ON THE WAY TO THE INDEPENDENCE: THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THROUGH THOMAS PAINE’S COMMON SENSE AND JAMES CHALMERS’S PLAIN TRUTH AND TURKISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE THROUGH ALI KEMAL’S PEYAM-I SABAH AND FAIK AHMET BARUTÇU’S İSTİKBAL NEWSPAPERS

Authors : Gökçen Uzunköprü

Pages : 18-24

Doi:10.30520/tjsosci.650780

View : 31 | Download : 11

Publication Date : 2020-02-28

Article Type : Research

Abstract :America in 1776 and Turkey in 1923 were among those who achieved the impossible declaring independence. Both countries gained independence with a terrific fight against great powers, e.g., People in American colonies resisted the king of their mother country, Britain, and Turkish people struggled severely against the sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the allied powers of World War I which were Britain, France, Russia. In both countries, people went into division: patriots or revolutionaries and loyalists. While revolutionaries were as mad as hell at the authorities, the loyalists were against those opponents and their new system because the patriots would slide their countries into the chaos. Thomas Paine (an American writer) and Faik Ahmet Barutçu (a Turkish journalist) as revolutionaries or patriots and James Chalmers (American pamphleteer) and Ali Kemal Bey (a Turkish journalist) as loyalists tried their best to impress the public by their pens. On the one hand, Thomas Paine and Faik Ahmet Bey aimed to raise people’s awareness against the rulers’ deems, and on the other hand, James Chalmers and Ali Kemal Bey were striving to quiet the spirit, which the patriots had wakened. In spite of the different time and place, their reason for the fight was almost concurrent. Eventually, America and Turkey stepped into a new age in a short time, then the supreme power wasn’t the king or sultan anymore but the people.
Keywords : Ottoman Empire, British Empire, Independence, American Revolution, Turkish War of Independence