Ziya Gökalp’s Küçük Mecmua Period

Abstract

One of the most important figures in the history of Ottoman-Turkish political thought, Ziya Gökalp, spent a long period of the National Struggle in Diyarbakır. After returning from Malta, where he lived in exile from May 29, 1919 to April 30, 1921, he served in Ankara for a short time and then moved to Diyarbakır. Gökalp, who left and returned to Diyarbakır many times due to investigations and family reasons, played important roles in his life during different periods. Starting from his youth, when he formed his first impressions of life and his worldview, he fought against tyrants who took advantage of the lack of authority in Diyarbakır and the administration that supported them, and against the people who disturbed them. He participated in the second great congress of the Union and Progress held in Thessaloniki in 1909 as the Diyarbakır delegate and was appointed as the Diyarbakır Provincial Education Inspector in 1910. In the same year, he participated in the third congress of the Union and Progress held in Thessaloniki as the Diyarbakır delegate and was elected as a member of the General Directorate of the Central Office. After a tenyear period that witnessed World War I and the War of Independence, he devoted his time in Diyarbakır, where he returned for the last time, to cultural and political activities. He organized the young people and educators to collect cultural and folkloric materials in the city; set political meetings. Gökalp, who started his work with Gece Dersleri (Night Lessons) to enlighten the people of the city, published a weekly magazine called Küçük Mecmua (Little Magazine) in order to make his ideas heard throughout the country. He published many folk tales, beliefs and folk songs for the first time in this magazine. With his articles published in the magazine, Gökalp, who aimed to enlighten the people of Anatolia and determine the scientific, cultural and artistic policies of the newly established state, touched on many different subjects, especially the War of Independence, from current affairs to current developments, from philosophy to literature, from folk beliefs to international politics. Before Lausanne, Dr. After completing his studies on Kurdish tribes, which he had started upon the request of Rıza Nur, and planning to examine Arab and Turkmen tribes, Gökalp, who did not live long enough, based the sociology of the new state to be established on the example of Diyarbakır and treated this city as an experimental laboratory. His last residence in Diyarbakır, between September 1921 and March 1923, is one of Gökalp’s most productive periods in terms of literature and thought. Gökalp, who returned to Ankara after working for Küçük Mecmua for less than two years, shared with his readers for the first time in the pages of this magazine most of the concepts and ideas he produced in his works titled Türk Töresi, Altın Işık, Doğru Yol, Hâkimiyet-i Milliye ve Umdelerinin Tasnif, Analiz ve Tefsiri, published in 1923. Gökalp left behind his Turanist views in Türkleşmek, İslamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (1918), and developed his ideas in the Türkçülüğün Esasları (1923) Türk Medeniyet Tarihi (1925), which are considered to be among his most important works, and focused exclusively on the idea of Turkism. Thus, in order to understand the final point of Gökalp’s mental evolution and the development of his intellectual life, the period when he published Küçük Mecmua almost singlehandedly should be examined meticulously.

Citation: Yiğitler, Şener Şükrü (2025). “Ziya Gökalp’s Küçük Mecmua Period”, Erdem, December, Issue:89, pp. 277-303