![]() ![]() Mehmed Ziya changed his name, initially as a pen name, to "Gökalp", meaning "Sky warrior" or "Blue warrior" in Old Turkish. ![]() The revolutionary currents of Constantinople at the time were extremely varied the unpopularity of the Abdul Hamid II regime had by this time awakened diverse revolutionary sentiment in Constantinople. He developed relationships with many figures of the revolutionary underground in this period, abandoned his veterinary studies, and became a member of the underground revolutionary group, the Society of Union and Progress. There, he attended veterinary school and became involved in underground revolutionary politics, for which he served ten months in prison. This cultural environment has often been suggested to have informed his sense of national identity later in his life, when political detractors suggested that he was of Kurdish extraction, Gökalp responded that while he was certain of patrilineal Turkish racial heritage, this was insignificant: "I learned through my sociological studies that nationality is based solely on upbringing." Some historians nonetheless characterize him as being of Kurdish origin.Īfter attending secondary school in Diyarbakır, he settled in Istanbul, in 1896. Diyarbakır Province was a "cultural frontier", having been ruled by Arabs and Persians until the 16th century, and featuring "conflicting national traditions" among the local populations of Turks, Kurds, and Armenians. Mehmed Ziya was born in Çermik in the Diyarbekir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire on 23 March 1876. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |