DIET: The Price of Freedom

The new work of my brother Mustafa Özcanbaz, his last novel describing the years of the National Struggle in Çorum. (Post Publications, Istanbul, 20025, 360.p)

Çorum is a city in the middle of the Anatolian Geography, which is wanted to be squeezed us with Sevres, it has not been occupied, what is the relevance of the National Struggle, I heard you say. ‘O Turk, Tremble and Return to Yourself, Pick Up, You're Not Going Anywhere’ is one of the foci of the resurrection that we call the Anatolian Ergenekon.

In the words of my professor Özcanbaz, "Çorum, which was under occupation and resisted among the cities whose hands were tied by rebellions, was the only passageway connecting the east and west of Anatolia. Therefore, it was very important. With the endeavours of the rational Çorum people, it was on the right side and had a rightful share in the success of the National Struggle. When we look at the number of martyrs given on the battlefield, those who were martyred after being wounded and those who became veterans, Çorum is at the top of the list."

This last sentence should not be perceived as necrophilia, that is, as a kind of death-loving, it is the expression of being biophilic, of being a lover of life, of being attached to life by overcoming all negativities. What's Erich Fromm and the National Struggle got to do with each other?

Novel Heroes Will Be Familiar to You

The resurrection is the realisation of the Anatolian Ergenon by supporting the leading cadre using the historical accumulation of a new state. ‘In Ali Osman, I described the struggle of the whole Çorum with its Alevis and Sunnis, in Feylesof, the educated people's construction of the newly established state on Turkishness, in Abbas Külahi, Bekir Hafız, the contributions of sincere Muslims to the struggle, in Yaşar, the Turkish nation that stood up regardless of its pain, in Kurdish Hacı Mustafa Efendi, I told about those who were against the National Struggle but saw their mistake and supported it. In Yakup Usta and Deli Murat, the Anatolian wisdom and purity, and in Süleyman Sami Bey, Cemal Bey, Major Rasim, Major Mehmet Tevfik Beys, the ideal spirit that laid the foundations of the Republic of Turkey are reflected.’

As someone who has read Atsız's The Death of the Grey Wolves, The Resurrection of the Grey Wolves, Mustafa Necati Sepetcioğlu's and Bekir Büyükarkın's novels on Turkish history since secondary school, you too, friends, should hear the voice of the heart, which is the narration of the city where I was born and raised through the method of oratory/rhetoric and poetry's presentation of the truth.

I have explained this point in the ‘Introduction’ section of the novel, let me share it with you now, if I may.

The method used to explain philosophical/religious truths to general masses of people is oratory/eloquence/rhetoric and poetry. The stories of Dede Korkut, Yusuf Has Hacib's Kutadgu Biliğ and Ahmet Yesevi's hikmet are examples of the wisdom that the basic principles of Turkish thought have conveyed to today's people.

Turks conveyed their oral culture to the people through verse (mani, poem, poem, runma, folk song, epic, elegy, semai, beautifulisation, satire, hymn, breath, deviye, speech and breaths called destur written in the form of speeches). In terms of the history of thought, in the Eastern tradition, truths are told through legends, epics, tales, stories, proverbs, folk songs/sayings; in Western philosophy, through mythology; and in the Islamic tradition, especially in the Holy Qur'an, through parables.

A universal history cannot be written without writing a particular history

The author of the book in your hand, as a brother who has also served as the president of Çorum Intellectuals' Quarry and still carries the burden of this non-governmental organisation, embroidering the trace of Turkestan-Turkey cultural continuity by centring Çorum in his novels like his namesake Mustafa Necati Sepetçioğlu.

As a writer with an academic discipline, he aims to reach young people by novelising his archival readings in the Seljuk-Ottoman-Turkish Republic cultural continuity of the Turkification and Islamisation process of Çorum.

As a literary product, he tries to present what he reads from the sources of Çorum's National Struggle years as ‘living’ cases that need to be understood and understood in terms of transferring the socio-political conditions of that period, the feelings and thoughts of the people, their imagination, desires and wishes, egoistic and spiritual states, that is, what was experienced at that time.

A universal history cannot be written without writing a particular history, from this point of view, in our opinion, the effort to convey technical / authentic information to the general public in the novel genre is not localisation or localisation. It is an effort to convey to the youth the forms that the particular (local/national) values of the Turkish Muslim imagination developed in Inner Asia/Atayurt (Turkestan) outside of the Arab and Persian power conflicts took in Asia Minor/Anatolia (Turkey).

This and similar studies are of great importance in terms of referring to the theoretical foundations of the Turks' continuous migration to the West by following the trade (Silk) routes of the period, and their adoption of the newly acquired regions as their homeland.

Turkestan The Turkish Hand

We know that as a result of migration movements, which we see as socialisation movements, the term Turkestan, Turkish Homeland, Turkish hand began to be used for the Caspian and Hungarian countries extending from Idyl-Volga to Central Europe in the IX-X centuries and finally for Anatolia from the XII century. The name of our country is important because the term ‘Turkey’ was already used by the Byzantines in the VI century for Central Asia. In the IXth and Xth centuries, they also called the area extending from the Volga to Central Europe as Turkey. In the XI-XII centuries, Egypt and Syria were called Turkey.

Anatolia started to be recognised as Turkey from the XIIth century. If we ask what is the place of Çorum in this respect, we see that the 11th century is the turning point. Because Çorum was Turkified and Islamised during the Seljuk period. The Seljuks, who preferred to work in coordination with the Sassanid-Persian and Arab cultures, from which they were significantly fed by taking cultural code, instead of struggling with them, did not surrender to the conceptions of Islam put forward by the Arab and Persian Minds, and created a unique perspective of their own. The Turkish intellect and the concept of Islam and the state system, which is the transfer of this concept to practice, have been the triggers of the Turkish Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Turkish Intellect and Muslim Vision

What we mean by"Turkish Islam ’ is to dwell on the horizontal and vertical differentiation of Islam in the world, the transformation of existing belief systems in different cultural spaces, and the transformation of the existing belief systems themselves according to the cultural codes of that geography. As a matter of fact, from the second half of the 11th century onwards, the political/intellectual, economic and political Muslim visions of the Persian and Turkish minds began to be seen in the Islamic world.

Shiite states emerged against the Umayyad and Abbasid (Sunnite) model of the Arab mind. With the Turkish and Persian conceptions of Islam, Khorasan Islam, Egyptian Islam and Maghreb Islam began to be experienced in the Islamic world. In the context of horizontal and vertical differentiation, both the lifestyles of the people living in this geography changed, and these people interpreted the new system with their ancient cultures and brought different perspectives to it.

In 1055, the process that started with Tugrul Beg, who was named Emir of the East and West because he liberated the Abbasid Caliphate from the domination of the Shiite Fatimid Caliph and the Büveyhis, is extremely important for Çorum. The Seljuks, who took part of Syria from the Fatimids, established a new empire from Iran to Syria and Asia Minor.

They settled in an enormous region covering the Caspian Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Persian Sea by crossing the Iranian route. Established in Kirman, Hamedan and Asia Minor, the Seljuks ended the Fatimid rule over Baghdad and Damascus. In addition to this military struggle, they established Madrasahs, the important universities of the period, to wage a theoretical struggle against the intellectual accumulation of the Shiite university al-Azhar.

Danişment: Wise

Danişment is the name of the Turkmen Principality of Turkey which Turkified and Islamised Çorum. Danishmend is a Persian term meaning "enlightened, scholar, wise ’. The Danişmend Principality, which took Central Anatolia from the hands of Byzantium, made wise contributions to the Turkification of Anatolia by opening Çorum and its surroundings to Turkish tribes. If we recall the historical foundations of this, Ahmet Gazi, who was the Danishmend Bey of the Great Seljuk Ruler Melikşah, assigned Çavlı Beyi to take Çorum (Nikonya) after taking Amasya, but he failed. Thereupon, Melik Ahmet Gazi took Iltekin Gazi, one of the important commanders of the period, with him and came to Nikonya and captured this place (1075).

Our name appears right here, because Melik Ahmet Gazi left İlyas Beyi, the head of Çorumlu tribe of Alayuntlu tribe of Oghuzs, who showed great heroism in the war, as the administrator here. Then he conquered the region, which has important agricultural land and is now called Osmancık. The name of this place comes from Osman Bey from Alayunt tribe. When we look at Çorum and its districts, it is the continuation of this tradition to give the names of the tribes and tribes of Oghuz Turks. Bayat, Büget, Kayı, Kınık, Salur, Avşar, Bayındır, Karakeçili, Karaevli, Dodurga are some of the names of the tribes and clans.

The Price of Freedom Diet

Returning to the novel, it tells the story of the period of the National Struggle in the region Turkified and Islamised by the Çorum tribe in the Seljuk-Ottoman-Turkish Republic cultural continuum. This does not mean putting the pre-Islamic Turkish cultural history in the background. Because just as Bilge Tonyukuk initiated the war of liberation of the Gokturks together with Kutlu by relying on the strength and will of the Turks, Mustafa Kemal refers to the initiation of the war of liberation by relying on the strength and high character of the Turks.

Mustafa Kemal, first in the Gallipoli War and then in the War of Independence, once again announced to the world 14 centuries after Bilge Kagan that ‘no one can destroy the Turk unless the sky collapses and the earth splits ’ to the global and imperialist powers of the period. In this respect, the National Struggle is an Anatolian Ergenekon and Çorum is a region that has made significant contributions to this.

May the souls of all our ancestors who gave their lives for this cause from the Ergenekon of Ötüken to the Ergenekon of Anatolia rest in peace. Mustafa Hodja, may your well-being be perpetual.