In Memoriam for the Famous Professor (Qazim Turdiu)
Memorie.al / Qazim Turdiu (Tirana, June 7, 1917 – April 8, 1989), was a prominent Albanian educator, pedagogue, and author in the field of mathematics. For his contribution to the field of education, as part of the constellation of post-independence educators like Eqrem Çabej and Arshi Pipa, and in the development of academic texts, he was honored with numerous titles. He was born into a well-known Tirana family, one of the many children of Mahmud Turdiu and Nadire of Myslym Llagami. After graduating from the Tirana Gymnasium in 1937, he pursued higher studies in mathematics at the University of Montpellier in France, where he graduated in 1939, even with the highest results in his course.
He returned to Albania after the Italian occupation (1939), as the second Albanian with a complete education in mathematics, where he was appointed as a teacher at the Shkodra Gymnasium (1940 – 1942) and later at the Tirana Gymnasium, holding the position of deputy director (1943).
As an apolitical nationalist, he opposed the Italian occupation and supported the idea of Ethnic Albania. He was honored with the duty of carrying the remains of Naim Frashëri, during the ceremonies of their return to Albania. He intervened with the King’s Lieutenant, Jacomoni, to save communist high school students arrested by the Italians from prison.
As one of the well-known intellectuals of the time, he was invited (through the mediation of Abdyl Këllezi) to participate in the National Liberation Movement. He refused because of the Kosovo issue and the alliance of Albanian communists with the Yugoslavs. With the opening of the Higher Pedagogical Institute (1948), he was among its first pedagogues, and likewise with the opening of the University of Tirana (1957), where he worked until 1983.
Due to the lack of higher education in Albania, he was the founder of mathematics teaching in higher schools. In the years 1958-1960, he completed postgraduate studies at Lomonosov University in Moscow, under the direction of the renowned mathematician Kolmogorov.
During his 44-year career, he educated thousands of cadres and gained fame for his communication level in the auditorium and his objectivity in student evaluation. He excelled as a didactician and methodologist of mathematics, contributing greatly to raising the scientific level and professional qualification of mathematics teachers.
He is known as the author of many school programs, textbooks, and monographs, including those on the methodology of mathematics, analytical geometry, mathematical analysis, plane trigonometry, the history of mathematics, etc.
He distinguished himself as a defender of the tradition of Western schooling and influenced the preservation of the school’s professional objectivity against the communist system’s tendencies towards extreme politicization. The high level of teaching in exact sciences, and the professionalism of the Albanian school in general, owe a considerable extent to the contribution of Prof. Qazim Turdiu.
During the communist regime, he worked and lived in difficult political conditions, both general and personal. He suffered continuous attacks from the regime’s circles due to his class origin, stemming from former high strata, and his two “escaped” brothers (Dr. Faik Turdiu and Dr. Ramazan Turdiu).
In the State Security file for Prof. Eqrem Çabej, it is noted that the agent pseudonymed “Shigjeta” (The Arrow), on October 20, 1957, informed that; “Professors of the University of Tirana Eqrem Çabej, Qazim Turdiu, Minella Karajani, and Rrok Zojzi, speak ill of the regime in Albania.” Former Minister of Interior, Feçor Shehu, deposed in the investigation in 1982 that Qazim Turdiu had been under surveillance several times.
In the 1970s, he had sharp conflicts at the university with the tendencies to imitate the Chinese Cultural Revolution and then with the breakdown of discipline and accountability within the framework of “liberalism,” which he mainly survived thanks to the personal prestige he enjoyed with members of the regime’s leadership who were of his generation or his former students, such as Ramiz Alia.
In 1956, he married Asime Pipa (1931-1999), from the Pipa family of Shkodra, and had two children (Parid, 1958 and Silva, 1961). The engagement in 1981 of his daughter, Silva Turdiu, to the son of Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, was condemned by the communist leader Enver Hoxha, due to the girl’s family’s kinship ties with well-known anti-communists (Ramazan Turdiu, Myzafer and Arshi Pipa, etc.), and became the pretext for the tragic end of the Shehu family.
The regime’s revenge also included Prof. Qazim Turdiu and his family. In 1983, after the publication of Enver Hoxha’s book “The Titoists,” where the Turdiu and Pipa families were attacked as connected to the United States of America, the regime forced him into compulsory retirement. He died in Tirana on April 8, 1989, from a serious illness (lung cancer). Thousands of people attended his funeral, challenging the regime’s stigma.
Honors
Prof. Qazim Turdiu was given the title Docent as early as 1957; the degree of Candidate of Sciences in 1960; the high title “Merited Teacher” in 1965; then the title Professor in 1972; he was decorated with various orders and medals, etc. In 1992, at the proposal of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, which also had the unanimous support of the relevant authorities, the President of the Republic, Prof. Dr. Sali Berisha, awarded him the high title “Teacher of the People.”
The Municipal Council of Tirana, in 1999, decided that the new 8-year school (today 9-year) on “Don Bosko” street should bear his name. He was later honored with the “Naim Frashëri” Order, First Class and “Honorary Citizen” of Tirana. / Memorie.al
