Turkish literaturethe body of written works in the Turkish language.

The earliest Turkish literature was produced in Mongol-controlled Anatolia during the later 13th century. Among the numerous Turkic dynasties of Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, only the post-Mongol Anatolian states and then the Ottoman Empire maintained Turkish as a literary language. From the 14th through the early 20th century, writing in Turkish flourished in the Ottoman Empire, and it subsequently continued in the Turkish republic. Despite changes in language and culture from the Mongol and Ottoman periods to the emergence of modern-day Turkey, Turkish literature has remained an important means of expression for the Turkish-speaking peoples of Anatolia and the adjacent areas of the Balkans. Much of this region’s literary activity has centred on Istanbul, its central urban metropolis since the mid-15th century.

Epic and the emergence of the âşik

The oldest genre of Turkish literature is the heroic epic, of which the prime example is the Kitab-i Dede Korkut (“The Book of My Grandfather Korkut”; Eng. trans. The Book of Dede Korkut), which has survived in two 16th-century manuscripts. The actual date of the work is unknown. At least one of the tales was already circulating in written form in the early 14th century, and Central Asian sources suggest that the shaman-bard Korkut and his tales date from the 9th and 10th centuries. The style of the epic—which consists of prose narrative mixed with verse speeches—suggests oral composition. The language of the text is Oghuz Turkish, containing both Anatolian and Azerbaijani elements. There is no overall narrative framework, but most of the 12 tales revolve around legendary Oghuz heroes. The original poem (if not the 16th-century manuscripts) was evidently created by an oral bard, or ozan, the heir to a partly shamanic tradition, although the circumstances of the epic’s transformation to written literature are unknown, and the work as such had no influence on the subsequent development of Turkish literature. Both manuscripts known at the turn of the 21st century were discovered in Europe, the larger one in Germany in the early 19th century. Yet Turkish interest in the Book of Dede Korkut emerged nearly a century after significant German and Russian work. In the 20th century major studies of the text were undertaken in Turkey, Russia, and Azerbaijan as well as in Europe.

Much of the style of the Book of Dede Korkut predates the heroic tradition of the Oghuz Turkish poet-musician known as the âşik, who emerged in the 16th century in Anatolia, Iran, and the southern Caucasus and eventually supplanted the ozan. The âşik (ashoog in Azerbaijani; from the Arabic ʿashiq, “lover” or “novice Sufi”) was a professional or semiprofessional performer, singing a variety of epic, didactic, mystical, and lyrical songs to the accompaniment of a long-necked lute (saz). The classical âşik of the Anatolian Turkmen tribes was Karacaoğlan, who flourished in the later 16th century or possibly the mid-17th century (his date of death is sometimes given as 1679). He is mentioned in several biographical dictionaries (tezkires) of the period. In its formal qualities his poetry is closely related to folk verse, and he generally treats lyrical themes without the mystical subtext that was common in courtly verse of the period. His style influenced such 17th-century âşiks as Âşik Ömer of Aydin and Gevherî, as well as the âşiks of the 18th century.

During the 17th century the popular urban song (şarkı) was taken up by court poets and musicians, and it became fashionable for courtiers to entertain themselves by performing these songs with the folkloric bağlama. The great 17th-century poet Nâʾilî was the first to include such songs in his divan (collected works), a practice that reached its culmination in the following century with Ahmed Nedim. The outstanding âşik of the later 17th century was Âşik Ömer, who wrote both folkloric qoşma poems and courtly lyrics, or gazels (Persian: ghazals). Thus, during the 17th century the âşiq became a bridge between the literary taste of the court and the people of the towns. The interplay between this popular poetry and the courtly gazel continued into the 19th century, when it was exemplified by the work of İbrahim Dertli.

Sufi poetry

By the middle of the 13th century, mystical (Sufi) poetry had become a major branch of Turkish literature, with Sufi poets working primarily in Anatolian Turkish. One of the two well-known poets of the 13th and 14th centuries was Âşık Paşa, author of the Garībnāmeh (“The Book of the Stranger”), a didactic poem of some 11,000 couplets that explores philosophical and moral themes. It is considered among the finest mesnevîs (Persian: masnavī mas̄navīs; see masnawi) of the era. Yunus Emre, author of a divan and of the didactic mesnevî Risâletʿün nushiyye (“Treatise of Counsel”), was the period’s other well-known poet. Despite Yunus Emre’s evident scholastic learning, he wrote in a language and style that appealed to popular taste. His poetry was read and studied in Ottoman times, and it remains central today to the dhikr ceremony of ritual prayer practiced by Sunni brotherhoods (tarikats) and to the ayîn-i cem ritual of the Alevî Bektashi, an order of tribal Shīʿite Sufis.

Later in the 13th century Seyid İmadeddin Nesimi, probably of southeast Anatolia, created brilliant Sufi verse in Persian and in a form of Turkish rather closer to Azerbaijani. The 15th century saw a split between heterodox Sufi tendencies, as seen in the verse of Kaygusuz Abdal, and the orthodox Sufism of Eşrefoğlu Rumi. Like Yunus Emre, Eşrefoğlu wrote verse in which the Sufi poet functions as a charismatic and sacred figure who writes poetry in order to communicate his sacerdotal authority to his disciples. By the early 16th century, this style of poetry, generally known as ilâhî (“divine”), was practiced by such sheikh-poets as İbrahim Gülşeni and his son Gülşenîzâde Hayali as well as Muslihiddin Merkez, Muhiddin Uftade, Seyyid Seyfullah Nizamoğlu, and Aziz Mahmud Hüdâyî. The growth during the 16th and 17th centuries of this type of poetry, which was intended to be sung in the dhikr ceremony, was a function of the monopoly over mysticism held by the Sufi brotherhoods of that era. The most outstanding representative of this tradition is Niyazi Mısri, a 17th-century poet of the Halvetiye tarikat. His verse was enormously popular in his lifetime and throughout the 18th century. Like Yunus Emre, Niyazî Misrî was able to express subtle mystical insights using very simple language:

I was seeking a cure for my trouble;My trouble became my cure.I was seeking a proof for my origin;My origin became my proof.

I was looking to the right and the leftSo that I could see the face of the Beloved.I was searching outside,But the Soul was within that very soul.

Poetry of the Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1839)

While the Ottomans wrote a great deal of prose (especially on history, theology, mysticism, biography, and travel), poetry was the focus of literary thought; hence, the following discussion will confine itself to verse. The forms, genres, and themes of pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Turkish literature—those works written between about 1300 and 1839, the year in which the wide-ranging Tanzimat reforms were begun—were generally derived from those of Persian literature, either directly or through the mediation of Chagatai literature. Anatolia and parts of the Balkans, although increasingly Turkish-speaking, developed a high literary culture of the type known as Persianate.

Forms and genres

The dominant forms of Ottoman poetry from its origins in the 14th century until its decline in the late 19th century were the gazel and the kasîde (originally from the Arabic qaṣīdah; see qasida). The formal principles of the gazel were the same for both Persian and Ottoman varieties. Composed of a series of couplets (distichs), it was subject to a single metrical scheme and was usually in monorhyme, often using a repeated word (redîf). The pen name (mahlas) of the poet usually appeared in the closing distich. In the 15th and 16th centuries Ottoman gazels might extend from 5 to 10 couplets, but in the mid-17th century 5 became the norm.

The tropes and images of the classical Ottoman gazel were extremely conventional; in many cases they appeared as early as the 12th century in the Persian ghazals of Sanāʾī. In general, the images of the gazel cast the poet as the lover singing to his beloved—that is, as the nightingale singing to the rose. The world of the gazel is thus largely confined to a garden, with a vocabulary related to the appearance and growth of flowers and plants and also to birds. A second family of images concerns the hair and face of the beloved, focusing on the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and cheeks as well as the expressions created by these features. The speaker, addressee, and theme might also change from couplet to couplet. It was mainly religious gazels that retained a single speaker and theme; these single-melody poems were known as yek-ahenk. But by the mid-17th century, with the work of poets Cevri, Nâʾilî, Fehim, and Neşatî, gazels of all sorts became largely monothematic.

The kasîde was an encomium whose object was to praise its subject. It had two major varieties, secular and religious. Unlike the gazel, whose mystical references (as well as its secular ones) were often ambiguous, the religious kasîde had as its ostensible subject God, the Prophet Muhammad, or ʿAlī, Muhammad’s son-in-law and the fourth caliph. Secular kasîdes usually took as their subject individuals—a sultan, a vizier, a pasha, or a high member of the secular bureaucracy (ulema)—or specific events, such as a military victory.

All kasîdes were divided into several sections. In the secular kasîde the lyric prologue (nesîb) often described some aspect of nature or the garden, while in the religious kasîde it might take a more general moral or philosophical theme. The medhîye followed, a section that named and praised the subject. In secular kasîdes this section’s imagery was usually drawn from the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), the epic completed by the Persian poet Ferdowsī in the 11th century, while in religious kasîdes allusions to the Qurʿān and Hadith are very common. After the medhîye came a couplet, the hüsn-i tahallus (literally, “beauty of the pen name”), in which the poet mentions his own name. It led into a section of self-praise (the fahrîye), in which the poet lauds his skills. The poem might end with a hüsn-i taleb (literally, “beauty of the request”), in which he seeks patronage or a favour.

Within these parameters, the kasîde could take a wide variety of forms. Some are centred to such an extent on a specific situation or request of the poet that the distinctions between these sections become somewhat blurred. Other kasîdes share with gazels a lyric mood. During the 17th century a number of kasîdes incorporated into the fahrîye praise for poetry in general or, similarly, broader meditations on the nature of poetry. In size the kasîde varies from 14 to more than 100 couplets.

The Ottomans’ principal narrative poetic form, the mesnevî, was also made up of couplets. (It was common practice for poets to insert gazels or other stanzaic forms into a mesnevî to express the speech of the characters.) Starting with Aşık Paşa and Yunus Emre in the 14th century, the mesnevî was often used by Sufi writers as a vehicle for didactic works. During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, Ottoman writers achieved distinction by writing original mesnevîs, such as the Çengname (“Tale of the Harp”), a mystical allegory by Ahmed-i Dâi, and the satirical Harname (“Tale of the Donkey”), by Sinan Şeyhi. A century later, Lâmiî Çelebi of Bursa initiated translations of the major Persian mesnevîs into Turkish. He was especially influenced by the 15th-century Persian scholar and poet Jāmī. Nevertheless, the major innovations in the narrative structure of the mesnevî created by the brilliant Chagatai poet ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, who was a student of Jāmī, had little effect among the Ottomans. Indeed, the acknowledged Ottoman master of the genre in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Nevʾî-zade Atâyî, broke up the narrative into small unconnected tales and criticized Navāʾī for the complexity of his mesnevîs. The mesnevî was still used successfully at times for didactic works such as the 17th-century Hayrîyye of Yusuf Nâbî.

By the 17th century both the Persian and the Chagatai mesnevî forms had gone into decline, and Ottoman writers generally ceased to treat the genre as one of first-rate literary significance. Nevertheless, the final two major works of Ottoman literature were written in the mesnevî form: Hüsn ü aşk (1782; “Beauty and Love”), a mystical allegory by Şeyh Galib, and Mihnetkeşan (1822; “The Sufferers”), a self-satirizing autobiography by Keçecizade İzzet Molla. Thus, the Ottoman mesnevî was generally of the first order of literary significance only at the beginning and end of Ottoman literary history. The one striking exception is the Leyla ü Mecnun (Leylā and Mejnūn) of Mehmed bin Süleyman Fuzuli, written in the 16th century. Although this work has been accepted into the Ottoman canon, its author wrote within the Turkmen literary tradition, under the influence of the Chagatai mesnevî.

While the gazel was the Ottoman lyric form par excellence, stanzaic forms were also in limited use. Stanzas ranged from 4 to 10 lines and were of two basic types: the müzdeviç, in which the last line (or couplet) of each stanza has the same rhyme, and the mükerrir, in which the last line (or couplet) is the same in each stanza. The four-line murabbaʾ form seems to have emerged from both Persian quatrain forms (especially the robāʿī) and Turkic quatrain forms (especially the tuyugh). Ottoman murabbaʾs often feature an epigrammatic style.

The tercibend and terkibbend are more-elaborate stanzaic forms. Both feature stanzas with the stylistic features of the gazel, but, unlike gazels, each stanza in these forms is followed by a couplet with a separate rhyme. In the tercibend the same couplet is repeated after each stanza, while in the terkibbend each couplet following a stanza is unique. Poems that use these forms are frequently elegies, in which case they are called mersiyes. A masterpiece of the terkibbend genre is the elegy for Sultan Süleyman I written by Bâkî in the 16th century. Other Ottoman stanzaic forms utilize varying numbers of couplets, such as the müseddes, which has three. A fine example of this form is the Müseddes der ahvâl-i hod (“Six-Line Poem on His Own State”), by Nâʾilî. Less common are the müsemmen, with four couplets, the muʾaşşer, with five couplets, and the müsebbaʾ, with seven lines.

The muhammes, a five-line poem, was generally reserved for a type of poetic imitation in which a second poet closed the poem by writing three lines that mimicked the style of the opening couplet, written by a first poet. The second poet might also insert three new lines between the first and second lines of the other poet’s couplet. In the muhammes the aim was for the second poet to subordinate his style to that of the first poet. (The type of imitation used in the muhammes was distinct from that used in certain types of gazel and kasîde in which a poet referred to a poem by another poet—or sometimes by two or three previous poets—in order to “answer” and surpass his predecessors.)

Movements and poets

Poetry’s place within Turkish society prior to the second half of the 15th century is relatively unknown, but the 16th century saw the composition of seven biographical dictionaries (tezkires) by Ottoman poets that make clear the high esteem in which poets and their poetry were held. Of these, five—by Sehî Bey (1538), Latifî (1546), Âşık Çelebi (1568), Hasan Çelebi (1585), and Ali Efendi (1599)—may be considered major examples of the genre. All five are large-scale works that include much biographical material as well as many anecdotes and some aesthetic judgments. Early in the 17th century, three more tezkires were written, of which one (by Riyazî) covers the entire 16th century in detail.

Patronage for Ottoman poets in the classical age took a variety of forms. The location of this patronage varied as well: poets were attached to the imperial household in Bursa or, later, Istanbul, or they were supported at the provincial Anatolian courts of the Ottoman princes. These princes also sometimes took poets along on military campaigns. Aside from the sultan, the leading ministers of state might also contribute toward the upkeep of poets. The simplest form of patronage was the annual stipend. During the 15th and 16th centuries the sultan Bayezid II granted an annual stipend to each of more than 30 poets.

Throughout the Ottoman Empire’s early history, either official patronage or a good position in the bureaucracy—or both—were available (and often attained) by poets who were from provincial cities or otherwise outside the inner circles of Ottoman rulers. During the second reign (1451–81) of the sultan Mehmed II, the poet İsa Necati, who was of obscure origins, was able to attract the attention of the sultan, who read and admired one of his gazels and immediately had him enrolled as a chancery secretary. Hayali Bey, the most influential poet of the first half of the 16th century, was the son of a timar sipahî (feudal cavalryman) from Rumeli, in the Balkans. He began his career with a troupe of wandering dervishes and eventually came under the protection of the vizier İbrahim Paşa. Through the vizier he became a favourite of Sultan Süleyman I, who granted him a yearly stipend and the income of several fiefs.

A major basis for this structure of poetic patronage was the bureaucratization of the ulema. (See Ottoman Empire: Classical Ottoman society and administration.) Once the ilmiye (ulema class) had become firmly attached to the imperial bureaucracy, it was possible for a talented poet who was a graduate of a madrassa (Turkish: medrese; a Muslim school of theology) to expect an appointment first as a mülâzim (assistant professor) and eventually as a müderris (professor). Among the many candidates for these professorships, a considerable number composed poetry and were, at least in their own minds, identified as “poets.” Some of the most talented or ambitious could use their poetry to advance quickly in the system. Bâkî is perhaps the supreme example of a poet who achieved success in the ilmiye system of mid-16th-century Turkey, but he is in no way typical. These two trends—the integration of the Islamic clergy into the Ottoman bureaucratic system and the separation (and subsequent expansion) of the secular bureaucracy from the madrassa-educated potential clergy—came to alter fundamentally the meaning of the word poet as a professional designation by the middle of the 16th century.

From the beginning of the reign of Sultan Selim I in 1512 until the 1539 reorganization of the bureaucracy (following the execution of İbrahim Paşa in 1536), the Ottoman state seemed to be able both to fill its expanded bureaucracies and to support leading poets. But it appears that, after this time, the state began to view its bureaucratic and fiscal needs as holding priority over its literary ones. The entry of Rüstem Paşa into the office of grand vizier in 1555 ushered in a new period of fiscal austerity and antiliterary sentiment in which new poets had a much slimmer chance of patronage. The real and apparently inexorable decline in state patronage for poetry set in with the accession of Murad III as sultan in 1574.

Ottoman poetry of the later 15th and 16th centuries represents a mature synthesis of the three major Islamic languages—Turkish, Persian, and Arabic—within a secure matrix of Turkish syntax. Despite the hybridization of courtly literary language, the literary production of the Ottoman court, almost alone among Turkic dynasties of the period, remained predominantly Turkish. A close analysis of the language of the classical-age poets reveals the liberal use of Turkish linguistic features, sometimes linked with popular and humorous effects, even to the point of self-parody.

Stylistically, the 16th century was marked by two major trends: the further elaboration of the Turkish courtly style of the later 15th century, represented by Necati, and the creation of a new synthesis of Sufi and secular concerns. The foremost representative of the former movement was Bâkî; the latter was Hayali Bey. In the second half of the 16th century, the courtly style asserted itself by way of the brilliant poetry of Bâkî. A ranking member of the ulema, Bâkî perfected an essentially secular style that held a central position in the poetry of the period. Among Bâkî’s couplets are

Behold the beauty that expands the heart within the mirror of the rose—Behold the one who holds the mirror to the shining face of Truth.


Behold the love-addicted heart—a beggar wandering in the street.Behold the beggar who loves kingship and sovereignty.

In the first half of the 17th century this courtly style was represented most notably by Yahya Efendi, who rose to the position of şeyhülislâm, the highest rank within the ulema. However, this style was challenged by Yahya Efendi’s contemporary Nefʾi, an aristocrat from the eastern Anatolian provinces who was an outsider in the Ottoman capital. Nefʾi was a master of the kasîde, but he is also remembered for couplets such as

I am the wonder-speaking parrot.Whatever I say is no idle chatter.

He emphasized his outsider identity by perfecting his satirical verse (hiciv; Arabic: hijāʾ) and by adopting features of the new Indo-Persian style of the Mughal court in northern India. In doing so, he initiated a major stylistic movement in Ottoman poetry. The principal poets of this school, some of them students or followers of Nefʾi, were Cevri, Nâʾilî, Fehim, and Neşatî, all of whom wrote some of the very finest verse in Ottoman Turkish. By using an almost exclusively Persian lexicon, however, their poetry reversed the dominant trend of Ottoman poetry.

In the 17th century this newer style of poetry was termed tâze-gûʾî (“fresh speech”) or tarz-i nev (“new style”). (By the early 20th century it had come to be known as poetry of the Indian school, or Sabk-i Hindī.) In the late 16th century the two most important figures had been the Indian-born poet Fayzî and the Iranian Urfî (who was patronized in India). The Persian poets of the next generation, such as Kalîm Kâshânî and Saib-i Tabrizi, were encouraged by the Mughal court to develop their meditations on the poetic imagination. Much of this new philosophy of literature and poetic style influenced a major group of 17th-century Ottoman poets.

The death of the Ottoman sultan Murad IV in 1640 was followed by a series of events that resulted in a progressively weaker basis for governmental patronage of poetry. While higher clerical positions continued to be monopolized by a group of prominent Istanbul ulema families in the mid-17th century, places in the secular bureaucracies were being apportioned largely according to political patronage. Poets continued to rise through the ranks of the bureaucracies, but only rarely was their poetic ability a major factor in their careers or a source of much material benefit for them.

The ulema, however, continued to produce poets, the most illustrious of whom was the şeyhülislâm Bahayî Efendi. Like his predecessor Yahya Efendi, he was the scion of an illustrious ulema family. Bahayî Efendi’s poetry is a continuation of Bâkî’s style as it was developed by Yahya Efendi, and, as such, it furnishes the prime example of the neoconservative tendencies of the poets of his class. It is also indicative of the secondary position of poetry within his life that his divan is very small; it contains only 6 kasîdes and 41 gazels.

The major contemporary source for knowledge about the poets of the mid-17th century is the Teşrîfâtʾ üs-şuarâ of Edirneli Güftî, written in 1660–61—the only Ottoman tezkire composed as a mesnevî. It was not commissioned nor apparently presented to any patron, and its major function seems to have been as a means for the author to satirize and slander many of his contemporaries. It was also a general attack on and complaint about the literary situation in Turkey.

Beginning in the early 17th century, the Mawlawīyah (Turkish: Mevleviyah), an order of dervishes who were followers of the 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet Rūmī, were exerting a major influence on poetry. Cevri and Neşatî are the prime examples of leaders of the “fresh speech” who were committed Mawlawīyah. In the Ottoman capital the order began to create an alternative structure of literary evaluation that was independent of the courtly tradition, which had by this time become largely dominated by the higher ulema.

The leading poet of the later 17th century was Nâbî, a provincial notable who became an intimate of the second vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Mustafa Paşa, and eventually served as his chancery secretary. In his youth Nâbî attracted the notice of Nâʾilî, the most eminent poet of his time. Nâbî’s fame rests mainly on his didactic mesnevî Hayrîyye, which contains moral maxims for his son.

The 18th century witnessed significant changes in style and genre that led ultimately to the dissolution of the classic form of Ottoman poetry. But these changes were incremental and resulted in major stylistic splits only after the middle of the century. The first third of the 18th century was dominated by Ahmed Nedim, scion of an illustrious ulema family, who rose to prominence under the grand vizier Damad İbrahim Paşa between 1718 and 1730. Nedim’s fame rests largely on his kasîdes, the strongest and most original since those of Nefʾi a century earlier, and on two lesser genres that were undergoing development at this time—the tarîh (chronogram) and the şarki (a form of urban popular song). The tarîhs of Nedim display an entirely new awareness of the physical characteristics of the buildings being praised, thereby registering a perceptible shift from formal, highly stylized techniques of literary representation to ones based partly on observation of worldly phenomena. Similarly, his şarkis revel in the physical surroundings of the pleasure grounds of Saʿadābād Palace in Tehrān.

The leading poet of the middle of the 18th century was Koca Ragıb Paşa, whose public life was that of a high bureaucrat and diplomat. His career extended from serving as chief secretary of foreign affairs and, later, as grand vizier to being governor of several large provinces. Ragıb Paşa made no striking formal innovations, but the language of his gazels shows a happy synthesis of the canonical tradition of Bâkî with the “fresh” (or “Indian”) style of Nâʾilî. By this period such stylistic departures no longer aroused the acrimony of a century earlier.

The last third of the 18th century saw a lack of faith in older lyric metaphors. Drawing on the tradition of popular theatre, poets turned toward colloquial speech. At times they also embraced a new form of poetic subversion by which the praise characterizing the traditional lyric was replaced by its traditional opposite—hiciv, the poetry of satire. Vâsif Enderunî combined local Istanbul speech with a strong reminder of Nedim’s kasîdes and gazels in his poetry. Fazıl Enderunî went even further in his development of the şehrengiz (city-description) genres, of which Hubanname (“The Book of Beauties”), Zenanname (“The Book of Women”), and Çengîname (“The Book of Dancing Boys”) were part. All of these are replete with dialogue and descriptions that are both satirical and vulgar. The album paintings accompanying manuscripts of these works emphasize the new realism of their style and contents. These tendencies took a somewhat more mature form in the Mihnetkeşan (1823–24) of Keçecizade İzzet Molla, who wrote a humorous autobiographical mesnevî that has been hailed by some as the first work of modern Ottoman literature. Unique in Ottoman literature, the tale has no purpose other than to describe the author’s trials and misfortunes as he was sent into exile from the capital.

One of the most important Ottoman literary classics was created at the end of the 18th century, when Şeyh Galib, a sheikh of the Galata Mawlawīyah dervishes, wrote his mesnevî Hüsn ü aşk (1782; “Beauty and Love”), an allegorical narrative poem. Galib, who had been befriended by Sultan Selim III, wrote with considerable reference to the Indian style, although by his era Ottoman poets were no longer conversant with contemporary Indo-Persian literature. Despite the masterly quality of Beauty and Love, which is perhaps the greatest mesnevî ever written by an Ottoman poet, neither Galib’s mystical theme nor his highly Persianate language were to have much influence on succeeding generations of Ottoman writers.

The last chapter of traditional Ottoman verse was written in the mid- and late 19th century within a bureaucratic circle, the Encüman-i Şuarâ (“Council of Poets”) group of Leskofçali Galib Bey, which also included Arif Hikmet Bey and Yenişehirli Avnî Bey. The Indian-style poets of the mid-17th century, especially Nâʾilî, Neşatî, and Fehim, furnished the models for these late Ottoman poets, who rejected the type of change that began engulfing Ottoman literature in the 1840s. Two of the major poets of this generation, Ziya Paşa and Namık Kemal, began their literary careers as members of this conservative circle, only to break with it in their own mature works.

New Ottoman literature (1839–1918)

The lack of faith in traditional literary models that had emerged during the later 18th century took a drastic new turn for the generation that experienced the Tanzimat reforms, which began in 1839 and, under the influence of European ideas, were aimed at modernizing the Ottoman state. The most radical new voice was that of Ibrahim Şinasi, who studied in France and then returned to Constantinople for several years, during which time he started the newspaper Tasvir-i Efkar (“Description of Ideas”). He subsequently remained active as a journalist and as a translator, and he also became the first modern Ottoman playwright with his Şair evlenmesi (1859; The Wedding of a Poet). At midcentury the central literary conflict was between Şinasi and Leskofçali Galib Bey, and Şinasi succeeded in winning both Ziya Paşa and Namık Kemal over to the cause of modernization. Ziya Paşa led a successful career as a provincial governor, but in 1867 he fled to France, England, and Switzerland; while in exile he collaborated with Şinasi. In Geneva in 1870, Ziya Paşa wrote the Zafername (“The Book of Victory”) as a satire on the grand vizier Mehmed Emin Âli Paşa and as a general attack on the state of the empire. Written in classical language, it nonetheless represents a far-reaching modern development of the type of satire used by Vasif Enderunî in the previous generation. Ziya Paşa’s poetic anthology Harabat (1874; “Mystical Taverns”) is a thoughtful attempt to evaluate the Ottoman literary heritage and to create a classical canon.

Namık Kemal took over the newspaper Tasvir-i Efkar when Şinasi fled to Paris in 1865, but in the late 1860s he left Turkey for London, where he published the newspaper Hürriyet (“Freedom”). Eventually he devoted himself to poetry and theatre that usually carried a strong nationalist and modernizing message. His most famous play was Vatan; yahut, Silistre (1873; “The Motherland; or, Silistria”). After the accession of Abdülhamid II as sultan in 1876, Kemal spent most of the rest of his life in exile. The increasingly strict censorship in the reign of this sultan, which lasted until the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908, limited the possibilities for the development of new Ottoman literature.

The novel made its appearance in Turkish in the late 19th century, most notably with the works of Ahmet Mithat, who published prolifically between 1875 and 1910. During Mithat’s lifetime, both the novel and poetry assumed a strongly public, didactic orientation that would prove highly influential among many writers well into the 20th century. Tevfik Fikret became a major literary voice of the late Ottoman era through his editorship of the literary journal Servet-i fünun (1896–1901; “The Wealth of Knowledge”) and his leadership of the literary circle of the same name. His poetry displays a shift from the romanticism of his early works (such as Rübab-i şikeste [1900; “The Broken Viol”]) to social and political criticism after 1901. Abdülhak Hâmid’s career spans the late Ottoman, Young Turk, and early republican eras. While maintaining a successful life as a state official and diplomat, he wrote poetry and plays using a style that mixed classical and journalistic effects.

Modern Turkish literature

Despite the numerous political problems of the Young Turk era (1908–18), the relative easing of censorship compared with the previous regime allowed writers a greater freedom of expression, which they were quick to take advantage of, both thematically and stylistically.

Refik Halid Karay was a journalist who became one of the leading short-story writers in Turkey. His political columns, mainly of a satirical nature, appeared between 1910 and 1913 in various journals; they were published under the pen name Kirpi (“The Porcupine”) and were collected in Kirpinin dedikleri (1919; “What the Porcupine Said”). Many of his columns display a highly nuanced ear for the local speech of various social groups and a keen eye for detail in locations within Istanbul. These qualities also characterized his short-story writing. Among his best short stories are “Şeftali bahçeleri” (1919; “The Peach Orchards”), a half-ironic description of the placid lives of an earlier generation of provincial bureaucrats, and “Şaka” (1913; “The Joke”), a more jaundiced view of the same class during his own time. Karay also wrote a number of novels, none of them matching the quality of his short stories. His political opinions, expressed mainly in his journalistic writings, led to his being exiled to Anatolia from 1913 to 1918 by the Young Turks and to Lebanon and Syria from 1922 to 1938 by Kemal Atatürk.

Other writers who emerged during the early 20th century, such as Memduh Şevket Esendal, Omer Seyfeddin, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, and Reşat Nuri Güntekin, employed the short story mostly as a vehicle for social edification and commentary. One of the period’s more striking figures was Halide Edib Adıvar. Educated at the American College for Girls in Istanbul, she later taught English literature at Istanbul University (1939–64) and wrote some of her best-known works in English. Among these are The Clown and His Daughter (1935), which later became a best seller in Turkish as Sinekli bakkal. Although she and her husband joined Atatürk’s rebellion against the Allies and the Ottoman government, they were soon after exiled from Turkey (1923–39). Nevertheless, she maintained a strongly nationalist stance in her work. Halide Edib was the first Turkish female writer to attain widespread recognition. Şevket Süreyya Aydemir was principally a writer of short stories, but his autobiographical novel Suyu arayan adam (1961; “The Man in Search of Water”) displays a brilliant style and reveals a deep search for a personal and national self that was rare in Turkish prose.

In poetry the outstanding figure of that generation was Yahya Kemal Beyatlı. Born in Skopje (Usküb; now in Macedonia), Beyatli studied in Paris for several years and subsequently taught at Istanbul University. After the proclamation of the Turkish republic, he held several ambassadorial posts. Although he supported republican principles, much of Beyatli’s poetry glorifies the Ottoman past. His lasting artistic achievement was his synthesis of classical Ottoman and contemporary French poetry.

One of the most multifaceted figures of 20th-century Turkish literature is Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar. A scholar of modern Turkish literature, he taught at Istanbul University for most of his life and published much literary criticism, including a major critical work on the poetry of Beyatlı, under whom he had studied. But Tanpınar’s scholarship was overshadowed by his short stories, novels, and lyrical poetry. Tanpınar is considered the founder of modernist fiction in Turkey largely on the basis of his novels. Saatleri ayarlama enstitüsü (serialized 1954, published in book form 1961; The Time Regulation Institute), the most complex novel written in Turkish until the 1980s and ’90s, is his most important. It is the autobiography of Hayri Irdal, a poorly educated petit bourgeois born in Istanbul in the 1890s. He follows charlatans of various types until he begins working for the founder of the Time Regulation Institute, which is responsible for ensuring that all clocks in Istanbul are set to the same time. Both the founder—the American-style entrepreneur of the Turkish present—and Hayri—the conformist of the Turkish past—emerge as reprehensible figures who offer scant hope for a Turkish society immersed in cultural self-deception. His other novels include Huzur (1949; “Contentment”) as well as the posthumously published Sahnenin dışındakiler (1973; “Those Not on the Stage”), Mahur beste (1975; “Composition in the Mahur Mode”), and Aydaki kadın (1987; “The Woman on the Moon”). Tanpınar’s poetic output, while not extensive, is also highly regarded. Throughout all his writings he demonstrated his ability to bridge the cultural gap between the Ottoman and the republican periods.

Most poets of the 1930s and ’40s rejected Beyatlı’s neo-Ottomanism and preferred a much simpler style reminiscent of folk poetry. The outstanding figure of the era was Nazım Hikmet. Born in Salonika (now Thessaloníki, Greece), he studied in Moscow, became a devoted communist, and was much influenced by the modernist style of the Russian poets Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky. His Şeyh Bedreddin destani (1936; The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin), written during a short imprisonment in Turkey, is an unprecedented work that blends a folk ballad style with poetic modernism. His politically motivated incarceration was followed by a much longer period of imprisonment in 1938, from which he was freed only in 1951. He spent the rest of his life in Russia and traveling in Europe. His later poetry was not published in Turkey until 1965, two years after his death, and so affected only a much younger generation. He went on to become the most widely known and translated Turkish poet of the 20th century. His major works include Moskova senfonisi (1952; The Moscow Symphony) and Memleketimden insan manzaraları (1966–67; Human Landscapes from My Country).

In 1941 three poets—Orhan Veli Kanık, Oktay Rifat, and Melih Cevdet Anday—initiated the Garip (“Strange”) movement with publication of a volume of poetry by the same name. In it they emphasized simplified language, folkloric poetic forms, and themes of alienation in the modern urban environment. Later, Anday broke with this style, treating philosophical and aesthetic issues in his poetry in a more complex manner. One of his best-known collections of poetry is Göçebe denizin üstünde (1970; On the Nomad Sea). The Garip group had immense influence on Turkish poetry. A contemporary poet who also used folk metrics and language with success was Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı; unlike the Garip poets, who were urban dwellers, he was born deep in Anatolia.

Behçet Necatigil chose a distinct poetic path, eventually creating poems that are models of brevity and wit; they occasionally refer obliquely to the Ottoman culture of the past. Sevgilerde (1976; “Among the Beloveds”) is a collection of his earlier poetry. Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca wrote modernist poetry, often with a socialist outlook, while pursuing a career in the military, which he left in 1950. He became one of Turkey’s most influential poets during the post-World War II era. Choosing a simplified and modernist literary form, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, who taught literature in Turkey at the University of Ankara, turned his critique of the alienation of the individual in modern society into a conservative Islamist political message. Collections of his poetry include Sonsuzluk kervanı (1955; “The Caravan of Eternity”) and Şiirlerim (1969; “My Poems”).

The two outstanding short-story writers of the mid-20th century were Sait Faik Abasıyanık and Sabahattin Ali. Leading a reclusive and uneventful life as a high-school teacher in Istanbul, Abasıyanık revolutionized the Turkish short story by choosing a stream-of-consciousness style in which plot is de-emphasized; this style focuses the reader’s attention on the perspective of the writer in a way that had not been attempted previously in Turkish. As such, he was a lonely figure in Turkish letters and came to be better appreciated only after his death, in 1954. His many collections of short stories include Semaver (1936; “The Samovar”) and Mahkeme kapısı (“The Court-House Gate”), published posthumously in 1956.

Sabahattin Ali was probably the most powerful and effective of the 20th-century short-story writers in Turkey who addressed social themes. He was born into a military family in northern Greece, and he studied and taught in Germany, where his controversial writing caused him to lose his teaching position and to be imprisoned for libel in 1948. A year later, after his release, he was assassinated under mysterious circumstances. His short story “Ses” (1937; “The Voice”) is representative of his thematic concerns: it describes an encounter between two educated urbanites and a village troubadour, through which Sabahattin Ali points toward the incompatibility of the aesthetic ideals of the West and those of a Turkish village. His most famous collections of short stories are Değirmen (1935; “The Mill”) and Kağnı (1936; “The Oxcart”).

As literacy spread to the countryside after the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923 and the output of urban writers became more varied, Turkish writers expanded their thematic horizons. Among the most influential novelists of the generation born in the 1920s is Yashar Kemal. Born in a small village in southeastern Anatolia, where he never completed his secondary education, Kemal arrived in Istanbul in 1951 and found work with the prestigious newspaper Cumhuriyet. In 1955 he published the novella Teneke (“The Tin Pan”) and his first full-length novel, Ince Memed (“Thin Memed”; Eng. trans. Memed, My Hawk), both of which brought him immediate recognition in Turkey. The latter, like many of his other novels and short stories, is set in the rural eastern Anatolia of his youth and portrays the glaring social contradictions there, often aggravated by the process of modernization under the capitalist system. The novel gained an international audience and was adapted as a film in 1983. Kemal subsequently published novels at frequent intervals, including Yer demir gök bakır (1963; Iron Earth, Copper Sky), Binbogalar efsanesi (1971; “The Legend of a Thousand Bulls”), and Demirciler çarşısı cinayeti (1974; Murder in the Ironsmiths Market). He also published highly acclaimed collections of short stories. While Kemal’s works appear to be realistic and straightforward, his subtle narrative techniques ensure that his works are appreciated by a wide range of readers.

Another leading novelist born in the 1920s, Adalet Ağaoğlu, portrayed life from a more personal and introverted perspective than Kemal. She was one of the generation that suffered from the repression after the military coup d’état in 1971, and she based some of her fiction on these experiences. Her novels deal with a broad spectrum of the social changes that occurred within the Turkish republic, and she was among the first Turkish writers to treat sexual themes in depth. Her first novel, Ölmeye yatmak (1973; “Lying Down to Die”), brought her considerable success. She followed this with Fikrimin ince gülü (1976; “The Slender Rose of My Desire”), Bir düğün gecesi (1979; “A Wedding Party”), Uç bes kişi (1984; “A Few People”; Eng. trans. Curfew), Hayır (1987; “No”), and Ruh uşümesi (1991; “A Shiver in the Soul”).

The promising literary career of Sevgi Soysal was cut short by her untimely death in 1976. Born in Istanbul, Soysal studied philology in Ankara and archaeology and drama in Germany. Her first novel, Yürümek (1970; “To Walk”), features a stream-of-consciousness narrative and a keen ear for local dialogue; its treatment of sexual issues was unusually open for its time. She was imprisoned after the coup of 1971, an experience she recounted in her memoir Yıldırım bölge kadinlar koğuşu (1976; “The Yildirim Region Women’s Ward”). Other novels by Soysal include Yenişehirʿde bir oğle vakti (1973; “Noontime in Yenişehir”) and Şafak (1975; “Dawn”). She also wrote short stories.

Beginning with Troyaʿda olüm vardı (1963; Death in Troy), Bilge Karasu created works that display a sophisticated narrative style. Among his novels and novellas are Uzun sürmüş bir günün akşamı (1970; “The Evening of One Long Day”), Göçmüş kediler bahçesi (1979; The Garden of Departed Cats), Kısmet büfesi (1982; “The Buffet of Fate”), and Kılavuz (1990; “The Guide”).

Although he wrote prolifically in every genre, Necati Cumalı is known primarily as a short-story writer. He abandoned a career as a lawyer for writing and subsequently lived in Paris, Istanbul, and Israel. His first collection of short stories was Yalnız kadın (1955; “The Lonely Woman”). He explores the end of Turkish life in the Balkans in his collection Makedonya 1900 (1976; “Macedonia 1900”).

The poet Attilâ İlhan also wrote several successful novels. He lived and worked in Paris intermittently between 1949 and 1965 and later worked as a journalist in Turkey. His poetry, while modernist in its use of highly sophisticated language, often refers to Ottoman poetry, music, and history. Several of his poem cycles refer to the Young Turk era and the Balkan Wars. His poems on the latter focus on the political catastrophes that led to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of modern Turkey, a theme that he also developed in several of his novels, including Dersaadette sabah ezanları (1982; “Morning Calls to Prayers at the Sublime Port”). İlhan’s collections of poems include Duvar (1948; “The Wall”), Sisler bulvarı (1954; “The Avenue of Mist”), Yağmur kaçagı (1955; “The Rain Deserter”), Tutuklunun günlüğü (1973; “Diary of Captivity”), Korkunun krallığı (1987; “The Principality of Fear”), and Ayrilik sevdaya dahil (1993; “Separation Is Included Within Love”).

Among the poets of the latter half of the 20th century, Sezai Karakoç blended European and Ottoman sensibilities with a right-wing Islamist perspective. His poetry collections include Körfez (1959; “The Gulf”) and Şiirler VI (1980; “Poems VI”). Karakoç also published numerous essays on Islam. The poet İsmet Özel began his career as a Marxist, but by the 1980s his writing had become strongly Islamist, although of a more liberal variety than Karakoç’s. Özel’s volumes of poetry include Evet isyan (1969; “Yes, Rebellion”) and Celladima gülümserken (1984; “While Smiling at My Executioner”). Ataol Behramoğlu studied in Ankara and Moscow as well as in England and France. Often seen as the successor to Nâzim Hikmet, he merged political themes and folkloric forms. Among his collections of poetry are Kuşatmada (1978; “During the Siege”) and Türkiye üzgün yurdum, güzel yurdum (1985; “Turkey My Sad Home, My Beautiful Home”). Hilmi Yavuz worked as a journalist in London, where he also completed a degree in philosophy, and he later taught history and philosophy in Istanbul. In his poems the aesthetics of Ottoman civilization become the object of deep, at times nostalgic, reflection within a thoroughly modernist framework. His volumes of poetry include Bakiş kuşu (1969; “The Glance Bird”) and Doğu şiirleri (1977; “Poems of the East”); Seasons of the Word (2007) is a collection of his poetry in English translation.

The two best-known novelists in Turkey at the turn of the 21st century were Orhan Pamuk and Latife Tekin. In very distinct ways, both expanded the scope of the novel in Turkish and opened up modern Turkish literature to readers in Europe and North America. To a large extent, their differences in social background and gender impelled them toward radically divergent literary paths.

In his first novel, Cevdet Bey ve oğullari (1982; “Cevdet Bey and His Sons”), Pamuk wrote about the entry of Turkish Muslim merchants into the higher bourgeoisie during the Young Turk era. He gained international fame with Beyaz kale (1985; The White Castle), the first of his novels to be translated into English. This work, set in the mid-17th century, is a meditation on the oppositions between East and West. He returned to these themes in his subsequent novels, including Kara kitap (1990; The Black Book)—which, set in contemporary Istanbul, alludes to Ottoman mystical literature while playfully deconstructing the Turkish cultural present—and Kar (2002; Snow). Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, was perhaps the only Turkish novelist of his time to have built upon the avant-garde aspect of Tanpınar’s writing.

Tekin’s first novel, Sevgili arsiz ölüm (1983; Dear Shameless Death), depicts many of her own experiences as a displaced villager from Anatolia in the metropolis of Istanbul. Berci Kristin çöp masallari (1984; Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills) focuses on female characters living in a new shantytown. Tekin’s deconstruction of narrative duplicates the deconstruction of every element of the life of the former villagers, which does not spare any part of their former religious and social belief system. The manner in which her novels use the Turkish language sets her critique of modernity apart from and beyond earlier attempts to treat similar themes in Turkish literature. Her other novels include Gece dersleri (1986; “Night Lessons”) and Buzdan kılıçlar (1989; Swords of Ice).

The works of Pamuk and Tekin mirrored Turkey’s identity at the turn of the 21st century, when the country was the heir to, on the one hand, a sophisticated urban civilization with a history of both confronting the West and desiring to assimilate its values and, on the other hand, a rural culture that remained embedded in the developing world and vulnerable to a predatory modernity.