1. A NEW ASSOCIATION
August 30, 1908, Moda…
I’ve just returned from a walk. There’s a sweet joy inside me. I’m sitting by my window. Our neighbor the Rupenyans’ large green parrot, hanging in its cage on the balcony, looks at me and calls out “Hosegur, hosegur…” A cat is playing in the shaded flower beds of the garden. The trees are full of birds… As if their voices make the scorching brightness of the sun tremble. A desire for activity is surging within me. I cannot read books. Reading is absurd, the obligatory entertainment of sunless winter days. “What should I do?” I wonder.
What does an Armenian do? Certainly something useful, profitable! When I was a child, while still studying at Karabetyan Idadisi, we had a strange geography teacher named Baghdaseryan.
“The greatest pleasure in the world is keeping a diary,” he would say. I found this empty, meaningless, quite inappropriate. I would say to myself, “Keeping a diary is written chatter.” When I was very young, what I aspired to was “being serious.” While studying my lessons, talking with my friends, walking down the street, I would sour my face and furrow my brows as if my kidneys were aching. This habit left very deep, premature lines on my face. I, who said “If speech is silver, silence is golden,” was also abstinent when it came to writing. My letters were very brief, very meaningful. Just as I never said anything excessive in my life, I never wrote anything excessive either. Today, but I don’t know why? I keep wanting to write, to transfer my memories to paper.
Resting my eyes among the faint leaves of the trees, I turn my imagination to a past of fifteen years. There is teacher Baghdaseryan… A fat man with auburn mustache, red face, and innocent demeanor.
He says: “My children, you will change every day. As you grow each day, your minds and thoughts will grow, you will approach virtue each day, you will feel regret for your days that passed without awareness, without consciousness. Don’t begrudge five or ten minutes to write down what you think and feel. Tomorrow you won’t know what you wrote today. When you read what you wrote a year ago the following year, you will be amazed to see how much you’ve changed…”
Hayikyan, sitting at the head of the third row, smiles. Shaking his big head, he says, “Instead of dealing with such empty things, I would read something useful and learn.”
Poor friend Hayikyan! If you hadn’t believed the teacher’s words back then and hadn’t been a know-it-all, today you would have the meaningful traces of your life, your soul in your hands, and over them, no matter how tragic, you would travel toward that precious past that is loved more as it grows distant, you would enjoy it, find sweet pleasure…
Now, pen in hand, you’re thinking this way!
I am thinking this way now, yes, pen in hand. My memory is worn, my imagination tired… Since my childhood, darkened with blood stains and sword shadows, my mind has changed every moment. The books I read, my shattered beliefs, my hardened innocence have given birth to my present personality. My eyes today cannot see yesterday in its truest colors. I became unfortunate. I became indifferent. I became happy, I became despondent. I became hopeful. I became successful. Like my thoughts, there is no constancy in my feelings or my fortune. Everything is changing. If this word, which we say a thousand times a day without knowing what truth is, has any origin, there is no doubt in my mind now that it lies not in constancy but in change. What is constant in the world? Life is a storm that has caught us and carries us away, transforming us. We cannot stay in one place, in one state for even a moment. Can there be truth in something that doesn’t exist? What exists is perpetual change. If I had a diary in my hand today, perhaps I could have understood the truth.
From now on, many of my thoughts and feelings will change and be forgotten. I will save them from the darkness of my memory, my feelings. Since I cannot write yesterday correctly, I will begin to write tomorrow starting from today.
What changes in fifteen, twenty days, my Lord! The power and authority of the Red Sultan, who had so many of our brothers massacred by Kurdish bandits, suddenly extinguished. The despotism disappeared, leaving behind a strange, laughable memory like the nightmarish dream of a man waking on a spring morning. Religions were reconciled. Nations mingled. Priests kissed devout hodjas. Elements that had drunk each other’s blood, gouged each other’s eyes for centuries, danced arm in arm. They applauded the rising sun of freedom.
Pessimists who see everything as black say: “This is a fever, it will pass… there is nothing new under the sun. The Tanzimat cannot be the foundation of freedom. Every nation is a nation. They cannot gather and live comfortably together as one nation under one law, within one homeland.”
But events are proving them wrong. Today the hearts of Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, Turks, and Kurds beat for “Free Ottomanism.” The demonstrations in Beyoğlu and Tepebaşı clearly showed how eager the Greeks are for Ottomanism, how loyal they are. Issues of language and other matters will be resolved fairly by the deputies in the Parliament that will open…
What was I thinking two months ago? I was certain that Turkiye, this sick man, could no longer rise from the deathbed he had fallen into. Rather than letting this patient drag on like this, to poison him and quickly bring him to the ominous result that cannot be avoided… To establish at least an autonomous region under Russian protection in Armenia… To Armenianize the Kurds and Turks living in cities within a century and lay the foundation of the old Armenian empire…
True, ideals are not things that “are” but things that “are desired to be.” But what an inappropriate fantasy… Why should each nation live as a separate group, a separate government? Here they are, getting along perfectly well together, bound by ties of interest and neighborliness. Aren’t Americans happy? Why shouldn’t we be Ottoman? Why should we destroy this society of thirty-something million? Don’t logic and interest prevent us from chasing after fantasies and ideals?
The ongoing applause and demonstrations have brought about a fundamental revolution in my logic. Now I can think very clearly, very correctly. I am Ottoman. I will remain Ottoman.
Farewell, O old revolutionary Hayikyan, farewell to you…
September 10, 1908, Moda…
I am lazy! For how many days have I been thinking about things to write on the ferry, on the road, saying to myself “Tonight…” I postpone evening to morning. In the morning to the next evening… The intoxication of the Constitution, of freedom has passed. Now we are all like dazed people. The country’s internal affairs are chaotic, things don’t seem like they’ll be fixed so quickly. True, there’s no one who doesn’t openly want the Constitution. But the rubble of the collapsed old administration still stands over us like a terrible mountain, unpleasant events are never lacking.
In Beşiktaş, a Muslim gardener’s daughter elopes with a Greek. The fellow complains to the police station. They catch the girl and the Greek. Then the people attack the police station. They beat the girl and the Greek so much that the Greek dies. The Greeks who took the Greek’s body paraded it through Beyoğlu. They made all sorts of demonstrations. They gave this ordinary police matter a national character. I was among the demonstrators. One day they were shouting that they would take revenge on the Turks.
The patriarchates began to stir, saying “Our old rights, our old privileges.” But isn’t the Constitution “one” for all Ottomans? Can special rights, special privileges remain before the Constitution? And is their continuation reasonable? Logical? I had many arguments about this. I confess that the Turks are very sincere! They are giving up their own nationality for the sake of Tanzimat, the Constitution, Ottomanism. In the books they teach in school, in their histories, in their newspapers, they don’t even let the single word “Turk” slip from their mouths.
“We are Ottomans, we are all brothers,” they say, “outside the mosques and churches, we have no differences. Above everything there is sacred, supreme Ottomanism!”
There are no opponents to this idea among the Turks. Ottomanism has become like a religion to them, logic, not accepting debate. Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, some Armenians say “Ottomanism poses a danger to our nationalities.” I don’t find this statement so true, it’s a seed planted by the patriarchates… Priests are afraid that political unity will break their power. Looking at the matter from their perspective, they’re not entirely wrong…
But are we in the age of priests today… What does “nationality, ethnicity” organization mean in a constitutional country with a constitution?
January 1909, Moda…
It’s so cold… Firewood and coal prices are very expensive! The old woman whose boarding house I stay in says “It’s the end of the world!” She has never seen such cold, such high prices in her life. Clothing and firewood expenses have shaken my budget. I cannot set aside my three hundred francs each month and deliver them to the bank… Business is slack, slack, slack… How much I want to enter politics without abandoning the world of commerce! Yes, there is a worm in my blood. I’m thinking of joining one of the Armenian parties. But I don’t find any of them compatible with the Constitution. Because “political parties based on nationality principles” are contrary to the Ottoman Constitution. I think about the Committee of Union and Progress. That too is unknown to me… I hear that Europeans attribute ambitions like Pan-Islamism to these men they call “Young Turks.” One must wait, not rush… Let summer come first… Let’s see what will happen!
May 17, 1909, Moda…
I am so lazy about writing… I was supposedly going to write my feelings, my memories day by day. Where is it? Like a negligent Turk, I console myself saying “I can’t bring myself to do it.” Today, well, I have no work, I force myself to sit at my desk. I find my notebook lost under books and newspapers. What has happened in four months, what… Almost a history… Our enemy the Red Sultan was overthrown. Now he is imprisoned in Salonica… There is no longer any possibility of reaction and despotism returning.
I was present throughout all phases of the uprising, this reaction was not at all a national revolt against innovation. All the soldiers of Istanbul were asserting that they were Muslim as if someone had told them “You are Christians.” They weren’t bothering people with hats, especially foreigners, they were even showing them extra respect. I also wore a hat so they wouldn’t think I was a Young Turk. All my friends wore hats too. One could walk freely among the revolutionaries with a hat. What entertaining days they were… The government and everything had been extinguished, almost evaporated, flown away. Common, petty sergeants were ruling the capital. The most famous of them was Hamdi Sergeant. They hanged this poor fellow. At the most splendid time of his power and authority, I wanted to interview him as a correspondent for an Armenian newspaper. He received me in a magnificent room at Taşkışla. He was still wearing his sergeant’s uniform. His sword was hanging at his waist.
“What do you want?” he said. I told him I was a correspondent and wanted to meet with him as if I were a representative of the Armenian nation. He didn’t ask for credentials or anything. But he didn’t seat me either… We spoke standing.
“Well, what will you ask, go ahead?”
“What is your purpose from the revolution?”
“To bring out the Sharia…”
“What does Sharia mean? Would you kindly explain to me? We Armenians have no information about this matter.”
“Go learn what Sharia means from our ulema gentlemen. It’s not my place to teach you. Perhaps I’ll say something wrong and commit a sin.”
“How will you bring out the Sharia?”
“We will kill all the educated officers. We will destroy those irreligious fellows they call Young Turks until not one remains…”
My God… We hate the Young Turks for their fanaticism, for being supporters of Islamic union, and attack them at every opportunity. The Turks call them “irreligious.” Such a contradiction… But which is true…
“Very well sir, are you Turkish?”
“No, I’m not Turkish or anything…”
“Are you Albanian?”
“No, I’m nothing…”
“Then what are you?”
“Muslim…”
It was impossible to explain to this sergeant that religion and nationality are different things. I left, went outside. That night I stayed in Beyoğlu. I walked around. All the brothels and taverns were full of revolutionaries. They were all drunk to the point of death. They were embracing prostitutes, shouting at the top of their voices, “We want Sharia!”
There could not be a more purposeless, more ideal-less revolution in the world. When the Action Army came, the spirit of the uprising was extinguished like soap foam. The heroes were tied up like sheep in barracks. They were sent by ship after ship to Salonica to work on military roads in Rumelia. The navy soldiers who had torn apart a captain named Kabuli Bey in Abdülhamit’s presence were hanged.
I went with a Turkish-Ottoman friend to see those who would be hanged. That night we slept at a hotel in Sirkeci. Early in the morning we came to the square where the gallows had been erected. The sun had not yet risen. A commotion arose from the direction of the Ministry of War. The carts bringing the condemned were advancing. Those who were to be hanged were shouting takbir with all their might. The gendarme officer there said to us: “These ones are babbling. The others were well-behaved.” Now Dervish Vahdeti is encouraging them. He thinks that the people hearing the takbir sounds will come and forcibly save him from the rope…
I wanted to see this man who, even at his last breath, didn’t give up encouraging the people to revolt. We went to him with an officer my friend knew. This was a fiery-faced but savage, determined man. He had turned a bit pale. He was still cursing the Young Turks, talking about what they would get and so on. They didn’t let him talk much. They hanged him… When his head fell, I thought of our martyred, self-sacrificing revolutionaries. How strange the Turks are. They deny many things like their own nationality. They don’t even deign to call the very perfect, noble, self-sacrificing Armenian revolutions a “revolt,” if it comes up in conversation they just smile and say “Armenian noise…” That great revolution that produced so many self-sacrificing people… Yes, in this country it was literally called a “noise.”
Dervish Vahdeti had played quite a big role. The circulation of his religious newspaper, which he published with a French name, had reached thirty to forty thousand. Even I was almost convinced that people were looking for very great, very illogical stupidities to believe in. Even the most enlightened youth from higher schools were reading Dervish Vahdeti’s writings line by line.
Especially there was a Young Turk I knew from his acquaintances. He was a fairly big official. On the days of the revolution I was at the Parliament. I saw with my own eyes that he took out two flags, green and red, from his pocket and said, “Either this one will win, or this one…” in a coquettish, giddy, joyful manner. This was a Young Turk. But since he had nothing in the name of ideals, reaction, darkness, and ignorance were also fine with him.
Am I writing events?… What’s the point of writing what newspapers write? When I want to write my own feelings, my impressions, without realizing it, I get up and become a “chronicler.” Anyway… Well, that storm has passed too… Now we seem to be at ease… Cabinets keep changing. Young, young elements are entering the ministry, our fortune, Turkiye’s fortune is about to be determined… I still haven’t determined my profession. Should I go to the Armenian parties! In that case, won’t I become a nationalist? However, I believe in Ottomanism, I am convinced that economic ties are stronger than ties of religion, fanaticism, and nationality.
June 1909, Moda…
Today I spoke with a Turk. He left a very good impression on me. I must absolutely write down the words that passed between us. This gentleman’s name is Niyazi Bey… He came from Europe after the proclamation of the Constitution. He was very elegant. If he didn’t have a fez on his head, he couldn’t be distinguished from a European. He finished his law education in Paris, receiving a first-class diploma. He was introduced to me at Deputy Mızıkyan’s house. When the conversation turned to politics, I expressed my doubts about the “Committee of Union and Progress.” He claimed to be “independent,” neither from the government party nor the opposition. He had changed so much, had become so civilized that I was thinking, “Ah, if only every Turk who goes to Europe would come back like this…” I listened to his words with great attention:
“Your suspicion of the Committee of Union and Progress is quite empty!” he was saying, “Pan-Turkism, Pan-Islamism and so on are slanders of European fantasists. There is also a saying, do you know it, ‘One knows another by oneself.’ A sinister current lives in Europe: The current of nationality and ethnicity! There they paint everything in the color of nationality. For example, although the French have no racial unity, they are so nationalistic, so fanatical about nationality that even Parisian coquettes do not associate with Germans. In Germany everything is national. Even socialism… In such an environment, ‘judgments’ are also made nationally. For example, René Pinon in one of his books says, ‘The Turks employ those who are ethnically Turkish among the soldiers they recruit in Istanbul, Edirne, and the temperate, beautiful places of Macedonia, and send non-Turks to Yemen, Fezzan, to the most distant places.’ However, the Ottoman government has done completely the opposite. Albanians and Arabs all come to the Imperial Army. They do their military service in the comfortable barracks of Yıldız. It is the Turks, that is, Anatolian children, who go to Yemen, Fezzan, and Macedonia. They even call Yemen ‘The Turkish Cemetery.’ They say that until now more than a million Anatolian Turks have died in Yemen from disease and war. Monsieur René Pinon doesn’t want to lie or slander us. His own logic accepts that Turks would do this, that is, send non-Turks to the bad, distant places of the empire. He judges that we do the same. Because if there were several elements in France, they would certainly think of the French first. Similarly, in this century, Slavic Union, Germanic Union, Latin Union are the main lines of European politics. Their politics takes fixed and changing forms around all these three ideals. Can a humane, noble politics be conceived in an environment where such ideals are born? Europeans think every nation is like themselves. They consider it possible that Turks also have a nationality, history, and ambitions called ‘Turkishness.’ They are mistaken. Because they judge with their feelings. Without conducting any research about us, they fabricate ‘Pan-Turkism’ fantasies that never cross any Turk’s mind. Then our Christian fellow citizens like you, who live among us and know our inside and outside, also believe these lies fabricated by European fantasists. In our homeland, in the country where we live, who calls it ‘Turkiye? Only Europeans and European newspapers have produced this meaningless name. Here is the Tanzimat education in plain sight… In no school book, in no geography book will you find a country name called ‘Turkiye.’ We say Ottoman Europe, Ottoman Asia, Ottoman Africa, and then all together ‘Ottoman Territories.’ You naturally know your own histories. Also look at the histories we teach in our schools. You will not find a single word ‘Turk.’ Besides, our histories have been especially prepared against Turkishness. We mention the world’s greatest conquerors like Hulagu and Tamerlane in our histories with curses and damnations solely because they were Turks. Then our histories show no lack of respect for Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon. Even some of our poets have composed poems for them. Especially Alexander has become almost an allusion in our literature. Every nation’s poets sing of their own nations, their histories, their traditions. Neither the new nor the old among our poets have written a single word about Turkishness, and when they need to speak of their own nationality, they have said ‘Etrak-i bi-idrak’ (Turks without perception). The last poet of our country, Tevfik Fikret, has not passed a single word ‘Turk’ even for medicine in his famous Rubab-ı Şikeste. Mehmet Emin Bey is nothing but a fantasist to the Ottomans. Now can a nation that has denied its own nationality with its history, education, and literature to this extent create a union ideal based on its own nationality? Europeans can consider the existence of such an ideal possible because they don’t study us!… Those among us should not show such naivety. Just as the words ‘Turk, Turkishness, Turkiye, Turkology’ have no meaning in our country, there is also no language called ‘Turkish.’ You know that the science of linguistics says ‘Every language is a language.’ We Ottomans broke this rule centuries ago. We created a new artificial language. Only the common people and women use Turkish morphology and Turkish grammar. Our thinkers, scholars, and men of letters have a separate written language composed of the union of three languages under the name ‘Ottoman.’ In this language there are words and rules from three languages. True, words can pass from every language to every language. For example, many words in English are French. But they have been Anglicized, subjected to English rules. In Ottoman it’s the opposite… Arabic words remain Arabic, Persian words remain Persian. When the common people and women distort their pronunciation and change them according to the nature and intonation of Turkish, Ottoman scholars immediately correct them under the name ‘error.’ Then a phenomenon that exists in no other language in the world… Arabic and Persian rules and particles have also entered Ottoman. The lies of those who say ‘A language cannot have morphology and grammar rules taken from foreign languages contrary to nature. Because languages are an institution and cannot be changed’ have been revealed. While Turkish essentially has no masculine or feminine genders, we have accepted all of Arabic’s masculine and feminine rules and conjugations, and Persian’s compound rules and particles. Although the villagers and common people, or rather the folk, have not accepted this rich artificial language, poets, men of letters, and the government have written and spoken this invented ‘Ottoman’ language. Our young writers are making the language even more obscure. In this regard, the great services of Fikret, Faik Ali, Süleyman Nazif, and especially Hüseyin Daniş have preceded. Ottoman is beginning to approach the language of its first writers, old poets, and Nergisi. If there is a bit more activity in our literature, in a few years, the remaining Turkish words, adjectives, and verbs will also be removed from the written language… The first means for ‘union’ is language. How can a nation that has pledged to kill its own language like this, to absolutely not put national literature into writing, unite with language compatriots? Ottomans absolutely do not recognize the Turks outside the ‘Ottoman Territories.’ They have no relations with them whatsoever. And they cannot… Now tell me, can there be a slander more foolish than the slander of ‘Turkism’?
Even if some political parties have an unfounded ideal like Turkism, the Ottoman government will always remain Ottoman, it will not recognize a special nationality outside ‘Ottomanism.’ Ottomanism is a political nationality. It has no connection whatsoever with history and tradition. It was established with the Tanzimat. This actual, historyless nationality is extremely conducive to progress and development… A nationality from mixed elements… Time and the Constitution will give birth to this phenomenon, this Ottoman nationality which will naturally remain without fanaticism since it has no history, will rise to elevation and progress with giant steps within half a century. In the East everything is still in the government. The spirit established by the Sublime Porte is so strong, so vigorous that, I assure you, neither the ideals of the Pan-Islamists nor the Turkists can penetrate there. The motto of the Ottoman government is contained in the phrase ‘Without distinction of race or religion.’ A Turk can absolutely not claim even the smallest right in the name of history or nationality like a Greek, an Armenian, an Albanian, a Bulgarian, etc… The word ‘Turk’ has been erased from laws, histories, geographies, and even from all minds. Ottoman, Ottoman, Ottoman… The goal pursued by the government is so noble, so humane that to understand it one must investigate the humanistic mentality of the Tanzimat. In the Tanzimat there is no history, grudge, prejudice, nationality. If true Ottomanism were established, our homeland would become the paradise of the world. But the tradition of the Sublime Porte alone cannot succeed in this.”
…Niyazi Bey spoke for two hours. I seemed to understand the value of Ottomanism. The Turks were truly not claiming nationality. Their religious fanaticism would fly away as education advanced, that is, as soon as progress began. This was being seen. And what magnanimity this was! To give up one’s history, one’s tradition!… Now I remember. Ahmet Mithat, supposedly the most democratic and nationalistic among the Turks, wrote in an article he published in the first days of the Constitution that apart from the sultan’s dynasty, there was no Turkish family in Turkiye.
What a contradiction, my Lord! Whereas we even claim that the Kurds are Armenian.
July 15, 1909, Moda…
Today I ran into Niyazi Bey on the ferry. We talked again. This man appears to me as noble, innocent, and honorable as the sole artist of the “Ottomanism” monument. Especially when speaking French, he is so polite, so gentle that… Ah, this crude Turkish doesn’t suit his mouth. He told me, “We’re forming an association soon,” “anyone can join ‘without distinction of race or religion.'”
“Is it a political association?” I asked.
“First scientific, social… then, after its evolution, political…” I laughed. Various currents were about to begin in Turkiye as well. I asked again: “What will your goal be, sir?”
“Ottomanism…”
“Ottomanism is something that exists… How can something that exists be a goal, a target?”
His dark eyes were shining, a sorrowful but definite determination was reflected in his face.
“The existing ‘Ottomanism’ is nothing but a lie,” he said, “The Greeks have their Patriarchate. They have a separate language, separate schools. The Armenians likewise. The Bulgarians likewise. The Serbs likewise. The Arabs likewise. The Albanians, other Ottomans too… Then where is the real, ‘one’, ‘solid, unified’ Ottomanism? The Sublime Porte denies this separation. But a truth cannot be hidden from a seeing eye. The ‘Ottomanism’ that the Tanzimat wanted to create has not yet been born.”
“But how can it be born?” I asked.
“By fusing and settling all the elements…”
“Do you think this is possible?”
“Completely…”
I thought. It was understood from the certainty of his words that Niyazi Bey believed in this conviction with his entire being. He continued:
“If I doubted even for a moment that all the elements in Ottomanism would merge, would become one, wouldn’t I have denied Ottomanism from its foundation?… ‘Without distinction of race or religion’, do you know what this means? It means ‘There is no race, no religion, only Ottomanism!’ By declaring equality between races and religions, the Tanzimat wanted them either not to exist at all or to become one. It wrote this great ambition only on papers, put it into laws, that is, left it in imagination, could not bring it into action. For example, for that ‘solid, unified’ Ottomanism, it could not create a single language, a single nationality, a single religion, a single education, a single history, a single educational system.”
“But how could this be possible?”
“It could very well be possible! If it weren’t possible, what use would there be in inventing the lie of ‘Ottomanism’?”
Indeed, I thought too. Without fusing all the elements and making them speak with a single language, without raising them with a single education and a single educational system, a “solid, unified” institution could not be secured. Yes, the Tanzimatists must have been certain they would make this dream reality. First, they made the Turks forget the Turkish nationality to which they themselves belonged. They removed the word “Turk” from their histories, their literature, and the word “Turkiye” from geography. And they succeeded. So a nation could forget its own institutions, traditions, language, even the name of its nationality. Indeed, Hamdi Sergeant had told me that he was “not Turkish but Muslim.”
While the Turks were the rulers, they gave up their nationality like this and accepted the invented, actual “Ottoman” nationality, and no one from among them had yet objected to this, so why should other nations hold back from imitating them?…
I think. How strange this will be! But at the same time, what a humane, what a civilized, what a contemporary nationality it will be! The new “Ottoman” nationality that will rise with a new language, new morals, a new goal, a new religion, a new education will perhaps light the torches of happiness and elevation on earth like the founder of the universal, common humanity religion. I think… “Ah, if only this dream were reality…” I say.
August 18, 1909, Moda…
The weather is so hot… my head aches. At the same time, I can’t breathe under the invisible reins of a terrible cold. I’ve just received a letter from Niyazi Bey. My thoughts are confused. I’m going through a crisis of terrible indecision. Could I too be a nationalist, unknowingly a narrow-minded man, a chauvinist incapable of comprehending the great humanitarian idea?
I will keep the original of this letter. In case I lose it, I’m copying it here too:
August 18, 1909, Pangaltı
My dear Monsieur Hayikyan,
We have formed the association I mentioned to you last month on the ferry. Our club has also opened. The government gave us the permission we requested without any delay. Our program and principles were very compatible with the goal that the Sublime Porte must pursue despite all its resistance. Yes, again without distinction of race or religion… In the declaration we gave to the government, we wrote the following:
- Every Ottoman will enter the “Ottoman Fusion Club” “without distinction of race or religion.”
- The nationalities gathered under the Ottoman name will be given a universal, common education, and feelings of other elements and nationalities like Turkishness will gradually be abolished.
- The unity of the “Ottoman” homeland will be secured, a new “Ottoman” patriotism will be created.
- All Ottomans will be taught a universal, common language. This universal Ottoman language will be considered the language of Ottoman education, literature, and science.
- In schools, no ethnicity or nationality outside Ottomanism will be valued. The children of the Ottoman country will not learn the histories and literatures of their old nationalities and ethnicities.
- Our club will publish newspapers and pamphlets, give conferences to reach its goal. As a first step, “Element Dissolution” branches will be opened, and efforts will be made to extinguish mutual religious fanaticism and national aspirations among the people.
But it takes very great efforts not to proceed on these principles, but even to approach them. Now we will begin to act by examining our ideal from a scientific, technical point of view. In our club’s board of directors and scientific committee, there are not only Turkish Ottomans, but also Greeks, Jews, Levantines, Arabs, and Bulgarians. As an Armenian, I desire that you join the board of directors and the committee. I told my friends my idea. The higher education you received will be an example for tomorrow’s common humanity. I explained how nobly you find the “Ottomanism” ideal. Among our friends, there is no unknown person. All the Ottoman country knows their honor and learning, and so do you. Look:
Diyamandis Efendi, Nikefor Angilef Efendi, Nikolaviç Efendi, Fraşerli Nadir Bey, Moiz Bori Efendi, Salihü’l-ayni Efendi, Casimü’l-Kürdi Bey, Louis Durant Bey, Sadullah Behçet Bey, Hasan Rudi Bey, Poet Sait Bey, Celil Mün’im Bey, Hodja Bali Efendi, Doctor Eserullah Natık Bey.
If you wish to participate in the dissemination of our great ambition, write your consent in two lines. Please honor our club at number “57” on Süleymaniye Street next Monday.
With lasting hope…
“Ottoman Fusion Club” Temporary Secretary Niyazi
What should I write! Yes? Or no?… Today my mind is not functioning properly. I’m unwell, let me think a bit. Anyway, wouldn’t immediate consent be rash?
August 20, 1909, Moda…
My illness continues. What I thought was a cold turns out to be a bad “flu.” How did I catch a cold in this heat?… I can’t figure it out. Tomorrow I’ll be able to get up a bit. The doctor says, “Stay in bed, don’t go out at all…” This is their custom. If I get better, why should I stay confined? Besides, there’s quite a bit of time until Monday. I’ve just written a reply to Niyazi Bey. I will join the “Ottoman Fusion Club.” I thought in vain for two or three days. There is no harm in joining such a club. But “delusion” has become an illness among us, no, a second nature. To still be afraid of the poor Turks who have long since given up their own nationality… This is truly meaningless… And am I the only non-Turk in this club? There are Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Arabs, in short, every nation. If my nationality is endangered, so is theirs…
September 1, 1909, Moda…
I still haven’t gotten better. All the Turkish members of the “Ottoman Fusion Club” inquired about my health by letter. Members from other ethnicities don’t care at all.
October 21, 1909, Moda…
Today I went to the club. They received me warmly. The building was very large. The furnishings were very magnificent. The Turkish members have taken on the club’s expenses. Niyazi Bey is apparently very wealthy. The meeting hall resembled a small palace council chamber. All the servants were wearing official uniforms.
The meeting was truly scientific. The topic was “Do social institutions establish themselves, or are they established?” Everyone spoke. Indeed, the members are the most perfect men I’ve seen until now…
No conclusion emerged from the discussion, we dispersed. The president is Sait Bey… This is a very valuable man; truly a poet and scholar whose “nation is humankind, whose homeland is the face of the earth”…
March 7, 1910, Moda…
Six months have passed so quickly… My affairs have begun to deteriorate. None of our people know of my membership in the “Ottoman Fusion Club”… Because we make no noise. We have not yet published any newspaper or pamphlet. A fixed result does not always emerge from our deliberations. The work we’ve begun is so great, so difficult that if I weren’t inside it myself, I would say “This is only a dream.”
But one saying of Niyazi Bey never leaves my ear:
Don’t say it can’t be, it can’t be This beautiful world is the realm of possibility…
May 11, 1910, Moda…
Ah, beautiful Istanbul… Now it is necessary to bid you farewell. In a week I’m going to Marseille. Eighty lira salary… I’ve become the agent of Torakyan Company. When Niyazi Bey heard of my departure, he said “We will give you this salary, stay…” Truly what a strange but what a wealthy man… I didn’t accept. He became despondent. He asked that I at least remain a corresponding member.
Until now I hadn’t lived in Europe. Let’s see what that life is like?… Nevertheless, I won’t give up this room. At every opportunity I’ll rush back and reunite with this view, this tranquility, this Fener sleeping in poetry.
PART 2: THE LAST ONE
FIRST ATTEMPT
April 23, 1912, Moda…
Yesterday I arrived in Istanbul. I ran straight to my room. Ah, here is summer again… The Rupenyans’ garden is in bloom again… Politics has seized and covered every part of the country with the repulsiveness of a burst sewer… as if two years haven’t passed. I went to my office yesterday. This morning I came to the room on the seven o’clock ferry… Yes, life is nothing but a dream. I arranged my books. I pulled my armchair next to the window again. Just like before… Now I’ve gone back two years, I feel as if I’ve gained two more years…
With this strange, innocent feeling, I found my notebook. I read the twenty or thirty pages I wrote with such pleasure… Why didn’t I write every day… What a pity, my unwritten days, my events have been lost in the past. But here are the things I wrote… They stand alive. As I read, I live again…
I wonder if the “Ottoman Fusion Club” is still standing?… Should I go see Niyazi Bey…
Am I tired? Like a Turk, I stretch and say: “Tomorrow, God willing…” But what’s the hurry? Slowly, slowly… The motto in Turkiye’s life is “slowly, slowly.”
Now let me go out and walk the bright streets I haven’t seen for two years, the dreamy shores. Let me smell the sweet, cool breezes.
April 28, 1912, Moda…
Yesterday I went to the club. I participated in the deliberations. The members have met twenty times in two years. They have reached no positive result. General Secretary Niyazi Bey says, “From now on we will meet twice a month.” He is very pleased that I will now stay in Istanbul and not go to Marseille… I talked with him at length in the committee room. The definitive program must apparently be decided at the first meeting… First, the language question… They’ve been talking about language for two years. He is inclined toward accepting the “Esperanto” language… Some of the members apparently want the Latin language.
May 24, 1912, Moda
Yesterday I met with Diyamandis. He was waiting for a friend at Tokatlıyan. I asked if everyone could accept it if “Ottoman fusion’s” language became “Esperanto,” he laughed.
“The Turks have no language anyway,” he said, “they might be able to accept it. But the Greeks have their perfect language and literature of five or ten thousand years.”
Would Armenians ever give up Armenian! I thought this too.
June 30, 1912, Moda…
I continue to attend the Committee. I’ve just realized. At the meetings, the Arab, Greek, Albanian, Serb, Bulgarian, Wallachian, Jewish members are not present. We conduct our deliberations with eight people. With Turkish members… I too have now become convinced that this fused “solid, unified” Ottomanism ideal is truly very, very far-fetched dream. The reason for the members gradually fleeing was Niyazi Bey and Sait Bey’s scientific theories. These gentlemen say:
“Within Ottomanism there are separate communities. These communities have given birth to ethnic wills by swallowing the desires of their individuals. To fuse Ottomanism, individuals must be separated from their communities. If the individual is separated from his community, that is, if he becomes willless, then only his ‘desire’ will rule him? The individual thinks of nothing but his own interest. Such individuals living only with their own desires, only with their own interests gather with economic ties and constitute Ottomanism. Therefore, the first points to be attacked are nationality, religion, and morality, which are the pillars of the community institution. When these pillars are demolished, individuals will be face to face with their own organic desires…”
Separating from their communities did not suit any of the non-Turkish members. They stopped coming to the club. I insist. I don’t miss any deliberations. My signature is on all decisions.
I see that these Turks are not dishonorable men: But they are all ideologues… The delusion of “Ottomanism” has put all their logic and judgment to sleep.
July 5, 1912, Moda…
My ideas from two years ago have completely changed today. Yesterday I read the beginning pages of my notebook. Oh my Lord! I, Dikran Hayikyan, orphan whose father was killed while acting as an agent in the revolution that flared up for the complete revival of the Armenian nation, believed in Ottomanism for a moment…
What is “Ottomanism”? The Fusion Club taught me its meaning:
- The nations, whatever nation they may be from, Turk or whatever, who will live under the Ottoman name will give up their own nationalities.
- They will gradually separate from their religions, institutions, languages.
- They will live only with individual, only personal, organic “desires,” forgetting the “wills” inspired by their communities with an artificial oblivion.
- They will unite under the “Ottoman” name and create a new, historyless nationality.
All of these are such empty, such impossible things! I am amazed at how the members of the “Ottoman Fusion Club” have been deceived by such a childish idea. These men want to work only with their logic. They don’t know that logic cannot work in history, in social matters. They think just like the French revolutionaries. They too thought they were doing something with logic, they changed their religions, their histories, even the names of the years. It didn’t last long, both their logic and themselves were ruined. Their goal was “humanity.” The ideal in the members of the “Ottoman Fusion Club” is more or less the idea of “humanity”… To kill the community spirits in the elements of Turkiye that make individuals enemies of each other -with a sacred ambition far above personal interest-… To establish a special, local, geographical internationalism…
Tomorrow there is another meeting. This time I want to give them a bit of a hard time.
July 28, 1912, Moda…
The day before yesterday the weather was a bit rainy. I found everyone present in the club’s meeting hall. When I say everyone, I mean only the Turks. For months now, neither Diyamandis, nor Angelof, nor Nikolaviç, nor the others have come to the club.
The agenda had the language issue.
Doctor Eserullah Natık was proposing the acceptance of either Latin or Hebrew. Especially, he was saying, “Hebrew is the most perfect language!” Hasan Rudi Bey wanted Latin. This monocled young bey… Very elegant, wealthy like his other friends. At the same time a writer. Apparently he publishes a five-hundred-page book every fifteen days.
“Although Latin is not alive, we can revive it. What need is there to search for another language?” he says, considering Sadullah Behçet his most loyal supporter.
Hodja Bali Efendi was objecting. This gentleman, despite coming to our club, is a terrible politician. No one has gone as far as him regarding “union of elements.” A merciless enemy of nationalists… Let me summarize his idea:
“The purpose of religions is to make people happy. We hodjas must reconcile with Sahibiye clergymen, rabbis, and Christian priests. Fanaticism will disappear. Since God is one, why should there be several religions?”
Hodja Bali Efendi also published this idea in the Istanbul press. Since he encountered no objection from any side, I understood that among political excitements, Turks have forgotten their fanaticism too.
He says: “This Ottoman language, formed by the mixture of Arabic and Persian, which is our current literary language, suffices for the purpose. It is the world’s greatest language because it has made the sources and rules of three languages its own.”
Celal Mün’im and Poet Hamit Bey are also of this opinion… Only they wanted words and rules to be taken from the languages of all the ethnicities constituting Ottomanism too. Doctor Eserullah Natık is recognized as Turkiye’s most learned, greatest philosopher. In fact, if an Ottoman academy were to be opened, he would certainly be its president. Now he too prefers the establishment of an Ottoman language composed of the languages of all nations in Turkiye. “The Turks have no language anyway. Their dictionaries are Arabic and Persian. They take all the necessary words and terms from these Arabic and Persian dictionaries,” he was saying. In fact, he went further: Since Ottoman will be completely reorganized; words and especially morphological and grammatical rules will be taken from Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Wallachian, and Armenian. To give this language a more universal character, interjections should be borrowed from English, prepositions from German, and official and private pronouns from French.
I gave many details about Armenian.
Doctor Eserullah Natık said that such a universal, sublime, perfect Ottoman would be accepted even by the whole world. Then I objected.
“Languages are not established, like every institution they establish themselves. Those who do not accept this truth of social science have been deceived many times. No artificial, invented language has ever lived, nor will it… Indeed, thus the ‘Volapük’ language invented in 1880 first gained considerable importance. But this was a temporary fashion. Because a language, that is an institution, could not be established. This language, which had two hundred and eighty clubs within ten years, also had twenty-five newspapers. In Paris alone, fourteen ‘Volapük’ schools had been opened. Large stores were about to accept this language for their employees. What happened? This language suddenly disappeared so quickly that today there is no possibility of encountering a person who knows ‘Volapük’ in the whole world. Then ‘Esperanto’ came out. It too is now slowly fading, giving way to the ‘Ido (Yda)’ language. It too will not live, it will certainly die. However, Armenian… This is actually the language of the Ottoman Territories. Because outside of Turkiye there is no united nation or state that speaks Armenian. However, Greece speaks Greek, Egypt speaks Arabic. Bulgaria speaks Bulgarian, Serbia speaks Serbian, Romania speaks Wallachian, Spain speaks Jewish, Kashgar and Khiva Khanates speak Turkish. In a language composed of all these languages, traces of an external nationality will certainly remain. Armenian is not like that. First, writing it is very easy. Since there are Armenians in almost every major city of Turkiye, they can spread this language very quickly if accepted…”
Then I continued. Bali Efendi seemed to be gaining conviction. Sait Bey began to think. But Doctor Eserullah Natık criticized my proposal:
“True, there is no united nation or state outside the ‘Ottoman Territories’ that speaks Armenian,” he said. “But this language is a historical language. We want a manufactured, new language. There is no science in the world as full of myths as linguistics. It is said ‘A language cannot have rules taken from other languages contrary to its own nature,’ isn’t it? A lie! Here is today’s Ottoman… Our scholastics have very well imposed Arabic and Persian rules that don’t exist in Turkish. They have multiplied ‘descriptive conjunctions’ that are not in Turkish nature. There are thirty or forty line sentences in your literature. Today a genteel Ottoman absolutely does not deign to use Turkish words or Turkish morphological rules. In fact, the Ottoman we envision has partially begun. It has rules from three separate languages foreign to each other. If the rules of three separate languages can come together and live, why shouldn’t the rules of ten languages unite and live together?”
I did not answer. But was the Ottoman language that Eserullah spoke of alive? I see that no… I paid attention: Even the Turks who claim Ottomanism only use foreign compounds made with Arabic and Persian rules and words when writing and composing poetry. When speaking, their sentences are all short, all natural… They even adapt Arabic and Persian words to their own intonation. But when writing, they correct the representation made by nature with a scholarly affectation…
An Ottoman language composed of the languages of all elements living in Turkiye was accepted. Hasan Rudi wanted the abolition of Persian words and rules that had somehow entered before, since there were no Persians in the “Ottoman Territories.” Hodja Bali Efendi answered him: “There are quite a few Persians in Istanbul and Anatolia. They can take and give girls from/to the Ottomans. Why should we throw away their words and rules that entered at one time? On the contrary, Persian is the most beautiful element of Ottoman.”
Poor Hodja Bali Efendi… He was calling the Azerbaijani Turkic Turks who filled Istanbul and provincial centers and took over the tombeki, tea, paper, pen trade and labor “Persian” based on their clothing.
August 30, 1912, Moda…
Yesterday, one of my Armenian friends gave me the August 16, 1912 issue of the French magazine “Mercure de France.”
“You must read it…” he said. What he had marked with a pencil was a very long article signed by Risal. The article’s headline: “Turks are seeking a national spirit…” Now I’ve finished it. Right now I feel a bitter dissatisfaction. If the things this Monsieur Risal reports are true, it’s terrible… So the Turks are also becoming a nation… Apparently there are some people here and there who search for a Turkish spirit, try to abandon the Arabic, Persian, scholastic, mixed language continuing under the name of Ottoman and to create literature with the spoken, natural folk language.
Yes, the Turks are also stirring.
An Englishman had told me: “In Turkiye there is a population of more than fourteen million that speaks Turkish and is completely Turkified… But how many Armenians, how many Greeks are there? I don’t think these elements are more than three million…”
The Greeks’ idea is to capture Istanbul, Izmir, etc., and throw these fourteen million to the right side of the “Kızılırmak”; the Armenians’ idea is to form Great Armenia and throw all the Turks to the left side of the “Kızılırmak”… If these two nations succeed at the same time, not a single Turk will remain in Anatolia, they will all pour into the Kızılırmak and flow to the sea.
But! If the Turks also; cling to their nationality like the Greeks, Armenians, even Arabs and Albanians! What will we become in the face of a united force of fourteen or fifteen million? We Armenians, so scattered, so few, should think about this, we should strengthen the “Ottomanism” institution. Three or four million can never prevail over fifteen million.
A very capable European writer says: “The Turks are very magnanimous. They never mention their own nationality, their history, their traditions. Now they only want to live comfortably. If the Christians in Turkiye don’t show excessive fanatical nationalism and don’t awaken them, thanks to the Constitution, within half a century there won’t be a single Turk left. Wealth, commerce, land, even the government will pass into the hands of Christians, the Turks will again enter their tents and withdraw to their plateaus, return to that remote, pure, peaceful Turkestan they came from to pray more comfortably… However, as Christians show fanaticism in nationalism, this state also reflects on the Turks. Some of them are coming forward saying, ‘I am Turkish, I am proud of Turkishness.’ They write poems and books in the spoken, natural Turkish, give conferences. They are even slowly reviving an ideal called ‘Turkism.'”
I think, if we Armenians, Greeks, even Arabs and Albanians don’t show fanaticism in our nationality, the Turks won’t depart from the cosmopolitanism they call “Ottomanism,” they will forget all their existence.
The party holding the government has been completely overthrown. The “Entente” party, which works with Greeks and is more moderate and more political than our Fusion Club, along with nationalist Albanian revolutionaries and Ottoman officers completely devoid of national ideas, succeeded in this. The “Savior Officers Group” is currently in command… There are great figures raised by the Tanzimat spirit in the cabinet. For example, who in the world could imagine that a Tanzimat genius like Kamil Pasha would act thinking of “Turkishness”… He is a complete Ottoman.
Ah, but the possibilities of war… If there is war, either defeat or victory… I fear defeat the most. It is great disasters that awaken nations. What if the Turks also suffer a disaster and awaken…
October 1912, Moda…
War has begun… Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Greeks, even Albanians to some extent, have declared war on the Turks.
We don’t care about the affairs of the universe. Our club still meets, we continue our deliberations.
Yesterday was meeting day.
The agenda had the “religion” question.
Eserullah Bey said that the new “Ottoman” nation to be organized must absolutely have a religion. Hodja Bali Efendi proposed that a religion formed from the combination of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Sabianism be accepted by all Ottomans with some modifications. Sadullah Behçet is completely against religion… Hasan Rudi shouted “Let’s be irreligious like the Japanese!” The deliberation lasted quite a while. When publications began, they feared the people’s agitation. Finding a new religion was more difficult than finding a new language. Finally, for now they decided on “irreligiousness.” Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, in short, all Ottomans would gradually abandon their religions.
Sait Bey was saying, “Neglect…” “neglect plants figs in all hearths!” He gave details like this: The first Tanzimatists erased nationalities with one stroke. They made the Turk forget his Turkishness. But they couldn’t touch religion. Because they too, like us, perhaps more than us, feared the fanaticism rooted for centuries. Once fanaticism was removed, naturally religion wouldn’t remain either. The remedy they found was “neglect.” Working iron shines. Just as the one that doesn’t work gets rusty, if an institution is not rejuvenated and left to its own devices, it ages, collapses, disperses. The most faithful religion in the “Ottoman Territories” was Islam. To destroy Islam, neglect was necessary. The Tanzimatists, while organizing every part of the country, never looked at the madrasas. They left all religious institutions in their old state. They neglected them. We too will follow the path they took. We won’t modernize religion. Naturally, the modernizing Ottomans will remain foreign to the unmodernized religion. Our ambition will also be realized.
No one was still paying attention to the non-Turkish members not coming to the club. They were making decisions absent-mindedly, unaware of everything.
While descending from the Sublime Porte, Eserullah and Niyazi were with me. They weren’t looking at the troop deployments at all, they weren’t even hearing all that noise…
November 1912, Moda
My affairs are ruined. The war immediately showed its effect. The market is stagnant… No money. Today I was crossing to Istanbul. I saw a large crowd at the dock.
They’re saying, “The people of Istanbul are migrating to Üsküdar, Kadıköy.” But how quickly… So Bulgarians will enter Istanbul, for weeks now they’ve been forcing the Çatalca lines. Everywhere is full of refugees… Misery is extreme!
On the ferry I couldn’t take my eyes off Hagia Sophia’s dome. I was in the side cabin. A beautiful, plump Greek woman was sitting across from me with her son who could be estimated to be only four years old. The weather was very nice. Cannon sounds seemed to be coming from afar. The child had stood on his knees and was looking outside. He asked in Greek, “Isn’t this Hagia Sophia, mother?” The woman looked at me once. I had a hat on my head. She didn’t suspect. Besides, no one in Istanbul is afraid of the Turks anymore… She answered her child: “Yes, my dear.”
“Ah, how beautiful…”
Then the woman leaned over. They began looking out the window. They were talking quietly. I was listening while pretending to read the newspaper in my hand: “When will Constantine come?”
“He’ll unite with his allies. Within fifteen, twenty days…”
“Why didn’t the Bulgarians and Serbs enter and take it now?”
“They’re waiting for the real owner of Istanbul…”
“Who is the real owner of Istanbul?”
“Constantine, the heroic son of George.”
They looked outside all the way to the Bridge. Like me, they too were convinced that Istanbul was living its last days.
Everyone in Istanbul expects this. A gendarme officer I ran into at the Bridge said that the embassies and Kamil Pasha had come to an agreement, that as soon as the Bulgarian army enters, Ottoman gendarmes and foreign soldiers who will disembark from embassy escort ships will patrol with the Ottoman flag in one hand and the flag of the state they belong to in the other hand.
Bravo… Indeed, no man as great as Kamil Pasha has been raised among the Ottomans until now, nor can be… To convince the embassies to land troops in Istanbul… Every Ottoman who hears this takes a comfortable breath, saying “Long live the sage of politics!” amazed and delighted by the pasha’s skill. European newspapers write that the clothes and uniforms that Bulgarian King Ferdinand will wear at the “coronation” ceremony in Hagia Sophia have been made in Paris.
O old Hagia Sophia… So after five hundred and some years, a cross will be erected on your dome again…
January 28, 1913, Moda…
The armies of the Christian allies did not enter Istanbul. How we rejoiced whenever we heard cannon sounds. Prayers for victory were being said in all the churches -not secretly, openly-. The Turks were driven out of Rumelia. The Bulgarians left no mosque, minaret, or Muslim in the places they passed through. They burned. They destroyed. They killed. They made all the Pomaks Christian. All of Europe was amazed at the courage, determination, and severity of the young Balkan nations. The Bulgarian national color is this year’s fashion in Paris… Even Bulgarian fashion became common in Beyoğlu. Fabrics in Bulgarian colors even began to be sold in Istanbul.
I continue to attend our “Fusion Club.” My friends are so absent-minded, so preoccupied with their deliberations that they have no news of the war… Apparently they don’t even hear the cannon sounds that shake our horizons every day. In yesterday’s deliberation, Eserullah Natık spoke of the civilization of Christians and the barbarism of Turks and Muslims.
“If Christians take our country, that’s when we’ll see real freedom and liberty. Here is Egypt before our eyes… What prosperity, what happiness…” he said. Since he doesn’t read newspapers, he had no knowledge of what the Balkan peoples were doing. I didn’t object. The deliberation dragged on in this eternal sleep.
Sait, Sadullah Behçet, even Hodja Bali Efendi insisted that the first thing to be done to fuse the Ottomans should be taking and giving girls “without distinction of race or religion.”
Indeed, Muslims could take girls from Christians. But they couldn’t give. The friends wanted to break this imbalance. They were using perfectly sound logic: “If it’s taken, why shouldn’t it be given?”
Hodja Bali Efendi expressed his idea: “What is religion? Isn’t it Sabianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam? We will unite all of these. We will return them to their origin. We will bring out the ‘Abrahamic Religion.’ Since the ‘Abrahamic Religion’ will see no difference between nations and religions (without distinction of race or nation), it will also permit marriage.”
No one could object to Bali Efendi. Now our program is evolving. When we dispersed today, Doctor Eserullah Natık said, “Soon we will go into action.” “Truth is advancing. No one can stop it…”
But which truth, my Lord…
March 7, 1913, Moda…
Truth has advanced. No one has stopped it yet. Because no one is aware of the thing that is advancing.
We will begin to publish and disseminate the principles we have drawn up through years of research. First a newspaper… For now we will publish this once a week. But finding the name for our newspaper was very difficult. There are eight of us in the club. All eight of us found different names. I said “Tower of Babel.” This is truly a perfect name for a publication claiming Ottoman fusion. Eserullah Natık distorted Alfred Fouillée’s term “idée-force”; he said no meaning came from it. He made it “idée-forte.” He translated it as “Kuvvet-i zinde” (Living Force). If “idea” were put in place of “force,” it would be a perfectly suitable name for a newspaper that would publish our purpose: Fikr-i Zinde (Living Idea)…
Sadullah Behçet was saying, “The newspaper must have a ‘motto’ before a name!”
The mottos we found didn’t match each other at all. The eight names we found for our newspaper were these:
Tower of Babel, Living Idea, Unique Sun, Element Dissolution, Humanity, Ottomans, Let’s Fuse, Free Conscience, Free Knowledge…
Finally we decided to draw lots. We wrote these eight names on papers. We drew one, “Humanity” came out.
Sait became the editor-in-chief.
Eserullah Natık would write the philosophy section; Sadullah Behçet and Hasan Rudi, the social science section, Niyazi Bey, the literature section, Celal Bey, the science section, Hodja Bali Efendi, the religion section, And I, the miscellaneous…
Let’s see when we’ll be able to publish our first issue?
April 15, 1913, Moda…
Yesterday we deliberated on the contents of the first issue.
Sait Bey had written a long poem about how “humankind” is a single nationality, how the “homeland” must be the “face of the earth,” and that only those who understand this truth can be considered human. This was truly a masterpiece of non-national, that is, “without distinction of race or religion” literature.
He was singing that religions, nationalities, and homelands are all myths. “Eserullah Natık’s” article was more than fifty pages. He mentioned many foreign names. But to tell no lie, the article was very great. I liked it too.
Sadullah Behçet and Hasan Rudi had shown all their capabilities. Within four or five pages, Hasan Rudi was talking about social science, instincts, history, zoology, metaphysics, pathology, proving that there was no difference between spiritism and spiritualism, that all sciences were nonsense; finally he was boasting that he himself was a scholar.
Niyazi Bey was claiming that every language is not a language, that languages are not established but can be established, that just as there are words coming from one language to another, there can also be rules, giving details for advanced Ottoman, showing examples of sentences made with Arabic, Persian, Greek, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Spanish words and rules, he couldn’t finish describing the harmony and beauty of this completely mixed artificial language.
The science section was very brilliant. It was being proven that the only truth is in science, that everything outside science is nothing but a delusion, an imagination.
Hodja Bali Efendi was explaining the common religion of the fused Ottoman nation. This was the “Abrahamic Religion.” Sabianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam should be mixed, going backwards to find the religion of Abraham. This issue was almost a manifesto issue. It contained the fundamental ideas of the Fusion Club. We would put “marriage without distinction of race or religion” announcements on the last page. We would help young people who would marry regardless of religious or national differences. My article was greatly applauded. Eserullah Natık said, “This is the most perfect piece of this issue.” Hasan Rudi said he had also written these ideas before. Poet Sait was just now understanding my knowledge in history and ethnography.
The headline of my article was the sentence: In the Ottoman Territories, There is Not a Single Turk Racially or Ethnically!… I was relying on history and ethnography. No one could object to my claim scientifically. The summary of my article was this:
“There are no Turks at all in the Ottoman Territories! Although Ahmet Mithat Efendi confirmed this but wrote only that the House of Osman dynasty belonged to the Turk-Tajik race, he too was mistaken. Before proving that the House of Osman is not from the Turk-Tajik race either, I will explain that not a single individual Turk exists in all the Ottoman Territories. The greatest witness to the truth that there are no Turks in Anatolia is the French traveler Tavernier. This gentleman, who traveled through all the Ottoman Territories, Iran, and India three times in the seventeenth century, writes in his published history that in the great distance from Tokat to Tabriz, there were only two percent Muslims. From this it is understood that 200 years ago in Anatolia there were not Turks, there weren’t even Muslims! Not a single piece of evidence proving the contrary can be found. The Anatolian population, which some self-interested, fanatical nationalists call ‘Turk,’ became Muslim by sword force. These conversions are events of the last two hundred years. Yes, the Anatolian people are indeed Muslim, but they are absolutely not Turkish. When nationalists, who think of nothing but deceiving everyone and obtaining their base interests, see that there are no Turks in the Ottoman Territories, they speak of Arab, Persian, and Byzantine influences. They say that ‘Turkishness’ was lost under these three influences. How can something that didn’t exist later be lost? The Muslims in the Ottoman Territories are former Greeks and Armenians who converted from their religions. If these poor people cannot leave their new religion and return to their old nationalities, they will never accept Turkishness either. Indeed, no one in the Ottoman Territories says, ‘I am Turkish.’
When asked about nationality, they only say, ‘I am Muslim, praise be to God…’
Nationalists will not tire from this insistence of the truth. By fabricating that there are eighty million Turks in the world, they deceive this one and that one. Especially the meaning of the word ‘Turan,’ which is their ideal, is against them. The Russian scholar, famous Bartold, fearing the harm of these self-interested people, has announced to everyone what the word ‘Turan’ means. A Russian scholar like Bartold assures us that ‘Turan’ was a province of Iran, and it’s a Persian name…”
I was giving so much detail, bringing so many witnesses from European scholars, even proving so perfectly that there is no nation called “Turk” on the face of the earth today… objection was impossible…
My Ottoman friends, who are wrongly slandered as being called “Turk,” were extremely happy that there were no Turks on earth and were embracing me. Hodja Bali Efendi was kissing my forehead. Because he was convinced that nationalism was irreligion. Trembling with the excitement of joy, he was saying, “Bravo Hayikyan Efendi my son,” “you’ve said the final word to these scoundrels. Let’s see if they can now produce an answer from their Turkology or whatever… “
And he was also adding: “Not only we Ottomans, but ‘the august and mighty Russian state’ is also concerned about their harm. Probably the embassy translator will translate this article of yours, you will receive a reward, a medal from the ‘Imperial Scientific Society of Petersburg’…”
