Gökçen Efe (1891 – 16 November 1919) was a Turkish

folk hero A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; an ...

, who showed bravery during the

Turkish War of Independence The Turkish War of Independence "War of Liberation", also known figuratively as ''İstiklâl Harbi'' "Independence War" or ''Millî Mücadele'' "National Struggle" (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns waged by th ...

Life

He was born in

Ödemiş Ödemiş is a district of İzmir Province of Turkey, as well as the name of its central town (urban population 75,577 as of 2012), located 113 km southeast of the city of İzmir. About 4 km north of Ödemiş town are the ruins of Hypaep ...

İzmir Province İzmir Province ( tr, İzmir ili) is a province and metropolitan municipality of Turkey in western Anatolia, situated along the Aegean coast. Its capital is the city of İzmir, which is in itself composed of the province's central 11 distri ...

. His real name was Hüseyin, but he used the name Gökçen Efe after choosing to live an

efe Agencia EFE, S.A. () is a Spanish international news agency, the major multimedia news agency in Spanish language and the world's fourth largest wire service after the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. EFE was created in 1939 ...

life as an aide to the well-known

Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe (1872–1911) was a Zeybek, who was active as an outlaw in the region enclosing İzmir, Aydın, Denizli, Muğla and Antalya in modern western Turkey, from 1893 to 1910. Born in Ödemiş in 1871, he went out to the Aegean ...

(1872–1911), who was his relative. After

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

army began invading Turkish territory on 15 May 1919, he began to fight against the regular Greek troops as a guerrilla fighter under the general principles of

Turkish National Movement The Turkish National Movement ( tr, Türk Ulusal Hareketi) encompasses the political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries that resulted in the creation and shaping of the modern Republic of Turkey, as a consequence of the defe ...

( tr, Kuvai Milliye). During the summer of 1919, he fought successfully against the Greek troops usually with

hit-and-run tactics Hit-and-run tactics are a tactical doctrine of using short surprise attacks, withdrawing before the enemy can respond in force, and constantly maneuvering to avoid full engagement with the enemy. The purpose is not to decisively defeat the ene ...

. In November, he tried to confront a Greek advance in the village Fata near Ödemiş. But, at the end of a three-day fighting, he fell on 16 November 1919.

Legacy

In 1957, Turkish government renamed the town of Fata, after merging with another settlement, to Gökçen in his honor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gokcen Efe People of the Turkish War of Independence 20th-century people from the Ottoman Empire 1891 births 1919 deaths People from Ödemiş Members of Kuva-yi Milliye Turkish revolutionaries