Namık Kemal

Namık Kemal (21 December 1840 – 2 December 1888) was an Ottoman writer, poet, journalist and intellectual, a leading figure of the Young Ottomans who pressed for governmental reform in the late Tanzimat period, and the most influential voice of the ideas of fatherland and freedom in modern Turkish literature. ¹

His writings brought him exile three times — to Paris in 1867, to Cyprus from 1873 to 1876, and to Chios, where he died in 1888 — while his play Vatan Yahut Silistre (Homeland or Silistra) became his most famous and consequential work. ¹

He was born Mehmet Kemal at Tekirdağ on 21 December 1840. His father, Mustafa Asım Bey, was chief astrologer at the Sultan's palace; his mother was Fatma Zehra Hanım; and his family, of Turkish descent, came originally from Yenişehir in Bursa Province. "Kemal" was part of his given name, not a surname, which the Ottoman Empire did not use. ¹

In his youth he travelled across the empire, staying in Istanbul, Kars and Sofia, and studied several subjects including poetry. In 1857, aged seventeen, he entered the Translation Office of the Ottoman government. ¹

The political nature of his writings forced him out of the Translation Office under Grand Vizier Emin Âli Pasha, and he joined his friend İbrahim Şinasi at the newspaper Tasvîr-i Efkâr (Herald of Ideas), which he edited after Şinasi's exile in 1864 until his own exile and flight to Paris in 1867. ¹

He joined the Young Ottomans in 1862 and wrote continually on political, administrative, social and foreign-policy reform. In Paris in 1868 he ran the newspaper Hürriyet (Liberty), a popular venue for the Young Ottomans' anti-sultanate, pro-parliamentary views. ¹

Allowed to return to Constantinople around 1870, he wrote for several newspapers and published his own, İbret (Admonition). In this period he wrote his most significant work, the play Vatan Yahut Silistre, the story of an Ottoman soldier moved by loyalty to his nation — not his religion or his sultan — to defend Silistra against the Russians in the Crimean War. ¹

The play's nationalist impact was so profound that İbret was shut down and Kemal was exiled a second time, to Cyprus, where he spent three years (1873–1876) in the building still known as the Namık Kemal Dungeon in Famagusta. ¹

He supported Murad V's accession in 1876 and protested his deposition three months later. The first Ottoman parliament was established in 1876 under Young Ottoman pressure and Midhat Pasha's influence; Sultan Abdul Hamid II then exiled Kemal a third time, to an administrative post on Chios, where he died on 2 December 1888. He was buried at Bolayır, Gelibolu. ¹

His output spanned the novel, drama, criticism and history. His novels İntibah (1874) and Cezmi (1887/88) are among the earliest Turkish novels; his plays include Vatan yahut Silistre, Akif Bey, Gülnihal, Kara Bela, Zavallı Çocuk and Celaleddin Harzemşah. ¹

His criticism includes the Tahrîb-i Harabat, the Takip, the Mukaddime-i Celal and the Renan Müdafaanâmesi, his defence against Ernest Renan; his historical works treat the sieges of Silistra and Kanizsa and an introduction to Ottoman history. ¹

His "Ode to Freedom" (Hürriyet Kasidesi) sums up his political programme: the sovereignty of the nation, the separation of powers, the responsibility of officials, personal freedom, equality, freedom of thought, press, association and property, and the sanctity of the home. ¹

His friend and editorial partner İbrahim Şinasi, founder of Tasvîr-i Efkâr, drew him into reform journalism, and Midhat Pasha, architect of the first constitution, was his chief political ally in 1876; Midhat Pasha has a record in this museum, Şinasi does not yet, and a political alliance is not among the formal person-to-person relations used here, so both are recorded in prose. ¹

His opponents were the men of the palace: Grand Vizier Emin Âli Pasha, who drove him from the Translation Office; Sultan Abdülaziz and his advisers Âli and Fuad Pashas, whose centralising government he attacked; and Abdul Hamid II, who exiled him last. ¹

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, often said he had been influenced by Kemal's writings as a young man and drew inspiration from them for the Turkish state. ¹

This section sets out positions as the sources report them. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Kemal and his companions set out a programme of constitutional, representative government, drawing on the constitution of the French Third Republic and preferring the British parliament as the model of the world in political principles; in his writings he argued that Islam was compatible with political freedom and constitutional rule, and his thought is classed with Islamic modernism. ¹

The Ottoman authorities treated him as a dangerous opponent: his newspapers were closed and he was exiled three times. Readings of his legacy divide between those who see the father of Turkish nationalism and democracy, and those who note that his project remained one of reform within the Ottoman frame. ¹

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