How Aikido Began in Turkey

The more I read about how Aikido began in Turkey, the less I can help laughing. I find myself wondering whether there is some other Turkey besides the one I lived through. Below, as this country’s first black-belt aikidoka, I share with you how Aikido actually began in Turkey.

Aikido began in Turkey in June 1983, at the Samurai sports hall in Kadıköy, İstanbul. Although people later emerged — once Aikido had become popular — claiming they had practised aikido back in the 1960s and 70s, there is nothing convincing about those claims.

That people who practised Judo in the 1960s likened certain Judo techniques to Aikido, because those techniques came from JuJutsu, and offered this as their evidence, is rather like someone who once played baseball claiming they played golf as well.

When Ahmet Berkol Hoca’s sports hall in Kadıköy was opening, letters were written to various organisations in Europe and Japan in the hope of support; as a result, the Aikido Headquarters in Tokyo came to hear of this hall.

At that time Kenji Kumagai (Aikido 5th Dan), who had been appointed general manager of the Middle East division of the Japanese company Komatsu, went to the Aikido headquarters before travelling to the region and asked whether there was any Aikido there. He was told there was none — but that a request had come from one hall.

Kenji Kumagai first chose Cairo, Egypt as his base, for its historical significance. Later, however, on a trip to İstanbul he liked the city so much that he moved his office there. Kumagai, who suffered from very serious diabetes, fell ill shortly after arriving in İstanbul and was treated for some six months. As soon as he recovered he went straight to that hall in Kadıköy. Immediately after meeting its owner, Ahmet Berkol Hoca, he began teaching Aikido to the instructors and senior students of the hall’s various disciplines.

Before those classes, this is what had happened regarding Aikido:

Lemi Bağdatlılar, who taught gymnastics to young children at the sports hall, one day told Ahmet Hoca that a relative of his living abroad practised a sport called Aikido, and that when this relative visited Turkey they had exercised together a few times, as he was flexible. Ahmet Hoca then asked Lemi Bey to teach as much as he could remember, and so Lemi Bey began his classes. Among his students were İhsan Özgün and Mevlüt Zor, who would later also attend Kumagai Hoca’s classes.

As someone who watched those classes at the time and later practised Aikido myself, I can say that what was done bore little resemblance to what Kumagai Hoca taught us.

One day, after Ahmet Berkol Hoca, Lemi Bey and I set off to visit Karakuşak — the popular Far Eastern martial arts magazine of the period — we were walking through Kadıköy discussing how we should introduce Lemi Bey. When Lemi Bey said he held no diploma or belt in Aikido, Ahmet Berkol Hoca said: ‘Listen to what you are worrying about, Lemi — there, I have just given you your black belt in Aikido.’ We laughed together. From that day on, Lemi Bey was a black belt in Aikido.

When Kumagai Shihan began teaching, Lemi Bey took off his hakama and black belt and started the classes again with a white belt.

Within a few months of the classes beginning — partly because I was one of the youngest in the group, partly because Aikido suited my build so well, and because I was open to learning — I moved ahead of my friends in grade. The hall’s owner Ahmet Berkol Hoca and I (I call him Hoca because, although we trained in Aikido together, Ahmet Berkol Hoca was one of Turkey’s most senior Judo instructors) took the black belt examination a few months before the others, and passed. These were at the same time the first official Aikido grades in Turkey.

After receiving the first degree of the black belt, Ahmet Berkol Hoca stopped attending classes regularly. For that reason he only reached the second degree some fifteen years later.

Counting those who attended classes regularly in those days, they were Lemi Bağdatlılar, İhsan Özgün, Ali Uludağ, Neşe Altan (this country’s first woman aikidoka, first woman black belt and first woman Aikido instructor), Yalçın Yenice, Mevlüt Zor, Melih Toprakçı, and myself, Mustafa Aygün. There were also others who joined from time to time and then took long breaks.

Kumagai Shihan’s wife Shigemi also played a great part in Aikido becoming loved in Turkey — not technically, but through her humanity. And though not to the same degree, I think we should also remember Mr Ura, the general manager of Mitsui, who joined our classes from time to time and helped us.

Ergin Sezen, one of the Komatsu staff who acted as our interpreter while Kumagai Hoca was teaching, and the Hoca’s driver Ekrem Abi (may he rest in peace), are likewise among the unforgettable people of that era.