Longing for the Lost Caliphate by Hassan Mona;

Author:Hassan, Mona;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

DEBATING A MODERN CALIPHATE

ALI ŞÜKRÜ’S BRUTALLY mutilated corpse lay half-buried in a vineyard, not far from the presidential villa Çankaya, nestled in the bucolic hills a few miles south from what was then central Ankara. It was finally discovered on April 2, 1924, after days of searching. A deputy for Trabzon in Turkey’s first Grand National Assembly, Ali Şükrü was last seen dining with Mustafa Kemal’s personal bodyguard Osman Ağa on March 26 before his mysterious disappearance, and cries of agony had been heard emanating from Osman Ağa’s house that very evening. Marks of strangulation were clearly visible on Ali Şükrü’s neck, and rumors abounded that Mustafa Kemal had personally ordered the murder the day after he had returned to Ankara from a tour of the country. Ali Şükrü had been a particularly vocal opponent of Mustafa Kemal’s government as one of the nationalist Second Group members of the first assembly. The Second Group had recently established a newspaper Tan with Ali Şükrü as its editor; his unremitting railing, as Finefrock notes, “had become more than aggravation” for Mustafa Kemal at this crucial political juncture as he strategically planned for new elections. The Second Group had also established a publishing house under Ali Şükrü’s ownership to stir public discussion of their views, and one of their first publications expounded on the future relationship between the Islamic caliphate and the Grand National Assembly. This treatise was circulated among all the other deputies on January 15, 1923. As Finefrock has encapsulated this era in Turkey, “An argument had developed in favor of the Caliph playing an important role in whatever political system was ultimately established. This view was increasingly voiced in the Assembly by both liberals and conservatives alike, with the latter beginning by early January to make it a public issue.”1 Within a matter of months, however, twenty-nine-year-old Ali Şükrü (1894–1923) had paid for the dissemination of these views with his life. Indeed, as this chapter demonstrates, the separation of the caliphate from the Ottoman Sultanate followed by the Ottoman Caliphate’s abolition initiated passionate and potentially lethal debates over the caliphate’s role in uncharted configurations of the modern state.

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