Musa Kâzım Karabekir | |
|---|---|
 Karabekir in 1939 | |
| Leader of the Progressive Republican Party | |
| In office 17 November 1924 – 5 June 1925 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| 5thSpeaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey | |
| In office 5 August 1946 – 26 January 1948 | |
| Preceded by | Abdülhalik Renda |
| Succeeded by | Ali Fuat Cebesoy |
| Member of the Grand National Assembly | |
| In office 1920 – 20 July 1927 | |
| Constituency | Istanbul |
| In office 26 March 1939 – 26 January 1948 | |
| Constituency | Istanbul |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1882 Kocamustafapaşa,Istanbul, Istanbul Vilayet, Ottoman Empire[1][2][3][4] |
| Died | 26 January 1948(1948-01-26) (aged 66)[5] Ankara, Turkey |
| Cause of death | Myocardial infarction |
| Resting place | Turkish State Cemetery, Ankara, Turkey |
| Signature |  |
| Nickname | Zeyrek |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Ottoman Empire (1902–1919) Ankara Government (1920–1923) Turkey (1923–1924) |
| Branch/service | Ottoman Army Army of the GNA Turkish Army |
| Years of service | 1902–1924 |
| Rank | General |
| Commands | 1st Expeditionary Force,14th Division,18th Corps,II Corps,I Caucasian Corps,XIV Corps,XV Corps,Eastern Front,1st Army |
| Battles/wars | |
Musa Kâzım Karabekir (alsoKazim[citation needed] orKiazim[6] in English; 1882 – 26 January 1948)[5] was aTurkish general and politician. He was the commander of theEastern Army of theOttoman Empire during theTurkish War of Independence, and fought a successful military campaign against theArmenian Democratic Republic. He was the a founder and leader of theProgressive Republican Party, theTurkish Republic's first opposition party to Atatürk, though he and his party would be purged following the Sheikh Said revolt. He was rehabilitated withİsmet İnönü's ascension to the presidency in 1938 and served asSpeaker of theGrand National Assembly of Turkey before his death.
Karabekir was born in 1882 as the son of an Ottoman general, Mehmet Emin Pasha, in the Kocamustafapaşa quarter of the Kuleli neighborhood ofİstanbul, in theOttoman Empire. The Karabekir family traced its heritage back to the medievalKaramanid principality, in central Anatolia,[2] where his family belonged to theAfshar tribe.[5]
Karabekir toured several places in the Ottoman Empire while his father served in the army. He returned toIstanbul in 1893 with his mother after his father died inMecca. They settled in theZeyrek Quarter. Karabekir was put into Fatih Military Secondary School the next year. After finishing his education there, he attended theKuleli Military High School from which he graduated in 1899. He continued his education at theOttoman Military College, which he finished on 6 December 1902 at the top of his class.
As a junior officer, he was commissioned in January 1906 after two months to the Third Army in the region aroundBitola inNorth Macedonia. There, he was involved in fights withGreek andBulgariankomitadjis. In April 1906, he saw Bulgarian rebels being deported who even being deported shouted a Bulgarian nationalist slogan.[7] He reasoned that the day his nation shows this spirit, his nation will be saved.[7] Later that year, he became the 11th member of the Ottoman Freedom Committee (which in 1907 would become the CUP).[7] For his successful service, he was promoted to the rank ofsenior captain in 1907. In the following years, he served in Constantinople and again in the Second Army inEdirne.
On 15 April 1911, Kâzım applied to change his family name from Zeyrek to Karabekir.[8] Until then, he had been called Kâzım Zeyrek, after the place in which he lived with his mother, a custom in the Ottoman Empire as family names were not used. From then on, he adopted the name Karabekir, the name of his ancestors.
During his service in Edirne, Karabekir was promoted to the rank of major on 27 April 1912. He took part in theFirst Balkan War againstBulgarian forces but was captured during theBattle of Edirne-Kale on 22 April 1913. He remained aprisoner-of-war until thearmistice of 21 October 1913.
Before the outbreak ofWorld War I, Karabekir served inConstantinople and was then sent to some European countries likeAustria-Hungary, Germany, France andSwitzerland. In July 1914, he returned home, as a world war was likely.
Back in Constantinople, Karabekir was assigned[clarification needed] the chief ofintelligence at the General Staff. Soon, he was promoted tolieutenant colonel. After a short time on the southeastern front, he was sent to theDardanelles. As commander of the 14th Division, Karabekir fought in theBattle of Gallipoli in the summer of 1915. In October 1915, he was appointed chief staff officer at the First Army in Istanbul.
He was commissioned to theIraqi front to join the Sixth Army. For his success atGallipoli, he was decorated in December 1915 by both the Ottoman and the German Commands and was contemporaneously promoted tocolonel. In April 1916, he took over the command of the 18th Corps, which gained a great victory over the British forces led by GeneralCharles Townshend during theSiege of Kut-al Amara in Iraq.
Karabekir was appointed commander of the 2nd Corps on theCaucasus front and fought bitterly against theRussian andArmenian forces for almost ten months. In September 1917, he was promoted tobrigadier general by a decree of theSultan. In May 1918 he became the commander of the 15th Army Corps inErzurum and as he began to grasp the defeat of theOttoman Empire inWorld War I, he began to prepare his forces for a war against the Armenians.[9]
In compliance with theTreaty of Sèvres, Ottoman SultanMehmed VI gave Karabekir the order to surrender toEntente powers, which he refused to obey. Contrary to the orders of the British to demobilize the Ottoman army in Eastern Anatolia, he provided the Turkish rural population with weapons.[9] He stayed in the region and, on the eve of theErzurum Congress, whenMustafa Kemal (Atatürk) had just arrived inErzurum, he secured the city with a cavalry brigade under his command to protect him and the congressmen. He pledged with Mustafa Kemal to join theTurkish national movement and then took command of theEastern Front during theTurkish War of Independence by theKuva-yi Milliye.
In early September 1920, Karabekir commenced the first military operations against theRepublic of Armenia. There were brief small-scale skirmishes in the region ofOltu, but as the Turkish offensive elicited virtually no reaction from the Allied powers, Karabekir continued the offensive. On 28 September, he sent four divisions from theXV Army Corps across the Armenian border with the objective of capturing the strategic fortress ofSarikamish.[10] Sarikamish was taken the following day, and the rest of the Turkish advance continued unchecked. Throughout October, Armenian resistance progressively collapsed, and the Turkish armies capturedKars on 30 October and occupiedAlexandropol, Armenia's largest city at the time, on 6 November.[11] A ceasefire was concluded on 18 November, and negotiations were carried out between Karabekir and a peace delegation, led byAlexander Khatisian, in Alexandropol. Although Karabekir's terms were extremely harsh, the Armenian delegation had little recourse but to agree to them. Karabekir affixed his signature under the peace agreement, theTreaty of Alexandropol, which was signed on 3 December 1920.[12] Although the treaty was technically invalid, as the government that Khatisian's delegation represented had ceased to exist the previous day, Turkey's territorial gains as stipulated in the treaty were confirmed in theTreaty of Kars of 1921.[13] Karabekir's army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians during the campaign against Armenia, with conservative estimates placing the number killed at approximately 60,000.[14][15][16]
In 1924, he was assigned to takeHakkari back. He was designated by the newGrand National Assembly inAnkara to sign also the friendship agreementTreaty of Kars with theSoviet Union on 23 October 1921. He then conqueredHakkari from theAssyrian forces and in the process, massacred and displaced manyAssyrians.
After the defeat of Greek forces in WesternAnatolia, theRepublic of Turkey was proclaimed. Kâzım Karabekir Pasha moved toAnkara in October 1922 and continued to serve in the parliament as Deputy of Edirne. He was still the acting commander of the Eastern Army when he was elected Deputy of Constantinople on 29 June 1923. Six months later, he was appointed Inspector of the First Army. He received the highest Turkish award by the parliament, the "Order of Independence" for his meritorious and distinguished service in the military and politics during theWar of Independence. He retired from military service in October 1924 and then entered politics.[17]
Karabekir had differences of opinion withMustafa Kemal about the realization of theRepublican reforms, one of the most important being the abolition ofcaliphate. Even though he agreed with Mustafa Kemal on the subject, he did not agree with him on immediate action. For Karabekir, the timing was inappropriate because British forces stood at the border of southeasternTurkey and claimedKirkuk, now inIraq. Karabekir did not believe that the caliphate should be abolished before this was solved.Kurds, more radical in theirShafiSunni beliefs, began to rise against the government because they thought that the government would abolish religion after it ended the caliphate. Struggling with the rebellion, Turkey agreed to leave Kirkuk to Iraq, which was under the British mandate. Such conflicts prompted tensions between Karabekir and Mustafa Kemal.
On 17 November 1924, several politicians around Karabekir andAli Fuat Cebesoy founded theProgressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası),[18] which had several prominent current and former military commanders as its members.[19] Afterwards, the party's recent members were blamed for theSheikh Said rebellion and the assassination attempt made against Mustafa Kemal inİzmir.[20] The party was closed on 5 June 1925 by the government, and Karabekir was imprisoned by theIndependence Tribunals with many of his party members but later acquitted and released.[20] Following those developments, all relations were broken between Karabekir and Mustafa Kemal.
Retiring temporarily from politics, Karabekir devoted himself to writing his memoirs of theTurkish War of Independence andAtatürk's reforms. After Kemal Atatürk died in 1938, Karabekir's close friendİsmet İnönü rehabilitated him.
In 1939, Kâzım Karabekir returned to politics and re-entered parliament as an MP from Istanbul. He was elected speaker of the parliament on 5 August 1946. He died in office at the age of 66 on 26 January 1948 in Ankara after a heart attack. His remains were later relocated to theTurkish State Cemetery in Ankara.
Kâzım Karabekir was survived by his wife İclal and three daughters Hayat, Emel, and Timsal. The four-story mansion in the Erenköy quarter ofKadıköy district in Istanbul, where he lived for almost 15 years, was converted into a museum in 2005.
Rauf Orbay stated that the proclamation of therepublic was rushed, and the most correct form of government would be the one in which thecaliph would preside. WhileAli Fuat Cebesoy was agreeing to this view, Kâzım Karabekir told them that he was a supporter of the republic, and was against a personalsultanate.[21]
The aim of all Turks is to unite with the Turkic borders. History is affording us today the last opportunity. In order for theMuslim world not to be forever fragmented it is necessary that the campaign againstKarabagh be not allowed to abate. As a matter of fact drive the point home inAzeri circles that the campaign should be pursued with greater determination and severity.[22]
— Kâzım Karabekir
| Military offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Inspector of theFirst Army 21 October 1923 – 26 October 1924 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey 5 August 1946 – 26 January 1948 | Succeeded by |
| Grand National Assembly Büyük Millet Meclisi (1920–1960) |  | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House of Representatives Temsilciler Meclisi (1961) | |||||
| Grand National Assembly in period of Bicameralism Büyük Millet Meclisi Çift Meclisli Dönemde (1961–1980) |
| ||||
| Consultative Assembly Danışma Meclisi (1981–1983) | |||||
| Grand National Assembly Büyük Millet Meclisi (since 1983) | |||||
| Interim speakers of the parliament |
| ||||
