Ottoman Democratic Party
Which party was Abdullah Cevdet a member of in 1908?
Abdullah Cevdet Abdullah Cevdet ( ‎ ; ; 9 September 1869 – 29 November 1932 ) was an Ottoman and later Turkish intellectual and physician of ethnic Kurdish descent . He was one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress ( CUP ) . In 1908 , he joined the Democratic Party which merged with the Freedom and Accord Party in 1911 . He was also a translator , radical free-thinker , and an ideologist of the Young Turks until 1908 . Biography . The son of a physician , and himself a graduate from the Military College in Istanbul as an ophthalmologist , Cevdet , initially a pious Muslim , was influenced by Western materialistic philosophies and was against institutionalized religion , but thought that although the Muslim God was of no use in the modern era , Islamic society must preserve Islamic principles . He published the periodical İçtihat from 1904–1932 , in which articles he used to promote his modernist thoughts . He was arrested and expelled from his country several times due to his political activities and lived in Europe , in cities including Vienna , Geneva and Paris . His poetry was linked with the Symbolist movement in France , and he received accolades from leading French authors like Gustave Kahn . The overall goal of early Young Turks such as Cevdet was to bring to end the absolutist regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II . Cevdet and four other medical students ( including Ibrahim Temo ) at the Military Medical Academy in Istanbul founded the society of Ottoman Progress in 1889 , which would become the Committee of Union and Progress ( CUP ) . Initially with no political agenda , it became politicized by several leaders and factions and mounted the Young Turk Revolution against Abdul Hamid II in 1908 . However , Abdullah Cevdet and Ibrahim Temo cut their ties with the CUP soon after 1902 , as the CUP began to advocate a Turkist nationalist policy . Instead he promoted his secular ideas in his magazine İçtihat , where he published articles in support of several policies , which later were part of Atatürks Reforms like the shutting down of the madrases or the furthering of womens rights . In 1908 he joined the Ottoman Democratic Party ( ; ) which was founded against the CUP . In 1912 he and Hüseyin Cahit advocated without success for the Latin script to be introduced in the Ottoman Empire . Cevdet was tried several times in the Ottoman Empire because some of his writings were considered as blasphemy against Islam and Muhammad . For this reason , he was labelled as the eternal enemy of Islam ( Süssheim , EI ) and called Aduvullah ( the enemy of God ) . His most famous court case was due to his defense of the Baháʼí Faith , which he considered an intermediary step between Islam and the final abandonment of religious belief , in his article in İçtihat on 1 March 1922 . For a brief period between 1921 and 1922 he was active for Kurdish independence . Religion and science . Cevdat wanted to fuse religion and materialism , that is , under the influence of Victor Hugo and Jean-Marie Guyau , discard God but keep religion as a social force . In one poem he says:We are pious infidels ; our faith is that Being a disciple of God is tantamount to love . What we drink at our drinking party is The thirst for the infinite . Ranging from the New Testament to the Qur’ān , from Plato to Abū al-‘Alā’ al-Ma’arrī , he created an eclectic philosophy , reconciling science , religion , and philosophy with one another , and in order to specifically build an Islamic materialism ( he was a translator of Ludwig Büchner , one of the main popularizers of scientific materialism at the end of the 19th century ) , he would use medieval mystical authors like Al-Maʿarri , Omar Khayyam and Rumi , and try to find correspondence in their works with modern authors such as Voltaire , Cesare Lombroso , Vittorio Alfieri and Baron DHolbach . His final step was to present modern scientific theories ranging from Darwinism to genetics as repetitions of Islamic holy texts or derivations from the writings of Muslim thinkers , trying to fit the Quran or ahadith with the ideas of peoples like Théodule Armand Ribot or Jean-Baptiste Massillon . He found that the Qur’ān both alluded to and summarized the theory of evolution . Disillusioned by the ulemas lukewarm response to his role as materialist mujtahid ( as he would term it ) , he turned to heterodoxy , the Bektashi ( he called Turkish Stoicism ) and then Baháʼísm . Being unfruitful in that regard as well , hed spent his last efforts as purely intellectual . Death . Left alone in his final years , Abdullah Cevdet died at the age of 63 on 29 November 1932 . His body was brought for religious funeral service to Hagia Sophia , which was still used as a mosque at that time . However , nobody claimed his coffin , and it was expressed by some religious conservatives that he did not deserve Islamic funeral prayer . Following an appeal of Peyami Safa , a notable writer , the funeral prayer was performed . His body was then taken by city servants to the Merkezefendi Cemetery for burial . References . - Şerif Mardin , Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri , 1895–1908 , Istanbul 1964 ( 1992 ) , 221–50 . - idem , Continuity and Change in the Ideas of the Young Turks , expanded text of a lecture given at the School of Business Administration and Economics Robert College , 1969 , 13–27 . - Frank W . Creel , The program and ideology of Dr . Abdullah Cevdet : a study of the origins of Kemalism in Turkey ( unpublished PhD thesis ) , The University of Chicago , 1978 . - M . Şükrü Hanioğlu , Bir siyasal düşünür olarak Doktor Abdullah Cevdet ve Dönemi , Istanbul , 1981 . - idem , Bir siyasal örgüt olarak Osmanlı Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti ve Jon Türklük , Istanbul , 1986 . - idem , The Young Turks in Opposition , Oxford University Press , 1995 . - Necati Alkan , The eternal enemy of Islam : Abdullah Cevdet and the Bahai Religion , Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 68:1 , 2005 , 1-20 .