Ali Kemal Bey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ali Kemal Bey (1867 - November 6, 1922) was a liberal Turkish journalist, newspaper editor and poet^[1] who was briefly Minister of the Interior in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. He was murdered during the Turkish War of Independence.

Contents 1 Journalist and liberal 2 Exile in England 3 After World War I 4 Murder 5 Descendants and legacy 6 References 6.1 Primary sources 6.2 Secondary sources 7 External links

[edit] Journalist and liberal

Ali Kemal early acquired strong liberal democratic convictions which caused him to be sent into exile under Abdulhamit II but immediately after the end of the sultan's personal rule in July 1908, he became one of the most prominent figures in Turkish journalistic and political life, though because of his opposition to the Young Turks who had made the revolution, he spent most of the following decade in opposition.

He was at one time editor of the Turkish İkdâm newspaper and a leading member of the Liberal Union.^[2]

In The Times of March 9, 1909, on speculating that he would contest the seat of the late Minister of Justice Refik Bey, Ali Kemal was described as among the "leading men of letters in Turkey, an excellent speaker, and personally very popular".^[3] Ali Kemal was unanimously adopted as the candidate to represent the parliamentary constituency of Stambul at a meeting of the Liberal Union on March 9, 1909.^[4]

After the murder of the editor of the Serbesti, Hassan Fehmi Effendi in April, 1909, Ali Kemal Bey stated that he had warned Ismael Kemal Bey and Rifsat, the assistant editor of the Serbesti that they had been condemned by extremists in Salonika^[5] A media storm between the liberal paper İkdam and the conservative Tanin followed, with İkdam accusing Ahmed Rıza Bey of having been in favour of enlightened absolutism, and Tanin, the organ of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) accusing the Liberal Union of being a subversive body, conspiring with Armenians. At that time Ali Kemal accused Rahmi Bey and Dr. Nâzım Bey of the Committee of Union and Progress of proposing his murder.^[6] These events became known as the 31 March Incident and were followed by the countercoup of 1909, an effort to dismantle the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire and replace it with a monarchy under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Soldiers from Salonica deposed Abdul Hamid on April 27, 1909 and his brother Reshad Efendi was proclaimed as Sultan Mehmed V.

[edit] Exile in England

Ali Kemal fled to exile in England, where in late 1909, his wife Winifred (née Brun) (an Anglo-Swiss lady whom Ali Kemal had married in London in 1903 ^[7]) gave birth to a son, Osman Wilfred Kemal. Shortly after giving birth his wife died of puerperal fever. Ali Kemal stayed with his son and daughter with his mother-in-law Margaret Brun (nee Johnson) in Wimbledon until 1912 when he returned to Turkey, marrying again. His second wife was Sabiha Hanim, daughter of a Turkish pasha. They had one son, Zeki, born in October 1914.

On his return from exile, Ali Kemal made a speech in favour of war with the Balkan League in Stambul on October 3, 1912.^[8] Montenegro started the First Balkan War by declaring war against the Ottomans on October 8, 1912.

[edit] After World War I

On a report dated November 11, 1918, speculating on the successor to Ahmed İzzet Pasha, The Times reported that Ali Kemal was backing Ahmed Tevfik Pasha to be grand vizier with support of the Naval and Khoja parties.^[9] In a report in The Times dated May 19, 1919, it stated that Ali Kemal was appointed Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Damat Ferid Pasha, replacing Mehmed Ali Bey who had retired.^[8] Ali Kemal was one of the delegates ^[1]of the Ottoman delegation at the Paris peace conference in June, 1919. In a report dated June 25, 1919, The Times reported that Ali Kemal had accused agents of the Committee of Union and Progress of impeding the restoration of order in the Ottoman provinces, specifically accusing Talaat Pasha of organizing Albanian brigand bands in the Ismid and Enver Pasha of doing the same in the Panderma, Balikesir and Karasi districts. He alleged that the CUP had £700,000 of party funds availiable for propaganda as well as numerous fortunes made by profiteering during World War I. Ali Kemal had resigned between the filing of the report and its publication in The Times on July 3, 1919.^[10]

With unequalled passion Ali Kemal condemned the attacks on and massacres of the empire's Armenians during World War One and inveighed against the Ittihadist chieftains as the authors or that crime, relentlessly demanding their prosecution and punishment. In line with this attitude he campaigned also against the Kemalist movement which then was being propped up by the clandestine partisans of the defunct Ittihad. Along with other conservatives serving under the Sultan in Istanbul, Ali Kemal also set up an organisation known as the İngiliz Muhipler Cemiyeti ("The Anglophile Society"), which advocated British protectorate status for Turkey. This, combined with his past opposition to the Committee of Union and Progress, made him anathema to the nationalist movement gathering strength in Ankara and fighting the Turkish War of Independence against the attempts to partition Turkey between Greece and the Entente Powers.

[edit] Murder

On November 4, 1922, Ali Kemal was kidnapped from a barber's shop at Tokatliyan Hotel in Istanbul, and was carried to the Asiatic side of the city by a motor boat en route to Ankara for a trial on charges of treason. On November 6, 1922, the party was intercepted at Izmit by General Nureddin, then the Commander of the First Army which was aligned with Mustafa Kemal. Ali Kemal was lynched by a mob set up by the General. His head was smashed by cudgels and he was stoned to death. As described by Nureddin personally to Dr. Riza Nur, who with Ismet Inönü was on his way to Lausanne to negotiate peace with the Allies, "his blood-covered body was subsequently hanged with an epitaph across his chest which read, "Artin Kemal"". This bestowal of a fictitious Armenian name administered a final indignity to the victim. ^[11]

[edit] Descendants and legacy

His British son and daughter adopted their maternal grandmother's maiden name of Johnson during the first world war, his son Osman taking his middle name Wilfred as his first name. Wilfred's son Stanley Johnson was a member of European Parliament for the Conservative Party and is a noted expert on the environment and population studies. His great-grandson Boris Johnson was editor of The Spectator, Conservative Member of Parliament for Henley on Thames and has held the office of Mayor of London since May 4th 2008.

Sabiha, Ali Kemal's second wife, went into exile in Switzerland with her son Zeki Kuneralp. He returned to Turkey after the death of Ataturk and was admitted--with the personal approval of President İsmet İnönü--into the Turkish Diplomatic Service, serving twice as its Permanent Undersecretary in the 1960s and serving as ambassador to London from 1964 to 1966 and again from 1966 to 1972. His wife and brother-in-law were killed when unidentified Armenian terrorists opened fire on his car while he was serving as ambassador in Madrid in 1978.

Zeki Kuneralp wrote an account of his father's life in English for the benefit of the British side of the family.

[edit] References

[edit] Primary sources

• M. Kayahan Özgül (ed.): Ali Kemâl, Ömrüm, Hece yayınları, Ankara 2004
• Zeki Kuneralp (ed.): Ali Kemal, Ömrüm, İsis Publications, Istanbul 1985

[edit] Secondary sources

• Osman Özsoy: Gazetecinin İnfazı [The Execution of a Journalist], Timaş Yayınları, Istanbul 1995 [Biography in Turkish]

[edit] External links

• Ali Kemal Bey, kultur.gov.tr
• My dream for Turkey, by Boris’s great-grandfather, The Spectator, Norman Stone, April 23, 2008