Ahmet Ali Çelikten


Ahmet Ali Çelikten, also known as İzmirli Ahmet Ali, was an Ottoman-born Afro-Turkish aviator who was one of the first black pilots in aviation history. He was certainly the first black male fighter pilot, having received his “wings” in 1914. He was one of the few black pilots in World War I, like African American Eugene Jacques Bullard, William Robinson Clarke from Jamaica, Pierre Réjon from Martinique and Domenico Mondelli from Eritrea. Ahmet's maternal grandmother was born in Bornu and was brought to what is now Turkey as part of the Ottoman slave trade.

Biography

Ahmet was born in 1883 in Izmir, in the Aidin Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. His mother, Zenciye Emine Hanım, was of Nigerian descent; his father, Ali Bey, was also African Turkish. He aimed to become a sailor and entered the Naval Technical School named Haddehâne Mektebi in 1904. In 1908, he graduated from this school as a First Lieutenant. And then he went to aviation courses in the Naval Flight School that was formed on 25 June 1914 at Yeşilköy. He was then a member of the Ottoman Air Force.
During World War I, he married Hatice Hanım who was an immigrant from Preveza. He became one of the first black military pilots in aviation history when he started serving in November 1916. On 18 December 1917, Captain Ahmed Ali was sent to Berlin to complete aviation courses. He died in 1969.

Legacy

To quote David Nicolle's book, The Ottoman Army 1914–1918, "Most Ottoman aircrew were recruited from the Turkish heartland... others came from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire as far south as Yemen, or even from neutral Iran. Captain Ahmet was a mix of Arab-African and Turkish origin and may have been the first 'Black' Air Force pilot in aviation history, having received his 'wings' in 1914-15." The book features a photo of Ahmet in front of a Bleriot XI-2 trainer at the Yeşilköy flying school. The same photo is featured in "Over the Front", Volume 9, No. 3, Fall 1994. Ahmet's "wings" would seem to have been earned prior to Bullard's earning his brevet No. 6259 on 20 July 1917, though Bullard is often cited as history's first black military aviator.

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