Turkish literature is the collection of written and oral texts composed in the
Turkish languageTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
, either in its
OttomanOttoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic and Persian languages and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
form or in less exclusively literary forms, such as that spoken in the
Republic of TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
today. The Ottoman Turkish language, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, was influenced by
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
and
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
and used a variant of the Perso-Arabic script.
The history of turkic literature spans a period of nearly 1,500 years. The oldest extant records of written
TurkicThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
are the
Orhon inscriptionsThe Old Turkic script is the alphabet used by the Göktürk and other early Turkic Khanates from at least the 8th century to record the Old Turkic language. It was later used by the Uyghur Empire...
, found in the
Orhon River valleyOrkhon Valley Cultural Landscape sprawls along the banks of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, some 360 km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar...
in central
MongoliaMongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It borders Russia to the north and the People's Republic of China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only 24 miles from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator,...
and dating to the 8th century. Subsequent to this period, between the 9th and 11th centuries, there arose among the
nomadNomadic people are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in...
ic
Turkic peoplesThe Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
of
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
a tradition of
oralOral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...
epicsAn epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
, such as the
Book of Dede KorkutThe Book of Dede Korkut, also spelled as Dada Gorgud, Dede Qorqut or Korkut-ata , is the most famous epic story of the Oghuz Turks...
of the
Oghuz TurksThe Oghuz were a group of Turkic peoples. In the ninth century the Oghuz Turks from the Aral steppes drove the Pecheneg Turks of the Emba region and the River Ural toward the west...
—the linguistic and cultural ancestors of the modern
Turkish peopleThe Turkish people , also known as the "Turks" are defined mainly as citizens of the Republic of Turkey. An early historic text provided the definition of being a Turk as "any individual within the Republic of Turkey; whatever his/her faith or racial/ethnic background; who speaks Turkish, grows up...
—and the Manas epic of the
KyrgyzThe Kyrgyz are a Turkic ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan.-Etymology:There are several etymological theories on the ethnonym "Kyrgyz."...
people.
Beginning with the victory of the
SeljuksThe Seljuq were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries...
at the
Battle of ManzikertThe Battle of Manzikert, or Malazgirt, was fought between the Byzantine Empire and Seljuq forces led by Alp Arslan on August 26, 1071 near Manzikert . It resulted in one of the most decisive defeats of the Byzantine Empire and the capture of the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes...
in the late 11th century, the Oghuz Turks began to settle in
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
, and in addition to the earlier oral traditions there arose a written literary tradition issuing largely—in terms of themes, genres, and styles—from
ArabicArabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers of the Arabic language. It does not usually include works written using the Arabic alphabet but not in the Arabic language such as Persian literature and Urdu literature...
and
Persian literaturePersian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
in 1922, the oral and written traditions would remain largely separate from one another. With the founding of the
Republic of TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time.
The two traditions of Turkish literature
Throughout most of its history, Turkish literature has been rather sharply divided into two rather different traditions, neither of which exercised much influence upon the other until the 19th century. The first of these two traditions is Turkish folk literature, and the second is Turkish written literature.
For most of the history of Turkish literature, the salient difference between the folk and the written traditions has been the variety of language employed. The folk tradition, by and large, was oral and remained free of the influence of Persian and Arabic literature, and consequently of those literatures' respective languages. In folk poetry—which is by far the tradition's dominant
genreA genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other form of art or utterance...
—this basic fact led to two major consequences in terms of poetic style:
- the poetic meters
In poetry, the meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order. Prosody is a more general linguistic term, that includes poetical meter but also the rhythmic aspects of...
employed in the folk poetic tradition were different, being quantitative (i.e., syllabicSyllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed number of syllables per line or stanza regardless of the number of stresses that are present. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as Japanese or modern French or Finnish—as opposed to accentual verse, which is common in stress-timed...
) verse, as opposed to the qualitative verse employed in the written poetic tradition;
- the basic structural unit of folk poetry became the quatrain
A Quatrain is a stanza of poetry consisting of four lines. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome continues into the 21st century where it is seen in works published in several languages.-Forms:*The heroic stanza...
(Turkish: dörtlük) rather than the coupletA couplet is a pair of lines of verse. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets....
s (Turkish: beyit) more commonly employed in written poetry.
Furthermore, Turkish folk poetry has always had an intimate connection with
songA song is a metrical composition intended or adapted for singing, especially one in rhymed stanzas; a lyric; a ballad....
—most of the poetry was, in fact, expressly composed so as to be sung—and so became to a great extent inseparable from the tradition of
Turkish folk musicTurkish folk music has combined the distinct cultural values of all those civilisations which have lived in Anatolia and the Ottoman territories in Europe and Asia...
.
In contrast to the tradition of Turkish folk literature, Turkish written literature—prior to the
foundingThe single-party period of the Republic of Turkey begins with the Republican People's Party being the only party in after the establishment on October 29, 1923 and ends in 1946 with the establishment of National Development Party . End of single party period marked with Republican People's Party...
of the Republic of Turkey in 1923—tended to embrace the influence of Persian and Arabic literature. To some extent, this can be seen as far back as the
SeljukThe Sultanate of Rûm was the continuation of the Great Seljuq Empire in Anatolia, in direct lineage from 1077 to 1307, with capitals first at İznik and then at Konya. Since the court of the sultanate was highly mobile, cities like Kayseri and Sivas also functioned at times as capitals...
period in the late 11th to early 14th centuries, where official business was conducted in the Persian language, rather than in Turkish, and where a court poet such as Dehhanî—who served under the 13th century
sultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power"...
Ala ad-Din Kay Qubadh I—wrote in a language highly inflected with Persian.
When the Ottoman Empire arose early in the 14th century, in northwestern Anatolia, it continued this tradition. The standard poetic forms—for poetry was as much the dominant genre in the written tradition as in the folk tradition—were derived either directly from the Persian literary tradition (the
gazelThe ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...
غزل; the
mesnevîThe masnavi is a poetic form in Persian and Ottoman literature.The masnavi consists of an indefinite number of couplets, with the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc, etc....
مسنوى), or indirectly through Persian from the Arabic (the
kasîdeQasida in Arabic: قصيدة, plural qasā'id, قــصــائـد; in Persian: قصیده , Turkish: Kaside, is a form of poetry from pre-Islamic Arabia. It typically runs more than 50 lines, and sometimes more than 100...
قصيده). However, the decision to adopt these poetic forms wholesale led to two important further consequences:
- the poetic meters (Turkish: aruz) of Persian poetry were adopted;
- Persian- and Arabic-based words were brought into the Turkish language in great numbers, as Turkish words rarely worked well within the system of Persian poetic meter.
Out of this confluence of choices, the Ottoman Turkish language—which was always highly distinct from standard Turkish—was effectively born. This style of writing under Persian and Arabic influence came to be known as "Divan literature" (Turkish:
divan edebiyatı),
dîvân (ديوان) being the Ottoman Turkish word referring to the collected works of a poet.
Just as Turkish folk poetry was intimately bound up with Turkish folk music, so did Ottoman Divan poetry develop a strong connection with
Turkish classical musicOttoman classical music developed in palaces, mosques, and Mevlevi lodges of the Ottoman Empire. Above all a vocal music, Classical Turkish Music traditionally accompanies a solo singer with a small instrumental ensemble...
, with the poems of the Divan poets often being taken up to serve as song lyrics.
Folk literature
Turkish folk literature is an
oral traditionOral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a settling (or settled) people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle. One example of this is the series of
folktalesFolklore is the body of expressive culture, including stories, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which...
surrounding the figure of Keloğlan, a young boy beset with the difficulties of finding a wife, helping his mother to keep the family house intact, and dealing with the problems caused by his neighbors. Another example is the rather mysterious figure of
NasreddinNasrudin Nasrudin Nasrudin (Persian ملا نصرالدین, Turkish "Nasrettin Hoca", Kurdish "Mella Nasredîn", Arabic: جحا juḥā, نصرالدين naṣr ad-dīn meaning "Victory of the Faith", transl.: Malai Mash-hoor, Albanian "Nastradin Hoxha" or just "Nastradini", Azeri"Molla Nəsrəddin" Bosnian "Nasruddin...
, a
tricksterIn mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
who often plays jokes, of a sort, on his neighbors.
Nasreddin also reflects another significant change that had occurred between the days when the Turkish people were nomadic and the days when they had largely become settled in Anatolia; namely, Nasreddin is a
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
imamAn imam is an Islamic leadership position, often the leader of a mosque and the community. Similar to spiritual leaders, the imam is the one who leads the prayer during Islamic gatherings. More often, the community turns to the mosque imam if they have an Islamic question...
. The Turkic peoples had first become an
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
ic people sometime around the 9th or 10th century, as is evidenced from the clear Islamic influence on the 11th century
KarakhanidKara-Khanid Khanate was a Turkic Khanate founded by the Karakhanids or Qarakhānids, also called the Ilek Khanids , who were a Turkic dynasty. The Khanate ruled Transoxania in Central Asia from 840-1211. Their capitals included Kashgar, Balasagun, Uzgen and then again Kashgar. The name of the state...
work the
Kutadgu BiligThe Kutadgu Bilig, or Qutadğu Bilig , is a Karakhanid work from the 11th century written by an Uyghur author of Balasagun for the prince of Kashgar...
("
Wisdom of Royal Glory"), written by
Yusuf Has HajibYusuf Balasaghuni or Yusuf Khas Hajib Balasaghuni was an 11th century Uyghur scribe from the city of Balasaghun, the capital of the Karakhanid Empire. He wrote the Kutadgu Bilig and most of what is known about him comes from his own writings in this work.Balasagun was located near present-day...
. The religion henceforth came to exercise an enormous influence on Turkish society and literature, particularly the heavily
mystically orientedMysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...
SufiSufism or ' , also spelled as tasavvuf and tasavvof, is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ' , though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals...
and
Shi'aShia Islam , is the second largest denomination of Islam, after Sunni Islam. The followers of Shia Islam are called Shi'as or Shi'ites....
varieties of Islam. The Sufi influence, for instance, can be seen clearly not only in the tales concerning Nasreddin but also in the works of
Yunus EmreYunus Emre was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic. He has exercised immense influence on Turkish literature, from his own day until the present...
, a towering figure in Turkish literature and a poet who lived at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century, probably in the Karamanid state in south-central Anatolia. The Shi'a influence, on the other hand, can be seen extensively in the tradition of the
aşıks, or
ozans, who are roughly akin to medieval European
minstrelA minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary historical events. Though minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
s and who traditionally have had a strong connection with the
AleviThe Alevi are a religious, sub-ethnic and cultural community in Turkey, numbering in the tens of millions . Alevism is considered one of the many branches of Islam. However, Alevi worship takes place in assembly houses rather than mosques. The ceremony , features music and dance...
faith, which can be seen as something of a homegrown Turkish variety of Shi'a Islam. It is, however, important to note that in Turkish culture, such a neat division into Sufi and Shi'a is scarcely possible: for instance, Yunus Emre is considered by some to have been an Alevi, while the entire Turkish
aşık/
ozan tradition is permeated with the thought of the
BektashiBektashism is an Islamic Sufi order , considered to be a distinct branch of Twelver Shi'a Islam. It was founded in the 13th century by the Islamic saint Hajji Bektash Wali...
Sufi
orderTarika may refer to:*Tarika , musical group from Madagascar*Tariqah, school of Sufism...
, which is itself a blending of Shi'a and Sufi concepts. The word
aşık (literally, "lover") is in fact the term used for first-level members of the Bektashi order.
Because the Turkish folk literature tradition extends in a more or less unbroken line from about the 10th or 11th century to today, it is perhaps best to consider the tradition from the perspective of genre. There are three basic genres in the tradition: epic; folk poetry; and folklore.
The epic tradition
The Turkish epic has its roots in the Central Asian epic tradition that gave rise to the
Book of Dede KorkutThe Book of Dede Korkut, also spelled as Dada Gorgud, Dede Qorqut or Korkut-ata , is the most famous epic story of the Oghuz Turks...
, which is in a language recognizably similar to modern Turkish and which developed from the oral traditions of the
Oghuz TurksThe Oghuz were a group of Turkic peoples. In the ninth century the Oghuz Turks from the Aral steppes drove the Pecheneg Turks of the Emba region and the River Ural toward the west...
, that branch of the Turkic peoples which migrated towards
western AsiaWestern Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East - which describes geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than location within Asia...
and
eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
through
TransoxianaTransoxiana is the ancient name used for the portion of Central Asia corresponding approximately with modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southwest Kazakhstan. Geographically, it means the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers...
beginning in the 9th century. The
Book of Dede Korkut continued to survive in the oral tradition after the Oghuz Turks had, by and large, settled in Anatolia.
The
Book of Dede Korkut was the primary element of the Turkish epic tradition in Anatolia for several centuries. Another epic circulating at the same time, however, was the so-called
Epic of KöroğluThe Epic of Köroğlu is a heroic legend prominent in the oral traditions of the Turkic peoples. The legend typically describes a hero who seeks to avenge a wrong. It was often put to music and played at sporting events as an inspiration to the competing athletes.The legend first began to take shape...
, which concerns the adventures of Rüşen Ali ("Köroğlu", or "son of the blind man") to exact revenge for the blinding of his father. The origins of this epic are somewhat more mysterious than those of the
Book of Dede Korkut: many believe it to have arisen in Anatolia sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries; more reliable testimony, though, seems to indicate that the story is nearly as old as that of the
Book of Dede Korkut, dating from around the dawn of the 11th century. Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Köroğlu is also the name of a poet of the
aşık/
ozan tradition.
That the epic tradition in Turkish literature may not have died out entirely can be seen from the
Epic of Shaykh BedreddinSheikh Bedrettin was a revolutionary theologian and charismatic preacher who led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1416. His full name was Şeyh Bedrettin Mahmud Bin İsrail Bin Abdülaziz....
(
Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı), published in 1936 by the poet
Nâzım Hikmet RanNâzım Hikmet Ran , commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet , was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described as a "romantic communist" and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent...
(1901–1963). This long poem—which concerns an Anatolian shaykh's rebellion against the Ottoman
SultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power"...
Mehmed I Mehmed I Çelebi was a Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1413 to 1421.- His nickname :He is nicknamed as;...
—is a sort of modern, written epic that nevertheless draws upon the same independent-minded traditions of the Anatolian people that can be seen in the
Epic of Köroğlu. Also, many of the works of the 20th-century novelist
Yaşar KemalYaşar Kemal is one of Turkey's leading writers. He has long been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, on the strength of Memed, My Hawk....
(1923– ), such as his long 1955 novel
Memed, My HawkMemed, My Hawk is a 1955 novel by Yaşar Kemal. It was Kemal's debut novel and is the first novel in his İnce Memed tetralogy. The novel won the Varlik prize for that year and earned Kemal a national reputation. In 1961, the book was translated into English by Edouard Roditi, thus gaining Kemal...
(
İnce Memed), can be considered modern
proseProse is the ordinary form of written language. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward". Prose is adopted for the discussion of facts and topical reading, as it is often articulated in free form writing style...
epics.
Folk poetry
The folk poetry tradition in Turkish literature, as indicated above, was strongly influenced by the Islamic Sufi and Shi'a traditions. Furthermore, as partly evidenced by the prevalence of the still existent
aşık/
ozan tradition, the dominant element in Turkish folk poetry has always been song. The development of folk poetry in Turkish—which began to emerge in the 13th century with such important writers as Yunus Emre, Sultan Veled, and Şeyyâd Hamza—was given a great boost when, on 13 May 1277, Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey declared Turkish the official state language of Anatolia's powerful Karamanid state; subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region.
There are, broadly speaking, two traditions of Turkish folk poetry:
- the aşık/ozan tradition, which—although much influenced by religion, as mentioned above—was for the most part a secular tradition;
- the explicitly religious tradition, which emerged from the gathering places (tekkes) of the Sufi religious orders and Shi'a groups.
Much of the poetry and song of the
aşık/
ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-known
aşıks from before that time whose names have survived together with their works: the aforementioned Köroğlu (16th century); Karacaoğlan (1606?–1689?), who may be the best-known of the pre-19th century
aşıks; Dadaloğlu (1785?–1868?), who was one of the last of the great
aşıks before the tradition began to dwindle somewhat in the late 19th century; and several others. The
aşıks were essentially minstrels who travelled through Anatolia performing their songs on the
bağlamaright|180pxThe bağlama is a stringed musical instrument shared by various cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean, Near East, and Central Asia. It is sometimes referred to as the saz...
, a
mandolinA mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It is descended from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family...
-like instrument whose paired strings are considered to have a symbolic religious significance in Alevi/Bektashi culture. Despite the decline of the
aşık/
ozan tradition in the 19th century, it experienced a significant revival in the 20th century thanks to such outstanding figures as
Aşık Veysel ŞatıroğluAşık Veysel Şatıroğlu , also known as just Aşık Veysel, was an Alevi Turkish minstrel and highly regarded poet of the Turkish folk literature. He was born in the Sivrialan village of the Şarkışla district, Sivas, on October 25, 1894 and died on March 21, 1973...
(1894–1973),
Aşık Mahzuni ŞerifAşık Mahzuni Şerif , also known as Mahsuni Şerif, was a Turkish folk musician, ashik, composer, poet, and author.Mahzuni Şerif was born in Berçenek village of Afşin, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey in 1940....
(1938–2002), Neşet Ertaş (1943– ), and many others.
The explicitly religious folk tradition of
tekke literature shared a similar basis with the
aşık/
ozan tradition in that the poems were generally intended to be sung, generally in religious gatherings, making them somewhat akin to Western
hymnA hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek , "a song of praise"...
s (Turkish
ilahi). One major difference from the
aşık/
ozan tradition, however, is that—from the very beginning—the poems of the
tekke tradition were written down. This was because they were produced by revered religious figures in the literate environment of the
tekke, as opposed to the milieu of the
aşık/
ozan tradition, where the majority could not read or write. The major figures in the tradition of
tekke literature are: Yunus Emre (1240?–1320?), who is one of the most important figures in all of Turkish literature; Süleyman Çelebi (?–1422), who wrote a highly popular long poem called
Vesîletü'n-Necât (وسيلة النجاة "The Means of Salvation", but more commonly known as the
Mevlid), concerning the
birthMawlid ' is a term used to refer to the observance of the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammad which occurs in Rabi' al-awwal, the...
of the Islamic
prophetIn religion, a prophet is a person who has been contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans...
MuhammadMuhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh , is the founder of the religion of Islam [ إِسْلامْ ] and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets as taught by the...
; Kaygusuz Abdal (1397–?), who is widely considered the founder of Alevi/Bektashi literature; and
Pir Sultan AbdalPir Sultan Abdal , a legendary Turkish Alevi poet, whose direct and clear language as well as the richness of his imagination and the beauty of his verses led him to become a loved among the Turks. Pir Sultan Abdal reflected the social, cultural and religious life of the people; he was a humanist,...
(?–1560), whom many consider to be the pinnacle of that literature.
Folklore
The tradition of folklore—folktales, jokes, legends, and the like—in the Turkish language is very rich. Perhaps the most popular figure in the tradition is the aforementioned
NasreddinNasrudin Nasrudin Nasrudin (Persian ملا نصرالدین, Turkish "Nasrettin Hoca", Kurdish "Mella Nasredîn", Arabic: جحا juḥā, نصرالدين naṣr ad-dīn meaning "Victory of the Faith", transl.: Malai Mash-hoor, Albanian "Nastradin Hoxha" or just "Nastradini", Azeri"Molla Nəsrəddin" Bosnian "Nasruddin...
(known as
Nasreddin Hoca, or "teacher Nasreddin", in Turkish), who is the central character of thousands of jokes. He generally appears as a person who, though seeming somewhat stupid to those who must deal with him, actually proves to have a special wisdom all his own:
One day, Nasreddin's neighbor asked him, "Teacher, do you have any forty-year-old vinegar?"—"Yes, I do," answered Nasreddin.—"Can I have some?" asked the neighbor. "I need some to make an ointment with."—"No, you can't have any," answered Nasreddin. "If I gave my forty-year-old vinegar to whoever wanted some, I wouldn't have had it for forty years, would I?"
Similar to the Nasreddin jokes, and arising from a similar religious milieu, are the Bektashi jokes, in which the members of the Bektashi religious order—represented through a character simply named
Bektaşi—are depicted as having an unusual and unorthodox wisdom, one that often challenges the values of Islam and of society.
Another popular element of Turkish folklore is the shadow theater centered around the two characters of
Karagöz and HacivatKaragöz and Hacivat are the lead characters of the traditional Turkish shadow play, popularized during the Ottoman period...
, who both represent
stock characterA stock character is a stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes, but they are often more narrowly defined...
s: Karagöz—who hails from a small village—is something of a country bumpkin, while Hacivat is a more sophisticated city-dweller. Popular legend has it that the two characters are actually based on two real persons who worked either for
Osman IOsman I, Osman Gazi or Othman I El-Gazi Ottoman: عثمان بن أرطغرل, or Osman Bey or I.Osman or Osman Sayed II) was the leader of the Ottoman Turks, and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire...
—the founder of the
Ottoman dynastyThe Ottoman Dynasty ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1299 to 1922, beginning with Osman I , though the dynasty was not proclaimed until Orhan Bey declared himself sultan...
—or for his successor
Orhan IOrhan I , was the second Bey, or chief, of the nascent Ottoman Empire from 1326 to 1359...
, in the construction of a palace or possibly a mosque at
BursaBursa is a city in northwestern Turkey and the seat of Bursa Province...
in the early 14th century. The two workers supposedly spent much of their time entertaining the other workers, and were so funny and popular that they interfered with work on the palace, and were subsequently
beheadedDecapitation is the separation of the head of an animal from its body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by means of a guillotine...
. Supposedly, however, their bodies then picked up their severed heads and walked away.
Ottoman literature
The two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry and
proseProse is the ordinary form of written language. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward". Prose is adopted for the discussion of facts and topical reading, as it is often articulated in free form writing style...
. Of the two, poetry—specifically, Divan poetry—was by far the dominant stream. Moreover, it should be noted that, until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
; that is, there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European
romanceAs a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about the marvelous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight errant,...
,
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
, or
novelA novel is a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
(though analogous genres did, to some extent, exist in both the Turkish folk tradition and in Divan poetry).
Divan poetry
Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly
ritualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...
ized and
symbolicSymbolism is the use of symbols to represent things such as ideas and emotions. Symbolism is sometimes used to refer specifically to totemic symbols that stand on their own, as opposed to linguistic symbols....
art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of
symbolA symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may stand for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield...
s whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظير
mura'ât-i nazîr / تناسب
tenâsüb) and opposition (تضاد
tezâd)—were more or less prescribed. Examples of prevalent symbols that, to some extent, oppose one another include, among others:
- the nightingale (بلبل bülbül) — the rose (ﮔل gül)
- the world (جهان cihan; عالم ‘âlem) — the rosegarden (ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن gülistan; ﮔﻠﺸﻦ gülşen)
- the ascetic (زاهد zâhid) — the dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus....
(درويش derviş)
As the opposition of "the ascetic" and "the dervish" suggests, Divan poetry—much like Turkish folk poetry—was heavily influenced by Sufi thought. One of the primary characteristics of Divan poetry, however—as of the Persian poetry before it—was its mingling of the mystical Sufi element with a profane and even erotic element. Thus, the pairing of "the nightingale" and "the rose" simultaneously suggests two different relationships:
- the relationship between the fervent lover ("the nightingale") and the inconstant beloved ("the rose")
- the relationship between the individual Sufi practitioner (who is often characterized in Sufism as a lover) and God
Allah is the standard Arabic word for God. While the term is best known in the West for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to "God"...
(who is considered the ultimate source and object of love)
Similarly, "the world" refers simultaneously to the physical world and to this physical world considered as the abode of sorrow and impermanence, while "the rosegarden" refers simultaneously to a literal garden and to the garden of Paradise. "The nightingale", or suffering lover, is often seen as situated—both literally and figuratively—in "the world", while "the rose", or beloved, is seen as being in "the rosegarden".
Divan poetry was composed through the constant juxtaposition of many such images within a strict metrical framework, thus allowing numerous potential meanings to emerge. A brief example is the following line of verse, or
mısra (مصراع), by the 18th-century
judgeQadi is a judge ruling in accordance with the sharia, Islamic religious law. Because Islam makes no distinction between religious and secular domains, qadis traditionally have jurisdiction over all legal matters involving Muslims...
and poet Hayatî Efendi:
- بر گل مى وار بو گلشن ﻋالمدﻪ خارسز
- Bir gül mü var bu gülşen-i ‘âlemde hârsız
Here, the nightingale is only implied (as being the poet/lover), while the rose, or beloved, is shown to be capable of inflicting pain with its thorns (خار
hâr). The world, as a result, is seen as having both positive aspects (it is a rosegarden, and thus analogous to the garden of Paradise) and negative aspects (it is a rosegarden full of thorns, and thus different to the garden of Paradise).
As for the development of Divan poetry over the more than 500 years of its existence, that is—as the Ottomanist Walter G. Andrews points out—a study still in its infancy; clearly defined movements and periods have not yet been decided upon. Early in the history of the tradition, the Persian influence was very strong, but this was mitigated somewhat through the influence of poets such as the
AzerbaijaniThe Azerbaijanis are an ethnic group mainly living in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Commonly referred to as Azeris/Āzarīs or Azeri Turks , they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau...
Nesîmî‘Alī ‘Imādu d-Dīn Nasīmī , often known as Nesimi,
was a 14th-century Turkic Ḥurūfī poet. Known mostly by his pen name of Nesîmî, he composed one Divan in Azerbaijani Turkic, one in Persian, and a number of poems in Arabic...
(?–1417?) and the
UyghurThe Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China....
Ali Şîr Nevâî (1441–1501), both of whom offered strong arguments for the poetic status of the Turkic languages as against the much-venerated Persian. Partly as a result of such arguments, Divan poetry in its strongest period—from the 16th to the 18th centuries—came to display a unique balance of Persian and Turkish elements, until the Persian influence began to predominate again in the early 19th century.
Despite the lack of certainty regarding the stylistic movements and periods of Divan poetry, however, certain highly different styles are clear enough, and can perhaps be seen as exemplified by certain poets:
- Fuzûlî
Fużūlī was the pen name of the Azerbaijani poet, writer and thinker Muhammad bin Suleyman . Often considered one of the greatest contributors to the Dîvân tradition of Azerbaijani literature, Fuzûlî in fact wrote his collected poems in three different languages: Azerbaijani Turkic, Persian, and...
(1483?–1556); a unique poet who wrote with equal skill in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, and who came to be as influential in Persian as in Divan poetry
- Bâkî
Bâḳî was the pen name of the Ottoman Turkish poet Mahmud Abdülbâkî ...
(1526–1600); a poet of great rhetorical power and linguistic subtlety whose skill in using the pre-established tropesIn linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form...
of the Divan tradition is quite representative of the poetry in the time of Süleyman the MagnificentSuleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566...
- Nef‘î (1570?–1635); a poet considered the master of the kasîde (a kind of panegyric
A panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...
), as well as being known for his harshly satirical poems, which led to his executionCapital punishment or the death penalty, is the execution of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences....
- Nâbî (1642–1712); a poet who wrote a number of socially oriented poems critical of the stagnation period
The Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire is the period following the growth of the Ottoman Empire . During this period the empire continued to have military might. The next period would be shaped by the decline of their military power which followed the loss of huge territories...
of Ottoman history
- Nedîm
Ahmet Nedîm Efendi was the pen name of one of the most celebrated Ottoman poets. He achieved his greatest fame during the during the reign of Ahmed III, the so-called Tulip Era from 1718 to 1730...
(1681?–1730); a revolutionary poet of the Tulip EraThe Tulip period or Tulip era is a period in Ottoman history from 1718 to the rebellion of Patrona Halil in 1730. This was a relatively peaceful period, during which the Ottoman Empire can be said to have begun to orient itself towards Europe.The name of the period derives from the tulip craze...
of Ottoman history, who infused the rather élite and abstruse language of Divan poetry with numerous simpler, populist elements
- Şeyh Gâlib (1757–1799); a poet of the Mevlevî
The Mevlevi Order, or the Mevlevilik or Mevleviye are a Sufi order founded in Konya by the followers of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian. They are also known as the Whirling Dervishes due to their famous practice of whirling as a form...
Sufi orderTarika may refer to:*Tarika , musical group from Madagascar*Tariqah, school of Sufism...
whose work is considered the culmination of the highly complex so-called "Indian style" (سبك هندى sebk-i hindî)
The vast majority of Divan poetry was
lyricLyric poetry usually refers nowadays to a short poem that expresses personal feelings. It need not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics 1447a, merely mentions lyric poetry along with drama, epic poetry, dancing, painting and other forms of mimesis...
in nature: either
gazels (which make up the greatest part of the repertoire of the tradition), or
kasîdes. There were, however, other common genres, most particularly the
mesnevî, a kind of verse romance and thus a variety of
narrative poetryNarrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays....
; the two most notable examples of this form are the
Leylî vü Mecnun (ليلى و مجنون) of Fuzûlî and the
Hüsn ü Aşk (حسن و عشق; "Beauty and Love") of Şeyh Gâlib.
Early Ottoman prose
Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose never managed to develop to the extent that contemporary Divan poetry did. A large part of the reason for this was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of
sec (سجع, also transliterated as seci
), or rhymed proseRhymed prose is a literary form and literary genre, written in unmetrical rhymes. This form has been known in many different cultures. In some cases the rhymed prose is a distinctive, well-defined style of writing...
, a type of writing descended from the Arabic saj'Saj‘, سـجـع is a form of rhymed prose in Arabic literature. It is named so because of its evenness or monotony, or from a fancied resemblance between its rhythm and the cooing of a dove. It is a highly artificial style of prose, characterized by a kind of rhythm as well as rhyme...
and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be a
rhymeA rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
.
Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time. This tradition was exclusively
nonfictionalNonfiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. This presentation may be accurate or not; that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question. However, it is generally assumed that the authors of such accounts believe them to be...
in nature—the
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
tradition was limited to narrative poetry. A number of such nonfictional prose genres developed:
- the târih (تاريخ), or history
History is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
, a tradition in which there are many notable writers, including the 15th-century historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
Aşıkpaşazâde and the 17th-century historians Kâtib Çelebi and Naîmâ
- the seyâhatnâme (سياحت نامه), or travelogue
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, of which the outstanding example is the 17th-century SeyahâtnâmeSeyâhatnâme is a Persian term, also used in Ottoman Turkish, which means Book of travels, denoting a literary form and tradition whose examples can be found throughout centuries in the Middle Ages around the Islamic world, starting with the Arab travellers of the Umayyad period.An outstanding...
of Evliya ÇelebiEvliya Çelebi , the son of the imperial goldsmith Derviş Mehmed Zılli and an Abkhazian mother, was a famous Ottoman traveler who journeyed throughout the territories of the Ottoman Empire and the neighbouring lands over a period of forty years.- Life :Çelebi was born in Constantinople in 1611 to...
- the sefâretnâme
Sefâretnâme , literally the book of embassy, was a genre in the Turkish literature which was closely related to seyahatname , but was specific to the recounting of journeys and experiences of an Ottoman ambassador in a foreign, usually European, land and capital...
(سفارت نامه), a related genre specific to the journeys and experiences of an Ottoman ambassadorAn ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents their country. They are usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization, to serve as the official representative of their country....
, and which is best exemplified by the 1718–1720 Paris Sefâretnâmesi of Yirmisekiz Mehmed ÇelebiYirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi Efendi, also Mehmed Efendi or Mehemet Effendi, was an Ottoman statesman who was delegated as ambassador by the Sultan Ahmed III to Louis XV's France in 1720. He is remembered for his account of his embassy mission .Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi was born in Edirne. His date of...
, ambassador to the court of Louis XV of FranceLouis XV ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death on 10 May 1774...
- the siyâsetnâme (سياست نامه), a kind of political treatise describing the functionings of state and offering advice for rulers, an early Seljuk example of which is the 11th-century Siyāsatnāma
Siyāsatnāma , also known as Siyar al-muluk, is the most famous work by Nizam al-Mulk, the founder of Nizamiyyah schools in medieval Persia and vizier to the Seljuq sultans Alp Arslan and Malik Shah...
, written in Persian by Nizam al-MulkAbu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizam al-Mulk was a celebrated Persian scholar and vizier of the Seljuq Empire...
, vizierA vizier is a high-ranking political advisor or minister, often to a Persian Empire's monarchs such as Shah and Shahenshah. It sometimes refers to ministers and advisors of the Muslim's caliph, or sultan...
to the Seljuk rulers Alp ArslanAlp Arslan was the second sultan of the Seljuk dynasty and great-grandson of Seljuk, the eponym of the dynasty...
and Malik Shah IJalāl al-Dawlah Malik-shāh or simply Malik Shāh was the Seljuk sultan from 1072 to 1092....
- the tezkîre (تذکره), a collection of short biographies
A biography is a description or account of someone's life and the times, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography of a person's life written or told by that same person...
of notable figures, some of the most notable of which were the 16th-century tezkiretü'ş-şuarâs (تذكرة الشعرا), or biographies of poets, by Latîfî and Aşık Çelebi
- the münşeât (منشآت), a collection of writings and letters similar to the Western tradition of belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....
- the münâzara (مناظره), a collection of debate
Debate or debating is a formal method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examine the consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examine what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is technique of...
s of either a religious or a philosophical nature
The 19th century and Western influence
By the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had become
moribundThe term "Sick man of Europe" is a nickname that has been used from time to time, to describe a European country experiencing a time of economic difficulty and/or poverty.-Origin:...
. Attempts to right this situation had begun during the reign of
Sultan Selim IIISelim III
was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. He was a son of Mustafa III and succeeded his uncle Abdülhamid I . He was born in Istanbul. His mother was Valide Sultan Mihr-i shah...
, from 1789 to 1807, but were continuously thwarted by the powerful
Janissary corpsThe Janissaries comprised infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards...
. As a result, only after
Sultan Mahmud IIMahmud II
was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839. He was born at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, the son of Sultan Abdul Hamid I. His reign is notable mostly for the extensive legal and military reforms he instituted...
had abolished the Janissary corps in 1826 was the way paved for truly effective reforms (Ottoman Turkish: تنظيمات tanzîmât).
These reforms finally came to the empire during the
Tanzimat periodThe Tanzimat , meaning reorganization of the Ottoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. The Tanzimat reform era was characterized by various attempts to modernize the Ottoman Empire, to secure its territorial integrity against...
of 1839–1876, when much of the Ottoman system was reorganized along largely
French linesCivil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges. The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which...
. The Tanzimat reforms "were designed both to modernize the empire and to forestall foreign intervention".
Along with reforms to the Ottoman system, serious reforms were also undertaken in the literature, which had become nearly as moribund as the empire itself. Broadly, these literary reforms can be grouped into two areas:
- changes brought to the language of Ottoman written literature;
- the introduction into Ottoman literature of previously unknown genres.
The reforms to the literary language were undertaken because the Ottoman Turkish language was thought by the reformists to have effectively lost its way. It had become more divorced than ever from its original basis in Turkish, with writers using more and more words and even grammatical structures derived from Persian and Arabic, rather than Turkish. Meanwhile, however, the Turkish folk literature tradition of Anatolia, away from the capital
ConstantinopleIstanbul is the largest city in Turkey and fifth largest city proper in the world with a population of 12.6 million. Istanbul is also a megacity, as well as the cultural and financial centre of Turkey. The city covers 39 districts of the Istanbul province...
, came to be seen as an ideal. Accordingly, many of the reformists called for written literature to turn away from the Divan tradition and towards the folk tradition; this call for change can be seen, for example, in a famous statement by the poet and reformist Ziya
PashaPasha or pacha, formerly bashaw, was a high rank in the Ottoman Empire political system, typically granted to governors, generals and dignitaries...
(1829–1880):
Our language is not Ottoman; it is Turkish. What makes up our poetic canon is not gazels and kasîdes, but rather kayabaşıs, üçlemes, and çöğürs', which some of our poets dislike, thinking them crude. But just let those with the ability exert the effort on this road [of change], and what powerful personalities will soon be born!
At the same time as this call—which reveals something of a burgeoning
national consciousnessNationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...
—was being made, new literary genres were being introduced into Ottoman literature, primarily the novel and the short story. This trend began in 1861, with the translation into Ottoman Turkish of
François FénelonFrançois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, more commonly known as François Fénelon , was a French Roman Catholic theologian, poet and writer...
's 1699 novel Les aventures de Télémaque
, by Yusuf Kâmil Pasha, Grand VizierA vizier is a high-ranking political advisor or minister, often to a Persian Empire's monarchs such as Shah and Shahenshah. It sometimes refers to ministers and advisors of the Muslim's caliph, or sultan...
to Sultan Abdülaziz. What is widely recognized as the first Turkish novel, Taaşuk-u Tal'at ve Fitnat (تعشق طلعت و فطنت; "Tal'at and Fitnat In Love") by Şemsettin Sami (1850–1904), was published just ten years later, in 1872. The introduction of such new genres into Turkish literature can be seen as part of a trend towards
WesternizationWestern culture refers to cultures of European origin.The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies...
that continues to be felt in Turkey to this day.
Due to historically close ties with
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
—strengthened during the
Crimean WarThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
of 1854–1856—it was
French literatureFrench literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak other traditional non-French languages. Literature written by citizens of other nations such as...
that came to constitute the major Western influence on Turkish literature throughout the latter half of the 19th century. As a result, many of the same movements prevalent in France during this period also had their equivalents in the Ottoman Empire: in the developing Ottoman prose tradition, for instance, the influence of
RomanticismRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
can be seen during the Tanzimat period, and that of the
RealistRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
and
NaturalistNaturalism is a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Naturalism is the outgrowth of Realism, a prominent literary...
movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other hand, it was the influence of the
SymbolistSymbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the movement had its roots in Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and Parnassian movements that became paramount.
Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously: for instance, the poet
Nâmık KemalNamık Kemal, born as Mehmed Kemal was a Turkish nationalist poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, translator and social reformer. Namık Kemal greatly influenced the Young Turk and Turkish nationalist movements and contributed to the Modernization of the Turkish language...
(1840–1888) also wrote the important 1876 novel İntibâh
(انتباه; "Awakening"), while the journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
Şinasi (1826–1871) is noted for writing, in 1860, the first modern Turkish play, the one-actA one-act play is a play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over several acts. One-act plays may consist of one or more scenes. In recent years the 10-minute play known as "flash drama" has emerged as a popular sub-genre of the one-act play, especially in writing competitions...
comedyComedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece...
"Şair Evlenmesi
" (شاعر اولنمسى; "The Poet's Marriage"). In a similar vein, the novelist Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844–1912) wrote important novels in each of the major movements: Romanticism (حسن ملاح ياخود سر ايچيكده اسرار Hasan Mellâh yâhud Sırr İçinde Esrâr
, 1873; "Hasan the Sailor, or The Mystery Within the Mystery
"), Realism (هﻨﻮز اون يدى يشکده Henüz On Yedi Yaşında
, 1881; "Just Seventeen Years Old
"), and Naturalism (مشاهدات Müşâhedât
, 1891; "Observations"). This diversity was, in part, due to the Tanzimat writers' wish to disseminate as much of the new literature as possible, in the hopes that it would contribute to a revitalization of Ottoman
social structureSocial structure is a term used in sociology and anthropology to refer to relationships or bonds between groups of individuals . Whereas 'structure' refers to "the macro", "agency" refers to "the micro"...
s.
Early 20th-century Turkish literature
Most of the roots of modern Turkish literature were formed between the years 1896—when the first collective literary movement arose—and 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was officially founded. Broadly, there were three primary literary movements during this period:
- the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde (ادبيات جدیده; "New Literature") movement
- the Fecr-i Âtî (فجر آتى; "Dawn of the Future") movement
- the Millî Edebiyyât (ملى ادبيات; "National Literature") movement
The New Literature movement
The Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde
, or "New Literature", movement began with the founding in 1891 of the magazine Servet-i Fünûn (ﺛﺮوت ﻓﻨﻮن; "Scientific Wealth"), which was largely devoted to progress—both intellectual and scientific—along the Western model. Accordingly, the magazine's literary ventures, under the direction of the poet
Tevfik FikretTevfik Fikret was the pseudonym of Turkish poet Mehmed Tevfik.-Biography:Tevfik Fikret was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, in 1867...
(1867–1915), were geared towards creating a Western-style "
high artHigh culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture. In more popular terms, it is the culture of an elite such as the aristocracy or intelligentsia...
" in Turkey. The poetry of the group—of which Tevfik Fikret and Cenâb Şehâbeddîn (1870–1934) were the most influential proponents—was heavily influenced by the French Parnassian movement and the so-called "
DecadentDecadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
" poets. The group's prose writers, on the other hand—particularly
Halit Ziya UşaklıgilHalit Ziya Uşaklıgil was a Turkish author.-Biography:Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil was born in Istanbul in 1867. He went to primary school and then attended the secondary school Fatih Rustiyesi in the same city. His family moved to Izmir in 1879. He completed his secondary education in Izmir...
(1867–1945)—were primarily influenced by Realism, although the writer Mehmed Rauf (1875–1931) did write the first Turkish example of a
psychological novelA psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...
, 1901's Eylül
(ايلول; "September"). The language of the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde
movement remained strongly influenced by Ottoman Turkish.
In 1901, as a result of the article "Edebiyyât ve Hukuk
" (ادبيات و ﺣﻘﻮق; "Literature and Law"), translated from French and published in Servet-i Fünûn
, the pressure of censorshipCensorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
was brought to bear and the magazine was closed down by the government of the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid IIHis Imperial Majesty, The Sultan Abdülhamid II, Emperor of the Ottomans, Caliph of the Faithful, , was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire...
. Though it was closed for only six months, the group's writers each went their own way in the meantime, and the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde
movement came to an end.
The Dawn of the Future movement
In the 24 February 1909 edition of the Servet-i Fünûn
magazine, a gathering of young writers—soon to be known as the Fecr-i Âtî
("Dawn of the Future") group—released a manifestoA manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. However, manifestos relating to religious belief are rather referred to as credo. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
in which they declared their opposition to the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde
movement and their adherence to the credo, "Sanat şahsî ve muhteremdir
" (صنعت شخصى و محترمدر; "Art is personal and sacred"). Though this credo was little more than a variation of the French writer Théophile GautierPierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and literary critic.While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism,...
's doctrine of "l'art pour l'art"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendition of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
", or "art for art's sake", the group was nonetheless opposed to the blanket importation of Western forms and styles, and essentially sought to create a recognizably Turkish literature. The Fecr-i Âtî group, however, never made a clear and unequivocal declaration of its goals and principles, and so lasted only a few years before its adherents each went their own individual way. The two outstanding figures to emerge from the movement were, in poetry, Ahmed Hâşim (1884–1933), and in prose,
Yakup Kadri KaraosmanoğluYakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu was a Turkish novelist, journalist, diplomat, and senator.-Early life:...
(1889–1974).
The National Literature movement
In 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II had instituted a
constitutional governmentA constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a written , unwritten or blended constitution...
, and the
parliamentThe Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire began shortly after Sultan Abdülhamid II restored the constitutional monarchy after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. The period established many political groups...
subsequently elected was composed almost entirely of members of the Committee of Union and Progress (also known as the "
Young TurksThe Young Turks were a coalition of various groups favoring reformation of the administration of the Ottoman Empire. The movement was against the monarchy of Ottoman Sultan and favored a re-installation of the shortlived Kanûn-ı Esâsî constitution...
"). The Young Turks (ژون تورکلر Jön Türkler
) had opposed themselves to the increasingly authoritarianAuthoritarianism describes a form of government characterized by an emphasis on the authority of state in a republic or union. It is a political system controlled by typically non-elected rulers who usually permit some degree of individual freedom....
Ottoman government, and soon came to identify themselves with a specifically Turkish national identity. Along with this notion developed the idea of a Turkish and even pan-TurkishPan-Turkism is a political movement started more than 100 years ago aiming to unite the various Turkic peoples into a modern political state.-Name:...
nationA nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin. The development and conceptualization of the nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries,...
(Turkish: millet
), and so the literature of this period came to be known as "National Literature" (Turkish: millî edebiyyât
). It was during this period that the Persian- and Arabic-inflected Ottoman Turkish language was definitively turned away from as a vehicle for written literature, and that literature began to assert itself as being specifically Turkish, rather than Ottoman.
At first, this movement crystallized around the magazine Genç Kalemler
(کنج قلملر; "Young Pens"), which was begun in the city of SelânikThessaloniki , Thessalonica, or Salonica is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia. It is honorarily called the Συμπρωτεύουσα Symprotevousa of Greece, as it was once called the συμβασιλεύουσα symvasilevousa of the Byzantine Empire...
in 1911 by the three writers who were most representative of the movement: Ziya GökalpZiya Gökalp was a Turkish sociologist, writer, poet, and political activist. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, he adopted the pen name Gökalp , which he retained for the rest of his life...
(1876–1924), a sociologist and thinker; Ömer SeyfettinÖmer Seyfettin, also Omer Seyfeddin, was a Turkish nationalist writer from late 19th to early 20th century, considered to be one of the greatest modern Turkish authors...
(1884–1920), a short-story writer; and Ali Canip Yöntem (1887–1967), a poet. In Genç Kalemlers first issue, an article entitled "New Language" (Turkish: "
Yeni Lisan") pointed out that Turkish literature had previously looked for inspiration either to the
EastThe term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures, social structures and philosophical systems of "the East", namely Asia and Eastern Europe ....
as in the Ottoman Divan tradition, or to the
WestThe Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context...
as in the
Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde and
Fecr-i Âtî movements, without ever turning to Turkey itself. This latter was the National Literature movement's primary aim.
The intrinsically nationalistic character of
Genç Kalemler, however, quickly took a decidedly
chauvinisticChauvinism, , in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a blind belief in national superiority and glory. By extension it has come to include an extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of any group to which one belongs, especially when the...
turn, and other writers—many of whom, like Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, had been a part of the
Fecr-i Âtî movement—began to emerge from within the matrix of the National Literature movement to counter this trend. Some of the more influential writers to come out of this less
far-rightistFar right, extreme right, hard right, ultra-right or radical right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within a political spectrum...
branch of the National Literature movement were the poet Mehmet Emin Yurdakul (1869–1944), the early
feministThe term Feminism can be used to describe an academic discourse, or to describe a political, cultural or economic movement aimed at establishing more rights and legal protection for women...
novelist Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964), and the short-story writer and novelist
Reşat Nuri GüntekinReşat Nuri Güntekin was a Turkish novelist, storywriter and playwright. His novel, Çalıkuşu is about the destiny of a young Turkish female teacher in Anatolia; the movie was filmed on this book in 1966, and remade as TV series in 1986. His narrative has a detailed and precise style, with a...
(1889–1956).
Post-independence literature
Following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the
First World WarWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
of 1914–1918, the victorious
Entente PowersThe Entente powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The key members of the Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire. New Zealand, Belgium, Serbia, Canada, Australia, Italy, Romania and the United States were also drawn into the war...
began the process of carving up the empire's lands and placing them under their own
spheres of influenceIn the field of international relations, a sphere of influence is an area or region over which a state or organization has significant cultural, economic, military or political influence....
. In opposition to this process, the military leader Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), in command of the growing
Turkish national movementThe Turkish National Movement encompasses the political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries which resulted in the creation and shaping of the Republic of Turkey, a consequence of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.Turkish revolutionaries...
whose roots lay partly in the Young Turks, organized the 1919–1923
Turkish War of IndependenceThe Turkish War of Independence is the political and military resistance developed by Turkish Nationalists to the Allied partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in World War I...
. This war ended with the official ending of the Ottoman Empire, the expulsion of the Entente Powers, and the founding of the Republic of Turkey.
The literature of the new republic emerged largely from the pre-independence National Literature movement, with its roots simultaneously in the Turkish folk tradition and in the Western notion of progress. One important change to Turkish literature was enacted in 1928, when Mustafa Kemal initiated the creation and dissemination of a
modified versionThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, a certain number of which have been adapted or modified for the phonetic requirements of the language.These letters are:...
of the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman script. Over time, this change—together with changes in Turkey's system of education—would lead to more widespread
literacyLiteracy is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. In everyday terms, "literacy" is typically described as the ability to read and write...
in the country.
Prose
Stylistically, the prose of the early years of the Republic of Turkey was essentially a continuation of the National Literature movement, with Realism and Naturalism predominating. This trend culminated in the 1932 novel
Yaban ("
The Wilds"), by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. This novel can be seen as the precursor to two trends that would soon develop:
social realismSocial Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
, and the "village novel" (
köy romanı).
ÇalıkuşuÇalıkuşu, or The Wren, is the novel of Reşat Nuri Güntekin written in 1922, about the destiny of a young Turkish female teacher named Feride in Anatolia.-Translations:...
("
The Wren") by
Reşat Nuri GüntekinReşat Nuri Güntekin was a Turkish novelist, storywriter and playwright. His novel, Çalıkuşu is about the destiny of a young Turkish female teacher in Anatolia; the movie was filmed on this book in 1966, and remade as TV series in 1986. His narrative has a detailed and precise style, with a...
addresses a similar theme with the works of Karaosmanoğlu. Güntekin's narrative has a detailed and precise style, with a realistic tone.
The social realist movement is perhaps best represented by the short-story writer Sait Faik Abasıyanık (1906–1954), whose work sensitively and realistically treats the lives of cosmopolitan Istanbul's
lower classesWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
and ethnic minorities, subjects which led to some criticism in the contemporary nationalistic atmosphere. The tradition of the "village novel", on the other hand, arose somewhat later. As its name suggests, the "village novel" deals, in a generally realistic manner, with life in the villages and small towns of Turkey. The major writers in this tradition are Kemal Tahir (1910–1973), Orhan Kemal (1914–1970), and Yaşar Kemal (1923– ). Yaşar Kemal, in particular, has earned fame outside of Turkey not only for his novels—many of which, such as 1955's
İnce Memed ("
Memed, My Hawk"), elevate local tales to the level of epic—but also for his firmly leftist political stance. In a very different tradition, but evincing a similar strong political viewpoint, was the
satiricalSatire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods,...
short-story writer
Aziz NesinAziz Nesin was a Turkish famous writer and humorist, and author of more than 100 books.-Biography:...
(1915–1995) and
Rıfat IlgazRıfat Ilgaz was a poet who was born in Cide, Kastamonu, Turkey. He was a teacher, poet, and writer. Ilgaz was one of Turkey’s best-known and most prolific poets and writers, having authored over sixty works.-Biography:...
(1911-1993).
Another novelist contemporary to, but outside of, the social realist and "village novel" traditions is
Ahmet Hamdi TanpınarAhmet Hamdi Tanpınar was one of the most important modern novelists and essayists of Turkish literature. He was also a member of the Turkish parliament between 1942 and 1946.-Biography:...
(1901–1962). In addition to being an important
essayAn essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author....
ist and poet, Tanpınar wrote a number of novels—such as
Huzur ("
Tranquillity", 1949) and
Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü ("
The Time Regulation Institute", 1961)—which dramatize the clash between East and West in modern Turkish culture and society. Similar problems are explored by the novelist and short-story writer
Oğuz AtayOğuz Atay was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar , appeared 1971-72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984...
(1934–1977). Unlike Tanpınar, however, Atay—in such works as his long novel
TutunamayanlarTutunamayanlar is the first novel of Oguz Atay, one of the most prominent Turkish authors. It was written in 1970-71 and published in 1972. Although it was never reprinted in his lifetime and was controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984...
("
The Disconnected", 1971–1972) and his short story "
Beyaz Mantolu Adam" (
"Man in a White Coat", 1975)—wrote in a more
modernistModernist literature is the literary expression of the tendencies of Modernism, especially High modernism.Modernism as a literary movement reached its height in Europe between 1900 and the middle 1920s. Modernist literature addressed aesthetic problems similar to those examined in non-literary...
and
existentialistLike “rationalism” and “empiricism,” “existentialism” is a term that belongs to intellectual history. Its definition is thus to some extent one of historical convenience...
vein. On the other hand,
Onat KutlarMehmet Arif Onat Kutlar , also known as Onat Kutlar, was a prominent Turkish writer and poet, founder of the Turkish Sinematek and one of the founders of the Istanbul International Film Festival.-Biography:...
's
İshak ("
Isaac", 1959), composed of nine short stories which are written mainly from a child's
point of viewThe narrative mode is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. The collection of all narrative modes in order to construct a complete narrative is also called the narration ; the terms are sometimes differentiated...
and are often surrealistic and mystical, represent a very early example of
magic realismMagic realism, or magical realism, is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting...
.
The tradition of literary modernism also informs the work of novelist Adalet Ağaoğlu (1929– ). Her trilogy of novels collectively entitled
Dar Zamanlar ("
Tight Times", 1973–1987), for instance, examines the changes that occurred in Turkish society between the 1930s and the 1980s in a formally and technically innovative style.
Orhan PamukFerit Orhan Pamuk generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
(1952– ), winner of the 2006
Nobel Prize in LiteratureThe Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
, is another such innovative novelist, though his works—such as 1990's
Beyaz Kale ("
The White CastleThe White Castle is a novel by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.-Plot introduction:The story is about a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples who is taken prisoner by the Ottoman Empire...
") and
Kara Kitap ("
The Black BookThe Black Book is a novel by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. It was published in Turkish in 1990 and first translated and published in English in 1994...
") and 1998's
Benim Adım Kırmızı ("
My Name is RedMy Name Is Red is a Turkish novel by Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk. It won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003, as well as the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger and Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour awards in 2002...
")—are influenced more by
postmodernismThe term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature...
than by modernism. This is true also of
Latife TekinLatife Tekin is one of the most influential Turkish female authors. She was born in 1957 in Kayseri, Turkey. She continued her education in Istanbul. In 1983, her famous novel Sevgili Arsız Ölüm was published. The magic realism in the book was drawn from the Anatolian folklore and traditions...
(1957– ), whose first novel
Sevgili Arsız Ölüm ("
Dear Shameless Death", 1983) shows the influence not only of postmodernism, but also of magic realism.
Poetry
In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, there were a number of poetic trends. Authors such as Ahmed Hâşim and Yahyâ Kemâl Beyatlı (1884–1958) continued to write important formal verse whose language was, to a great extent, a continuation of the late Ottoman tradition. By far the majority of the poetry of the time, however, was in the tradition of the folk-inspired "syllabist" movement (
Beş Hececiler), which had emerged from the National Literature movement and which tended to express
patrioticPatriotism is love of and/or devotion to one's country. The word comes from the Greek patris, meaning fatherland. However, patriotism has had different meanings over time, and its meaning is highly dependent upon context, geography and philosophy....
themes couched in the syllabic meter associated with Turkish folk poetry.
The first radical step away from this trend was taken by
Nâzım Hikmet RanNâzım Hikmet Ran , commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet , was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described as a "romantic communist" and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent...
, who—during his time as a student in the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
from 1921 to 1924—was exposed to the modernist poetry of
Vladimir MayakovskyVladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
and others, which inspired him to start writing verse in a less formal style. At this time, he wrote the poem "
Açların Gözbebekleri" ("Pupils of the Hungry"), which introduced
free verseFree verse - also known as vers libre - is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using a strict rhyme scheme, but still recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.-Types:Philip...
into the Turkish language for, essentially, the first time. Much of Nâzım Hikmet's poetry subsequent to this breakthrough would continue to be written in free verse, though his work exerted little influence for some time due largely to
censorshipCensorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
of his work owing to his
CommunistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
political stance, which also led to his spending several years in prison. Over time, in such books as
Simavne Kadısı Oğlu Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı ("
The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin, Son of Judge Simavne", 1936) and
Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları ("
Human Landscapes from My Country", 1939), he developed a voice simultaneously proclamatory and subtle.
Another revolution in Turkish poetry came about in 1941 with the publication of a small volume of verse preceded by an essay and entitled
GaripGarip was a group of Turkish poets. Also known as I. New Movement.It was composed of Orhan Veli, Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet, who had been friends since high school. They made their mark with a 1941 joint collection entitled Garip. After O.Veli's death in 1950, the two remaining friends developed...
("
Strange"). The authors were
Orhan Veli KanıkOrhan Veli Kanık was a Turkish poet. Together with Oktay Rıfat and Melih Cevdet, he founded the Garip Movement.-Biography:...
(1914–1950), Melih Cevdet Anday (1915–2002), and Oktay Rifat (1914–1988). Explicitly opposing themselves to everything that had gone in poetry before, they sought instead to create a popular art, "to explore the people's tastes, to determine them, and to make them reign supreme over art". To this end, and inspired in part by contemporary French poets like
Jacques PrévertJacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. -Life:Prevert was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine and grew up in Paris, where he was bored by school. He often went to theatre with his father, a drama critic, and acquired a love of reading from his mother...
, they employed not only a variant of the free verse introduced by Nâzım Hikmet, but also highly
colloquial languageA colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics. Colloquialisms are also sometimes referred to collectively as "colloquial language". Colloquialisms or colloquial language is considered to be characteristic of or only appropriate for casual, ordinary,...
, and wrote primarily about mundane daily subjects and the ordinary man on the street. The reaction was immediate and polarized: most of the
academic establishmentAcademia, Acadème, or the Academy are collective terms for the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research....
and older poets vilified them, while much of the Turkish population embraced them wholeheartedly. Though the movement itself lasted only ten years—until Orhan Veli's death in 1950, after which Melih Cevdet Anday and Oktay Rifat moved on to other styles—its effect on Turkish poetry continues to be felt today.
Just as the Garip movement was a reaction against earlier poetry, so—in the 1950s and afterwards—was there a reaction against the Garip movement. The poets of this movement, soon known as
İkinci Yeni ("Second New"), opposed themselves to the social aspects prevalent in the poetry of Nâzım Hikmet and the Garip poets, and instead—partly inspired by the disruption of language in such Western movements as
DadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and
SurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
—sought to create a more abstract poetry through the use of jarring and unexpected language, complex images, and the association of ideas. To some extent, the movement can be seen as bearing some of the characteristics of postmodern literature. The most well-known poets writing in the "Second New" vein were Turgut Uyar (1927–1985), Edip Cansever (1928–1986),
Cemal SüreyaCemal Süreya was a Turkish poet and writer.-Biography:He graduated from the Political Sciences Faculty of Ankara University. He was the editor-in-chief of the Papirus literary magazine...
(1931–1990), Ece Ayhan (1931–2002), Sezai Karakoç (1933- ) and
İlhan Berkİlhan Berk was a leading contemporary Turkish poet. He was a dominant figure in the postmodern current in Turkish poetry and was very influential among Turkish literary circles -Biography:Berk was born in Manisa, Turkey in 1918 and received a teacher's training in Balıkesir...
(1918– ).
Outside of the Garip and "Second New" movements also, a number of significant poets have flourished, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1914– ), who wrote poems dealing with fundamental concepts like life, death, God, time, and the cosmos; Behçet Necatigil (1916–1979), whose somewhat
allegoricalAllegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal. An allegory is a device that can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture...
poems explore the significance of
middle-classThe middle class are any class in the middle of a social schema. In Weberian socio-economic terms they are the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socioeconomically between the working class and upper class. In Marxist terms, middle class commonly refers to either the...
daily life; Can Yücel (1926–1999), who—in addition to his own highly colloquial and varied poetry—was also a translator into Turkish of a variety of world literature; and
İsmet Özelİsmet Özel is a Turkish poet and scholar.-Early years:Özel is the sixth child of a police officer from Söke. He attended his primary and secondary school in Kastamonu, Çankırı and Ankara...
(1944– ), whose early poetry was highly
leftistIn politics, left-wing, political left, leftist and the Left are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege...
but whose poetry since the 1970s has shown a strong
mysticalMysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...
and even
IslamistIslamism is a set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system; that modern Muslims must return to their roots of their religion, and unite politically....
influence.
Book Trade
30 000 new titles appear yearly, often in small numbers. 9 verso 17 Euro (pro pocket book/hardcover) - at an average earning of less than 600 Euro monthly - are rather unattractive, where illegal copies at bazaars cost two thirds less. "Official Certificates" for legally published books do not solve the problem, because controlling the illegal book trade remains difficult.
5000 of 10 000 book shops in Turkey are in Istanbul, including the bookfair and growing licence trading. Turkey was a guest of honour at the Frankfurt Bookfair in 2008.
In English
In Turkish
- Divan Edebiyatı, a website with many examples of Ottoman Divan poetry
- ATON, the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative
The Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative is a searchable archive of oral Turkish literature. The archive is housed in the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, United States. It includes links to numerous audio recordings in MP3...
, a searchable archive of oral literature based at Texas Tech UniversityTexas Tech University, often referred to as Texas Tech or TTU, is a public, coeducational, research university in Lubbock, Texas, United States. Established on February 10, 1923, and originally known as Texas Technological College, it is the leading institution of the Texas Tech University System...
and containing links to numerous MP3 files