turkish-literatureturkish-literature

Turkish literature “Türk edebiyatı” consists of compositions of oral and written texts in the Turkish language, both in the form of the Ottoman or simplified, such as those Pronounced in contemporary Turkey. Among the most prominent ancient Turkish myths is the myth of «Alp Artunga », who is believed to have lived in the seventh century and was the ruler of the Saqis at that time, and in it, he narrates how he destroyed the Iranian armies, and the legend of Bozkurt, which narrates that the people of Gök Türk arose from a female wolf, and a myth Ergenukon, which narrates the exit of the Gök Turk Turks from Ergenukon with their melting in a mountain of iron. The most prominent of these obelisks are the obelisks erected in the name of Toniukuk, Kul Tagin, and the Cagan language.

Turkish literature goes back to the eighth century AD. The most prominent of what was written in the Jagtarian language is the biography of Babur, the founder of the Mughal family in India, which is known as «Babur Namah» . The oldest representatives of Turkish «Azerbaijani» literature were the Sufi poet Imad al-Din Nasimi, who died around 1418, and the greatest of them was the poet Muhammad Faduli, who died in 1556. As for Turkish «Ottoman» literature, his representatives were the Sufi poet Yunus Amira.

In fact, «Ottoman» literature, which has been around for centuries, is the richest of all this literature. It was greatly influenced by Arabic and Persian literature.

Ottoman literature

Among the first generation of prominent figures in divan poetry during the fourteenth century, we mention Dhani, Judge Burhan al-Din, Nasimi, and Ahmadi. By the fifteenth century, Persian poetry in all its styles and characteristics was transferred to Turkish poetry. In the sixteenth century many artists, who lived in central Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Middle East, flocked to Istanbul and made it a forum for them. Al-Nafi’i is known as a poet of poems and satire in the seventeenth century, with strong technique, deep language, and courage in performance.

As for Al-Nabi, who came to prominence in the eighteenth century, he wrote sermon poems, and in his books he criticized the state, society and social life. The poetry of the Diwan in the eighteenth century was represented by the personality of the giant poet Nadim, with the tendency to root the topics dealt with, which cleared the way for simple popular poetry to enter and influence the divan literature. In his poetry, Nadim promoted the trend of «thin and delicate poetry» instead of the concept of «flowery and complex poetry.» Thus, Nadim inaugurated a new era in poetry and emotional expression, which was continued by Sheikh Ghalib until the end of the mentioned century.

Divan literature declined in the nineteenth century and fell into decline with the emergence of the «Tanzimat literature», which was following the example of Western literature. During this period, unfamiliar productions began in «divan literature,» such as fictional, theatrical and fictional artwork, essays, diaries, comparative studies and criticism. During this period, journalism and literature intertwined. During this period, the writer Shanasi composed the first Turkish theatrical production known as «The Poet’s Marriage,» which is the first step in surprising literature.

After that, many artists such as Namik Kamal, Diaa Pasha, Shams al-Din Sami, and Rajai Zadeh Mahmoud Akram presented works in various types of modern literature. In 1891, a movement called «New Literature» appeared at the hands of a group of writers who gathered around a magazine called «The Fortune of Arts,» which focused primarily on art. The new literature movement began with the establishment of the wealth of art magazine, which followed issues of science, culture, and progress in that era, under the supervision of the poet «Tawfiq Fikret», with the aim of creating high-quality Turkish literature according to Western curricula. The poetry of the followers of this school, such as Tawfiq Fikret and Janab Shihab al-Din, was heavily influenced by French literature, especially the Bernasi movement, which emphasized the poetic form more than passion, and was also influenced by a group of French poets who were called the poets of decay, and the movement writers such as Khaled Dia and Muhammad Raouf, They fell under the influence of the realist school, and writer Rauf wrote the first psychological novel in Turkish literature in 1901 entitled September.

In the same year, the publication of the magazine affected an article on French entitled Literature and Law.

Republican literature


In the second half of the thirties, poets such as Jahid Sidqi Tarangi, Fadhil Husni Daglarja, and Ilhan Burke appeared, developing a more liberal line of poetry. With the advent of the forties, novelist Saeed Faik Abbasi Yanyik comes out to us with his new stories that we see dealing with the educated individual and the street man instead of the social life with the self-emotions of the isolationist intellectual who is far from the grievances of society. Likewise, writers of the same period such as Tariq Bogra, Oktay Iqbal, Jawad Shaker Qabba Aghajli, Khaldun Tanner, Jadet Quadrat Suluq, and Samim Koçakuz, in their books dealt with the realistic approach. In the field of poetry, a new style prevailed as a reaction not only to old poetry but also to the poetry of Nazem Hikmat Ran, known as “Gharib Current” in association with the book published under the title “The Stranger” , which collects an anthology of poems by Orhan Wali Kanik, Qatayi Rifat, Malih, Jawdat Andai, was characterized by a complete departure from weight and rhyme, and confined to the everyday language common in the poetic perception of self-suffering and individual topics with the battlefield of life.
This pattern had an impact and convergence with the desire of interested young people, as it affected even well-known poets of that period, such as Nagati. In the second half of the forties, Jihun Atif Qansu, Jahid Kulabi, Najati Jumah Ali and Badri Rahmi Ayuboglu developed new styles of poetry that were distinguished by a social sense and an expressive formulation based on the sensual and emotional perception through eloquent verbal patterns characterized by the tone of the saying. Starting in the 1950s, we see Turkish writers focusing more on the realities of rural and village life. An essay by Mahmoud came in his famous novel “Our Village” and author Pekir Baykourt with his masterpiece “The Revenge of Snakes” , so they opened a wide field in rural Turkish literary composition that is translated The lives of the rural people and the people of the Turkish countryside and the surrounding in all its forms, and in this field Yasser Kamal invented a different dimension through his novels in the fifties, and he was the one who began his research with a different style.
Yashar Kamal’s novel “Muhammad Al-Waseem”, the first volume of which was published in 1955 and which revolves around the challenges faced by the residents of the Jagor Ufa region and the situations they develop in an epic manner, bears the first effects of the attitudes and methods of the novel that he will use and develop in the following years. Along the same lines, Kamal Taher appeared in his story known as “The People of the Lake”, which was published in 1955, to be the other, fond of the issues of the countryside and the village. As for writers who began writing during the period 1950-1960, such as Demir Ozlo, Farid Adjo, Yusef Atilgan and Naziha Marij, we see that different and individual concepts dominate their books. In the same period, authors who preferred the method of satire to criticize valuable social phenomena appeared, inspired by simple daily events, on top of whom was the writer Aziz Nisin, who considered his literary birth in 1955, who continued to present works in various fields of literature.
Among the representatives of this current, which is called Al-Jadeed Al-Thani, we see names such as Jamal Thuraya, Adeeb Janswar, Targut Oyar, Ajah Ayhan, Ilhan Barak, Ozdemir Asaf, and Kamal Ozar. During the same period, Sazai Karagök developed his own poetic language, and in his books he treated fateful and metaphysical patterns in a spiritual manner. This concept of poetry, represented by the compositions of these poets, showed different trends in the following years. In the post-1960 period, social issues gained weight, and the search for new artistic and formal methods became a pioneer that enriched the Turkish language.
Whereas, novelists such as Orhan Kamal, Yashar Kamal and Kamal Taher continued to write works on their own format throughout the 1960s, while novelists such as Samim Quja Kuz, Tila Ilhan, Tariq Bogra, Hasan Izz al-Din Dinamo and Ilhan Selcuk worked on issues of modern history. During the same years, Mustafa Necati Sebacioglu was very popular among the new generation with his books on Turkish history. While Septicoglu, in a series of his novels, deals with the history of the Ottoman Empire from the victory in the Battle of Malazgirt to the era of its weakness, he deals with in his other novels the social transformation that modern Turkey has witnessed with his results. He won the “Nobel Prize for Literature” in 2006.
«Turgut Ozkman, who is known in Turkey and the world alike as a playwright, has won his book “These Reckless Turks,” which is a historical novel telling the Turkish struggle for independence, won the title of the best-selling and read book during 2005, and thus won the “Prize” Honor Foundation Arts ». The state also encourages writers as much as possible, and works in order not to forget the famous writers and their writings. In this context, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has supported the celebrations held by the Turkish Professional Union of authors of scientific and literary works across the country, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the famous poet Aref Nihad. The Ministry declared the period May 2004 – May 2005 “the year of Najib Fadel” on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the great Turkish poet of literature Najib Fadel Kaysakurek.
As is the case every year, in 2008, various activities were also held to mark the approval of the Independence Anthem, and to commemorate the death of some poets and writers such as Omar Seif al-Din, Faqir Bayquret, Khaldun Tanir, Orhan Kamal, Aunt Qutlar, Nazim Hikmat, Aziz Nisin, Jamil Mureij, Najib Fadil Qaishakurek and Muhammad Akef Arsoy And Necati Gail rejoiced. Other writers who have emerged in the forefront of Turkish literature include Aisha Qulin, Nazli Irai, Bukit Ozunir, Kurshad Bashar, Pinar Kaur, Ihsan Oktay Anar, and Alef Alatli.

Architecture & Culture


With the establishment of the republic, aspirations to develop an architectural culture in Turkey also gained speed. With the changes made in the educational systems of institutions such as the precious arts in Istanbul , the House of Engineers and the school that graduates the technical manpower for the railway service , and led by experts such as Holzmeister, Egli, Wagner and Taut Starting with the upbringing of a new generation of architects. Today in Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus there are 38 branches of architecture at the university level, and as is the case in Turkey, the graduates of these branches perform successful works in various countries of the world as well. If Turkish architecture is viewed from a stylistic point of view, it is noted that there is a “search for identity” starting from the early years of the Republic.
Among the buildings of this period, surrounding Ulus Square in Ankara, the Grand Turkish National Council building, the Ankara Palace Hotel, the Agricultural Bank and Garanti Bank buildings , the Turkish House in Namazakah Tepe and the Museum of Ethnography. In the 1930s, under the leadership of expert architects from Central Europe, the modern architectural monuments called “Ankara Cubism” gained the center of gravity.

Drawing & Sculpture


During the first decade of the last century, and within the scope of art education, the painters Ibrahim Jalali, Hikmat Onat, Namik Ismael, Uni Levig and Fihaman Duran were dispatched to Europe in order to receive their educational attainment, which led to the Turkish art of drawing the acquisition of the principles of the stream of realistic viewing or symbolic ideas. These artists were known as the “generation of 1914”, and they worked as faculty members at the Academy of Fine Arts, where they trained and trained painters of the “Republican Generation”. Ali Aouni Chalabi and Zaki Koca Mami were the first painters to gain modern artistic views in Turkish drawing through The Hoffman School was impressed by its aspirations, and they shared with their colleagues Sharaf Akdic, Mahmoud Joudeh, Hala Assaf, Muhyiddin Thabati, Rafik Akebman, Jawad Darali, and the sculptor Ratib Asher Aujdoglu, the pioneer in spreading the ideas of the Hoffman School of Art, and they were known as the “Independents”. With the university reform in 1928, the School of Fine Arts was transformed into the Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1937 the French painter Leopold Levy was brought in to assume the presidency of the Higher Department of Painting in it.
They were inspired by the traditional and heritage sources of Turkish painting, such as miniatures, calligraphy, carpets, rugs, mosaics and mosaics, and unified them through formulating and expressing them in modern formations and ideas. The art of Turkish painting recorded a huge leap in the eighties and nineties represented in the tyranny of the unreasonable fictional art versus realism, at the hands of Fikret Moelal, Awni Erbas, Burhan Uyghur, Ergen Inan, Errol Akyawash, Burhan Doganjay, Otko and Warlik, where they won international successes. Artists such as Gökhan Anlagan, Husamuddin Qogan, Muhammad Gun, Maher Govan, Alp Tamir Uluqilij, Ismat Dogan, Muhammad Uygun, Altan Jalam, Salda Asal and Serhat Kiraz added new dimensions in the use of oil paintings in terms of concept and practice that resulted in the Turkish art of modern steps.
The first model of the memorial models of Turkish sculpture is the work of the Turkish artist Ratib Ten Ojdoglu, represented by the Manaman Monument and the Erzincan Earthquake Monument. In 1937 the German professor of sculpture was brought in by Rudolf Peeling to head the sculpture department at the State Academy of Fine Arts, and he remained in this position until 1954, and many Turkish sculptors were apprenticed during his stay as a member of the academic staff, and he was the one who carved the Inönü statues in a park Tashleq in Istanbul and in the garden of the Faculty of Agriculture in Ankara. In 1961, the Turkish sculptor Gözgün Ajar won the first prize in the Youth Biennial, the sculpture branch in Paris, for his amazing models in abstract work.

The art of photography also took its share of the developments in life and became more developed due to Ataturk’s support for this art. Turkish. With the establishment of the Turkish Photography Art Federation in 2003, the art of photography took another step forward in the way of organizing. The thirteenth “State Photography Competition” was organized in 2008, which is organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism every two years in order to contribute to enriching the state’s collections of photos and developing the art of photography.


The theater


Turkish theater has a long history dating back to very ancient times, as the habit of telling stories was known to the Turks in Central Asia, and as a result of their crystallization with Islamic culture, they developed into a form of praise that became prevalent in the sixteenth century. The improvisational Turkish dramas constituted the summit of the development of Turkish theater, as it came to resemble the Italian folk theaters in the days of the Renaissance, and from these performances branched out the performances of fantasy, shadow, puppets, gramophone and imitator, which lived its golden age in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With the Tanzimat era , which began in 1839, written texts began to appear in the field of Turkish theater in the form of translations and quotations from international plays, in addition to new plays by Turkish authors. For example, the comedic “Marriage of the Poet” from one chapter by the author Shinasi, it is considered the first written play in the history of Turkish theater, followed by the establishment of theaters in the palaces of Ciragan, Wildes and Dolmabagaçe in Istanbul and then in other cities such as Izmir, Bursa, Adana and Ankara, and the formation of special theatrical groups.
As well as the Higher Institute of Arts, which was established under the name of “Dar Al Badaa` Al Othmaniyah” in Istanbul in 1914, it had a great impact on the development of Turkish theater. « In the republican era, efforts were focused on imparting the modern character of Turkish theater, as a first step in this direction, where the great theater artist Mohsen Ertugrul assumed the presidency of Dar Al Badaa ‘in 1927, and as a second step, Dar Al Badaa was linked to the Istanbul municipality in 1931, and then resigned in 1934 under the name of Istanbul City Theater ».

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By Ahmad