Munis Tekinalp

Moiz Cohen (1883 in Serres, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire – 1961 in Nice, France) was a Turkish writer, philosopher, and journalist of Jewish heritage. He became an ideologue of different movements at different times: Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism, and Kemalism. Born to a Jewish family, he later changed his name to Munis Tekinalp.[1]

Munis Tekinalp
Born
Moiz Cohen

1883
Serres, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire
Died1961 (aged 77–78)
Nice, France
Other namesTekin Alp
CitizenshipOttoman, Turkish
MovementOttomanism, Pan-Turkism, Kemalism

Biography

He was sent for schooling in the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Salonica, continuing for a rabbinical ordination (though he never practiced). He would later continue to legal studies in Salonica, completing them in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) after Salonica fell to Greece.[1]

In 1905, he began to write for the newspaper Asır, later renamed into the Yeni Asır where he worked for five years and was promoted to its editor-in-chief.[2] In 1912 he left Salonica for Istanbul,[3] where he began teaching law and economics at the Istanbul University and was engaged in tabac export. He published an economy magazine for the Association of Economy and served as a consultant for some companies until 1918.[4]

He would later become one of the advocates of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of Pan-Turkism.[5] After 1923, he became a passionate ideologue of Kemalism and wrote a standard work about it.[6] He taught in the community schools, and entered active politics in the Republican People's Party (CHP) for which he served in the city council. Tekinalp ran for the general elections in 1954 and 1957, however he could not enter the parliament. He served as the secretary general of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce. He wrote for the newspapers Cumhuriyet, Vatan, Akşam, Hürriyet, and Son Posta.[4]

He was an adherent of the idea of a forceful Turkification of the minorities within the Turkish Republic and wrote such in his pamphlet Türkleştirme (1928).[7] In 1934 he, Hanri Soriano and Marsel Franko, also Jews, founded the Turkish Culture Association (Türk Kültür Cemiyeti) for the promotion of the Turkish language.[8] He presented the principles of Kemalism in a book published in Istanbul in 1936, then updated and translated them into French one year later, with a preface by Édouard Herriot (Le Kémalisme, Paris: Félix Alcan Publisher, 1937).[1]

Following his retirement from the Turkish Language Association in 1956, he moved to Nice, France, where he died in 1961. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Nice.[9]

Works
  • Tekinalp (1914). Turan. Türk Yurdu Kitabhanesi. p. 143.
  • Tekinalp, Munis (1928). Türkleştirme. p. 99.
  • Tekinalp, Munis (1936). Kemalizm. Cumhuriyet Gazete ve Matbaası. p. 347.
  • Tekinalp, Munis (1944). Türk ruhu. Remzi Kitabevi. p. 287.
  • Tekinalp, Munis et Yıldız Akpolat (2005). Tekin Alp ve Türkleştirme. Fenomen. p. 82. ISBN 9789759893224.

References
  1. Jacob M. Landau, Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 1883-1961 (1984)
  2. Landau, Jacob (1984). Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 1883-1961. Istanbul: Nederlands historisch-archaeologisch instituut. p. 3. ISBN 9789062580538.
  3. Landau, Jacob M. (1981). Pan-Turkism in Turkey. C. Hurst & Co. p. 51. ISBN 0905838572.
  4. Aslan, Ümit (2012-01-20). "Moiz Cohen'den Munis Tekinalp'ı yaratan süreci anlamak" (in Turkish). Bilgili Dünya. Archived from the original on 2012-07-16. Retrieved 2012-08-05.
  5. Landau, Jacob M. (1981). Pan-Turkism in Turkey. C. Hurst & Co. p. 32. ISBN 0905838572.
  6. Landau, Jacob M. (1981). Pan-Turkism in Turkey. C. Hurst & Co. p. 74. ISBN 0905838572.
  7. Suny, Ronald Grigor; Göçek, Fatma Müge; Gocek, Fatma Muge; Naimark, Norman M.; Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies Norman M. (2011-02-23). A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 302. ISBN 978-0-19-539374-3.
  8. Landau, Jacob (1984). Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 1883-1961. Istanbul: Nederlands historisch-archaeologisch instituut. p. 6. ISBN 9789062580538.
  9. Landau, Jacob (1984). Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 1883-1961. Istanbul: Nederlands historisch-archaeologisch instituut. p. 6,7. ISBN 9789062580538.
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