Hikmet Kıvılcımlı

Araştırmacı, Yazar

Ölüm
11 Ekim, 1971
Eğitim
İstanbul Faculty of Medicine

Theoretician, writer and publisher (B. 1902, Pristina / Yugoslavia (Kosovo)- D. 11th October 1971, Belgrade / Yugoslavia (Serbia)). When his father, who was a government officer, was assigned to Yemen after the Balkans War, his family immigrated from Pristina and after they lived in Istanbul, Izmir and Muğla for short periods, they were settled in Aydın / Kuşadası. He went to elementary and secondary school there. He became successful in an examination he participated when he was in the ninth class of Vefa High School and he gained the right to study in the İstanbul Faculty of Medicine. He met socialism through the magazines Kurtuluş and Aydınlık published in the years when Istanbul was under English supervision and he continued his works in accordance with this world perspective until his death. As a youth seeing the occupation of Izmir, he participated for a while to the gang of Yörük Ali Efe, who had been among people defending Kuvay-ı Milliye during the War of Independence, and he accomplished the Kuvayı Milliye Command in the region of Köyceğiz.

Kıvılcımlı participated in the secret Second Congress of the Türkiye Komünist Party (TKP) realized on 1st January 1925 as a delegate and was selected as a member of the Central Committee. He finished the faculty of medicine the same year. He was sentenced to ten years of penal servitude by the Independence Tribunal, according to the law on the maintenance of order (Takrir-i Sükûn) established because of the Şeyh Sait Insurgency against the revolutions of Ataturk. He was released by benefiting from an amnesty granted one year later. He was included in the Istanbul group of the withholding of 1927 and he was sentenced to prison for three months. After coming out of prison, he was again sentenced to prison for four and a half years in May 1929, with the accusation of the activities he performed and his works for the aim of “Bringing laborers to the government”. In the prison of Elazığ where he served his sentence, he made series of researches and many translations and he wrote original works. He started to publish his works in the publication series “Laborer Library and the Concerns of the Day” that he founded in the year of 1935, by taking the approval of TKP. However, the books he published were always put under investigation.

He received a new punishment of four and a half years because of his provocative attitude in the Izmir Court Case of İsmail Bilen (Laz İsmail). The court case that was executed in 1938 and that was named “the Court Case of the Navy” was combined with the “Court Case of the War Academy” and he was put on trial together with Nâzım Hikmet. He was sentenced to prison for fifteen years with the ground that “His books were read and interiorized by noncoms and this situation was shaking the discipline of the navy” in the judgment motion of the lawsuit. After he stayed in jail for twelve years, he came out from the prison by benefiting from the repentance law granted by the Demokrat Party (DP) in 1950. He returned to Istanbul with the scientific and artistic works he have done in the prisons of Kırşehir and Kayseri, where he was imprisoned in that period.

The Vatan Party (VP) was founded in the year of 1954 and he was selected as the general president of this party. However, his party was closed due to his speeches in the elections of 1957. He was arrested together with the founders and administrative board members of the party. At the end of the investigation during two years, the court case ended with exculpation. In the year of 1965, he founded and directed the Tarihsel Maddecilik Publications. There, he translated and published his most important works, the book Tarih Tezi and the translations of Marx’s, Engels’s and Lenin’s works. Meanwhile, he translated one part of “Kapital” to Turkish. In 1967, he founded the İşsizlik ve Pahalılıkla Savaş Institution (İPSD). A very numbered original work of him were published, concerning topics from economy to anthropology, from the explanation of the historical and theoretical development of the Marxist thought to the strategic and tactical problems of the revolution of the working class in Turkey. His articles were published in magazines such as “Aydınlık” and “Türk Solu”, and also the magazines “Sosyalist” and “Ant”, founded by him.

Kıvılcımlı got cancer disease when the military coup of 12 March 1971 was approaching. He was obliged to go into hiding after the military coup, however, the Commandership of the State of Siege, which was declared on 26th April, started to search him. Hereupon, he went to Cyprus, then to Lebanon and Syria in a boat, together with his friends. When it wasn’t possible for him to stay in Sofia and Berlin where he reached afterwards, he went to Yugoslavia. The three operations that he went under there didn’t give a positive response and he lost his life.

Kıvılcımlı, who also produced works in the fields on social sciences and literature, was known as a Marxist theoretician, a man of act and a translator. According to him, the Ottoman history wasn’t learned correctly by many people because of various reasons and wasn’t analyzed healthfully. When this was the case, the researches and investigations made resulted mostly in breakages and variations because history was not considered as a whole with the other elements needed for the entities. Kıvılcımlı explained why the famous Marxist theoreticians didn’t focus on this subject as: “The article of the Ottoman History is a subject that neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Lenin found the time to deal with. This is because they lived in the environment of relations and contradictions of a developed and suffocated capitalist community beyond the Ottoman Article”. Kıvılcımlı tried to investigate the Ottoman history with an understandable language, with a dialectic approach and as a whole, without separating it from its geography, its nature and its traditions, by saying: “The Article of the Ottoman History is generally its land economy, especially its state-owned land economy policy. Neither the Ottoman history, nor its place on the history chain can be understood unless this article is understood”. He verbalized the principle of this investigation with the following words: “The Ottoman history is always given with its most scholastic form. Even though it is Ottoman that is the most known passage from prehistoric to historic, this passage that brought interesting enlightenments for the world is never mentioned. But the structure of the segments (namely the degeneration of pawn broker-merchant) in the period of the Ottoman Empire of the state and the classical relationships becoming feudal lords is explained in verbosity. And then, without examining why the feudal castles with walls and towers in whichever Western country are not present in Ottoman, it is regretted why it is not accommodated with the classical feudal lord models of Ottoman.”

Hikmet Kıvılcımlı put the Edebiyat-ı Cedide, which was a movement of literature that literature critics haven’t temped to interfere so far, to an autopsy table with his survey “Edebiyat-ı Cedide’nin Felsefesi” that was formed from two parts, analytic and synthetic. Kıvılcımlı, who indicated that the philosophy of Edebiyat-ı Cedide was: “… the properties that attract the attention in the best opinions; nicknamed day dreams, the personal love ideal, pessimism, Islamic mysticism, the skepticism that is called incredulity, trust in god, fear of the reality”, later on considered this movement of literature from the point of view of the reflection of the truth and the usage of notions of natural understanding, human, absolute human, youth-old and the notion man. He tried to prove his claims with various examples that he took from the poets and writers of this movement. Kıvılcımlı had hundreds of scientific and artistic works written in old Turkish and new Turkish.

WORKS:

SURVEY-RESEARCH: Sosyete ve Teknik 1 - Tarih Öncesi Din - Devlet (1935, 2nd  ed. 2000), Türkiye İşçi Sınıfının Sosyal Varlığı, Emperyalizm: Geberen Kapitalizm, Marks-Engels: Hayatları, Kuvayi Milliyeciliğimiz (1965), Tarih - Devrim - Sosyalizm Işığında Kapitalizme İlk Geçiş - İngiltere (1965), Türkiye’de Kapitalizmin Gelişimi (1965), İlkel Sosyalizmden Kapitalizme (1965), Tarih - Devlet - Sosyalizm (1965), Karl Marx (1966), Oportünizm Nedir?, Halk Savaşının Planları, Devrim Zorlaması, Türkçenin Üreme Yolları ve ‘Dil Devrimciliğimiz’ (1966), Finans Kapital ve Türkiye (1978), Türkiye Köyü ve Sosyalizm (1980), Toplum Biçimlerinin Gelişimi (1988), Osmanlı Tarihinin Maddesi 1 (1989), Genel Olarak Sosyal Sınıflar ve Partiler 2 (1989), Sosyalist Kütüphanesi (brochure, undated), Finans Kapital ve Türkiye 3 (brochure, 1989), Kısaca Marksizmin Düşünüşü 5 (brochure, 1989), Üretim Nedir? 1 (brochure, 1989), Marks - Engels: Hayatları 4 (brochure, 1989), Metafizik Sosyolojiler (1989), Edebiyat-ı Cedide’nin Felsefesi (prep. A. Emin Karaca, 1989), Yol 2 / Strateji Planı / Düşman: Burjuvazi / Müttefik: Köylü / - Türkiye’de Ulusal Sorun / - Legaliteyi İstismar (1992), Dinin Türk Toplumuna Etkileri / İslamda Toprak Sorunu / Cennet Sözcüğü Nereden Gelir? / Eyüp Sultan Konuşması (1994), Nasıl Müslüman Olduk? (with Erdoğan Aydın, 1994), Devrimci Hareketin Otokritiği (1994), Türkiye Ekonomi Politikası (1996), Tarih Tezi Işığında İlkel Sosyalizmden Kapitalizme Son Geçiş Japonya (prep. Süleyman Şaşmaz, 2000), Komün Gücü - Siklus  (prep. Süleyman Şaşmaz, 2000).

TRANSLATION (From Karl Marks - F. Engels): Ücret Fiyat Kâr, Gündelikçi İş ile Sermaye, Enternasyonal İşçiler Cemiyeti’ni Açış Hitabesi, Kapital’in bazı fasikülleri, Marksizm’in Prensipleri, Ludwig Feuerbach, Maymunun İnsanlaşma Prosesinde Emeğin Rolü. (From V. İ. Lenin): Karl Marks’ın Hayatı – Felsefesi – Sosyolojisi, Marks’ın Ekonomi Politiği - Sosyalizmi - Taktiği. (Other): Marksizmin Temel Meseleleri (from Plehanov), Tarihi Materyalizm Nazariyesi (from Buharin), Kısaca Ekonomi Politik (from Lapidus-Ostrovityanof), Dünyayı Sarsan On Gün (from John Reed).

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