page_title: Namık Kemal
section_title: Ideology and exile
hierarchical_section_title: Namık Kemal / Ideology and exile
caption_attribution_description: Türkçe: Namık Kemal’in 1878’de dönemin meşhur fotoğraf stüdyosu Abdullah Biraderler’de çektirdiği fotoğraf.
context_page_description: Namık Kemal was an Ottoman democrat, writer, intellectual, reformer, journalist, playwright, and political activist who was influential in the formation of the Young Ottomans and their struggle for governmental reform in the Ottoman Empire during the late Tanzimat period, which would lead to the First Constitutional Era in the Empire in 1876. Kemal was particularly significant for championing the notions of freedom and fatherland in his numerous plays and poems, and his works would have a powerful impact on the establishment of and future reform movements in Turkey, as well as other former Ottoman lands. He is often regarded as being instrumental in redefining Western concepts like natural rights and constitutional government.
context_section_description: Namık Kemal was heavily influenced by Western conceptions of the relationship between the government and the people. As such, he and his compatriots spoke out against the movement to centralize the government being undertaken by Sultan Abdülaziz (ruled 1861–1876), and his advisors Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha and Mehmed Fuad Pasha. As a result of his criticism of the government, Namık Kemal was exiled from the Ottoman Empire in 1867 and fled to Paris, where many other exiled Young Ottomans had found refuge.
  In 1869 or 1870, Kemal was allowed to return to Constantinople and proceeded to write for a number of Young Ottoman-run newspapers, and eventually published one of his own, Ibret ("Admonition"), in which he addressed more intellectual, social, and national subjects. In addition, it was after his return to Constantinople that Kemal wrote his most significant and influential work: the play Vatan Yahut Silistre, or Silistra, which translates to "Fatherland." The play tells the story of an Ottoman soldier whose loyalty to his nation, and not his religion or allegiance to the Sultan, motivates him to defend the town of Silistra, Bulgaria from the Russians during the Crimean War. The impact these nationalist sentiments, unheard of in the Ottoman Empire prior to Kemal, had on the Turkish people was so profound that Kemal's newspaper, Ibret, was shut down, and Kemal himself was banished from the Empire for the second time. During this second exile, Kemal took refuge in Cyprus, in a building known as the Namık Kemal Dungeon in Famagusta, where he remained for three years between 1873 and 1876. 
  His masterpiece, "Ode to Freedom" summarizes his political views.
caption: A photo of Namık Kemal taken in Istanbul, 1878.
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