Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI 
147 
In a similar way Hasan-Âli Yücel referring to the publication of 
Kır Mektupları 
and 
the discovery of Homer by the then twenty year old Yakup Kadri states that they are 
“a turning point in Turkish literature” although “the voice of the then young Yakup 
was then echoed in a deaf horizon”. “Later his grand-children would crown his 
cultured head with the laurel wreath”
93
. Hasan-Âli Yücel also linked the subsequent 
introduction of classical literature to a Turkish readership in general and schools in 
particular through translation with the Nev Yunanîlik movement. He concluded by 
saying: “We should remember with respect Yakup’s service and pioneering role in 
this movement”
94
. 
As a footnote it may be mentioned that Yakup Kadri’s interest in antiquity seems to 
have been only literary. There are no signs of an interest in its physical remains and 
when in later life he was ambassador in Tirana he did not visit Greece itself even 
though his close friend Ruşen Eşref was serving in the Athens embassy at the time.
His closest link with the real as opposed to the imaginary Athens seems to consist of 
ordering cartes de visite while ambassador to Albania from the well known Athens 
stationer, Pallis.
95
93
Yücel 296 
94
Yücel 299. Yıldırım 2013, 640-41sees that such an idea of a Turkish renaissance, both in the sphere of culture 
and administartion could not be sustained in the early days of the Republic. This idea found its mature expression 
in the works on culture, national identity and politics of Yahya Kemal’s student, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and of 
Hilmi Ziya Ülken. Especially the former focused on the shaping of an Anatolian and Mediterranean identity 
which would lead to a new humanism and Turkish Renaissance. 
95
I found these in the Karaosmanoglu archive and for me they were easy to identify because Pallis was the 
stationer which supplied my school in Athens.

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