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Genç Kalemler

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Genç Kalemler
Cover of Genç Kalemler
Categories
  • Literary magazine
  • Cultural magazine
  • Political magazine
Founder
Founded1911
First issue11 April 1911
Final issue1912
CountryOttoman Empire
Based inThessaloniki
LanguageOttoman Turkish

Genç Kalemler (Ottoman Turkish: Young Pens) was an Ottoman literary and cultural magazine which was one of the earliest nationalist publications in the Ottoman Empire.[1] Murat Belge describes it as a pan-Turkist publication.[2] It was published between April 1911 and October 1912 in Thessaloniki, Ottoman Empire, and was the first Ottoman publication which called for having a national language.

History and profile

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Genç Kalemler was first published on 11 April 1911 as a successor of Hüsn ve Şiir, a literary and sociology magazine[2] which was published in Thessaloniki in 1910.[3] Its editor-in-chief was Nesimi Sarım who was the secretary of the Central Council of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).[3] The founders of Genç Kalemler were the members of a national literary movement: Ziya Gökalp, Ömer Seyfettin and Ali Canip Yöntem.[1][4] The magazine was financially and politically backed by the CUP.[3]

The major tenet of the magazine was to implement the language reform to simplify the Ottoman language to improve the literacy rates and to avoid the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.[1] It supported the use of pure Turkish[1] and employed vernacular Turkish instead of the Ottoman Turkish.[5] Another major view of the magazine contributors was that the Ottoman Turkish could not be a national language due to its artificial nature and that Istanbul Turkish should be adopted as the official language of the Empire.[1] To this end the editors of Genç Kalemler reviewed the literary works written in Ottoman Turkish arguing that these works could not reflect the eminence of the Turkish nation.[6]

Ziya Gökalp's poem entitled Turan was first published in the magazine.[7] Gökalp's another significant contribution in the magazine was his article about the philosophical approach of Henri Bergson which was the first writing on Bergson in an Ottoman publication.[8] Mehmet Ali Tevfik and Hakkı Süha published poems in the magazine developing analogies between the forces of Genghis and Attila and the Ottoman soldiers fighting against the Italian Empire in the Italo-Turkish War in Libya.[9]

Genç Kalemler published a total of thirty-three issues before ceasing publication in October 1912.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Ayşegül Aydıngün; İsmail Aydıngün (2004). "The Role of Language in the Formation of the National Identity and Turkishness". Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. 10 (3): 417–420. doi:10.1080/13537110490518264. hdl:11511/40574. S2CID 145324008.
  2. ^ a b c Murat Belge (2010). "Genç Kalemler and Turkish Nationalism". In Celia Kerslake; Kerem Ökten; Philip Robins (eds.). Turkey's Engagement with Modernity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 27–37. doi:10.1057/9780230277397_3. ISBN 978-1-349-31326-6.
  3. ^ a b c Renée Worringer (2014). Ottomans Imagining Japan. East, Middle East, and Non-Western Modernity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 192–193. doi:10.1057/9781137384607. ISBN 978-1-137-38460-7.
  4. ^ Şeyma Afacan (2022). "Historical aspects of linguistic and emotional changes". In Gesine Lenore Schiewer; Jeanette Altarriba; Bee Chin Ng (eds.). Language and Emotion. An International Handbook. Vol. 46. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter. p. 286. doi:10.1515/9783110347524-013. ISBN 978-3-11-039460-3.
  5. ^ Kemal H. Karpat (1960). "Social Themes in Contemporary Turkish Literature: Part I". The Middle East Journal. 14 (1): 34. JSTOR 4323199.
  6. ^ Timothy Roberts; Emrah Şahin (December 2010). "Construction of National Identities in Early Republics: A Comparison of the American and Turkish Cases". Journal of the Historical Society. 10 (4): 527. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5923.2010.00315.x.
  7. ^ M. Vedat Gürbüz (2003). "Genesis of Turkish Nationalism". Belleten. 67 (249): 503. doi:10.37879/belleten.2003.495. S2CID 156608257.
  8. ^ Nazım İrem (February 2002). "Turkish Conservative Modernism: Birth of a Nationalist Quest for Cultural Renewal". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 34 (1): 92. doi:10.1017/S0020743802001046. JSTOR 3880169. S2CID 146794994.
  9. ^ Doğan Gürpınar (2012). "What is in a Name? The Rise of Turkic Personal Male Names in Turkey (1908–38)". Middle Eastern Studies. 48 (5): 697. doi:10.1080/00263206.2012.703617. S2CID 144784853.
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