Ali Kemal

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Ali Kemâl

Ali Kemâl Bey ( Ottoman علی کمال بگ; * 1867 in Istanbul as Rıza Ali; † November 6, 1922 in İzmit ) was a liberal Ottoman journalist, editor of daily newspapers and poet who was Minister of Education from March to May 1919 and Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire from May to June 1919 under the government of Grand Vizier Damat Ferit . He was kidnapped and murdered on the orders of Nureddin Pasha . Ali Kemâl is the paternal grandfather of British politician Stanley Johnson and great-grandfather of his children Boris , Rachel and Jo Johnson .

education

Kemâl was born under the name Rıza Ali as the son of Mumcular Kâhyası Balmumcu Ahmed Efendi from Çankırı in Istanbul, his mother was a slave of Circassian origin. In middle school, he was expelled from military school for bad behavior. In 1882 he was accepted into civil servant training at the Mülkiye School . In the meantime he wrote poems and articles under the pseudonym "Ali Kemâl", by which he should be known from now on. He spent 1887 to 1888 in France to improve his French . During this time he organized himself against Abdülhamit II. As a result, he served a nine-month prison sentence and was transferred to Aleppo as a civil servant , where his two novels, İki Hemşire (“Two Nurses”) and Çölde Bir Sergüzeşt (“An Adventurer in the Desert “).

After illegally returning to Istanbul , he was forced to flee to Paris due to the ongoing persecution against him . There he made the acquaintance of the Young Turks . In 1900 he traveled to Egypt , where he enjoyed an elegant lifestyle on the farm of a financially distressed prince. There he met his first wife Yvonne, an Englishwoman .

In 1908 he returned to Istanbul and devoted himself to journalism. He also taught at the Istanbul University of Darülfünun . With the rise of the Committee for Unity and Progress , he began to write critical articles against it. Because he brought his oppositional stance into his classes, the students protested and he lost his post. Short stays in exile in Vienna and London followed. When his English wife died, he married a daughter of Müşiu Verri Zeki Pascha in 1912 .

During the reign of the Committee for Unity and Progress after 1912, he was banned from journalistic activities, so that he earned his living with trade and private education. When the ailing ruling party lost power, he became involved in politics and joined the Freedom and Unity Party . He became general secretary of the party and, with the formation of a government under Damat Ferid Pasha, he became education minister in his first cabinet and interior minister in his second cabinet.

Opposition to the Committee for Unity and Progress

Ali Kemâl condemned the attacks and bloodbaths against the Armenians from 1915, reviled the Ittihadist leaders as the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and relentlessly demanded their legal prosecution and punishment.

Kemâl was also an editor of various Ottoman dailies, including Sabah , Alemdar , Peyam and later Peyam-Sabah ; he not only openly blamed ittihadist leaders, but also the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies and "thousands and thousands" of common people for their participation in the massacres. In the January 28, 1919 edition of Sabah , Kemâl wrote:

“Five years ago a unique crime was committed, a crime that shook the world. Given the dimensions and norms, the authors don't add up to five or ten, but to hundreds of thousands. It has already been factually proven that this tragedy was planned on the basis of a decision made by the Ittihad Central Committee. "

In the July 18, 1919 edition of the Alemdar , he wrote:

“[…] Our Justice Minister has opened the doors of the prisons. Let's not try to put the blame on the Armenians; we don't have to flatter ourselves that the world is filled with idiots. We looted the belongings of the men we deported and massacred; we have sanctioned theft in our Chamber and Senate. Let us prove that we have sufficient national energy to enforce the law against the heads of these gangs who trampled justice and dragged our honor and national life through the dust. "

Opposition to the national liberation movement

Already in the initial phase he attacked the national liberation movement under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , whom he called berduş , ie " tramp " or " tramp" , because of his wandering activity to mobilize forces in Anatolia . As Minister of the Interior, he managed to stir up some telegraph stations against Ataturk.

Caricature by Cevat Şakir (1921): “Ali Kemâl Bey in his office”. He is sitting in a chamber pot.

He openly sympathized with a Turkey under a British mandate and is considered the founder of İngiliz Muhipler Cemiyeti , an Anglophile association in which the Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pascha was a member. In response to the criticism that he was a mouthpiece for the English occupation forces, he replied that the English did not need any lackeys and that the real traitors were in Anatolia.

On June 26, 1919, he resigned due to an argument with the Minister of War and devoted himself again to journalistic activities. On August 2, 1919, he began his work in the newspaper Peyam-i Sabah and immediately adopted an aggressive tone. He called the national movement under Ataturk "snakes", "jokes", "bandits" and prophesied that the Anatolian people, "based on the Sharia and the Sultan", would soon put an end to the movement. Shortly after the opening of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara , he wrote on April 25:

"Death penalty. Death penalty. Death penalty ... Because the band of robbers Mustafa Kemal, Kâzım Karabekir , Ali Fuat and Sami are more vicious and worse than the unionists, they will be punished early. "

- Original : "İdam. İdam. İdam… Mustafa Kemal haydudu, Kâzım Karabekir, Ali Fuat, Sami gibi çete reisleri haydutlar İttihatçılardan daha adi, daha kötü oldukları için cezalarını daha evvel bulacaklar. "

Shortly before the Turkish attack, the büyük taaruz , against the entrenched Greek troops, he wrote the following on August 7th:

“Mustafa and his followers are preparing for a major attack against the Greeks . This insane attempt has only one goal: doom, doom again, doom again. Because Greece has troops, ammunition and equipment. And in the end, great support in the form of the British. You are weak on every point. In addition, they are miserable bandits. The Anatolian people love Allah and his religion. But they are hypocrites and unbelievers "

- Original : “Mustafa Kemal ve yandaşları, Yunanlılara karşı büyük bir saldırıya hazırlanıyor. Bu çılgınca teşebbüsün amacı yine izmihlal, yine izmihlal, yine izmihlal. Çünkü Yunanistan'ın orduları var, mühimmatı var, teçhizatı var. Nihayet İngiltere gibi büyük bir yardımcıları var. Bu sergerdeler ise her hususta yoksul. Fazla olarak da gaddar haydut. Anadolu halkı, Allah'ını dinini sever. Onlar ise zındık, münafık. "

With Mustafa Kemal's victory and the capture of Izmir , he struck a more conciliatory tone with gayelerimiz bir ve birdir (“Our goals are the same”). He admitted that he was wrong about that.

Assassination and burial

On November 4, 1922, Ali Kemâl was overpowered in a hairdressing salon in front of the Tokatlıyan Hotel in Istanbul and taken out of the city by ship by shaking off some English pursuers. In Izmit he was brought before Nureddin Pasha, who was supposed to bring him to a military court in Ankara for high treason . In fact, however, Nureddin Pasha ordered his captain Rahmi Apak:

“Now gather a few hundred people from the street in front of the big gate. If Ali Kemal passes the gate, they should kill him, lynch [him] "

- Original : "Şimdi sokaktan birkaç yüz kişiyi büyük kapının önüne toplat. Kapıdan çıkarken Ali Kemal'i öldürsünler, linç etsinler. "

When Ali Kemâl passed the gate, he was beaten, stoned and stabbed by a mob. The mob stole his jewelry, gold watch and new suit. He was then dragged through the town by his ankles with a rope and his body was hung from a railway tunnel.

According to Falih Rıfkı Atay's accounts, Nureddin Pasha is said to have exhibited the body for Ismet Inönü . He took the train through Iznik in the direction of Switzerland to sign the Treaty of Lausanne . According to Atay, Inonu is said to have bowed his head at the sight of the corpse and dragged Nureddin Pascha into a corner and insulted him wildly. Ataturk's reaction to the lynching is described as "disgusted"; Panic broke out in Istanbul among supporters of the British occupying forces, who fled to the British consulate for protection.

The funeral turned out to be difficult as the public refused to let him be buried in İznik and those in charge of the cemeteries refused to accept him. Considerations circulated about burying the "traitor" in Greece . Ultimately, he was buried without a tombstone near a public cemetery. His grave was not rediscovered until 1950.

Others

Ali Kemâls second son Zeki Kuneralp (1914-1998) passed the entrance exam for service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When discussing whether he should be accepted because of his father's agitation, the then Prime Minister Ismet Inönü intervened with the words "I don't understand, what's supposed to be there, why shouldn't he come in?" He became Vice Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador. His wife, who also works as an ambassador, and his brother-in-law were shot dead in 1978 by the Armenian terrorist organization Asala in Madrid.

Fonts

  • İki Hemşire , (Two Nurses), 1899, novel;
  • Çölde Bir Sergüzeşt , (An Adventurer in the Desert), 1990, novel;

literature

  • M. Kayahan Özgül (Ed.): Ali Kemâl, Ömrüm. Hece yayınları, Ankara 2004.
  • Zeki Kuneralp (ed.): Ali Kemal, Ömrüm. İsis Publications, Istanbul 1985.
  • Osman Özsoy: Gazetecinin İnfazı. Biography. Timaş Yayınları, Istanbul 1995

Web links

Commons : Ali Kemal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boris Johnson 'is descendant' of mummified Basel woman bbc.co.uk, accessed on July 23, 2019 (English)
  2. ↑ a b c Dedesini linç ettik, torunu Londra Belediye Başkan. Bugün , December 24, 2014, archived from the original on December 24, 2014 ; accessed on July 14, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Vahakn N. Dadrian : Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources . Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, 1991 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ↑ a b Soner Yalçın : Bu gazeteci üslubu kimden miras kaldı. Retrieved July 15, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Rahmi Apak: Yetmişlik Subayın Hatıraları. Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988, ISBN 975-16-0075-8 , pp. 262–263 (Turkish)
  6. ↑ Rahmi Apak: Yetmişlik Subayın Hatıraları. P. 264.
  7. ↑ Rahmi Apak: Yetmişlik Subayın Hatıraları. P. 265.
  8. ^ Andrew Mango: From the Sultan to Ataturk: ​​Turkey. Excerpt from the page ( Memento from February 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ MİLLİYET İNTERNET - YAZARLAR. In: www.milliyet.com.tr . Retrieved July 14, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Ali Kemal
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ali Kemâl Bey; Rıza Ali (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1922
Place of death İzmit