EurasiaŶ AĐadeŵy of SĐieŶĐes SoĐial SĐieŶĐes JourŶal
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MUSTAFA CHOKAY'S ACTIVITIES IN THE CAUCASİA
Vecihi Sefa Fuat HEKİMOĞLU *
* BİTLİS EREN оNİVERSİTESİ
E-mail: sefafuat@hotmail.com
Copyright© 2017 Vecihi Sefa Fuat HEKİMOĞLU. This is an open access article distributed
under the Eurasian Academy of Sciences License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
ABSTRACT
Mustafa Chokay was born in Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan, on December 25th, 1890. He struggled
his whole life for the freedom of not only his fellow Kazak Turks but also Uzbek, Turkmen,
Kyrgyz, Azerbaijan Turks. Additionally, he fought for other people like Ukrainians and
Georgians that suffered similar atrocities under Russian rule. After his education at the
university of Petersburg, Chokay was on the frontline of the freedom movement of Turkestan
people and had important duties in the Presidency of Turkestan, declared on November 26,
1917 and in Alash Orda autonomy which had been established by Kazakh leaders such as
Alikhan Bokeykhanov and Ahmet Baytursynov. When the national governments of Turkestan
were dispersed by the Bolshevik forces, Mustafa Chokay tried to continue liberating Turkestan
Turks by forming alliances with the peoples under Soviet sovereignty.
Within his life of political struggle, the period he had in Caucasia is of great importance.
After he realized that the Turkestan Turks could not succeed in the struggle for independence
by their own forces, they started to seek for allies to the national movement. For this purpose;
he sought the possibilities of working with Azerbaijani Turks and Georgians living in a similar
fate and he tried to integrate Ukraine into the Turkestan-Caucasus alliance by establishing an
organization called "Erkin Odak" in 1919. But Mustafa Chokay, who had to leave Georgia after
the Soviet armies invaded the Caucasus, went to Europe through Istanbul and pursued his
struggle from Paris until the end of his life. In this study, the activities of Mustafa Chokay in
the Caucasus between January 1919 and February 1921 is tried to be examined on the basis of
the works published in Turkey, Kazakhstan , Georgia and newspaper articles of the time.
Keywords: Mustafa Chokay, Turkestan, Soviet Union, Caucasia, Azerbaijan, Georgia.