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Turkish literature

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Literature types

   A page from the Dîvân-ı Fuzûlî, the collected poems of the 16th-century
   Ottoman poet Fuzûlî
   Enlarge
   A page from the Dîvân-ı Fuzûlî, the collected poems of the 16th-century
   Ottoman poet Fuzûlî

                                                        Turkish Literature
                                                               By category
                                                            Epic Tradition

                                                                     Orhon
                                                   Dede Korkut - Köroğlu
                                                            Folk Tradition

                                                           Folk literature
                                                                  Folklore
                                                               Ottoman Era

                                                            Poetry | Prose
                                                            Republican Era

                                                            Poetry | Prose

   Turkish literature is the collection of written and oral texts composed
   in the Turkish language, either in its Ottoman form or in less
   exclusively literary forms, such as that spoken in the Republic of
   Turkey today. The Ottoman Turkish language, which forms the basis of
   much of the written corpus, was heavily influenced by Persian and
   Arabic and used a variant of the Perso-Arabic script.

   The history of Turkish literature spans a period of nearly 1,500 years.
   The oldest extant records of written Turkish are the Orhon
   inscriptions, found in the Orhon River valley in central Mongolia and
   dating to the 8th century. Subsequent to this period, between the 9th
   and 11th centuries, there arose among the nomadic Turkic peoples of
   Central Asia a tradition of oral epics, such as the Book of Dede Korkut
   of the Oghuz Turks—ancestors of the modern Turkish people—and the Manas
   epic of the Kyrgyz people.

   Beginning with the Seljuks in the 11th century, the Oghuz Turks began
   to settle in Anatolia, and in addition to the earlier oral traditions
   there arose a written literary tradition heavily influenced by Arabic
   and Persian literature. For the next 900 years, until shortly before
   the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the oral and written traditions
   would remain largely separate from one another. With the founding of
   the Republic of Turkey 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 genre—this basic fact
   led to two major consequences in terms of poetic style:
     * the poetic meters employed in the folk poetic tradition were
       different, being quantitative (i.e., syllabic) verse, as opposed to
       the qualitative verse employed in the written poetic tradition;
     * the basic structural unit of folk poetry became the quatrain
       (Turkish: dörtlük) rather than the couplets (Turkish: beyit) more
       commonly employed in written poetry.

   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
   of Turkish folk music.

   In contrast to the tradition of Turkish folk literature, Turkish
   written literature—prior to the founding 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 Seljuk 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 sultan 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 gazel غزل; the mesnevî مسنوى), or
   indirectly through Persian from the Arabic (the kasîde 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 music, with the poems of the Divan poets often being
   taken up to serve as song lyrics.

Folk literature

   Turkish folk literature is an oral tradition 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 folktales 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 Nasreddin, a trickster who often plays jokes, of a
   sort, on his neighbors.
   An aşık performing in Anatolia, from an 18th-century Western engraving
   Enlarge
   An aşık performing in Anatolia, from an 18th-century Western engraving

   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 imam. The Turkish people had first become an Islamic people
   sometime around the 9th or 10th century, as is evidenced from the clear
   Islamic influence on the 11th century Karakhanid work the Kutadgu Bilig
   ("Wisdom of Royal Glory"), written by Yusuf Has Hajib. The religion
   henceforth came to exercise an enormous influence on Turkish society
   and literature, particularly the heavily mystically oriented Sufi and
   Shi'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 of Yunus 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 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
   minstrels and who traditionally have had a strong connection with the
   Alevi 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 Bektashi Sufi order, 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 Korkut, which is in a language
   recognizably similar to modern Turkish and which developed from the
   oral traditions of the Oghuz Turks, that branch of the Turkic peoples
   which migrated towards western Asia and eastern Europe through
   Transoxiana 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 Köroğlu, 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 Bedreddin (Şeyh Bedreddin
   Destanı), published in 1936 by the poet Nâzım Hikmet Ran (1901–1963).
   This long poem—which concerns an Anatolian shaykh's rebellion against
   the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I—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 Kemal (1923– ), such as
   his long 1955 novel Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed), can be considered
   modern prose 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 bağlama, a mandolin-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 Şatıroğlu
   (1894–1973), Aşık Mahzuni Şerif (1938–2002), Neşet Ertaş (1943– ), and
   many others.
   Kaygusuz Abdal
   Enlarge
   Kaygusuz Abdal

   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 hymns (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 Vesiletü'n-Necat (وسيلت النجات "The Means of
   Salvation", but more commonly known as the Mevlid), concerning the
   birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad; Kaygusuz Abdal (1397–?), who is
   widely considered the founder of Alevi/Bektashi literature; and Pir
   Sultan Abdal (?–1560), whom many consider to be the pinnacle of that
   literature.

Folklore

   Nasreddin Hoca
   Enlarge
   Nasreddin Hoca

   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 Nasreddin (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 neighbour. "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 theatre
   centered around the two characters of Karagöz and Hacivat, who both
   represent stock characters: 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 I—the
   founder of the Ottoman dynasty—or for his successor Orhan I, in the
   construction of a palace or possibly a mosque at Bursa 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 beheaded.
   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
   prose. 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 fiction; that
   is, there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European romance,
   short story, or novel (though analogous genres did, to some extent,
   exist in both the Turkish folk tradition and in Divan poetry).

Divan poetry

   An Ottoman garden party, with poet, guest, and winebearer; from the
   16th-century Dîvân-i Bâkî
   Enlarge
   An Ottoman garden party, with poet, guest, and winebearer; from the
   16th-century Dîvân-i Bâkî

   Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly ritualized and symbolic art form.
   From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth
   of symbols 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 (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 (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 judge and poet Hayatî
   Efendi:

          بر گل مى وار بو گلشن ﻋالمدﻪ خارسز
          Bir gül mü var bu gülşen-i ‘âlemde hârsız
          ("Does any rose, in this rosegarden world, lack thorns?")

   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 Azerbaijani Nesîmî (?–1417?)
   and the Uyghur 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 (1483?–1556), a Divan poet of Azeri origin
   Enlarge
   Fuzûlî (1483?–1556), a Divan poet of Azeri origin
     * Fuzûlî (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 (1526–1600); a poet of great rhetorical power and linguistic
       subtlety whose skill in using the pre-established tropes of the
       Divan tradition is quite representative of the poetry in the time
       of Süleyman the Magnificent
     * Neşâtî (1600?–1674); a poet of the Mevlevî Sufi order whose work is
       perhaps exemplary of the highly complex so-called "Indian style"
       (سبك هندى sebk-i hindî) of the 17th century
     * Nâbî (1642–1712); a poet who wrote a number of socially oriented
       poems critical of the stagnation period of Ottoman history
     * Nedîm (1681?–1730); a revolutionary poet of the Tulip Era of
       Ottoman history, who infused the rather élite and abstruse language
       of Divan poetry with numerous simpler, populist elements

   The vast majority of Divan poetry was lyric in nature: either gazels
   (which make up the greatest part of the repertoire of the tradition),
   or kasîdes (a kind of panegyric). There were, however, other common
   genres, most particularly the mesnevî, a kind of verse romance and thus
   a variety of narrative poetry; 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 Galib (1757–1799).

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), or rhymed prose, a type of writing descended from Arabic
   literature and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in
   a sentence, there must be a rhyme.

   Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the
   time. This tradition was exclusively nonfictional in nature—the fiction
   tradition was limited to narrative poetry. A number of such
   nonfictional prose genres developed:
   Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682?), an Ottoman travel writer
   Enlarge
   Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682?), an Ottoman travel writer
     * the târih (تاريخ), or history, a tradition in which there are many
       notable writers, including the 15th-century historian Aşıkpaşazâde
       and the 17th-century historians Kâtib Çelebi and Naîmâ
     * the seyâhatnâme (سياحت نامه), or travelogue, of which the
       outstanding example is the 17th-century Seyahâtnâme of Evliya
       Çelebi
     * the sefâretnâme (سفارت نامه), a related genre that is a sort of
       travelogue of the journeys and experiences of an Ottoman
       ambassador, and which is best exemplified by the 1718–1720 Paris
       Sefâretnâmesi of Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi Efendi, ambassador to the
       court of Louis XV of France
     * 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, written in Persian by Nizam al-Mulk, vizier to the
       Seljuk rulers Alp Arslan and Malik Shah I
     * the tezkîre (تذکره), a collection of short biographies of notable
       figures, some of the most notable of which were the 16th-century
       tezkiretü'ş-şuarâs (تذکرهتوششعرا), 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
     * the münâzara (مناظره), a collection of debates of either a
       religious or a philosophical nature

The 19th century and Western influence

   By the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had become moribund.
   Attempts to right this situation had begun during the reign of Sultan
   Selim III, from 1789 to 1807, but were continuously thwarted by the
   powerful Janissary corps. As a result, only after Sultan Mahmud II 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 period of
   1839–1876, when much of the Ottoman system was reorganized along
   largely French lines. 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 Constantinople, 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 Pasha (1829–1880):
   Ziya Pasha (1829–1880), Ottoman poet and reformist
   Enlarge
   Ziya Pasha (1829–1880), Ottoman poet and reformist

     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 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 of François Fénelon's 1699 novel Les aventures de Télémaque, by
   Yusuf Kâmil Pasha, Grand Vizier 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 Westernization that continues to be felt in
   Turkey to this day.

   Due to historically close ties with France—strengthened during the
   Crimean War of 1854–1856—it was French 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 of Romanticism can be seen
   during the Tanzimat period, and that of the Realist and Naturalist
   movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other
   hand, it was the influence of the Symbolist 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 Kemal (1840–1888)
   also wrote the important 1876 novel İntibâh (اﻥﺘﺒﺎﻩ; "Awakening"),
   while the journalist Şinasi (1826–1871) is noted for writing, in 1860,
   the first modern Turkish play, the one-act comedy "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 یﺎﺧﻮد سر ايچيکده 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 structures.

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 ﺁﺕﯽ; "Dawn of the Future") movement
     * the Millî Edebiyyât (ﻡﻠﯽ ادبيات; "National Literature") movement

The "New Literature" movement

   Tevfik Fikret (1867–1915), poet and editor of Servet-i Fünûn
   Enlarge
   Tevfik Fikret (1867–1915), poet and editor of Servet-i Fünûn

   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 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—particularly Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil (1867–1945)—were primarily
   influenced by Realism, although the writer Mehmed Rauf (1875–1931) did
   write the first Turkish example of a psychological novel, 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 censorship was brought to bear and the
   magazine was closed down by the government of the Ottoman sultan
   Abdülhamid II. 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 manifesto in which they declared their
   opposition to the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde movement and their adherence to
   the credo, "Sanat şahsî ve muhteremdir" (صنعت ﺵﺨﺼﯽ و ﺤﺘﺮمدر; "Art is
   personal and sacred"). Though this credo was little more than a
   variation of the French writer Théophile 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. 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 Karaosmanoğlu (1889–1974).

The "National Literature" movement

   Cover page from an issue of Genç Kalemler
   Enlarge
   Cover page from an issue of Genç Kalemler

   In 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II had instituted a constitutional
   government, and the parliament 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 تورکلر Jön Türkler) had
   opposed themselves to the increasingly authoritarian 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-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.

   At first, this movement crystallized around the magazine Genç Kalemler
   (کنج قلملر; "Young Pens"), which was begun in the city of Selânik 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; and Ali Canip Yöntem (1887–1967), a
   poet. In Genç Kalemler's first issue, an article entitled "New
   Language" (Turkish: "Yeni Lisan") pointed out that Turkish literature
   had previously looked for inspiration either to the East as in the
   Ottoman Divan tradition, or to the West 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 chauvinistic 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-rightist branch of the National
   Literature movement were the poet Mehmet Emin Yurdakul (1869–1944), the
   early feminist novelist Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964), and the
   short-story writer and novelist Reşat Nuri Güntekin (1889–1956).

Post-independence literature

   Following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First World War of
   1914–1918, the victorious Entente Powers began the process of carving
   up the empire's lands and placing them under their own spheres of
   influence. In opposition to this process, the military leader Mustafa
   Kemal (1881–1938), in command of the growing Turkish national movement
   whose roots lay partly in the Young Turks, organized the 1919–1923
   Turkish 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.

   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 version of the Latin 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 widespread literacy 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 realism, and the "village novel" (köy romanı).

   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 classes 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 satirical short-story
   writer Aziz Nesin (1915–1995).

   Another novelist contemporary to, but outside of, the social realist
   and "village novel" traditions is Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962). In
   addition to being an important essayist 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 Atay (1934–1977). Unlike Tanpınar, however, Atay—in such
   works as his long novel Tutunamayanlar ("Losers", 1971–1972) and his
   short story "Beyaz Mantolu Adam" ( "Man in a White Coat", 1975)—wrote
   in a more modernist and existentialist vein. On the other hand, Onat
   Kutlar's İshak ("Isaac", 1959), comprised of nine short stories which
   are written mainly from a child's point of view and are often
   surrealistic and mystical, represent a very early example of magic
   realism.

   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 Pamuk
   (1952– ), winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, is another such
   innovative novelist, though his works—such as 1990's Beyaz Kale (" The
   White Castle") and Kara Kitap (" The Black Book") and 1998's Benim Adım
   Kırmızı (" My Name is Red")—are influenced more by postmodernism than
   by modernism. This is true also of Latife Tekin (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 patriotic themes couched in the syllabic meter
   associated with Turkish folk poetry.

   The first radical step away from this trend was taken by Nâzım Hikmet
   Ran, who—during his time as a student in the Soviet Union from 1921 to
   1924—was exposed to the modernist poetry of Vladimir 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 introduced free verse 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 censorship of his work owing to his Communist 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 Garip ("Strange"). The authors were Orhan Veli Kanık
   (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 Prévert, they employed not only a variant of
   the free verse introduced by Nâzım Hikmet, but also highly colloquial
   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.

   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
   Dada and Surrealism—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), and İlhan Berk (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
   allegorical poems explore the significance of middle-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; and İsmet Özel (1944– ), whose early poetry was highly
   leftist but whose poetry since the 1970s has shown a strong mystical
   and even Islamist influence.
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