“Life is a sleep, love is its dream!” they say. How true!
I too loved and was loved. I had met my beautiful, compassionate Hayganoş at the Haçiks’ house. The respect I felt for this noble heart, this elegant girl, gradually turned into love. That noble emotion that makes people live with sweet dreams and teaches them the meaning of the most important poems finally taught me too the pleasures of living. After tasting this pleasure, I felt the love of spouse, children, family, and then nation. It was as if I had no soul, no feelings before seeing Hayganoş… Now she is my wife… I hear the voices of our children playing downstairs. How happy I am!
Everything is covered in snow… The wood in the stove burns with a sweet, warm crackle. I have no work, I’m leafing through my books. I find this notebook I wrote many years ago. Something forty or fifty pages long… An incomplete, scattered, miserable chapter of my bachelorhood… A novel that no one but me would understand if they read it. I’m sure no diary as disorganized as this has ever been kept in the world. But as I read, my memory is inflamed. I remember the days when we gathered with the delusion of Ottoman fusion, those innocent ideologues, my naive friends. Things I had forgotten for years suddenly come back to me, exciting me.
The heat of my body increases. Involuntarily, I fall into the desire to write again. I will write… Isn’t writing the noblest, most beneficial of entertainments and fantasies?
Each passing year has left a thin layer of mist. A blue smoke… Through this smoke I still see. I remember the last act of the foolish comedy we played – as if it had just closed – point by point. Here is the “Ottoman Fusion Club” in Nuruosmaniye. As if we had just published the first issue of the “Humanity” journal. Today we have our meeting again. I’m smoking a cigarette in the armchair by the window. Eserullah Natık has prepared his conference, he will start giving it at every opportunity he finds. How happy we are. Sales are great. Not a single copy remains of the eight thousand.
We decide to make a second edition and disperse.
Everyone comes asking for the “Humanity” magazine. Some booksellers even sold them for five kuruş each.
Niyazi Bey says, “Ah, if only we had delayed the thousand copies we sent abroad…”
Yes, it was a few days later. I can’t remember well. It was meeting day again. We had gathered at the club. Sait was reading a new poem he had written. I saw a pile of papers on the table.
I asked Niyazi Bey what they were.
“Protest telegrams that the nationalists had sent with encouragement…” he laughed. Hoca Bali Efendi shook his turban: “They throw stones of reproach at the fruitful tree.”
I approached. I began to look at these papers. Long and short, they all said to us, “O vile wretches who deny your nation! We are Turks, we neither deny our nationality nor change our religion…” Many of the telegrams bore the signatures of Turkish provincial mayors. The fury was terrible. But no one at the club cared. They had even brought articles for the second issue. I was reading telegrams as long as articles from the “Turkish Homeland,” “Turkish Hearth,” “Turkish Power,” “Golden Horde,” “New Turan,” “Turkish Unity” societies. My heart was pounding. The sacred, noble rage of a great nation whose existence was being denied was swelling, overflowing – more terrible than a typhoon. Telegrams had rained from the provinces, districts, and sub-districts of Edirne, Bursa, Konya, Kastamonu, İzmir, Adana, Trabzon, Ankara, and Aleppo. The “Humanity” magazine apparently hadn’t reached the eastern provinces yet. All of Anatolia was shouting, “I am a Turk!” Our club’s scientific and social purpose had offended all the nations living in Turkiye. Not only Turks, but Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians had also been angered by the Ottoman fusion. The Arabs were demanding the execution of Hoca Bali Efendi, who was trying to corrupt Islam and create a new religion. The Patriarchate had issued a declaration. “Greeks are Greek, Hellenic,” it said, “They recognize no other nationality. Ottomanism is only their official, political title. There is no difference whatsoever in language, tradition, education, religion, or ideals between a Greek in Turkiye and a Greek in Athens, Crete, or anywhere else. Greek (national culture – Culture nationale) is one throughout the world. A bunch of devils trying to destroy their own nationalities can never corrupt great Hellenism.” The Armenian Patriarchate, Armenian circles found this fusion attempt quite ridiculous.
As I read the papers, I seemed to understand the illogic, the absurdity of being against social institutions, nationality, and religion. From afar, some noises were approaching. We looked at each other. We approached the large window. A crowd with flags was coming from Nuruosmaniye Street. We were turning pale, not making a sound, hearing the terrible roar like a threat, like a living denial, rising from forty or fifty thousand mouths.
We are Turks, we are Turks… Sacred is our science. Our strength is in “Unity,” our language is one…
The servants understood the situation. Istanbulites were demonstrating against us. Police were guarding the club doors. Eserullah Natık clenched his fists, teeth, and legs. “Ah, these Turkish rascals! They’re deceiving all the Ottomans,” he groaned.
Sadullah Behçet was frightened by this terrible crowd, trembling, “Foule, foule! Inconsciente, elle veut nous écraser…”
Hasan Rudi began to say, “On my mother’s side, I suppose I also belong to the Turkish element…”
Within ten minutes the entire street was filled. The crowd was so large, so dense that no one could move. A young man – I later learned who he was, he was the orator of the Turkish Hearths – climbed onto the high balcony of our club. In a very loud, bright, divine voice, he proclaimed that the word “Ottomanism” was nothing but a “foreign” term, that like religions, nationalities were also respectable, sacred, indispensable institutions, that in Turkiye more than fourteen million Muslims who spoke Turkish were considered Turks, that the same number of Muslims who spoke Arabic were considered Arabs, and that the Turks would gladly accept that the minority Greeks and Armenians also preserved their nationalities. Eserullah Natık wanted to defend Ottomanism from the club window and speak in the form of a speech about the inappropriateness of creating a nationality called “Turk.” We all prevented him. We were scared, turning pale. The young Turkish orator’s speech was extending like a conference, deepening amid continuous applause. Finally, raising his hand toward our window, he said, “Pay attention, O absent-minded ignorant ones! You write ‘There are no Turks in Turkiye.’ See how many Turks there are in just one corner of Istanbul…”
I don’t know if a command was given. The tightly packed crowd loosened. Slowly a path opened. Anthems overflowing from the vigorous, fiery spirit of an awakened nation undulated like a spring, a storm of happiness. Students from Turkish schools, the University, the Medical School passed in ranks with military steps. Then private schools… Then members of the Turkish Hearth, Golden Horde, Turkish Power, and many other Turkish societies… Turkish tradesmen’s societies, sports groups, aviators, scouts, horsemen, machinist and electrician societies… All, all passed. Perhaps this magnificent parade lasted more than three hours. I estimated them at more than eighty thousand. Our friends were rubbing their eyes as if awakening from an opium sleep. We weren’t talking, we were silent. Every Turkish group passing in front of the club was shouting, “Curse upon those who deny their nationality, history, past, ancestors!…”
Toward evening the demonstration crowd decreased, we were going to flee. Sadullah Behçet was badly frightened. Eserullah Natık, as you know, was as stubborn as an animal.
“I will not despair,” he said, “even if all Turkistan, all Turan rises up, I will still create a unified, monolithic Ottomanism.”
Late at night we were fleeing in carriages brought by servants. The people gathered on the roads were pointing us out to each other, saying, “Are these the ones who deny their nationalities?” The next day’s İz’an newspaper was talking about our Fusion Club, our ideas, and the magnificent demonstration of the previous day in its editorial. The title of this article was “Ashab-ı Kehf” (People of the Cave). Even then, this newspaper sold fifty thousand copies. This term “Ashab-ı Kehf” became the nickname for my friends at the Fusion Club. Everyone was mocking them, writing mockingly about the closing of our club, “Ashab-ı Kehf has awakened!…” İz’an’s article was really quite perfect. Today I vaguely remember its contents.
“A bunch of devils have gathered,” it said, “they have formed a society under the name of Ottoman Fusion Club. The other day the first issue of the Humanity journal they wrote to propagate their doctrine came out. It drew the curse of all nations in Turkiye. The purpose of this group was actually to melt away nationalities and religions under the word ‘Ottomanism,’ which is a foreign term from a political magazine. They first attacked Turkishness with all their might. According to them, there was not a single Turk in Turkiye, or even in the whole world. But yesterday’s magnificent demonstrations by Istanbul Turkish associations were a living answer to them. It is noteworthy that among those who advocate this Ottoman fusion idea, there are no elements other than Turks. Everyone knows how fanatical and conservative Armenians, Greeks, and our Arab brothers are about their nationalities. This fusionist group is sleeping… They don’t know anything. They don’t even know about our disasters, this recent war, the betrayals that Christians living under the Ottoman name did to Turks in this war, that Arabs held conferences against us in Paris while cannons were firing at the Çatalca line.”
They deny Turkishness, a five-thousand-year history, our language, our existence. They even try to invent a religion for the geographical internationalism they will create in Turkiye. One can do nothing but judge their madness. They show such illogic as to say “They are not Turks” about the Turkish element that has been settling in Turkiye, in Anatolia, for ten centuries. Political, administrative, they want to apply the term “without distinction of race or religion” to social matters and societies, and they even encourage the Greeks, Armenians, and Muslims that they will unite to create a historyless, motherless “Ottoman” to take and give girls to each other. The government should arrest them and put them in an asylum. It is a social danger for people who are so ignorant, who live in such delusions, to walk freely among us with pens in their hands. God forbid, they could even cause a revolution. To tell a nation, especially Turkishness, ‘You don’t exist!’ is a fiery curse. The national spirit awakened by the recent disasters in Turkiye has grown, flared up, and engulfed everywhere. Even in the most remote villages of Anatolia, all Turkish children are shouting ‘Turan, Turan.’
The members of the Fusion Club have never gone to the theater, never read newspapers, journals, novels, poems, in short, not even a page of the new national Turkish literature. They shut themselves up in their clubs, constantly organizing their own dreams. When they left their club yesterday, they saw the world. They saw that Turkiye is not the sleeping Turkiye they knew, unaware of its nationality. Yes, approximately thirty thousand people participated in yesterday’s demonstrations. The voice of truth they raised showed them the existence of Turkishness. Undoubtedly they have awakened now. Just as the People of the Cave were astonished when they came out of their caves and saw the world changed, so were they astonished. Thousands of sons of the nation they called ‘non-existent’ passed in front of their caves, proclaiming their national aspirations. If there is anyone among them who is not completely mad, he understood that neither the history nor the name of a living, vigorous nation can be changed.
“O People of the Cave! There is no one in Turkiye who speaks your language. Return to your cave again, fall into your eternal sleep!”
İz’an’s nationalist chief editor had filled exactly five columns with his passionate, dignified, resentful, despised expression. No one was talking about the Ottoman Fusion Club anymore, everyone was talking about “Ashab-ı Kehf,” making fun of them. The humor newspapers were filled with elegies. Even our Armenian press started mocking. How noble the Turks are. They still didn’t resent this charlatan who denied his nation.
Among the first non-Turks to enter the Fusion Club, Diamandis had gone to Athens with the Thessaloniki deputyship. I think he even became a minister there. Angelof had become the undersecretary of the Bulgarian Embassy in Istanbul immediately after the war. Moiz Bori was convicted of embezzlement and expelled. Louis Durant’s secret was also revealed. I had heard that he was running a pension in Beyoğlu. Fraşerli Nadir had become the press director of the Kingdom of Albania. Istanbul newspapers had once written in large letters that he had left Islam and become Catholic. I don’t know what happened to the others. In twelve years the world turned upside down. All life changed. The Ottoman Empire, like Austria and Russia, also went bankrupt. Now Arabs, Armenians, even Jews in Jerusalem have separate states. As for me; what have I become… I… I, over time, became a fanatical nationalist. As Hayganoş loved me, I loved my nation. I understood that there is no, absolutely no difference between family and nationality.
I feel a sweet warmth touching the back of my neck. I turned my head. Hayganoş… My dear, cherished, angelic wife. She’s looking at what I’m writing over my shoulder, asking: “What’s that? Are you writing?…”
“I’m writing my old memories.”
She doesn’t answer. She fixes her large, melancholy eyes on mine. She stands like that. There is such beautiful, such sensitive stillness in her gaze… I ask: “Why are you looking like that?…”
She doesn’t answer. As if she’s going to cry… My heart starts pounding. Could it be a delusion of jealousy? But it’s not possible. A large pearl begins to shine on the long lashes of her right eye. She turns, I get up. Kissing her forehead, I ask again: “Tell me my love, what is your sorrow?”
“What are you writing?”
“Old memories…” She sobs.
“Why are you writing in Turkish, is Armenian bad, coarse, vulgar?…” she says. The pearl falling from her lashes drops onto her cheek. Oh, what a noble woman! A great woman who loves her mother’s language!… She’s jealous of Turkish. I understand, she’s jealous of Turkish. I understand again that if there were no women, if there were no love, just as there would be no family, no happiness, there would be no nationalities either, and we humans would pass through the world miserable, unambitious, inglorious, without competition, wretched, ruined, like plants. Woman, who teaches us love, also teaches us family. And family plants sacred feelings of nationality in our minds. I want to console her: “Don’t cry, my soul. This is a notebook I wrote long ago…”
“Then tear it up…”
Ah, poor Turkish notebook! Should I tear you up now? But no, no… I am not a woman. I can never be as sensitive a nationalist as Hayganoş. I will throw you into a corner where she cannot see you: Sleep there like a bundle of moss that has fallen into the cave of Ashab-ı Kehf… But beware, with your Turkish lines, do not catch my beloved’s eye… Do not make her jealous and make her cry…
Ömer Seyfettin
