Abdullah Cevdet Bey (9 September 1869 – 29 November 1932) was a Kurdish-Turk intellectual, activist, poet, essayist, and physician.Fevzi Bilgin & Ali Sarihan, Understanding Turkey's Kurdish Question, Lexington Books (2013), p. 13 A Young Turk, he was one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and wrote articles with pen name of "Bir Kürd" ("A Kurd")Jongerden (2012), p.169 for the publications such as Meşveret, Kurdistan and Roji Kurd about the East–West dichotomy and Kurdish awakening and nationalism. In his personal publication İctihad he pushed for the westernization of society, feminism, workers rights, liberty, science, secularism, and social liberalism. He was an ideologue of the CUP until 1902, when he became an opponent of the organization he founded as it embraced Turkish nationalism. In 1908, he established the Democratic Party, which merged with the Freedom and Accord Party in 1911. He was briefly active in support of Kurdish independence in the early 1920s before supporting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Turkish National Movement.
Cevdet's literary career was defined by his antagonistic relationship with religious conservatives and constant press censorship. Due to his critical historical essays on Islam and Muhammad, he was taken to court several times over charges of blasphemy. He introduced to the Ottoman public Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the Bahá'í Faith. Several of Cevdet's ideas, by Atatürk's own admission, came to fruition as part of his reforms such as secularism, the shuttering of madrases, and the furthering of women's rights.
Biography
Early life Abdullah Cevdet was born on 9 September 1869 (or 1867) in Arapgir, Malatya.Jön Türk'lükten, Jin Kürt'lüğe. Rasim Giresunlu, Ufuk Ötesi.Abdullah Cevdet , Hüseyin Akar. He was born to a family of Kurdish origin. He would always describe himself as a Turk of Kurdish origin. His father was Hacı Ömer Vasfi Efendi, a clerk of the first battalion in Diyarbakır. After completing his primary education in Hozat and Arapgir, he went to Harput with his family. He graduated from Ma‘mûretülazîz (Elâzığ) Military Junior High School in 1885. At the age of fifteen, he went to Istanbul to attend the Kuleli Military Medical Preparatory School. He graduated three years later and continued his education in the Imperial School of Medicine.
Cevdet was initially a pious Muslim and received a religious education, but was influenced by Western materialistic philosophies which turned him against institutionalized religion. He thought that "although the Muslim God was of no use in the modern era, Islamic society must preserve Islamic principles".Şükrü Hanioğlu, "Blueprints for a future society: late Ottoman materialists on science, religion, and art" in Elisabeth Özdalga, "Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy", Routledge (2005), p. 41
Years in Medical School During his student years in the Imperial School of Medicine, he was influenced by biological materialism, the ideology which dominated the school. He translated a section of Ludwig Büchner’s work Kraft und Stoff, which greatly influenced him, under the title Fizyolociya-i Tefekkür (1890) "Physiology of Contemplation". In the same year, he published Dimâğ ("The Brain") on brain functions. In 1890 he prepared the first draft of his work Fünûn ve Felsefe ("Science and Philosophy"), which attempted to reconcile the ideas of Islamic scholars and biological materialist philosophers. Cevdet published two more books on biological materialism and brain functions, Fizyolociya ve Hıfz-ı Sıhhat-i Dimâğ ("Physiology and the Preservation of Mental Health") and Melekât-ı Akliyye ("The Angels of Reason") in his last year at school, and wrote articles on the same subjects in the magazines Maârif, Musavver Cihan and Resimli Kitab.
As Cevdet developed his political beliefs, he identified with the Young Ottomans before him, especially Ali Suavi. On 3 June 1889, he and three of his friends: İbrahim Timo, İshak Sükûti, Mehmed Reşid, founded the Ottoman Union Committee. This society later became the Committee of Union and Progress.Jongerden (2012), p.69 The overall goal of Young Turks such as Cevdet was to bring to end the absolutist regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He was arrested several times during his education due to his political activities and was expelled from school for a while. While in medical school he joined the literature scene, and upon the request of Abdülhak Hâmid, he compiled his poems into a book. In these early works published under the name of Ömer Cevdet, the influences of Namık Kemal, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem, Hâmid and Halid Ziya can be felt.Abdullah Cevdet (Karlıdağ), Kenthaber.com Arapgir-Malatya İz bırakanlar Sayfası, Erişim tarihi: 20.07.2011 After his first poetry book Hiç, published in 1890, he also published the poetry books Tuluat (1891) and Masumiyet (1893).
He eventually completed his medical education in July 1894 and became an ophthalmologist. After finishing school, he practiced in Haydarpaşa Numune Hospital in Istanbul. He was sent to Diyarbakır on a temporary duty in November of the same year due to a cholera epidemic, on the side organizing among those in the city to establish a CUP branch there.Zeynep Çamsoy, Milli Mücadele Döneminde Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti, Ankara Üniversitesi Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Ankara 2007 He saved Ziya Gökalp from his suicide attempt and initiated him into the CUP. He also took the opportunity to translate Büchner’s Natur und Geist under the pen name Goril.
As an activist When he returned to Istanbul in 1895, he was arrested on charges of subversion and he was assigned to the ophthalmology department of the Tripoli (of Libya) Central Hospital, which was essentially an exile.Abdullah Cevdet (Karlıdağ), Kenthaber.com Arapgir-Malatya İz bırakanlar Sayfası, Erişim tarihi: 20.07.2011 However, he continued his work on behalf of the CUP there. After serving one and a half years, he was again imprisoned. When he was released four months later, he learned that he was to be deported to Fezzan, so he fled to France via Tunisia 1897. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for this.
He arrived in Paris in the aftermath of the Mizancı Murad affair, when Murat Bey overthrew Ahmed Rıza as CUP leader, but subsequently returned to the Ottoman Empire after striking a deal with Sultan Abdul Hamid's top intelligence officer Ahmed Celâleddin Pasha. Cevdet went to Geneva and met with Young Turks such as Tunalı Hilmi and Dr. Mehmed Reşit and became close with Ahmed Rıza. Cevdet and Ibrahim Temo would soon cut their ties with the CUP after 1902, as the organization began to advocate a Turkist nationalist policy.Jongerden, (2012), p.70 For now though, together with İshak Sükûti in Geneva, he published the Osmanlı newspaper, a new CUP organ, in Turkish and French, and wrote articles denouncing autocracy. Plekhanov, Axelrod, and Lenin were also in Geneva at the same time and were busy publishing Iskra. He translated Western works; among the works he translated was Friedrich Schiller's drama William Tell. He later published the preface he wrote for the work as a book titled İki Emel. He also translated Vittorio Alfieri's essay Della Tirannide (1789) under the title İstibdâd (Despotism). In one of the poetry books he published in Geneva, Kahriyât, he included poems written with political aspirations rather than artistic concerns, themed on freedom and patriotism, almost all of which were directed against Abdul Hamid II, accusing him of hostility towards liberty.
Eventually, Abdul Hamid took notice of the dangerous literature Cevdet was publishing. In 1899 Cevdet softened his publications so 72 of his friends imprisoned in Fezzan and Tripoli could be released. The Sultan then offered to buy him out by employing him as chief physician of the Vienna embassy on the condition that he would give up writing political articles and stay away from Istanbul, an offer which he accepted, to much consternation from his Young Turk friends. During this time, although he continued to identify with the sultan's opposition to some extent, he occupied himself more with poetry and publishing books that received interest from Symbolist circles. His poetry was linked with the movement, and he received accolades from leading French authors like Gustave Kahn.Şükrü Hanioğlu, "Blueprints for a future society: late Ottoman materialists on science, religion, and art" in Elisabeth Özdalga, "Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy", Routledge (2005), p. 46
His position was suspended in 1903 after an incident where he slapped the ambassador who informed the palace that he was secretly continuing his political activities. He returned to Geneva and founded the Ottoman Union and Revolution Committee [Osmanlı İttihat ve İnkılap Cemiyeti] and published the Osmanlı again as the organization's organ. The government organized a false flag operation to extradite him from Switzerland, by claiming his authorship of a pornographic booklet that targeted the sultan, though it was actually published by a government agent. Cevdet was deported from Switzerland, but he was able to move to Egypt.
Egyptian years From 1904 to the end of his life in 1932, Cevdet published the periodical İctihad and stayed out of politics, writing articles to promote Westernization and secularism. It came under several aliases as the magazine would be interrupted by shuttering: Cehd, İşhâd, İştihâd, Âlem, Eski İçtihad.Oğuzhan Saygılı, Abdullah Cevdet’in Doğru Anlaşılabilmesine Doğru
He moved to Cairo and joined Prince Sabahaddin's Private Enterprise and Decentralization League. He wrote articles in support of the 1906 Erzurum Uprising and called for constitutional monarchy along with the abolition of certain taxes. After the Young Turk Revolution and the return of constitutional monarchy he did not return home immediately, but stayed in Egypt for a while longer until 1910.
In Cairo he sought to reconcile the Eastern and the Western literary traditions. Within the framework of this goal, he translated Shakespeare, Schiller, Hugo, and Byron, as well as Saadi, Rumi, and Khayyam. He believed the Ottoman Empire was backwards and not competitive because of the role of religion in society. In 1908, he translated and published Reinhart Dozy’s two-volume work Essai sur l’Histoire de l’Islamisme ("Essay on the History of Islamism") under the title Tarih-i İslâmiye ("Islamic History"). The book, which was critical of Islam and of Muhammed, caused immense controversy upon its release; it was banned and confiscated by the censors in February 1910Hilmi Yavuz, Dozy, İslam Tarihi ve Abdullah Cevdet(1), Zaman gazetesi, 01 Kasım 2006 and existing copies were thrown from the Galata Bridge after catching the attention of the Sheikh-ul-Islam. Cevdet claimed that he translated the work to allow Muslim historians to correct Dozy's mistakes.
He thanked and met Theodor Herzl for publishing one of his poems in Neue Freie Presse in 1903. After this acquaintance, he started to help Herzl by translating his letters into Turkish.Yaşar Kutluay, "Siyonizm ve Türkiye", Bilge Karınca (2013), p. 291
After 1910
In 1908, he joined the Ottoman Democratic Party () which was founded against the CUP.