Mehmet Fuat Köprülü

Mehmet Fuat Köprülü (December 5, 1890 – June 28, 1966), also known as Köprülüzade Mehmed Fuad, was a highly influential Turcologist, Professor Ordinarius, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey. A descendent of the illustrious Köprülü family, whose influence in shaping Ottoman history between 1656 and 1683 surpassed even that of the House of Osman, Fuat Köprülü was a key figure in the intersection of scholarship and politics in early 20th century Turkey. As a historian and public intellectual, his books, articles, essays and poems forged a “canon of Turkish culture and national identity” that provided the newly formed Republic of Turkey with scholarly sources of Turkishness.

Fuat Köprülü was born in the city of Istanbul in 1890 as Köprülüzade Mehmed Fuad. His paternal grandfather, Ahmet Ziya Bey, was the former ambassador to Bucharest, and Ahmet Ziya Bey was son of the former head of the Imperial Chancery of State (Divan-i Humayun Beylikcisi), Köprülüzade Arif Bey. Köprülüzade Arif Bey descended from the Köprülüs of the 17th century, an exceptional dynasty of Grand Viziers whose reforms and conquests delayed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Fuat Köprülü was named after the first Grand Vizier of the Köprülü Era, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha.

Fuat Köprülü received his formal education at Ayasofya Rusdiyesi and Mercan Idadisi, both formed by Ottoman authorities to modernize and reform the Ottoman education system. In 1905, while a student at Mercan Idadisi and only 15 years old, the magazine Musavver Terakki published three poems by Fuat Köprülü. By the time he entered the School of Law of Istanbul University at the age of 17, Fuat Köprülü already had an excellent command of French, Persian and Arabic. His first book, Hayat-i Fikriyye (The Intellectual Life), was published when he was 19 years old. After three years of study, Fuat Köprülü abandoned the School of Law because of the poor quality of instruction, saying that diploma was “not worth the loss of time it would entail.”

From 1910 to 1913, Fuat Köprülü taught Turkish language and literature at various high schools in Istanbul, including the prestigious Galatasaray High School. Fuat Köprülü initially opposed the literary movement known as New Language, which sought to simplify the Turkish language, and wrote articles for the Servet-i Funun magazine using a literary style comprehensible only to the most learned of Ottoman intellectuals. Fuat Köprülü changed his writing style and politics during the Balkan Wars. On February 6, 1913, the day after the Bulgarian army attacked the Ottoman lines in the outskirts of Istanbul, Turk Yurdu magazine, a bastion of simplified Turkish prose and Turkish nationalism, published the first of many popular and patriotic essays by the 23-year-old Fuat Köprülü: “Umit ve Azim” (Hope and Determination), “Hicret Matemleri” (Mourning Migration), “Turk’un Duasi” (A Turk’s Prayer), and “Turkluk, Islamlik, Osmanlilik” (Turkishness, Islamness, Ottomanness).

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