Türkçe TercümeToday, we commemorate Haydar Bammate with gratitude on the 60th anniversary of his death. Haydar Bammate, one of the prominent intellectuals, diplomats, and politicians of the Caucasus, was born in 1890 in the village of Kafir-Kumuk in Dagestan, the son of a poor but honest officer of the Russian Imperial Army. His father, Nazhmudin Bammate, unlike his counterparts, was not an imperial officer who persecuted his compatriots and made a fortune through bribery but an honest and just man who tried to raise two boys with limited financial means. His father's poor economic condition was insufficient to provide Haydar with a university education. When Haydar graduated high school, he had not even received an answer to his scholarship application. While Haydar was waiting for a state scholarship, his father was martyred, and the scholarship that Haydar was expecting came the day after the news of his father's death...
In those days when Russia was burning with the fire of the 1905 revolution attempt, Haydar Bammate was at the center of the revolutionary movements in the capital, St. Petersburg. Concerned for the Muslims of the Caucasus and Russia, Haydar couldn't stay out of this process. Indeed, he was caught on the Russian intelligence radar as an objectionable revolutionary by starting to work in the magazine Mousoulmanine, a publication manipulated by the Tsar's secret police. It was in those days that Haydar wrote his first article, Duma. His article was published in the newspaper “To the Muslim World” in July 1911. After graduating from the Law Faculty in the capital, Haydar Bammate, who also benefited from the self-government policy offered by the revolution, was busy with the problems of the Caucasus and Caucasian Muslims while fulfilling his civil service.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 was a turning point in Haydar Bammate's life, as it was for every Caucasian. During his civil service in Tbilisi, he was one of those who closely followed the repercussions of the war in the Caucasus. When the Russian monarchy, weakened by the war, was overthrown by the February Revolution, Haydar Bammate was among the participants of the General Congress of Islamic Deputies of the Caucasus held in Baku in April and was one of the few people who pondered possible scenarios of autonomy. At the First All-Russian Muslim Congress, which convened in Moscow immediately after the congress in Baku, Haydar Bammate was one of the leading members of the Caucasus delegation and one of the most active participants of the congress. Due to his participation in this congress, he was unable to attend the First Congress of the Mountaineers of the Caucasus in Vladikavkaz. Haydar Bammate, who took his place in the second congress organized in September and became a member of the Central Committee, accelerated his diplomatic initiatives due to the situation created by the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty signed after the Bolsheviks seized power in October and withdrew Russia from the World War arena. He first met with representatives of the Trans-Caucasian peoples in Tbilisi and presented them with a vision of a Greater Caucasian Confederation, but to no avail.
Bammate then traveled to Turkey to attend the Trebizond Conference, where the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty would be negotiated between the Ottoman Empire and other Central Powers and representatives of the Trans-Caucasian peoples. As the representative of the North Caucasus delegation in charge of foreign affairs, endowed with governmental powers, he tried to convince the representatives of the Trans-Caucasian peoples to reaffirm the ideal of Confederation. After the failed Trebizond negotiations, he participated in meetings with Ottoman officials in Istanbul and lobbied for support for the independence of the North Caucasus. When it was decided to continue the negotiations that failed in Trabzon in Batumi, he traveled to Batumi as the head of the delegation. When it became clear that the Batumi negotiations would not yield any results, he became one of the two signatories of the declaration declaring the independence of the North Caucasus to the world on May 11, 1918, together with the President of the North Caucasus Government, Abdulmecid Chermoy.
When the diplomatic channels in Batumi were blocked, Bammate moved to Istanbul and continued to work there until the end of the World War for a diplomatic solution, the recognition of independence, and the construction of the Great Caucasian Confederation.
Towards the end of the war, he intended to go to Berlin, but after the Central Powers lost the war, he turned his route to Switzerland and went to Bern in November 1918 to negotiate with the representatives of the post-war Entente Powers. After continuing his lobbying activities in Switzerland for a while, in the spring of 1919, he traveled to Paris in the hope of finding support for the independence of the North Caucasus at the Peace Talks. Unfortunately, his intensive diplomatic contacts in Paris between April and August 1919 did not produce the desired result in the vicious circle of the Paris Peace Talks.
In the same period, when the Volunteer Armies of the Monarchist Russians led by General Denikin invaded the North Caucasus, Haydar Bammate returned to Tbilisi in October and took an active role in the activities of the Caucasian Allied Madjlis and the Defense Council. To prevent Denikin's armies, he made attempts before the military representations of the Entente states through diplomatic means and publishing. After Denikin's armies were defeated and expelled from the North Caucasus in March 1920, he was elected as the Speaker of the Parliament of the re-established North Caucasus Republic. However, with the Bolshevik occupation that began in April, the parliament was unable to work. Continuing his work in Tbilisi against the Bolshevik occupation, Bammate carried out active political, military, and diplomatic work for a year as the Chairman of the Union of Politicians of Mountaineers and the Mountaineers-Azerbaijan Joint Defense Committee. Upon the occupation of Tbilisi by the Bolsheviks in February 1921, Bammate moved to Batumi, the last point of resistance, and after continuing the resistance in Batumi for a while, he immigrated to Turkey in March 1921. Immediately after he found asylum in Turkey, in April, he married Zaiynab Chermoy, the niece of Abdulmecid Chermoy.
Unable to get the support of the Angora government for his anti-Soviet work during his short stay in Turkey, Bammate moved to France in October of the same year and continued his work in Paris. His first child, Nazhmudin was born in Paris in 1922. In 1925, his second son, Timur was born. In the same year, Bammate accepted the offer of Afghanistan citizenship made by the Afghan King and served as Chargé d'affaires in this country's representative offices in France and Switzerland for a long time. Bammate, who assumed the leadership of Kavkaz, one of the two main groups that emerged in the anti-Soviet struggle, fought for the establishment of a confederative Caucasian union for his entire political life. Bammate, who was hated to death by his political rivals, always prioritized the interests of the Caucasus during this struggle and did not accept the domination and bribery of any foreign power.
Since 1936, when the signs of the Second World War started to be visible, Bammate managed to establish friendly and equal alliance relations with the diplomatic missions of the Japanese Empire and started to publish the magazine Kavkaz with the financial means provided by the Japanese Government. Even in the turbulent environment of the early days of the Second World War, he maintained good relations with the Japanese and pursued a consistent anti-Soviet policy. In 1942, Bammate distanced himself from the political arena due to the inconsistent Caucasian policy pursued by Nazi Germany, and until the end of the Second World War, he always supported his old friend Alihan Kantemir, to whom he handed over the leadership of the political struggle in émigré circles. After the war, he provided all kinds of material and moral assistance to the North Caucasian prisoners of war in the refugee camps. He pushed diplomatic channels to free them and send them to other countries.
Haydar Bammate devoted the last quarter of his life to the study of Islamic Civilization, and in this field, he produced works that have entered the literature with philosophers and orientalists such as René Guénon (Abdülvahid Yahya) and Enrico Insabato. Despite his deteriorating health in the 1930s, Bammate led an active and dangerous life, and his tired heart finally stopped on March 31, 1965, at the age of 75.
While commemorating this loyal, sincere, and distinguished son of the Caucasus with mercy and gratitude, I am proud to announce that the first of a series of books in which you will read these milestones of his life in much more detail and with information based on archival documents will meet with the reader on the anniversary of his death. The first fruit of the work I started in 2023 in Haydar Bammate's private archive, which remained a mystery for 35 years, is ready to meet you as a book covering the period of his life until 1921. The book will consist of many rarely known documents from the German, Swiss, Russian, French, Turkish, and Georgian archives as well. I continue to work with all my strength to prepare the other books of the series for publication as soon as possible. If we are lucky enough, we will have the other books of the series ready for printing this year.
Cem Kumuk
Istanbul, 31 March 2025