the same newspaper titled as Turk, the thesis of Akçura was criticised by Ali Kemal, one of the liberals in favour of Ottomanship and Ahmed Ferit accused him with the charge of getting occupied in imagination. According to his opinions, there was not any applicable quality of the view of Islamism. Pan-Turkism has not been revealed yet.
Upon the outburst of the revolution of July 1908, the first thought that conquered the victory was the Ottomanship (in other words, a material Ottoman land in respect of all factors). Afterwards, within only one year, the Committee of Union and Progress was convinced of the presence of the contradictory inclinations of the factors that constituted the Ottoman Empire. The movement of Turkism started to develop with a great momentum.
Turkish Society was established in order to examine and study upon the situations and states of all Turkish tribes in İstanbul on the date of 24th of December in 1908. However, the operational field of this society was restricted to the issues of language disputed in the magazines titled as Yeni Lisan (New Language), Genç Kalemler (Young Pens), etc. In the year of 1911, a Turanian society was established under the name of (Turan Neşr-i Maarif Cemiyeti- Turanian Society of the Diffusion of Education) with the purpose of the expansion of the scientific activities. Afterwards, the first edition of the magazine titled as Türk Yurdu (Turks Homeland) was published in the month of December which was managed by Yusuf Akçura. On the date of 25th May 1912, Turkish Associations were founded to be interested with the Turkish culture.
the same time, Ziya Gökalp who had first been in operation in Salonika (1909) and then was appointed as a member to the central board of the Committee of Union and Progress in 1910 continued his activities in Istanbul (1912). Gökalp tried to arouse the memories flowing in the blood of Turkism through a series of publications written in verse. He warbled the Turkish ideal that represented the spiritual existence of the mysterious Turan land as follows: The sons of Oguz Khan did not ever forget the Turan homeland. Turan was connected with some great scholars such as Attila, Farabi, Uluğ Bey, İbni Sina, etc.: The homeland of Turks is neither Turkey, nor Turkestan; their homeland is the great and eternal Turan.
The theory of Ziya Gökalp was manifested with the following formula: (in terms of culture) becoming Turkish, becoming Muslim (in terms of civilisation) modernisation. The systematic explanation of his theories can be found in his book titles as Türkçülüğün Esasları (The Principles of Turkism). This book was published in Ankara one year before the death of his author (1339=1923). The concept of Turan was subjected to modifications for the proper form of application in this book.
Ziya Gökalp defines the term of nation as a society composed of the individuals that are connected with the institutions of common language, religion, ethics and aesthetic issues. Turan is not a mixed alloy that includes the nations of Turks, Moguls, Tunguses, Finnish and Hungarian nations. (According to Ziya Gökalp), the term of Turan is the word that exclusively includes the Turkish tribes and societies. The union of Turks will be achieved gradually. The first target of Turkism is the cultural union of Oguz Turks, in other words the Turks in Turkey and the Turkmen in Azerbaijan, Iran and Harizm. The political union of these societies is not taken into consideration for the time being; but nothing can be said for the future. On the other hand, if the Tatars, Uzbeks and Khirghiz people would move ahead towards the establishment of their own cultures and the separate formation of their cultural structures, they will maintain their own names. Under these circumstances, the Turanian tribe will fulfil its duty as a uniting general term in the name of the nations that we have stated above that constitutes a unique community.
The Turanian romanticism has left various reflections in only literary field; the examples that can be uttered for this sentence would include the work of Altın Ordu (Golden Army) by Ahmed Hikmet, the work of Yeni Turan (New Turan) by Halide Edip in 1913, the work of Muhterem Katil (the Honoured Killer) by Aka Gündüz, and the work of Ay demir (Iron Moon) by Müfide Ferid.
In the course of the First World War, the Community of Union and Progress that reigned the Ottoman Empire fulfilled that Turkey has become more Turkish through the official declaration of the policy in favour of Ottomanship in relation with the issues of Muslims. From Turkism to Turan in and out of Turkey
Following Suleyman Pasha, Necip Asım and Veled Çelebi had been the leaders of the thought of Turkism. This thought was developed in the meetings carried out on Fridays in the waterside residence of Ahmet Mithat Effendi in Beykoz. The studies of the foreign scientists in the field of Turcology have played an important role in the development of Turkism.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, a child was born in the village of Gaspira in Bahcesaray of Crimea who would become a great ideologist and idealist of the Turkish world in the future. This child attended to Russian military schools in the course of his secondary education and drank the first drops of Turkism in the middle of Pan-Slavism. He had heard that the Greeks of Turkish nationality killed the Turks in Crete, and he had secretly get on board of a ship in Odessa with one of his friends. When it was understood that he did not have any passport, he was arrested and then surrendered to his family. Pursuant to these events, he did not return to the Russian school. He worked as a Russian teacher in Turkish schools for a period and then went to Paris.
The newspaper titles as Tercüman (Interpreter) owned by İsmail Bey was published half in Russian and half in Turkish languages in the year of 1883. The trait of the newspaper is the union in language, opinions and works. In case that all Turks on the World would speak with the same tongue and all Turks ranging from the boatman of Bosphorus to the camel rider of Kashgar would understand each other with the same words, a common literary language will be obtained. Similarly, a union of opinion will be maintained in that way. Thus, the union of Work, Activity, Action, in other words, the union of Turks on the world will be achieved.
The influential orientalists such as the Missioner Ilminsky and the Professor Simirnov who were considered as an expert in the field of the Muslims and Turkish nation in Russia would stated that it would be a political error to give permission for the publication of the newspaper. In a report of Okhrana, the Russian secret agent, it was stated that the Islamic propaganda observed in the aforesaid newspaper and in the other Turkish newspapers that moves ahead in the same direction was a curtain drawn over Pan-Turkism.
Gaspıralı İsmail Bey sold the jewellery and ornaments of his wife and the other furniture in his house and continued to publish his newspaper. There were several initiatives for the abrogation of the publication of the newspaper titled as Tercüman. Despite these efforts and against the intrigues of all Turkish and Muslim enemies, the intelligence, talents and the energy of İsmail Bey provided the maintenance of the publication of this unique and petite weekly newspaper issued in the mother tongue of the Turkish people with the population of twenty-thirty millions.
His synthesis and the other opinions about the issue of the strict adoption of Turkism and Islamism but the assimilation of the Western sciences and techniques influenced the Turks in the Crimea, Kazan, Azerbaijan and Turkestan as well as the Turks in Turkey.
There were several followers of Turkism and Turanians that followed İsmail Bey: Yusuf Akçura, Hüseyinzade Ali Bey, Ağaoğlu Ahmet Bey, Sadri Maksudi (Arsal), Zeki Velidi (Togan), Abdullah Battal (Taymas) and other various thinkers and men of actions. Pursuant to the Russian-Japan war in 1905, Russia has turned into an ideological cauldron. In the course of this turmoil that lasted until the year of 1917, Turks could not get obtain anything unfortunately. The studies carried out in the congresses in Duma (Russian assembly) have fallen short. The decisions taken in these congresses that were carried out with the representatives coming from every region of Russia pertaining to the Turkish and Islamic societies could not be realised. The tribal attitudes and behaviours of the Turkish communities constituted an obstacle for the establishment of the Great Turan. Particularly an agreement could not be concluded about the methods to be followed in the course of the decline of the Russian Tsardom. Some of them were in favour of the autonomy while some others supported the idea of a federation; Regional nationalism was propagandised in an unreasonable manner. All the works fulfilled with the Turanian view by particularly Gaspıralı İsmail Bey and the other Crimean and Kazan Turks and the Azerbaijan Turks could not prove fruitful under these circumstances.
Gökalp wrote an article for the newspaper Yeni Mecmua (New Magazine) titled as What should be done by the Russian Turks in the year of 1918. In this article, he stated that the tribal conscience was a detrimental incident, that they should be given up and the national conscience should be maintained instead. But it was too late. In the Middle East, the newspapers titled as Birlik Tuvi, Uluğ Türkistan (the Sublime Turkestan), Türk Söz ve El Bayrağı (the Turkish Flag of Language and Union), Turan, Hürriyet (Liberty) had started to issue the opinions and thoughts of Great Turkism and Great Turan. But Russians invaded the Turkish countries one by one, and Enver Pasha and his Publishers were exterminated. These opinions could not be killed thoroughly, but they could not come to light due to the several precautions taken. Çolpans poems are still kept in memories. Everybodys hope is the achievement of Red Apple for the Anatolian Turkism and the establishment of the Great Turan.
Since the years of 1908, the Turkism that began to develop within the environment of the Turkish Society, the Turkish Association and the Turkish Homeland was ordered in a systematic manner by Ziya Gökalp. Prof. Zeki Velidi Togan has said We should accept Ziya Gökalp as the spiritual guide of Turkism and added to his words that: We should correct and complete his faults and deficiencies. It would be advantageous to establish the Turkism developed by Ziya Gökalp on the cultural principles and to avoid it from the political field. However, the salvation and union of the Turkish world should live in the hearts of the people as an ideal just like the Ideal of Red Apple and the reality of Great Turan.
The state of Great Turan was founded by Oğuz Khan. His followers tried to keep this exalted state alive under different names of dynasty. Huns, Gokturks, Uighur Turks, Avars, Khazars, Peceneks, Kuman tribes, Karahan dynasty, Gazne Turks, Seljuks, Ottomans, and hundreds of great Turanian World Countries The only stable and unchangeable factor of these states is the Nation, in other words, the Turkish nation and of course, their language is Turkish. The names of the states and dynasties have been temporary, and they did not even have any significance.
The fundamental issue is the Nation and its ideal that keeps it alive.
Our purpose in naming this great study of General Turkish History that is included in this site as Turkish Turan History is as follows:
Our aim is to emphasise that the Turkish history and the Turkish nation constitute a union, that there is not any kind of qualitative difference between a militia of Oğuz Khan who lived five thousand years ago and any Turkish soldier or any person of our people today, and what makes the difference is the lack of the ideal of the red apple (promised land) or maybe our people of today may have get rid of the thought of Great Turan from their minds.
With the ideal of Red Apple in our hearts and the thought of Great Turan in our minds, we constitute a very very large nation wide-spread from the Northern Siberia to Manchuria or ranging from a Red Indian chief with Turan Roots residing on the other side of America to the Anatolian Turk Sheikh effendi obstinate in speaking Turkish that resides in Yemen provinces.
Thus, the term of Great Turan Country shall mean the hearts and the places where this great Nation resides in.
End