Marvin Jones - Erdal Inonu

Turkey lost Erdal İnönü in the fall of 2007. Erdal İnönü had a quality that was far superior to his other qualities, such as being the son of İsmet İnönü and having served as foreign minister and deputy prime minister for a period. That was being a scientist.

While reading his book, 300 Years of Delay, I saw that he discussed the reasons for the Ottoman backwardness in science in a very enlightening way. He presented in a very instructive way the process of transition from academies to universities in the West and how the Royal Society emerged in England, and with what methods science first defined nature and created scientific concepts, and how knowledge was conceptualized and passed down from generation to generation through scientific classification.

I learned about their friendship after I went to Berkeley in 1994 and met Marvin Jones. They met in the late 1940s when Erdal İnönü was doing his military service at the Infantry School in Ankara. I had also conveyed this surprising friendship in a letter to Istanbul. My mother had also sent me Erdal İnönü’s book Memories to be forwarded to Marvin. Years later, I took a photo that Marvin had sent me to Erdal İnönü when he was signing his books at the Kabalcı Bookstore in Beşiktaş and showed him this photo of Marvin and Erdal İnönü side by side.

The photo is dated April 26, 1949. It was taken in Ankara, I think, at the General Staff Headquarters. There were many officers around a long meeting table. Since we sent soldiers to Korea in 1950, the days when the photo was taken in Ankara must have been busy days in terms of the military. Marvin used to tell me all the time how he interviewed the Turkish officers who were going to Korea.

Marvin Jones had a very interesting life story. He was born in Bloomington, Indiana, to illiterate parents who were members of the Ku Klux Clan. When they were poor and could not find firewood in their home, they would break the legs of tables and chairs to light the stove. Sometimes they could not even remove the frozen dishes from the shelves.

He had to study Turkish because he could only get a scholarship to study Turkish at Indiana University. One of his teachers was an American who lived in Istanbul in the late 1800s and lived in Bebek and wrote the first Turkish-English/English-Turkish Redhouse dictionary.

He volunteered for World War II and survived the war with a shrapnel wound to his cheek. He was interviewed at the Pentagon and sent to Ankara in 1948 with the Truman Doctrine. He served as a translator between the Turkish and American governments.

His happy life in Ankara during İsmet İnönü's presidency began to deteriorate when Adnan Menderes came to power in 1950. In fact, he was sad on behalf of Turkey when Adnan Menderes was hanged in 1960, but he was not sad at all for Adnan Menderes.

In 1952, he was sent off from Turkey by being carried on shoulders at the airport in Ankara. After returning to his country, when he participated in a radio program in Indiana, he claimed that if Turkey continued on its development path since 1923 for another ten years, it would definitely become a superpower in the Middle East and Europe, but his hopes for Turkey were always dashed throughout the 1950s.

He met Einstein while he was doing his doctorate in German at Princeton University.

Whenever we spoke Turkish, he would use expressions like "tahtelbahir, hicap duyarımefendi, filhakika" to me. He was like a walking Turkish dictionary. He would tell me that even in the trenches during the war, whenever he had free time, he would study Turkish words. He would say that he would have preferred to have come to this world as a Turk if he had not come to this world as an American. Every corner of his house was filled with things he had brought from Turkey and photographs of Türkiye.

I spent every Sunday from morning until evening at his house, chatting about literature, philosophy, and history, and having wonderful dinners during my two years in Berkeley.

Marvin Jones had an unforgettable place in my life and memories. He was not an easy person to come across.

That day, when I showed him the photograph in my hand at Kabalcı Kitabevi, Erdal İnönü had a hard time remembering those days. Since he had also been to Berkeley for scientific studies at the time, he was intrigued by my approaching him with such a photograph and chatting with him. That day, I had the third book in the series in which he told his memories signed for both me and Marvin. It was May 2001 at that time.

Photo: Marvin Jones's photo archive. In the foreground of the photo, on the left, Marvin E. Jones, on the right, Erdal İnönü.

When I sent Marvin the book, he was very happy. I think I was only able to mail the Erdal İnönü-signed book to Marvin towards the end of the year, after I bought it in May 2001. I remember him saying to me, "It was the best New Year's gift I got this year" when I called him.

There is a funny reason why I mailed the book so late. In February 2001, the most serious economic crisis in the history of the Republic of Turkey broke out. Everyone was being laid off and I was waiting, wondering "when would it be my turn?" I was working at the Ottoman Bank at the time. I had reduced my expenses to a minimum. In this environment, I thought I would send the book sometime and only managed to mail it on New Year's Eve of 2002 when the economic crisis slowed down a bit.

In November 2005, Marvin Jones died first. In the fall of 2007, Erdal İnönü died. From this friendship of over fifty years, all I have left are these memories and a black and white photograph. May they both rest in peace.

02.02.2008