Hekimoğlu İbrahim (died 26 April 1913), known by his epithet Hekimoğlu ("son of a physician" in Turkish), was a Turkish outlaw and a folk hero. He was born in

Fatsa Fatsa is a municipality and district of Ordu Province, Turkey. Its area is 363 km2, and its population is 126,775 (2022). It lies on the Black Sea coast. Name The oldest recorded name of the town is Polemonion (, Latinized as Polemonium), af ...

Ordu Ordu () or Altınordu is a port city on the Black Sea coast of Turkey and the capital of Ordu Province. The city forms the urban part of the Altınordu, Ordu, Altınordu district, with a population of 235,096 in 2023. Name Kotyora, the origina ...

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 ...

(today's Blacksea region in

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

)

Early years

According to the Turkish historians Mithat Sertoğlu and Ayhan Yüksel, Hekimoğlu İbrahim grew up in a Turkish farming family in the Yassıtaş village of

.Sertoğlu, Mithat - "Kahramanlar Kahramanı Hekimoğlu" İstanbul 1983.Yüksel, Ayhan - "Eşkıya Hekimoğlu" Tombak, Sayı : 35 (Aralık 2000), s. 72 - 75 In the early 1900s, while he was working for the local

Chveneburi Georgians in Turkey ( ka, ქართველები თურქეთში, tr) refers to citizens and denizens of Turkey who are, or descend from, ethnic Georgians. Numbers and distribution In the census of 1965, those who spoke Georg ...

( Muslim Georgian communities who migrated to the lands of the

as a result of the pressures of the Tsarist Russian Empire as a result of the

Russo-Turkish War The Russo-Turkish wars ( ), or the Russo-Ottoman wars (), began in 1568 and continued intermittently until 1918. They consisted of twelve conflicts in total, making them one of the longest series of wars in the history of Europe. All but four of ...

) landowner, Sefer Agha, he fell in love with his daughter, Fadime. Soon after, Fadime and İbrahim began to meet in secret. One day, a local Chveneburi man, Yusuf, saw the two lovers together and told them their meeting violated the social and religious code of the Chveneburi community, where, in those days, a single girl was forbidden from speaking to a man who was not a close relative. Following Yusuf's disclosure of the love affair between Hekimoğlu and Fadime, an animosity by Chveneburi people towards the neighbouring Turks developed. To avenge the community honour, a group of Chveneburi men, including Yusuf, tried to kill Hekimoğlu, but he escaped their trap, killing one of the Chveneburi men in the process with his soon-to-become famous M1874 Turkish Peabody-Martini rifle ().Yüksel, Ayhan - Eşkıya Hekimoğlu İbrahim'in 'Aynalı Martin' Tüfeği, Hürriyet Tarih 27 Kasım 2002, s. 20 - 21. Fearing an unfair trial, Hekimoğlu refused to surrender himself to the local authority in Fatsa and took refuge in the mountains, becoming an outlaw.

Outlaw and folk hero

Led by Hekimoğlu, a gang of outlaws conducted a campaign of robberies and raids against any landowner or community leader who was rumoured to be mistreating the local population. Hekimoğlu and his gang were said to share some of their bounty with the poor (à la

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary noble outlaw, heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions o ...

). This led Hekimoğlu to attain a folk hero status and he was given the title "the hero of the all heroes" () by the local people. His gang activities were a significant factor in raising the ethnic tension between the Chveneburi and Turkish communities in Fatsa and in the wider

Sanjak A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian. Banners were a common organization of nomad ...

(sub-province) of Janik. On 15 December 1908, a telegram was sent from Fatsa to the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire in

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

, the capital, requesting assistance in capturing Hekimoğlu, but due to the assistance and shelter given to him by local Turkish villages, authorities were unsuccessful in capturing him and Hekimoğlu responded by increasing his attacks on the Chveneburi.

Death

The Ottoman Council of State () rejected Hekimoğlu's requests for a pardon, and on 26 April 1913, he was killed along with his friend Alan Osman in a 8 hour long shootout with the authorities in his home village of Yassıtaş in Fatsa. His death was documented by an American journalist.

Legacy

Hekimoğlu is recalled in

as a folk hero, almost of legend, who fought against injustice and oppression. In his honour, a

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

titled '' Hekimoğlu Türküsü'' was composed. It remains popular throughout Turkey to this day.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hekimoglu 20th-century people from the Ottoman Empire Turkish folklore Year of birth unknown

Early years

Outlaw and folk hero

Death

Legacy

See also

Notes