Th n n b t T r h d rn z t n: l rn T r h L n , lt r , nd nt ll t l

rd r P r z

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4 3 4

Thinking about Turkish Modernization: Cemil Meriç on Turkish Language, Culture, and Intellectuals

Serdar Poyraz

n this essay, relying on a close reading of the major works of one of the least-known,

and, dare I say, most interesting, Turkish intellectuals of the twentieth century, Cemil

Meriç (1916–87), I question the accuracy of what I call the “offi cial dogma” of Turkish

modernization. Briefl y stated, this offi cial account argues that Turkish modernization is a

linear process of progress from tradition to modernity, from obscurantism to reason and enlight-

enment, and from the Empire to the Republic.

This narrative of linear progress, which formed the backbone of the main arguments

of diverse writers on Turkish modernity such as Bernard Lewis and Niyazi Berkes, explicitly

depends on a set of dichotomies (tradition-modernity, religion-science, and Empire-Republic)

and implicitly favors the dichotomies’ second terms (modernity, science, and Republic) over

the fi rst (tradition, religion, and Empire). While the fi rst terms stand for arbitrariness with

respect to political government and lack of reason in societal affairs, according to the accepted

wisdom, the second terms represent order in politics and reason in society.

Meriç debunks this simplistic account and argues that modernization in Turkey is a com-

plex process during which some essential cultural ingredients of the society—the language

and the shared norms of interpersonal behavior—are badly (perhaps irreparably) damaged.

Turkish modernization, in Meriç’s account, is not a process of linear progress but a process

containing serious amounts of alienation (of the political elite and the intellectuals from the

common people) and displacement of identities: the casualties here include not only ethnic and

religious minorities but also those societal groups that formerly represented the mainstream

in several of the Empire’s institutions, such as the religious orders, or tarikats.Rather than sing the praises of the Republican political elite for their ambitious projects

of political and social engineering, Meriç warns that their overconfi dent and hasty “reforms”

push society to the brink of anomie by destroying the cultural connections of Turkish society

to its own history.1

However, it should be strongly emphasized here that Meriç is not simply a conservative

thinker who yearns for the past. On the contrary, as the following pages will make clear, his

analysis of Turkish society includes a remarkable criticism of its past and traditions as well.

Comparative Studies of

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Vol. 26, No. 3, 2006

doi 10

.1215/1089201x-2006-024

© 2006 by Duke University Press

1. It is certainly not a coincidence that one of Meriç’s major books deals with the history of anarchism (particularly the his-tory of the nihilist movement in nineteenth-century Russia). He is very interested in comparing the case of Turkey with Russia,

where enormous dislocation in terms of identities took place in the late nineteenth century. See Cemil Meriç, Bir Facianin Hi-kayesi (The Story of a Disaster) (Ankara: Umran Yayınları, 1981).

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Placing himself above the simplistic di-

chotomy of modernity and tradition, Meriç criti-

cizes both modern Turkish society and tradition

from a critical/humanist perspective, calling for

mutual understanding and tolerance between

the different segments of Turkish society. Meriç

symbolizes an intellectual trend in Turkey whose

ideas are similar to those of Takeuchi Yoshimi in

Japan and Jalal Al-e Ahmad in Iran in that they

question the predominant Eurocentric notions

of modernization and enlightenment.

The secondary literature on Meriç is rather

thin. For this article I made some use of the book

published about him by his daughter (and Istan-

bul University professor) Ümit Meriç Yazan,2 as

well as the selections from his writings prepared

by Mustafa Armağan.3 Other than these two

works, I completely relied on the primary mate-

rial written by Cemil Meriç. The primary sources

include all of his works, which are currently in

print in Turkey.4

The following discussion consists of three

main sections and a conclusion. In the fi rst sec-

tion, I present a brief life story of Meriç and try

to demonstrate how the singular facts about his

personal life may account for the later develop-

ment of his character and ideas.

In the second section, I try to conceptual-

ize how Meriç understood the terms East and

West with regard to civilizations and culture. I

attempt to demonstrate that these terms did

not have any geographical connotations in his

works and that his use of these terms often re-

ferred to differing attitudes to reason and ratio-

nality prevalent in certain societies in different

periods of history. For Meriç the civilizational

dividing lines are demarcated not by religions

(Christianity versus Confucianism or Islam a la

Samuel Huntington) but by attitudes toward criti-cism and free speech.

I also attempt to account for his peculiar

use of Marxism as a critical tool in his investi-

gations about the nature of European history.

Again, Meriç is no dogmatist here, and he freely

criticizes the so-called Marxists in Turkey (rep-

resented by the Türkiye İşći Partisi, or Turkish

Workers’ Party, in the 1960s) for their dogmatic

understanding of Marxism and their “religious”

reading of Karl Marx.

In addition, I talk about his approach

to orientalism and argue that his ideas in the

1960s may be the first systematic account of

orientalism written before Edward Said. More

important, I try to demonstrate that Meriç not

only accounted for the orientalism of Western

writers (for the sake of argument, I call this

“outward orientalism”) but also talked about

the orientalist attitudes of the native intellectu-

als toward their own culture and people (“in-

ward orientalism”).

The third section mainly deals with Meriç’s

ideas about the Turkish language and his harsh

criticism of language reform in Turkey. He ac-

tively responded to the “reforms” in language

by creating a highly peculiar literary style of his

own, relying extensively on Persian and Arabic

vocabulary yet not refraining from using French

or Latin expressions in his works.

Finally, I conclude by making a number of

general remarks about Meriç’s writings and the

possibilities they offer to the reader for a radi-

cal reinterpretation of the history of the Turk-

ish Republic and the Turkish modernization

process.

The Life and Works of Cemil MeriçMeriç was born on 12 December 1916 in Rey-

hanli, Hatay (Antakya), just before Hatay, a

small town in southern Turkey, was placed

under the French mandate. His father was a

minor bureaucrat who migrated to Hatay from

Dimetoka, Greece, with his family in 1912 dur-

ing the Balkan Wars. In 1923 Meriç obtained

his primary school degree (certifi cat d’études pri-maires), and after fi nishing secondary school in

1928 he began his high school studies in An-

takya Sultanisi (Antakya High School), where

a curriculum heavily infl uenced by French cul-

2. Ümit Meriç Yazan, Babam Cemil Meriç (My Father Cemil Meriç) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994).

3. Mustafa Armağan, Düşüncenin Gökkuşağı: Cemil Meriç (Istanbul: Ufuk Kitaplari, 2001).

4. Cemil Meriç, Bir Facianin Hikayesi; Bu Ülke (This Country) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003); “Türk Genci,” Yıldız 1 (1935); Mağaradakiler (Those in the Cave) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003); Bir Dünya’nın Eşiğinde (In the Threshold of a World) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002); Umrandan Uygarlığa (From Social Life to Civilization) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları,

2003); Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar (Sociologi-cal Notes and Lectures) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003); Jurnal, vols. 1–2 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003); Saint-Simon: İlk Sosyolog, İlk Sosyalist (Saint-Simon, the First Sociologist, the First Socialist) (Istan-bul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002); Kırk Ambar (Encyclopedic Knowledge) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003).

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ture was followed. Ironically, in 1928 when his

fellow students in mainland Turkey were trying

to decipher the Latin alphabet, which had been

newly established in high schools, Meriç was

polishing his command of the French language

by studying the French classics:

Lise bir’de Hugo’nun Legends du Siecle’ini

okuduk. Lise iki’de Chateaubriand’ın Atala, Rene ve Le Dernier des Abincerages’ını. . . . Lise üç’te

Lanson’un ‘Edebiyat Tarihi’ sınıf kitabımız oldu.

Yalniz Lanson mu? Zaman zaman Desranges’ın

Seçme Yazılar’ı da. Ayrica klasikler: Moliere’den,

Corneille’den, Racine’den üç dört kitap okumak

zorundaydık.5

[In the fi rst year of high school, we read Legends du Siecle, written by Victor Hugo. In the second

year, Atala, Rene, and Le Dernier des Abincerages by

Chateaubriand. . . . In the third year our course

book was History of Literature, written by Lanson.

Only Lanson? Occasionally we read the “Se-

lected Articles” of Desranges. And the classics:

we had to read three or four novels by Molière,

Corneille, and Racine.]

Understanding the social and cultural di-

versity of Hatay in the 1930s, I think, is crucial

for comprehending Meriç’s later development

of ideas on culture and language (and why he

was reluctant to buy the nationalist myths of the

Turkish Republican elite wholesale). He expe-

rienced the curious combination of living in a

vibrant periphery city of the Ottoman state (in

terms of social structure and culture) and in a

French mandate, where genuine contact with

European civilization and culture was possible

for the aspiring student because of the educa-

tional system.

Moreover, he was spared the cultural shock

caused by the radical changes in language and

alphabet that were brought about by the Repub-

lican “reforms” in the Turkish Republic. Meriç

himself seems to be well aware of the infl uence

of his early life on his later intellectual stance:

Lise tahsili boyunca hep Osmanlıca yazdım. Hür

bıraktılar, harfl eri kullanmada. . . . Belki Osman-

lı’dan kopmadığım için inkılap aydınlarına

benzemiyorum. . . . Araplarin ve Çerkeslerin

yanında, onlara karşı kendi an’aneme gömül-

düm. Fakat aynı zamanda Avrupalılaşmayı bü-

tünüyle yaşadım. Fransız mahremiyetine girme

imkanım oldu. Halbuki inkılap nesli bunların

hiçbirini yaşamadı.6

[I always wrote in the Ottoman language during

high school. They let us choose which language

to write in. . . . I am dissimilar from the “intel-

lectuals of reform,” maybe because I had never

been too far away from Ottoman (culture). . . .

Living among the Arabs and Circassians, I bur-

ied myself deep in my tradition as a defense

against them. However, at the same time, I

deeply experienced Europeanization. I had a

chance to observe the intimacy of French cul-

ture. The generation following the reforms, on

the contrary, could not experience any of this.]

A brief fall under the spell of Turkish na-

tionalism and the publication in a local jour-

nal of an essay in which he accused his Turk-

ish teachers of not being nationalistic enough

against the mandate authorities led to problems

with the high school’s administration.7 As a re-

sult, he had to leave Hatay for Istanbul without

graduating from high school (he was at the fi nal

grade at the time, and he would have been sent

to Mulkiye [Istanbul University Department of

Government] for university studies if he had fi n-

ished high school in Antakya).

During his fi rst stay in Istanbul (1936–37),

he attended the twelfth grade of the Pertevniyal

Lisesi (Pertevniyal High School) and made ac-

quaintance with Nurullah Atac (whom he would

later harshly criticize for his role in the language

reform) and Nazim Hikmet (for whom he trans-

lated a work by Joseph Stalin into Turkish from

French). In any case, life proved to be harsh in

Istanbul for a lonely young man, and because

of fi nancial diffi culties Meriç had to return to

Antakya, where he fi nished his secondary stud-

ies. After working as a schoolteacher in an An-

takya village for a brief time in 1937, following

his graduation from high school, he managed

to fi nd a job in the translation bureau of Isken-

derun, where he directed a team that translated

Turkish newspapers into French.

5. Meriç, Bu Ülke, 24–25. (All translations from Meriç are by the author).

6. Cemil Meriç, Jurnal (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1992), 1:64–65, quoted in Armağan, Düşüncenin Gök-kuşaği, 38.

7. Meriç, “Türk Genci.”

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In 1938, after Hatay became an indepen-

dent republic for a brief interval, he was sent

to a small town as district governor (nahiye mu-duru). The governor of Hatay duly dismissed

him from his job after a month; in 1939 he was

arrested for engaging in “communist activities.”

The content of these activities was next to noth-

ing, it seems, and after spending two months in

prison during his trial, he was set free. He chose

to return to Istanbul in 1940.

Merić began his university education in

the School of Foreign Languages (Yabancű

Diller Okulu) in Istanbul that year. The school

was designed to offer two years of language

education in Turkey, followed by two years of

practical studies abroad. However, he could not

be sent abroad because World War II was being

fought and was instead appointed as a French

teacher to the Elaziğ High School in eastern

Anatolia. Just before he went to Elaziğ, he mar-

ried Fevziye Menteşoğlu, who was a teacher of

geography, several years older than he.

In 1945, he had to return from Elaziğ to

Istanbul because of his wife’s health problems.

In 1946 he was accepted as a reader of French at

Istanbul University. He eventually retired from

there in 1974.8

Meriç’s university job, together with the

steady nature of his marriage, gave a semblance

of normality to his turbulent life. But the appar-

ent normality was cut short in 1954 when he lost

his sight. He had had progressive myopia since

the age of four, and his hectic (almost super-

human) schedule of constant readings did not

help either.

He went through a period of serious de-

pression after a visit to Paris and a subsequent

operation did not restore his sight. Thanks to

the support of his family and students, he man-

aged to return to his studies and in the 1950s

published a number of translations from French

literature. In the late 1950s, he prepared and

published a French grammar book for Turks

and began his studies of Indian literature. His

interest in Indian literature and philosophy

enormously infl uenced his later and more im-

portant publications. In one of his later publica-

tions he explicitly says that until studying Indian

literature and philosophy, his understanding of

culture and civilizations was essentially Euro-

centric:

60’lara kadar tecessüsümün yöneldiği kutup Av-

rupa. Coğrafyamda Asya yok. . . . Hint benim için

Asya’nın keşfi oldu. Avrupa’dan görülen Asya,

Avrupalının gözü ile Asya, ama nihayet Asya.

Bu yeni dünyada da kılavuzlarım Avrupalıydı

demek istiyorum, ilk hocam Romain Roland. . . .

Ama büyü bozulmuştu, anlamıştım ki tarihte

başka Avrupa’lar da var.9

[Up to the 1960s, my curiosity was directed to

Europe. In my geography there was no Asia. . . .

(Discovering) India meant the discovery of Asia

for me. An Asia, perceived from Europe, in the

European perspective, but in the end, Asia. I

mean to say that in this new world, too, my guides

were Europeans; my first master was Romain

Roland. . . . However, the spell had been broken,

and I realized that there were other Europes in

history as well.]

After publishing his book on Indian lit-

erature in 1964,10 Meriç began to examine one

of the earliest modern socialist thinkers, Saint-

Simon. His book on Saint-Simon11 was followed

by a number of very important publications in

the 1970s and early 1980s in which he began

to talk about the problematic nature of Turkish

modernization. In other words, after a serious

engagement in Indian literature and French

philosophy, Meriç returned to the study of Turk-

ish history and culture with decisive effect.

His highly original criticisms of Republi-

can ideology and of the naive belief of the Turk-

ish bureaucratic elite in “progressing” by author-

itarian measures led during this later period to

various accusations being directed against him,

to claims that he had begun his intellectual ad-

venture from the “left” and decided to settle on

the “right” in his later years. These, in my opin-

ion, were shallow criticisms that missed the es-

sence and scope of his cultural critique of Turk-

ish society. In fact, the words left and right did

not mean much to Meriç, who asserted force-

8. During his stay at the university, he also lectured in the Department of Sociology.

9. Meriç, Mağaradakiler, 322.

10. See Meriç, Bir Dünya’nın Eşiğinde, for a new print-ing of this book, which was originally published as Hint Edebiyati (Indian Literature).

11. Meriç, Saint-Simon.

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fully, “İzm’ler idrakimize giydirilen deli göm-

lekleri. İtibarları menşelerinden geliyor. Hepsi

de Avrupalı”12 (Isms are straitjackets of madness

put on our intellects. Their esteem comes from

their origins. They are all European).

In another place, he even suggests that the

terms left and right as analytical tools should be

avoided in any serious discussion of Turkish so-

ciety and culture:

Sol-Sağ . . . Çılgın sevgilerin ve şuursuz kinlerin

emzirdiği iki ifrit. Toplum yapımızla herhangi

bir ilgisi olmayan iki yabancı. . . . Avrupa’nın bu

habis kelimelerinden bize ne? Bu maskeli hay-

dutları hafızalarımızdan kovmak ve kendi gerçe-

ğimizi kendi kelimelerimizle anlayıp anlatmak,

her namuslu yazarın vicdan borcu.13

[Left-Right . . . two demons suckled by mad loves

and unconscious venoms. Two strangers that

are not related to the structure of our society at

all. . . . Of what concern could those two mali-

cious words of Europe be to us? Repelling those

masked bandits from our memory and under-

standing and explaining our own reality with

our own words are the intellectual responsibili-

ties for any honorable author.]

It is important here to note that the term

ideology for Meriç always means a system of

thought devised in a specifi c part of the world

during a specifi c period of history in order to

answer the questions that essentially belong to

the geography where that ideology was created.

So it is not surprising that he opposes the usage

of the terms left and right as universal categories

to explain the problems of modern Turkey.

Meriç’s later publications (between 1974

and 1984) include important works such as Bu Ülke (This Country), Umrandan Uygarlığa (From Social Life to Civilization), Mağaradakiler (Those in the Cave), and Bir Facianın Hikayesi (The Story of a Disaster).14 After this period of immense intel-

lectual and publishing activity in the last fi fteen

years of his life, Meriç passed away in 1987.

In the early 1990s İletişim Yayűnlarű pub-

lished his notes for the lectures he gave in the

Sociology Department of Istanbul University,

in addition to his complete works and diaries.15

These were literary diaries intended for publica-

tion after his death.

Civilizations, Ideologies, and the Issue of Orientalism in the Works of Cemil MeriçIn one of the earliest entries to his diary in 1959,

Meriç writes the following passage in which he

attacks essentialist cultural classifi cations:

Batı ile Doğu’yu ayrı dünyalar gibi göstermeye

kalkışanlar büyük bir gafl et içindedirler. Batı

ile Doğu ancak haritada bir realite. İhtiyarla-

yan, belleri bükülen, bunayan milletler var.

Ortaçağ’da, Avrupa Doğu, Asya Batı’dır. İbn

Haldun Bergson’dan çok daha batılı. . . . Tarih,

galiplerin yazdığı bir kitap.16

[Those who try to show East and West as sepa-

rate worlds are gravely mistaken. East and West

are realities only on a map. There are nations,

which are aging, bent double, and in their dot-

age. In the Middle Ages, Europe was East, and

Asia was West. Ibn Khaldun is much more Euro-

pean than Bergson. . . . History, a book written

by the victors.]

The importance of this passage comes

from the fact that Meriç here implicitly suggests

that the use of the terms East and West should

be relative since they can be “realities” only on

a map. This raises an obvious question: relative

in terms of what? Meriç answers this question

in one of the fi rst lectures that he gave in the

Sociology Department of Istanbul University in

1965:

Doğu-Batı kutuplaşması, Batı’nın eseri olan

çok yersiz bir tasnif. Eğer Batı hür düşüncenin

vatanı ise zaman zaman Doğu, Batı olmuştur.

14. yüzyılda yaşayan bir İbn Haldun, 17. yüzyıl-

daki Bossuet’ den çok daha Batılı’dır.17

[The East-West confl ict is an irrelevant concep-

tualization of the West. If West is (thought of

as) the motherland of independent thought, then at

times East turned out to be West. Ibn Khaldun,

who lived in the fourteenth century, is much

more Western than Bossuet of the seventeenth

century. (Emphasis added.)]

12. Meriç, Bu Ülke, 90. “Izm’ler” is one of Meriç’s many curious neologisms. Being a suffix used for ideologies in modern Turkish (like Komunizm, Kapi-talizm, etc.), it is used here as a proxy for any ideology coming from Europe.

13. Ibid., 79.

14. Meriç, Umrandan Uygarlığa; Mağaradakiler; Bir Facianın Hikayesi.

15. Meriç, Jurnal, vols. 1–2.

16. Meriç, Jurnal, 1:54.

17. Meriç, Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar, 2.

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It is obvious that Meriç associates the term

West with freethinking. Since freethinking and

criticism do not need to be associated with any

particular geography, various parts of the world

may, in principle, be more “Western” than oth-

ers in different periods of history, according

to Meriç. As his understanding of the East and

West does not contain any references to a par-

ticular geography (Europe) or religion (Chris-

tianity), Meriç feels himself free to occasionally

criticize the Turkish intellectuals who implicitly

make the assumption of linking the ideas of

progress and science with Europe and Christi-

anity (and obscurantism and backwardness with

Islam and Asia). For instance, in one of the lec-

tures he gave at Istanbul University, he says,

İslamiyet terakkiye mani midir? şeklinde bir

soru, sosyolojik kafadan mahrumiyeti gösterir.

İslam bir üst yapı müessesesidir. Bir İbn Rüşd

veya İbn Haldun’un yetişmesine engel olmamış-

tır. Hristiyanlık terakkiye ne kadar engelse İslam

da o kadar engeldir. Gelişen bir cemiyet icin ka-

nattır din, çöken bir ülke için safradir. Osmanlı

İmparatorluğu’nun çöküşü sosyal ve ekonomik

sebeplerdendir, İslamiyetin bunda hiçbir rolü

yoktur. Feodal istihsal sistemi, kapitalizm tara-

fından bozguna uğratılmıştır.18

[A question such as “Is the religion of Islam a

hindrance to progress?” displays the lack of soci-

ological thinking (on the part of the questioner).

Islam is an institution of superstructure. It was not

an obstacle to the appearance of, say, Ibn Rushd

or Ibn Khaldun. Islam is a hindrance to progress

as much as Christianity is. Religion is a “wing”

for a developing society and a “ballast” for a col-

lapsing one. The collapse of the Ottoman Em-

pire was because of social and economic reasons,

and Islam had no role in that collapse. The feudal

production system was routed by capitalism.]

One should carefully note that Islam is de-

fi ned as an “institution of superstructure” in the

passage above. It means that Meriç essentially

accepted the Marxist distinction between the in-

frastructure and superstructure (at least in 1968

when he gave that lecture), which privileges the

role of the modes of production and economic

relations over other sociological factors in ex-

plaining social phenomena.

It should be clear to the reader that Meriç

was very well read in Marxist literature, making

occasional references to the writings of Marx

and Engels. He talks about his acquaintance with

Marxist literature in the following manner:

Önce lisede Engels’in Anti-Duhring’i geçiyor

elime. Üç cilt. Sosyalizmle ilgili bütün meseleler

var bu kitapta. Çok dikkatle okudum, hatta yüz

sayfa kadar da özet çıkardım. Kitabı Halep’ten

satın almıştım. Marx’ın Kapital’ini de o sıralarda

okudum. . . . Bir de Moskova’da basılmış bir Ka-

pital hülasası vardı kitaplarımın arasinda.19

[First I got into my hands the Anti-Duhring, by

Engels, in high school. Three volumes. All of the

subjects related to socialism are included in this

book. I read it carefully, even summarized it in

approximately a hundred pages. I bought it in

Aleppo. I read the Capital by Marx around that

time as well. . . . In my library, there was also an

extract of the Capital published in Moscow.]

However, in my opinion, one should not overemphasize the role of Marxism in the

thought of Meriç. Meriç uses Marxism basically as

an analytical tool to attack the common assump-

tions made by the Turkish intelligentsia about Eu-

ropean history and the superiority of European

culture. In an important passage, he writes,

Descartes’in XVII. Yüzyılda Avrupa’da başardığı

düşünce devrimine benzeyen bir düşünce dev-

rimi yaratmıştır bizde marksizm. Anlatmıştır ki

Batı düşüncesi dokunulmaz bir hakikatler bü-

tünü değildir. Her sınıfın, her milletin, her ca-

mianın kendini korumak için uydurduğu yalan-

lar var. Batı’dan icazet almadıkça Batı’yı tenkit

edemezdik. Marksizm bize bu icazeti verdi. Yani

şuurumuza takılan zincirleri kırdı ve Avrupa bü-

yüsünü bozdu.20

[Marxism created an intellectual revolution here

(in Turkey) similar to the one accomplished by

Descartes in the seventeenth century in Europe.

It taught that Western thought is not a monolith

of untouchable truths. There are lies that are

made up by all classes, nations, and communities

in order to protect themselves. (Before Marx-

ism) we could not criticize the West unless we got

permission from the West. Marxism gave us this

permission. Thus, it smashed the chains tied to

our conscious and broke the spell of Europe.]

18. Ibid., 194.

19. See Yazan, Babam Cemil Meriç, 23.

20. Meriç, Mağaradakiler, 232.

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In other words, Marxism acted as an agent

of disenchantment (to borrow from Max We-

ber’s terminology) for Meriç, pointing to the

contradictions and problems of European his-

tory. His thorough understanding of Marxism,

in my opinion, is one of the reasons, which may

explain Meriç’s success in leaving behind the

dichotomous way of thinking about Turkish

culture (religion versus science, obscurantism

versus reason, and Empire versus the Republic).

These dichotomies implicitly depended on a

view that proposed the essential “correctness”

of reason, science, and European culture, un-

derstood as monolithic entities, vis-à-vis religion

and traditional Turkish culture. Marxism, it

seems to me, helped Meriç to see that those sup-

posedly monolithic entities were problematic

and full of contradictions themselves.

Despite the importance he gave to Marx-

ism in his writing, Meriç was no naive believer

in Marxism. What he valued in Marxism was the

use of dialectics as a technique of inquiry, not

the Marxist doctrines about history and its sup-

posedly inevitable course of action:

Marksizm de dışarıdan gelen bütün ideolojiler

gibi bir felaket kaynağı olmuştur. Çünkü, çocuk-

larımız hazırlıksızdılar. Marksizmin de bir ide-

oloji olduğunu bilmiyorlardı. Delikanlılar çar-

pıtılmiş sloganları dünyaca geçerli bir hakikat

sandılar. Oysa Marksizm bir doktrin olmadan

once, bir araştırma yöntemidir. Bir tekke şeyhi

degildir Marx. Belli bir çağda, belli bir bölgede

yaşamış, her insan gibi, birçok zaafl arı olan bir

düşünce adamı.21

[Marxism has been a source of disaster like all

the other ideologies of foreign origin because

our children were unprepared. They did not

know that Marxism is also an ideology. Young-

sters thought of the distorted slogans as uni-

versal truths. However, Marxism, before being

a doctrine, is a method of research. Marx was

not a sheik of a dervish lodge. He was a man

of thought, who lived in a certain age and re-

gion, with many weaknesses, like every human

being.]

In fact, in various places in his works Meriç

criticizes Turkish intellectuals for reading Marx

religiously and creating an unnecessary dogma

of Marxism.22 What he proposes, instead of fol-

lowing an ideology blindly, is to take a critical

stance against all ideologies and make a thor-

ough reading of them by comparing various

ideologies with one another. Not unlike the old

European humanists, he encourages the reader

to read and think about the ideologies before

following any one of them:

Hep birden esfel-i safi line yuvarlanmak istemi-

yorsak, gözlerimizi açmalıyız. İnsanlar sloganla

güdülmez. Düsünceye hürriyet, sonsuz hürriyet!

Kitaptan değil kitapsızlıktan korkmalıyız. Bütün

ideolojilere kapıları açmak, hepsini tanımak,

hepsini tartışmak ve Türkiye’nin kaderini onla-

rın aydınlığında, fakat tarihimizin büyük mira-

sına dayanarak inşa etmek. İşte en doğru yol.23

[We have to open our eyes wide if we do not

want to fall into the deepest pit of hell. People

cannot be herded with slogans. (There should

be) freedom to think, an unlimited freedom!

We should be afraid of the dearth of books, and

not of the books. Leaving the doors open for all

ideologies, understanding and discussing all of

them, and building the future of Turkey in the

light of those ideologies, depending on the great

heritage of our history. This is the best way.]

Elsewhere he stresses that the only pos-

sible way of establishing a connection to Eu-

ropean culture is to learn to analyze both the

strengths and the weaknesses of that culture:

Yeni Osmanlılar’dan genç sosyalistlere kadar

bütün intelijansiyamız hamakatin içindedir.

Batı’yı tanımadan taklit etmişiz. Çare, Batı’yı

bütün olarak tanımak. Batı’nın içtimai ve ikti-

sadi tarihini bütünü ile bilmek. Her içtimai na-

zariyenin zehirli ve hayırlı tarafl arını bütünün

içine yerleştirerek anlayabiliriz. Batı’nın bütün

dünya görüşlerini bilmek. Batı’yı bütünüyle, ya-

lanı ile, hakikatiyle tanımak.24

[From the Young Ottomans up to the young

socialists, our whole intelligentsia has been

sunk into stupidity. We imitated the West with-

out understanding it. The remedy is to entirely

understand the West: to know the entire social

and economic history of the West. We can fi g-

ure out the poisonous and beneficial sides of

21. Ibid., 231.

22. See Meriç, Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar, 238, 253. Also see Meriç, Mağaradakiler, 60, 230.

23. Meriç, Bu Ülke, 94.

24. Meriç, Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar, 284.

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every social theory by placing them in a gestalt.

Knowing all of the worldviews of the West. Un-

derstanding the West in its entirety, including its

lies and truths.]

I turn now to an issue of central impor-

tance in Meriç’s writings, namely, orientalism

in its various versions. A decade before Edward

Said published his original work on orientalism,

Meriç wrote the following remarks in 1968:

Oryantalizm bir günde kurulmaz ve bir koldan

çalışmaz. Doğu evvela fi lolojik olarak tanınır.

Fransa’da Ecole des Langues Orientales 19.

yüzyıl başlarında kurulur. İlk hocası Batı’da 50

yil sahasında hüküm sürecek olan Silvestre de

Sacy. Arapça tetkikler onunla başlar. . . . Batı’nın

Doğu merakının temelinde mutlak olarak kapi-

talizm vardır, saf ilmi bir tecessüs değildir bu.

Gelişen bir sınıfın ihtiyacıdır.25

[Orientalism was not founded in a day. And it

does not operate in a single branch. The East,

at fi rst, was understood philologically. École des

langues orientales was founded in the begin-

ning of the nineteenth century in France. Its

fi rst teacher was Silvestre de Sacy, who reigned

in his academic fi eld for fi fty years in the West.

Arabic études began with him. . . . At the base of

the Western curiosity toward the East, there is

capitalism; it is not a purely scientifi c curiosity.

It is the need of a growing class.]

When Said’s book Orientalism was pub-

lished in the late 1970s, Meriç was so advanced

in his analysis of orientalism that he dismissed

some of Said’s ideas as exaggerations.26 For

example, in one of the entries he wrote in his

diary in 1981, he says,

William Jones’un “Muallakat” tercümelerini

düsünüyorum. Edward Said’in ithamlari geliyor

aklıma: oryantalistler ajandırlar. Belki doğru

ama neyin ajanı? Adam Farsça’nın zamanımıza

kadar muteber bir gramerini Fransızca olarak

kaleme almıs, Nadir Sah Tarihi’ni Voltaire’in

diline kazandırmış, Osmanlı edebiyatının İran

ve Arap edebiyatları içinde çok orijinal bir yeri

olduğunu delilleriyle ispat etmiş. Ajan bu mu?

Biz yarım asır önce yazılan bir Arap Edebiyatı

tarihinden habersiziz. Ne Imr’ul Kays’ı tanıyo-

ruz, ne Suk-ul Ukra’yı. Ajan biz miyiz acaba, ba-

tılılar mı?27

[I am thinking of William Jones’s translations

of “Muallakat.” Then the accusations of Edward

Said come to my mind: orientalists are agents.

Perhaps this is true, but agents of what? The guy

(William Jones) wrote a still respected grammar

of the Persian language. He translated The His-tory of Nader Shah into the language of Voltaire.

He proved that Ottoman literature has an origi-

nal place beside Persian and Arab literature. Is

this what you call an agent? We are still unaware

of a “History of Arab Literature” written fi fty

years ago. We know of neither Imr’ul Kays nor

Suk-ul Ukra. So who are the agents, the West-

erners or us?]

Moreover, in a lecture he gave at Bogazici

University in 1981, Meriç made an important

analytical distinction between the works of West-

ern orientalists (for the sake of the argument,

I call it “outward orientalism”) and the use of

these works by the native, oriental intellectu-

als to classify their own people. I want to argue

that these intellectuals look at their own society

through orientalist lenses; their attitude might

be called “inward orientalism” to distinguish it

from the former. The destructive effect of the

second phenomenon is much more important

than the fi rst one according to Meriç. Since he

also compares the attitude of late Ottoman writ-

ers such as Ahmet Mithat Efendi about the West

with the attitudes of some of the later Republi-

can authors in the same lecture, I want to quote

the relevant passage of the lecture here:

Ahmet Mithat Müsteşrikler kongresine gider-

ken, “Bizi nereye yerleştirecekler” diye düşünür.

“Biz de Batı’yı tanıyoruz, yani müstağribiz.”

Batı düşüncesini tanıyan insanların ismi, aynı

zamanda halktan kopmuş bahtsız aydınların da

ismidir. Ahmet Mithat, Avrupa’ya bir fatih eda-

sıyla gidiyordu. Batı ile Doğu insan beyninin

iki yarım küresi idi ona göre. İslam’ın vahdeti

onu da etkiler. . . . Gulliver Kompleksi diyorum

ben buna: Ölçüleri kaybetmek. Osmanlı için,

hidayeti temsil eden Osmanlı ile delaleti tem-

sil eden bir kafi rler ülkesi olarak Garb var idi.

25. Ibid., 173.

26. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

27. Meriç, Jurnal, 2:296.

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Ahmet Mithat’tan sonra durum tersine döndü.

Küçüldükçe küçüldük. Batı’nın iftiralarına, biz

de yenilerini ekledik. Şark bir harabezardır, bir

miskinler tekkesidir. Ali Canip için de Nazım

Hikmet için de Şark böyledir. Çetin Altan da her

makalesinde Şark aleyhtarıdır. . . . Böylece ken-

dimize düşmanın biçtiği ölçülerle yetinmemiş,

bunlara yenilerini ilave etmişizdir. Oysa belli

bir Şark prototipi olmadığı gibi, Batı prototipi

de yoktur. . . . Bütün oryantalistleri yalancılık ve

casuslukla itham etmek doğru olmaz. Bu yam-

yam Avrupa ile düşünen Avrupa’yı aynı kefeye

koymak olur.28

[While Ahmet Mithat was going to the congress

of the orientalists, he thought, “Where will they

place us?” “We know the West and this makes us

Occidentalists.” (The names of) the people who

know the West correspond to (the names of) the

intellectuals who have been alienated from the

common people. Ahmet Mithat was still going to

Europe in the manner of a conqueror. Accord-

ing to him, East and West were the two lobes of

the same human brain. (He thought that) the

idea of the unity (tawhid) in Islam would also af-

fect Europe. . . . I call this Gulliver’s complex:

losing the proportions. For the Ottomans, there

was the Ottoman Empire, which represented

the way of Islam, and there was the West, which

represented error and corruption. After Ahmet

Mithat, the situation changed. We became (in-

tellectually) smaller and smaller. To the slanders

made by the West we added new ones. The East

is a house in ruins, a lodge for the rotten. For

both Ali Canip and Nazűm Hikmet, the East is

like that. āetin Altan is fi ercely opposed to the

East in his every article. . . . In this manner, we

became not contented even with the (false) eval-

uations (about ourselves) made by the enemy

and added new ones to those. However, there is

neither a fi xed prototype of the East nor a pro-

totype of the West. . . . It is not right to accuse all

of the orientalists of lying and espionage. This

would be confusing the cannibal Europe with

the thinking Europe.]

In brief, Meriç, it seems to me, produced

from the 1960s onward an appealing and in

some ways more perceptive version of the main

thesis of Said on orientalism.

Turkish Language and Intellectuals in the Work of Cemil MeriçBefore I proceed to analyze Meriç’s ideas about

the Turkish language and language reform, I

want to make clear that, in my opinion, Meriç is

one of the best stylists of the Turkish language

in the twentieth century. In his writings he ex-

tensively uses aphorisms with striking effect and

pushes the boundaries of the Turkish language

to its limits by the widespread, and often bril-

liant, usage of irregular sentences (devrik cumle), where the regular verb does not appear at the

end of the sentence, which is the general rule

for a standard Turkish sentence. Moreover, he

often conveys his ideas forcefully by using nomi-nal sentences, which normally sound a bit unusual

in Turkish. Also, his choice of vocabulary is ex-

tremely eclectic: he does not refrain from using

any word of Persian, Arabic, or French origin in

his prose if he thinks that it is the appropriate

word for the context.

In a certain way, he is the embodiment of

the worst nightmares of the Türk Dil Kurumu

(Turkish Language Society):29 a very intelligent

writer with an excellent command of several

languages (including French, English, Arabic,

and Persian) who does not care about “pure

Turkish” and writes in an exciting, almost cap-

tivating, prose.

Meriç’s stylistic choices are not arbitrary

in my opinion. He surprises his readers by his

strange grammatical choices in order to make

sure that they are always alert and awake, so

to speak, while they are reading his noncon-

ventional theories and explanations. In other

words, his unconventional literary style is an

appropriate vehicle for the unconventional con-

tent of his ideas.

What does Meriç think about the self-

appointed saviors of the Turkish language who

engaged in so-called language reform from the

mid-1930s on, purifying Turkish from the in-

fl uence of Arabic and Persian, and created an

Orwellian Newspeak in its stead? Essentially he

thinks that the Turkish language must be saved

from its saviors.

28. Meriç, Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar, 345–46.

29. The society is an ideological institution formed in the early years of the Turkish Republic with the inten-tion of “purifying” the Turkish language.

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Meriç is a believer in continuities in the

realms of language and culture, and one of his

harshest criticisms against the Republican elite

is that they do not have this sense of continuity:

Türkçenin bedbahtlığı, tabii tekamülünü ya-

parken, birdenbire zıplamaya zorlanmasından

olmuştur. Nesiller arasındaki köprüler uçu-

rulmuş ve hafızadan mahrum bir nesil türetil-

miştir. Hafızadan yani kültürden. Milletin ana

vasfı: devamlılık. Altı yüzyıllık tarih cerrahi bir

ameliyatla içtimai uzviyetten koparılıp atılınca,

Türk düşüncesi boşlukta kalmıştır. Boşlukta kal-

mıştır, çünkü Batı’ya da tutunamamış, sırtını

Batı tefekkürüne de dayayamamıştır. Elli yıldan

beri Batı’yla bu kadar sarmaş dolaş olduğumuz

halde, hala yeni neslin tek değer yetiştireme-

mesi, bunun en hazin tecellilerinden biri değil

mi? Uydurca ile bir Hurriyet Kasidesi, bir Sis,

hatta bir Erenlerin Bağından yaratılabilmesi için

en az bir altı yüzyıla daha ihtiyaç var.30

[The reason for the misfortune of the Turkish

language is that it was suddenly forced to jump

while it was continuing its natural evolution (of

walking). The bridges between the generations

were destroyed, and a generation without a mem-

ory was produced. Being deprived of memory

(means) being deprived of culture. The main

characteristic of a nation: continuity. When the

history of six hundred years was separated from

the social organism by means of a surgical oper-

ation, Turkish thought fell into a vacuum. It fell

into a vacuum because it could not lean on West-

ern thought as well. Is it not a sad manifestation

of this fall that, after fi fty years of intimacy with

the West, our new generation did not develop

anything of value? We still need at least another

six hundred years of Newspeak 31 in order to be

able to create The Poem on Freedom or Fog or even

From the Vineyard of the Dervishes.]

In one of the lectures he gave in 1975,

Meriç vehemently attacked the idea of language

reform and claimed that this idea was a conse-

quence of the alienation of the Turkish intelli-

gentsia from its own history and culture, which

began in the Tanzimat era:

Dil davası yoktur, intelijansiyanın yabancı-

laşması, başkalaşması, düşmanlaşması var-

dır. Türkiye’de halk kendi kitaplarını, aydın

Batı’nin kitaplarını okur. Halkın anlayacağı bir

dil konuşmaktan elbette ki utanacaklardı. Sonra

Kur’an’daki kelimelere tahammül edemedi-

ler. . . . Hakikatte dil davası yok, Türk insanının

hafızasından iğdiş edilmesi var.32

[There is no language problem; there is the

problem of alienation, of alteration, and of the

intelligentsia’s becoming an enemy to its own

society. In Turkey, the people read their own

books and the intelligentsia read the books of

the West. Of course, they would be ashamed of

speaking a language that would be understood

by the people. Also, they could not tolerate the

vocabulary of the Koran. . . . In reality there is

no language problem. There is just the castra-

tion of the historical memory of the Turkish

people.]

As the above quotation demonstrates,

Meriç’s ideas about the language reform are

closely related to his ideas about the alienation

of the Turkish intelligentsia from Turkish soci-

ety, which, according to Meriç, started with the

appearance of a new type of bureaucrat in the

wake of the Tanzimat reforms, replacing the old

class of the ulema:

Ulema sahneden çekilince, yeni bir zümre çıktı

ortaya; Avrupa’yı gören, Avrupa mekteplerinde

tahsil yapan, Avrupa’yı sathi olarak bilen, sefa-

retlerle temas halinde olan, tercüme bürosunda

yetişen insanlar çıktı sahneye: Tanzimat ricali.

Söz sınıf-ı ulemanın değil, bu yeni yetişen in-

telijansiyanındı artık. Öyle bir vaziyet oldu ki,

Tanzimat’tan sonra, yabancı dil bilmek Sadra-

zamlığa kadar getiriyordu insanı. Başka bir vasfa

ihtiyaç yoktu . . . Bu yeni zümre, yeni intelijan-

siya halka neden iltifat etsin? Halktan kopmuştu,

halkla hiçbir alakası yoktu. . . . Mütercim Rüştü

Paşa, Vefi k Paşa, Ali Paşa, Fuat Paşa, Reşit Paşa.

Bunların tek vasfı vardı: Batı dili bilmek. Halkla

ne gibi bir münasebeti vardı bunların? Hiç.33

[When the ulema left the stage, a new class

came to the forefront, a new group of people

who have seen Europe, who have been edu-

cated in European schools, who know Europe

superfi cially, who have some contact with the

embassies, and who have been trained in the

translation bureau: the men of Tanzimat. It was

the turn of this newly emerging intelligentsia to

30. Meriç, Jurnal, 1:70–71.

31. The hilarious neology Meriç uses to ridicule the pure language of the Turkish Language Society is Uy-durca. I chose to translate it as “Newspeak.”

32. Meriç, Sosyoloji Notları ve Konferanslar, 295.

33. Ibid., 392.

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speak instead of the class of the ulema. Such a

situation emerged that after Tanzimat knowing

a foreign language sometimes elevated a man to

grand vezirate. There was no need for further

qualifi cation. . . . Why would this new class, this

new intelligentsia, care for the people? They had

broken away from the people, they had no con-

tact with the people. . . . Mutercim (Translator)

Rustu Pasa, Vefi k Pasa, Ali Pasa, Fuat Pasa, Resit

Pasa. They had one qualifi cation only: knowing

a Western language. What kind of connection

did they have to the people? None.]

This newly emerging intelligentsia was

“European” in a rather shallow sense. They

wanted to act and live like Europeans, imitat-

ing European dress and manners. Otherwise,

they were not genuinely familiar with European

thought and philosophy. Meriç ruthlessly em-

phasizes one characteristic they shared with the

ulema: they were both uncritical imitators.

Osmanlı’da sınıf-ı ulema tekrarlayıcıdır. Kur’an’ın,

hadislerin ve daha önceki imam ve müçtehitle-

rin tekrarlayıcısı. Tanzimattan sonraki aydınlar

da tekrarlayıcıdır, Avrupalı yazarların tekrarla-

yıcısı. . . . Ikinciler. . . . yabancı bir kültürle karşı

karşıyaydılar. Bu kültürü ayıklamaları, tenkit et-

meleri güçtü. Yabancı bir dünya’da, bilmedikleri

şartlar içinde gelişen bir kültürdü bu.34

[The class of the ulema in the Ottoman state

was repeating the Koran, the hadith, and the

earlier imams and mujtahids. The intellectuals

after the Tanzimat were also repeating, this time

they were repeating the European authors. . . .

The second group . . . was facing a foreign cul-

ture. It was diffi cult for them to sort out and crit-

icize this culture. This was a culture that grew

in a foreign world in circumstances unknown to

them.]

The Republican period merely acceler-

ated the alienation of the intelligentsia from the

common people, according to Meriç. Destroy-

ing the cultural codes of Turkish society, the

Republican elite left only the “myth of Atatürk”

as cultural cement for the society. Meriç, under-

standably, thinks that this is not enough for a

healthy society:

Dünyanın bütün tımarhaneleri bizim intelijansi-

yanın kafatasi yanında birer aklı selim mihrakı.

Cemiyet tek mit’e dayalı: Atatürk miti. Başka bağ

yok. İmparatorluğun birbirine düşman etnik

unsurlardan mürekkep yamalı bohçası dikiş

yerlerinden ayrılalı beri biz kendi kendimize

düşman insanlar haline geldik. Mazi yok, tari-

himizi tanımıyoruz. . . . İnsanları bir araya geti-

ren hiçbir ideoloji doğmadı. Nihayet dil de gitti

elden. Türk milleti. Hangi millet? Milliyetçiyiz.

Hangi milliyetçilik?35

[Every madhouse in the world is a source of com-

mon sense compared to the head of our intelli-

gentsia. Society depends on a single myth: the

myth of Atatürk. There is no other bond. Since

the patchwork of the Empire, which was com-

posed of ethnic elements hostile to one another

disintegrated in its seams, we have become our

own enemy. There is no past, we do not know

of our history. . . . No ideology arose that could

unite the people. In the end, we also lost the

language. Turkish nation. Which nation? We are

nationalists. Which nationalism?]

In another striking passage in his diaries,

Meriç criticizes the cultural reforms of the Mus-

tafa Kemal era:

Mustafa Kemal musikiyi değiştirmeye kalktı,

yapamadi. Zevk meclislerinde gazel aranıyordu,

şarkı aranıyordu. Altı yüz senenin ötesine atla-

mak, yani milli tarihte alti yüz senelik bir paran-

tez açmak mümkün müdür? Dil-Tarih Kurumu

şefin bu emrini sadakatle başarmaya çalıştı.

Tarih gömülmez. Binalarıyla, sokaklarıyla, mü-

zeleriyle, mezarlarıyla yok edilmesi imkansız bir

şahittir. Sıra dile geldi. Yeni harfl er zaten gele-

neğin, irfan geleneğinin sırtına indirilen bir

baltaydı. Selanikliler, Rusya’dan gelen Türkler

ve şeften iltifat görmeye koşan gençler dili tah-

rip için cansiperane bir gayret harcadılar. Mus-

tafa Kemal işin maskaralığa vardığını anladı,

ama iş işten geçmişti.36

[Mustafa Kemal ventured to change the music,

but he could not do that. People still looked for

old songs and gazals in the musical/literary sum-

mons and meetings. Is it possible to jump beyond

six hundred years or put six hundred years of na-

tional history into parentheses? The Institute of

Language and History tried to follow this order

34. Meriç, Mağaradakiler, 24.

35. Meriç, Jurnal, 1:109.

36. Ibid., 302.

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ut T

urki

sh M

oder

niza

tion

of the “chief” in fi delity. History, however, cannot

be buried. It is an indestructible witness with its

buildings, streets, museums, and graves. Then it

was the turn of the language. The new alphabet

was indeed an axe skewered at the back of the

tradition, the tradition of spiritual knowledge.

Thessalonians, the Turks coming from Russia,

and the young toadies eager to gain the favors

of the chief made an incredible effort to destroy

the language. Mustafa Kemal understood that

the issue later bordered on charlatanry, but it

was too late.]

Does Meriç offer a solution to the imbro-

glio of Turkish culture in the post-Republican

era? Apparently he does not. In fact, he stresses

that ready-made solutions and magical formulas

of reform do not work in the realm of culture:

Ben, herhangi bir tarikatin sözcüsü değilim.

Yani, ilan edilecek hazır bir formülüm yok. Ders-

lerimde de, konuşmalarımda da tekrarladığım

ve darağacına kadar tekrarlayacağım tek haki-

kat: her düşünceye saygı.37

[I am not the spokesman for any religious order.

I mean I do not have any ready-made formula

to declare. The only truth that I have repeated

in my courses and speeches, and the only one

that I will repeat until (I am sent to) the gallows:

respect for every idea.]

The above passage, I believe, is the best

possible way of summarizing the complex stance

of an intellectual of such high caliber as Meriç.

ConclusionMeriç offers a highly interesting critique of the

modernization process of Turkey beginning

from the Tanzimat era. His impact on the intel-

lectual progress of the conservative intellectuals

of Turkey in the 1980s coincided with the rise of

a conservative middle class in Turkey (thanks to

the economic shift of Turkey from import sub-

stitutive industrialization to export-led growth

during the Turgut Ozal period), which provided

the necessary readership to this rising new intel-

lectual class. It is not surprising to see that these

new intellectuals such as Ali Bulac, Mustafa

Armagan, and Ahmet Turan Alkan eagerly ac-

knowledge their intellectual debt to the legacy

of Meriç.38 In short, for the serious student who

wants to understand the complicated process

of Turkish modernization, the works of Cemil

Meriç are indispensable.

37. Meriç, Bu Ülke, 53.

38. See, e.g., Ahmet Turan Alkan, Tercüman, 21 June 1987.