24 Ağustos 2019 Cumartesi

TNT History Archives: Egypt Loses Its Turkish Accent (1903)

//Ed. Note: Turkish journalist Dr. Şerefeddin Mağmumi,
in exile in Cairo, bemoaned the loss of Turkish and 
Turkishness in Egypt, after four centuries of Ottoman
rule.//

turk-arab relations today click here for a recent TNT report.

yavuz selim kahire ile ilgili görsel sonucu
Ottoman Sultan Yavuz Selim entering Cairo on 15 February 
1517.


I’m Thinking That...

“Türk” newspaper (Cairo): 24 December 1903

They say that a person can do more harm to himself than a stranger can.  
How true.  We can apply this to groups and nations, as well.  
Sometimes a person or group of people can do so much more harm to 
their own nation than a foreigner could do.  The thing that brought this 
to my mind was the news that the Emir of Afghanistan has ordered the 
learning of Turkish in the new Kabul medrese.  

Upon hearing this, I began to think about the sad state of Turkish here 
in Egypt, which is that element of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish 
family to which this continent has been entrusted.  I felt so badly about 
this, recalling that Egypt has been a Turkish nation since Yavuz Sultan 
Selim’s conquest of Cairo.  The Egyptian state officials and military 
officers have mostly come from Turkish stock for the past four centuries. 

muhammed ali paşa click here for background.

muhammed ali egypt ile ilgili görsel sonucu
An Albanian Ottoman subject who ruled Egypt,
1805-1848.

In fact, the late Muhammed Ali Paşa practically turned Egypt into an 
Anatolian province and the official language was Turkish.  Still today 
one can see that the official documents and registers of various 
departments from that period held in the basement storerooms were 
written in Turkish.  But just look at the current situation. 

The number of well-off, landed Turkish families in the Nile Valley, 
which once numbered 40,000, has decreased such that these families 
can be counted with one’s fingers.  Most of the current youth whose 
parents came from Turkey to settle in Egypt as farmers do not speak 
Turkish, their native tongue.  Since they don’t know their mother 
tongue, they are strangers to Turkishness and have begun to be 
indifferent to both the tribulations and the joys of the Turks.  In fact, 
most of their children say “we’re Egyptians”, forgetting, or wanting 
to forget, that the blood in their veins in Turkish blood.
  
In this way, thousands, tens of thousands of Turkish farmers are being 
sucked up like a sponge and lost.  Yet, this sad and painful image we 
see was brought about by ourselves, not by foreigners.   The Khedive 
İsmail Paşa, obsessed with a passion for independence, smashed the 
hatchet on Turkishness in its heart and in its soul.  Even if we were to 
forgive him all these transgressions in his quest for the throne, he can 
never be forgiven for the harm he did to Ottoman and Turkish history.   
He chased the Turks from Egypt in order to cut off material and 
spiritual ties with Istanbul.  Turkish was eliminated everywhere and 
could neither be spoken nor read.

ismail paşa click here for background.

khedive ismail paşa ile ilgili görsel sonucu
Lavish spending led to British occupation.

It may be that if Egypt had been taken over by a foreign government 
the breach with Istanbul would not have been so serious but İsmail Paşa 
wanted it this way.  What about our statesmen in Istanbul at that time?  
Did they look the other way or partner in these heinous acts for five or 
ten thousand liras?

Last year, England wanted to make English the official language of 
the island of Malta, which is under England’s administration.  However, 
the Italian state and nation, although not having any administrative or 
political relation to Malta, objected vigorously and rained down protests 
on the English.

Unfortunately, there was no subsequent effort to heal the breach between 
Egypt and Istanbul.  A shame, a sin.  Today, Egypt is under the military 
occupation of England, whose officials and military officers are given a 
100 lira bonus for learning Arabic, but those who learn Turkish get a 200 
lira bonus!   And in Afghanistan, a remote and desolate country in Asia, 
the Emir has ordered the teaching of Turkish!  Yet, in Egypt, many 
senior and respected officials of Turkish origin have been forced to
abandon their Turkish education and perform their duties in a different,
foreign tongue.  What a shame...

ottoman egypt ile ilgili görsel sonucu

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