THE NAMES ERDOGAN IDENTIFIED AS CENTRAL TO TURKEY’S CULTURE
Hurriyet Daily News
Friday, October 9, 2009
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s speech on Oct. 3 at his party’s
convention made headlines the next day as he paid homage to a group
of people who contributed to Turkey in one way or other.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s speech on Oct. 3 at his party’s
convention made headlines the next day as he paid homage to a group
of people who contributed to Turkey in one way or other.
His speech was considered to be groundbreaking because some of the
names he mentioned were, at one stage, considered to be enemies of
the state while others died in exile.
"If you try to remove Ahmet Yesevi, Hacı BektaÅ~_, Pir Sultan
and Hacı Bayram Veli from our culture, the country will become an
orphan," Erdogan said. "Without Yunus Emre, Turkey will be without a
voice. Without Mevlana, it would be without a soul. Without listening
to Sabahat Akkiraz, Turkey will be without traditional music. If
Turkey ignores Tatyos Efendi, it will lose half its songs.
"Turkey missed Cem Karaca as much as he missed this country. Songs that
do not pay respect to Ahmet Kaya, who wrote, ‘Farewell, My Two Eyes,’
are not complete songs. Just as one cannot imagine a Turkey without
Mehmet Akif [Ersoy, the poet who wrote the national anthem], a country
without Nâzım Hikmet is an incomplete Turkey," he said in his speech.
"You may or may not accept their ideas, you may like them or not, but
without Ahmed-i Hani or Said Nursi of Bitlis, Turkey’s spirituality
is deficient," he said. "We are Turkey with all its rivers, flowers,
smells, mountains and stones," he said.
His list immediately triggered a debate as well. For some, the list
endorsed the right names, but others found it too narrow, arguing
that it should have included more names.
The following personalities were mentioned by Erdogan in his speech:
Ahmet Yesevi
Yesevi was born in 1093 in Kazakhstan. He was a Sufi poet as well
as slamic sect. Although he never came to Anatolia, he became a
beloved figure there as well. Together with other Anatolian figures
like Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi, Yunus Emre and Hacı BektaÅ~_ Veli,
he had an influence on Alevi communities. He provided a philosophical
perspective on Islam to Turkish communities that had recently accepted
the religion. Although well versed in Arabic and Farsi, Yesevi also
wrote in Turkish.
Tatyos Efendi
Tatyos Efendi was an Armenian with 47 songs including eight preludes,
six saz semahs (special compositions for the saz, an Anatolian
stringed instrument) and one major composition in Turkish classical
music. Born in 1858 in Istanbul’s Ortaköy district, he lived his
last years in poverty and died on March 16, 1913. Ahmed Rasim Bey,
another composer, said one of his own pieces was the consequence of
Tatyos Efendi’s life. Tatyos Efendi’s parents wanted him to become
an artisan but he chose music instead.
Nazım Hikmet
Nazım Hikmet was prosecuted several times because of his poems and
articles. In 1938, he was sentenced to prison for 28 years and four
months for attempting to provoke an army rebellion. A communist, he
was imprisoned for more than 12 years before being released in 1950
as the result of an amnesty. Fearing a new sentence, he escaped to
the Soviet Union when he was 48 years old. Hikmet was then stripped
of his Turkish citizenship in July 25, 1951. He was buried in Moscow
after his death in 1963. On January 10, 2009, his citizenship was
restored. He is one of Turkey’s most internationally recognized poets
even though his work was forbidden in Turkey for many years.
Said Nursi
Originally from Bitlis in southeastern Anatolia, Said Nursi was the
founder of the Islamic Nur movement and was arrested in 1934 in the
central Anatolian city of EskiÅ~_ehir on the charge of "launching
a secret group aiming to change the system of the state." He was
sentenced to 11 months in prison and then to internal exile in
the province of Kastamonu. In 1948, he was sentenced to 20 m with
illegal political aims. He died in the southeastern Anatolian city
of Å~^anlıurfa in 1960 and was buried in Halil-ur Rahman Dergah. His
remains, however, were transferred to an unknown place by the leaders
of the 1960 military coup.
Hacı BektaÅ~_ Veli
Hacı BektaÅ~_ Veli was born in NiÅ~_abÃ"r in Khorasan (present-day
Iran) in 1281. He came to Anatolia after finishing his education. In
Anatolia, he led the locals to the "right way" by providing them
mystical and philosophical instruction, later becoming popular among
them. He and his students made contributions to Ahilik, a group
composed of artisans who supported each other and shared religious
and moral teachings. Beloved by Ottoman sultans, Hacı BektaÅ~_ Veli
died in 1338. His followers became the BektaÅ~_is, a Sufi order still
widespread throughout Anatolia today.
Pir Sultan Abdal
Pir Sultan Abdal was a legendary folk poet and Alevi, a liberal sect
of Islam. He lived in the 16th century and received education in an
Alevi dervish house. He reflected the social, cultural and religious
life of the people. He was a humanist, and wrote about love, peace,
death and God. Not influenced by Divan literature, an elitist style
favored by the palace and composed of Turkish, Arabic and Persian,
he went beyond the formulaic norms of Sufi poetry culture and wrote
in a manner that could be appreciated by ordinary people. He was
executed by the Ottoman state following an insurrection in the 1500s.
Hacı Bayram Veli
One of the main Sufi teachers in Anatolia, Hacı Bayram Veli lived in
the 15th century and greatly contributed to the unification of Turks
throughout Anatolia with his teachings. A folk poet born in the small
village of Solfasol near present-day Ankara, he became a scholar of
Islam. His life changed after he received instruction in Sufism from
Somuncu Baba in the city of Kayseri. Two major religious orders emerged
out of his teachings, the Bayramilik Å~^emsiye and the Melamiye.
Yunus Emre
Yunus Emre was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic. He has exercis e
on Turkish literature from his own day until the present. Like
the Oghuz-language "Book of Dede Korkut," an older and anonymously
written Central Asian epic, Turkish folklore inspired Yunus Emre in
his occasional use of "tekerlemeler" as poetic devices handed down
orally to him and his contemporaries. This strictly oral tradition
continued for a long while. "Divan," a large collection of his
poems, was published after his death but because experts believed
the collection also featured other poets’ works, its contents were
later reduced to 357 poems.
Mevlana
Mevlana, known to the English-speaking world as Rumi, was a
13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian and mystic. He was born
in 1207 in present-day Afghanistan and came to Konya in 1228. Although
Rumi’s works were written in Persian, Rumi’s importance is considered
to transcend national and ethnic borders. His poems have been widely
translated into many of the world’s languages and transposed into
various formats. He was buried at his dervish convent in Konya after
his death in 1273, a site that is now a museum.
Ahmed Khani
Ahmedi Khani was a 17th century poet and philosopher who represented
Kurdish literature. He was born amongst the Khani tribe in Hakkari
province in present-day Turkey. Hani studied religion and wrote his
works in Kurdish languages although he was also fluent in Turkish,
Arabic and Persian. The prominent poet started writing when he
was 14 years old and later opened a school in the eastern town of
Dogubeyazıt. He worked as a teacher for a long time. His most
important work is the Kurdish classic love story, "Mem and Zin"
(Mem Ã" Zîn) (1692), a work widely considered to be the épopée of
Kurdish literature.
Mehmet Akif Ersoy
Mehmet Akif Ersoy has been called Turkey’s national poet because
he wrote the country’s national anthem, yet he was also a prominent
author and academic. He worked as the editorial writer for Sırat-i
Mustakimmagazine after the declaration of the second constitutional
monarchy. He was a e Turkish War of Independence and was later
awarded the Medal of Independence. He was labeled as the "unbeliever
veterinarian" because of his personal opinions. In the last years of
his life, he lived in Egypt and translated the Holy Koran into Turkish.
Ahmet Kaya
Ahmet Kaya was a Kurdish poet, singer, and a leading artist in
Turkey. His works were labeled as "protest music" or "revolutionary
arabesque." During his career, he recorded approximately 20 albums. He
was sent into prison for printing illegal banners when he was 16
years old. He was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison
on charges of aiding and abetting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers
Party, or PKK, after Turkish dailies released a picture taken during
a concert in Berlin in 1993. He was forced to leave the country and
later passed away in Paris in 2000.
Cem Karaca
Cem Karaca was a prominent Turkish rock musician and one of the most
important figures in the Anatolian rock movement. The son of an
Armenian mother and an Azeri father, Karaca recorded the leftist
revolutionary album, "May 1," in 1977. Karaca was abroad when
the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980 occurred. Because of a May Day
statement he had given in Germany, the coup leaders issued a warrant
for his arrest. After some time, the government stripped Karaca of his
Turkish citizenship, but did not rescind the arrest warrant. Several
years later, then-Prime Minister Turgut Ozal issued an amnesty for
Karaca. Shortly afterward, he returned to Turkey. He died in 2004.