WORLD WORLDWIDE TURKEY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Turkey, Yeryuzu Postasi: A River Without a Shore: Anarchism - Cemal Selbuz (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The article titled A River Without a Shore: Anarchism[1]written by Cemal

Selbuz was first published in Birikim magazine, October 2023, issue 414.
---- The first anarchist movements in the Ottoman geography began in the
1890s when a small group that went from Bulgaria to Geneva established
relations with Russian anarchists. This relationship later transformed
into the Bulgarian anarchist movement, which had a significant impact on
the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Thrace and eventually
reached a mass movement, and continued with Alexander Atabekyan, who
made a significant contribution to anarchist propaganda within the
Armenian community with the first Armenian anarchist journals, brochures
and booklets in the same period and in the same city, and the Armenian
anarchists in the center of the Empire, who were influenced by these
activities (almost all the first anarchists in Southern Europe and the
Balkans were people who had previously gone to Geneva and established
contacts with Russian anarchists. Although Ottoman intellectuals
published one of their newspapers (Osmanli) there in the same period,
this anarchist atmosphere of Geneva did not really affect them).
Undoubtedly, the Italian anarchists, who had a short-term impact on the
development of actions against the Empire, should also be included in this.

If we leave aside the "ethno-political" historians who are abundant in
every capital, with the exception of very few sources, studies in the
style of "modern political thoughts in the Ottoman Empire" - including
anarchism - are mostly conducted on Ottoman intellectuals. Communities
other than "Ottoman-Muslim affiliation" come to the agenda only if they
have taken part in organizations established by Ottoman intellectuals in
different periods or if they have formed temporary alliances for a short
period. Similarly, in left-Marxist historiography, figures belonging to
other communities that were the pioneers of the first socialist ideas
and trade union organizations in the Ottoman Empire only find a place
under the name of "portraits from history."

The anarchists, who took shape in the mid-80s and became a political
movement in the last 30 years, also published/are publishing a small
number of short texts on the Ottoman period. These texts mostly use
modern historiography on Ottoman intellectuals as sources or quote from
articles written in Europe in a chronological manner - such as Anarchism
in Halbmond . In the published texts, except for Süreyya Evren's book
Kara Bayrakragin Türkiye'de Yirmi Yili , for example, Armenian
anarchists are either not mentioned at all or are merely mentioned.

Undoubtedly, in this regard, apart from the fact that archives are
closed, sources are scattered and it is difficult to access them, in the
narratives and texts that start with "this geography", there is also a
desire to search for anarchism - if any - in the circle of Ottoman
intellectuals or to present libertarian sensibilities as completely
anarchist within the non-modernist heretic traditions.

Bulgarian and Armenian Anarchists in the Ottoman Empire

To the revolutionary and libertarian socialists!

To the revolutionaries of all countries!

"... Our cause is your cause. Who can say that the dawn of social
revolution rising in the East will not spread throughout the world! We
are depending on your support and we ask the congress delegates to start
a propaganda campaign[...]in their own countries for the Armenian cause".

A group of Armenian libertarians, July 18, 1896

( Der Sozialist , 26 September 1896, No. 39, Berlin)

In this declaration sent to the London congress, the libertarians wrote
that they were fighting for independence and freedom in solidarity with
the workers of the world, against the oppression and massacres inflicted
on the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire.

Atabekyan sent this declaration, which the Armenian libertarians wrote
for the first time in their own name, to the Socialist International in
London in 1896. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) also sent
their own declaration, written in French, to the same congress six days
after the libertarians' declaration:[2]

" Atabekyan sent a declaration signed by the Libertaires Arméniens
(Libertarian Armenians) entitled Aux socialistes revolutionnaires et
libertaires (To Revolutionary and Libertarian Socialists) to the
International Congress in London (July 18, 1896). I translated the same
declaration for Der Sozialist (September 26, 1896) " (M. Nettlau,
Anarchists und Syndikalisten , Band V , p. 482).

The struggle of libertarians within the ARF until this declaration was
also mentioned in a letter sent by Atabekyan to Jaques Gross:

" ...You cannot imagine what peace of mind I have been given by a
distinguished comrade whom I have met here and with whom I have shared a
deep friendship during this time... He is a refugee from Constantinople,
a misunderstood rebel who risks not only his freedom but also his life
at every moment. Although he is a libertarian who believes in our ideas,
since the libertarians in the East are few and weak, he struggles
together with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation... " (Aleksander
Atabekyan's letter to Jaques Gross from Sofia, November 16/28, 1896,
IISG Amsterdam)

The fact that the founders of the anti-colonialist independence
movements of this period sympathized with anarchism, and that anarchists
were even active in these movements, can also be seen in the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation; the early days of the ARF, founded in Tbilisi
in 1890, included anarchists, socialists and nationalists. It is even
said that one of its founders, Kristapor Mikaelyan, was a Bakuninist for
a time and always supported direct action and self-government (AT
Minassian). K. Mikaelyan, who is considered an icon of freedom in
Armenian literature with his militancy and essay writing, also went to
Bulgaria, like Atabekyan and other libertarians from Istanbul. He died
in Bulgaria while trying to throw a bomb at Sultan Abdulhamid II in
Yildiz ( The Fedailer , Avetis Aharonyan).

The propaganda activities of the ARF towards the Muslim population, the
joint militant actions they organized in Edirne and Istanbul with the
Macedonian Local Committee in Istanbul, directed by Dimitar
Vlahof-Gurin, who sympathized with anarchism, against the Sublime
Porte,[3]also influenced the intellectuals who started the second Young
Turks movement:

" The Armenian massacres of 1894-1895 and the actions of the ARF
completely affected the world of thought of the Ottoman intellectuals.
The declaration of the Young Turks called on the peoples of the Ottoman
Empire to fight together against the despotic regime." (YA Petrosyan,
Young Turks )

The fact that libertarians in the Ottoman Empire took part in the
independence movements, beyond their small numbers, also had a great
impact on the fact that they saw anarchists as the closest to them in
the 19th century anti-colonialist movements; one of the geographies
where relations between anarchists and the independence movements of the
period were intense was the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. The most
striking influence in this regard was the Bulgarian anarchists in Thrace
and Macedonia, the last regions of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.
The fact that Bulgarian anarchists were a decisive factor in the
Macedonian national liberation movement dates back to the 1890s, when
they were influenced by anarchism.

The small Bulgarian group that came to Switzerland in the 1890s, where
Russian immigrants were densely populated and the influence of Bakunin
and Nechayev was still felt, was deeply influenced by the works of
Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Jean Grave and Emile Henry from France. Within
the MSRC (Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee) founded by this
group, the two currents other than the social democrats, the nihilists
and anarchists, were more active. While the MSRC[4]established relations
with many currents and committees in the Balkans, it gave more
importance to its relations with Armenian revolutionaries, especially in
Central Europe, the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire (Stefan Troebst).

Unfortunately, the historiography of the anarchists, who were in almost
international solidarity with the anti-colonial movements of the period
- Cuba, the Philippines and the Balkans - on the impact of the
anarchists on the Ottoman geography is quite inadequate - except for a
few studies conducted in Bulgaria - under the titles of the "Macedonian
problem" or the "Balkan wars". In this ethno-political historiography in
Turkey and the Balkans, anarchism either finds a place only as an idea
or the militant actions they organized against the Ottomans and affected
the entire region in various periods are insistently ignored for the
reasons of "keeping their distance from terrorism". On the other hand,
in new anarchist historiography studies on the role and impact of
anarchists in the anti-colonial movement, different perspectives that
include similarities or differences regarding today are opened to
discussion.

Anarchists, who had a worldwide communication network within the
anti-colonial movement, influenced this movement in two ways, or we can
say that they were influenced by them. It is possible to divide the
anarchist movement of the period into two: a current that remained
within the pure independence movement of anti-colonialism and melted
into it over time, and a current that tried to transform this struggle
into a class struggle against the states. We can see both of these
currents more clearly among the anarchists who played a decisive role in
the struggle in the Balkans. While some of the Thracian and Macedonian
anarchists declared the Turkish poor of the Empire as enemies and
expressed nationalist discourses more loudly, on the other hand, they
were actively struggling to transform the independence movement into an
anti-authoritarian, social revolution.[5]In a statement, the
revolutionary commander of Thrace stated that they were fighting for a
cause that went beyond ethnic borders and included Turkish peasants as well:

" We use our weapons against tyrants and oppressors, we fight for
freedom and humanity, our cause is above all national and ethnic
differences... We stand with all those who suffer under the dark Empire
of the Sultan, including the Turkish peasants. " (Lucien van der Walt
and Michael Schmidt, Black Flame , p. 319)

Known for his important studies on Macedonia, S. Troebst draws attention
to the importance of researching the anarchist movement, which affected
the entire political and social process in the Ottoman geography and
still remains a big gap. In this regard, the memoirs of Gr. Balkanski
(Georgi Grigorov), an influential figure among the Bulgarian emigrant
anarchists in Europe, whom S. Troebst also attaches importance to,
especially because of his important contributions to the Balkans and the
"Macedonian question", published in 1969, are still waiting to be
translated for this geography.

" All of this shows the never-ending nationalist turmoil that was going
on in Macedonia, not only with the widespread social democracy but also
with the wars from 1912 to 1918 and the communist and dictatorial
regimes that emerged afterwards. Bulgaria, as a country of militant
anarchism, has sometimes seen countless deaths and terrible tragedies
(Jambol)[6], like a part of Spain . But it is the only country in
Eastern Europe where real anarchism has taken place. " (Max Nettlau,
Band V , p. 477)

Alexander Atabekyan[7]

(Since my two works on Atabekyan have been published before, I will
briefly mention them here, see Siyahi , no. 9)

After graduating from high school in Shushi in 1886, Atabekyan came to
Geneva to study medicine and joined the social democratic "Hinchak"
party in Geneva in 1889. Working as a volunteer typesetter in the
Hinchak (Çan) newspaper of the same name, published by Armenian
socialist Avetis Nazarbekyan, Atabekyan actively fought against the
massacres, oppression and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire and the Caucasus. (Max Nettlau).

Peter Kropotkin's pamphlet Words of a Rebel, which greatly influenced
the young anarchists of the period and had a wide circulation, also
influenced the young Atabekyan (1890). And in a short time, while he
established relations with anarchist-communists, he also began to
translate anarchist texts into Armenian. Max Nettlau writes that the
recognition of Armenian anarchist publications (1891-1894) was due to
Atabekyan's devoted work.

Atabekyan first started working at the printing house of the old
Ukrainian Kuzman, which was almost the only address for anarchists in
Geneva, to compile Armenian and Russian articles. Later, with a
versatile printing technique he established in the boarding house he
stayed in, he printed the declarations titled " To the Armenian peasants
" signed in Paris and " Letter from an international anarchist group to
the Armenian revolutionaries " (1891). Later, under the name
Anarchiceskaya Biblioteka , he published Armenian translations of the
most widely read anarchist articles of the period:

Sofia Baradina's speech

Malatesta[?]Among Farmers

Peter Kropotkin, The Abolition of the State, Anarchism, Political Rights
(Paris 1893)

Elisé Recluss, To the Farmer's Brother (Paris 1893) (Mechitarists
Library Vienna) On the cover of this mini-booklet, there is a statement
in Ottoman Turkish stating that permission was obtained from the Ottoman
Ministry of Education.

Atabekyan met Kropotkin, whom the anarchists of the time eagerly wanted
to meet, in London in 1891 and undertook the task of printing and
delivering Russian texts for the first anarchist group formed in
southern Russia. Upon his return to Geneva, he printed the first volume
of Bakunin's The Paris Commune and State Thought in Russian to send to
Russia. (M. Nettlau, Anarchists und Syndikalisten, Band V )

The pamphlets published by Atabekyan had a wide circulation among
Armenian emigrants (M. Nettlau). Their distribution in the South
Caucasus and the Balkans was organized by Stoianoff, who came to
Bulgaria after being exiled from Paris. Jason Adams also states that
Atabekyan's pamphlets were widely distributed among Armenian
revolutionary movements in Türkiye, and other sources also state that
they reached Istanbul and Izmir.

The continuous and massive Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire
(Sason, Samsun, Zeytun, ...) affected Atabekyan greatly .

" ... The events of 1895 disturbed Atabekyan so much that, as far as I
know, he was unable to continue his anarchist activities. " (Max
Nettlau, Age.)

Atabekyan left Europe after being notified of the exile decision given
for his anarchist activities in Paris, and went first to Bulgaria and
then to the Rasht region of Iran, where he would stay for sixteen years[?].

Hamayankh

The first anarchist magazine in Armenian, Hamayankh (Commune), published
by Atabekyan, was published in Paris in 1894 with five issues. (Max
Nettlau) The first pages of the eight-page magazine contained articles
on anarchism and the Armenian revolutionary movement in general. The
other pages gave brief news about the anarchist movement and political
events from around the world under the title "International
Revolutionary Movement". Some of the articles on the Armenian massacres
and resistances were booklets published by the ARF (Armenian
Revolutionary Federation).[?]Adams writes that the nihilist rhetoric in
the articles on the Armenian resistance belonged to Atabekyan. For
example , the "Sason-Mus resistances" in the first issue of Hamayankh
was written with a lyrical, nihilist rhetoric by Alfred Telvo[?]. Apart
from these texts, Hamayankh also contains texts criticizing the
centralized and authoritarian structures of the Armenian revolutionary
movements.

There are no articles or writings in Hamayankh written by Atabekyan . It
seems possible that he wrote under another name because of the police
investigation in Paris and the decision to exile him. Anahide Ter
Minassian also writes that the absence of Atabekyan's name may have been
a precaution against the constant surveillance and prosecution of
anarchists at the time.

Moscow

Atabekyan left the city of Rasht in northern Iran, where he worked as a
doctor for many years, and came to Moscow in 1917. There is no other
documentation about his years in Iran, apart from the brief information
written by A. Birukov, stating that Atabekyan joined the Russian army at
the end of 1914 and worked as the head of a field hospital on the
Caucasus front[?].

Atabekyan participated in discussions on the October revolution in
Anarxia , the newspaper of the anarchist federation in Moscow . He
published 30 articles, including the hope of transforming the October
revolution into an anarchist revolution and the subsequent struggle
against the Bolsheviks' domination of power.

In 1918, Atabekyan, together with G. Sandomirsku, founded the first
Moscow anarcho-cooperative printing house, Pochin (Initiative), which
was organized in a cooperative manner. The Pochin publishing house,
typeset and layouted by Atabekyan, printed 24 books and pamphlets,
mostly written by him. In 1919, they published the Pochin magazine with
the same name (A. Birukov). Pochin , which was published in 11 issues ,
included the letters and memoirs of Kropotkin, whom Atabekyan had always
admired, his own correspondence with Kropotkin, and his experiences in
the Middle East and the Caucasus.

In January 1921, Kropotkin, who was seriously ill at home in Dimitrov,
was accompanied by his friend and doctor Atabekyan. Kropotkin's
condition worsened day by day and he died on February 13, 1921. The
Bolsheviks' proposal for an official state funeral was rejected by his
family. The funeral was held by the anarchist committee established
throughout Russia, with Emma Goldman, Aleksander Berkman, Aleksander
Atabekyan and other anarchists. This was the largest and last anarchist
demonstration in Russia.

Atabekyan also had his share of the purge movement against anarchists
that began with the Kronstadt rebellion. In 1920 , he was arrested by
the Cheka for opposing the press law and sentenced to a six-month
concentration camp. When he was arrested again in 1921, he was sentenced
to exile to the Caucasus. This exile was stopped as a result of the
initiative of Kropotkin's family ( Répression de l'anarchisme en Russie
soviétique , Editions de la "Librairie sociale" Paris).

We have different information from different sources about Atabekyan's
situation after 1921: Atie van der Horst and Elly Koen's Atabekyan
Papers archive prepared for the IISG states that he died in the labor
camps in Soviet Russia in 1940, A. Birukov states that he died in Moscow
in 1933, French sources (Editions de la "Librairie sociale", ibid.) and
Paul Avrich in his book Anarchists in the Russian Revolution write that
he disappeared in exile, and GP Maximoff writes that he died in exile.

During my research on Atabekyan, I asked my friend Diran, who helped me
with Armenian sources, to check whether Atabekyan still had any living
relatives in Russia. The news he sent me was invaluable to me. Diran
found out that Atabekyan's great-grandson, Andrew Birukov, was living in
Moscow. When I visited A. Birukov in 2008, I started with the question I
was most curious about; what happened to Atabekyan during the arrests
and exiles in the 1920s? Because, in all known anarchist sources to
date, it was written that he was missing or died in exile. Andrew showed
me a document from the Soviet period that he had pulled out of his files
and said, "My great-grandfather was burned." At that moment, I had heard
something completely new, beyond what had been written before, that I
could not have predicted. With a little sadness, a little surprise...

Atabekyan, who had been suffering from tuberculosis for a long time,
lost consciousness after the disease worsened and died in Moscow in 1933
and was subsequently cremated.

The fact that Atabekyan was not heard from for a long time during the
Bulgarian and Iranian periods, his fragility, and especially the effects
of his deep sadness and helplessness in the face of the Armenian
massacres are also understood from his correspondence. Likewise, during
the Ottoman-Russian war, when he volunteered as a doctor in a field
hospital on the Caucasus front (Birukov finds it understandable that his
great-grandfather joined the Russian army as a doctor, since he was
Russian), there is no news of him - except from his family - during this
period. However, the enigma of the period from 1920 until his death in
anarchist sources is due to the fact that the purge and exile movement
against anarchists throughout the Soviet Union completely eliminated
meetings and correspondence between anarchists, and Atabekyan contracted
a fatal illness. So much so that the few anarchists who survived this
purge and became refugees in Berlin and Paris could see no other
possibility than that those who remained in the Soviet Union had been
exiled, arrested or killed. During this wave of terror, Atabekyan, whose
second arrest was stopped by Kropotkin's family, returned to the medical
profession at a time when there was no one left for him to reach, but he
gave it up due to his advanced illness. Atabekyan, who was able to go
out only with the help of his family members, lived until 1933,
unannounced, lost and completely locked in his house.

Baha Tewfik

" ...A nihilist, a deviant person who did not recognize any
authority..., a dissident personality who declared war on the dominant
ideas, beliefs and acceptances of the period, who was never even close
to any party... "

These lines are almost the common expression of what was said about Baha
Tevfik in the literary and political circles of the period.

Baha Tevfik, a completely different person who did not fit the civil
servant-intellectual type of the Ottoman intellectuals, resigned from
the civil service many times because he could not "tolerate gratitude".
(Riza Bagci) Baha Tevfik, who introduced the materialist-evolutionist
philosophy (Baha Tevfik also defended the biological-evolutionary
materialism of the 19th century, which was also a widespread tendency
within the Young Turks movement) and published the book Nietzsche's Life
and Philosophy , one of the people he was most influenced by, openly
opposed the moral and value understanding of the period and stated
without hesitation that he was an atheist. In a period when nationalism
was effective, he took a libertarian stance against nationalism with the
words, " ...In this regard, first of all, it is necessary to get rid of
all kinds of tyranny. Nationality, like the past, is also tyranny. "
(Riza Bagci, On Baha Tevfik ). Riza Bagci states that some sources
associate Baha Tevfik with the Ottoman Socialist Party and its circle,
and that these sources are baseless, and that he ideologically rejected
socialism during his Izmir years and based his views on individualism
against society.

Baha Tevfik, in the intensive publishing activity that started with the
declaration of the Second Constitutional Era, published dozens of
newspapers, magazines and Felsefe Mecmuasi , the second philosophy
magazine after Selanik . In seven years, he published 17 volumes of
works, some of which were written jointly, mostly containing social and
philosophical thoughts. In these works, B. Tevfik mostly dealt with the
individual, who was never on the agenda in Ottoman social and political
thought and whom he saw as the most important being in life.

Rather than introducing the importance and value of the individual in
society, Baha Tevfik places the individual at the center of his
political perspective by stating that the individual is the essence of
social and political life, and that Plato, one of the ancient Greek
thinkers, did not attach any importance to the individual and sacrificed
the individual for society:

"...Today, even the most extreme socialists confirm that the happiness
and salvation of humanity is possible with Aristotle's
theory-individualism rather than with Plato's essentials-individualism."
( Felsefe-i Ferd )

B. Tevfik addresses socialists in these lines, but his understanding of
the individual does not include the "socialist-individual" imagination
imposed on society as "sacrifice" or "self-sacrifice". According to him,
the individual can be free as long as he is separate from society and is
taken as the basis in everything. However, as will be seen later, Baha
Tevfik sees socialism as a "reasonable" form of thought and governance
for the freedom of the individual.

When the expression "future anarchism" in the last section of Felsefe-i
Ferd is taken into consideration, it can be said that B. Tevfik's
individual-based social and political thoughts contain libertarian
tendencies. (Without going into the debates between M. Ö. Alkan, who
once called Baha Tevfik a liberal, Riza Bagci, who said he could be a
nihilist, and Burhan Sayli, who said he was definitely an anarchist, I
am leaving this short assessment open to free throws as a reasoning.) In
order to better understand whether Tevfik's individual imagination is
anarchistic or not, it is still useful to look at bearded people.

Bakunin, who tried to bring together the two currents of anarchism,
individualist and collective anarchism, stated that true individual
freedom is only possible in a free and just society, that the
individual's unity with society is based on will and voluntariness, and
that the individual can always give up this unity. Another point that is
striking here is that Bakunin made this effort from an "individualist"
vein rather than a "sacrifice to the community".

First of all, B. Tevfik separates himself from the "rejection of the
state" that dominates the individual the most, which is the
distinguishing feature of these two currents of anarchism. In his long
texts on decentralization, he states that centralized governments
restrict the freedoms of the individual and that liberal
decentralization is "preferable". It is very clear that B. Tevfik
foresees that a liberal state would be good for the rights and freedoms
of the individual. Similarly, with its view that focuses on the
individual in every situation, it separates itself from this aspect of
collectivist anarchism, which says that the real development of the
individual can only be possible with the liberation of the social
sphere. However, it unites with the evolutionary aspect of individualist
anarchism on this issue.

Baha Tevfik expresses his predictions regarding anarchism in his article
"The End of the Age and the Result of the Philosophy of the Individual"
as follows:

" I see 'anarchism' in this new age. In my opinion, humanity, which has
passed from slavery to wage slavery and from wage slavery to socialism,
will eventually reach anarchism and there will feel all the independence
and grandeur of individuality. " ( Felsefe-i Ferd , p. 112)

I have previously stated that Baha Tevfik also defended the evolutionary
materialism that was generally accepted among Ottoman intellectuals. In
fact, the fact that he stated in the preface of Felsefe-i Ferd that he
took Emile Durkheim as his role model on this issue better explains that
the above lines were written from an evolutionary perspective. B. Tevfik
sees socialism here as a "reasonable" administration rather than an
"ideal" one. In the section on the difference between anarchism and
socialism that he mentioned before the above quote: " In my opinion,
socialism is a social doctrine that tries to strengthen social life
against the individual and the individual's merits. " (Felsefe-i Ferd)
shows his fundamental difference of thought with socialism. According to
him, socialism, just like the liberal state vision, is a balancing and
good administration for the freedom of the individual in order to reach
the "ultimate".

Does Baha Tevfik, with his libertarian side that prioritizes the
individual against the 'state-society' and sees the ultimate future of
humanity in anarchism, and his liberal-evolutionary side that wants a
state that would be reasonable for the individual, stand closer to the
19th century British social scientists John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer
and Edward Carpenter, who were both liberals and libertarians who
defended all rights of the individual against the state and who were
advocates of the most minimal government?

Abdullah Cevdet, who wanted a "river with banks"

" ... General disarmament! What a sweet dream for the warring peoples
who are tired of killing each other senselessly for the pleasure of dark
tyrants! What a deceitful intrigue for those who can distinguish truth
from lies. Hypocrisy developed by one of the most terrible minds that
ever wore the crown!... Now the autocrats feel the need to change the
old forms of government... As long as the people do not understand the
value of their humanity[and do not abolish the state??], the tyrants
will hang over the people like the sword of Damocles... "

(Abdullah Cevdet, "Désarmement", Les Temps Nouveaux Supplément
littéraire , No 9, 24-30 June 1899[Sükrü Hanioglu states that A. Cevdet
made use of Tolstoy's letter published in the Daily Chronicle on 15
February 1899 in a significant part of his article .])

The regular writers of Les Temps Nouveaux Supplément littéraire , the
sequel to La Revolte published by Jean Grave , included Jean Grave,
Peter Kropotkin, Elisé Reclus, Bernard Lanarc, Octave Mirbeau. In
addition to A. Cevdet's article "Désarmement" (disarmament), another
article of his that was published in the same journal and attracted
considerable attention (Max Nettlau) was "Un Précurseur Anarchiste,
Ebou-Ala-El-Muarri" (An anarchist pioneer Ebu'l Ala el-Maarrî) (see
Appendix).

S. Hanioglu, after stating that A. Cevdet was also interested in
anarchism philosophically, finds his article on El-Maarri "interesting"
and says that "he considered being an anarchist and being a Serazad in
religious thought as equal." Although it is not quite understandable
that he came to such a conclusion, A. Cevdet's introduction to
El-Maarri, especially in the introduction part of his article, as "a
very famous figure in the East with his free thoughts" shows that he
thought Serazadism carried libertarian sensibilities rather than
equating being an anarchist with being a Serazad.

Abdullah Cevdet, who was a regular writer for the Mesveret and Osmanli
newspapers published in Paris and Geneva by the Young Turk movement ,
was the only person in the movement who was interested in anarchism
during his early years in Paris. Later, in an article in the Ictihad
magazine he published, he stated that during his early years in Europe,
the books of Bakunin, Kropotkin and Reclus were his Bible and that he
desired the abolition of the state. Similarly, his admiration for Elisé
Reclus[8]and his fervent recommendation that his work Evolution et
Révolution be translated into Turkish stemmed from his anarchist
tendencies at the time. (Sükrü Hanioglu, Abdullah Cevdet )

A. Cevdet's interest in anarchism is not very different from the
modernist thought world of the Young Turks team in Paris. Cevdet was
also interested in anarchism as a more effective means of struggle
against religion, which he saw as the greatest obstacle to the process
of "political modernization" in the Ottoman Empire. Sükrü Hanioglu, who
states that the reaction against religion was a general tendency among
the Ottoman intellectuals who adopted biological materialism, conveys
how Yahya Kemal's reaction against religion during the same period in
Istanbul led him to take an interest in anarchism and that Abdullah
Cevdet encouraged him in this regard.[9]

Among the Ottoman intellectuals, only a few, like Cevdet, were
interested in anarchism. The vast majority of them were state-funded (so
much so that the Young Turks' articles against Abdulhamid in Paris,
titled "Killer Sultan" or praising the anarchist Guillaume Tell who
killed the King of Italy, were sent to Abdulhamid in return for money)
and their sole purpose was to save the state. Although the Young Turks
did not embrace anarchism and kept their distance, the Italian anarchist
Amilcare Cipriani supported Ahmet Riza by participating in his defense
in the trials to close down Mesveret (S. Hanioglu) .

While students and intellectuals who went to Europe from the Balkans at
about the same time as the Young Turks established relations with
Russian immigrants in Switzerland (Geneva, Bern), where anarchism was
active, and formed the first anarchist groups in order to get rid of the
Ottomans, Ottoman intellectuals, whose main aim was to save the Ottoman
state, were interested in French schools such as positivism and
nationalism in Paris.

Max Nettlau describes how A. Cevdet, who said that rejecting the state
was like wanting a "river without a shore," later found himself on a shore:

" ...Kropotkin was always indignant when he saw the Young Turks'
newspaper , Mesveret (Paris, Ahmed Riza), many issues of which he sent
to me without reading them... These were all Paris organs of
intellectuals from the time of Dreyfus, who, instead of fighting for
good things in their own countries, were preaching the foreign policy of
Delcassé and Poincaré, such as L'Européen (since 1902), Le Courrier
européen (since the end of 1904), Les Annales des nationalités (since
1912, edited by Painlevé, Seignobos, etc.) etc. " (Max Nettlau,
Anarchist und Syndikalisten, Band V , pp. 483-484)

"Humanitarian Anarchism, Anger Anarchism"

In the Ottoman Empire, this typology, which came to the present day with
the addition of the new vein of Marxist 'statism', which was
'enlightened' in the '60s', 'putschist' in the 70s' and 'patriotic' in
the '70s' and said that it would be more powerful than the bourgeoisie
of its own state, during the process of becoming an 'enlightened'
nation-state, and later 'Republican intellectual', never gave up on
growing in its main source, the state. For this reason, it always gave
priority to adopting the political ideas that fed that source. Adopting
anarchism was almost as difficult as proving one's maturity among this
segment. But one could not be unaware of world conditions either...

The world; just like today, meant medium-media back then . In other
words, the one in the center dominated the center; the world's
information was passed from the center by adapting to it. The
contradictions around the center; were designed in accordance with the
center. But a thought or an action directed towards the center; its
chemistry is surprising!

" Anarchists! You trembled when you saw the title, didn't you? "

These lines were written by Ahmet Rifki in the Zekâ magazine published
by Baha Tevfik, as a continuation of the article titled " Anarchists ",
addressing the reader. Ahmet Rifki says that he was also afraid of
anarchism for a while, and that anarchism made him think of "political
thugs" and "terrible murders". Ahmet Rifki, who was arrested on the
grounds that he opposed Abdülhamid, also tells Abdülhamid that he hated
the Belgian anarchist Ed. Guers, who was caught in the bombing he
organized in Yildiz, when he saw him in prison.

One day , after seeing and reading Kropotkin's book Anarchy in the
Babikyan bookstore, A. Rifki, who was very impressed by "legal and
philosophical" anarchism, recommended to his readers first Anarchy ,
then Conquest of Bread and Memoirs of a Revolutionary , which he called
"the most important and perfect philosophy", by giving the address of
the bookstore.[The books mentioned here are the French editions of
Kropotkin's book]Later, after reading Jean Grave and Charles Malato's
Philosophy of Anarchy and Individual and Society , he condemned this
approach as "anarchism-violent", that is, irritable. However, he
approved of the philosophical side of "ideological anarchism-anarchism
ideale", which he defined as "philosophy of humanity". According to A.
Rifki, intellectual anarchism is " an action that tries to close the
gaps of life within the framework dictated by personal freedom, not to
sell one's independence to anyone, and to find the most effective
measures to cure the social wounds and sad diseases of humanity . "
(Akt. M. Ö. Alkan)

The protest action organized by Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and Arthur Conan
Doyle, together with Kropotkin and other anarchists, against the
sentence of anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer to death by a military
court after he was arrested following the workers' uprising in Catalonia
in 1909 spread worldwide. Translations of articles and protest actions
about Ferrer were widely covered in Bahçe, Istirak, 20. Yüzyilda Zekâ
and Resimli Kitap , which were also published in Istanbul and
Thessaloniki at the time. Ahmet Rifki published an article he translated
about Ferrer, and an article he wrote himself titled "For Ferrer" in
Istirak:

" ...If Ferrer is dead, the human society is feeding thousands of
devoted followers of his profession. Today, the futile attempts of that
inspiring intelligence are being brought about and will be brought about
by the struggles of his cabinet members and the efforts of his lovers.
Sincere and final greetings! Thousands of regrets and hatreds for this
last brutal act of his morality, for the lustful domination of the
Jezuvits!.. " (Kerim Sadi, Contribution to the History of Socialism in
Turkey , p. 266)

In a footnote to a poem written for Bakunin by Hayran in Istirak , it is
written: "The political life of this great altruist will be published in
our newspaper by Ahmet Rifki Bey." (Dr. Hayriye Topçuoglu, Bektasi Ahmet
Rifki, His Life and Works ).

Ahmet Rifki, who spent his life in exile and prison as a Bektashi,
continued his 'chronic' opposition in the Republic period as well as in
the Ottoman period and remained in exile until the end of his life.

In the period 1909-1912, anarchist texts were few in number and could
only be read in a second language; articles on anarchism were published
in magazines as articles containing introductions, criticisms, and even
hatred. In Resimli Kitap , M. Rauf wrote introductory articles under the
titles "Nihilism and Anarchism", Haydar Rifat wrote "Anarchist Parties",
Bedi Nuri wrote a commentary in Ulum-u Iktisadiye ve Içtimaiye magazine
rejecting individual anarchism with the content "Anarchism is filled
with an optimistic, humanitarian moral philosophy" , articles defending
anarchism such as E. Lami's "The Most Glorious Mubariz of the 19th
Century-Insaniyeti Proudhon" etc. were also published in Istirak. (Kerim
Sadi/M. Ö. Alkan)

During this short three-year period, there were heated promotions and
discussions about new ideas and movements in the political, social and
literary fields in Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Izmir (a publishing
activity unprecedented in the entire Ottoman and Republican periods),
but with the Republic, not a trace of all this remained, as if it had
never happened.

Constantinople

Starting from 1864, 10,000 Italian immigrant workers were employed in
the railways, coal mines, yarn factories and shipyards operated by
British and Italian companies, primarily in Izmir and Istanbul, as well
as in the Aegean and Black Sea regions. (Oliver Jens Schmitt, Levantiner
) In the early periods, these workers were brought by companies because
of their skilled workers and production experience, and were later
followed by nomadic workers looking for work. Since Italian workers
lived as nomads in Europe as in the Ottoman Empire, they were preferred
more as cheap labor. The networks of Italian workers at that time
extended from Odessa to Galata, Izmir, and Thessaloniki, to Beirut and
Alexandria in the East, and to the ports of Southern France, Italy and
Austria in the West. Although not as frequent as in these regions, Latin
and North America should also be included in this network of relations.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, Italian workers, who migrated the most to
Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, were joined by Balkan and Spanish workers
after 1870.[10]

Especially between 1870 and 1890, Balkan, Italian and Spanish immigrant
workers migrated in masses to Egypt, North Africa, some parts of the
Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia. So much so that between 1870 and
1914, Italian immigrant workers, whose number reached 14 million, were
known as Workers of the World . (Ilham Khuri Makdisi)

One of the important junctions of the intense nomadic worker movement
between North Africa and Italy was the port of Izmir. In 1887, 2,000
poor Italian workers, including boatmen and fishermen, lived in the La
Punta[Alsancak?]district of Izmir. After the Italian migrant workers
found work and earned as much money as they wanted, they generally
returned to Italy, but those who could not find work and did not even
have money to return, settled in the poor neighborhoods of the cities
they came to, as in Izmir.

The immigrant Italian workers who came to Istanbul mostly worked in the
Haliç shipyard, in the Zonguldak port construction and in the coal
mines. After the wealthy Levantines moved to Pera, Galata became a
district where Italian workers lived and carried out their political
activities. In the late 19th century, Galata, Pera and the Izmir port
became the chosen regions of Italian anarchists who wanted to retreat
for a while and to disappear from the persecution and oppression in
Europe. Italian anarchists, who had to constantly travel between large
ports due to the strict prosecution of the Ottoman police and the
Consulate authorities, found the opportunity to continue their anarchist
activities by receiving support from Italian immigrant workers working
in large enterprises. The Italian anarchists, who actively organized and
published in Alexandria and Beirut, also began to organize in Istanbul:

" Ugo Parrini, deported from Alexandria in 1878, came to Constantinople
via Syria, where he founded the first anarchist group. " (Max Nettlau,
Band V )

We understand that Italian anarchists were also influential in the
development of strikes[11]and other new forms of struggle against the
Ottomans, especially in Istanbul and in port cities such as
Thessaloniki, Alexandria, Beirut and Izmir between 1872 and 1908:

" ...The development of the first actions was also influenced by the
Italian anarchists in the Empire. The Italian anarchists, who were
active in Egypt and Turkey, attended the London congress in 1881 with a
delegate from Turkey. " (Jean Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste en France )

At the last congress of the anarchist International held in London on
July 14-19, 1881, the federation of Istanbul and Alexandria was approved
from Malatesta's list, together with other Italian delegates:

... (25) Errico Malatesta - ......Revolutionary Socialists of Marseille,
Socialists of Marken, Anarchists of Geneva; Socialist-Revolutionary
League of Turin. International Federations of Constantinople and
Alexandria (Egypt) (Max Nettlau, Anarchists und Sozialrevolutionäre,
Band III , p. 193).

The anarchists' relations with the established public are only at the
level of transmission of publications, due to differences in language
and religion. Some of the Armenian anarchist texts are coordinated by
Italian anarchists in Egypt and Turkey to reach the Armenian communities
in these countries.[12]

Italian anarchists who came to Istanbul in the early 1900s tried to
cover their tracks by working in the Golden Horn, the largest shipyard
of the period, used by the Italian firm Ansaldo Armstrong for
shipbuilding and renovation. One reason the anarchists chose this
shipyard was that the Italian workers working there were the only
community they could establish relations with due to their openness to
anarchist and socialist ideas. The Catholic Church complained against
the increasing anarchist activities in the shipyard over time, saying
that "anarchists and socialists are trying to exploit Italy's colonial
structures by disguising themselves as workers." The activities of the
anarchists, who were closely monitored by the Ottoman police and Italian
consulate officials, also mobilized the Italian Foreign Ministry. In a
letter sent to the Constantinople consulate in 1903: " Attention to the
increasing anarchist activities! The anarchists are camouflaging
themselves as a Levantine gentleman, also using their names. " (Oliver
Jens Schmitt, ibid.) With these warnings and the involvement of
informants in the ongoing prosecution, the anarchists were deported:

"(Jetta Pasqual file) Jetta Pasqual, who lived in Alexandria from 1887
to 1901 and went to Piraeus with a Jewish prostitute , settled in the
notorious Gallo d'oro Hotel in Galata in April 1902 to establish contact
with Errico Malatesta, whose connections to the anarchist journal II
Risvegilo , published in Geneva, were known and who had attracted the
attention of the Ottoman and Italian authorities . After the Ottoman
police had two Italians confirm Pasqual and Malatesta's activities,
Pasqual was deported in October 1902. " (OJ Schmitt)

However, another important meeting ten years ago went smoothly. Icilio
Ugo Parrini, an Italian anarchist who also came from Egypt and was well
known in Alexandria, met with Giacomo Costa, who published the first
anarchist newspaper with him in Alexandria, in Istanbul. Parrini stayed
in Istanbul for 18 months.[13]

Another anarchist who traveled between Alexandria, Beirut, Izmir and the
ports of Italy was Errico Malatesta. Arrested in Alexandria in 1878 on
the grounds of the assassination of King Umberto I and deported to
Syria, Malatesta applied to be extradited to Italy from the Italian
consulate in Syria. Enraged by the rejection of his request, Malatesta
was about to throw the inkwell on the table at the officer's face when
the consul intervened and stopped him. Reluctantly accepting the
consul's offer that he could only be sent to Izmir because he was
"persona non grata" in Italy, Malatesta boarded a French ship to go to
Izmir... (Piero Brunello-Pietro Di Paola, Malatesta )

It is known that Malatesta came to Izmir, but we have no records of
whether he stayed there or not. Although Italian Consulate agents tried
to keep him in Izmir and later to arrest him in Naples, thanks to the
friendship he established with the captain of the ship he boarded, he
once again overcame the difficulties and reached Italy, where he always
wanted to return.

Malatesta's biographer, Max Nettlau, states that he returned to Naples
immediately after each trip and continued his activities there,
preferring to remain in Italy as long as possible rather than become an
international migrant.[14]

" ...I have had the great fortune to have met many of them personally
and to have shared their friendship. I feel a deep gratitude for making
my life rich, colourful and interesting. Among the many virtuous men and
women with whom my life paths crossed and who travelled great distances
in the same direction as me was my friend Abraham Frumkin, who is a rare
and very valuable figure in our ranks ." (Rudolf Rocker, Dem lieben
Freund und Kameraden A. Frumkin , IISG. Amsterdam)

Another familiar anarchist figure who passed through Constantinople was
Abraham Frumkin. A. Frumkin[15], an important figure in the Jewish
anarchist movement, came to Constantinople from Egypt in 1891 to study
law and learn Ottoman Turkish in return for a scholarship. When the
promised scholarship did not arrive, A. Frumkin left Istanbul and went
to America in 1893. A. Frumkin, who was introduced to anarchism through
his Jewish friends in New York, returned to Istanbul in 1894 as an
anarchist, with a large number of anarchist publications and books.
Frumkin met Nastia and Moses Shapiro, who had to come to Istanbul
because of their revolutionary activities in Southern Russia, and began
a long friendship with the Shapiros, which would continue in London.
Moses Shapiro, together with Frumkin, who also edited the Arbeter
Fraynd[16]in London , published the classics of European literature in
Yiddish, mostly in Frumkin's translations. Moses Shapiro also published
the newspaper Propaganist , which published eleven issues, on his own .
(William J. Fishmann)

All these publications were published in the terrible poverty of London
(Kropotkin sometimes needed half a crown to buy a return ticket during
his visits to London, and when there was no money left in their house to
buy bread, Kropotkin's wife went door to door to borrow money from her
neighbors) and people would give their last penny without hesitation to
publish the publications. When unemployment and poverty began to
threaten people's lives in 1898, Frumkin went to Paris to create new
opportunities, while Moses was forced to return to Istanbul.

A dog in Galata

" The Misfits, who belong neither to a party nor to a group. As
individuals we set out without saving and blinding beliefs. Our disgust
with society does not cause us to form fixed beliefs. We struggle with
cheerful destructiveness and do not dream of a good future. What does a
tomorrow that will be in a few centuries' time matter to us? What
concerns us, nephews, is not to obey all laws, all rules and all
theories - including the anarchist - and from now on, we want to devote
all our compassion, anger, rage and instinct to being proudly ourselves. "

This manifesto of the "nonconformists" was written by Zo d'Axa, the
publisher of the four-page weekly magazine L'Endehors , which first
appeared in Paris in 1891 and "broke all social shackles." Among the
writers of L'Endehors were militant anarchists such as Sébastien Faure,
Louise Michel, Emile Henry and Malatesta, as well as writers and poets
such as Emile Verhaeren, Saint-Pol-Roux, Vielé-Griffin, Octave Mirbeau,
Tristan Bernard and Felix Feneon.

Published during a period when "propaganda in the act" was effective ,
L'Endehors quickly became a target of the state, subject to constant
searches, prosecutions and arrests. Zo d'Axa left Paris in 1892 upon an
arrest warrant issued for "supporting a terrorist organization" and
embarked on a long journey, first to London, then to Germany and Italy,
then to Istanbul via Greece and finally to Jerusalem.

Zo d'Axa, who came to Galata from the port of Piraeus by ship, visited
many neighborhoods of Istanbul and what caught his attention the most
was the liveliness in Galata and the street dogs[17]. Zo d'Axa, who
asked about the barking of dogs that started at night in the outskirts
of Pera and lasted for quite a long time, " Do the poorly fed dogs of
Galata howl at the doors of luxurious houses against the dogs that are
fed with plenty of rich leftovers? " expressed his observations about
the street dogs of Istanbul, especially Galata, as an individualist
anarchist:

" In Constantinople, where thousands of street dogs roam, there has
still not been a single case of rabies. The scrawny dog of Galata has
never bitten anyone. Why? Because it has neither a collar nor an owner!
" (Zo d'Axa, Von Mazas nach Jerusalem )

Source:

"Foreign Language Publications in Türkiye", Press and Broadcasting
College Publication, Istanbul 1984
Ahmet Bedevi Quran, Our Revolutionary History and Young Turks , Kaynak
Publications, 2000
Anahide Ter Minassian, Nationalism and Socialism in the Armenian
Revolutionary Movement (1887-1912) , Zoryan Institute Thematic Series, 1984
Archives d' Etat de Genève. Geneva, Atabekyan's first records in Geneva.
Avetis Aharonyan, Fedais on the Road to Freedom , Belge Publications, 2001.
Baha Tevfik, Philosophy of the Individual , Soft G Publications, 1997
Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags , Metis 2007, Istanbul
CIRA (Centre international de recherche sur l'anarchisme, Lausanne)
Correspondence with Paraskev Stojanov, P. Nikitin, article on the Pocin
publishing house, GP Maximoff, The Guillotine at work 1940 , P. Nikitin,
Pocin
Der Sozialist 1896 , Die Zeitungsbibliothek im Berliner Westhafen Berlin
Edmondo de Amicis, Istanbul , Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Publications, Ankara 1986
Fikret Adanir, Macedonian Problem , History Foundation Yurt Publications
2001
GP Maximoff, The Guillotine at work 1940 , Cienfuegos Pr 1979
George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, From Prince to Rebel , Black Rose
Books 1990
George Woodcock, Anarchism , Kaos Publications 1996
IISG (Internationale Institut für Sozialgeschichte, Amsterdam):
Aleksander Atabekyan Papers and Max Nettlau Papers: Kropotkin, Nettlau,
J. Gross, J. Grave, Gustav Landauer, all correspondence with Italian
anarchists in Egypt, Algeria and Istanbul, all issues of the journals
Pocin and Hamayankh
Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global
Radicalism, 1860-1914 , University of California Press 2010
Jaap Kloosterman, Les Papiers de Michel Bakunine à Amsterdam , ISSG
1985/2004
Jean Maitron, Le mouvement anarchiste en France , Gallimard 1992
Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East , Cambridge
University Press 2001
Jürgen Gaulke, John Stuart Mill , Rowohlt, Hamburg 1996
Kerim Sadi (A. Cerrahoglu), Contribution to the History of Socialism in
Turkey , Iletisim Publications, 1994
Les Temps Nouveaux Supplement Literaire No: 5 1898, CIRA, Lausanne
Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary
Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism , AK Press, Edinburgh,
Oakland, 2009
M. Ö. Alkan, "Political Thought of Baha Tevfik", Encyclopedia of Social
Struggles , issue 53, 1989
M. Ö. Alkan, "Philosophy Journal", History and Society , issue 49
M. Ö. Alkan, "Baha Tevfik: An Ottoman Name in the History of Turkish
Thought", History and Society , issue 52, 1988
Madeleine Grawitz-Andreas Löhner, Bakunin. Ein Leben für die Freiheit ,
Edition Nautilus 1999
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans , Iletisim Publications 2003
Mark Mazower, Der Balkan , Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag 2002
Max Nettlau, Anarchisten und Sozialrevolutionäre , die historische
Entwicklung des Anarchismus in den Jahren 1880-1886 , Vaduz Topos 1984
Max Nettlau, Anarchisten und Syndikalisten, Band V , Vaduz Topos 1984
Max Nettlau, Der Vorfrühling der Anarchie, ihre historische Entwicklung
von der Anfaengen bis zum Jahre 1864 , Vaduz Topos 1984
Max Nettlau, Elisé Reclus: Anarchist und Gelehrter (1830-1905)
Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta: das Leben eines Anarchisten , der
Syndikalist Verlag 1922
Mechitaristen-Bibliothek zu Wien. Vienna, Hamayankh issues and a small
booklet of 215 pages in which he published anarchist texts under the
name Anarchiceskaya Biblioteka in 1894
Mete Tuncay-Erik Jan Zürcher, Socialism and Nationalism in the Ottoman
Empire (1876-1923) , Iletisim Publications 1993
Mete Tunçay, Left Movements in Turkey (1908-1925) , Ankara 2009
Nur die Phantasielosen flüchten in die Realität , Bulgarien, Karin
Kramer Verlag, Berlin 1984
Oliver Jens Schmitt, Levantier , Oldenbourg 2005
Oliver Jens Schmitt, Skanderbeg: Der neue Alexander auf dem Balkan ,
Pustet, Regensburg 2009
Paul Avrich, Anarchists in the Russian Revolution , Metis Publications 1992
Piero Brunello-Pietro Di Paola, Errico Malatesta , Edition Nautilus 2009
Riza Bagci, "On Baha Tevfik", History and Society , issue 60
Riza Bagci, A Study on the Life, Literary and Philosophical Works of
Baha Tevfik , Kaynak Publications, 1996
Rudolf Rocker, Aus den Memoiren eines deutschen Anarchisten (edition
suhrkamp), Frankfurt 1974
Stefan Troebst, Das makedonische Jahrhundert , Oldenbourg 2007
Serif Mardin, Political Ideas of the Young Turks 1895-1908 , Istanbul 1983
Sükrü Hanioglu, Dr. Abdullah Cevdet as a Political Thinker and His
Period , Istanbul 1981
Sükrü Hanioglu, The Ottoman Union and Progress Society as a Political
Organization and the Young Turks , Istanbul 1986
Tarik Zafer Tunaya, Westernization Movement in Turkey's Political Life ,
Arba Publications, 1996
Victor Serge, Erinnerungen eines Revolutionärs , Nautilus Hamburg 1990
William J. Fishmann, East End, Jewish Radicals 1875-1914 , Nottingham 2004
YA Petrosyan, Young Turks Through Soviet Eyes , Bilgi Publishing House, 1974
Yahya Kemal, My Childhood, My Youth, My Political and Literary Memories,
Istanbul Conquest Society, 1973
Zo d'Axa, Leben ohne zu warten. Von Mazas nach Jerusalem . Nautilus
/Nemo Press, Hamburg 1984
ADDITIONAL:

Abu'l Ala al-Maarrî, an anarchist pioneer

I could have titled this article "Great Geniuses of the Middle East" if
I could only use the word "genius" in the sense of "above-normal
intelligence". Today, I will tell you about the poet Abu'l Ala al-Maarrî
from Aleppo, who died a century ago, and was known as Muarrer al-Numan
in his homeland.

Al-Numan, a poet and thinker, is not known in Europe but is a very
famous figure in the East with his free thoughts. He has one of the
proudest intelligences in the world with his imagination and surprising
wisdom. Silvestre de Sacy was the first French orientalist to draw
attention to him as a writer, but unfortunately he focused only on his
writing style and not on the content of his writings and thoughts. He
devoted pages to grammatical analyses of his works but almost completely
neglected to analyze his psychology.

Gustave Dugat, who in his interesting work titled "History of Muslim
Philosophers and Clergymen", attributed great importance to Abu'l Ala.
However, M. Herbellot, in his work titled The Eastern Library, passed
him over with a few words.

My aim is different from theirs. In this study, while evaluating this
master Arab poet, who is also the author of the geneology of important
people, I position myself in a very different place from other
orientalists in terms of perspective. Beyond the formal characteristics
of his poetry, I will deal with Maarrî and the mentality he represents.

Abu'l Ala al-Ma'arri was born in the year 373 (976 according to
Christians) after Ibn Khalliqan ( the famous author of Vefayatu'l-a?yan
). He lost his sight due to smallpox at the age of 7. According to
reliable sources, the large white spot on the cornea of his right eye
allowed only a small amount of sunlight to pass through. His left eye
was completely blind.

Maarri's soul was suffering from the universal tyranny that reigned both
politically and religiously. He was like Prometheus in chains. Lucretius
Carus* seemed to have come into being in him. Just as Prometheus was
cursed and tortured by Zeus, Maarri was condemned to suffer all the
pains and humiliations that a broken and unhappy heart can feel. Just as
Lucretius summarized the philosophy of Epicurus by singing about nature
and its laws, Maarri embraced the same subjects, but in a much more
beautiful, sublime, superior and spiritual form. There is a fierce
beauty hidden in his poems. The nothingness of life, the constant
mistakes of people, the corrupt social organizations... This is the
source of Maarri's burning poems. He preaches social reform because he
feels its necessity in his very being. He rebels invincibly against the
inequality of conditions. He says:

" Winter is in a hurry to descend upon the earth, and it is falling upon
the scantily clad rich as well as the half-naked poor and wretched. A
nobleman and a rich man rob an entire people of their treasures, and the
poor are deprived of a morsel of bread which is vital to them. " And
Maarri also treats this people, who are numb and prostrate to the
oppressors, with some disdain. He speaks of their ignorance and their
"long live" to the tyrants who exploit them:

" How ignorant the nations I know are. Undoubtedly, the older
generations I did not know were much more confused, lost and mindless.
These people pray for their leaders every week and wish them "long
life"! This is the result of their spiritual barrenness. If the pulpit
could talk, it would weep bitterly at this completely absurd act. "

Maarrî's soul feels all the pain inside, but never complains. His
critical intelligence examines everything to catch the slightest spark,
a glimmer, a light. It is undoubtedly humorous. Listen to this passage:

" Jesus came and abolished the laws of Moses. Then Muhammad came and
brought with him 5 daily prayers and said that there would be no other
prophet after Muhammad. "

" Mankind made mistakes yesterday and will make mistakes tomorrow. If I
am talking about the impossible and mistakes, I raise my voice. If I am
explaining the pure truth, I feel obliged to lower my voice. "

If I say this, it is not because I am concerned, but to show the
terrible things that happen to people who dare to tell the truth.

He did not hesitate to say:

" People are divided into two classes. One has religion but no
intelligence. The other has intelligence but no religion. "

His boldness goes even further:

" Wake up, you lost ones! Wake up! Your dogmas are old lies. The
deceivers tried to gather all the wealth, to accumulate it, and to wear
the glory. They succeeded and died, but their vile doctrines survived. "

These lines are no less than:

" When we remember Adam and his actions and imagine him marrying his son
to his daughter, do we not declare mankind a debauched race and the
whole world a bastard? "

As I mentioned earlier, our poet was blind but seemed content with his
situation and addresses himself with the following lines:

" O Abu'l Ala, son of Solomon... if you had not been granted blindness
and were able to see the world, the pupil of your eye would not be able
to grasp even a single human being. "

Doesn't Maarrî's bitter mockery remind us of the great German
philosopher Schophenhauer: " If a god created this world, I wouldn't
want to be in his place because this misery on earth tears me apart. "

Abu'l Ala al-Maarri accepts the idea of spontaneous generation. This
view, which is accepted by many scientists, is rejected by the famous
bacteriologist Pasteur. Maarri expressed himself on this subject with
the following words:

" Man, who astonishes the whole world with the gigantic works he has
left behind, is nothing but a crude matter formed by the transformation
of a wild animal. "

He had seen many distortions and disgusting things in the social order
of his time. The following lines came from his pen and from the bottom
of his heart:

" Death is comfortable because eternal peace is with it,

"superior to life, even to a long existence "

" I studied people and their various actions,

"I have encountered nothing but treachery and meanness "

Maarri did not eat animals, killing animals, tearing their flesh and
feeding on them was immoral and savage for him. I dare to say that he
was not wrong. He only ate wheat and vegetables. For this reason, one of
his students wrote the following after his death:

" You, who, thanks to your compassion and mercy, could not shed the
blood of any animal, are now responsible for the tears gushing from my
pupils like a fountain and the bleeding of my heart. "

Maarri died in 449 according to the Muslim calendar. His pessimism went
so far as to condemn birth. He wanted the following to be written on his
grave:

" Here is the crime my father committed against me,

As for me, I have never attempted to harm anyone's life. "

True to her principles, Maarrî did not marry or have children.

                                                                   ***

Maarri's poems were first published in Arabic and Latin in Dantzig by
the efforts of an amateur named Fabricius. The title of his main work
was The Neglectable Necessity ( Luzaumi-Malayelzem ). All the lines of
its two volumes were rhymed. They were published in Cairo in 1891 as a
result of the efforts of Aziz Efendi-Zend. He was responsible for the
Elmahronié newspaper. His divan, Sakt-el-Zend, meaning "Spark of the
Lighter", was published in Beirut in 1884 by Chakir-Chakir
(Sakir-sakir). This divan was a collection of lyrical poems written with
mastery and carrying a magnificent dynamism. His admirable original
lines gushed with a tremendous poetry and an overwhelming liveliness.
There were also elegies in between. The poet was hopelessly saddened by
the loss of his friend forever. But instead of exaggerated agitations
that shook the earth with sleet tears and pathetic whimpering, he
suffered from the depths of his heart, but he did not write down
everything his heart told him. He calmed his pain, knew how to control
the burning suggestions that came from within him, thus making them less
Romanesque and perhaps more heartfelt, more sincere and touching.

I plan to return to this subject with research devoted to his
philosophical poems and, in particular, with a much more comprehensive
study that will analyze and translate the elegies I mentioned above from
beginning to end.

Dr. Abdullah Cevdet

Estafette , May 16

* Titus Lucretius Carus lived between 99 BC and 55 BC, went mad before
finishing his writings, committed suicide with his own hand, and was a
Roman poet and philosopher who defended Epicurean materialism against
all the magnificence of idealism. Like Al-Numan, he was never mentioned
and for many years Rome tried to make him forget him. In his six-volume
work On the Nature of Things, he says: They shed the blood of their
fellow citizens to increase their own wealth. They double their wealth
by committing murder after murder. The funerals of their brothers are a
source of pleasure to them, the tables of their relatives are a source
of hatred. (Book 2, pp. 59-63) (trans.)

[1]Abdullah Cevdet

2 Süreyyya Evren, "Twenty Years of the Black Flag in Turkey", Fifth
Estate (New York), Winter 2007 374 (3 Vol. 41).

[2]Here, I must correct my mistake in the 9th issue of the Siyahi
magazine. The EDF's report was also sent to the same congress in London,
and in the following years, different reports continued to be sent to
the Copenhagen congresses, not to Amsterdam.

[3]The relations established by the anarchist wing of the MSRC
(Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee) with the Armenian
revolutionaries during this period (1899) were of particular importance.
M. Gerdzhikov had established relations with Armenian organizations
while still in Geneva. The Armenian revolutionary movement, organized in
the "Hinchak" groups founded in 1887 and the "Dashnak" groups founded in
1901, had the largest number of members, apart from the Geneva, Paris
and Istanbul committees, in Plovdiv, Varna and Sofia. They had 300
supporters in Macedonia alone. With the increase in the massacres in
Eastern Anatolia, the Armenians intensified their actions against the
Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 1890s. S. Merdzanov, who was
greatly affected by the Armenians' bold acts of violence, went to
Istanbul towards the end of 1899 with rather ambitious plans, such as
assassinating Abdulhamid, the French tobacco factory and the Ottoman
Imperial Bank. Dimitar Vlahof-Gurin, the director of the Macedonian
Local Committee in Istanbul, introduced SI. Merdzanov, P. Mandzukov,
Peter Sokolov and Pavel Pockov to well-known Armenian revolutionaries
such as Yusufcana, Boris Ivanov and Bedros Pareyan. Also of particular
importance was the fact that SI. Merdzanov worked with the Armenian
terrorist Bedros Siremciyan, who had connections with the Macedonian
organization in Plovdiv. When SI. Merdzanov and B. Siremciyan crossed
the Ottoman border with a 9-man Ceta[gang]consisting of Macedonians and
Armenians in June 1901 and headed towards Edirne, they were detected and
dispersed by Ottoman troops. Five cetni[gangs]were killed, along with P.
Sokolov. SI. Merdzanov, B. Siremciyan and two other gang members were
arrested and executed on 27 November 1901 at four different city gates
in Edirne. The relations between Macedonian and Armenian revolutionaries
continued after this incident. M. Gerdzhikov continued to act together
with the Armenian committee in Plovdiv during the uprising that started
in the summer of 1903 throughout Thrace. ( Stefan Troebst, Das
macedonische Jahrhundert)

[4]Anarchist thought was brought to the Macedonian movement by the
"Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee" (MSRC). This committee
emerged in Switzerland in 1898 as a Bulgarian and Macedonian student
group. (Fikret Adanir, Macedonian Question) ... The anarchists turned
more to the Macedonian movement known as the Internal Macedonian
Revolutionary Organization, which included M. Gerdzhikov and D. Gancev.
G. Delchev, the movement's representative abroad, was very interested in
anarchist thought, especially in acts of violence. The influence of
anarchism was clearly visible in his statements of that period: "Power
always means fraud, robbery, oppression (...) Fight against the powerful
and rebel against all forms of feudalism" (S. Troebst, ibid. p. 103) .

[5]...In these uprisings, the anarchists were trying to transform the
revolution beyond the "banner of independence" into a social revolution
of the workers and the poor. (M. Schmidt, L. van der Walt, The Kurdish
Question: Through the lens of Anarchist Resistance in the Heart of the
Ottoman Empire 1880-1923).

[6]In the 5th issue of the anarchist magazine Alarm, published in
Hamburg in 1923 , the Bulgarian anarchists' call for international help
was published and the state terror experienced in Jambol was described
as follows:

"What happened in Jambol was incomparably bigger than what happened
before. On March 26, our comrades rode their horses to the protest rally
in Jambol. The participants of the rally were attacked by the police and
soldiers. The government mobilized the garrisons in Jambol and the
troops in the neighboring city of Sliven to suppress this
unprecedentedly large crowd in a bloody manner. The state forces
launched bloody clashes that lasted all day and night. Our comrades
repelled all the attacks. Our most daring comrades were arrested. The
members of the group stormed the prison to rescue the arrested comrades.
One policeman and one member of the group were injured in this raid. The
wounded man was taken to Stara Zagora and shot. Comrades, this is the
real situation in Bulgaria today. The government's plan is to destroy
the best comrades of our movement. We must protect our lives and our
freedom. There is only one way out of this difficult struggle: our
deaths or the survival of our movement. Comrades, anarchy In the name of
international solidarity, just as we helped your struggle in Italy,
Spain and Russia, so help us. The proletariat of your country must know
how the anarchists died in Bulgaria. April 2, 1923 Anarchist group,
Sofia" ( Nur die Phantasielosen flüchten in die Realitaet[Those Without
Dreams Take Refuge in Reality]Karin Kramer Verlag, Berlin, 1984)

[7]I have prepared three articles on Atabekyan to date. New documents
and information have been added to each article. Some of these
additions, although new, have been added to the archived documents to
date, have also been translated from the 6 languages I have, the vast
majority of which are French and Russian, and mostly handwritten, only
when volunteers were available. The new documents, apart from the
archived documents, consist of those I obtained during my visit to
Atabekyan's great-grandson A. Birukov. These documents have shown that
various anarchist sources and studies in IISG written about Atabekyan
after 1920 and his death are not correct. I have tried to indicate the
reasons for this mistake in this article. For example, the mistake in a
picture used in the article in the 9th issue of Siyahi was due to
incorrect archiving in IISG (I informed them of this situation). I
realized in this study that institutional archiving of historical
figures and events is not enough. If no academic or any other research
has been done on an archive, that archiving is left to the rough
arrangement and classification of employees or volunteers. The document
errors in IISG stem from the fact that there has been no archival
research on Atabekyan to date and the documents have only been classified.

[8]Makdisi, giving examples of the works of Hamit Bozarslan and Sükrü
Hanioglu, states that the political thinkers of the late Ottoman period,
especially the Young Turks, were more interested in the political
violence side of anarchism, as in the "Turkish Anarchist Society",
rather than analyzing it as a thought, but that the important political
figures of the period, Abdullah Cevdet, Yahya Kemal and Prince
Sabahaddin, were influenced by Elisé Reclus, one of the anarchist
thinkers of the period, albeit for a short time. (Ilham Khuri-Makdisi,
The Eastern Mediterranean And The Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914)

A. Cevdet's philosophical interest in anarchism, the publication of two
of his articles, news and promotional articles in Les Temps Nouveaux
Supplément litéraire, an important and respected anarchist publication
of the period, differentiates him from other Young Turks. It would be
more accurate to talk about Yahya Kemal's being influenced by the
intense anarchist atmosphere in Paris rather than his interest in
anarchism. Similarly, Prince Sabahaddin was only interested in anarchism
as a modern-liberal. (yn) Stating that the Turkish Anarchist Society
only adopted violence as a method, but were not interested in anarchism
as a political philosophy, S. In response to the association created by
the name of the Turkish Anarchist Society, Hanioglu used expressions
such as "O people of Islam, aren't you tired of the twenty-five year
rule of this cruel tyrant...O people of Arabia, Yemen and Nejd, have you
forgotten the virtues and generosity of your former caliphs? ... The
killing and killing of the Sultan is religiously permissible, God
willing, and we will kill him... If you had spent the two million that
you gave as a reward for the Yildiz and Besiktas vermin on the supply of
war ammunition, you would have become the first war state of Europe...",
and he states that the similarity is only in the field of method. (S.
Hanioglu, Doctor Abdullah Cevdet as a Political Thinker and His Period,
p. 246, Istanbul 1981)

[9]"... When I left Istanbul, I already had a deep anti-religious mind.
My irreligiosity increased in Paris. The year 1904 was a year when
hostility towards the church and religion in Paris was raging and the
socialist movement was blowing like a strong wind. I was participating
in meetings and demonstrations. While listening to the "International"
on the streets, my heart was filled with a broad love for humanity and
my eyes were filled with tears. I was listening passionately to the
speeches of Jaurés, Pressence, Vaillant, the German anarchist Sébastien
Faure and Malato. As my irreligiousness and revolutionary zeal
increased, I became an ardent critic and an extreme disciple of the
Temps Nouveaux newspaper of the anarchist Jean Grave. Doctor Abdullah
Cevdet saw some of the lines I added with this mindset and in a new
style and he liked them very much..." (Yahya Kemal, My Childhood, My
Youth, Political and Edebi Apart from this passage, which remains as a
"beautiful memory" in his memoirs , there is nothing else about
anarchism. (syn)

[10]Of course, there was also a reverse migration throughout North
Africa. Particularly after 1907, when profits in Lebanese silk
production fell and male peasants were unwilling to work under
conditions of wages that were further reduced by the spread of cheap
female labor in silk workshops, 100,000 Lebanese men, mostly Christians,
emigrated to North and South America from 1884 to World War I. Another
group of peasants emigrated from Syria to the United States from 1880
until the US Immigration Act of 1921. Again, a parallel development was
the emigration of 275,000 Iranian workers to Russia in 1913. Between
1906 and 1914, a community of 10,000 Algerian Berbers emigrated to
France in search of work, the vast majority of them illegally . During
World War I, 120,000 Algerians were subjected to forced labor in French
industry. (Joel Beinin, Worker and Peasants in the Modern Middle East,
p. 73)

[11]In the last quarter of the 19th century, a new style of social
conflict emerged in Ottoman cities, primarily in the capital Istanbul,
Izmir, Alexandria, Beirut and Tunis. Strikes, which became a common
feature of urban experience in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially
after the 1890s, were frequently treated in the local press as
"köküdisi"[the expressions "outside the world" or "foreign to us" have a
long history], "foreign" and "European" style protests. We know of 50
strikes in the Ottoman Empire between 1872 and 1908. In Alexandria, 10
strikes took place in February and March 1902 alone, although they were
not of particular economic or political significance. These numbers
increased exponentially a few months after the Young Turk revolution of
1908, when strikers, especially concentrated in Istanbul, Thessaloniki
and Izmir, reached 100,000, half of the wage-earners in the cities of
the Empire. (Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the
Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914) In June and December 1908, 39
strikes were recorded in Istanbul, 31 in Thessaloniki and 13 in Izmir.
(Joel Beinin, Worker and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, p. 78,
Cambridge University Press 2001)

[12]Italian anarchists who wrote to Atabekyan from Egypt and Algeria
stated that they had difficulty in establishing relations with the local
population due to the influential religious factor. Perhaps Alexandria
should be distinguished from other cities in Egypt, Algeria and
Istanbul; it is understood from the mass actions and, as Ilham Makdisi
stated, the intense discussions of socialism and anarchism in the local
press that the organized and effective activities and publications of
the Italian anarchists in Alexandria affected the local population. (yn)

[13]Born in Livorno in 1851 , brought to Egypt by his family and
spending his entire life there, Icilio Ugo Parrini was among the older
anarchists in Egypt. (Nettlau describes Parrini as an extraordinary,
enthusiastic and loyal friend.) Parrini, who was the head of a Mazzinite
group during his first years in Egypt, founded the first anarchist
newspaper Il Lavoratore in Alexandria (1877) with Giuseppe Messina and
Giacomo Costa, which ran for three issues. As a result of increasing
pressure, they published a new newspaper called Il Proleteria with a
secret primitive printing press. In 1878, with the persecution that
began when Malatesta came to Alexandria, Parrini, like other anarchists,
was deported from Egypt and brought to Piraeus. A month later, he was
arrested again when he returned to Egypt. This time, he went to Cyprus,
and from there, via Beirut, he met Giacomo Costa, who had come from
Italy, in Istanbul. The first anarchist groups founded by Parrini and
Costa in Istanbul, who immediately started propaganda activities, could
not continue their existence after them. ( M. Nettlau)

[14]Arrested and deported in Alexandria, where Italians live heavily,
Alvino and Malatesta were brought to Beirut, Syria by ship. From there,
Alvino and Malatesta were put on a French ship called la Provence to be
sent to Izmir. They met the captain of the ship, an honest man who would
take them to France without extraditing them to the Italian authorities,
and in return for the captain's help, they helped unload the cargo at
every port the ship stopped at. When they arrived at the port of Izmir,
the captain refused the consulate agents' request for the extradition of
both of them, and continued on to Naples for the next port. The first
visitors to the ship, which anchored near Naples, were again Italian
agents. This time, instead of making an official request, they tried to
trick Malatesta and get him off the ship. When their game failed, the
police intervened and demanded his extradition, claiming that he was
related to the case of anarchist Passanante, who was on trial for
assassinating the king. The captain says that the incident is political
and that he will only obey the decision of a diplomat assigned to him.
While there is diplomatic turmoil on the one hand, his comrades visit
Malatesta on the other. Finally, the captain receives a statement from
the French stating that he can return Malatesta and Alvino on his own
responsibility, without being subject to any pressure. After showing the
statement to Malatesta, the captain tears it up and orders the police to
abandon the ship immediately, to the applause of his comrades waiting
outside the ship. When they arrive at the port of Marseille, Malatesta
continues his journey to Geneva, while Alvino remains there. (Max
Nettlau, Errico Malatesta)

[15]The Jewish liberation movement has always had devoted supporters.
Perhaps one of the most active and devoted of them was Abraham Frumkin.
Born in Jerusalem in 1872, A. Frumkin's father was a religious teacher.
After his early journalistic experience, Frumkin went to Jaffa for one
year (1891) as a teacher of Arabic and the Israeli Belkind School, and
from there he went to Constantinople to study law and learn Ottoman
Turkish in return for a promised scholarship. After a while, when it
became clear that the scholarship payments would not be made, he went to
America, which was called the "Goldene Medina" at the time. (1893) He
first became acquainted with anarchist ideas under the influence of his
friends in New York and soon became an ardent advocate of anarchism.
Frumkin returned to Constantinople the same year as a determined
missionary, carrying a wealth of anarchist books and publications to
find other "converts". After convincing Nastia and Moses Shapiro, whom
he first met, to anarchism, the Shapiros' house became a place for young
revolutionaries to meet, discuss and hide. The Shapiros put Frumkin in
touch with the Arbeter Fraynd <Arbeiterfreund>, which was founded by
Wess, whom they had met in London in 1895, and copies of which were sent
to Constantinople. Frumkin, who came to London in 1986, immediately went
to the self-sacrificing Wess, who had undertaken everything for the
Arbeter Fraynd, and became the editor of the newspaper together with
him. (William J. Fishmann, East End, Jewish Radicals 1875-1914,
Nottingham 2004)

[16]"In 1885, a few intellectuals, around whom a large number of workers
gathered, founded the Yiddish magazine Arbayter Fraynd (Worker's Friend)
in London. Its first editor was Philipp Kranz. Saul Yanowski ensured
that the newspaper became an anarchist publication in the 1890s. In
time, anarchism, especially anarcho-communism under the influence of
Peter Kropotkin, became the most active movement in Jewish socialist
circles. Arbayter Fraynd ceased publication in 1894 under the editorship
of William Wess, but was later republished under the editorship of
Abraham Frumkin. In 1898, Rudolf Rocker took over the editorship of the
newspaper. R. Rocker was a non-Jew who had learned Yiddish and who
eventually became a spokesman for the anarchist movement and the Jewish
anarchist movement in England. He continued as editor of the newspaper
and spokesman for the British Jewish anarchist movement until the
outbreak of the First World War. The Arbayter Fraynd, like other Yiddish
newspapers of the time, may be said to have reached a very high,
cosmopolitan level."

[17]All the travelers of the 19th century, especially the European
travelers and writers, mentioned the street dogs of Istanbul with great
interest in their travelogues. The young Italian writer Edmondo de
Amicis, who came to Istanbul in the 1870s, described the street dogs he
saw as a part of life in Istanbul as follows: ... None of these many
dogs in Istanbul have owners. All of them constitute a great republic of
vagabonds, without collars, duties, names, residences or laws. They do
everything on the streets; they dig holes for themselves in the streets,
sleep there, eat and drink there, are born there, nurse their puppies
there, die there, and at least in Istanbul, no one disturbs the dogs
while they are walking or lying down. The dogs are the owners of the
road. In our cities, dogs step aside and give way to horses and people.
Here, people, horses, camels and donkeys make a curve like this so as
not to run over the dogs. (Edmondo de Amicis, Istanbul, p. 125)

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