 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Turkish literature (Turkish:Türk edebiyatı, Türk yazını) comprises oral compositions and written texts in theTurkish language. TheOttoman form of Turkish, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, was highly influenced byPersian andArabic literature,[1] and used theOttoman Turkish alphabet.
The history of the broaderTurkic literature spans a period of nearly 1,300 years.[2] The oldest extant records of writtenTurkic are theOrhon inscriptions, found in theOrhon River valley in centralMongolia and dating to the 7th century. Subsequent to this period, between the 9th and 11th centuries, there arose among thenomadicTurkic peoples of Central Asia a tradition oforalepics, such as theBook of Dede Korkut of theOghuz Turks— ancestors of the modernTurkish people—and theEpic of Manas of theKyrgyz people.
Beginning with the victory of theSeljuks at theBattle of Manzikert in the late 11th century, the Oghuz Turks began to settle inAnatolia, and in addition to the earlier oral traditions there arose a written literary tradition issuing largely—in terms of themes, genres, and styles—from Arabic andPersian literature. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of theOttoman Empire in 1922, the oral and written traditions would remain largely separate from one another. With the founding of theRepublic of Turkey in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time.
The earliest known examples ofTurkic poetry date to sometime in the 6th century AD and were composed in theUyghur language. Some of the earliest verses attributed toUyghur Turkic writers are only available in Chinese language translations. During the era oforal poetry, the earliest Turkic verses were intended as songs and their recitation a part of the community's social life and entertainment. For example, in theshamanistic andanimistic culture of the pre-Islamic Turkic peoples verses of poetry were performed at religious gatherings in ceremonies before a hunt (sığır), at communal feasts following a hunt (şölen). Poetry was also sung at solemn times andelegy calledsagu were recited atyuğ funerals and other commemorations of the dead.[3]
Of the long epics, only theOğuzname has survived in its entirety.[4]The Book of Dede Korkut may have had its origins in the poetry of the 10th century but remained an oral tradition until the 15th century. The earlier written worksKutadgu Bilig andDīwān Lughāt al-Turk date to the second half of the 11th century and are the earliest known examples of Turkish literature with few exceptions.[5]
One of the most important figures of early Turkish literature was the 13th centurySufi poetYunus Emre. The golden age ofOttoman literature lasted from the 15th century until the 18th century and included mostlydivan poetry but also some prose works, most notably the 10-volumeSeyahatnâme (Book of Travels) written byEvliya Çelebi.[5]
The periodization of Turkic literature is debated and scholars have floated different proposals to classify the stages of Turkic literary development. One proposal divides Turkic literature into early literature (8th to 19th c.) and modern (19th to 21st c.). Other systems of classification have divided the literature into three periods either pre-Islamic/Islamic/modern or pre-Ottoman/Ottoman/modern. Yet another more complex approach suggests a 5-stage division including both pre-Islamic (until the 11th century) and pre-Ottoman Islamic (between the 11th and 13th centuries). The 5-stage approach further divides modern literature into a transitional period from the 1850s to the 1920s and finally a modern period reaching into the present day.[6]
Throughout most of its history, Turkish literature has been rather sharply divided into two 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.[7]
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 an oral tradition carried on byminstrels 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 genre—this basic fact led to two major consequences in terms of poetic style:[7]
Furthermore, Turkish folk poetry has always had an intimate connection with song—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 ofTurkish folk music.
In contrast to the tradition of Turkish folk literature, Turkish written literature—prior to thefounding 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 theSeljuk 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 centurysultanAla 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 (thegazel غزل; themesnevî مثنوی), or indirectly through Persian from the Arabic (thekasîde قصيده). However, the decision to adopt these poetic forms wholesale led to two important further consequences:[8]
Out of this confluence of choices, the Ottoman Turkish language—which was always highly distinct from spoken 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 withTurkish classical music, with the poems of the Divan poets often being taken up to serve as song lyrics.
Turkish folk literature is anoral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a settled (or settling) people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle. One example of this is the series offolktales 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 ofNasreddin, atrickster 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 aMuslimImam. The Turkic peoples had first becomeIslamized sometime around the 9th or 10th century, as is evidenced from the clear Islamic influence on the 11th centuryKarakhanid work theKutadgu Bilig ("Wisdom of Royal Glory"), written byYusuf Has Hajib. The religion henceforth came to exercise an enormous influence on Turkish society and literature, particularly the heavilymystically orientedSufi andShi'a varieties of Islam. The Sufi influence, for instance, can be seen clearly not only in the tales concerning Nasreddin but also in the works ofYunus Emre, 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 theKaramanidstate in south-central Anatolia. The Shi'a influence, on the other hand, can be seen extensively in the tradition of theaşıks, orozans,[9] who are roughly akin to medieval Europeanminstrels and who traditionally have had a strong connection with theAlevi 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 Turkishaşık/ozan tradition is permeated with the thought of theBektashi Sufiorder, which is itself a blending of Shi'a and Sufi concepts. The wordaşık (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 Turkish epic has its roots in the Central Asian epic tradition that gave rise to theBook of Dede Korkut; written in the Azerbaijani language – and recognizably similar to modern Istanbul Turkish – the form developed from the oral traditions of theOghuz Turks (a branch of the Turkic peoples which migrated towardswestern Asia and eastern Europe throughTransoxiana, beginning in the 9th century). TheBook of Dede Korkut endured in the oral tradition of the Oghuz Turks after settling in Anatolia.Alpamysh is an earlier epic, still preserved in the literature of various Turkic peoples of Central Asia in addition to its important place in the Anatolian tradition.[10]
TheBook of Dede Korkut was the primary element of the Azerbaijani–Turkish epic tradition in the Caucasus and Anatolia for several centuries. Concurrent to theBook of Dede Korkut was the so-calledEpic of Köroğlu, which concerns the adventures of Rüşen Ali ("Köroğlu", or "son of the blind man") as he exacted revenge for the blinding of his father. The origins of this epic are somewhat more mysterious than those of theBook of Dede Korkut: many believe it to have arisen in Anatolia sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries; more reliable testimony,[11] though, seems to indicate that the story is nearly as old as that of theBook 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 theaşık/ozan tradition.
The epic tradition in modern Turkish literature may be seen in theEpic ofShaykh Bedreddin (Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı), published in 1936 by the poetNâzım Hikmet Ran (1901–1963). This long poem – which concerns an Anatolian shaykh's rebellion against the OttomanSultanMehmed I — is a modern epic, yet draws upon the same independent-minded traditions of the Anatolian people as depicted in theEpic of Köroğlu. Many of the works of the 20th-century novelistYaşar Kemal (1923–2015 ), such as the 1955 novelMemed, My Hawk (İnce Memed), can be considered modernprose epics continuing this long tradition.
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 existentaşık/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, andŞeyyâd 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;[12] subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region.
There are, broadly speaking, two traditions (or schools) of Turkish folk poetry:
Much of the poetry and song of theaşık/ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-knownaşıks 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 centuryaşıks; Dadaloğlu (1785?–1868?), who was one of the last of the greataşıks before the tradition began to dwindle somewhat in the late 19th century; and several others. Theaşıks were essentially minstrels who travelled through Anatolia performing their songs on thebağlama, amandolin-like instrument whose paired strings are considered to have a symbolic religious significance in Alevi/Bektashi culture. Despite the decline of theaşık/ozan tradition in the 19th century, it experienced a significant revival in the 20th century thanks to such outstanding figures asAşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973),Aşık Mahzuni Şerif (1938–2002),Neşet Ertaş (1938–2012), and many others.
The explicitly religious folk tradition oftekke literature shared a similar basis with theaşık/ozan tradition in that the poems were generally intended to be sung, generally in religious gatherings, making them somewhat akin to Westernhymns (Turkishilahi). One major difference from theaşık/ozan tradition, however, is that—from the very beginning—the poems of thetekke tradition were written down. This was because they were produced by revered religious figures in the literate environment of thetekke, as opposed to the milieu of theaşık/ozan tradition, where the majority could not read or write. The major figures in the tradition oftekke 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 calledVesîletü'n-Necât (وسيلة النجاة "The Means of Salvation", but more commonly known as theMevlid), concerning thebirth of the IslamicprophetMuhammad;Kaygusuz Abdal (1397–?), who is widely considered the founder of Alevi/Bektashi literature; andPir Sultan Abdal (?–1560), whom many consider to be the pinnacle of that literature.
The two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry andprose. Of the two, poetry—specifically, Divan poetry—was by far the dominant stream. Moreover, until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of fiction; that is, there were no counterparts to, for instance, the Europeanromance, short story, or novel (though analogous genres did, to some extent, exist in both the Turkish folk tradition and in Divan poetry).
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(October 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Ottoman Divan poetry was a highlyritualized andsymbolic art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth ofsymbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظيرmura'ât-i nazîr / تناسبtenâsüb) and opposition (تضادtezâd)—were more or less prescribed. Examples of prevalent symbols that, to some extent, oppose one another include, among others:
As the opposition of "the ascetic" and "the dervish" suggests, Divan poetry—much like Turkish folk poetry—was heavily influenced bySufi 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:
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 tothe 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, ormısra (مصراع), by the 18th-centuryjudge and poet Hayatî Efendi:
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 (خارhâr). 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 from 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;[14] 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 theAzerbaijaniNesîmî (?–1417?) and the UzbekAli 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.
Although Turkish poets (Ottoman andChagatay) had been inspired and influenced by classical Persian poetry, it would be a superficial judgment to consider the former as blind imitators of the latter, as is often done. A limited vocabulary and common technique, and the same world of imagery and subject matter based mainly on Islamic sources, were shared by all poets of Islamic literature.[15]
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:
The vast majority of Divan poetry waslyric in nature: eithergazels (which make up the greatest part of the repertoire of the tradition), orkasîdes. There were, however, other common genres, most particularly themesnevî, a kind ofverse romance and thus a variety ofnarrative poetry; the two most notable examples of this form are theLeylî vü Mecnun (ليلى و مجنون) of Fuzûlî and theHüsn ü Aşk (حسن و عشق; "Beauty and Love") of Şeyh Gâlib.
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 ofsec' (سجع, also transliterated asseci), orrhymed prose,[16] a type of writing descended from the Arabicsaj' and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be arhyme.
Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time. This tradition was exclusivelynonfictional in nature—the fiction tradition was limited to narrative poetry.[17] A number of such nonfictional prose genres developed:
By the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had becomemoribund. Attempts to right this situation had begun during the reign ofSultan Selim III, from 1789 to 1807, but were continuously thwarted by the powerfulJanissary corps. As a result, only afterSultan Mahmud II had abolished the Janissary corps in 1826 was the way paved for truly effective reforms (Ottoman Turkish: تنظيماتtanzîmât).
These reforms finally came to the empire during theTanzimat period of 1839–1876, when much of the Ottoman system was reorganized along largelyFrench lines. The Tanzimat reforms "were designed both to modernize the empire and to forestall foreign intervention".[18]
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:
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.[19] Meanwhile, however, the Turkish folk literature tradition of Anatolia, away from the capitalConstantinople, 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 reformistZiya Pasha (1829–1880):
Our language is not Ottoman; it is Turkish. What makes up our poetic canon is notgazels andkasîdes, but ratherkayabaşıs,üçlemes, andçöğürs[20], 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![21]
At the same time as this call—which reveals something of a burgeoningnational consciousness—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 ofFrançois Fénelon's 1699 novelLes aventures de Télémaque, byHüseyin Avni Pasha, toSultan 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") byŞemsettin Sami (also known as Sami Frashëri) (1850–1904), was published just ten years later, in 1872. However, there had actually been, according to Gonca Gökalp, five other earlier or contemporaneous works of fiction that were clearly distinct from earlier prose traditions in both Divan and folk literature, and that approximate novelistic form. Among these five works is theMuhayyelât ofAli Aziz Efendi, cited above. Another, 1851'sAkabi Hikâyesi ("Akabi's Story"), written by theArmenianVartan Pasha (Hovsep Vartanian) using theArmenian script and for an Armenian audience was, according toAndreas Tietze, "the first genuine modern novel written and published in Turkey". The introduction of such new genres into Turkish literature can be seen as part of a trend towardsWesternization that continues to be felt in Turkey to this day.
Due to historically close ties with France—strengthened during theCrimean War of 1854–1856—it wasFrench literature 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 ofRomanticism can be seen during the Tanzimat period, and that of theRealist andNaturalist movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other hand, it was the influence of theSymbolist andParnassian movements that became paramount.
Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously: for instance, the poetNamık Kemal (1840–1888) also wrote the important 1876 novelİntibâh (انتباه; "Awakening"), while the journalistİbrahim Şinasi (1826–1871) is noted for writing, in 1860, the first modern Turkish play, theone-act comedy "Şair Evlenmesi" (شاعر اولنمسى; "The Poet's Marriage").[22] In a similar vein, the novelistAhmed Midhat Efendi (1844–1912) wrote important novels in each of the major movements: Romanticism (حسن ملاح ياخود سر ايچيڭده اسرارHasan Mellâh yâhud Sırr İçinde Esrâr, 1873; "Hasan the Sailor, or The Mystery Within the Mystery"), Realism (هﻨﻮز اون يدى يشکدهHenüz On Yedi Yaşında, 1881; "Just Seventeen Years Old"), and Naturalism (مشاهداتMüşâhedât, 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 ofOttoman social structure.[23]
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:
| This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(October 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
TheEdebiyyât-ı Cedîde, or "New Literature", movement began with the founding in 1891 of the magazineServet-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 poetTevfik Fikret (1867–1915), were geared towards creating a Western-style "high art" 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 "Decadent" poets. The group's prose writers, on the other hand—particularlyHalit Ziya Uşaklıgil (1867–1945)—were primarily influenced by Realism, although the writer Mehmed Rauf (1875–1931) did write the first Turkish example of apsychological novel, 1901'sEylül (ايلول; "September"). The language of theEdebiyyât-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 inServet-i Fünûn, the pressure of censorship was brought to bear and the magazine was closed down by the government of the Ottoman sultanAbdülhamid II. Though it was closed for only six months, the group's writers each went their own way in the meantime, and theEdebiyyât-ı Cedîde movement came to an end.
| This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(October 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
In the 24 February 1909 edition of theServet-i Fünûn magazine, a gathering of young writers—soon to be known as theFecr-i Âtî ("Dawn of the Future") group—released amanifesto in which they declared their opposition to theEdebiyyât-ı Cedîde movement and their adherence to the credo, "Sanat şahsî ve muhteremdir" (صنعت شخصى و محترمدر; "Art is personal and sacred").[24] Though this credo was little more than a variation of the French writerThéophile Gautier's doctrine of "l'art pour l'art", 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. TheFecr-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 Karaosmanoğlu (1889–1974).
In 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II had beenforced to allow a re-establishedconstitutional government, and theparliament subsequently elected was composed almost entirely of members of the Committee of Union and Progress (also known as the "Young Turks"). The Young Turks (ژون تورکلرJön Türkler) had opposed themselves to the increasinglyauthoritarian 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 evenpan-Turkish nation (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.[citation needed]
At first, this movement crystallized around the magazineGenç Kalemler (کنج قلملر; "Young Pens"), which was begun in the city ofSelânik in 1911 by the three writers who were most representative of the movement:Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), a sociologist and thinker;Ömer Seyfettin (1884–1920), a short-story writer; andAli Canip Yöntem (1887–1967), a poet.[citation needed] InGenç Kalemler's first issue, an article entitled "New Language" (Turkish: "Yeni Lisan") pointed out that Turkish literature had previously looked for inspiration either to theEast as in the Ottoman Divan tradition, or to the West as in theEdebiyyât-ı Cedîde andFecr-i Âtî movements, without ever turning to Turkey itself.[25] This latter was the National Literature movement's primary aim.[citation needed]
The intrinsically nationalistic character ofGenç Kalemler, however, quickly took a decidedlychauvinistic turn,[26] and other writers—many of whom, like Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, had been a part of theFecr-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 lessfar-rightist branch of the National Literature movement were the poetMehmet Emin Yurdakul (1869–1944), the earlyfeminist novelistHalide Edib Adıvar (1884–1964), and the short-story writer and novelistReşat Nuri Güntekin (1889–1956).[citation needed]
Following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in theFirst World War of 1914–1918, the victoriousEntente Powers began the process of carving up the empire's lands and placing them under their ownspheres of influence. In opposition to this process, the military leaderMustafa Kemal (1881–1938), in command of the growingTurkish National Movement whose roots lay partly in the Young Turks, organized the 1919–1923Turkish War of Independence. 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.[citation needed]
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 amodified version of theLatin alphabet to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman script. Over time, this change—together with changes in Turkey's system of education—would lead to more widespreadliteracy in the country.[27]
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 novelYaban ("The Wilds"), by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. This novel can be seen as the precursor to two trends that would soon develop:[28]social realism, and the "village novel" (köy romanı).Çalıkuşu ("The Wren") byReşat Nuri Güntekin 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 writerSait Faik Abasıyanık (1906–1954), whose work sensitively and realistically treats the lives of cosmopolitan Istanbul'slower classes andethnic minorities, subjects which led to some criticism in the contemporary nationalistic atmosphere.[29] The tradition of the "village novel", on the other hand, arose somewhat later.[citation needed] 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), andYaşar Kemal (1923[?]–2015).[citation needed] Yaşar Kemal, in particular, has earned fame outside of Turkey not only for his novels—many of which, such as 1955'sİnce 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 thesatirical short-story writerAziz Nesin (1915–1995) andRıfat Ilgaz (1911–1993).[citation needed]
Another novelist contemporary to, but outside of, the social realist and "village novel" traditions isAhmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962). In addition to being an important essayist and poet, Tanpınar wrote a number of novels—such asHuzur ("A Mind at Peace", 1949) andSaatleri 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 writerOğuz Atay (1934–1977).[citation needed] Unlike Tanpınar, however, Atay—in such works as his long novelTutunamayanlar ("The Good for Nothing", 1971–1972) and his short story "Beyaz Mantolu Adam" ("Man in a White Coat", 1975)—wrote in a moremodernist andexistentialist vein. On the other hand,Onat Kutlar'sİshak ("Isaac", 1959), composed of nine short stories which are written mainly from a child'spoint of view and are often surrealistic and mystical, represent a very early example ofmagic realism.[citation needed]
The tradition of literary modernism also informs the work offemale novelistAdalet Ağaoğlu (1929– ). Her trilogy of novels collectively entitledDar 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 Pamuk (1952– ), winner of the 2006Nobel Prize in Literature, is another such innovative novelist, though his works—such as 1990'sBeyaz Kale ("The White Castle") andKara Kitap ("The Black Book") and 1998'sBenim Adım Kırmızı ("My Name is Red")—are influenced more bypostmodernism than by modernism. This is true also ofLatife Tekin (1957– ), whose first novelSevgili Arsız Ölüm ("Dear Shameless Death", 1983) shows the influence not only of postmodernism, but also of magic realism.Elif Şafak has been one of the most outstanding authors of Turkish literature which has new tendencies in language and theme in 2000s. Şafak was distinguished first by her use of extensive vocabulary and then became one of the pioneers in Turkish literature in international scope as a bilingual author who writes both in Turkish and in English.[citation needed]
A recent study by Can and Patton[30] provides a quantitative analysis of twentieth century Turkish literature using forty novels of forty authors ranging from Mehmet Rauf's (1875–1931)Eylül (1901) to Ahmet Altan's (1950–)Kılıç Yarası Gibi (1998). They show using statistical analysis that, as time passes, words, in terms of both tokens (in text) and types (in vocabulary), have become longer. They indicate that the increase in word lengths with time can be attributed to the government-initiated language reform of the 20th century.[31] This reform aimed at replacing foreign words used in Turkish, especially Arabic- and Persian-based words (since they were in majority when the reform was initiated in the early 1930s), with newly coined pure Turkish neologisms created by adding suffixes to Turkish word stems. Can and Patton;[30] based on their observations of the change of a specific word use (more specifically in newer works the preference of "ama" over "fakat", both borrowed from Arabic and meaning 'but', and their inverse usage correlation is statistically significant); also speculate that the word length increase can influence the common word choice preferences of authors.[citation needed]
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 patriotic themes couched in the syllabic meter associated with Turkish folk poetry.[citation needed]
The first radical step away from this trend was taken byNâzım Hikmet Ran, who—during his time as a student in theSoviet Union from 1921 to 1924—was exposed to the modernist poetry ofVladimir Mayakovsky 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 introducedfree verse into the Turkish language for, essentially, the first time.[32] 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 censorship of his work owing to hisCommunist political stance, which also led to his spending several years in prison. Over time, in such books asSimavne Kadısı Oğlu Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı ("The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin, Son of Judge Simavne", 1936) andMemleketimden İnsan Manzaraları ("Human Landscapes from My Country", 1939), he developed a voice simultaneously proclamatory and subtle.[citation needed]
Another revolution in Turkish poetry came about in 1941 with the publication of a small volume of verse preceded by an essay and entitledGarip ("Strange"). The authors wereOrhan Veli Kanık (1914–1950), Melih Cevdet Anday (1915–2002), andOktay 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".[33] To this end, and inspired in part by contemporary French poets likeJacques Prévert, they employed not only a variant of the free verse introduced by Nâzım Hikmet, but also highlycolloquial language, and wrote primarily about mundane daily subjects and the ordinary man on the street. The reaction was immediate and polarized: most of the academic establishment 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.[citation needed]
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 asİkinci Yeni ("Second New",[34]) 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 asDada andSurrealism—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 Süreya (1931–1990),Ece Ayhan (1931–2002),Sezai Karakoç (1933– ),İlhan Berk (1918–2008).[citation needed]
Outside of the Garip and "Second New" movements also, a number of significant poets have flourished, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1914–2008), who wrote poems dealing with fundamental concepts like life, death, God, time, and the cosmos; Behçet Necatigil (1916–1979), whose somewhatallegorical poems explore the significance ofmiddle-class 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;İsmet Özel (1944– ), whose early poetry was highly leftist but whose poetry since the 1970s has shown a strongmystical and evenIslamist influence; andHasan Hüseyin Korkmazgil (1927–1984) who wrote collectivist-realist poetry.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
5,000 of 10,000 book shops in Turkey are in Istanbul, including the bookfair and growing licence trading. Turkey was a guest of honour at theFrankfurt Bookfair in 2008.[35]
 |  |
| İbrahim Şinasi | Halide Edib Adıvar |
 |  | |
| Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil | Tarık Buğra |
 |  |
| Füruzan | Halikarnas Balıkçısı |
*Alpamysh, Hasan Bülent Paksoy
| History |
| ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geography |
| ||||||||||||
| Government |
| ||||||||||||
| Economy | |||||||||||||
| Demographics | |||||||||||||
| Society |
| ||||||||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
