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Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı, known as Feylesof, was a poet, literary figure, philosopher and politician of the Second Constitutional Monarchy period. Today, Rıza Tevfik is mostly remembered as a poet, but after 1913 he gained his real fame with his poems written in syllabic meter. Tevfik, having a broad knowledge of Eastern and Western philosophy, interpreted existing philosophical knowledge and emphasized the remarkable similarities between them and modern views, rather than creating an original school.
Rıza Tevfik began his education at a Jewish school and learned Spanish and French at a young age. He dropped out of Galatasaray Sultanisi and Mekteb-i Mülkiye, then entered Tıbbiye-i Mülkiye and became a doctor at the age of 30. He married Ayşe Sıdıka Hanım, the first Turkish woman pedagogue, and had three daughters from this marriage. After the death of his first wife, he married Nazlı Hanım for the second time and had two sons from this marriage.
In 1907, he was elected as a member of the Meclis-i Mebusan from the Committee of Union and Progress Party. Between 1913 and 1918, he took a break from politics and started to teach philosophy and aesthetics at Darülfünun. In 1918, he returned to politics as the Minister of Education, but he received a great reaction due to his participation within the delegation that signed the Treaty of Sèvres and his opposition to the War of Independence. He went to Egypt on November 8, 1922, fearing that he might experience what happened to his close friend Ali Kemal, and then was included in the list of 150 by the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Later, upon the invitation of Emir Abdullah, King of Jordan, he traveled to Jordan and served as the king's court interpreter.
In 1934, Rıza Tevfik retired from this position and settled in the Lebanese town of Joinieh, and in 1936 he traveled to Europe with his wife and stayed in England and France for a year. He returned to Istanbul in 1943, five years after the law on the amnesty of the 150th was enacted, and wrote articles on literature, art and aesthetics in various newspapers for the rest of his life. He died on December 30, 1949.
Places
Istanbul
Jordan
Jounieh (Lebanon)
United Kingdom
France
Legal status
Philosopher, poet, literary figure, and politician