Literature: Turkish

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LITERATURE: TURKISH

National literature that began during the Tanzimat period of the Ottoman Empire.

Halide Edip Adivar, Nazim Hikmet, Sait Faik Abasiyanik, Fazil Hüsnü Dağlarca, Nüsret Aziz Nesin, Yaşar Kemal, and, more recently, Orhan Pamuk are writers whose works are known outside of Turkey.
As more translations appear—the latest is a post-modernist novel titled Gece (Night), by Bilge Karasu—an increasing number of works are being recognized as having universal appeal. The literature represented evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century with a group of writers who were members of the bureaucratic intelligentsia. Committed to the Tanzimat reforms, they sought to bring change to literature as well, making it a vehicle for influencing sociopolitical thinking and culture in general. At its inception, therefore, modern Turkish literature has set both didactic and aesthetic goals: to be an art form and source of enjoyment, but also to be engaged.

The pioneers of modernism—İbrahim Şinasi (1826–1871), Namik Kemal (1840–1888), and Ziya Paşa (1825–1880)—were familiar with European literatures and had lived in Europe. They witnessed the central role literature played there, a role lacking in Turkey, where two distinct literary traditions (elitist and popular) split society. The first, following Arab-Persian classical Islamic tradition and seeking artistic perfection rather than social reality, gave priority to poetry (divan şiiri); was rigid in verse form, meter, and rhyme patterns, highly sophisticated in rhetoric and imagery; and employed language saturated with Arabic and Persian loanwords largely unintelligible to the masses. The second was based on Turkish folk traditions of form, content, and style in both poetry and prose, and linked the Turks to their Central Asian heritage. In general it was denigrated by the small, educated class. Religiously inspired works, many of them mystic, were important in both traditions.

In the 1860s the Şinasi-Namik Kemal-Ziya Paşa school took the first steps toward modernity. Through translation and adaptation (primarily from French), then original composition, they introduced Western-style poetry and fiction, and wrote the first Turkish plays designed for the modern stage. They also turned to journalism—the Tasvir-i Efkar (Description of ideas) was the principal forum for introducing their works—and accustomed readers to editorials, essays, and literary criticism propagating such concepts as fatherland, patriotism, nation, justice, freedom, and constitutional government. They did not completely reject the past, but gave old poetic forms new elements of content and style, using language more comprehensible to the expanding, middle-class reading public. This movement surged again under the republic, resulting in the romanization of the alphabet and measures to produce an öz türkçe (pure Turkish), both of which had a great effect on literature.

These writers lauded proreform statesmen and satirized traditionalists. They targeted social customs like arranged marriages and moralized against the harem system, marital infidelity, prostitution, and inhuman treatment of slaves. Namik Kemal's play Vatan yahut Silistre (Fatherland or Silistria, 1873) caused antiregime demonstrations, and he spent many years in exile as a result. He and his colleagues put reform before creative art, and in articles and prefaces to their works stressed the didactic and social role of literature. Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan (1852–1939) and Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem (1847–1914), in contrast, showed increasing concern with aesthetics. Ekrem, a teacher, published his lectures, which displayed his knowledge of Western literature and concern for liberating Ottoman poetic style, and was led into a literary battle with Muallim Naci, represented (somewhat unjustly) as the prime defender of the old style. Ekrem also influenced the literary school that flourished in the 1890s, the Edebiyat-i Cedide (New Literature) or Servet-i Fünun (Wealth of Sciences), the latter the title of the journal serving as its main platform. Its leading poets, Tevfik Fikret (1867–1916) and Cenap Sehabettin (1870–1934), spoke lyrically of love and nature in a Turkish inspired by the language of the divan poets. Fikret also wrote very provocative antiregime poems.

In fiction, building on the pioneer efforts of Ahmet (1844–1912), the leading prose writer, Halit Ziya Uşhakliğil (1866–1945), brought to his novels a more developed literary realism and psychological analysis. His two collections of prose poems show an inclination for artistry that set a trend followed by his contemporary Mehmet Rauf (1875–1931), and still finds the occasional follower today.

Although the 1908 constitutional period brought hope to writers after the repressive control of Abdülhamit II, further Ottoman decline and Europe's antagonism engendered permission and anti-Western outbursts among writers of the Fecr-i Ati (Dawn of the Future) group that formed in 1909. Meanwhile, a current of Nationalism gained strength, poets such as Mehmet Emin Yurdakul (1869–1944) proclaiming pride in being a Turk and turning to the folk tradition for verse form, meter, and language. The presence in the empire of émigré Turks from Russia fanned consciousness of belonging to a wider "Turanian" nation, and groups of scholars and writers, including Yusuf Akçuroğlu (1876–1935), Mehmet Fuat Köprülü (1890–1966), and Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), promoted study of the early history and culture of the Turks. The most important group was Genç Kalemler (Young Pens), formed in 1910, which stressed language reform. Despite strong romanticism, the short stories of its leader, Ömer Seyfettin, represent a breakthrough in the strongest in modern Turkish literature.

World War I and the War of Independence, culminating in the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Turkish Republic, presented writers with a fresh panorama of people, places, and events to observe and depict, even greater possibilities for artistic choice through emphasis on Westernization, and an ever-increasing array of readers. Novelists of the older generation, such as Halide Edip Adivar (1884–1964), the first important activist woman writer; Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (1889–1974) and Reşat Nuri Güntekin (1889–1956), represent an important advance in both narrative and character analysis, their works depicting the weaknesses of late Ottoman society, the inner conflicts of its people, the surge of patriotism during the War of Independence, and the new roles of women.

In poetry, three prominent poets adhered to the classical meter and verse form: Yahya Kemal Beyath (1884–1958), a neoclassicist who expressed his nationalism by nostalgically recalling Ottoman splendors; Ahmet Haşim (1885–1933), a symbolist steadfast in an art for art's sake approach, painting dreamlike vignettes of nature in its most tranquil moments; and Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873–1936), who, although also choosing the classical traditions, wrote in a language very close to prose and spoken Turkish.

Of the many ideologies to which the Turks were exposed from the early days of the Republic, communism captivated Nazim Hikmet (1902–1963), the major poet of the century. Having been imprisoned for many years, he fled Turkey in 1951 and spent his remaining years behind the Iron Curtain. He fashioned Turkish free verse, and his works (prison poetry, love lyrics, social or political declamation, long narrative verse) display a striking fluidity of language and a new depth of human understanding. Only Fazil Hüsnü Dağlarca (b. 1914), with the breadth of his aesthetic view and intellectual delving into the metaphysical, approaches his stature.

Of prime importance has been the development of realist village literature. Urban-born nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century writers seldom focused on Anatolia and its rural population. With the center of government moved to Anatolia, and especially after the introduction of a two-party system, the villager became a focus of attention for fiction writers, who now included those born in villages or closely familar with village life. Yaşar Kemal writes of the plight of the peasants in the Taurus Mountains and Çukurova Plain. Other writers have followed the villagers in their migration to country towns or big cities. In recent years an increasing number of works have drawn attention to the problems facing Turks who have migrated to Germany and other European countries since the late 1960s. Among other writers who depict the "little man" with deep understanding are Nüsret Aziz Nesin (b. 1915) and Sait Faik Abasiyanik, who has over 100 short stories set in Istanbul, nearly half of them on the island of Burgaz, revealing the life of the fisher-folk on the Sea of Marmara.

Poets also turned to the "common man." In 1941, Ornan Veli (1914–1950), Oktay Rifat (1914–1988), and Melih Cevdet Anday (b. 1915) published a collection of poems, Garip (Strange), calling for poetic realism untrammeled by rules and dictates, un-adorned and in colloquial speech, concerned with and attempting to communicate with the man in the street. In the mid-1950s Anday joined the Second New Movement, a group including Ilhan Berk (b. 1916), Cemal Süreya (1931–1990), and Edip Can-sever (1928–1986), who turned to obscurantism, writing poetry that was abstract and abtruse, in some cases almost totally incomprehensible.

Women were rarely mentioned among the writers of the Ottoman Empire before the nineteenth century. Their number increased after the Tanzimat, when a new generation of well-educated women emerged who understood French and were familiar with the works of both the French Romantics and the new Ottoman writers. Best known is Fatma Aliye Hanim (1862–1936), elder daughter of Ahmed Cevdet Paşa. The first Turkish woman novelist, her publications also included translations of French, articles, works on history, and a newspaper for women. Halide Edip Adivar served as a model for women from the early days of the Republic, both as a writer and as an activist. Women have turned to fiction rather than poetry. Güiten Akin (b. 1933), for example, a poet who has won many awards, is the only women represented in The Penguin Book of Turkish Verse. In contrast, the surge of enthusiasm for the short story in the 1970s, the Füruzan phenomenon, is credited to the stories published by Füruzan (Selçuk; b. 1935), a young writer of village background who deals especially with the exploitation of villagers in the cities.

In the 1990s women continue to participate fully on the Turkish literary scene. Both male and female writers continue to explore the wealth of their heritage and new avenues of expression.

see also abasiyanik, sait saik; adivar, halide edip; daĞlarca, fazil hÜsnÜ; ersoy, mehmet akif; gÖkalp, ziya; koprÜlÜ, mehmet fuat; namik kemal; nesin, nÜsret aziz; recaizade mahmud ekrem; Şinasi, İbrahim; tevfik fikret; uŞakliĞil, halit ziya; yurdakul, mehmet emin.