TURKISH RESPONSE TO THE CHRISTIAN CALL FOR DIALOGUE

Abstract

After the Second Vatican Council, which took place in 1962-1965, the Catholic Church reached out to both co-religionists and non-Christians. As the second largest religion in the world (after Christianity), the Muslim world began to react to this call for dialogue. Without a worldwide religious authority, Muslim scholars and communities have tried to understand and respond to this call for dialogue in their own way. Turkey, as one of the most influential and modern Muslim majority states, joined the discussion about interreligious dialogue, especially with Christians. Very diverse in culture, religion, and thought, Turkish scholars' discussions and critiques of the dialogue requested by the Christian world have clearly contributed to interreligious dialogue on a global scale in the last decades. This dissertation examines the development of interreligious dialogue in Turkey and the works of prominent and widely recognized Turkish theologians as a response to the Christian call for dialogue. It explores the problems, challenges, and future of the perception of interreligious dialogue in the Turkish context, in particular, the views of three influential Turkish scholars: Abdurrahman Küçük, Mahmut Aydin, and Davut Aydüz. The conclusion proposes the Turkish Model for interreligious dialogue.