Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

The sleep of buried hurricanes is stirred,
Rocks stretch far like pelagic graves,
From the sea to heaven
The sailor’s curse is heard.
Time vanishes and life abandons time;
From the galaxies descend no bulletins.
Heavy and tired with an ill omen,
When all men are thought to have ceased,
The beacon grins.
Fazıl Hüsnü Dag˘larca (1914–2008)

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133
a f t erwor d
The Future of 
Turkish Literature
t i s a t ru i s m that poetry dominated Turkish literature for nearly 
a thousand years. In the latter part of the twentieth century, though, 
poetry was eclipsed by fi ction, which established its hegemony in the pres-
ent age.
Orhan Pamuk’s winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 cer-
tainly played a major role in this phenomenon, although it would not be 
incorrect to assert that the novel genre might have become ascendant even 
without Pamuk’s singular achievement.
Prior to the inroads that Europeanization made into Turkish culture 
around the mid–nineteenth century, elite poets (and intellectuals in gen-
eral) had spurned prose as being easy, as inferior to verse. By the same 
token, oral folk poetry had held sway in the rural areas, and it could also 
rightfully boast of fascinating creativity in tales and narratives.
Now, in the early twenty-fi rst century, Turkish verse seems to be suf-
fering from tired blood. Gone are the paragons and legendary masters. 
In the past, many of those luminaries stood as acclaimed cultural heroes. 
Today, the few revered fi gures are in their eighties or nineties. Although 
some younger practitioners have managed to gain recognition, many of 
the poetic talents that emerged in the 1980s have since channeled their 
creative energies into fi ction. Numerous major publishers have been forced 
to terminate or suspend the publication of poetry books and anthologies. 
Sales of such books are now paltry. Th
e reading public, once enamored of 
poetry in books and magazines, seems to have abandoned its passion. In 
this sense, Turkey is experiencing the decline that played havoc with the 

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A Millennium of Turkish Literature
popularity and prestige of poetry in the English-speaking world, Europe, 
and Latin America several decades earlier.
Not that the current poetic output is of a lesser caliber. Simply put, 
poetic creativity is overshadowed by the novel’s current power. What 
compounds the problem is that most of the successful Turkish verses are 
abstruse, obscurantist, and inaccessible—too demanding at a time when 
the public revels in the Internet’s easy appeal.
A similar downtrend is observed in dramatic writing when it is 
compared with the plays that achieved impressive success in the lat-
ter part of the twentieth century. Even those major playwrights of that 
period who are still alive have stopped writing plays, or they appear to 
have become less virtuosic. New talents that might have been expected 
to write for the theater are concentrating on more lucrative television 
series or fi lms. Th
ere looms the peril of the live stage giving way to the 
screen. Yet the theaters (run by the state, major or small municipalities, 
independents, and universities) continue to stimulate extensive theatri-
cal activity. Although the current scene is dominated by revivals, non-
Turkish classics, and translations of modern European and American 
hits, its vitality is such that high-quality native playwriting is bound to 
have a resurgence.
Literary criticism seems likely to enjoy its golden age in the coming 
decades. Creative writing had for a millennium produced a huge corpus, 
including masterworks in many genres, without the benefi t of critical 
guidance. Scholarship and literary history, too, had lagged, notwithstand-
ing some rare exceptions. Th
e essay form has become extraordinarily suc-
cessful since the late nineteenth century, however, and holds the promise 
of remaining so in the foreseeable future.
Turkish criticism now seems to be on the eve of estimable achieve-
ments. With great élan, scholars, academic critics, and professional review-
ers are beginning to produce refi ned evaluations of modern works as well 
as of Turkey’s long literary heritage. Th
is output will probably include 
excellent histories of Turkish culture and literature.
Novels and short stories in Turkey can be ranked as world class. Th
e 
modernist Yaşar Kemal, a Nobel Prize contender for decades, is esteemed 
as a master of fi ction. And Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, a postmodernist 
par excellence, continues to enjoy international popularity.

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Aft erword
135
Th
e diversity of creativity in the genre of fi ction in Turkey is astound-
ing, as is the virtuosity. From stark realism to stream of consciousness, 
from historical adventure to magical realism, from psychological suspense 
to sweeping sagas, Turkish authors have squeezed into half a century vir-
tually the entire experience of European, American, and Latin American 
fi ction. Th
eir achievement is remarkable because although emulating that 
monumental legacy, they have also been able to avoid imitation and to 
endow their works with an authentic Turkish personality.
In the early part of the third millennium, the literature of the Turk-
ish Republic can justifi ably boast of a prodigious creative energy and 
some impressive success in many genres. It has yet to reach the thresh-
old of greatness. It is faced with some impediments: 
cultural convulsion
(cataclysmic changes in sociopolitical institutions, faith, and technology); 
language crisis
(a vast transformation, broader than the language reform 
undertaken by any other nation, in which a vocabulary that consisted of 
75 percent Arabic, Persian, and French words in 1920 increased its ratio of 
native words to 80 percent and reduced borrowings to only 20 percent by 
1970, and the language functioning at the turn of the twenty-fi rst century 
has about one hundred thousand dictionary entries); 
critical gap
(despite 
some fi ne critical writing, Turkish literature still operates by and large 
without the guidance of coherent aesthetic theories and systematic criti-
cal analysis); 
traditional lacunae
(the noticeable absence of philosophy, of 
the norms of tragedy, of psychological analysis in depth); and 
excessive 
imitation
of models, movements, and major works that have evolved in 
the West.
Th
e dynamism, quality, purpose, diversity, and impact of modern 
Turkish literature seem impressive. Th
ere is a fertile versatility at work. 
Turkish literature has never been more varied or more inclusive. Follow-
ing many decades of conscious experimentation, questing for new values, 
acquisition of deeper literary and human insights, and stronger expertise 
in blending form and content, Turkish authors are creating an authentic 
synthesis of national and universal elements.
In the early phase of its second millennium, Turkish literature stands 
as both old and new, mature and youthful. It is a unique synthesis nur-
tured by a nation’s vivid imagination. It confi dently looks forward to its 
future as a powerful force in world literature.

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