Nationalism found its first external organization in Turk Yourdu, a kind of literary and cultural club formed by the Turkish students in Geneva in 1910. As it had some fine students from among the Russian Turks, its spirit was Pan-Turanistic, at least culturally. It issued non-periodical reviews and continues to do so, some of which contain unusually fine literature and studies on Turkology. The club passed a resolution calling me the Mother of the Turk, a tender tribute of the Turkish youth, which not only touched me but has also molded me in the responsibility of a real but humble mother to my people. I am glad of this opportunity which allows me to own the godfathers of the title, which was generally attached to my name in the Turkish world, and which is the greatest recompense I would have asked, had I been given my choice, for my insignificant services to my people and country.

Another Turk Yourdu was founded a year later [in Paris] by older research students, among whom was the eminent jurist and statesman Youssouf Kemal [Tengirsek].

The capital [Constantinople] soon followed the example. The founding of Turk Yourdu in Istamboul was chiefly and primarily one of the many intellectual undertakings of the Union and Progress, but men who belonged to it confess that although they endowed it with funds they never tried to make a political tool of the organization. The organization published a weekly which goes on to this day. It was edited by Youssouf Akchura [Yusuf Akçura], who was openly and decidedly anti-Unionist, although an avowed and sincere Pan-Turanist. He made a great success of the paper, and it had perhaps more readers among the Turks in Russia than in Turkey. Akchura, a believer in the superiority of the Russian Turk to the Ottoman Turk, advocated warmly the necessary cultural unity of the Turks. He wrote interesting articles on this subject, but it was amusing to note that the Turkish he uses was that of the Ottoman Turk of an older period rather than that of the very recent nationalistic Ottoman Turk. Keuk-Alp Zia [Gökalp Ziya], Mehemmed Emin, Ahmed Hikmet, Riza Tewfik, as well as the nationalists of the later and younger school, contributed to it.

The external expression of nationalism went one degree deeper and propagated itself among the younger generation, especially the students. It first originated among medical students. The medical faculty has the historic honor of starting almost every new movement, especially when it is directed against personal tyranny of despots and regimes, or the tyranny of reaction and ignorance. It had given the greatest number of victims to Abdul Hamid's tyranny. But it would be interesting to note in this instance how and why the Turkish student has thought of himself as something separate and different from the other Ottoman students of the empire.

After 1908 all the non-Turkish elements in Turkey, Christian and Moslem, had political and national clubs. When the Turkish students of the universities saw their fellow-students, whom they had so far identified with themselves, belonging to separate organizations with national names and separate interests, they began to wonder. The non-Turkish youth were passing into feverish activity about their national affairs, as something different from that of the Turk.

The Ottoman Turk so far had been a composite being, an Ottoman citizen like any other, his greatest writers writing for all the educated men of the empire, his folklore and popular literature passing from one generation to another, unwritten by the educated, but powerful in the minds and memories of all the simple Turkish-speaking Ottomans. For the first time reduced to his elements and torn from the ensemble of races in Turkey, he vaguely faced the possibility of searching, analyzing, and discovering himself as something different from the rest. How was he different from the others? Where was he being led in the accumulation of other desires and interest? Cast out or isolated in his own country, he not only saw himself different, but he had also the desire to find out wherein lay the difference.

The first separate organization formed by the Turkish youth in this sense was called the Turk Ojak (Turkish Hearth). So it was in 1911 that the first national club was founded. The founders were a few medical students who kept their names secret. The fundamental spirit of equality and fraternity of the Ojak was an established tradition then. No member allowed himself to feel superior to any other. The club was helped by some writers and famous doctors as well as by the Union and Progress.

Two dominant clauses which were never allowed to be altered by the general congress, and which show the tendencies and the spirit of the Ojak are: first, the Ojak will help the cultural development of the Turk; second, the Ojak is not a political institution.

To those clauses the old members of the Ojak have been fanatically faithful from 1911 to 1924. Neither the extreme Unionists during the ascendancy of the Unionist regime, nor the anti-Unionists after the decisve downfall of the Unionist regime in 1918, could alter these clauses and drag the Ojak into party politics.

The most active period of the Ojak began when Hamdullah Soubhi Bey became the president. By his great oratorical powers he obtained tremendous influence over the youthful members, and his tenacity and diplomatic ability made him persuade all the great men and all the governments to come to his aid either with funds or in some other way. Besides the majority of young students, the majority of Turkish writers and leading men also belonged to it, and worked with admirable idealism for the cultural development of the Turk. Lectures and free lessons were opened to the public by well known men, among whom KeukAlp Zia was the most prominent. Men belonging to all shades of political creeds and ideals gathered in sincere understanding under its roof.

The clubs helped the Turkish students from all over the Turkish world to obtain their education in Istamboul. The Ojak, which showed Pan-Turanistic tendencies culturally, was against Pan-Islamism, but in a few years Pan-Turanism also gave way to a regional nationalism, which can be defined as belonging to Turkey proper and the peoples who live in it.

In 1912 the general congress elected me as its only woman member. It was in 1918 that another congress chose a council of eleven to modify its constitution. I was in the council, and we modified the constitution with a new clause which made women members eligible. Many Ojaks have risen all over the country since then. The situation of the Ojaks in the present time, after the alteration of their constitution in 1924 in Angora, wants an entirely different treatment.

As nationalism is considered a narrow ideal by those who aim at the welfare of humanity and hope to obtain it through internationalism, I have often been reproached by my international friends [especially the American missionaries]. And as I have not ceased to work for the happiness of my kind, especially of those who are nearest to me, I have honestly tried to analyze the inner meaning of my nationalism, whether it can hurt others who are not Turks, whether it can hurt in the long run the family of nations in the world to which Turkey also belongs.

The individual or the nation, in order to understand its fellow-men or its fellow-nations, in order to create beauty and to express its personality, must go deep down to the roots of its being and study itself sincerely. The process of this deep self-duty, as well as its results, is nationalism. I believe with all earnestness that such a national self-study, and the exchange of its results, is the first and right step to international understanding and love of the peoples and nations.

Halide Edip [Adıvar], Memoirs, London: The Century Co., 1926, S. 321-26.