Ali Saip Ursavaş

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Ali Saip Ursavaş
Ali Saip Bey
Born1885 (1885)
Rawandiz, Ottoman Empire
Died25 September 1939(1939-09-25) (aged 53–54)
Adana, Turkey
Buried
Adana Asrî Mezarlığı
Allegiance Ottoman Empire
 Turkey
Years of service
  • Ottoman Empire: September 1, 1908-1919
  • Turkey: 1919-February 28, 1926
Rank
Commands held
  • Mobile Detachment of the Drizur Gendarmerie Regiment, Kars Gendarmerie Command, Kozan Gendarmerie Command
  • Urfa Gendarmerie Command, Urfa Area Kuva-yi Milliye, member of the Konya Independence Tribunal, Independence Tribunal of the Riot Area
Battles/wars
Other workMember of the GNAT (Urfa)

Ali Saip, also known as Ali Saip Ursavaş Bey or Namık Bey[1] (1885, in Rawandiz – September 25, 1939 in Adana) was an Ottoman-Kurdish[1][2] general who served in the Ottoman and Turkish armies, and one of the early key members of CHP.

He was also a prominent politician of the Republic of Turkey.[3] In 1925 he was nominated prosecutor at the Independence Tribunal in Diyarbakır which was established to counter the Sheikh Said Rebellion and sentenced Sheikh Said to death.[4] Later he succeeded Hacim Muhittin Çarıklı [tr] as the Tribunals president.[5]

Life and Career[edit]

Ali Saip in Ottoman commandeur uniform, 1915

Ali Saip was born in Rawandiz, today‘s Kurdistan Region, Iraq in 1887. Ali Saip, who used the nickname 'Namık' during the war, had a rank of captain in the army. It is reported that Ursavaş, who served in the Adana (Kozan) Sis region under the control of France, worked for the benefit of the French, not with the Kuva-yi Milliye forces.[6] After it was determined that he met with local units of the resistance movement, Ursavaş, who was sent to the Urfa region by the French, was the main organizer of the resistance in the region. According to Osman Tufan, he tried to forgive himself in the following period. During the period when Ali Saip was sent to Urfa, there was a bifurcation in the political preferences of the Kurdish elites due to their differences in reading the rapidly changing political processes and opportunities. On the one hand, there were Seyit Abdulkadir and Bedirhan families, who came together around the Society for the Rise of Kurdistan, who demanded Kurdish autonomy and independence in line with the British regional policy while the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, but did not sever their relations with the Ottoman administration in Istanbul because the British did not take any practical steps. On the other hand, there were local Kurdish tribes who could not solve the political knot resulting from being a party to the Armenian genocide and who were positioned against the hesitant Mesopotamian policy of the British due to the organizing efforts of Mustafa Kemal's cadres through the Islamic discourse and anti-Armenianism. Organization of the resistance movement in Anatolia The fact that the Kurds did not take any action against the movement and supported it to a significant extent during the process played a very important role in removing the resistance movement, which was carried out with limited resources, from the control of the war-weary imperialist powers. One of the most important staff in the region to garner the support of the Kurds was Kuvay-ı Milliye Commander Ali Saip, who was sent to Urfa.

The first important thing that Ali Saip did in Urfa was to publish a declaration that the Kurdish tribes he organized in Urfa were loyal to the Ottoman Empire and were not in favor of Kurdish independence, and to report this to the Paris Peace Conference, where decisions were made on the fate of the region. The declaration had the signatures of some tribes and religious scholars of the region. Ali Saip's most important move in the following period was to organize the Kurdish tribes militarily and politically in order to drive the French forces out of Urfa. In his declaration on January 8, 1920, in which he called for the Kurdish tribes in Urfa to unite against the French, Ali Saip said: "There are only Turks and Kurds in the world who protect Islam independently.[7] "Islam and the homeland are in danger today," he said, and with the support of the Kurdish tribes, French soldiers left Urfa on April 11, 1920. For these works, he was given the surname "Ursavaş" by Mustafa Kemal, which is short for the expression Urfa warrior, and he took his place as the Urfa deputy in the first parliament.[8] Ali Saip, who carried out important activities in the region, was one of the executors of the 'Kurdish policy' of the newly established Turkish state. After the proclamation of the Republic, it would be revealed that the discourse of Islamic brotherhood was used periodically by the Kemalist cadres to gain the support of the Kurds and that the promises of autonomy given to the Kurds would not be fulfilled. Sheikh Said and Ararat resistances are the resistance practices that emerged from this realization. Ali Saip would take the stage again during the process of liquidation and suppression of those who participated in the Kurdish resistance and the Kurds who might oppose the Kemalist cadre's policy of not sharing sovereignty in the region.

Ali Saip, 1920s

Ali Saip, a member (judge) of the Eastern Independence Court of Turkish Gouverment, where the trial process was completely instrumentalized for political motives, took steps to break the Kurdish resistance, on the one hand, and on the other hand, coded the cause of the Sheikh Said Uprising as an Islam-based organization and associated it with the Progressive Freedom Party and opposition journalists.[9] He was tasked with giving legal legitimacy to the project of liquidating Mustafa Kemal's opponents. A total of 882 people were tried in the Eastern Independence Tribunal process, where the right of defense was granted to the suspects in a very limited manner, most of whom were tried in a language they did not know, 570 of which were for the crime of rebellion. The people tried in the Eastern Independence Tribunal established in Diyarbakır were not only those who participated in the Kurdish resistance with arms, but also At the same time, they were Kurdish politicians, soldiers, civil bureaucrats, tribal leaders and clergy who were known to be incompatible with the rejectionist attitude of the Kemalist line regarding the Kurds' fundamental rights demands.

Ali Saip, who returned to Adana after the trials of the Independence Courts, implemented a despotic rule in the Kozan district of Adana, taking strength from his involvement in the Kemalist cadres. In addition to obtaining 3,800 decares of land in Ayşehoca village for his own account through dubious means, he also seized 5,000 decares of land belonging to the Armenian Cintoros near Hemite Castle. In addition, Kozan was removed from being a province after the conflict that started with the reaction of the local people after the fertile lands allocated to the Circassian immigrants were taken into their title deeds, and the situation became inextricable. They started the legal process in 1950. Due to the lack of results, they went to the European Court of Human Rights.[10] In addition, the intensity of the parallels between the character of Arif Saim Bey and the actions of Ali Saip in the fiction of Yaşar Kemal's famous novel 'İnce Memed', made this character of Yaşar Kemal It supports the idea that it is created based on historical reality.[11]

After his name was mentioned in an assassination attempt against Mustafa Kemal in 1935, Ali Saip lost his qualification as one of Mustafa Kemal's reliable staff and died in the following years.

Works[edit]

  • Kilikya Faciaları ve Urfa Kurtuluş Mücadeleleri, Ankara, 1940.

Medals and decorations[edit]

See also[edit]

Sources[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Ali Saip Ursavaş: Şeyh Said'i Astıran Urfa 'Kahramanı'". Nor Zartonk / Նոր Զարթօնք (in Turkish). 2013-06-27. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  2. ^ "Ali Sâib Ursavaş (1885-1939)". Atatürk Ansiklopedisi (in Turkish). 2020-12-17. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  3. ^ Türk Parlamento Tarihi Araştırma Grubu, Türk Parlamento Tarihi, Millî Mücadele ve T.B.M.B. I. Dönem 1919-1923 - III. Cilt: I. Dönem Milletvekillerin Özgeçmişleri, Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Vakfı Yayınları, Ankara, 1995, ISBN 975-7291-06-4, p. 945.
  4. ^ Üngör, Umut. "Young Turk social engineering : mass violence and the nation state in eastern Turkey, 1913- 1950" (PDF). University of Amsterdam. pp. 240–243. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  5. ^ Olson, Robert W. (1989). The emergence of Kurdish nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925. University of Texas Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-292-77619-7.
  6. ^ Yorulmaz, Şerife (2005-05-01). "Çukurova'da Kuva-yı Milliye Yapılanmasının Temel Özellikleri". Atatürk Yolu Dergisi (in Turkish). 9 (35): 345–373. doi:10.1501/Tite_0000000049. ISSN 1303-5290.
  7. ^ "Şeyh Sait: Ben ne bu hareketin önünde ne de arkasında; herkes gibi içindeyim". Independent Türkçe (in Turkish). 2020-02-13. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  8. ^ https://www.yeniasya.com.tr/roportaj/istiklal-mahkemeleri-zihniyeti-ergenekon-da-suruyor_160098
  9. ^ Habertürk. "Ali Saip Bey Kimdir, Hangi Cephede Savaşmıştır? Ali Saip Bey (Ursavaş) Nerede ve Kime Karşı Mücadele Etti?". Habertürk (in Turkish). Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  10. ^ "Said-i Kurdi ve Bitlis Ayaklanması". Kürt Tarihi (in Turkish). 2022-01-17. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  11. ^ "Eşref Edib, Ali Saib ve Yaşar Kemal/Tarih/milliyet blog". blog.milliyet.com.tr. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
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