Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

1
The Dawn in Asia
T
u r k i s h l i t e r at u r e is among the world’s oldest—and young-
est—literatures. Its creative tradition, according to some debatable 
claims made by numerous scholars, dates back to before Christ. It is com-
monly accepted, however, that its legacy of written works spans twelve 
centuries.
1
In their long history, the Turks have gone through more changes than 
most nations, and yet—paradoxical as it may sound—they have preserved 
most of their basic cultural traits. Th
rough the centuries, they lived as 
nomadic tribes, built small and large states in parts of Asia, created the 
Selçuk state in Asia Minor and later the sprawling Ottoman Empire, which 
endured from the thirteenth to the early twentieth century, and fi nally 
established the modern Turkish Republic. At diff erent stages of their his-
tory, Turkic communities embraced shamanism, Buddhism, Judaism, 
Christianity, Manichaeanism, Zoroastrianism, and other creeds until 
most of them accepted the Islamic faith more than a thousand years ago. 
Th
eir language, one of the world’s most regular in grammar and also one 
of the most agglutinative, has used fi ve separate scripts: Köktürk, Uyghur, 
Arabic, Cyrillic, and (since 1928) one based on the Latin alphabet.
Th
e pattern of the main ages of Turkish literature follows the fore-
going outline of the major periods of Turkish history. But scholars have 
pursued a variety of approaches to the periodization of Turkish literary 
1. A useful and reliable general history of Turkish literature is Talat S. Halman, gen. 
ed., 
Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi,
4 vols. (Ankara: T. C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2006; 2d ed., 
2007).

---

2
A Millennium of Turkish Literature
development. Th
e simplest approach sets up two stages: early (eighth to 
nineteenth century) and modern (nineteenth to twenty-fi rst century). 
Another breakdown involves three periods: pre-Islamic (until the elev-
enth century), Islamic (eleventh to mid–nineteenth century), and mod-
ern (mid–nineteenth century to the present). A diff erent three-pronged 
categorization is: pre-Ottoman (until the thirteenth century), Ottoman 
(thirteenth to twentieth century), and twentieth century to the present. 
A more elaborate—also more meaningful—approach sets up fi ve stages: 
pre-Islamic (until the eleventh century), pre-Ottoman Islamic (eleventh 
to thirteenth century), Ottoman (thirteenth to mid–nineteenth century), 
transitional (mid–nineteenth century to the 1920s), and modern (1920s to 
the present). All these periods have their subdivisions, on which, however, 
there is no unanimity among literary historians.
Few cultures have changed as drastically and still remained as intact 
as has Turkish culture throughout history. Turkish history has included 
“some cataclysmic transformations in terms of locale, cultural orienta-
tion, faith, system of government, allegiance.”
2
Language is a particularly 
compelling example of transformation and continuity. From the tenth to 
the twentieth century, Turkish intellectuals and men of letters voraciously 
absorbed Persian and Arabic vocabulary as well as some of the grammati-
cal devices of these two languages. Yet despite the elitist enthusiasm for 
such borrowings, the language spoken by the masses remained remarkably 
unchanged and was preserved not only in colloquial use from generation 
to generation, but also in folk literature. As a result, in terms of morphol-
ogy, syntax, and a substantial portion of vocabulary, the Turkish language 
is essentially the same as it was a thousand years ago.
3
“Man’s legacy to man is words. . . . Whosoever is born must die, but his 
words live on. Language is the interpreter of thought and science. It gives 
man dignity. Human beings attain happiness through language. But lan-
guage can also demean man and cause heads to roll. It is on words that man 
2. Talat S. Halman, “Poetry and Society: Propaganda Functions of Poetry in the Turk-
ish Experience,” in Talat S. Halman,