Career
His last name comes from the town of Gaspra in Crimea. Ismail communicated his ideas mainly through the newspaper Terciman he founded in 1883, which existed till 1918. In his publications he called for unity and solidarity among the Turkic peoples and advocated their modernization through Europeanization.
Ismail believed that the only way for modernization was through education.
He developed a "pan-Turkic" language, which was a simplified form of Turkish omitting words imported from Arabic and Persian. He said back in 1881:
"Our ignorance is the main reason for our backward condition.
We have no access at all to what has been discovered and to what is going on in Europe. We must be able to read in order to overcome our isolation.
We must learn European ideas from European sources.
We must introduce into our primary and secondary schools subjects that will permit our pupils to have such access".