Ali Suavi street, Kadikoy

Ali Suavi street, Kadıköy

There are several restaurants, art galleries and Nazim Hikmet Culture Center (Nazım Hikmet Kültür Merkezi) in Ali Suavi street  (Ali Suavi sokağı, sanatçılar sokağı)

About Ali Suavi

1838 – 1878

Ottoman intellectual.

Born into a working-class family in Istanbul, Ali Suavi became a teacher in ruşdiye schools (for adolescents) in Bursa and Filibe before being dismissed by an irate governor for his unorthodox ideas. He traveled to Paris and London and there joined such individuals as the poets Namik Kemal and Ziya Paşa, members of the Young Ottomans. In 1867, Ali Suavi became the editor of Munbir, a Young Ottoman newspaper devoted to issues of government reform.

Ali Suavi was deeply religious and passionately devoted to the unification of all Turkic-speaking peoples; he soon broke with the other Young Ottomans, who were more interested in the reform of the Ottoman Empire along the lines of European liberalism. After opposing Midhat Paşa, grand vizier of the empire, and the Constitution of 1876, Suavi gained the favor of the autocratic Sultan Abdülhamit II, and he was rewarded with an appointment as director of the Galatasaray Lycée. But Ali Suavi soon became dissatisfied with the new sultan, and after the ignominious defeat of the Ottomans in the Russo – Ottoman War of 1877 – 1878, Suavi led a coup attempt to restore the deposed Murat V to the throne. The coup failed, and Ali Suavi was executed.

Bibliography

Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3d edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 – 1977.
A Propos de L’Herzegovine (Regarding Herzegovina, Paris, 1876),
Ali Paşa’nın Siyaseti (The Politics of Ali Paşa, 1908),
Defter-i Âmâl-i Ali Paşa (Defter-i Amal-i* of Ali Paşa, Paris, ?),
Devlet Yüz On Altı Buçuk Milyon Borçtan Kurtuluyor (The Government Gets Out of a One Hundred and *Sixteen and a Half Million Debt, Paris, 1875).
Hive (Hive, Paris 1873, İstanbul 1910),
Hukuku’ş-Şevari (Ways of the Law, translation from Gazali, 1808),
Montenegro (Montenegro, Paris, 1876),
Nesayih-i Ebu Hanife Kamusu’l Ulûm ve’l Maârif (Nesayih-i Ebu Hanife, Dictionary of Science and *Education, an unfinished essay of encyclopedia, 1870),
Saydu’l Mefkûd (The Lost Prey, 2 volumes),
Taharriyat-ı Suavi alâ Tarih-i Türk (The Research of Suavi on Turkish History),
Usul-i Fıkıh Nam Risalenin Tercümesi (Translation of the Pamphlet named Methodology of the Canon Law, London, 1868),

— ZACHARY KARABELL