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CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI 
136 
1897 received an unfavourable response from Ahmet Cevdet and from the editor 
Cenab Şahabettin
72
. 
Yahya Kemal and Yakup Kadri in their turn expressed their ideas to Tevfik Fikret 
who did not object but suggested they seek advice from Cenab Şahabettin. In the 
meeting with the latter in which Rıza Tevfik was present too, they encountered 
objections. 
In 1949 Rıza Tevfik, responding to Hasan-ÂliYücel’s request to tell him about the 
meeting with Yahya Kemal and Yakup Kadri on the Nev Yunanîlik movement, 
responded with a long letter written in an old fashioned and difficult language
73
. In 
short, to paraphrase him, he held Greek and Latin literature in great esteem but he 
could not see how a hellenising or Mediterranean movement could take root in 
Turkey. He did not support the idea of a literary movement which could be called 
collectively Mediterranean either. He could only see it as a movement which had a 
Hellenic heritage. Even if there are concrete examples of Mediterranean types of 
people (
charactère physionomique
), Rıza Tevfik argued that such examples do not 
exist in poetry. The area of Southern Italy, all of Western Anatolia, Sicily and Crete 
together with all the Aegean islands could be considered as one cultural source and 
cultural field. The new poetry’s model and ideal could be something neo-Hellenic 
but there was no way we could recreate the sublimity of the Ancients. 
72
Yücel, 252-5 
73
Yücel, 270-276 for the whole letter. 

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CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI 
137 
In a supplementary short letter he added that
74
:

Türkiye’de, daha doğrusu Osmanlı şiirinde birçok hellenizm 
fikirleri ve hayalleri var. Hattâ bütün tasavvuf felsefi neo-platonizmin 
İran’a aksetmiş olan gölgesinin gölgesidir. Hâlâ merbut bulunduğumuz 
bâzı âdetler, hurafeler eski Yunan’dan intikâl etmiş şeylerdir. Yalnız 
evellâ İran’a, İran’dan Selçukîlere, onlardan bize miras kalmış şeyler 
olduğu için nereden geldiğini bilmiyoruz. 
In Turkish, more precisely in Ottoman poetry there are some Hellenic 
thoughts and ideas. In essence all the mystic philosophy is the shadow of 
neoplatonism’s shadow on Iran. Some customs or superstitions to which 
we are still attached to are things transmitted to us from ancient Greeks. 
But because it is an inheritance which reached us having first been left to 
Iran and then to the Selçuk Turks we do not know where it came from. 
 
In short, Rıza Tevfik thought that the only element of Hellenism in Ottoman or 
Turkish literature could be detected in the mystics which in their turn have 
influenced innovators and proponents of Nev Yunanîlik like Yahya Kemal and 
Yakup Kadri.
Ömer Seyfettin, the advocate of a simple Turkish language and Turkism, for his part, 
not only ridiculed the idea of a neo-Hellenic movement but went as far as to imply 
its treacherous character. This position is not difficult to understand at a time when 
the Ottoman empire was losing territory to the neo-Hellenes! In the satirical short 
story “Boykotaj Düşmanı” (Damaging Enemy) (
Tanin
1952, 17 May 1330 / 30 May 
1914)
75
Ömer Seyfettin ridiculed Yahya Kemal and his poorly timed admiration for 
the Greek civilisation. This short story was written in the aftermath of the Balkan 
74
Yücel, 276 
75
Polat. 2011, 417-25

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