Sakallı Celâl

Sakallı Celâl , actually Mahmud Celâl Yalnız (born March 1886 in Istanbul ; died June 6, 1962 there ) was a Turkish intellectual and eccentric . He is often referred to as a philosopher.

Numerous sayings and anecdotes have come down to us from Sakallı Celâl. He did not leave a written certificate. He worked as a teacher, school principal, stoker on a ship and as a factory worker. Contemporaries described him as educated, clever, rationalistic, indomitable, belligerent, uncompromising, rebellious, irascible, energetic, humorous, generous, amiable, strange and extremely quick-witted. Yusuf Ziya Ortaç , who had known him for almost 50 years, compared him to an angry god when faced with reactionary ways of thinking. His outward appearance was particularly striking; he was an imposing, broad-shouldered man with a long beard and negligent, shabby, and unkempt clothes. Despite numerous companions, he led a solitary and lonely life and was regarded by many as an eccentric.

His real name was Mahmud Celâl Yalnız . Celâl carefully chose the surname Yalnız, which means "lonely". This is often wrongly represented as "Yalınız". But he is better known by his nickname (lakap) "Sakallı Celâl", "Bearded Celâl".

It is thanks to the work of Orhan Karaveli that this thinker has not been completely forgotten. Karaveli collected all reports about Celâl, spoke with numerous contemporary witnesses and published the book Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu , which deals only with this man.

Childhood and youth

Celâl Yalnız grew up in a family of the Ottoman upper class. His father was the commander in chief of the Ottoman fleet Admiral Hüseyin Hüsnü Paşa. His mother, whom he was later to disparagingly call " Abdülhamid's female ", was Ayşe Melek Hanım. Celâl was the third oldest of six siblings. His older brothers were named Kemâl and Cemâl, his younger siblings Nihâl, Cemile and Bilâl. Kemâl and Cemâl went to the Navy and joined the resistance against the despotism of Abdülhamid. Kemâl narrowly escaped the sultan's captors. Cemâl was caught and escaped the death penalty, but remained imprisoned in Rhodes until the Italians captured the island. The younger brother Nihâl died in a fall from a horizontal bar while doing school sports. The sister went to the American girls' high school in Istanbul as "Mary" and later married the Syrian Mustafa Satı Bey . Brother Bilâl led an inconspicuous life. He worked for the state railway company and Koç Holding , was married and had two sons. During the name reform, the Celâls brothers chose the surname Porsun ("boatswain").

Already in preschool, Celâl pressured his father to be allowed to learn French so that he could read his brothers' school books. After initially declining, Celâl received private lessons from "Matmazel" Edith. From 1896 to 1907 he attended the "Sultan School" ( Mekteb-i Sultani ). He was a student of Tevfik Fikret . Due to his physical strength, he was nicknamed Bocurgat during this time . In 1907 Celâl finished school. Thanks to Tevfik Fikret, Celâl received a position as an assistant teacher in the preparatory class in the school year 1908/1909. In 1909 he volunteered for service in the intervention army to put down the March 31 uprising, and was also involved in the skirmishes over the Taksim barracks . Then Celâl Yalınız studied with a state scholarship at the Sorbonne . Under pressure from his mother and financiers, he studied political science, although he was more interested in mechanical engineering. As a sign of rebellion, Celâl let his beard stand, which he no longer took off and which was to become his trademark. He did not finish his studies. He dealt extensively with the French Revolution . Influenced by Marxism, Sakallı Celâl returned home.

Working life

He got his first job as a teacher in Üsküp . He made the students wear shorts and play soccer. Because of this “devilish invention”, Celâl was soon released and returned to Istanbul. Ahmet Emin Yalman, chief editor of Hür Vatan , wrote in 1962 in a tribute to the bearded Celâl on the front page of his newspaper, you have time for him kaafir declared and issued a fatwa against him. It was not to be the last confrontation with authorities.

In 1911, Sakallı Celâl helped a supply of Turkish troops in Tripoli with weapons and ammunition against the Italians. The supply ship was brought in by the English. Celâl managed to convince the English commander that the weapons were intended for Tunisian mujahideen in the fight against the French.

Sakallı Celâl enlisted in the army during World War I, but was rejected. Instead he got a job as a teacher in Kastamonu . Despite his youth, he quickly enjoyed great popularity among the very small circle of intellectuals there. But the first complaints were immediately made to the ministry in Istanbul because the bearded man had been spotted without his head covering. The ministry transferred him to İzmit anyway . Here he met a like-minded person in the young literature teacher Yusuf Ziya Ortaç.

During the First World War, Sakallı Celâl was appointed deputy director of a grammar school in Ankara, the so-called Ankara Sultanisi . During an inspection of the “sultanic” school in Ankara, Minister Necati Bey publicly reprimanded him for making the students wear shorts. In response, the bearded man is said to have slapped the minister on the left and right.

At first he condescendingly dismissed the national resistance under Mustafa Kemal in Anatolia with the words: “Turks who cannot even deal with bed bugs have declared war on England!” However, he later supported the resistance. Celâl spent the years 1918–1923 in Istanbul. There he operated an intensive smuggling of arms for the benefit of the liberation movement.

After the proclamation of the republic, he was appointed director of the Ankara Sultanisi. A former student described him as a teacher who often did not come to class at all or too late, who passed the time with anecdotes and who kept taking sick leave. In Ankara he managed to have a teacher at his school for the first time in the history of Turkey. He also restricted teaching in Islamic sciences. He responded to objections from religious dignitaries by saying that the children learned religion from their parents and the imam. Foreign languages, on the other hand, can only be learned at school. Celâl's work was favored by the fact that the minister responsible, Hamdullah Suphi Tanrıöver, was a former schoolmate of the bearded man and held his hand over him protectively. When parents complained to the ministry about an incompetent teacher during his time as school director in Ankara, he explained at the joint appointment at the ministry that if you tie a goat in the guest room and put it on the carpet, you are not angry with the goat, but with the person who who tied them up there. Here it is not the fault of the teacher, who has no idea about boobs and bubbles, but rather those who sent him there.

When the ministry wanted to accelerate graduation by a year due to a lack of staff, Sakallı Celâl submitted the resignation. This ended his civil servant career and Celâl returned to Istanbul.

There are conflicting reports about Sakallı Celâl's subsequent activities. Working as the first machinist on the Gülcemal seems to be undisputed .

In mid-1928 he took a job in Aydın as a worker in the fig processing cooperative "Karapınar İncir Müstahsilleri Kooperatifi" in what is now İncirliova (then Reşadiye) and soon rose to the position of shift leader. Celâl bought a house there. During his time as a shift supervisor at the fig processing cooperative, he was denounced as a communist. During the search of the house, he asked the chief inspector why he hadn't been told straight away that they were looking for documents proving his status as a communist. He would like to help and show the right place to look. When the police looked at him expectantly, Celâl raised his huge paw and pointed to his head and said, “Here it is. [...] When you have enough strength, open it and take it with you. If not, goodbye! ”In an accident at work in the cooperative, Celâl's right index finger was crippled, and from then on he called it“ my communist finger ”. Sabahattin Ali , who was working as a German teacher in Aydın at the time, described Celâl in a letter in 1930 as the only sensible person he had met in Aydın. Now and then he comes by and they exchanged ideas. Celâl is an excellent man. That is clear from the fact that everyone else called him crazy. An accident at work on the machine in which his hand was slightly crippled ended this phase of life. The newspaper Hizmet published its own article about this accident, which praised the achievements of Sakallı Celâl and complained that extraordinary people like Celâl had to earn their living in the factory. When he was about to have an operation on his injured hand, he woke up from the anesthesia during the operation, misunderstood the situation, attacked doctors and staff and could not be overpowered. A little later he came to a little and told the astonished staff that they had just been operating on him. He'll lie down again, then they can go on.

Sakallı Celâl left his house and went to Ankara. Here he was left without any real occupation. He returned to Istanbul in the early 1940s.

Bearded Celâl was quite a well-known figure in Turkey in the 1940s. Numerous newspapers published reports about Celâl, reported about his quirks and published pictures of him.

In the 1940s, Sakallı Celâl had manifest mysophobia . He regularly took part in the pilaf days of the Galatasaray High School, was honored there despite his unkempt appearance, but never shook hands for fear of microbes.

He spent the last years of his life in the Doğan Apartmanı . He stayed there by his friend from his days in Skopje, Kazım Taşkent , founder of Yapı ve Kredi Bankası . He had another place of refuge in the Bomonti district in Şişli . This was made available to him by a charitable woman with the first name Münevver.

In 1962 Sakallı Celâl died of a cerebral haemorrhage. The leading columnists published obituaries for this unusual person. He was buried in the Aşiyan Cemetery in Istanbul. On his tombstone it reads: "A gardener accepts a thousand thorns for a rose."

Celâl and the women

Celâl remained a die-hard bachelor throughout his life, although credible sources exist on relationships with women. Sakallı Celâl told friends who wanted to help him with the Turkish bride show that the responsibility that marriage brings with it would mean that he could not live the way he imagined. He preferred solitude. He was reportedly in a platonic love affair in Istanbul with Neşecan Hanım, the wife of lawyer Muhittin Talûk Bey, at whose house he frequented. In the 1930s, Celâl wrote his will when he felt terminally ill. In it he stated that he would always love Belkıs, whom he named Mizyal. She loved him sincerely at the time. It was one of the painful experiences of his life not to have lived with her. However, it is not certain who these Belkıs were. He explained to a young engineer who enjoyed talking to him and who made advances to him at a ripe old age that she was spring and he was autumn. Both are seasons that could never come together. Karaveli regards this incident as an example of Celâl's wisdom and lovability.

Trivia

Some of the anecdotal incidents are backed up, others belong in the realm of legends.

• Bayazoğlu reports that Sakallı Celâl in Kastamonu, when the school stairs, which were in danger of collapsing, were not repaired despite several petitions, he simply blew them up with dynamite. Then Celâl was banished to İzmit. Orhan Karaveli reports on a protest against stairs at risk of collapsing in Ankara. In his role as director, Sakallı Celâl wanted to have the repair done, but fell on deaf ears. Then Celâl used a shoe-shine box in front of the ministry to clean his students' shoes.
• During his time in Kastamonu, he was asked by students what they should write for the exams in Islamic Sciences, because what he was teaching them did not correspond to the subject matter. Celâl replied that they should write in the exam that they did not believe in sophistries that were not proven by reason and positive science. A complaint initiated because of this was closed by the ministry on the grounds that Celâl was right, but that is not what they say.
• Celâl is said to have been found on the Gülcemal ferry without a ticket and to have paid his ticket money by serving as a sailor. According to other reports, he was used as a stoker there. In a variant handed down by Yavuz Kula, as a stoker on a ship, he had a discussion with Kâzım Karabekir about education policy. The agricultural expert and politician Ahmet İsvan reported that Celâl worked as the first machinist on the Gülcemal and had the conversation about education policy with Şükrü Kaya .
• Celâl always carried a Colt Police Positive Special revolver with her. In later years he gave the weapon to Aydın Yolaç, the son of his benefactress Münevver.
• One day, Celâl was stopped and searched by police. They found his revolver and made it safe. At the police station, Sakallı Celâl explained in exasperation that he needed the gun to protect himself against police officers. The police took this as a threat and investigated. Finally, Celâl put the following on record: “The police used to be the police of the Padishah and the Caliphate. Those who did not shout 'Long live the Padishah' seized them and threw them into dungeon. The police were literal tools of tyranny under the orders of the Padishah and the Caliphate. Now times have changed. The republic has been proclaimed and the same police are now the republic's police. How can you trust this police. How do you know whether these police will soon become the Caliphate Police again when the opportunity is favorable. Therefore I carry the weapon to protect Gazi Pasha and the republic. "
• Celâl is said to have learned the trade of a dentist from Siret Dosdoğru. In protest against the low wages of the garbage collectors, he is said to have swept the street in a tuxedo all the way to the governor's door.
• He was arrested twice for communist propaganda, but released during the first investigation. He owed this to the patronage of his old comrades from the Galatasaray high school. When during a house search one of the policemen asked for the Karl Marx portrait on the wall, he quickly explained: "This is my father, may God bless him."
• Haldun Taner describes how Sakallı Celâl took an immense pleasure in lifting up two eminent scholars and former classmates Ali Yar and İbrahim Hakkı Akyol at the same time.
• During his time in the Doğan apartment, Celâl is said to have set up a playground for the mice in a corner of his apartment.

Sayings

The sayings are often passed down in different versions.

• Those who pass as intellectuals in Turkey think it is Europeanization when they run west on a ship that sails to the Orient. - Türkiye'de aydın geçinenler Doğu'ya doğru seyreden bir geminin güvertesinde Batı yönünde koşturarak Batılılaştıklarını sanırlar.
• A play on words with the approximate meaning: In this country, those responsible are clueless and those who have a clue are not responsible. - Bu ülkede ilgililer bilgisiz, bilgililer de ilgisizdir.
• So much stupidity is only possible thanks to training. - Bu kadar cehalet ancak tahsille mümkün olur.
• It is sad that women consider a shaved man to be handsome. - Bir kızın tıraşlı bir erkeği güzel zannetmesi hazindir ...
• For example: Turkists are not Turks, just as yogurt makers are not yogurt. - Hiç bir yoğurtçunun yoğurt olduğu görülmediği gibi, hiç bir Türkçünün de Türk olduğu görülmemiştir.
• In humans, cleverness is like a pearl. It is not found in everyone. - İnsanoğlunda zeka, midyedeki inci gibidir. Hepsinde bulunmaz.

swell

• Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007.
• Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014.

Web links

• Life story and pictures of Sakallı Celâls (Turkish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Akbaba magazine, June 20, 1962.
2. ↑ Vâlâ Nereddin in the daily newspaper Zafer from January 11, 1962.
3. ↑ Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 167.
4. ↑ Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 166.
5. ↑ Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 169.
6. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 117.
7. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 134 f.
8. ^ Daily newspaper Hizmet from September 6, 1932.
9. ↑ Daily newspaper Vakit of October 2, 1932.
10. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 13 f.
11. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 182 ff.
12. ↑ Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 168.
13. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 104.
14. ↑ Hüseyin Korkmazgil in the magazine Yön from June 20, 1962.
15. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 125, with a picture of the weapon and a picture of how he carries it in his holster.
16. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 129 f.
17. ↑ www.ozgundurus.com
18. ↑ www.felsefe.gen.tr
19. ↑ Orhan Karaveli: Sakallı Celâl. Bir Türk filozofun yeniden doğuşu. Istanbul 2007, p. 40.
20. ↑ Türkiye daily newspaper from March 20, 2004.