Turkic Council Project Director Jeyhun Shahverdiyev attended the Conference on the theme of “Ahmet Ağaoğlu as our shared value’’ organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Ankara and the Faculty of Law of Ankara University on 19 November 2019.
Conference was devoted to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ahmet Bey Ağaoglu, a prominent Azerbaijani and naturalized Turkish politician, publicist, lawyer and journalist.
Dean of Law Faculty of Ankara University, Professor Dr. Muharrem Özen, President of the Union of Bar Associations of Turkey Metin Feyzioğlu, President of the Bar Associations of Azerbaijan, Mr. Anar Bagirov, President of the Supreme Court of Turkey İsmail Rüştü Cirit and Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Turkey, H.E. Khazar Ibrahim delivered opening speeches.
The conference was continued with a short documentary about the life of Ağaoglu and a panel discussions by the Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Hungary, Prof.Dr Vilayat Guliyev, Prof. Dr. Ali Birinci and Assoc. Dr. Cavid Abdullahzade.
Agaoglu was born in 1869 in the city of Shusha in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. He was the first Azerbaijani who entered the Faculty of Law of the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1889. He published the newspapers Hayat, İrşat and Terakki in Azerbaijan.
He served as a counsellor in the Caucasus Islamic Army and was elected as a member of the parliament of the first Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. On the way to the Paris Conference in 1918, Agaoglu was arrested by the British and exiled to Malta. After exile he returned to Ankara in 1921, joined the National Struggle and was appointed as the General Director of Press and Intelligence (General Director of Press and Publications) by the Ankara Government headed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
He was elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly as the second and third term deputy from Kars. In addition to political activities, Ağaoğlu also gave lectures on constitutional law in Ankara Law School.
He was the founder of the Anadolu Agency (AA) and Chairman of the Board in 1925.
Ağaoğlu considered cultural and educational progress to be the major part for national liberation and viewed the emancipation of women as a key component in the national liberation process. He was the first member of the Azerbaijani national intelligentsia to raise his voice for the equal rights for women. In his book Woman in the Islamic World, published in 1901, he claimed that "without women liberated, national progress cannot be achieved".
His ideas and legacy was continued by his daughter Süreyya Ağaoğlu who was a writer, jurist, and the first female lawyer in Turkish history.
