Zeki Velidi Togan

Zeki Velidi Togan was a teacher.

He studied the history of many people. He lived in many different lands. He taught at a big school in Turkey.

He also helped lead his own people. He wanted them to have their own way of life. Sometimes things were hard for him. He had to move to new places to be safe.

He wrote many books about culture. He wrote about how people talk. Many people can now read his work.

His work helps us learn about the past.

Zeki Velidi Togan was a famous historian. He studied the history of Turkic peoples. He was also a leader for the Bashkir people.

He was born in a village in 1890. Later, he worked to help his people gain freedom. This was a hard time. He fought in different wars. He even moved to Central Asia to lead a group called the Basmachi.

In 1923, Togan moved to Turkey. He became a teacher at Istanbul University. He taught many students about history.

Life was not always easy for him. In 1945, he was sent to prison for ten years. He was accused of being part of a group that wanted a military alliance. However, a new trial in 1947 let him go free.

Later, he worked at the Institute for Islamic Studies. He also helped write a big book about Turkic peoples. Many people around the world read his work today. His ideas were about culture and language. He wanted people to find their own national wealth.

Zeki Velidi Togan was a very important historian and a leader. He studied the history of Turkic peoples. He also led a movement for the Bashkir people.

He wanted people to find their own national spiritual wealth. This meant he wanted them to have their own culture. He believed that Persian influence had changed their language and speech. He wanted Turkic peoples to be free from this influence. This work made him a very famous scholar.

His life was full of many big changes. He was born in 1890 in a village called Kuzyanovo. He lived in the Ufa Governorate. From 1912 to 1915, he taught in a school called a madrasa in Kazan. In 1917, he helped organize the Bashkir Shuro, which is a council. He even declared that Bashkiria should be autonomous. This means he wanted his people to rule themselves. He spent much of his life moving between different lands.

History shows that Togan had to make many hard choices. In 1918, he was arrested by Soviet forces. He escaped in April of that same year. He fought in different wars during 1918 and 1919. At first, he fought under Ataman Alexander Dutov. Later, he fought under Admiral Kolchak. Eventually, he switched sides to fight with the Bolsheviks. He served as the chairman of the Bashrevkom from 1919 to 1920.

Later, Togan moved to many different places to study and teach. He lived in Turkey starting in 1925. He was the Chair of Turkish History at Istanbul University in 1927. He also lived in Vienna and earned a doctor of philosophy in 1935. He taught at Bonn University and Göttingen University in Germany.

In 1945, he faced a hard time in court. He was sentenced to ten years of hard labor. However, a retrial in 1947 let him go free.

Even after hard times, Togan continued his great work. He organized the Institute for Islamic Studies in 1953. In 1967, the University of Manchester gave him an honorary doctorate. He also helped write the Encyclopedia of Turkic Peoples. His many articles were translated into many different languages. People still study his ideas about culture and language today. He remains a major figure in the study of history.

Zeki Velidi Togan was a prominent historian, Turkologist, and political leader. A Turkologist is a scholar who studies the language and history of Turkic peoples. Togan was also a leader of the Bashkir liberation movement. He worked to protect the cultural identity of the Bashkir people. His life was defined by his deep study of history and his struggle for political autonomy. He spent his years moving between many different countries and political systems.

Togan’s political career began during a time of great change in Russia. In 1917, he helped organize the Bashkir Shuro, which is a council. During a congress in Orenburg in December 1917, he declared that Bashkiria should be autonomous. Autonomy means a region has the power to govern itself. However, Soviet forces arrested him in February 1918. He escaped in April 1918 and joined forces to fight the Bolsheviks. He initially fought under Ataman Alexander Dutov and later under Admiral Kolchak. After the RSFSR promised autonomy to the Bashkirs, Togan switched sides to fight with the Bolsheviks. He served as the chairman of the Bashrevkom, a revolutionary committee, from 1919 to 1920.

As political situations shifted, Togan moved into new areas of leadership. In 1920, he attended the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku. There, he helped create the statutes for ERK, a Muslim Socialist organization. Later, he moved to Central Asia and became a leader of the Basmachi Movement. From 1920 to 1923, he served as the chairman of the "National Union of Turkistan." In 1923, he traveled to a British embassy in Mashhad to ask for support for the Basmachi. The British officials were skeptical of his request. Shortly after, Togan emigrated from the region after finding original manuscripts by Ahmad ibn Fadlan in Iran.

Togan’s academic life was just as active as his political life. He moved to Turkey in 1925 and became the Chair of Turkish History at Istanbul University in 1927. He held controversial views regarding the Turkish History Thesis. Because of these views, he sought refuge in Vienna. He earned a doctor of philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1935. He also held teaching positions at Bonn University and Göttingen University in Germany.

In 1944, Togan faced a very difficult legal period. He was detained alongside other Pan-Turkists during a time of political tension. In March 1945, he was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. Prosecutors accused him of leading an organization called Gürem. They claimed this group wanted a military alliance with Nazi Germany to free Turkic people in the Soviet Union. This was a very serious accusation during that era. However, a retrial in 1947 resulted in the release of all the defendants, including Togan.

Togan’s scholarly work focused on the concept of national spiritual wealth. He was a Turkist and an advocate for removing Persian cultural influence from the Turkic world. He belonged to the Jadidist movement, which sought modern reforms. Togan believed Turkic peoples were "imprisoned in the civilization of the Iranians." He criticized the speech and literature of Bukhara, Fergana, and Khiva for using too much Persian vocabulary. He believed that removing this influence would help Turkic peoples find their own unique culture and language.

Even in his later years, Togan remained a highly respected figure in academia. In 1953, he organized the Institute for Islamic Studies at Istanbul University. In 1967, the University of Manchester awarded him an honorary doctorate. He also contributed significantly to the Encyclopedia of Turkic Peoples. His many articles on culture and language have been translated into many different languages. Today, his work continues to be a vital resource for understanding the history of Central Asia and the Turkic world.