Eskişehir, Türkiye
Sunday 21 April 2024
Your love did not leave me.
I was hungry.
I was thirsty.
Oh, the night was dark.
My soul is strange.
My soul is silent.
My soul is shattered.
And my hands are in handcuffs.
I am left without tobacco.
Sleepless.
Your love has not abandoned me.
(“Love Me“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Flag of the Republic of Türkiye
He is one of the masters of our social realist poetry.
He wrote original, passionate, wonderfully melodic contemporary poems, using the lyrical, epic and rhapsodic style with a flawless fiction, without ever losing his voice in the sensitivity and folk sources of the geography he lived in.
Ahmed Arif (21 April 1927 – 1991) was a Turkish-Kurdish poet.
His father, Arif Hikmet, was an ethnic Turkmen from Kirkuk and his mother Sayre was Kurdish.
His real name is Ahmed Hamdi Önal.
He was born in April 1927, in one of the houses on the narrow streets of Diyarbakır.
According to his own words, their house was a large house with a large courtyard, pool, garden, and summer and winter rooms.
His mother was Kurdish and his father was from Kirkuk.
He lost his mother during birth and grew up without a mother.
His father marries again.
Above: Turkish poet Ahmed Arif
All horizons have wintered
Four directions, sixteen winds, seven climates, five continents are under snow
We are in the science of meeting all the chapters
Rail, asphalt, highway, macadam
My steep road, my path
Taurus, anti-Taurus and the rebellious Euphrates
Tobacco, cotton, wheat plains, paddy fields
My homeland is under snow throughout
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey.
According to various estimates, they compose 20% of the population of Turkey.
There are Kurds living in various provinces of Turkey, but they are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country within the region viewed by Kurds as Turkish Kurdistan.
Above: Flag of Kurdistan
There are also people fighting in this weather
Hands and feet are frozen, heart is Hell
Ümit, angry and sad Ümit, honest to the core
He retreated to the mountains
He is under the snow
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Saturday 26 February 2022
Diyarbakır, Türkiye
A day spent walking around Diyarbakir and, yes, I will say it:
Above: Goletli Park, Diyarbakır, Türkiye
I like Kars, but see no reason to return, save for visiting cafés I wish I had enjoyed.
Above: Panorama of Kars, Türkiye
I like Doğubayazit, but I saw what I wanted to see and feel no terrible urge to revisit.
Above: Doğubayazit and Mount Ararat, Türkiye
I liked Van and Akdamar Island and wouldn’t mind exploring the Lake Van region more, but this is not high on my bucket list of things to do.
Above: Hazrat Omar Mosque, Van, Türkiye
Above: Akdamar Island in springtime
But, despite the gruelling bus ride from Van to here, I love Diyarbakir and would love to return.
Above: Caravanserai of Diyarbakır
Superbly positioned on a bluff above a great loop in the Tigris River, the old city of Diyarbakir shelters behind massive medieval walls of black basalt, enclosing a maze of cobbled streets and alleys, reminiscent of Québec City.
But where QC is experiencing minus temperatures in February, Diyarbakir is a balmy 18° C.
Above: Diyarbakır
Many of the city’s finest mosques and churches have been restored or are in the midst of renovations.
Above: Walls of Diyarbakır
Diyarbakir struggled to cope with an influx of Kurdish refugees fleeing the state – PKK war in the 1990s, many of whom now occupy old houses in the very heart of the walled city.
As a result, this is now the most proudly and most overtly Kurdish city in Turkey.
Full of heart and soul and character, Diyar is proud of being symbolic of Kurdish identity and tenacity.
Behind its grim basalt walls, the old city’s twisting alleyways are crammed full of historical buildings and mosques.
In past decades, Diyarbakir has witnessed pro-Kurdish demonstrations and riots.
Above: Kurdish-inhabited area
I know songs, an avalanche
Pictures, sculptures, epics
The structure of master hands
Armless, half-naked Venus
Transnonain Street
Garcia Lorca’s grave
And the pupils of Pierre Curie
Under the snow
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Vénus de Milo, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Above: Transnonain Street, Paris, 1834 – Honoré Daumier
Above: Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898 – 1936), Huerta de San Vicente, Granada, Spain
Above: French physicist Pierre Curie (1859 – 1906)
Some say that Diyarbakir still has a definite “edge‘.
Some say beware of the bag snatcher, the pickpocket and the stone-throwing youngster.
These I did not see.
Above: Diyarbakır city walls
The walls are made of solid stone of patience
The suburbs are under snow
My longing is coy, Ankara
Let the wolf love the smoky air
Let him walk on the asphalt
December, I don’t like it, the sinister intellectual
It’s different, but I don’t know
It’s only a few springs until the reunion
My heart, this cruel love
It is under snow
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: YDA Centre, Ankara, Türkiye
There is an old Arab saying:
“Black the walls, black the dogs and black the hearts in black Diyarbakir.”
Above: Sheikh Matar Mosque with its four-legged minaret, Diyarbakır
The weather is cloudy, the skies of Altindağ are cumulus
They rule over bread, love and life with their cups
Their lungs are small, their hands are big
They don’t have enough bread in their palms
All of them are at primary school age
The children of the edge are under the snow
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Altindağ, Ankara, Türkiye
Rough Guide sternly advises the traveller to avoid the backstreets of Diyarbakır after dusk.
But I heed this advice everywhere any way.
The other side of Hatip Çhay is temperate
The boulevards are tipsy
It’s sunrise on Carnation Street in Yenişehir
It’s not beyond questioning your wisdom
I know “your probable cause”
And “enough evidence” is there
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: The Hatip Çhay near Angora, Türkiye
Above: Yenişehir, Ankara, Türkiye
Diyarbakir dates back at least 5,000 years to the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni (circa 1500 BCE) when it was known as Amida.
It was then dominated by the civilizations of Urartu (based in Van)(900 BCE), Assyria (1356 – 612 BC), Persia (600 – 330 BC), Alexander the Great’s successors – the Seleucids (330 BC – AD 115) and Rome (509 BC – AD 1453).
Above: Kurkh stele of Shalmaneser III (r. 859 – 824 BC), Assyrian Empire, British Museum, London, England
Above: Alexander III of Macedon (“the Great“) (356 – 323 BC) mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii, Italy
Above: Roman provinces on the eve of the assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 BC
The Arab tribe of Beni Bakr that conquered and settled here named their new home Diyar Bakr (“the realm of Bakir“).
In 1497, the Safavid dynasty put an end to Turkoman rule in this area.
Above: Flag of the Safavid dynasty (1501 – 1736)
The Ottomans came and conquered in 1515, but even then, Diyarbakir would not know lasting peace.
Above: Coat of arms of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922)
In subsequent centuries, invading armies from Anatolia, Persia and Syria all overcame the city’s walls.
Above: 16th-century plan of Diyarbakır
Even so, Diyarbakir’s single most conspicuous feature is its great circuit of basalt walls.
(Facebook entry)
Above: Diyarbakır city walls
The education process until reaching high school takes place in various cities of the Southeast.
Since his father is the District Governor of Harran at that time, he receives his primary education in Harran.
He went to primary school in Siverek and secondary school with his older sister in Urfa.
When he turns 10, he takes the free boarding exams administered by the state.
Above: Harran, Sanlıurfa Province, Türkiye
Above: Siverek, Sanlıurfa Province, Türkiye
Above: Balikli Lake, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye
There are only a few high schools in Turkey at that time.
He studies at Afyon High School in Afyonkarahisar.
He graduated from high school in 1943.
After graduating from high school, he stays with his older brother Muhammed Necati in Uşak for a while.
He returns to Diyarbakır after his father retires and settles in Diyarbakır.
Above: Afyon Lisesi, Afyonkarahisar, Türkiye
Above: Lydian Cilandiras Bridge, Karahallı, Uşak Province, Türkiye
Above: Diyarbakır
A glazed garden on Carnation Street
A glazed garden inside a tile pot
A branch floats in the blue lake – sing a fire song
Don’t look at what grows in the pot
Its roots are in Altindağ, İncesu
(“Carnation Street“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Altindağ, Ankara
Above: İncesu Köyü, Ankara, Türkiye
His childhood years are also the childhood years of the Republic of Turkey.
This corresponds to the most complex period of the Southeast and its borders.
Ahmed Arif also gets his share of this confusion.
Above: Coat of arms of the Republic of Türkiye
We have reached a horizon where we are no longer alone, my darling
Although the night is long, the night is dark, but it is far from all fears
Living like this is a love
Alone
One breath away from death
Alone
Even while lying in the dungeon
Never being alone
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Ahmed Arif
During the troubled times the country was going through in those years, there were serious conflicts between tribes in the Southeast, the region where Arif lived.
Tribes coming from Syria and Iraq raid and plunder Harran, Siverek, Urfa and surrounding villages.
This plunder is on animals and continues reciprocally.
I am fishing at dawn
In flowing and non-flowing waters
It is me who takes a break from all the stalls
It’s a spring evening in the world
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Ahmed Arif
One day, when he was seven years old and sitting at home with his father, there was a knock on the door and when the boy Ahmed Arif opened the door, he saw two armed Arabs.
He ran to his father and said quietly:
“They have come.”
The father asks his son Ahmed to bring his soda bottle.
While describing this incident, Ahmed Arif ends with these words:
“I sat next to a wall and waited for the conflict to end.
When the conflict ended, the mountain was full of traces of blood.”
Ahmed Arif went through a difficult childhood that left deep scars on his child’s heart and soul.
Above: Ahmed Arif
I am not within four walls.
I am in rice, cotton and tobacco in Karacadağ, Çukurova and Cibali.
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Karacadağ, Ankara Province, Türkiye
Above: Çukurova, Adana Province, Türkiye
Above: Cibali, İstanbul, Türkiye
(Before the foundation of Turkey, the Kurds were recognized as an own nation of themselves.
Above: 19th century Kurdish Anatolian carpet
The Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) also recognized the Kurds as a nation at the time and stated that provinces in which the Kurds lived shall be granted autonomy.
Above: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 – 1938)
After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, which ended the caliphates and sultanate in Turkey, there have been several Kurdish rebellions since the 1920s:
- the Koçgiri Rebellion (6 March 1921 – 17 June 1921)
Above: The photo was taken in a village on the way from Trebizond to Sivas. On the left of the picture is the Kurdish host and Efendi of the village.
- the Beyitüssebab Rebellion (August – December 1924)
Above: Beytüşşebap, Türkiye
- the Sheikh Said Rebellion (8 February — 30 March 1925)
Above: Front row, left to right: Shiekh Sherif, Sheikh Said. Back row: Sheikh Hamid, Major Kasim (Kasım Ataç), Sheikh Abdullah. (1925)
- the Dersim Rebellion (20 March 1927 – 4 May 1938)
Above: Lost girls of Dersim (1938)
- the Ararat Rebellion (October 1927 – 17 September 1930)
Above: Leaders of the Ararat Rebellion:
From left to right: Sipkanlı Halis Bey (1899 – 1977) (Halis Öztürk, deputy of the 9th, 10th and 11th Parliaments from Ağrı), Ihsan Nuri Pasha (1892 – 1976) and Hasenanlı Ferzende Bey (1889 – 1939)
Why?
Because the policy towards the Kurds changed most prominently in 1924, as the new Constitution denied the Kurds autonomy.
Though Kurds were readily recruited the fight the War of Independence, commanders of Kurdish irregualrs felt betrayed by the very secular, highly centralized and very Turkish character of the new state.
Above: Kurdish mother and child, Van, Türkiye
The Kurds are predominantly Muslim.
There was a major uprising in 1925, which drew resentment against the abolition of the Caliphate as much as it did from a nascent Kurdish nationalism.
That rebellion became reason and pretext (and pretense) to reinforce the authoritarian character of the regime.
A loyal opposition party, which counted among its numbers heroes of the War of Independence, was abolished.
Newspapers in Istanbul were shut down.
Tribunals were established to eliminate not just Kurdish dissent but opposition in general.
The Kurdish people and their language were soon oppressed by the Turkish Government, as the Turkish Constitution of 1924 prohibited the use of Kurdish in public places, and a law was issued which enabled the expropriation of the Kurdish landowners and the delivery of the land to Turkish speaking people.
Through the Turkish History Thesis, Kurds were classified as being of Turanian origin, having migrated from Central Asia 5,000 years ago.
Above: Kurdish man jumping the fire during Newroz
(Translation:
There were in Turkey before the Turks.)
Above: Kurdish girl
Hence, a Kurdish nation was denied and Kurds were called Mountain Turks.
But this is a myth.
It is not Kurdishness per se that the courts have prosecuted.
Rather, they have pursued incitement to separation or aiding and abetting terrorism.
There have been instances in the past where merely writing or even singing in Kurdish has been taken as proof of this intent.
Hardened Turkish nationalists believe that any concession to Kurdish identity will lead to political secession.
The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore and names were banned, and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946.
In an attempt to deny an existence of a Kurdish ethnicity, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as “Mountain Turks” until the 1980s.
The words “Kurds“, “Kurdistan” and “Kurdish” were officially banned by the Turkish government.
Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life.
Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned.
But even though the ban on speaking in a non Turkish language was lifted in 1991, the Kurdish aim to be recognized as a distinct people than Turkish or to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction, but this was often classified as separatism or support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Currently, it is illegal to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools, yet there are schools who defy this ban.
The Turkish Government has repeatedly blamed the ones who demanded more Kurdish cultural and educational freedom of terrorism or support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
What they will not admit is that it is this hardline stance that created the violence of organizations like the PKK after all other channels of dissent were eliminated.
Above: The official and current flag of the Kurdistans Workers’ Party (PKK).
Since the 1970s, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for thousands of human rights abuses against Kurdish people.
The judgments are related to systematic executions of Kurdish civilians, forced recruitments, torturing, forced displacements, thousands of destroyed villages, arbitrary arrests, murdered and disappeared Kurdish journalists.
More than 1,500 people affiliated with the Kurdish opposition parties and organizations were murdered by unidentified assailants between 1986 and 1996.
The government-backed mercenaries assassinated hundreds of suspected PKK sympathizers.
The Turkish government is held responsible by Turkish human rights organizations for at least 3,438 civilian deaths in the conflict between 1987 and 2000.
Violence begets violence, which in turn begets more violence.
The reality is there is not an overwhelming desire for secession, but rather a century of repression and neglect – wherein huge sums are allocated to hydroelectric projects or military counterinsurgency as compared to that which trickles towards education – in the development of Kurdish regions has led to great discontent.
Above: Kurdish village Dîlan in Kerboran.
The village was burnt by Turkish soldiers in 1993.
With poisonous blind snakes and malaria
Paddies in Karacadağ on a manhunt 24 hours a day
Like a girl’s tear
A string of beads on her ankle
An amulet on her left shoulder
Forgotten and cold on the mountain
The daughter of a tiny tribe
Drop by drop, the rice becomes clear
He goes to the gentlemen’s table with trucks and mule caravans
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Karacadağ
From 1927 on, a General Inspector ruled over the First Inspectorate General through the implementation of emergency decrees and martial law.
Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Urfa, Van, Elaziğ and Diyarbakır were under his rule until 1952, when the government of the Democratic Party brought a new approach towards the Kurds and closed the General Inspectorates.
Above: Logo of the Demokrat Parti (1946 – 1960)
Referring to the main policy document in this context, the 1934 law on resettlement, a policy targeting the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases, with disastrous consequences for the local population.
The aim or the law was to spread the population with non-Turkish culture in to different areas than their origin, and to settle people who were willing to adhere to the Turkish culture in the formerly non-Turkish areas.
The Fourth Inspectorate General was created in January 1936 in the Dersim region and the Kurdish language and culture were forbidden.
Above: Mehmet Fuat Köprülü (1890 – 1966), key figure in forging a national identity, which inspired the resettlement law
The Dersim Massacre is often confused with the Dersim Rebellion that took place during these events.
The Dersim massacre (also known as Dersim genocide) was carried out by the Turkish military over the course of three operations in the Dersim Province (renamed Tunceli) against Kurdish Alevi rebels and civilians in 1937 and 1938.
Although most Kurds in Dersim remained in their home villages, thousands were killed and many others were expelled to other parts of Turkey.
Twenty tons of “Chloracetophenon (cyanide gas), Iperit (mustard gas) and so on” were ordered and used in the Massacre.
On 23 November 2011, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apologized for the Massacre, describing it as “one of the most tragic events of our near history” adding that, whilst some sought to justify it as a legitimate response to events on the ground, it was in reality “an operation which was planned step by step“.
Above: Republic of Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
However, this is viewed with suspicion by some, “who see it as an opportunistic move against the main opposition party, the secular CHP.”
Above: Logo of the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party) (CHP)
In 1937 – 1938, approximately 10,000-15,000 Alevis and Kurds were killed and thousands went into exile.
Above: Turkish soldiers and local people of Dersim region. They were exiled to other parts of Turkey, 1938.
My Çukurova, our swaddle, our shroud
His blood is dark, his face is white
Patient stones crack in the heat
The heart of the labourer does not crack
If he wishes, he can make cotton softer than foam
Külhan is a brawling young man
In the famous prisons of Anatolia, the people of Çukurova are the most imprisoned
As if showing his wound to his friend
Like watering a bunch of willows
So sincerely
So deep
Singing Turkish songs and swearing are reversed for the brave men of Çukurova
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Çukurova Prison
When the modern Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, nationalism and secularism were two of the founding principles.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of the early years of the Republic, aimed to create a nation-state (Turkish: Ulus) from the Turkish remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
The Turkish Ministry of National Education in 2008 defines the “Turkish people” as “those who protect and promote the moral, spiritual, cultural and humanistic values of the Turkish nation“.
One of the goals of the establishment of the new Turkish state was to ensure “the domination of Turkish ethnic identity in every aspect of social life from the language that people speak in the streets to the language to be taught at schools, from the education to the industrial life, from the trade to the cadres of state officials, from the civil law to the settlement of citizens to particular regions“.
Above: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and the first President of the Turkish Republic
Do you know tobacco?
“Girl’s hair“, said the zeybeks (folk dancers)
It doesn’t drink water from every vein
It doesn’t like its place easily
It gets cold
It gets offended
It is shredded between two leaves
There is a piece of my heart wrapped in thin, white papers
It burns in times of need and gives itself
To the silent lips of a friend
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
After the 1960 coup, the State Planning Organization (Turkish: Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, DPT) was established under the Prime Ministry to solve the problem of Kurdish separatism and underdevelopment.
In 1961, the DPT prepared a report titled “The principles of the state’s development plan for the east and southeast” (Turkish: Devletin Doğu ve Güneydoğu’da uygulayacağı kalkınma programının esasları), shortened to “Eastern Report“.
It proposed to defuse separatism by encouraging ethnic mixing through migration (to and from the Southeast).
This was not unlike the policies pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress under the Ottoman Empire.
Above: Emblem of the Committee of Union and Progress (1889 – 1918)
The Minister of Labour of the time, Bülent Ecevit of partial Kurdish ancestry, was critical of the report.
Above: Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit (1925 – 2006)
From the establishment of the Inspectorate Generals until 1965, Southeast Turkey, was a forbidden area for foreigners.
During the 1970s, the separatist movement coalesced into the Kurdish–Turkish conflict.
From 1984 to 1999, the Turkish military was embroiled in a conflict with the PKK.
The village guard system was set up and armed by the Turkish state around 1984 to combat the PKK.
The militia comprises local Kurds and has around 58,000 members.
Some of the village guards are fiercely loyal to the Turkish state, leading to infighting among Kurdish militants.
To be separated from the streets from the blue sky, from your bread, from your soul
In other words, to be helpless to the pain and poison of all longing
The first breath of the cigarette grows like Hizir
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
A key component of the Turkification process was the policy of massive population resettlement.
Due to the clashes between Turkish Army and the PKK the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, with Kurdish civilians moving to local defensible centers such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe.
The causes of the depopulation included the Turkish state’s military operations against Kurdish population, some PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not control and the poverty of the southeast.
In the 1990s, hope for an end to the conflict emerged, as the PKK has declared several ceasefires and the political society has organized several campaigns to facilitate a reconciliation.
Evacuations were unlawful and violent.
Security forces would surround a village using helicopters, armored vehicles, troops, and village guards, and burn stored produce, agricultural equipment, crops, orchards, forests, and livestock.
They set fire to houses, often giving the inhabitants no opportunity to retrieve their possessions.
During the course of such operations, security forces frequently abused and humiliated villagers, stole their property and cash, and ill-treated or tortured them before herding them onto the roads and away from their former homes.
The operations were marked by scores of “disappearances” and extrajudicial executions.
By the mid-1990s, more than 3,000 villages had been virtually wiped from the map, and, according to official figures, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless.
Above: The Roj emblem – symbol of the Kurds
Tobacco workers are poor
Tobacco workers are tired
But brave
Shining and honourable
A hope of my homeland behind the infamous seas
(“We are not alone“, Ahmed Arif)
If the Turks were the last of the Ottoman ethnicities to get their own nation-state, the Kurds arrived at History’s party too late.
There are anywhere between 28 and 35 million Kurds, inhabiting a region that straddles Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, with smaller populations elsewhere, including Armenia, Azerbaijan and Lebanon.
This geographic diversion suggests that Kurdish identity is shaped by a variety of competiting forces and that ethnic solidarity with fellow Kurds across borders is often overshadowed by the concerns and politics of the countries in which Kurds actually find themselves.
In Turkey, Kurds form a majority in 15 provinces in the southeast and east of the country, with the metropolitan city of Diyarbakır being the unofficial capital of the Kurdish region.
Above: Diyarbakır
There is also a large diaspora both in Western Europe and in coastal Turkish cities like Adana and İzmir.
Above: Adana, Türkiye
Above: İzmir, Türkiye
Istanbul, on the diametrically opposite side of the country from Diyarbakır, is almost certainly the largest Kurdish city in the world in the same way that New York City is home to the largest number of Jews.
Above: İstanbul, Türkiye
Defining what constitutes Kurdish identity is no less problematic than defining race and ethnicity in other parts of the world in which there have been centuries of migration and shifting political boundaries.
The official Turkish census does not poll ethnicity, for to do so would be to admit that Turkey is not only the home of Turks but of other ethnicities as well.
Kurdish is not a single language but an Indo-European linguistic group that shares many similarities with Farsi or Persian.
Turkish Kurds are mainly speakers of Kurmanji, but there are also Zaza speakers.
That dialects are not always mutually comprehensible is often used to disparage the idea that there could ever be a common Kurdish identity.
However, Turkish nationalists who make this argument do so with the hindsight of a century of intense nation-building that included huge institutional support for a standardized Turkish.
Kurdish, by contrast, has never been a medium of public discourse in Turkey or of education – despite the fact that some Kurdish children begin school without knowing Turkish.
Much of the rest of Turkey looks at Kurdish society through a glass darkly and sees tribal organization as imposing primitive loyalties and archaic kinship relations.
The sun shines, the snow gives rainy land
İncesu Creek, hello
Sparrows are wilder on the eaves
Eagles in the clouds
More strutting
He tears off another button from his chest
Someone waiting for a bill of exchange
İncesu Creek, hello
(“Hello“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: İncesu Canyon
For all its claims to be a melting pot of civilizations and a mosaic of different cultures, Turkey has been continuously blindsided by the problem of accommodating its own ethnic diversity.
A principal reason lies in the foundation of the Turkish Republic and the perceived need to impose a new national identity on a war-stricken nation.
Kurds posed an obvious challenge, because they formed a distinct and regionally concentrated linguistic group that was not Turkish.
As long as one does not insist on a Kurdish identity, Turkish society does not discriminate.
From the beginning of the Republic, the Kurdish issue, and specifically fear of Kurdish succession, has become inextricably linked to the problems of Turkish democratization and of the reliance on forms of repression to keep society under control.
Without the catharsis of the nation coming to terms with its past, Turkey will continue to oppress anyone who questions its legitimacy.
Forced nationalism, patriotism at gun point, inspires neither love nor loyalty.)
There are young flags
Peace thinks
Workers in the wells, blues
I think about them all
Twenty-four hours a day
And I think about you
Dark, ambitious
You, the dear fruit of the worlds
A verse from the tone of declaration of love
It grows and moves inside me
Your eyes come to my mind
(“Hello“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Flag of the United Nations
Arif’s story with poetry begins in his high school years.
When he is 16 years old, he constantly writes poetry.
His literature education in high school is very good and has made him love poetry.
At this age, he loves and reads writers and poets such as Behçet Necatigil, Ahmet Muhip Dranas, Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Cahit Külebi and Nâzım Hikmet.
Above: Turkish poet Behçet Necatigil (1916 – 1979)
Above: Turkish poet Ahmet Muhip Diranas (1909 – 1980)
Above: Turkish poet Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel (1898 – 1973)
Above: Turkish writer Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901 – 1962)
Above: Cahit Külebi (1917 – 1997)
Above: Turkish poetry Nâzim Hikmet (1902 – 1963)
Perhaps what makes Ahmed Arif special, though he is extremely interested in Divan (Rumi) and folk poetry, he creates his own unique language without being influenced by the poets he reads with pleasure.
Above: A page of the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi (1503)
Above: Ottoman poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (or simply Rumi) (1207 – 1273)
However, I cannot get what I want
However, I know from white to land, that’s my share
My pupils have forgotten how to laugh
My lips have forgotten how to kiss
İncesu Creek, hello
(“Hello“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: İncesu Crrek
When he writes his poem 33 Bullets, he has just finished high school.
Ahmed Arif, who then enlisted in the military, is discharged from his military service as a reserve officer in Riva on 11 March 1947.
Above: Riva Castle, İstanbul, Türkiye
Ahmed Arif studies philosophy at Ankara University.
This poem is an epic expression of Ahmed Arif’s reaction to a massacre.
The poem tells the story of 33 villagers who were taken from Van to the Iranian border and shot in 1943 on charges of theft.
This incident goes down in history as the General Muğlalı Incident.
His political attitude is also included in his poems.
For his university education, Ahmed Arif enters the Philosophy department at Ankara University, Faculty of Language, History and Geography.
Being in financial difficulties pushes him to work.
He starts working at the Central Bank.
As a freshman at university, he gets into trouble for the first time because of the poem 33 Bullets.
He is taken into custody.
Of course, he has not published a book yet, but publishing it in magazines, reproducing it and spreading it from hand to hand makes the poem known.
Above: Logo of Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih Coğrafya Fakültesi (DTCF)(Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography)
Brave harvests and gatherings
Established in the harsh mountains of the homeland
Bandits who have been brought to heel
Traitors, you have come to your senses
The orphan’s rights have been questioned
The reckoning has been settled
That’s it
(“You know if you’re fired by a bullet, the night will never pass“, Ahmed Arif)
In order to fully understand Ahmed Arif, it is necessary to take a look at those who are within his “influence” and those who are not.
In his early poems between 1943 and 1946, the influence of famous poets of that period is clearly visible.
However, there is an interesting detail that is a sign that Ahmed Arif will find his own voice.
The 1940s were a period when Orhan Veli (1914 – 1950) was very popular and the Garip movement (1941 – 1950) was perceived as a revolution.
The Garip movement (or the Strange Movement) is a poetry movement pioneered by Orhan Veli Kanık, Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet Anday.
Above: Turkish poet Oktay Rifat (1914 – 1988)
Above: Statue of Melih Cevdet Anday (1915 – 2002), Melih Cevdet Anday Park, Ören, Muğla Province, Türkiye
Garip argues that it is necessary to get rid of the patterns and understandings that have taken place in Turkish poetry until that day and oppose formalism and emotionalism and focus on the beauty of expression.
In 1941, the trio of Veli, Anday and Rıfat collected their poems that rebelled against the excessive emotionality, poetics and stereotypical expressions in poetry in a book called Garip.
They put a statement on the cover of the book:
“This book will invite you to doubt the usual things.”
The name Garip, which was put into the book, gained an identity that reflected both the three poets and the newly started movement in Turkish poetry over time.
Orhan Veli Kanık explained his views on literature in the Garip preface he wrote in 1941 and responded to Ahmet Haşim’s Piyale preface, and also opposed the hometown poetry that reached its peak with Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel.
Orhan Veli would explain his defense of poetry based on meaning rather than poetry based on aesthetics and wordplay, with the following words in the preface of Garip:
“Poetry is an art of words whose whole feature is in its mood.
In other words, it consists entirely of meaning.”
Writers of the Garip movement opposed all rules and predetermined patterns in poetry and adopted irregularity as their rule.
They included social satires in their poems, argued that poetry was unrelated to meter, rhyme and stanza , that it should be written freely, and expanded the subjects of poetry.
The works of Garip movement writers do not have a socialist or didactic character.
Garipciler also benefited from the expressions and experiences of folk poetry.
They argued that poetry, which until then had been considered an “elite” genre, could be written on any subject.
They incorporated spoken language into poetry.
They showed that a vulgar word like “callus” could also be used in poetry.
Orhan Veli wrote poems freely, going so far as to use the word “nasır” in his poem titled Kitabe-i Sengi Mezar.
For this reason, Orhan Veli was frequently criticized by Yusuf Ziya Ortaç, one of the five Poets of the Syllable, and supported by Nurullah Ataç.
Above: Turkish poet Yusuf Ziya Ortaç (1895 – 1967)
(Five Syllables (Five Poets of the Syllable, the Syllabists, the Five Poets of the Syllable) is the general name in Turkish literature of the five poets who wrote poems in syllabic meter and the spoken public language, in line with the views of the National Literature movement , after the First Constitutional Monarchy.
The five poets that make up this group are: Orhan Seyfi Orhon (1890 – 1972), Enis Behiç Koryürek (1891 – 1949), Halit Fahri Ozansoy (1891 – 1971), Yusuf Ziya Ortaç and Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel.)
The Garip movement , which did not seem like poetry with all these contradictory features and attracted reactions within Turkish literature, became more understandable over time.
The Garip Movement is the only community in the history of Turkish literature that adopted the Dadaism movement.
Above: Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik (1914 – 1950)
Naturally, every poet tries to produce products by embellishing daily events with colloquial language and a little humour.
Ahmed Arif, on the other hand, does not approve of this method at all.
The poets of that period, with their lifestyle in Istanbul, have a structure parallel to the French poets they take as an example.
However, Ahmed Arif is “a child raised with tribal customs in a country that was deliberately left behind to be exploited“.
Above: Ahmd Arif
However, in these periods, there were also poets outside the Garip movement – Rıfat Ilgaz, A. Kadir and, of course, Nâzım Hikmet.
Above: Turkish writer Rıfat Ilgaz (1911 – 1993)
Above: Turkish poet A. Kadir (full name İbrahim Abdülkadir Meriçboyu) (1917 – 1985)
The phenomenon of Nâzım Hikmet in the world of poetry is also a “danger” for many poets.
Ahmed Arif himself conveys this best:
“If you put Nâzım in front of a revolutionary young man who has just started poetry, the child will either panic and become a satellite of countercurrents, or he will be crushed and become a bad copyist.
What can the Kurdish dagger do against the hydrogen bomb?“
Above: Kurdish dagger
This thought of Ahmed Arif is the anatomy of a period.
Because many people think that writing poetry after Nâzım is a futile effort and even disrespectful.
However, Ahmed Arif very clearly understood “the gap between writing poetry like Nâzım and writing poetry after Nâzım“.
Above: Grave of Nâzim Hikmet, Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, Russia
Fires at the bottom of the sea
May on the blood-cut plains
Flying, as light as a bird’s feather
The steel cadaver of the pillboxes
Dead, my dear, dead
Murad was taken
(“You know if you’re fired by a bullet, the night will never pass“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Sultan Murad V (1840 – 1904)(r. 30 May to 31 August 1876) – His frail physical and mental health made his reign unstable. Murad V was deposed in favor of his half-brother Abdul Hamid II after only 93 days.
After 1948, he questions himself to find a way for himself and writes “Rüstemo” in this period.
Rüstemo can be perceived as the first poem in which Ahmed Arif finds his own style.
However, since he can be critical of himself and his poetry, he does not include this poem in his book.
“Rüstemo” remains in the magazines in which it was published.
Without cantering to Modan Plateau
Our right on Maktela
Karbeyaz Çermik Mountains
Our left is the blood red Euphrates
The forest is green in all four seasons
And the land is hard.
The springs come down from the tribes.
The herd grazes over Dersim.
In wood, in coal, in cotton.
It takes the heart away like a stream.
It’s a black love for honour and bread.
It’s a green desire.
And that’s why it holds the mountains.
And walked beyond the waters
Our adventure in hairy tents.
Forbidden from now on,
Cruelty and tithe and tribute and drudgery and the murderer and robbery and plunder and swearing at the girl and the mare.
It is forbidden, orders the Pasha of the Mountains, the unforgiving French trio.
My situation is unknown to you
Amazing result
Let it be known
I am clear and open to friends and foes.
First the Shaykh al-Islam issues a fatwa.
Massacre is deemed obligatory in four sects.
Then the Palace issues a decree.
And the b**** is shot in the camps.
You have caught up in a difficult time.
Tatar agha.
My hamayli, with one hand soaked in blood.
One hand is a cure for you.
Cano.
I wouldn’t call all of this a fight.
Those who are angry are training.
Let us not hug each other.
Okay.
The mountains have taken up positions and the paths are lying in wait.
Mountains and mountains of battalions bring Salawat.
A bloody evening over the pomegranite garden.
Let it be the Azrael, not the messenger.
Let it be my mother and my money, if I run away.
(“Rüstemo“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: An artistic depiction of Azrael, the angel of death
Published in various literary journals, his poems are widely read due to their original lyricism and imagery influenced by Anatolian folk cultures.
After his university years in Ankara, raising awareness, taking part in associations and, of course, going through investigations and torture, he is now a poet who understands the events he experiences with a revolutionary perspective and can reflect daily problems into his poems.
However, it was our fate
Death doesn’t put a price on a man like this
To keep silent and well, it is amazing
We are young, like a barrel
And a forked heart
Longing for peace and holidays
To sleep, deep, carefree, comfortable
To laugh with our 32 teeth
To make love and eat to our heart’s content
How many ways, I have been in tears
At night, longing is truly beautiful among us
And we actually know the sorrow
(“You know if you’re fired by a bullet, the night will never pass“, Ahmed Arif)
The best judgment about Ahmed Arif’s understanding of poetry, his sensitivity and his areas of influence is undoubtedly hidden in the evaluation made by Cemal Süreya (1931 – 1990):
“Ahmed Arif’s poetry, in a way, developed in the line of Nâzım Hikmet, or more precisely, in the same line as Nâzım Hikmet.
But between the two poets, there are great differences between them.
Nâzım Hikmet calls out to the people from the plains.
It is like a ‘great and fertile river’.
Ahmed Arif speaks of mountains, ‘unruly’ ones.
His poem is like an elegy.
It is dedicated to children who have never seen the sea.“
Arif passes the exam held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1948.
Above: The emblem of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Turkey)
However, while he was about to be sent abroad, he is detained because of a poem known as Palmiro.
The drafts of this still raw poem, which he wrote after the near death of the Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, are stolen and copied.
The copies are found in a friend’s house.
Above: Italian Communist Palmiro Togliatti
If my inside is silent, can I be at peace?
That Maltese knife, unsheathed, awake
And it is a young verse
Filinta figure
Why, why the devastation on your forehead
The murderous mist in your gaze?
How many times do I cry at night
How it has taken my mind
It has driven and sprouted love within me
Friend and enemy speak in their own way
To be condemned, to the brave man
This is neither shameful nor fobidden
It’s just a fact, in its own right
Maybe it’s the reason I live
(“You know if you’re fired by a bullet, the night will never pass“, Ahmed Arif)
(Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (1893 – 1964) was an Italian politician and leader of Italy’s Communist Party for nearly 40 years, from 1927 until his death.
Above: Logo of the Italian Communist Party
Born into a middle-class family, Togliatti received an education in law at the University of Turin, later served as an officer and was wounded in World War I, and became a tutor.
Above: Seal of the University of Torino (Turin), Italy
Described as “severe in approach but extremely popular among the Communist base” and “a hero of his time, capable of courageous personal feats“, his supporters gave him the nickname il Migliore (“The Best“).
In 1930, Togliatti renounced Italian citizenship and became a citizen of the Soviet Union.
Above: Flag of the Soviet Union (1922 – 1991)
Upon his death, Togliatti had a Soviet city named after him.
Above: Tolyatti, Russia
Considered one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic, he led Italy’s Communist Party from a few thousand members in 1943 to two million members in 1946.
Born in Genoa but culturally formed in Turin during the first decades of the 1900s, when the first Fiat workshops were built and the Italian labour movement began its battles, Togliatti’s history is linked to that of Lingotto.
Above: Historical view of Lingotto building with the test track on the roof (1928)
He helped launch the left-wing weekly L’Ordine Nuovo in 1919.
He was the editor of Il Comunista starting in 1922.
He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d’Italia, PCd’I), which was founded as the result of a split from the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) in 1921.
Above: Logo of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) (1892 – 1994)
In 1926, the PCd’I was made illegal, alongside other parties, by Benito Mussolini’s government.
Above: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945)
Togliatti was able to avoid the destiny of many of his fellow party members who were arrested only because he was in Moscow at the time.
Above: Palmiro Togliatti
From 1927 until his death, Togliatti was the Secretary and leader of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI), except for the period from 1934 to 1938, during which he served as representative to the Comintern, the international organisation of Communist parties, earning the il giurista del Comintern (“the Jurist of Comintern“) nickname from Leon Trotsky.
Above: Logo of Comintern (Communist International)(1919 – 1943)
Above: Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940)
After the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and the formation of the Cominform in 1947, Togliatti refused the post of Secretary-General, offered to him directly by Joseph Stalin in 1951, preferring to remain at the head of the PCI, which was by now a mass-based party, the largest Communist party in western Europe.
Above: Logo of Cominform (Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties)(1947 – 1956)
Above: Russian dictator Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953)
His relations to Moscow were a continuing subject of scholarly and political debate after his death.
From 1944 to 1945, Togliatti held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of Italy.
He was appointed Italian Minister of Justice from 1945 to 1946 in the governments that ruled Italy after the fall of Fascism.
He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy.
Above: Flag of the Republic of Italy
Togliatti inaugurated the PCI’s peaceful and national road to socialism, or the “Italian Road to Socialism“, the realization of the Communist project through democracy, repudiating the use of violence and applying the Italian Constitution in all its parts, a strategy that some date back to Antonio Gramsci, and that would since be the leitmotiv of the Party’s history.
Above: Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937)
After his death, it helped to further the liberalization among Communist parties and countries.
He was the first Italian Communist to appear in television debates.
Togliatti survived an assassination attempt in 1948 and a car accident in 1950.
He died in 1964 during a holiday in Crimea on the Black Sea.)
Yes, I’m about to cry, that’s it
You know even if you shoot a bullet at the night, it won’t go away
I can’t explain how desolate and dark it is
And poison – my zikkim cigaram
There’s a Hell on my pillow
Come on now
Above: Ahmed Arif
The poem causes some of his friends to be tried and Ahmed Arif to testify at the police station.
He is later released.
When Ahmed Arif is not hired due to this detention, he applies to the Council of State.
He is placed in a job at the Central Bank .
He continues his civil service and his education.
Above: Council of State, Ankara, Türkiye
Above: Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey logo
When he is at university, he gets into trouble for the poem 33 Bullets.
When the poet learns about an incident that took place in Van in 1943, known in history as the Muğlalı Incident, through an interview he reads in Hürriyet newspaper in 1950, he writes a poem about this incident.
The poem titled 33 Bullets, which he designs as an elegy and never plans to publish, becomes a well-known poem, circulating from hand to hand in a very short time.
He is taken into custody.
Above: Hürriyet (Liberty) newspaper logo
Ahmed Arif’s best example of his success in reflecting the real events he encounters or is affected by in his daily life into poetry is undoubtedly “33 Bullets“.
The poem deals with the event that went down in history as the “Özalp Incident” or “Muğlalı Incident“.
On 30 July 1943, 32 people were killed in the Özalp district of Van.
By the order of the Army Commander, General Mustafa Muğlalı, they were executed without trial.
Above: Turkish General Mustafa Muğlali (1882 – 1951)
İbrahim Özay, one of these 32 people, escaped to Iran with serious injuries, reported the incident to Turkey from there, and died seven months later.
Following this, there were many complaints, and an investigation commission was formed in Parliament.
The incident was brought to light in the commission report dated 30 April 1958.
In other words, exactly 15 years after the incident:
“The 33 people who were detained by the administrative authorities in July 1943, in accordance with the Law on Police Duties and Powers, were later handed over to the military authorities, and after one of them was released, the remaining 32 people were taken to the Çilli gap on the Turkish-Iranian border.
They were taken to the area known as the 1950s and shot by firing at them with infantry rifles and light machine guns.“
Above: The Çilli Gap, Turkish – Iranian border
Ahmed Arif read Zahir Güvemli’s interview on this subject published in Hürriyet newspaper in 1950 and was very impressed by it.
Above: Turkish artist Zahir Güvemli (1913 – 2004)
“33 Bullets“, which he designed as an elegy and never planned to publish, spread from hand to hand in a very short time.
Another feature that makes this poem different is that the poet is able to speak someone else’s language as if it were his own, even if it is outside his own experience.
(The Muğlalı Incident (or the 33-Bullet Massacre) is the event that resulted in the death of 32 Kurdish civilians and the escape of one of them, in July 1943, in the Özalp district of Van, where 33 people were allegedly executed for animal smuggling, on the orders of the 3rd Army Commander General Mustafa Muğlalı.
During World War II, smuggling incidents increased, especially on the Iranian border.
One of these incidents, which led to clashes between the tribes in the region and the security forces, broke out in the Özalp district of Van.
Gendarmerie units sent to the border upon a tip that the Milan tribe, some of whom live on Iranian territory, abducted a large herd of animals in July 1943, could not catch the smugglers because they fled to Iran.
Then, 40 relatives of the tribe living in Özalp were detained.
Although the court arrested only five people and released the rest, 33 people were handed over to a military unit under the command of two second lieutenants for questioning, by order of Mustafa Muğlalı, who came to Özalp.
The smugglers were shot near the border.
It was claimed that they were shot while trying to escape, based on a report prepared earlier.
Even though a villager who survived the incident with injuries managed to announce the situation to the relevant authorities, no results could be obtained from the applications made.)
A few years later, Ahmed Arif is taken into custody again.
This time the situation is much more difficult for him.
He is taken under custody by train from Ankara to Istanbul, on the grounds that “Ahmed Arif was previously affiliated with the secret Communist Party and was active within the Party“.
Above: Logo of the Türkiye Komünist Fırkası (Turkish Communist Party)(1920 – 1921)
This is the beginning of Ahmed Arif’s process full of torture and imprisonment.
These tortures create a person who writes his poetry in his mind, without putting it on paper, in order to protect his family, his environment and all his loved ones.
Arif is arrested on political grounds in 1950 and spends time in prison until 1952.
Above: Historic Zindan Prison inside Bodrum Castle built by the Knights Hospitaller.
He lands in prison early in the evening
It wouldn’t make any profit if you were a dragon
Neither do have mastery in fighting
Nor do you have a forked heart
It doesn’t benefit longing that fills you with subtlety and takes you away
(“Early in the evening, he will go to prison“, Ahmed Arif)
He is subjected to severe torture in the famous Sarsanyan Inn, which is called “the coffin” in Istanbul.
Above: Sanasaryan Khan, İstanbul, Türkiye
In addition to physical torture, psychological torture is also carried out.
Unable to withstand the torture, his body suffocates several times and is brought back with medical intervention, but despite this, the torture continues.
After being brought back to life, Arif is locked in cell number 9 in the Inn where he is brought back.
Here, unfortunately, he is subjected to terrible psychological torture.
He is told that his father has died and his remains are left lying around.
Ahmed Arif explains this news with the following words:
“This telegram gave me the pain that no physical torture had ever caused.”
A few days later, he falls ill with sadness and is hospitalized.
The sentences told to him there are that there is no such telegram and that this news is given deliberately to upset him.
While telling the tale, Ahmed Arif ends with:
“At that moment, all the Taurus collapsed on me.”
He stays in the cell in this Inn for 128 days.
Above: Sanasaryan Inn
He lands in prison early in the evening
Seven crossbars descend to seven gates
Suddenly the garden weeps
Opposite, at the foot of the wall
Three branches of night glory
Three roots of pansies
(“Early in the evening, he will go to prison“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Sanasaryan Inn
(Sanasaryan Inn is a building located in Sirkeci, Istanbul, which belonged to an Armenian merchant named Mıgırdiç Sanasaryan from Erzurum.
It belongs to the Sanasaryan Foundation and was used to cover the expenses of Sanasaryan College in Erzurum.
The neoclassical style Inn is a masonry stone building with an inner courtyard, consisting of a basement and five floors, on the block where Hamidiye Street and Mimar Kemalettin Street intersect in Sirkeci.
Although its ownership status is currently in court, it has been rented for 20 years by the General Directorate of Foundations.
The building was used by the Istanbul Police Department for a long time since 1935.
While it was functioning as a Police Department, people detained here were tortured.
Many names, including Deniz Gezmiş, Mihri Belli, Alparslan Türkeş, Aziz Nesin, Ruhi Su and Nihal Atsız, were interrogated and tortured in this building.)
Above: Turksih student leader Deniz Gezmiş (1947 – 1972)
Above: Turkish writer Mihri Belli (1915 – 2011)
Above: Turkish politician Alparslan Türkeş (1917 – 1997)
Above: Turkish humorist Aziz Nesin (1915 – 1995)
Above: Turkish musician Ruhi Su (“spiritual water“) (1912 – 1985)
Above: Turkish writer Nihal Atsiz (1905 – 1975)
It is the same terrible love
Clouds in the sky
Slips on the branches
Prison for putting your heads up
Dark boredom
Someone in Malta sings “The Kurdish Bride”
And I am in Volta, at the bottom of the bunk bed
And I always create impossible things
Ridiculous, clumsy, childish
(“Early in the evening, he will go to prison“, Ahmed Arif)
The great poet Ahmed Arif, who wore away the shackles of longing and won the hearts of millions of people who opened their eyes and kneaded his poems about social reality in Diyarbakır, attempts to commit suicide in his cell while he is in prison.
Ahmed Arif cuts his own jugular vein in the cell.
He explains the incident as follows:
“I was in the cell, when I put my head on the pillow, I heard a voice and this voice was the song:
‘The fire of love consumes my still bleeding heart.’
I said to myself:
“Ulan Ahmed, you are leaving.
You are depressed.
If something happens here, if you go crazy, people will say:
‘He went crazy out of fear.’
Get up, prevent this.”
Thinking like this, he attempts suicide, for he has been tortured and has suffered a lot in prison.
In the police report about him after he is released from prison, it is written briefly as follows:
“This is now a walking, living dead!
Because it is over, Ahmed Arif.”
Above: Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) leaves prison, The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on my pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
I wear this crown of shit
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
I wish I was shot or lost
Naked in a fight
I want it to be manly
Both friendship and hostility
However, none of this happens
Bayonets pass into the barrel
The night patrol of the gendarmes begins
(“Early in the evening, he will go to prison“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
They attack him.
Ahmed Arif is a feudal peasant.
The Turkish left would make this criticism.
And he would answer:
“If feudalism means being honest, if feudalism means merciless pity, if hospitality means feudalism, if bravery means feudalism, I am a peasant.
I accept feudalism.“
He is a most stubborn man.
He is subjected to terrible torture in the police.
They said, “Read one of your poems.” but he would not read.
The police beat him.
Then they throw what remains to the stadium next to the station.
“I stayed there like that, dead, for how many days, and the garbage men came and took me out of there,” he said.
The torture inflicted on Ahmed Arif has not been inflicted on anyone else.
Above: Prison guard Captain Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown) beats a prisoner to death, The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
He is released on 7 October 1954, as he has served this sentence long enough before being tried.
After his release, he is put in Harbiye Prison.
He is sentenced there for months.
He also loses his father in this process.
After 38 months of detention, at the end of the trial, he is sentenced to two years in prison and eight months under surveillance in Urfa.
Above: Şanlıurfa and the Mevlid-i Halil Mosque seen from Urfa Castle, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye
To be able to explain to the good children, the heroes.
To be able to explain the dishonorable, the ignorant,
The lie.
How many sunrises in a row,
The wolf sleeps, the bird sleeps, the dungeon sleeps
A world flowing noisily outside…
I was the only one who did not sleep,
How many lilies of spring,
I wore out the shackles because of your longing.
Let me wear blood roses in my hair, from side to side.
After being released from prison, he is exiled to Yozgat by those who are not limited to all this torture and can neither find a job nor earn money.
He is now on the verge of starvation.
Above: Yozgat, Türkiye
As a result of thousands of communications and correspondences, he is exiled to Diyarbakır.
He arranges for his sentence of being kept under public surveillance for eight months to be changed to Diyarbakır.
He goes to Diyarbakır, where his sister teaches.
He works as a clerk in a brick and tile factory.
He tries hard with the idea that at least his family is there, he will have a bowl of soup to eat.
He can find a job.
Above: Diyarbakir
I strike the match with precision
My cigarette is half in half with the first breath
I take a smoke, it is full
A smoke, I kill myself I know
“You too?”, you will say
But he goes to prison early in the evening
And it is a young spring outside
I love you like crazy
(“Early in the evening, he will go to prison“, Ahmed Arif)
The letters that Ahmed Arif writes to Leyla Erbil, for whom he has great love and who is also a writer, haven bee recently published under the name Leylim Leylim (Letters from Ahmed Arif to Leyla Erbil).
The letters are written between 1954 and 1957, and a final letter in 1977.
To read these letters written by Ahmed Arif is to reach many emotions about his inner world, like going through someone’s secret diary where it is possible to reach not only the feelings and thoughts about his inner world, but also the political pressure of his time, the conditions, the material and moral problems he is experiencing, all of them.
And so it was.
What impresses the most is Ahmed Arif’s despair as his love for Leyla Erbil is not reciprocated.
“I have no fault other than my desperation.“
Above: Turkish writer Leyla Erbil (1931 – 2013)
“May the trains you take not run out of breath.
May the places you set foot not experience an earthquake.
May the seas be gentle and the ferries be safe.
Make a decree and let the wind take me and throw me there.
Be happy.
God damn me!
I kiss your eyes.“
“The shortest path between two hearts:
Two arms that reach out to each other and can only touch each other with their fingertips from time to time.”
Letters turn into poetry.
These are letters befitting a friendship nourished by the jugular vein of poetry:
We mountaineers are from the same family as thunder and avalanches.
When I was five or six years old, some folk songs, or rather verses in folk songs, fascinated me enough to make me drunk.
Ahmed Arif sings about courage.
His valor, like a spring, like groundwater, like a blizzard, like showing your wound to your friend.
He walks through the snow, above in the heights, barefoot and yet his feet are burning.
Leyla Erbil keeps these letters for years.
In the letters he sends to Leyla Erbil, Ahmed Arif’s love for Leyla is very evident.
It is so deep and gratuitous that it penetrates the reader.
Above: Logo of Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı (Post and Telegraph Agency), the national post and telegraph directorate of Türkiye.
Leyla Erbil is not the only longing of Ahmed Arif in his poems.
He is also in love with his hometown, Diyarbakır.
Above: Ahmet Arif Literature Museum (Ahmet Arif Edebiyat Müzesi), Diyarbakır
Be quiet, don’t let anyone hear you
I would die if he didn’t hear me
I am awake in the middle of the night
After a green rain
It is raining green
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Seyahatname (The Book of Travels) is the name of a literary form and tradition whose examples can be found throughout centuries in the Middle Ages around the Islamic world, starting with the Arab travellers of the Umayyad period.
In a more specific sense, the name refers to the travel notes by the Ottoman Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi (1611 – 1682).
The Seyahâtnâme of Evliya Çelebi is one example of this tradition.
The author’s personal name is Derviş Mehmed Zilli, and “Evliya” is his pen name, which he adopted in honor of his teacher, Evliya Mehmed Efendi.
Evliya Çelebi’s father was the chief jeweller to the courts, and thanks to the talent of his father Evliya was allowed to enjoy the favour of the Court.
Because of his gift in reciting the Quran, Evliya was presented to Sultan Murad IV and admitted to the Palace, where he received extensive training in calligraphy, music, Arabic grammar, and tajwid.
Shortly before Murad IV’s expedition to Baghdad in 1638, Evliya was appointed a sipahi of the Porte.
Despite his diverse talents and the opportunity to climb the social ladder, Evliya had a keen interest in geography and invested his wealth into life goal of travelling.
He set out on a journey to assemble a complete description of the Ottoman Empire and its neighbors and to provide a complete record of his travels as a first-person narrative.
He wrote one of history’s longest and most ambitious accounts of travel writing in any language, the Seyahatnâme.
Although many of the descriptions in the Seyahatnâme were written in an exaggerated manner or were plainly inventive fiction or 3rd-source misinterpretation, his notes remain a useful guide to the culture and lifestyles of the 17th century Ottoman Empire.
In March 1655, Evliya Çelebi set out to join Melek Ahmed Pasha at his new post in Van.
On the way he stopped in Diyarbakır:
“Altogether 2,800 shops constıtute the well-built area of the bazaar, the Market of Beauty.
First, there is the bazaar of Hasan Pasha, then the army bazaar, the druggists’ bazaar – the brains of those who pass through it are scented with perfumes – and the goldsmiths’ bazaar.
All these bazaars are constructed with vaults of fine stone.
Further, there is the market of the blacksmiths, the bazaar of the locksmiths, the bazaar of jewellers and goldsmiths, the bazaar of the boot makers, the sadellers’ bazaar, the bazaar of the silk manufacturers and the bazaar of the traders in cloth.
In short, there are shops of 366 different trades and crafts, but the market hall in the army bazaar is a well-kept beautifully ornamented solid building of fitted stone with iron gates on both ends.
It is crowded with the richest merchants and one finds here valuable goods of the finest quality and the most expensive sorts of jewellery from all countries.
Swords, scimitars, maces, aves, arrows, daggers, spear blades and arrow heads such as those forged hereabouts are made nowhere elese, except perhaps for the weapon smiths of Isfahan.
The Armenian blacksmiths, while beating their hammers and pumping their bellows, sing songs with their fine voices thus earning their profit while singing songs.
When the cotton carders beat the cotton, the strings of their carding produce sounds in various musical modes.
The kettle makers, working in a group of twelve, hammer the red copper on heir anvils.
Even musical experts are struck with amazement when they head the melody produced by these hammers and observe their metrical motion.
Such is the degree to which the artisans here are perfect masters in every respect.
Unrivalled masters are as well the jewellers and goldsmiths making silver vessels and golden headgear and bejewelled vessels of pure gold.
And the embroiderers are as accomplished in the art of multi-coloured designs as painters produce.“
(The Book of Travels, Evliya Çelebi)
Above: Statue of Evliya Çelebi, Eger, Hungary
The farthest, the nameless and lonely
Do you hear that tearful memory?
A Stradivarius inter itself, its bow, its resin, its bridge
Yell if once it was me, we sons it is mine
Immortal, beautiful is the melody of the basket
Known and unknown sollen
Don’t wrap my soul and feathers around now
Hit me with your own wind
Sanyor green
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Full of heart, soul and character, Diyarbakır is finally tapping into its fantastic potential as a destination for travellers.
While it is proud of being symbolic of Kurdish identity and tenacity, increasing promotion and restoration programs have seen Turkish and foreign visitors streaming back.
Behind the grim basalt walls, the old city’s twisting alleyways are crammed full of historical buildings and Arab-style mosques.
(Lonely Planet Turkey)
When his exile ends and she returns to Ankara, she does not continue school and starts looking for a job.
She works as a proofreader and page secretary.
After completing his sentence of public supervision, he returns to Ankara.
Above: Roman baths, Ankara, Türkiye
The dream is all we suffer
My dream, my dream, my prison
How it took years
The adventure in one verse
They don’t know we searched for each other
They don’t know we loved
Two lost longings
Two pieces of souls
The heart of the flint has cracked
It is crying in the coolness of the rainbows
A water that has been drowned for ages
It is crying green
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Ahmed Arif, who did not have the opportunity to complete his higher education, works as an editor for the newspapers Medeniyet, Öncü, and finally Halkçı from 1956.
Green roses sprouted from their grooves
All the barrels are silent
The mountain is silent
The sea is silent
The world is sound, sleeping deep
The snake brings water to the baby sparrow
The barren woman gave birth to a blue girl
Her breasts are fertile and cool
She is milking green
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Two poets in Ankara meet.
Cemal Süreya says that they meet three or four days a week and chat until the morning.
At that time Ahmed Arif is still single.
These close meetings allow the two to become more sincere and closer to each other.
For Cemal Süreya regarding Ahmed Arif:
“There is certainly a closeness and similarity between the speaking style of every poet and his poetry, but I have come across a poet with such an identity between his speech and his poetry for the first time in Ahmed Arif.
His poetry is like a piece taken from his speech, and his speech is a continuation of the poem in every direction.”
Ahmed Arif’s friendship towards Cemal Süreya is:
“Let this brother take the blame for his bloodline.”
Above: Turkish poet Cemal Süreya (1931 – 1990)
Arif married Aynur Hanım, whom he met in Ankara, in 1967.
Their son Filinta was born in 1972.
The greatest happiness he experienced in his life was his son.
He devoted his life to his wife and son.
Above: Aynur Hanım and Ahmet Arif
I stood in the half-night
Nero, an ugly face in children’s books
And Caesar, a name in the ruins
But the dagger stone is like Big Carthage
You know, they gave him match juice
Look how he gets it, brave man
After thousands of years, it gets green
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Statue of Roman Emperor Nero (37 – 68), Anzio, Italy
Above: Roman general-statesman Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BC) statue, Rimini, Italy
His fame spread in the 1960s when Fikret Otyam added sections from Ahmet Arif’s poems to his interviews.
Above: Turkish writer-artist Fikret Otyam (1926 – 2015)
The only book of his poems, I Worn Out Shackles from Your Longing, was published in 1968.
This work, the poet’s only book, was met with great interest.
It has been published more than 60 times, making it one of the most printed poetry books in Turkey.
Ahmed Arif received the title of Anatolian Poet.
As Haydar Ergülen, a poet like himself, said:
“Ahmed Arif is one of those people whose life is poetry.
Both his life is poetry and poetry has been his life.“
Above: Turkish poet Haydar Ergulen
Ahmet Arif, who conveyed the people of Southeastern Anatolia, the region where he was born and raised, in his poems, became a popular person among the public for this aspect.
He did not publish or even write any poems after I Worn Out the Shackles of Longing.
Ahmed Arif lived in Ankara after retiring from journalism in 1977.
It is known that, shortly before his death, he told his relatives that his poems were ready for the publication of a second book, that he would go to Istanbul and have them dictated, and his new book published.
But this did not happen.
The poet died of a heart attack at his home in Ankara on 2 June 1991.
The poet’s poems, which he did not include in I Worn Out the Shackles of Longing, were collected in the book titled My Homeland is My Jugular Vein (Yurdum Benim Şahdamarin) in 2003.
From the top of the mountain
My hawk strikes the turbulence, its simple shadow
He doesn’t shoot birds
He doesn’t buy rabbits
But he was torn by hungry fierce sharks
Look, Tıber is respectful and silent
Look, the lotus string chain
These are the ligaments, the collarbones
Ignorance’s first hope, first lover and first guerrilla of Spartacus
Green is silent
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Be quiet, so no one can hear
Don’t let anyone here, I will die
I was awake half the night, then I found you
You, the golden piece of my rib
You, the smell of apples on your teeth
Which mother will give birth to us again?
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
Above: Adam and Eve, Peter Paul Rubens (1628)
He published only one collection of poetry:
Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim (I have worn out the shackles of your longing)(1960) – a volume that has gone through a record number of printings.
The book, which consists of Ahmed Arif’s “socialist-revolutionary” poems nourished by folk literature, folk songs, laments and fairy tales, is referred to as “one of the holy books of the socialist movement“.
Many of the poems in the book were composed as songs.
Into the blue
Into the blue, steal your eyes
Into the blue of a fire
Raging against the wind
If I’m blind
If I’m leaving behind all but you
So what if I’m through?
This life is mine, this dream is mine
Strangers have no clue
Come, I say,
The moon is dark.
If I end at your gate
Starved as a cur
Stripped as a snake
Wounded and cursed
With my loving, my need
My insatiable greed
What, then, could compete?
Come what may
The scribes all unite
My sentence to write
Come, I pray,
The moon is dark.
Bastards’ lairs on all my sides
They look like friends
Smile like friends
Light their cigarettes off mine
Kiss my cheek
Like worms they sneak
Bastards’ lairs to all my sides
To all my sides, dead ends
Craving for death in the loneliest night,
Don’t stay away,
The moon is dark.
(“The Moon is Dark“, Ahmed Arif)
His only book published while he was alive, I Have Worn Out the Shackles of Your Longing (1968), is one of the most published poetry books in Turkey.
He wrote his poems with a sincere expression, unusual synergies and free meter.
He gave an important place in his poems to the geography of Southeastern Anatolia and Çukurova, where he was born and raised.
Above: Ahmet Arif
My soul
I am writing a verse, just so you know
This is the smallest tavern in the bazaars
Her hair is on my face, childish
That dishonourable person of death is under our skin
And Ahmed’s work is the first to appear
It is the first time that a friendly hand has no dagger
The green is crying
(“Silent“, Ahmed Arif)
There is an organic integrity in Ahmed Arif’s poetry.
It is never possible to encounter a fragmented situation.
However, there are lines in the poem that stand out.
Ahmed Arif is a poet who can use verses that will truly capture people’s hearts.
Blue
Your eyes turn blue
Fire blue
Rebellious in the wind
If I am blind
If I am around nothing but you
If I am broken
Life is mine, fall down
What does it matter to hands?
Come on
The moon is dark
(“Dark Moon“, Ahmed Arif)
Another defining feature of his poetry is the language he uses.
It uses many concepts that are not used in daily life but are found in folk literature, from fairy tales to folk songs.
Moreover, while using these concepts, he also tries to expand the meanings.
He uses the word in a way that carries different meanings within the poem.
These words lead to the original structure of the lines and a concentration in the poem.
It identifies with speech, capturing the lively, natural voice of the people.
However, he never reduces the language of poetry to spoken language.
This brings the concept of image.
Behind the mountains, behind the mountains, Nazli is
A thin road on the edge of the cliff
It goes round and round
You have a patient, hopeless
Maybe Ayşe, maybe Elif
A Virgo with a well-shaped figure
Under her breast and semen
A pain, a treacherous knife
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
In Ahmed Arif’s poetry, the images are striking, the thought is striking and felt at the first moment.
His poetry is never dominated by the image.
Sometimes the image appears before us as a detail in a line.
Sometimes as the whole poem.
The shortness of the lines in his poem and their ability to be easily connected to each other also help his poem to impress the reader.
On the other hand, each verse, each analogy carries deep meanings within itself.
The function he attributes to words is partly related to this.
This is death
It does not say death to poverty
I have come, I am coming
Either in the morning or in the evening
Or in the morning, when you are sleepy
You will see, it will have happened
You had a hopeless patient
His longing was in sleep
His longing was in cold waters
Otherwise, their eyes are two flowers of fear
Two blue, huge flowers of fear
Blooming in deep wells
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
Ahmed Arif reveals the development of society and the perspectives of the oppressors and the oppressed through objects.
While exhibiting this, he conveys very clearly whose side he is on, by reflecting the tolerance of the oppressed and the oppression of the oppressors.
The mountains behind the mountains are terrifying
Has anyone ever thought about it?
On whose account does the day keep the evening?
Who is inspired by the mercy of the cloud?
The good child is the machine
What a beast it becomes
The me who provides sustenance for the wolf and the ants
How can the Earth be seduced
He does not tolerate the lame ox
And does not take the black plow into his bosom
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
In his poetry, the great influence of his tribal customs in determining the characteristics of the oppressed people cannot be denied.
Despite the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality, feudal culture reflects human values.
Some characteristics of the tribe, such as its loud voice, brave sensitivity and tolerance, can be listed as examples of this.
In Ahmed Arif’s poetry, the concepts of hope, sensitivity and courage have a big place.
The hope in his poetry is used in the sense of assurance, longing, bright future, joy and honesty.
His hope is not groundless and does not mean mere consolation.
On the contrary, it is a hope rooted in his revolutionary consciousness, aware of the conditions in which he lives.
The co-existence of joy and longing along with hope is a result of this.
These are signs that it will be difficult to reach the hoped-for destination.
“It is a fire,
Fires at the bottom of the sea,
May on the blood-cut plains
It has flown, as light as a bird’s feather,
The steel cadaver of the pillboxes,
It is dead, my dear, it is dead,
Murad has been taken.”
Even if it is to death, an accounting will be held for what happened.
The belief that the day will come gives enough information about the hope that Ahmed Arif carries in his heart.
The hope in Ahmed Arif’s poetry turns into resistance in many places.
The sensitivity in Ahmed Arif’s poetry includes emotions such as sadness, compassion, friendship, sublimity and love.
Above: Ahmed Arif
This sensitivity is such that it sometimes even goes so far as to personify objects.
The poet’s sensitivity puts all objects in the same situation.
The best example of this can be seen in the following verses:
“Do you know about the stone wall
Iron door, blind window
My pillow, my bunk bed, my chain
For which I went to death and back,
The sad picture in my stash
Do you know?
My interviewer sent green onions
It smells of cloves my cigarette
Spring has come to the mountains of my country.“
The courage is not a dry bravado made of simple, slang expressions.
The courage in him is the defiance of people who struggle to create a more beautiful world, against all existing negativities, contradictions and oppression.
This is a voice that combines bravery, courage, humanity, and the love of struggle and conveys it to the reader.
The heroes in Ahmed Arif’s poetry are always poor, helpless, oppressed, but honourable people.
The elements of peasant or tribal culture that Ahmed Arif uses in his poems do not mean that he resorts to an ordinary “peasantism” method.
These tendencies include different reflections of the oppressed among broad layers of society.
This can sometimes be villagers, sometimes students, and sometimes people living in slums.
When evaluated from this aspect, it never ignores the phenomenon of “class“.
Ahmed Arif’s lines –
“My Sepetçioğlu is a coal miner,
Nazif from Urfa holds a shovel, not a Mauser,
Goods are tribute and auction”
– are enough to exemplify this aspect of him.
Ahmed Arif has a lyricism that allows him to hear even the facts and events outside himself and to make this known to the reader.
However, this lyricism is not limited to creating emotional intensity.
Because lyricism, which ignores the facts behind the events and blunts a reaction to them, is also a trap.
In addition to the lyricism, what underlies this lyricism is the thoughts that give a different taste every time you read Ahmed Arif’s poem.
They are new horizons created for the reader.
This should be sought in Ahmed Arif’s revolutionism.
Because the best way to perceive the world correctly and convey this to other people is to convey the reflections of these truths in daily life to people with aesthetic concern and fine sensitivity.
That’s what he does.
The mountains behind the mountainous terrifying
Has anyone ever thought about it?
On whose account does the day keep the evening?
Who is inspired by the mercy of the cloud?
The good child is the machine
What a beast it becomes
The me who provides sustenance for the wolf and the ants
How can the Earth be seduced
He does not tolerate the lame ox
And does not take the beach plow into his bosom
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
People who left their mark on the period they lived in with their stance, actions and contradictions can become the common voice of a society.
These are the voices of resistance, pain, injustice, longing and love.
They become the hallmark of their era and often become a light for all subsequent generations.
They are the dissenters of their time.
The cost of this can be extremely high.
They become the subject of cinema, literature, art and even politics.
My Sepetcioğlu is a coal miner
He holds a shovel, not a Mauser
Nazif from Urfa
Goods are tribute – auction
Life is market – market
Red, white and brown
This is the owner of the hands that created the soft and hard wheat
Blind throat, for the sake of subsistence
Disappointed and disguised
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
Ahmet Arif is one of those figures who embodies most of these characteristics in his soul and channeled them into his life.
Our poet, who has paid an extremely painful price for his poems and contradictory stance rather than his identity as a journalist, continues his life without compromising the values and stance he believes in.
This is partly what makes the poet who he is.
Despite all this pain, he carries his human love, longing and faith into his poetry.
It has gained an important place in Turkish poetry.
Behind the mountains, beyond the mountains
How can I explain it?
Without trees, without birds, without shade
Naked now victim
“Who would not be sacrificed for the sake of the heavenly homeland that.”
Bravery is accepting sacrifice
Even if you are in Hell, in order to make you heavenly
For the poor and honourable people
This is the story.
Be the dark love.
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
Ahmet Arif has a unique feeling and image and writes with a sincere expression.
He goes through torturous prison processes because of the poems he wrote.
In Turkish poetry, there have been many poets who have gone beyond the norm both technically and in terms of content and meaning, and who have gained a place in the literary world with their unique forms of expression and meaning.
Some poets gave life to poetry based on their perspective on life, their ideologies, and their world views.
These poets have become the common voice of many opposition groups with their contradictory stances.
At this point, one of the first names that comes to mind in the recent era is Ahmed Arif, whom we can recognize with his unique poetic language, his experiences and his literary attitude in line with his beliefs.
He devoted his heart and soul, which he nurtured with love, to all kinds of inequality, injustice and his commitment to his people.
He reflected this with his literary identity.
In addition to all the emotions that nourish the poet, the basic one is love.
Loving you is philosophy, perfect
It is faith, terribly patient
Despite the rope and lead
She walks reckless and beautiful
He overthrows the mountain ranges
He turns the flowing waters around
He takes away the regrets of the orphans
He commands, according to his book
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
Ahmed Arif, who defies authority with his poetry, is called an angry poet by some circles, but when looked at objectively, it is normal to encounter the fact that he cannot remain silent against oppression.
Rather than anger, his only weapon is poetry.
As a result of this stance and view of life, his freedom is taken away before he can complete his education and the process in prison begins.
Even though he could not finish the philosophy department he studied, his experiences and his view of humanity became an important factor in the formation of his philosophy of life.
When we say that the conditions in which a person lives are formed, this is exactly what we are talking about.
When we look back much earlier than Ahmed Arif’s time, we encounter similar examples.
Ahmed Arif is one of the masters of social realist poetry.
He reveals his feelings as sincerely as possible.
As the day passes, hope grows
Behind the mountains and mountains
Not such poverty and longing
Not a single ear of wheat will remain dissatisfied
Not even a single olive branch will be left alone
If it is heavy, don’t let it rain
If it is heavy, don’t let the mountain wake up from its sleep
What a day this heart beats
Darkness escapes from your veins
It escapes, never to return
It offers what lies in its bosom
And offers it happily
Underground in the light of our brains
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
There is only one known poetry book: “I Have Worn Out the Shackles of Your Longing“.
How could such an emotional, strong-minded and original person write a single book of poetry?
This is actually a question that arouses curiosity in many readers and writers.
His son Filinta Önal’s statement on this subject is that his father constantly writes poetry in his mind 24 hours a day.
Ahmed Arif is a poet who waited 17 years to write a single line to complete a poem.
When we examine Ahmed Arif’s poems, each poem presents us with sections from his unknown life.
Younger and more productive in every season
Offering, bright and shining
The most beautiful harvest of love of its life
The Earth is in our hands
Full table, smiling mother, laughing children
Pregnant with the evening with ten to one, a hundred to one
Labour force ban at dawn
I don’t lie, my word is a man’s word
Be like this
It is written in the book
Be love, because it is like this
(“Sacrifice“, Ahmed Arif)
All great writers, bards and poets have had periods like this.
Yaşar Kemal wandered around Çukurova like a crazy man.
Village by village, town by town, Kemal wandered from 1951 to 1954.
Above: Turkish writer Yaşar Kemal (1923 – 2015)
(Çukurova in Southern Anatolia includes the provinces of Adana , Mersin , Osmaniye and Hatay.
With a population of 6.4 million, it is one of the regions with the highest population density in Turkey.)
Above: Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Hatay provinces (red) included in Çukurova and geographically Çukurova (pale pink).
Russian writer Maxim Gorky attempted suicide and aimed a bullet for his heart.
At the age of 21, Gorky attempted suicide, shooting a bullet through his lung.
Although he survived, his lungs were permanently damaged and caused him to suffer frequent bouts of tuberculosis.
Above: Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868 – 1936)
What happened to him is the same as what happened to Nâzım Hikmet and Necip Fazıl.
Hikmet was arrested many times due to his Communist views and membership in the banned Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) and spent most of his life in prison or exile.
He was tried in 11 separate cases in Turkey and spent more than 12 years in prisons in Istanbul, Ankara, Çankırı and Bursa prisons.
Above: Nâzım Hikmet in Çankırı Prison
After leaving Turkey in 1951, he was stripped of his citizenship of the Republic of Turkey.
This decision was annulled on 5 January 2009, 46 years after his death.
Fazıl suffered from serious illnesses until the age of 15.
He was sent abroad to study on a scholarship in Paris, but failed due to gambling and alcohol addiction and returned home.
He could not get rid of his addiction to gambling.
Above: Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (1904 – 1983).
When his friend, journalist and radio announcer Eşref Şefik Atabey fell ill, Necip lost the money he gave him to buy medicine in gambling and returned home empty-handed in the morning.
Above: Turkish journalist Eşref Şefik Atabey (1894 – 1980)
In the winter of 1942, he was sent to Erzurum for 45 days to do his military service again.
He was convicted and sentenced to prison for the first time because he wrote a political article while he was in the military.
Above: Erzurum Castle on a rainy day. Erzurum, Türkiye
He was imprisoned in Sultanahmet Prison.
Above: Sultanahmet Prison, now a Four Seasons Hotel, İstanbul, Türkiye
The artist founded the Great Eastern Society on 28 June 1949.
In 1950, the first branch of the association was opened in Kayseri.
Necip Fazıl was arrested for an article he wrote after returning to Istanbul from the opening ceremony in Kayseri.
Above: Kayseri, Türkiye
When the acquittal decision in the “insulting Turkishness case” was overturned by the appeals court in April, he went to prison with his wife Neslihan Hanım.
He was released on 15 July, as the first person to be released from prison with the amnesty law passed by the Democratic Party, which won the 1950 General Election.
Above: Necip and Neslihan Kısakürek
The incident known as the “Casino Raid ” took place on 22 March 1951 .
Necip Fazıl, who was caught during a raid on a casino in Beyoğlu, was kept at the police station for 18 hours due to this incident.
He published the 54th issue of his magazine on 30 March 1951.
However, before the magazine was distributed to newsstands, a decision was made to confiscate it.
Necip Fazıl, who was arrested due to an unsigned article published in this issue, was detained for 19 days.
When the sentence of 9 months and 12 days was given, he postponed his sentence for four months, and then received a three-month postponement report from the hospital.
The “Malatya Incident” occurred on 22 May 1952, when the postponement report received from the hospital regarding Necip Fazıl’s conviction in 1951 expired.
That day, Ahmet Emin Yalman, the owner and editor-in-chief of Vatan newspaper, was injured in an assassination attempt in Malatya.
Above: Turkish newsman Ahmet Emin Yalman (1888 – 1972)
In the incident, Ahmet Yalman, who was in Malatya, where Prime Minister Adnan Menderes went to attend the First Congress of the DP, within the framework of his trip to study the number of dormitories and who attended the events of the Prime Minister’s visit to Malatya and reported to the newspaper headquarters by phone, left the Malatya post office he went to for this purpose and was returning to the hotel at 23:30.
A senior student at Elazığ High School was shot and injured with a gun by Hüseyin Üzmez , a twenty-year-old young man.
Necip Fazıl was accused of instigating Hüseyin Üzmez.
The poet was arrested and sent to Malatya on the charge of “inciting and instigating premeditated murder, praising and exploiting the act of attempted murder“.
While he was serving a prison sentence of 9 months and 12 days due to his conviction in 1951, he published a brochure titled “I’m Ripping Your Mask” and made a comprehensive accounting of what had happened to him since 1943 and the events related to the Malatya Incident (11 December 1952).
Since his trial was still ongoing, he remained in detention for a while after his sentence for the 1951 conviction was completed.
He was released on 16 December 1953 when he was found not guilty of the Malatya Trial.
Above: Malatya, Türkiye
In 1957, he spent another 8 months and 4 days in prison due to overdue sentences from various cases.
Necip Fazıl, who was taken from his home on 6 June after the 1960 coup, was kept in Balmumcu Garrison for 4.5 months.
Above: Barbaros Bulvarı, Balmumcu, İstanbul
Although he was released due to the Press Amnesty, he was arrested again on the day of his release and sent to Toptaşı Prison, as his conviction for an article allegedly containing insults to Atatürk was finalized while he was in Balmumcu.
He was released on 18 December 1961, after serving a sentence of 1 year and 65 days.
Above: Toptaşı Prison
He was convicted of insulting Atatürk’s spiritual personality on 8 July 1981, due to his illegal actions regarding the crimes committed against Atatürk.
The decision was approved by the 9th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals.
Although it was reported by the court-appointed expert that the book titled “Sultan Vahidüddin, Not a Traitor, but a Great Friend of the Homeland“, which was the subject of the case, did not constitute any criminal element, Necip Fazıl was convicted on the grounds of “being inclined to insult Atatürk“.
Above: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
In fact, it is much easier to understand the definition of “Angry Poet” when we look at these experiences.
Because these torturous processes Arif was subjected to are the most important reason why he keeps his anger alive.
His political attitude and the subsequent prison process cost Ahmed Arif his educational life and he could not complete his philosophy education.
However, his experiences were extremely influential in Ahmed Arif’s formation of his own philosophy of life.
This philosophy, which carries him from captivity to freedom, also makes him the owner of a unique formation in the new period Turkish poetry.
Because Ahmet Arif is a reflection of “a poet who writes as he thinks and lives as he writes.
He writes as he says and says as he writes.”
This is how the philosophy of love, which places Ahmet Arif among the unforgettable Turkish poets, can be viewed.
Ahmed Arif has adopted a style in his poetry that is understandable and captures people’s hearts.
He always stated that he was an oppressed and poor poet of his people and he was always honoured by this.
The great love he has for his people can also be understood in his own words as he answers those who consult him about writing poetry:
“I always say this to my friends and those who come to me like this:
The most shameful thing in the world is to ask:
‘How can you show me a way to write poetry?’
By teaching, training and striving, a person can become a billionaire or a holding company boss.
He can become a carpenter or a blacksmith.
He can also become a pilot.
I don’t know, he can have a son.
He can achieve success in all professions.
But it is impossible for him to become a poet like that.
If there is a school for poetry, I think the poetry written with what he learned in that school is worth nothing.“
Ahmed Arif is a poet who believes that poetry has dignity.
The best example of this is:
“… and I am a poet.
I am a worker of honour, that is, a worker of heart.”
Above: Ahmet Arif
He conveys dignity while he never gives up humility.
Ahmed always remained devoted to poetry.
It must be said that he was not a very productive poet.
However, when he compiled his poems, which had not been possible to publish for years due to the printing environment, into a book in 1968, he immediately succeeded in conveying his original voice to the masses.
He grieved, fell in love, resisted, cried and longed through those poems.
These feelings were passed on to subsequent generations.
Ahmed Arif is among the most important poets of his time and today, who managed to touch the hearts of the people.
In an interview, he was asked:
“How do you manage not to fall into despair?”
Ahmed Arif answers the question with his usual clear attitude.
He also reflects all his revolutionary feelings in his answer.
He emphasizes that falling into despair is forbidden for a revolutionary and adds:
“Even in the hands of the executioner, under torture, even when death is one breath away.
It is not only forbidden, but also shameful.
Because the revolutionary himself is the future and hope of humanity.
This is a rule and a principle.
A noble, beautiful and honorable world, where dishonesty and baseness are not dominant, is based on this basic principle.
This flag was hoisted on my heart when I was a young man.
We are the future of the people.
We are their hope, their pride, their anger, their honour.
Above: Ahmet Arif
Ahmed Arif is a poet who tries to live without any difference between his words and actions, from the time he started to know himself until his death.
Although he paid a heavy price for this cause, he continued his life without compromising what he believed in.
He expresses himself to the reader with all his naturalness.
I don’t know if there is another poet who sees Anatolia as beautifully and realistically as he does.
It is as if he reconciled locality with universality.
He went beyond all the school names of his time and did not resemble anyone else.
Ahmed Arif told about love, affection, longing, Diyarbekir, Anatolia, revolution, and from generation to generation he became a voice to our hearts, minds, loves and longings.
Above: “And what couldn’t be more overwhelming than the taste of thinking about you?” (Ahmet Arif)
He only wrote poetry until the age of 28, but he left a centuries-old literary legacy.
When he passed away, the poems he had written in his mind for the second book also left with him.
A few lines from Ahmet Arif’s poem ‘Anatolia‘;
Hang on with the book
Hang on with poetry.
With nails, with teeth,
With hope, with love, with dreams.
Hold on, don’t embarrass me.
Ahmed Arif’s poems are sharp, bitter and honest, like noble folk songs and laments.
In Ahmed Arif’s poems, you never see anything strange in the village, in the rooms, in the camps.
As if listening to a good folk song, the people find their own voice, their own bitterness, sometimes their despair and sometimes their joy of living, their power to resist and impose, their noble hope in these poems.
That’s why the people, his workers, his villagers, will never find Ahmed strange.
Above: Ahmed Arif
Ahmed Arif is heartbroken about the land where he was born and its people, the brave and honorable people.
His main profession is patriotism.
He is a master at this.
With great respect to his memory…
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikiquote
- Google Photos
- Ahmed Arif, Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim
