TUNCAY OPÇİN
If you are a regular reader, you have probably noticed that few new books are published during the summer. Publishers plan their schedules around the reopening of schools, which, roughly speaking, takes us into October. By the end of May, they have already switched to their summer programs. New periodicals, in particular, almost invariably wait until autumn to launch.
Readers return from their summer vacations, students and teachers go back to school, universities reopen, and the market comes alive again. The calendar may have twelve months, but for publishers, the working year lasts no more than eight. Why have I given you all this technical information? To find a new way into the story, of course. I wanted to explain how Chronicle, the magazine I edited and which is still talked about today, began its publishing life—because that beginning brought Chronicle an extraordinary story.
Published under the tagline “The Logbook of Life,” Chronicle was intended to appear quarterly. It was conceived as a magazine devoted to biography and microhistory. Its first issue, featuring Osman Hamdi Bey on the cover, reached readers in the summer of 2005. Driven by the frustration and determination that came from having been unemployed for a year and a half, I launched the magazine in the middle of summer rather than waiting for autumn.
I also took the utmost care to ensure that the magazine would not be shaped by my political identity or religious affiliation. Its editorial board and roster of contributors included people from across the ideological spectrum. My aim was to reflect in its pages all the colors and identities of Turkey. One of the most intriguing people among them was undoubtedly Korkut Erkan.
Erkan was an Ankara antiquarian bookseller, a collector of ephemera, and a member of the Collectors’ Association. I met this staunch Kemalist through another pair of collectors, Aybala and Dr. Nejat Yentürk. I had approached the Yentürks for an article. They accepted my proposal and also told me that Korkut Erkan was a deeply knowledgeable figure whom I should approach with an idea for a feature.
I asked Korkut Erkan to write about Ankara during the years of the Turkish War of Independence. But as we talked and the magazine began to take shape in his mind, he started suggesting other subjects. By far the most exciting of them was Abdurrahim Tuncak, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s “adopted son.”
HE HAD LITTLE INTEREST IN INTERVIEW REQUESTS
Erkan showed me a photograph of Tuncak, whose name I had encountered years earlier in Cemal Granda’s memoir I Was Atatürk’s Valet, and told me that his story was exceptionally compelling. Korkut Erkan urged me to notice Tuncak’s astonishing resemblance to Atatürk and said it would make an excellent feature for the magazine.
When the Turkish public heard the phrase “Atatürk’s adopted children,” the only names that generally came to mind were Afet İnan, Sabiha Gökçen, and Ülkü Adatepe. At that time, Adatepe was the only one of them still alive. Abdurrahim Tuncak, meanwhile, had died in December 1998, yet remained unknown outside a very small circle.
According to the official account, Atatürk adopted Tuncak in 1911 and left him in the care of his family. Tuncak was only three years old when he was entrusted to Zübeyde Hanım. Atatürk’s family was then living in the Akaretler neighborhood of Beşiktaş, before later moving to Şişli. Tuncak did not give a single interview until he was seventy-three. His first—and last—interview was conducted in 1981 by Mete Akyol, one of the best-known journalists of the period.
In the interview, published in Milliyet, Tuncak said that he called Zübeyde Hanım “mother” and knew her as his mother. At the end of the War of Independence, he went to İzmir with Atatürk’s mother and sister. There, they were warmly received by the family of Latife Hanım, Atatürk’s wife. After Zübeyde Hanım’s death, Atatürk reportedly told the young Abdurrahim, “My child, now both of us are without a mother.”
Abdurrahim Tuncak told Mete Akyol that three women had played a profound role in his life: Atatürk’s mother, Zübeyde Hanım; his sister, Makbule Hanım; and Fikriye Hanım. In the same interview, Tuncak also referred to Fikriye Hanım—whose death was officially recorded as a suicide but remains highly controversial—as “Atatürk’s first wife.”
It is worth opening a parenthesis here to recall Hıfzı Topuz’s book Gazi and Fikriye. Topuz likewise wrote that Atatürk and Fikriye Hanım had married during the War of Independence. According to his account, the marriage ceremony was even performed by the mufti of Karacabey at the time.
Atatürk personally took an interest in Tuncak’s education. After graduating from Taş Mektep, Ankara’s leading high school, it was decided that he should continue his studies abroad, and he was sent to Germany. Tuncak studied there until 1937 and served as an interpreter for Hasan Rıza Soyak during the purchase of the presidential yacht Savarona. During the same period, he visited Salih Bozok, who was receiving treatment in Germany, and met Celal Bayar. Upon returning to Turkey, he began working for the Ankara Electricity, Gas and Bus Administration (EGO), despite Bayar’s offer of other career options.
His official residences were Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul and Çankaya Mansion in Ankara. After Atatürk’s death, Tuncak came under the protection of Makbule Atadan. Having no children of her own, Atadan initially wanted to adopt him. Because the age difference between them was too small, however, the proposed adoption was found incompatible with the law and could not proceed. Makbule Atadan then adopted Abdurrahim Tuncak’s wife instead. As a result, after Atadan’s death, her estate—which included a waterfront mansion in Kuruçeşme—passed to Tuncak.
After Atatürk’s death, Tuncak was politely ushered out of Çankaya Mansion. He next appeared in the historical record on November 10, 1953, when Atatürk’s remains were transferred from the Ethnography Museum to Anıtkabir. Abdurrahim Tuncak was one of the ten people present in the burial chamber during the interment.
ATATÜRK’S FAMILY LEGACY PASSED TO TUNCAK
After retiring from EGO in 1973, Tuncak settled in Istanbul and lived quietly for many years. Yet among the small circle of people who knew of him, he was both well loved and frequently visited. I knew two of his visitors, Nermin and Pamir Bezmen, as well as Professor Önder Küçükerman. According to their accounts, while serving as Chief of the General Staff, General Necip Torumtay visited Tuncak and kissed his hand with tears in his eyes. What undoubtedly moved Torumtay to tears was Tuncak’s uncanny resemblance to Atatürk—he looked almost like his twin.
Atatürk’s personal legacy first passed to Makbule Atadan and then to Tuncak. Zübeyde Hanım likewise remembered Tuncak in her will. All the family heirlooms were in his possession. Among the objects handed down to him were the carpet Talat Pasha had presented to Atatürk after the Gallipoli Campaign, as well as Zübeyde Hanım’s copy of the Qur’an and her prayer rug.
Unlike Atatürk’s other adopted children, Abdurrahim Tuncak was never widely known. At Başkent University, Rector Professor Mehmet Haberal established the Abdurrahim Tuncak Atatürk Museum to preserve his memory and began displaying there the artifacts inherited from Atatürk’s family.
Mehmet Sadık Öke, a nephew of Atatürk’s former wife Latife Uşaklıgil, described Tuncak as Atatürk’s son. According to Öke, Tuncak was Atatürk’s child with Fikriye Hanım, a relative of Atatürk’s stepfather, Ragıp Bey. In his book My Aunt Latife, Öke emphasized that he had received this information directly from his aunt, Latife Uşaklıgil.
After the release of Mustafa, a film written by Can Dündar, Tuncak’s daughter Nuray Çulha spoke to the newspaper Vatan. Çulha said that her father had begun living in Atatürk’s home when he was three months old and had been circumcised there at the age of five. She added that the family possessed a photograph documenting the occasion.
Another detail disclosed by Çulha was equally striking. Tuncak’s birth had been recorded inside the copy of the Qur’an that Zübeyde Hanım gave him. The same Qur’an also contained a notation of the date of death of Naciye, one of Atatürk’s three siblings who died at a young age. When Can Dündar visited Tuncak and asked, “Are you Atatürk’s son?” Tuncak gave an answer certain to provoke debate: “Some secrets will go with me to the grave.”
In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown traced the purported surviving bloodline of Jesus through a trail of symbols, carrying his readers from the depths of history into the modern world. Perhaps one day a gifted Turkish novelist will write the story of Abdurrahim Tuncak and bring this forgotten figure back into public view. For now, however, Tuncak’s name lives on only in a museum and in his two children.
