My dream for Turkey, by Boris’s great-grandfather
Norman Stone on the dramatic life and death of Ali Kemal, one-time interior minister of Turkey and our mayoral candidate’s forebear
Then the Young Turks, led by the formidable and ruthless Enver Pasha, came to power again, and took Turkey into the first world war. Ali Kemal sat it out, disapprovingly, in Bournemouth, and the two English children were brought up by their grandmother in a village near London. Fetret is a book dreaming of the Turkey that his little son will one day see. It is liberal, modelled on England. It has room, and more than room, for Christian minorities, but it is Turkish. It is Muslim, but the Islam is generous and tolerant. It adheres to its own identity, especially linguistic, but the young must learn French, because French literature is far ahead of any other.
Ali Kemal (incidentally a pseudonym: he was originally called ‘Ali Riza’, after one of the very first, tentative, Turkish nationalists) apparently belongs quite high up the tree in Turkish literature. I have to say ‘apparently’ because he wrote in Ottoman Turkish, and that is a very far cry from the modern language: my copy of Fetret has a small dictionary at the back, translating the old (Arabic and Persian) words for today’s readers. When Kemal Atatürk took over, he changed the script, and drastically modernised the language; and in the Sixties it was even mutilated (there is a superb book on this by Geoffrey Lewis, A Catastrophic Success). Turks disagree quite violently as to the language reform: slavish imitation of the West, or Turkey’s ticket to the modern world? Ali Kemal, who read and wrote very widely, was clearly in two minds. He was quite right to disapprove of the Young Turks’ taking Turkey into the first world war. That produced endless disasters, including the loss of a quarter of the population — Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Kurdish.
Ali Kemal hoped that the British would pick up the pieces and realise his ambitions. His timing was quite wrong; and he ought to have gone with the people who joined Kemal Atatürk in the depths of Anatolia. But he was a decent man, living a lonely life as an exiled litterateur, speaking broken English to a small son who must have seen him as a sort of Martian, and dreaming that one day the little boy would see a different Turkey. And lo and behold.
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Charles
April 24th, 2008 8:35amJust a small point, but Ali Kemal was not lynched. He was, reportedly, killed by women armed with knives and stones en route to the lynching (see NYT online archives article dated 13th Nov 1922). His body was then dragged through the streets before being placed on the scaffold for public view. Gruesome, I know, but pretty much what one would expect of Turkey in its genocidal years.
Ed Hummer
April 24th, 2008 2:20pm"And lo and behold". Although modern Turkey may be the land of milk and honey for Stone, I doubt that islamist state garbed in democratic feathers would have been Ali Kemal's dream.
Max
April 26th, 2008 2:23pmCharles, that sounds rather like my idea of lynching. The (London) Times says he was hanged. His son's memoir of him says that he was deliberately put to death. And he was certainly no Islamist.
Charles
April 27th, 2008 11:47amMax, sounds like you are better read on this subject than I am, so I shall defer to your opinion. I had only stumbled across the NYT article (about Ali Kemal Bey's demise) whilst investigating the fate of another Ali Kemal (a regional governor with a very unsavoury reputation).
According to the NYT piece, Boris's great-grandfather was indeed tried before one General Nureddin Pasha, the Military Governor of Smyrna. He pronounced a death sentence but then Ali Kemal was killed by the women on his way to the scaffold.
His crime was to be known as a prominent 'anti-nationalist'. His death, apparently, caused great concern in Constantinople where he was held in high regard.
M Clyde
April 28th, 2008 12:27pmWhat a fascinating story. What a fascinating man. He sounds fundamentally decent; moderate, urbane, and loyal to the traditional rule and to the traditional foreign policy; loyal to both the British and the Sultan. Such men perish in radical times.
Boris has written a Telegraph article (Nov 07) on Turkey's accession to the EU, of which he remains heartily in favour. I respect his reasons, but like his grandfather I think he fails to read the runes. These are radical times. Traditional attitudes are shifting dramatically.
Turkey is headed in an Islamist nationalist direction. Such a Turkey would be a disaster for Europe.
vangos
May 8th, 2008 5:36pm1.the author of the article has curiously omitted to mention that Turkey joined the I world war on the side of Germany.
2.In a distorted reporting he fails to make clear that the Turkish percentage died fighting the British & Greek armies, while the Greek & Armenian losses in Turkey were the result of genocide practised on the latter two populations by the Turks.
Mustafa Kemal
May 25th, 2008 1:53pmHa ha ha ! so you won't put my views regarding this article up on your site, but you'll do it to those who praises this low life taraitor. I guess after all.. you westerners aren't democratic and has no respect for the ohter side's views. Why this does not surprize me? LOL!!!
God damn you people!!!.
Mustafa Kemal
May 26th, 2008 1:22pmWell..let's see if you have enough guts to put my first two comments.
Typical English hypocracy...
Andrew
June 13th, 2008 9:32pmmustafa kemal, newspapers in Turkey do the same, trust me I know. It is not an English characteristic. Be calm.
Muhsin Mustafa
June 17th, 2008 4:05pmWhy is it that all British people are such gentleman and angels and a perfect example of humanity but others are always killing and doing all this horrible things to others. Have you looked at your history to see how many genocides, hanging and torturing is done by so called ' western' people.Not too long ago in British colonies, and in the name of peace in many countries countless atrocities have been done or allowed to be done because it suited your policies.
But you will argue that all your history is full of 'heroes', but the others are ' barbarians'.
It is matter of which side you are looking from.
Just as a final note even in Russian archives it is proved that Armenians practised genocide on Turks and for your information all the Greeks that died in Turkey were themselves invaders of Turkish land presented to them by the British and allied countries. they were killed during the Turkish Indepence war and as they left they burned and looted villages and raped women.
So as human being all through the history we have killed each other, it is we who decide which are genocide and which are for the country.