Abdullah Cevdet

Abdullah Cevdet Bey (‎9 September 1869 – 29 November 1932) was a Kurdish-Turk intellectual, activist, poet, essayist, and physician. A Young Turk, he was one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and wrote articles with pen name of "Bir Kürd" ("A Kurd") for the publications such as Meşveret, Kurdistan and Roji Kurd about the East–West dichotomy and Kurdish awakening and nationalism. In his personal publication İctihad he pushed for the westernization of society, feminism, workers rights, liberty, science, secularism, and social liberalism. He was an ideologue of the CUP until 1902, when he became an opponent of the organization he founded as it embraced Turkish nationalism. In 1908, he established the Democratic Party, which merged with the Freedom and Accord Party in 1911. He was briefly active in support of Kurdish independence in the early 1920s before supporting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Turkish National Movement. Cevdet's literary career was defined by his antagonistic relationship with religious conservatives and constant press censorship. Due to his critical historical essays on Islam and Muhammad, he was taken to court several times over charges of blasphemy. He introduced to the Ottoman public Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the Bahá'í Faith. Several of Cevdet's ideas, by Atatürk's own admission, came to fruition as part of his reforms such as secularism, the shuttering of madrases, and the furthering of women's rights.