The CHP's 52-year-old feud!

I spent the weekend in Edirne. I participated in talk and book signing events as part of the Second Book Fair organized by the Edirne Municipality at the Atatürk Cultural Center.

I would like to thank the readers and patriots of Edirne for their interest.

First and foremost, I wholeheartedly congratulate Mayor Recep Gürkan for bringing this magnificent cultural center to Edirne.

While I was there, I also visited the exhibition held at the ACC in memory of the historian and author Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, who was from Edirne…

You may remember this esteemed historian from his three-volume books titled "Tek Adam" (The Only Man) and "İkinci Adam" (The Second Man), in which he examined the Atatürk and İnönü eras…

He drew attention for advocating different ideologies during different periods. In his youth, he was a Turanist; between 1920 and 1927, he was an executive of the Communist Party of Turkey; and after 1927, he emerged as a defender and theorist of the Kemalist regime.

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He attended a military high school for a while in his youth, but eventually decided on a career in teaching.

He participated in local resistance movements during the Greek occupation of Edirne.

When the government established in Azerbaijan requested teachers from the Istanbul Government, he was appointed as a teacher to the city of Nuha and moved to Azerbaijan between 1919 and 1920. He became the commander of a volunteer unit formed against the Armenians and became a folk hero.

However, upon seeing the multi-ethnic structure of the Caucasus, he began to question the validity of his former Turanist ideas. He attended the Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku as a delegate from Nuha. His participation in this congress increased his interest in communism.

After returning to Turkey, Şevket Süreyya was elected to the seven-member Central Committee at the third congress of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) in 1925.

He was arrested as a result of the "1925 Arrests" that took place after the distribution of leaflets reading "Workers of the World, Unite!" on May 1st. He was tried alongside many famous communists of the era at the Ankara Independence Tribunal and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

After spending a year and a half in Afyon Prison, he was released under the general amnesty declared on October 29, 1927.

Although he moved away from the communist line after this and began to advocate a kind of nationalist communism, he returned to the view that the valid ideology for Turkey was Kemalism.

He left the TKP along with Vedat Nedim Tör. He was even accused of reporting the party to the police.

He began working as a bureaucrat in Ankara in 1928.

Until 1951, he held various government positions as an educator and economist.

He served as Deputy General Director of Higher Technical Education, Director of Economy for the Ankara Municipality, Founding Director of the Ankara School of Commerce, Head of the Industrial Inspection Board of the Ministry of Economy, and member of the Prime Ministry High Audit Board.

His articles were published in the Hâkimiyet-i Milliye newspaper in 1930 and 1931.

In 1932, at the request of Atatürk, he co-founded the magazine Kadro with Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu.

After retiring in 1951, he devoted himself to writing.

His articles were published in socialist-leaning magazines such as Devrim and Yön, which were established in the new intellectual climate that emerged after May 27. After the Yön magazine was closed following the March 12 Memorandum, he continued his writing in the Cumhuriyet newspaper.

He died at his home in Ankara on March 25, 1976.

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You might ask, why are you telling us about Şevket Süreyya all of a sudden?

The reason is the newspaper clipping you see in the article…

This clipping is on display in a frame at the exhibition held at the Edirne ACC.

The article by Şevket Süreyya Aydemir seen in this clipping was published 52 years ago, on September 13, 1971, in his column titled "Events and Opinions" in the Cumhuriyet newspaper…