Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

Nasreddin Hoca
The thirteenth century was artistically fertile: the Turks of Anatolia proved 
impressively creative in many genres from the decorative arts to music. In satire, 
too. A Nasreddin Hoca emerged—wit, raconteur, master of humor. Nasreddin 
Hoca anecdotes were popular as folk humor, but also in terms of their mysti-
cal implications. UNESCO declared 1996–97 “The International Nasreddin 
Hoca Year.”
One of his tales of wisdom is about justice delayed:
One day the Hoca is walking in the bazaar. A thug comes over and slaps him 
as hard as he can. People run over and apprehend the roughneck. They all 
go before the judge, who sentences the thug to pay the Hoca one gold coin in 
damages. The man says: “Your honor, I haven’t got a gold coin on me. Allow 
me to go home and get it.” The judge agrees. The Hoca is skeptical. But the 
judge tells him to sit in the rear of the courtroom and wait for the gold coin. 
The Hoca doubts if the roughneck will ever show up, but he sits and waits. A 
couple of hours later, he walks over to the judge: “Your honor,” he says, “I’ve a 
lot of things to do. I can’t wait any longer.” The judge insists: “He’ll bring the 
gold coin. Sit down and wait.” Another couple of hours pass—no sight of the 
thug—and the Hoca just can’t wait any longer. He slowly gets up, walks over 
to the judge, slaps him as hard as he can, and says: “When he comes, you get 
the gold coin.”

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Occidental Orientation
u ro p e s t o od i n aw e o f t h e O t t om a n s , who crushed many 
states and conquered vast territories, going, as patriotic Turks will 
proudly point out, “all the way to the gates of Vienna.”
Th
e Ottoman Turks, proud of their faith and conquests, felt superior 
to the West until decline set in. From the seventeenth century onward, 
there were defeats at the hands of European powers, deterioration of 
morale and offi
cial institutions, and eventually the armed rebellions of 
the empire’s non-Muslim minorities. Th
e Ottoman ruling class gradu-
ally became impressed with Europe’s growing strength and technologi-
cal achievements. Th
e Renaissance had wielded no infl uence on the Turks. 
Th
e printing press was not introduced to Turkey until the third decade of 
the eighteenth century, nearly 275 years behind Europe, and the fi rst news-
paper in Turkish came out in 1831. Th
e political and ideological impact of 
the French Revolution was felt decades later, and the Industrial Revolution 
and its eff ects eluded the Turks for an even longer time.
By the mid–nineteenth century, the shrinking Ottoman Empire had 
started to turn to the West for ideas and institutions. Aft er a series of lim-
ited innovations in the military, administrative, educational, and technical 
fi elds from the eighteenth century on, the Ottoman elite plunged into an 
extensive transformation usually referred to as “Westernization.” In 1839, 
the Tanzimat (Reforms) Period was ushered in: legal, administrative, and 
cultural changes were introduced in quick succession. Literature was both 
a concomitant to and a major catalyst of these changes. Th
e conservative 
religious establishment waged all-out war against Westernization, how-
ever. Cautious reformers recommended a synthesis of Eastern culture and 
Western technology: 
ex Oriente lux, ex Occidente frux.
But progressive 

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