K E M Â K H — K EM AL al-Manşür despatched against it a successful force
under al-'Abbâs b. Muhammad and ordered its fortification as a frontier post against the Khazars (al-Ya'kübi, foe. cit.). The Byzantines recaptured it in 177/793-4, and apart from a period during the caliphate of al-MaJmun, it remained nominally subject to the Emperors until the Battle of Mantzi- kert.
The first Türkmen raids on Kemâkh came in 449- 50/1057-8, and shortly after the Battle of Mantzikert or Malâzgerd [q.».] in 463/1071, it was in the hands of Mengüdjek Ahmad, who apparently had received the area round Erzindjan, including Kemâkh, as a grant from Alp Arslan. Inscriptions on the Great Mosque at Diwrigi state that Mengüdjek Ahmad had captured Kemâkh from the infidels. He made it his capital and was buried there on his death in 512/1118. In 536/1142 the Mengüdjek principality was divided amongst three heirs, the capital falling to Malik Mahmüd. In 622/1225, the Saldjük sultan cA!â’ al-DIn Kaykubâd [q.v.] annexed Erzindjan, and the last Mengüdjekid Dâwüd Shâh sought an alliance against him by offering Kemâkh to the amir of Erzurum al- Ashraf and to the Kh Warazm-Sljah Djalal al-DIn Mankübirtî. Both of these refused to intervene, and the Saldjük ruler annexed the region including Kemâkh (Ibn BIbl, Tawdrikh-i al-i SaldjUk, ed. Houtsma, in Recueil de textes . . ., Turkish text, iii, 387-8, Persian text, iv, 148-9). After the Mongol conquest of Anatolia in 641/1243, Kemâkh came within the Il-Khanid dominions.
Political instability in this region consequent on the decline of the Il-Khânîds makes it difficult to follow the fortunes of Kemâkh in the 8th/i4th century. It seems to have at first formed part of the domains of the Eretna dynasty [q.v.] and then to have enjoyed a semi-independence between the rival factions of Kâdî Burhân al-DIn [q.v.] and Mutahharten, the bey of Erzurum. In 796/1394 the wall of Kemâkh sub mitted to Burhân al-DIn and requested assistance against the agression of Mutahharten. In 799/1396-7 Burhân al-DIn placed Kemâkh under his own direct rule (cAzîz b. Ardaşhîr Astarâbâdî, Bazın u razın, ed. M. F. Köprülü). Shortly after this, the town fell to the Ottoman sultan Bâyazıd I (Solak-zâde, Ta’ rikh, Istanbul 1298, 374).
However, in 804/1402 Tîmür captured the town on his way to confront Bâyazîd at Angara (Ibn 'Arab- şhâh, CA dfcpib al-makdür. Eng. tr. J. H. Sanders, London 1936, 174-5). After the battle, Timm- appointed a certain Mirza Shams al-Din as governor of Kemâkh. Soon afterwards, it came under the rule of 'Utbmân Kara Y ülük, the founder of the A k Koyunlu dynasty [q.v.], and remained under their control, despite a siege b y the Kara Koyunlu Pir 'U m ar (Abü Bakr-i Tihrâni, Kitâb-i Diyâr- bakriyya, ed. Lugal and Sümer, 33, 35, 69-71). It was the Alf Koyunlu Uzun Hasan who established the laws of Kemâkh in the Kânûn-i Hasan Pâdişhâh, which the Ottomans adopted with little change.
A fter the fall of the A k Koyunlus in 908/1502, Kemâkh passed briefly into the hands of the Şafa- wids, until in 921/1515 it fell to the Ottoman sultan Selim I ; henceforth, it remained part of the Ottoman empire till the collapse of the latter. The Ottoman Kânün-nâme of 922/1516, based ob the Ak Koyunlu laws, gives the impression that the town derived much of its wealth from the transit trade through the Euphrates valley (Ö. L. Barkan, X V ve X V I asırlarda Osmanh imperatorluğunda zirai ekonominin hukukî ve mali esasları, İstanbul 1943, 184-5). In the mid- ııth /i7 th century, according to Ewliya Celebi, there
871 was a garrison in the Kemâkh fortress of a Janissary chief and 500 soldiers, and the economy of the town depended mainly on the salt mined nearby and sold in the town and on a fine-quality cloth woven there [Seyâhat-nâme,ii, 375-6). In 1830, J. Brant recorded a population there of 400 Turkish and 30 Armenian households (Jnal. of the Geogr. Soc., 1836), and in 1892, V. Cuinet registered for the whole kadd'>14,547 Muslims, 3,692 Armenians and 633 Greeks [La Tur- quie d’Asie, Paris 1892, i, 220 ff.). After its de finitive incorporation into the dominions of Selim I, Kemâkh was well within the Ottoman frontiers and hence lost much of its earlier strategic importance; however, during the First World W ar it again became an important defensive position in the fighting against the Russians.
B ib lio g r a p h y: (in addition to works mentioned in the te x t) : Murray’s handbook, Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Persia, etc., London 1895, 251; J. Markwart, Siidarmenien und die Tigrisquellen, Vienna 1930; E. Honigmann, Die Ostgrenze des byzantinischen Reiches von 363 bis i o j i, Brussels 1935, 56 ff., 70-2, 198-201; Besim Darkot, İA art. Kemah; Cl. Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, London 1968; Yaşar Yücel, Kadi Burhaneddin Ahmed ve devleti, Ankara 1970; S. Vryonis, The decline o f medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, Berkeley and Los Angeles I 9 7 r ; O. Turan, Doğu Anadolu Türk devletleri tarihi, İstanbul
1973-(C. H. Im b e r) K E M A L [see a t a t ü r k].
İs* K E M Â L , 'a l î (1867-1922), T u r k is h w r it e r , j o u r n a l i s t a n d p o l i t i c i a n . His father Hâdjdjî Ahmed Efendi had come as a young man from a village near Çankırı in Central Anatolia to the cap ital and had made a fortune as a wax-maker and had become the warden of his gild. 'A li Rida (as 'A ll Kemâl was called until his student days, see below) was born in 1867 in the Süleymâniye district of Istan bul, to his father’s second (Circassian) wife and grew up in a traditional conservative fam ily atmosphere. A fter attending the local schools, he entered the School of Political Science (Mekteb-i Mülkiye),where he particularly enjoyed the courses of Murad B ey (known as Mizândji Murâd, 1853-1914, the future Young Turk leader in exile, who later made his peace with 'A bd al-Hamîd II, see B. Lewis, The emergence of modern Turkey,index). The Terdjiiman-i Hakikat was his favourite newspaper, where he admired the poems and articles of Mu'allim Nâdjî, the leader of the literary opposition against the modernists, particularly against 'Abd al-Hakk Hâmid and RedjâH-zâde Ekrem. He also began to contribute to a student magazine Gülşhen under the pen-name 'A li Kemâl, which gradually replaced that of 'A lî Ridâ. While a student at the Mülkiye, he in 1886 went to Europe, where he spent over a year in Paris and Geneva and improved his French. On his father’s death in 1888, he returned to Istanbul to attend to fam ily affairs and complete his studies. Inspired by what he saw in European universities, he attempted to set up, together with a number of his university friends, a students’ association (for details see his article Mekitib-i '■ âliye tnakhşüş dfem'iyy etler, in ikdam, 20 August, 1908). The authorities became suspicious and the konakwhere they held their meetings was raided by the police. The students were rounded up and 'A lî Kemâl and four others (including 'A bd al-Halîm Memdüh, a future Young Turk writer) were sent to prison where they spent several months. Eventually 'AH Kemâl and a poet friend of his (Fakhri of
872 KEMÂL Kastamonu) were banished to Aleppo. He spent five years there, where he was officially attached to the office of the v iliwith a salary and was also al lowed to teach literature and French in the local high school (mekteb-i ı'-dâdi). Interesting details of his life and literary activities in Aleppo are given in his autobiography (see below). In 1894 he managed to escape to Paris and became a regular correspondent of the Istanbul daily ikdam,in which he published a highly popular series of letters and articles (for the controversy over the doubtful originality of some of his letters, see Hüseyn Djâhid, Ghawehdlarim.Istan bul 1326 rümil1910, 37-92). This occurred at a time when no political refugee could get anything published in Istanbul under his own name, and this privilege has been taken as an indication that 'AH Kemâl was by no means persona non gratain the capital. While in Europe he was in regular contact with the Young Turks, but never became one of them; he disagreed with most of their ideas, and his sympathies lay rather with cAbd al-Flamld to whom, as later evidence showed, he offered his services as adviser and in former (copies of his reports {zkurnals) and letters to the Sultan and his agents, some in facsimile, have been published; see Ahm et Bedevi Kuran, Osmanh imperatorluğunda inkılap hareketleri ve milli mücadele, İstanbul 1959, 302-9, and Asaf Tugay, İbret, Abdül- hamid’e verilen jurnaller ve jurnalciler, İstanbul n.d., 200-17). In 1897 he was appointed second sec retary in the Brussels Embassy, reportedly as a re ward for his röle in Murad B ey’s defection (Yahya Kemal [Beyath], Siyasi ve edebi portreler, Istanbul 1968, 78), but the Ambassador, Munir Paşha, who disliked him, never let him take up his appointment However, 'A ll Kemâl was allowed to use the title and to draw his salary for several years (Taninof 20 Ju ly 1324 Tünül2 August 1908 and Süleyman Nazif’s biographical notes used by Ibnülemin M. K. İnal, see Bibliography). From Paris he moved to Egypt and became the superintendent of the estates of two Egyptian princesses, Ahmed Djelâl ed-Din Pasha’s step-daughter and Mahmüd Mukhtâr Pasha’s wife. He contributed to local Young Turk papers and founded the newspaper Türk (which was Ottomanist, in spite of its title). He made a fortune b y speculating on the stock exchange, but went bankrupt following a crash in the market. When he returned to Paris in 1908, the revolutionary officers in Macedonia, in contact with the Young Turk organisation in Europe, had begun to prepare their move against the Sultan. 'A lî Kemâl corre sponded with the Palace and arrived in Istanbul a few days before the revolution of 23 Ju ly 1908. He was in the Sultan’s presence when the crisis was being discussed (Yahya Kemal, op. cit., 79). 'A bd al-Hamid rewarded his advisory services with a purse containing 450 gold pieces tj'anin,25 July 1324 rümiİJAugust 1908; 'AH Kemâl admitted this, but corrected the sum to 260 pieces, Ikddm,27 July I324r«m /g August 1908). The conservative journalist Ahmed Diewdet (1862-1935), who had no sym pathy for the committee of Union and Progress (CUP) now getting ready to seize power, invited 'AH Kemâl to be the leader-writer of his Ikddm. His first article M ididen Atiye(“ From the Past to the Future” ) ap peared on July 30 1908, one week after the Revolution. A flood of articles followed daily on politics, history, education, literature, language, etc. After an absence of tw enty years from the country, he wrote with great zeal and enthusiasm, in a somewhat didactic but entertaining and very personal style which soon made him one of the most popular journalists of the
period. A t the same time he taught diplomatic history in the Faculty of Letters and at the Mülkiye.His dis like of the CU P, which in the meantime employed everything (including political assassination) to in fluence and control the new régime, soon developed into a bitter hatred, and he began to attack daily the Committee’s policy and methods. On 12 March 1909 'A lî Kemâl handed over his column to Dr. Rida Nür, deputy for Sinop, who published his famous article of warning which was greeted as a manifesto inter preting all the grievances of the opposition: the CUP was accused of oligarchic tendencies, komitadjitac tics, bribery, favouritism, intolerance of opposition, etc. 'A ll Kemâl was a candidate of the Ottoman Liberal Party ('Othmdnli Ahrdr Firkasi) in the by- election of April 1909, but was defeated by the CUP candidate. He became more violent in his accusations. Outstanding Unionists such as Hüseyn Djâhid and Bahâ’ ed-Dîn Şhâkir attacked him in equally violent terms in CU P organs like Taninand Şhurâ-yi Ümmet and exposed his ambiguous relations with cAbd al- Hamid. The disturbing atmosphere created by the relentless campaign of the opposition press like Ikddm, Mizan, Serbesti, cOthmdnli and particularly Volkan,led on 13 April to a m utiny of the soldiers, incited by fanatical and disgruntled elements (for a good analysis of the mutiny and its background see Sina Akşin, 31 Mart Olayı-, Istanbul 1970). 'A ll Kemâl hid in the house of an English friend and fled to Europe as the army sent by Young Turk head quarters in Salonika (Ifareket ordusu, originally Harekât Ordusu “ Operations Arm y” ) marched on the capital. In Paris he contacted unionist leaders like Fethi (Okyar) and Djâwïd in the hope of a compromise with the CUP. When this failed, he contributed articles to Meşhrütiyyet, Sherif Pasha’s anti-Unionist organ abroad. He had already become a member of the Liberal Union (Hürriyet ve İHilâf Firkasi) founded in November 1911. In July 1912 the group of “ Saviour Officers” f Khaldskdr D.ibifin Grupu)brought down the Unionist government, and the Liberals assumed Power: 'A lî Kemâl returned to Istanbul and resumed his leaders in the Ikddm. But on 23 January 1913, the Unionists carried out a violent coup d’état
(
Bdb-i cA li Baskinl)and 'A li Kemâl was arrested. Djemal Bey (later Pasha and a member of the Unionists triumvirate), the military governor of Istanbul, visited him in prison and bribed him into leaving the country; hence 'A lî Kemâl went to Vienna on a government allowance (see Djemal Pasha, Mem oirs of a Turkish statesman, 1913-1916,London 1922, 16; revised Turkish edition, Hatiralar, edited by his son Behçet Cemal, Istanbul 1959, 22-26). He re turned to Istanbul in May 1913. The assassination of the grand vizier Mahmüd Shewket Paşha on June 11 1913 gave the CUP the opportunity to crush the opposition completely. 'A li Kemâl, who had promised Djemâl Pasha to keep out of politics, was however safe. W ith his support, he was allowed to publish the same year a daily paper, the Peyim , to which some leading young writers contributed (Refik Halit Karay, Minelbab llelmihrab, Istanbul 1964, 63-64) but which was suppressed on the outbreak of the World W ar I.'A lî Kemâl spent the war years completely secluded from public life on the island resort of Büyükada and along the Bosphorus shores. He collected manu scripts and rare books and concentrated on the study of classical literature and history. After the signing of the armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918), which sealed the fate of the Unionist régime, Mihran Efendi, the editor of the daily Şabâh invited 'A ll Kemâl to
K E M Â L 873 be a leader-writer of his paper, and he eagerly ac
cepted. B y this time the three CU P Leaders Enwer, T al'a t and Djemal had fled the country. He immedia tely began his violent attacks against the Unionists, daily enumerating the mistakes and misdeeds they had perpetrated before and during the War. The Allied fleet reached Istanbul on 13 November; the whole city was put under allied control, and hundreds of Unionists were arrested. The Greeks, supported by the Allies, had landed in Izmir and were advancing towards the interior. 'A lî Kemâl joined the first cabinet of Dâmâd Fend Paşha as Minister of Educa tion (4 March 1919). He acted with moderation for a while, and resisted the partisan pressures of the Liberal Union (Yahya Kemal, op. cit., 87-8). In the meantime, the nuclei of the national resistance movement were being set up all over the country and the first guerillas began to combat the Greek invaders on the Aegean coast. 'A li Kemâl, who became Minister of the Interior in the second Dâmâd Fend Paşha cabinet on May 19 1919 (the very day of Mustafâ Kemâl’s landing at Samsun), soon com pletely espoused the polity and strategy of Sultan Mehemmed V I, his Grand Vizier and their associ ates: sc, to ignore the violations of the armistice terms; to follow the instructions of the Allies and in the hopes of winning lenient peace terms, to offer no resistance to invading foreign armies, although this amounted, in the eyes of the natio nalists, to collaborationism. 'A li Kemâl was con vinced that Muştafâ Kemâl’s movement in Ana tolia was nothing but a resurgence of Unionist ambitions, organized and supported b y the survivors of the CUP (see particularly his article Ittihâd we Terakki öldü, yaşhasln Ittihâd we Terakki!“ The CUP is dead, long live the CU P!” , in Peydm,20 December 1919). This fundamental misjudgment of the national ferment in Anatolia caused him to mislead many of his readers and eventually sealed his own fate. On 18 June 19x9, 'A lî Kemâl, as Minister of the Interior, sent out to the provinces a circular against the forma tion of militia units and preparations for national defence, and assured the British authorities that every officer and government official obeying Muştafâ Kemâl’s orders would be court-martialled (G. Jaeschke, Türk kurtuluş savaşı kronolojisi, Ankara 1970, 43-45)- On 23 June he issued his famous secret circular in which he announced that “ Muştafâ Kemâl Paşha had entirely failed in his new mission, and that he had been recalled in accordance with the demands of the English High Commissioner, and that orders issued by him should not be obeyed (Ghâzî Muştafâ Kemâl, Nufuk, Ankara 1927, 22, English tr.2, A Speech . . . , Istanbul 1963, 26-27). 'A lî Kemâl was forced to resign (June 26) under the pressure of some of his colleagues in the cabinet who were sym pathetic to the resistance movement (for the circum stances of his resignation, see his statement in ' Alemdar, 3 July 1919; R. H. K aray, op. cit., 138- 143; and Jaeschke, Türk kurtuluş savaşı ile ilgili İngiliz belgeleri,Ankara 1971, 130-32). He complained of these colleagues to the Sultan who answered: “ Your loyalty has been a great consolation and a source of great hope to me. The Palace will always be open to you at any time” (Ghâzî Muştafâ Kemâl,
op. cit., 22-5, English tr. 28). On 3 August 1919, 'A lî Kemâl revived his Peydm and continued his campaign, with daily attacks on the leaders of the resistance movement in Anatolia and their supporters in Istanbul. Later Peydm was amalgamated with Mihran Efendi’s Sabdfi, becoming Peydm-i Sabah(1st January 1920), with 'A lî Kemâl as permanent
leader-writer. 'A lî Kemâl’s activities and writings unified and strengthened the Liberal Union which had shown signs of disintegration. He became one of the two most enthusiastic supporters (the other being R efî' Diewâd of the CA lemddr)of the collaborationist policy of the Sultan and of Dâmâd Fend Pasha, which was to obey the instructions of the occupying forces and to try to suppress the resistance movement. Following this line of policy, 'A lî Kemâl welcomed the rein forced allied occupation of Istanbul (16 March 1920), praised the successes of the Sultan’s “ disciplinary” troops dispatched to fight the Nationalists, and wrote a jubilant leader (25 May 1920) on the publication of the famous fetwd(11 April), followed by the death sentences in absentiaon Muştafâ Kemâl and his as sociates. News of the Nationalists’ successes made him vacillate occasionally; he would praise the bravery of the Turkish soldiers, but soon would relapse into his usual tirades with the leitmotiv of “ false nationalism and the dangers of ignoring world opinion” , etc. His vitriolic articles continued till as late as the end of August and early September 1922, when the Nationalists won a decisive victory and the routed Greek army was heading back towards Izmir. Only in his last three articles (8, 9, 10 September), when the Nationalist armies had reached the Aegean, did he admit his error and greeted “ the great victory of the Turk” and claimed that “ the goals had always been the same” . But it was now too late. The Nation alist government had already decided to bring all those who had collaborated with the enemy to Ankara for trial. But as this proved difficult in occupied Istanbul, one man was chosen as a test case, and this was to be 'A lî Kemâl, as the most prominent representative of the collaborators (see Dr. Ri<Jâ Nür, I f ayalim we Khâtlratim. British Museum, Or. 12591, 486b). Upon instructions from Ankara, Colonel Es'ad (later Pasha, 1875-1932), m ilitary governor and director of police of Istanbul, who was a trusted man of the Nationalists, took the necessary measures; on November 18 'A lî Kemâl was arrested b y two plain-clothed policemen in a barber’s shop in Beyoğlu (P6ra) and taken b y motor-boat to Izmid en route for Ankara and his trial. Nür ed-Din Pasha, com mander of the first army, interrogated him briefly in his headquarters. A big crowd was waiting outside. 'A lî Kemâl met his death in the square when he was being taken away. The circumstances of his death, a mob lynching according to the received version, are variously reported in the sources. According to some, his death was arranged or precipitated by Nür ed- Din Pasha for reasons of personal prestige (see Falih Rıfkı A tay, Çankaya2, Istanbul 1969, 341-42; Y ahya Kemal, op. cit., 94-99; Riçlâ Nür, op. cit., 487b; Istanbul Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul 1961, s.v.). 'ism et Paşha (İnönü) then foreign minister, who with his party arrived on the very day of the incident at Izmid on his way to the Lausanne Peace Conference, publicly showed his strong disapproval of Nür ed-Din Paşha for having ignored the government’s instructions and having taken justice into his own hands.
'A lî Kemâl was primarily a journalist. His early articles in the İkdam(from 1894 onwards), which he forwarded from Paris as a “ special correspondent” , are mostly compilations from the French press, with occasional personal or autobiographical digressions (see below). Some of his articles published in Young Turk papers abroad throw light on contemporary ideological differences (e.g. his answer to Aköurao- ghlu Yüsuf’s famous essay, both published in the Türk, Nos. 24-34, Cairo 1904, reprinted later with the same essay, Akiuraoghlu Yûsuf, Ü i Tarz- 1
874 KEMÂL Siyâset, 1327 rıîmi/1911, 33-45). The thousands of I articles which he published first in the Ikdàm and ] later in his own Peyim(which have not been collected)
j
are of great documentary importance for understand- I ing the atmosphere of the period and for following the development of political, social and cultural problems during the 1908-1914 period; but they should be read together with the articles of his great opponent Hüseyn Diâhid [Yalçin] in the Tanin,the organ of the CUP. His articles of the last phrase, published in the revived Peyim (August-December 1919) and in the Peyim i Şabih (1920-1922) typically reflect the frame of mind and the psychology of the Sultan’s government and its supporters in occupied Istanbul during the time of the resistance movement in Ana tolia. Apart from translations from the French, serialised in newspapers or published in book form and various minor publications, 'A ll Kemâl is the author of the following works: (1) Paris musahabeleri (a selection of his articles and letters published in the Ikdàm in the 1890s, 2 vols., Istanbul 1329, 1331 r./i9i3, 1915); (2) Fetret (written in England in 1895, published in Istanbul 1329/1913). Intended to be a novel, this book consists of a series of loosely- connected essays around its hero Fetret, the product of a mixed marriage, in which the author expounds his ideas on modernism, westernisation, literature, history and culture, and indirectly criticises his opponents of the Therwet-i Fünün literary school, particularly his main adversary Hüseyn Diâhid: (3) İk i hemşhire (Istanbul 1315/1899), a long short story, with much autobiographical material from the author’s exile years in Aleppo; (4) Çölde bir sergüzeşht (Istanbul 1316/1900; 2nd ed. of Nos. 3 and 4 published together under the title Bir safha-i şhebib, Istanbul 1329/1913); (5) R idjil-i Ikhtilil (Istanbul 1329/1913), a study of the French Revo lution and its impact on France and other European countries, consisting mainly of detailed biographies of Condorcet, Saint-Just, Danton and Robespierre; (6) Edebiyyat-i hakikiyye dersleri (Istanbul 1330/ 1914!, a collection of 12 essays, originally serialised in the Ikddm, based on a course “ Realism in Lite rature” given at the Sorbonne in the 1890s, with occasional remarks on contemporary Turkish literature; (7) Rashid miPerrikh mi shi’ ir mi ? (Istan bul 1334/1918), an informal study on the 18th century chronicler Râşhid, prompted by Alimed Refill’s en thusiastic article on Ahmed III and his grand vizier and son-in-law Ibrahim Pasha (Sultan Ahmed-i Thililh we Dimddi,in Ye hi Med¿mu’ a,No. 34 (1918), 149-53), in which 'A lî Kemâl compares the method and techniques of oriental historiography with those of modern western history-writing, mercilessly condemning the former. After a long exposition on Oriental and particularly Ottoman classical poetry, he concludes that Rashid was a mediocre historian but a remarkable poet of the NabI school. This work is particularly interesting since it is, in a way, a recapitulation of the themes and leit motivs which 'A ll Kemâl elaborated and repeated in all his «Tilings, adopting all the negative judg ments passed on the Turks and the Ottoman Empire b y European writers and observers, and thus developing a deep complex of inferiority vis-à- vis Europe and Europeans. Here we have the clues to his cosmopolitanism, his anti-nationalism and his feeling of helplessness in face of the West, his re current claim that it is futile to challenge the Great Powers (.Diiwel-i M u’ a&ama),and finally his constant advice for an acquiescent foreign policy and his a priori admission of the superiority of everythingwestern (see also his articles of 12, 15, 17, 21, 23 January and 23 March 1909 in the Ikdim)\ (8) ’■ Ömrüm,'A lî Kemâl’s memoirs about his early life, his school years and his exile period in Aleppo, were first serialised in the Peyim in 29 instalments from December 1329^-/1913. A revised version was seria lised in 32 instalments in the revived Peyim from 14 July i335-r./i9ig. They have not been published in book form, but a critical edition in roman script was prepared by Berna Kazak in 1954 (Istanbul U ni versity Library, unpublished thesis, No. 2621).
When he was not involved in politics or in personal quarrels with his rivals, 'A lî Kemâl wrote essays on diwin-poetry, articles on contemporary literary problems, and occasionally poems which he published in the Peyim -i Edebi, the literary supplement of his paper, to which many outstanding writers (Ridâ Tewflk, Ahmed Refik, Y ahya Kemâl, Y a'küb Kadri, etc.) contributed. In poetry and literary criticism, 'A lî Kemâl was a disciple of Mu'allim Nâdjl (1850- 93), a neo-classicist and an ardent opponent of the modernist school. He admired the diwin-poetry, had a very low (and wrong) opinion of classical Turkish prose (about which, like most of his contemporaries, he knew very little), and utterly despised the three generations of literary modernists: the Tanzimat, the Therwet-i Fününand the “ National Literature” [M illi Edebiyit) schools. He explained his views on Turkish literature in detail in a long letter which he sent in 1918 to Rüşhen Eşhref (Onaydın), who had been interviewing the leading writers of the period (Rüşhen Eşhref, Diyorlar ki, Istanbul 1918, modem Turkish ed. by Şemsettin Kutlu, Istanbul 1971)- In spite of the personal cachet of his style (surprisingly much praised b y the purist poet Y ahya Kemâl, op. cit., 71-2), 'A ll Kemâl had an awkward, anachron istic way of writing. Following the tradition of the classical Ottoman munşhis,he filled his essays with copious cliché quotations from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish verse. Like a few “ recalcitrant” con temporary writers (e.g., Djenâb ed-Dîn, Shihâb Süley man Na?If, 'A lî Ekrem, etc.) he took a hostile stand against the language reform movement of the post- 1908 period and completely ignored the general trend towards the turkification of the written language. His hair-splitting concern with grammatical rules did not much help to improve his style, as stated by the great contemporary stylist (and his friend and col league) Refik Khâlid [op. cit.,63).
A prolific writer of great vitality, with a remark able encyclopaedic knowledge, 'A lî Kemâl lacked the sense of history and reality. He wasted his talents in endless futile arguments, and ruined his career and himself by following his unbounded ambition, his blind obstinacy and his violent partisanship to the very end.
B ib lio g r a p h y : in addition to the works cited in the article, see Ali Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler, ii, Ankara 1968-9, 937-41; Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk inkılabı tarihi, i, ii, iii, İstanbul 1940-53, index; Celâl Bayar, Ben de yazdım, vi, vii, İstanbul 1968-9, index; Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks, Oxford 1969, 28, 122, 173; Mahmud Kemal Inal, OsmanlI devrinde son Sadnazamlar, 14 parts, Istanbul 1940-53, index; idem, Son asır Türk şairleri, 12 parts, Istanbul 1930-42, index; Âsim Us, Halitalar, Istanbul 1966, 46-54; M. and Dj., ’ A lî Kemâl Izmide nasll sewk olundu ? in Resimli Gazete,Nos. 71-9, Jan.- March 1341/1925; Bilâl N. Şimşir, Ingiliz belge lerinde Atatürk,i, Ankara 1973, index.
( Fa h í r İz)
Taha Toros Arşivi
