and studied the behavior and reactions of civilizations under different circumstances. His investigations brought him to the conclusion that in the universal order civilizations demonstrate similar behavior. In his own period, by studying existence and scientific thought, he identified the avari‘a al-zatiyyah (shortcomings of the nation). Ibn Khaldun proposed a theory in which civilization where civilization and inter-civilization relationships are propelled, on the one hand, by internal dynamics, as well as, on the other, by external relational dynamics, which are defined as change and conflict. According to this approach, civilizations do not show a linear progression or regression; quite the contrary, they have a history full of rises and declines. In a paradoxical manner many civilizations that have developed strongly weaken their ability to defend themselves, opening the way to their collapse. If we approach the subject from a modern perspective, how can we interpret the conflicts and disagreements that occur between modern civilizations from the point of view of Ibn Khaldun’s theory of civilizations and inter-civilization relationships, that is, the subject of the Science of Umran, and what can we say about the future of relationships between civilizations? Our aim is to evaluate the concept of the future from Ibn Khaldun’s perspective, starting from Samuel Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations and then to look at the future anew from the perspective of Ibn Khaldun.