Polish Seyfeddin, Istanbul Tribune des Peuples and Polish Day in Istanbul: Young Turks utilizing the Polish independence cause on the Bosporus

President Bronisław Komorowski’s visit to Turkey during the first week of March, 2014 officially marked the 600^th anniversary of the Polish – Turkish diplomatic relations. The cultural highlight of this visit was the opening of the exhibition in the Sakip Sabancı Museum entitled “Distant Neighbour, Close Memories - 600 Years of Turkish – Polish Relations” by the presidents of both countries. The exhibition presents pivotal moments in the diplomatic, military, commercial and cultural relations between Poland and Turkey during the past six centuries. Nevertheless, a celebration of historical contact and cooperation between Poles and Turks is not at all a recent phenomenon. During the Young Turk period (1908 – 1918), when Poland did not exist as an independent state, a Polish émigré in the Ottoman Empire, Tadeusz Gasztowtt a.k.a. Seyfeddin Bey (1881 – 1936) prompted the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to organize on 17 August, 1909 an event that was echoed in the Polish press of the time as “a Polish day in Istanbul”.

Tadeusz Seyfeddin Gasztowtt

Polish presence in the Ottoman Empire is typically associated with a few decades of the nineteenth century (1830-1878), when thousands of Poles fled to the Ottoman Empire hoping for Ottoman support in their efforts to regain national independence. The Ottoman failure in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 caused disillusion within the émigré community. The Treaty of Berlin which concluded the conflict in 1878 thus represented a symbolic end to activities organized on the Bosphorus that were aimed at Polish independence. Moreover, during the reign of Abdülhamid II (r.1876-1909), which was characterized by political repression, Poles could no longer enjoy the same support they had enjoyed previously during the Tanzimat period when conspiratorial activities and preparations for national insurrections took place within Ottoman borders.

Adam Mickiewicz's house in Tarlabaşı in the 1880s

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that Poles disappeared from the Ottoman landscape in the aftermath of the Treaty of Berlin. One can even say that the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and the coming to power of the Committee of Union and Progress was a watershed event that attracted a number of Polish émigrés from France to come to the Ottoman Empire. Among Poles who were active in the Ottoman public sphere during the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1918) was Tadeusz Seyfeddin Gasztowtt, who was born to a family of émigrés that fled to France after the 1830 November Uprising. The Gasztowtts were actively involved in the cultural and academic life of the Polish emigration in Paris. Known by Ottoman society as “Seyfeddin Bey”,  Tadeusz Gasztowtt was an ardent advocate of Polish – Ottoman friendship. He came to Istanbul in 1907 as a French teacher and correspondent of a monthly magazine dedicated to Polish culture called Bulletin Polonais (“Polish Newsletter”). Nevertheless, as soon as the Committee of Union and Progress came to power, he became their outspoken supporter. Gasztowtt spent over a decade in the Ottoman Empire, during which time he joined the Ottoman army as a volunteer during the Tripolitanian War (1911-12) and in February 1914 he was appointed the Secretary of the newly established Ottoman Consulate General in the capital city of Macedonia, Salonika, which was the former political centre of the CUP and had been lost in the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913). When Poland regained independence in 1918, Gasztowtt was a chief organizer of its diplomatic rapprochement at first with the Ottoman Empire and then with the Kemalist government in Ankara.

Gasztowtt was above all a passionate commentator on the developments taking place in the political scenes of Europe and Middle East. He gave voice to his views in a number of publications. In Istanbul he wrote extensively for newspapers sympathizing with the CUP. In 1910 he published a bilingual newspaper entitled Kürsi-i Milel/La Tribune des Peuples (“The People’s Tribune”). The journal openly sympathized with the contemporary Ottoman regime. The programme of the newspaper was to inform the Ottoman public on the oppressed Muslim nations living beyond the Ottoman borders, and to advise on the international affairs of the empire. The title “The People’s Tribune” was a clear reference to a newspaper with the same title published in 1849 in Paris by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s chief Romantic poet. Mickiewicz arrived in Istanbul in summer 1855 to end the disagreements among the émigrés that were attempting to organize Polish legions in the Ottoman army during the Crimean War (1853 – 56). Istanbul became the last address of Mickiewicz who died on 26 November, 1855. Gasztowtt introduced his newspaper as the heir to Mickiewicz’s Paris journal. It begins with the most emblematic quote from the poet’s masterpiece Dziady III (“The Forefathers”): “My name is million because I love and suffer for millions” in Ottoman and French. It is a poetic expression of the newspaper’s motto, which had been an imperative for thousands of Poles fighting on different fronts during the post-partition period (1795 – 1918): For our freedom and yours. On numerous pages of his publication Gasztowtt speaks of the Polish poet, his activities aimed at the Polish independence and his days in Istanbul. When he put forward his candidature to the Ottoman army in an open letter addressed to the Minister of War, Mahmud Şevket Pasha, he quoted words that Mickiewicz was reported to have on his deathbed to his friend Iskender Bey: “I told myself that even had I known that I was going to die from cholera somewhere in Turkey, I would still go no matter what because this was my obligation. I would rather die as a poet in a Polish Cossack Legion than as a chancellor of the French Institute”. By quoting these lines Gasztowtt also makes reference to the tradition of organizing Polish legions in the Ottoman army during the post-partition period.

Polish Day in Istanbul

Thanks to Tadeusz Gasztowtt’s close relations with the Ottoman government, on his initiative on 17 August, 1909 the CUP organized celebrations commemorating Adam Mickiewicz and the Polish soldiers who had fought on the Ottoman side in the Crimean War (1853-56). This event has received little attention in the historiography of the Polish-Ottoman relations although it was broadly echoed in the press of the time and portrayed among the Polish intelligentsia as a manifestation of the pro-Polish sentiments of the CUP.

"Polish Day in Istanbul"
featured in Tygodnik Ilustrowany

Celebrations consisted of two parts. First, a mass in the Church of St Mary Draperis was celebrated. Then, the participants walked down towards Tarlabaşı waving Polish and Ottoman flags together. Polish journal Tygodnik Ilustrowany (“Illustrated Magazine”) compared this procession to the completion of Wernyhora’s prophecy, according to which Poland was going to regain independence with Ottoman help. Next, the commemorative plaque on Adam Mickiewicz’s house in Tarlabaşı was unveiled. The house where the poet spent the last days of his life perished in the great fire of Pera in 1870 and the present building was erected shortly after by Istanbul’s Polish community. In 1955 this modest building was converted into the poet’s museum- “Adam Mickiewicz Müzesi”. The street where the building is located was for decades known as Adam Sokağı (“Adam’s street”) and it immediately became a place of pilgrimage for both the local Polish community and Polish travellers in Istanbul.

Unveiling of the commemorative plaque
on Mickiewicz's house in 1933

Among the main guests on the Ottoman side of the 1909 celebration were members of the CUP, Dr. Nazım and Salahaddin Bey and veterans of the Crimean War. The Polish side was represented by the head of the Polish Association in Istanbul, Michał Grabowski, the owner of the house, Marcin Ratyński, Leon Ostroróg, Tadeusz Gasztowtt and a delegation from Adampol. Representatives of some Istanbul minorities, e.g. Tatars, Georgians and Iranians were also present. Salahaddin Bey in his speech admonished the partition of Poland as a “sacrilegious act” and stressed that the Ottoman Empire had never recognized it. He assured the guests of the CUP’s solidarity with the Polish independence cause. In response, Tadeusz Gasztowtt called for the reinforcement of the centuries long Polish-Ottoman friendship. Bulletin Polonais concluded that the event was “a real lesson of tolerance” as numerous Muslims, an imam included, attended the mass and a lamb was sacrificed in front of the building in the memory of fallen Polish soldiers. Celebrations were an opportunity for the Tanin newspaper to commemorate thousands of Poles who not only had fought in the Crimean War in the Ottoman army, but had for decades rendered their services to the Ottoman Empire in various fields, and to stress the historical basis for the Ottoman-Polish cooperation. Tygodnik Ilustrowany concluded that “since the partitions no one had seen a similar celebration for Poland”.

Even if this act of sympathy might have been only symbolic, it still suggests that the partitions of Poland and subsequent engagement of the Polish political émigrés in the late of Ottoman Empire did not go unnoticed by the Ottoman public. Rather, one can speak of a reassertion of cordiality in Polish-Ottoman relations in the Second Constitutional Period. Moreover, given the diversified profile of its attendants and the echo that the events had in the contemporary press, Gasztowtt’s initiative was an opportunity to draw the attention of the Ottoman public and others to the issue of Polish independence.   

Select Bibliography:

1. Kazimierz Dopierała, Emigracja Polska w Turcji w XIX i XX wieku (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Polonia, 

1988)

2. Jerzy S.Łątka, Słownik Polaków w Imperium Osmańskim i w Republice Turcji (Cracow: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2005)

3. Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol.7 (Cracow: PAU, 1948 – 58)

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Paulina Dominik obtained her Master degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. For more on the author see: https://oxford.academia.edu/PaulinaDominik