Abdullah Cevdet

Abdullah Cevdet

Abdullah Cevdet Karlıdağ , also Dschewdet (born September 9, 1869 in Arapgir , † November 29, 1932 in Istanbul ), was an Ottoman - Turkish intellectual of Kurdish origin and a doctor. He was also a poet, translator, radical free thinker and ideologue of the Young Turks who led the westernization movement in the Ottoman Empire from 1908 to 1918.

aims

The main goal of the Young Turks as well as the Cevdets was to put an end to the absolutist regime of Abdülhamid II . For this purpose, Cevdet and four other medical students (including Ibrahim Starova ) founded the secret "İttihad-ı Osmani Cemiyeti" (Committee of Ottoman Unity ) at the Military Medical School in Istanbul in 1889 , which later became the "İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti" ( Committee for Unity and Progress ) rose. Initially without a political agenda, the committee was politicized by several of its leaders and then led a revolution in 1908 against Abdülhamid. Cevdet was not politically involved in the committee, but represented its secular ideas until his death.

In addition to the committee, Cevdet was a member of several Kurdish associations that were founded after 1908. He wrote for the Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti and for the Kürt Talebe Hêvî Cemiyeti. He was also a member of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti .

Cevdet was a proponent of the Decentralized Wing of the Young Turks, the line of Prince Sabahaddin , who founded the short-lived Young Turkish Liberal Party in 1908 . This association was the only rival party to the Committee for Unity and Progress in the Ottoman elections of 1908. Even before the Constitutional Revolution , Cevdet defended the view that the various ethnic cultures of the Ottoman Empire should be treated equally, so he was a supporter of Ottomanism , one with the Tanzimat and especially represented by the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks. He was against the political autonomy of the Muslim minorities, including that of the Kurds. For the future of the Ottoman state, however, he apparently favored a kind of federal state.

Cevdet had a reputation for being an anti-Muslim free thinker. Nevertheless, he had good connections with the religious leader Said Nursi . This closeness is likely due to the otherwise similar attitudes of both. They combined their commitment to Ottomanism, their belief in scientific progress and their desire to educate the Kurds.

The İctihad magazine

Cevdet was influenced by the material philosophy of the West and its antagonistic position towards institutionalized religion. He published articles on socio-religious, political, economic and literary issues in the İctihad magazine , which was founded in Geneva in 1904 and was used to spread modern ways of thinking and thus enlighten the Islamic masses. He was arrested and sent out of the country several times for his political activities and lived in London and Paris , for example . His magazine was banned several times, among other things because of his opposition to the Ottomans entering the First World War .

He has been charged several times because some of his writings were viewed as blasphemous against Islam and Mohammed . Therefore he was called the Eternal Enemy of Islam (Süssheim, EI) and Aduvullah (The Enemy of God). Perhaps his most famous accusation he got because of praise of Bahaiglaubens in an article in the Ictihad from 1 March 1922. Abdullah Cevdet was one of the intellectuals who Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in his reforms to secularization have affected Turkey.

Works

Cevdet wrote several volumes of poetry and translated works by Gustave Le Bon , William Shakespeare and Omar Chayyām into Turkish. In total, he wrote and translated more than sixty works.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Martin van Bruinessen From Ottomanism to separatism: Religious and ethnic backgrounds of the rebellion of Sheikh Said ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 260 kB), p. 18 

swell

• Karl Süssheim: Abd Allah Djewdet . Entry in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI1; Supplement), Leiden / Leipzig, 1938, pp. 55–60.
• Serif Mardin , Jön Turklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 1895–1908 , Istanbul 1964 (1992), 221–50.
• Şerif Mardin: Continuity and Change in the Ideas of the Young Turks , extended text of a lecture at Robert College , 1969, 13-27.
• Frank W. Creel: The program and ideology of Dr. Abdullah Cevdet: a study of the origins of Kemalism in Turkey (unpublished dissertation), The University of Chicago , 1978.
• M. Şükrü Hanioğlu : Bir siyasal düşünür olarak Doctor Abdullah Cevdet ve Dönemi , Istanbul, 1981.
• M. Şükrü Hanioğlu: Bir siyasal örgüt olarak Osmanlı Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti ve Jon Türklük , Istanbul, 1986.
• M. Şükrü Hanioğlu: The Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0195091159
• Necati Alkan : "The eternal enemy of Islam: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha'i Religion" (abstract) , Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 68: 1, 2005, 1-20.