Ahmet Cevat Emre (1876–1961) was a Turkish journalist and linguist. He was a member of the

Turkish Language Association The Turkish Language Association ( tr, Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) is the regulatory body for the Turkish language, founded on 12 July 1932 by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. The Institution acts as the off ...

(TDK) and involved in the latinization of the Turkish alphabet. He also served as a deputy for

Çanakkale Çanakkale (pronounced ), ancient ''Dardanellia'' (), is a city and seaport in Turkey in Çanakkale province on the southern shore of the Dardanelles at their narrowest point. The population of the city is 195,439 (2021 estimate). Çanakkale is ...

in the

Grand National Assembly of Turkey The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ( tr, ), usually referred to simply as the TBMM or Parliament ( tr, or ''Parlamento''), is the unicameral Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Consti ...

Early life and education

Emre was born on Crete, which at the time was within the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

. He later moved to

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

where he attended the

Kuleli Military High School Kuleli Military High School was the oldest military high school in Turkey, located in Çengelköy, Istanbul, on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus strait. It was founded on September 21, 1845, by Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I. After the 2016 Tur ...

and later also the

Ottoman Military College The Ottoman Military College or Imperial Military Staff College or Ottoman Army War College ( ota, مكتب اركان حربيه شاهانه, Mekteb-i Erkân-ı Harbiyye-i Şâhâne or اركان حربيه مكتب, romanized: ''Erkân-ı Har ...

. He was expected to have successful career in the

Ottoman Military The military of the Ottoman Empire ( tr, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun silahlı kuvvetleri) was the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. Army The military of the Ottoman Empire can be divided in five main periods. The foundation era covers the ...

, but was imprisoned and exiled to

Tripoli, Libya Tripoli (; ar, طرابلس الغرب, translit= Ṭarābulus al-Gharb , translation=Western Tripoli) is the capital and largest city of Libya, with a population of about 1.1 million people in 2019. It is located in the northwest of Libya o ...

in 1895. In Tripolitania he became familiar with philosopher

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...

s' "First Principles". He later was able to escape to Europe, and was able to return to Istanbul after the

Young Turk Revolution The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Ottoman Constit ...

in 1908 and joined the

Committee of Union and Progress The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) ( ota, اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی, translit=İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, script=Arab), later the Union and Progress Party ( ota, اتحاد و ترقى فرقه‌سی, translit=İttihad ve Tera ...

(CUP).

Professional career

He wrote a booklet on the Ottoman language for Middle schools in 1910 and at the beginning of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. was assigned as the assistant to the Turcologist and founder of the Chair on

Ural-Altaic languages Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share ...

at the Darülfünun . With the consent of

Ziya Gökalp Mehmet Ziya Gökalp (23 March 1876 – 25 October 1924) was a Turkish sociologist, writer, poet, and politician. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution that reinstated constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire, he adopted the pen name Gökalp ("cel ...

, Emre became the successor of Giese when the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

presence in the Ottoman Empire came to an end as a consequence of the

Armistice of Mudros Concluded on 30 October 1918 and taking effect at noon the next day, the Armistice of Mudros ( tr, Mondros Mütarekesi) ended hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I. It was signed by th ...

. He was left without employment as his Chair at the Darülfünun was abolished in the aftermath of World War I, following which he left Istanbul for

Tbilisi Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the Capital city, capital and the List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia (country), Georgia, lying on the ...

. In Georgia, he wrote articles in left wing journals and made himself known for his support for the latinization of the

Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, Dotless I, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requ ...

. Besides he attempted to sell Turkish books to the

Azeri Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic people living mainly in Azerbaijan (Iran), northwestern Iran and the Azerbaijan, Republi ...

Ministry of Education and sell carpets to Turkey. As he moved to

Batumi Batumi (; ka, ბათუმი ) is the second largest city of Georgia and the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, located on the coast of the Black Sea in Georgia's southwest. It is situated in a subtropical zone at the foot of th ...

, he published the magazine ''

Yani dyunya ''Yani dyunya'' ( crh, Yañı Dünya, Янъы дюнья) is a Crimean Tatar-language weekly newspaper, published in Simferopol on Fridays, with a circulation of around 3.700 copies. The newspaper was founded in Moscow in 1918; its first direc ...

,'' originally founded by

Mustafa Subhi Mustafa Suphi or Mustafa Subhi (1883 – 28 January 1921) was a Turkish revolutionary and communist during the period of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Early life Suphi was born in 1883 in Giresun Province, in the Ottoman Empire, now lo ...

and encouraged Nâzim Hikmet and

Vâlâ Nureddin Ahmed Vâlâ Nureddin (1901–1967) was a Turkish writer and journalist also known under his pen name Va-Nu. Early life and education Vala Nureddin was born in Beirut, as a son to a Vali of Beirut, but his birth was registered in Constantinopl ...

to write for the magazine. Later he was appointed professor for Turkish language at the Oriental Institute of the

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. In late 1924 he had to leave Moscow as his political views raised concerns and he returned to Turkey where he began to write together with his colleague from Moscow

Şevket Süreyya Aydemir Şevket Süreyya Aydemir (1897–25 March 1976) was a Turkish writer, intellectual, economist, historian, and one of the founders, publisher and a key theorist of ''Kadro'' ("Cadre"). ''Kadro'' was an influential left-wing political journal publi ...

for the newspaper Aydinlik. He has come to the attention to

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 Surname Law (Turkey), until 1934 ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish Mareşal (Turkey), field marshal, Turkish National Movement, re ...

and by 1928 he was in Turkey having been appointed a member of the Turkish language commission which was tasked with the latinization of the

. In late 1928 he was promoted to one of the members in the Central Bureau of the Language commission which supervised the latter activities. Between 1932 and 1949 he was the head of the Grammar and Syntax Department in the TDK. In January 1935 he was one of the first to have received Hermann F. Kvergič's study on the Turkish language, which has influenced the development of the

Sun Language Theory The Sun Language Theory ( tr, Güneş Dil Teorisi) was a Turkish ultranationalist, racist, pseudolinguistic, and pseudoscientific hypothesis developed in Turkey in the 1930s that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-T ...

. In the Turkish Language Association he opposed the classification of the languages in isolating,

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...

and

inflectional In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...

which he deemed as an old-fashioned European way of thought, but at the same time he attempted to prove that the Turkish language belonged to the inflectional languages, just as the indo-germanic languages as well.

Literary works and publishing

Besides having written several books on the

Turkish language Turkish ( , ), also referred to as Turkish of Turkey (''Türkiye Türkçesi''), is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 80 to 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Significant sma ...

and grammar, he translated

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek ...

' ''Agamemnon'' and

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

's ''

Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...

'' into Turkish. Between 1928 and 1933 he published and edited the monthly ''Muhit,'' a

Kemalist Kemalism ( tr, Kemalizm, also archaically ''Kamâlizm''), also known as Atatürkism ( tr, Atatürkçülük, Atatürkçü düşünce), or The Six Arrows ( tr, Altı Ok), is the founding official ideology of the Republic of Turkey.Eric J. Zurcher ...

outlet focused on

social darwinism Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...

, the well-being of the family and the raising of a Turkish youth. He is mentioned as one of the very early authors who used the term Kemalism with its political aspects in the magazine ''Muhit''.

Political career

He was also elected as a deputy for

in the

Personal life

While living in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, he experimented with the concept of a social family sharing a household with Nâzim Hikmet and Vâlâ Nureddin, in which Emre prepared the meals, Hikmet wrote poems and articles, and Nureddin taught Turkish to Azerbaijani. They lived together as a social family in Batumi as well as in Moscow. In Moscow they lived in separate rooms in the

Hotel Lux The former Hotel Lux in Moscow Hotel Lux (Люксъ) was a hotel in Moscow during the Soviet Union, housing many leading exiled and visiting Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A n ...

with a common kitchen for the household.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Emre, Ahmet Cevat Istanbul University faculty Turkish journalists 1876 births Turkish writers 1961 deaths Turkish nationalists Linguists from Turkey Turkish newspaper publishers (people) Ottoman Military College alumni Translators of Homer Translators to Turkish Moscow State University faculty Burials at Aşiyan Asri Cemetery