Ahmet Ağaoğlu, also known as Ahmed Bey Aghaoghlu (; or Ahmed Akif Aghaoghlu (December 1869, Shusha – May 19, 1939, Istanbul) was a public and political figure of Azerbaijan and Turkey, thinker, publicist, educator, writer, Turkologist, and the founder of liberal Kemalism.
After studying in France, he returned and opened the first library and reading room in Shusha in 1896. In 1897, he moved to Baku at the invitation of H. Z. Taghiyev and wrote articles for the Kaspi newspaper. He also worked with A. Huseynzade as an editor for the Hayat newspaper and served as chief editor for Irshad, Taraqqi, Progres, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, Hakimiyet-i Milliye, and Akın newspapers.
In 1905, he secretly founded the Muslim Difai Party to fight against the Tsarist government and Dashnaks. After being persecuted by the Tsarist government, Ahmet Bey lived secretly in his friends' homes for months. To avoid arrest, he relocated to Istanbul at the end of 1908. As a prominent figure in the Turkish Hearths national movement, Ağaoğlu was elected president of a congress held by the movement. Later, he joined the Young Turks' Committee of Union and Progress. Alongside serving as the director of a library in Suleymaniye and an active contributor to the Türk Yurdu journal, he taught Turkic-Mongol history and Russian language at Istanbul University.
In 1918, he served as the political advisor to the commander of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, which came to assist the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. On December 26, 1918, he was elected as a member of the Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic from the Zangezur district as a neutral representative. However, he later declined the membership. Aghaoghlu was also part of the delegation sent by the Republic to participate in the Paris Peace Conference. Upon reaching Istanbul, he was arrested along with other leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress by the British and exiled to the island of Malta.
After returning from exile, he led the Press Information Office in Ankara, served as the chief editor of the Hakimiyet-i Milliye newspaper, and, after being elected to the second and third terms of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, became Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's political advisor on foreign affairs.
On May 7, 2019, by Decision No. 211 of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ahmet Ağaoğlu was included in the list of authors whose works are declared state property in Azerbaijan.
Life
Early life Ahmet Ağaoğlu was born in 1869 in the city of Shusha, Azerbaijan. His father, Mirza Hasan Bey, was from the Kurdlar clan of Karabakh. This tribe had migrated from Erzurum, which was predominantly inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijani Turks in the 18th century, to Ganja, and later settled in Karabakh. His father, Mirza Hasan Bey, was a wealthy cotton farmer. The title mirza granted to his father indicates that the family belonged to the intellectual class. His grandfather, Mirza Ibrahim, was one of the most renowned scholars of Shusha. He was a calligrapher and wrote poetry in the Turkish language. Additionally, his uncles were proficient in Turkish, as well as Persian, Arabic, and Russian. His mother, Taza Hanim, was the daughter of Rafi Bey from the Sarijali clan of Shusha and the sister of Zeynalabdin Bey Rafibeyov.
Raymond Kévorkian notes that Ağaoğlu was descended from a family of dönmes, Turkish-speaking Jews who had earlier converted to Islam.Raymond Kévorkian. The Armenian Genocide: A History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 194.
Education
Secondary education Ahmet Ağaoğlu noted in his memoirs that his mother and uncle played a significant role in his education. His uncle, Mirza Mahammad, wanted Ahmet to become a mujtahid and hired teachers to teach him Persian and Arabic from the age of six. Initially, Agaoglu studied at a neighborhood school, but at his mother's initiative, he also secretly took Russian lessons. Despite being religious, his mother disliked clerics and mullahs. Agaoglu wrote that her views redirected his education from Najaf and Karbala to St. Petersburg and Paris.
In 1881, when a six-grade secondary school was opened in Shusha, the Karabakh governor gathered the local Muslim community at Khurshidbanu Natavan's house, urging them to enroll their children in the school. Ahmet's father promised the governor that he would send him to the Shusha Real School. Two of his teachers at this school—history teacher Shineyovski and mathematics teacher Palekarp—had a significant influence on him. Both were opponents of the Tsarist regime and promoted revolutionary ideas within the school. It was here that Agaoglu first encountered Western ideologies. In his memoirs, Ahmet Ağaoğlu wrote that the school was located in the Armenian neighborhood of the city, and among the 45 students, only five were Muslim. He falsely claimed that Armenian students were very hostile toward Turks, constantly harassing the Turkish pupils. Four of the Turkish students could not endure this environment and left the school, but Ahmet persevered and successfully completed his studies. He described these events in his memoirs as follows:
After completing the sixth grade of secondary school, Ahmet Ağaoğlu attended the seventh and final grades at Gymnasium No. 1 in Tiflis. According to his own writings, he was the only Turk at the Tiflis gymnasium. During his studies in Tiflis, he participated in secret meetings of the Narodnik Society at the insistence of his friends. These meetings left a profound impression on his thinking. After successfully graduating from the gymnasium in Tiflis, Agaoglu returned to Shusha with a distinction diploma and a prize of three hundred rubles. He spent the entire summer in the highlands with his uncle and then traveled to St. Petersburg to continue his education.
Higher education
Petersburg period
In August 1887, Agaoglu went to St. Petersburg to pursue higher education and rented a room in the home of a Christian family. The family was very surprised to learn that Agaoglu was Turkish, as until then, only Armenians and members of other Christian ethnicities had come to St. Petersburg for higher education. The family knew of no Turks pursuing education there, and Agaoglu understood their astonishment, given that Armenians and other Christians had pursued education before Turks.
The Caucasian youth Agaoglu met in St. Petersburg took him to the dormitory of the Caucasian Students' Union, where he discovered that there were four other Turks. Among them was Alimardan Topchubashov, who would later represent Azerbaijan in Paris, and Ali Bey Huseynzade, the grandson of a former Caucasian Sheikh ul-Islam. The other two Turkish students were studying civil engineering. Agaoglu successfully passed all his exams at the Technological Institute. However, during his final exam in algebra, he solved the problem outside the standard program. The professor, assuming Agaoglu was Jewish, refused to accept his answer despite its correctness. This incident deeply disappointed Agaoglu and fostered a strong sense of hatred toward Russians. He described those days in his memoirs as follows:
Paris period On January 8, 1888, Ahmet Ağaoğlu arrived in Paris. During his train journey, a woman he met suggested that he stay at Hotel de Peterbourg, a place frequented by visitors from Russia. With no acquaintances in Paris and not knowing French, he headed to the hotel. However, it quickly became clear that the hotel expenses were high. An employee of the hotel introduced him to two Georgian students studying in Paris through mutual friends. The Georgian students helped him find a room to rent. After settling in a room rented from an elderly woman, he began learning French. However, after a while, he ran out of money and fell into debt. Later, with money sent from home, he paid off his debts and moved into a boarding house on Rue de Glacier. Here, he met two Iranians and three Egyptians. Following their advice, he started attending lectures at the College de France and the École des Hautes Études Pratiques. At the College de France, French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan delivered weekly lectures, while at the École des Hautes Études Pratiques, James Darmesteter gave lectures on The History of Eastern Peoples. Both figures played a significant role in shaping Ahmet Ağaoğlu's intellectual development. In the 1888–1889 academic year, he began studying law at the Sorbonne. However, his interests were not limited to law alone. He developed a fascination with the history of Eastern civilizations and religions and enrolled in the School of Oriental Languages. There, he took lessons from experts in Eastern languages, such as Charles Schefer and Barber de Meynard. Later, upon the advice of James Darmesteter, he joined the intellectual club organized by Juliette Adam, founder and editor of La Nouvelle Revue. This exclusive club gathered intellectuals in France who engaged in discussions on politics, science, history, and philosophy. Between 1891 and 1893, Ahmet Ağaoğlu published a series of articles titled Persian Society in La Nouvelle Revue. In 1892, he gave a lecture at the International Congress of Orientalists in London on Beliefs in Mazdakism in Shia Islam. The text of the lecture was later published in several Western languages at the expense of Cambridge University.
Activity Ahmet Ağaoğlu published his articles on social and political topics in French press outlets such as Journal de Débat, Revü Been, and Nouvye Revyü. The articles he wrote in France were sent to newspapers like Kavkaz and Sharki Rus.
After completing his education in France in 1894, Ahmet Ağaoğlu returned to Tiflis, where he taught French at a local gymnasium for two years. He continued his collaboration with Kavkaz newspaper during this time. In 1896, he returned to Shusha. There, he began teaching French at the Shusha Real School and opened the first library and reading room in the city. For this reason, the people of Shusha started calling him "Firəng Əhməd" (French Ahmet). However, after he left Shusha, the reading room and library ceased their activities.
Ahmet Ağaoğlu believed in the importance of newspaper publishing to spread his ideas. However, after the Kashkul newspaper was closed in 1891, the Caucasus Censorship Committee imposed a ban on printing newspapers in Azerbaijani. At the same time, 19 newspapers in Armenian and Georgian were operating within the Russian Empire. At the end of the 19th century, when Mohammad Shahtakhtinski tried to get permission to publish a newspaper in Azerbaijani, the head of the Russian Empire's Printing Department, Solovyov, told him, "I definitely cannot allow a newspaper to be printed in Azerbaijani. What need does your people have for a newspaper? Your intellectuals should read in Russian, and the simple Azerbaijanis should just let their sheep graze."