Like people, cities, societies and countries have differences, characteristics, moments, days and situations to be proud of. If these traits are permanent rather than temporary, they almost leave their mark on the genetic structure and become immutable traits. It is these fundamental values that make people truly have a personality, transform societies into qualified societies, and give cities and countries the status of a special city or country. These values also form the civil identities of societies. It would not be enough however much pride would be put on them. However, no features or privileges should be tabooed or turned into idols. Kahramanmaraş is one of our qualified and featured cities that has always played a leading role both locally, regionally and globally. Located at the center of ancient civilizations and ancient cultures, as well as at the intersection of roads in the north-south and east-west directions, this historical city has always been influential in the Anatolian geography and has undertaken important missions. Here, instead of emphasizing the importance and characteristics of Kahramanmaraş, we will try to explain with a couple of examples how it has guided the course of history with the missions it has undertaken, and then to reveal the leading role it has played in the intellectual and artistic life of our country and the Islamic world since the second half of the twentieth century.
While the edicts of Tanzimat and Reform, which were announced at the end of the last century, brought important innovations in the theoretical sense, they also brought some difficulties in the practical sense. In particular, the rights granted to minorities were sought to be withdrawn from time to time to the detriment of the country, with the support of foreign states. In this sense, a tangible event took place in Kahramanmaraş. Namely, after the edict of Reform was read in the city in March 1856, a person named Guermani, who was in charge of providing military equipment in Kahramanmaraş on behalf of the British government, did not pay the full price of the goods he bought from the shopkeepers, and he made insulting words and behaviors to the people by citing the edict. The people of Kahramanmaraş, who are extremely fond of their honor and very sensitive to religious and national issues, immediately reacted to this spoiled attitude of minorities and foreigners, besieged the house where the person in question was and set it on fire. The British government protested this event, in which Guermani and some people lost their lives, and the criminals were identified and punished during the interrogation, and the blood price of the victims was paid by the Ottoman Empire.
Likewise, in those ominous days of the First World War, when the homeland was in danger, the people of Kahramanmaraş led the national liberation by raising the first flag of rebellion. After the Armistice of Mudros allowed the Allied Powers to occupy the regions they wanted, Kahramanmaraş was occupied first by the British and then by the French. Being aware of the British occupation, the people of Maraş first took control of the entrance and exit points of the city and demolished some bridges for this purpose. However, with the help and support of the Armenians living in the region, the city was occupied on February 22, 1919. Encouraged by the British occupation, the Armenians began to make riots in the city and to behave in ways that would hurt the pride of the people. After a while, the British and the French agreed that Mosul and Iraq should be left to Britain, while the lands occupied by the British in the Southeast should be left to France. However, the people of Kahramanmaraş, who aimed to protect their city at all costs, resisted to prevent the French from entering the city. For this purpose, they gathered in the square in front of the Grand Mosque and held a rally and condemned the persecution and torture of the French in the areas they occupied. On Wednesday, October 29, 1919, in the afternoon, the French came to Maraş and set up their headquarters next to the Aksu Bridge in the south of the city, and the next day they occupied the city with the support of the Armenians. The Armenians living in the city went to the roofs of their houses to celebrate the occupation and showed joy. They shouted slogans, “Down with the Turks, long live the French and the Armenians!” with the French and Armenian flags in their hands. The invading French soldiers trying to tear off the veils of Turkish women coming out of the bath and their shouting that, "This is not the country of the Turks, it is the country of the French, you cannot walk around with a veil!” caused great uneasiness in the city. Thereupon, Sütçü İmam, whose real name was Ali and who made a living by selling milk and being an imam, took his gun and came to the place where the incident took place and emptied his bullets on the attackers. Thus began that great and glorious struggle. This event was both the first fire of the liberation of Kahramanmaraş and the first glorious breakthrough of the war of independence. In the following days, the lowering of the Turkish flag in the Kahramanmaraş castle by the order of the French commander, Captain Andre, was the last step that infuriated the Muslim-Turkish people. The day after this event was Friday. The people gathered in great crowds at Grand Mosque. Ridvan Hodja, who climbed the pulpit, said, "Friday prayers cannot be performed in places where there is no freedom." The enthused community took the banner from the pulpit and walked towards the castle, and the French flag was lowered between the sounds of takbir and the Turkish flag was hung in its place. After that, resistance movements were revived all over the country and the imperialist powers were driven from all of Anatolia. This heroic city thus fulfilled its pioneering mission in our national liberation struggle.
Kahramanmaraş not only took the lead in the liberation of the homeland, but also played a leading role in cultural and intellectual developments. In the Ottoman period, starting with Saçaklızâde Mehmed Efendi, whose works were widely read in almost all the madrasas in the empire, to the Mathematician Abdürrahîm Pasha, to Sünbülzâde Vehbi Efendi, one of the last great masters of Divan poetry, and to the famous sufi poet Kuddûsî, many people grew up in these lands and dispersed throughout the Empire. Kahramanmaraş, which maintained its position as the intellectual attraction center of both the country and the region during the Republican period, has been one of the main centers of the Büyük Doğu (Great East) intellectual movement, which was initiated by the great poet and thinker Necip Fazıl Kısakürek throughout Türkiye. Some important representatives of Islamic thought and art, who continued the same line and formerly gathered around the magazine "Diriliş" under the management of Sezai Karakoç, then joined in the contemporary magazines "Mavera" and "Edebiyat", which was circled around the intellectuals and artists such as Mehmet Akif İnan, Nuri Pakdil, Erdem Bayazıt, Cahit Zarifoğlu and Rasim Özdenören were also from Kahramanmaraş or they were fed by the fountain of knowledge and wisdom that this city had. For this reason, especially in the last half century, Kahramanmaraş has formed one of the main intellectual axes not only of the region but also of Türkiye as a whole. I had the opportunity to meet valuable representatives of modern Turkish thought as well as Islamic science and thought in this beautiful city, which I first came to in 1961 as a little boy who received an old-style madrasa education. First, I visited Mufti Hafız Ali Efendi, who gained a well-deserved reputation in the region. I heard about his scientific authority from my late father. When I met him, the deceased Fazlı Efendi, who was then a mufti, was with him. After checking my Arabic by making me read a text, Hafız Ali Efendi said the following words that were almost like earrings in my ears: “Fame is a disaster, my son try to stay away from it!” These self-sacrificing people, who had a well-deserved reputation in the region and who tried to maintain this tradition and have not hesitated to endure many sacrifices for this cause as the last representatives of the old Ottoman tradition, such as Hafız Alı Efendi from Maraş, Zekeriya Efendi, Buluntu Hodja from Urfa, Molla Hamid Hoca, Molla İbrahim Efendi from Diyarbakır, Şeyda Hacı Fettah Efendi from Hazro, Molla Ahmet, Molla Mehmet, Mufti Haydar Efendi, Hoca Tayfır Efendi from Silvan, Hafız Tevfik Efendi from Antep, Lüzumi Efendi from Besni, Hacı Mahmut Efendi from Kilis were trying to enlighten the people on religious issues on the one hand, and on the other hand, they were making extraordinary efforts to keep religious sciences alive. However, these efforts were far from ensuring the preparation of a new awakening and resurrection that would cover the whole country and be effective all over the Islamic world. It was only capable of producing temporary solutions to our society, which had fallen into a religious void for a while. However, the Islamic world needed a new blood and a new mentality. Only a well-established education system and a broad cultural transformation program could provide this. İmam Hatip Schools, which were established to undertake this mission, received support from a large part of the society, and these institutions received an interest that would cover the nation within fifteen or twenty years. One of the first 7 İmam Hatip Schools in Türkiye was opened in Maraş. Parallel to the pioneering position of Kahramanmaraş, Maraş İmam Hatip School had become the center of a vibrant intellectual life in those days.
After reaching a certain level of education in the madrasa, I wanted to study in these institutions that provide religious education in the modern sense and have a diploma approved by the state, since my age was suitable. In Kahramanmaraş, where I went for this purpose, the Director of İmam Hatip School Abdülkadir Kocamanoğlu and the Deputy Director, Hamdi Savaş, helped me. At the same time, I benefited from many valuable teachers who taught at this school, especially the late İsmet Karaokur, the chief imam of the Maraş Grand Mosque, and Ali Haydar Kireççi, who had just arrived from Baghdad. In those days, I knew the late mufti Abdullah Edip Güvenen, who was really a decent person, and the late Muharrem Çelebi, who was going to Baghdad in those days to learn Islamic sciences. I can still remember the exciting speeches of Ziya Güvenen, a young Islamic Institute student. In this context, I also benefited greatly from the social, cultural and intellectual environments in Kahramanmaraş. The cultural events, which were considered very lively for that time, were held behind the glass doors of the "Maraş İmam Hatip School Graduates Association", which was established in a narrow room in the partitions on one of the porches of Grand Mosque. Adım Newspaper, which was followed with interest by the whole of Türkiye, was being published. In this modest place, I had the opportunity to meet and be with the leading notables and intellectuals of Kahramanmaraş. It was here that I met Kenan Ağabey (Seyithanoğlu), with whom we would be together for a long time. Later, we would also meet Mr. Hasan Seyithanoğlu and establish a friendly relationship. We used to have long conversations and discussions with friends such as Vehbi Vakkasoğlu, İsmail Kıllıoğlu, Ahmet Taşgetiren, Osman Sarı, Yaşar Alparslan, and Vakkas Göksu in this association, which I attended in my spare time. Here, I had the opportunity to meet names that I can remember at first glance, such as the late Mehmet Emirmahmutoğlu, Mehmet Sandaloğlu, Dear Yılmaz Ercan, Mehmet İncimez, Hilmi Vakkasoğlu, Mustafa Ramazanoğlu, from the notables of Maraş who devoted their hearts to Islamic understanding and strived to serve Islamic sciences as much as possible, and I also had the opportunity to get to know important poets and thinkers such as Necip Fazıl, Arif Nihat Asya and others who came to Maraş. I will never forget, on a warm May morning, in the shop of the bookstore Şeref, where I went to buy the Büyük Doğu magazine, I met Nuri Pakdil, who was living in Ankara at that time and came to visit his family and close friends. This meeting led to great changes in my intellectual line, to get to know modern art, thought, and above all, the West and Western thought. With his sincere demeanor and charming style, we soon formed a great friendship with Dear Nuri Pakdil. I used to look forward to his coming to Maraş all year long.
Through Nuri Ağabey, I got to know the late Mehmet Akif İnan, Cahit Zarifoğlu and Dear Erdem Bayazıt, and Rasim Özdenören. Kahramanmaraş had given many valuable names to the Turkish intellectual and artistic life. In the sixties, this beautiful city had become one of the important centers that really brought a new breath to Turkish intellectual life and added a new color to it. Kahramanmaraş cannot be appreciated enough for its pioneering role in this period. In my opinion, the pioneering spirit should be further developed by making use of the intellectual development of Kahramanmaraş in the last fifty years. While activating the city's strong industrial, agricultural and commercial potential, there is no doubt that it would be of great benefit to mobilize its rich intellectual capacity for the development of the Middle East region, which is the scene of bloody struggles. This beautiful city, which has unique features with its people, nature and history, can be turned into a cultural and intellectual attraction center for both our country and the Middle East. This can only be achieved through wide education networks and higher education institutions. When I went to this beautiful and pioneering city after a long break in 1968, I saw that many things had changed. Some of my friends were alive and some of them migrated to the hereafter. The poor, dull and tired city of those days was replaced by a brand new, prosperous and lively city. I felt very sorry that the old historical texture of Maraş has completely disappeared. But I also envied the new Kahramanmaraş, which was planned with a modern and advanced urban sensibility, with its large streets and boulevards, wide green areas and relatively meticulous architecture.