Ahmet Ağaoğlu

Ahmet Ağaoğlu (December 1869 – 19 May 1939), born Ahmet Ağayev, was an Azerbaijani-Turkish publicist, jurist and politician, and the founder of liberal Kemalism. ^{1 2} Educated at St Petersburg and Paris, he became a leading voice of the Azerbaijani national awakening as editor of the Baku newspapers Hayat and Irshad, founded the secret Difai party in 1905, and after moving to Istanbul was exiled by the British to Malta. ¹ In the Turkish Republic he sat in the Grand National Assembly, advised Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and supplied the theory of the Free Republican Party in the 1930 experiment with multi-party politics. ^{1 2}

He was born at Shusha in Karabakh, the son of Mirza Hasan Bey, a wealthy cotton farmer of the Kurdlar clan, and Taza Hanim; his grandfather Mirza Ibrahim was one of Shusha's renowned scholars, a calligrapher and poet. ¹ His uncle wanted him to become a mujtahid and hired teachers of Persian and Arabic for him from the age of six, but his mother — religious herself, though she disliked clerics — encouraged his secret Russian lessons and redirected his education from Najaf and Karbala towards St Petersburg and Paris. ^{1 2} After a Russian schooling at Shusha and Tiflis and an interrupted six months at the Technological Institute in St Petersburg, he reached Paris on 8 January 1888, attended lectures at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Études Pratiques — hearing Ernest Renan and James Darmesteter — and from 1889 studied law at the Sorbonne, publishing his series "Persian Society" in La Nouvelle Revue between 1891 and 1893. ¹

Returning in 1894, he taught French at his old school in Shusha, then moved to Baku in 1897 at the invitation of H. Z. Taghiyev, wrote for the Russian-language Kaspi, and worked with Ali Bey Huseynzade on the newspaper Hayat. ^{1 2} In 1905 he founded Hayat as the first Turkish newspaper of Baku, followed by Irshad and Taraqqi, and secretly founded the Muslim Difai Party to fight the Tsarist government and the Dashnaks; persecuted, he lived hidden in friends' homes for months before relocating to Istanbul at the end of 1908. ^{1 2} In Istanbul he directed the Süleymaniye library, contributed to Türk Yurdu, taught Turkic-Mongol history and Russian at Istanbul University, and joined the Committee of Union and Progress. ¹

In 1918 he served as political adviser to the commander of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus assisting the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, was elected to its parliament for Zangezur on 26 December 1918 as a neutral (though he later declined the seat), and joined the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference; on reaching Istanbul he was arrested with other Unionist leaders by the British and exiled to Malta. ^{1 3} After his return he headed the Press Information Office in Ankara, edited Hakimiyet-i Milliye, sat in the second and third terms of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and advised Atatürk on foreign affairs. ¹ In 1930 he stood beside the founder Fethi Bey as the weightiest figure and theorist of the Free Republican Party; when the party was closed he withdrew from active politics and wrote until his death. ²

He died at Istanbul on 19 May 1939 of liver inflammation and heart failure; his funeral was carried from his house in Nişantaşı to the Teşvikiye Mosque, and after the funeral prayer he was buried beside his wife at Feriköy cemetery. ¹

His books include Woman in the Islamic World (1901), Üç Medeniyet ("Three Civilisations", 1927), İngiltere ve Hindistan ("England and India", 1929), Serbest İnsanlar Ülkesinde ("In the Land of Free People", 1930), Devlet ve Fert ("State and Person", 1933), Ben Neyim ("What Am I?", 1939) and the posthumous Serbest Fırka Hatıraları ("Memoirs of the Free Party", 1949). ¹ As a journalist he edited, across Baku and Istanbul, Kaspi, Hayat, Irshad, Taraqqi, Hakimiyet-i Milliye and Akın. ^{1 3}

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

Liberal Kemalism and women's emancipation. He defined himself as a reformist and a Kemalist while developing liberal Kemalism, the liberal interpretation of the republic's founding ideology; he considered cultural and educational progress the major part of national liberation, viewed the emancipation of women as part of the struggle, and was the first member of the Azeri national intelligentsia to raise his voice for equal rights for women. ¹

Background claims and his faith. The English article, citing Raymond Kévorkian, describes Ağaoğlu as descended from a family of dönmes — Turkish-speaking Jews who had earlier converted to Islam; that is one scholar's claim about his ancestors, and his uncle's mujtahid plan and the Shia-oriented milieu of Karabakh described by the Turkish article are his upbringing, not attestations. ^{1 2} No source names a school for Ağaoğlu himself, and his faith is recorded as unknown in his data record. ⁴

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