Hüseyin Cahit Tanyol (1914 – 11 August 2020) was a Turkish writer, poet, and sociologist, often regarded as the father of Turkish sociology.

Early life and education

Hüseyin Cahit was born in 1914 in the town of Nezib, then located in the vilayet of Aleppo,

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. In 1931, he finished

Adana Adana is a large city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan River, inland from the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province, Adana province, and has a population of 1 81 ...

Boys' Teacher School. He graduated from Gazi Institute of Education in 1935. In 1940, he started studying philosophy at

Istanbul University Istanbul University, also known as University of Istanbul (), is a Public university, public research university located in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded by Mehmed II on May 30, 1453, a day after Fall of Constantinople, the conquest of Constantinop ...

and got his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

four years later with his thesis "The Origin of Ethics in

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manife ...

." He started working as an assistant at the same university in 1946 and got his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

with his work "The Place of Pleasure and Suffering in Morality."

Career

While he was working as a teacher in

İzmir İzmir is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara. It is on the Aegean Sea, Aegean coast of Anatolia, and is the capital of İzmir Province. In 2024, the city of İzmir had ...

in 1939, he started publishing ''Aramak'', a Turkish literary magazine, receiving acclaim from well-known Turkish authors at the time. He became an associate professor in 1953 and a professor in 1961. Between 1972 and 1982, he served as the head of the department of sociology at

. Between 1991 and 2003, he was a

visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

in Mimar Sinan University and Uludağ University.

Works

Cahit Tanyol made

field research Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct fi ...

on several rural ethnic groups living near his hometown, Nizip, such as

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

of the Reshwan tribe and

Turkmens Turkmens (, , , ) are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia, living mainly in Turkmenistan, northern and northeastern regions of Iran and north-western Afghanistan. Sizeable groups of Turkmens are found also in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, ...

Barak Barak ( or ; ; Tiberian Hebrew: '' Bārāq''; "lightning") was a ruler of Ancient Israel. As military commander in the biblical Book of Judges, Barak, with Deborah, from the Tribe of Ephraim, the prophet and fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israe ...

and

Chepni Chepni (; ; ) is one of the 24 Oghuz Turkic tribes. History In the legend of Oghuz Qaghan, the Chepni was stated as one of the clans of the tribe of ''Gök Han'' that consists of Pecheneg (''Beçenek''), Bayandur (''Bayındır''), Chowdur ('' ...

tribes.

Books

Poetry

*''Kuruluş ve Fetih Destanı'' (1969) *''Son Liman'' (1992) *''Düş Yorgunu'' (2001)

Non-fiction

*''Örf ve Adetler Bakımından Sanat ve Ahlâk'' (1952) *''Sosyal Ahlâk - Laik Ahlâka Giriş'' (1960) *''Sosyolojik Açıdan Din-Ahlâk-Laiklik ve Politika Üzerine Diyaloglar'' (1970) *''Atatürk ve Halkçılık'' (1982) *''Türk Edebiyatında Yahya Kemal'' (1985) *''Laiklik ve İrtica'' (1989) *''Çankaya Dramı'' (1990) *''Türkler ile Kürtler'' (1993) *''Schopenhauer'da Ahlâk Felsefesi'' (1998) *''Neden Türban? Şeriat ve İrtica'' (2002) *''Hoca Kadri Efendi'nin Parlamentosu'' (2003) *''Mamato'' (2012) *''Sancılı Toprak'' (2014)

Views

Tanyol often criticized the ideological dynamics in Turkey: As a non-Kurd, he touched on the Kurdish issue:

Controversies

After the death of Tanyol, a video of him from 2018, then aged 104, was released by one of his former students. In the video, he was confronted by his former students and shown declaring support for president

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister of Turkey, prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Jus ...

. This video was aired by regime-sided media along with an article by the confronting student on

Anadolu Agency Anadolu Agency (, ; abbreviated AA) is a state-run news agency headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. History The Anadolu Agency was founded in 1920 during the Turkish War of Independence by the order of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. As the Empire's capital � ...

. The video received great criticism, especially from Tanyol's son, Tuğrul Tanyol, who regarded the video as "disgusting" and "an insult to anyol'smemory." He underlined that Tanyol had a leftist background and previously fiercely criticized Erdoğan's original political movement,

Millî Görüş Millî Görüş (, ) or Erbakanism is a religiopolitical movement and the ideology of a series of Islamist parties inspired by Necmettin Erbakan. It argues that Turkey can develop with its own human and economic power by protecting its core I ...

. Tuğrul Tanyol further mentioned his father's encroaching dementia and that his father never voted for Erdoğan's party.

Personal life

Cahit Tanyol was married to Fethiye. He had one son, named Tuğrul, and one daughter, Bilge.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tanyol, Cahit 1914 births 2020 deaths Burials at Karacaahmet Cemetery People from Nizip Istanbul University alumni Academic staff of Istanbul University Turkish men centenarians