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 mythology, mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in Folk music, folk songs, folk tales ...

, who showed bravery during the

Turkish War of Independence , strength1 = May 1919: 35,000November 1920: 86,000Turkish General Staff, ''Türk İstiklal Harbinde Batı Cephesi'', Edition II, Part 2, Ankara 1999, p. 225August 1922: 271,000Celâl Erikan, Rıdvan Akın: ''Kurtuluş Savaşı tarih ...

Life

He was born in

Ödemiş Ödemiş () is a municipality and district of İzmir Province, Turkey. Its area is 1,019 km2, and its population is 132,740 (2022). It is located 113 km southeast of the city of İzmir. About 4 km north of Ödemiş town are the ru ...

İzmir Province İzmir Province () 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 districts out of 30 in to ...

. 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 Spanish language, Spanish-language multimedia news agency and the world's fourth largest wire service after the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. EFE was ...

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 m ...

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

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

army began invading Turkish territory on 15 May 1919, he began to fight against the regular Greek troops as a

guerrilla Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...

fighter under the general principles of

Turkish National Movement The Turkish National Movement (), also known as the Anatolian Movement (), the Nationalist Movement (), and the Kemalists (, ''Kemalciler'' or ''Kemalistler''), included political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries that resu ...

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

hit-and-run tactics Hit-and-run tactics are a Military tactics, 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 decisive ...

. In November, he tried to confront a Greek advance in the village Fata near

. But, at the end of a three-day fighting, he died of a bullet wound 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