On the occasion of his 100th birthday Nâzim Hikmet became during his life time the best-known Turkish poet in the world, and his works were translated into several languages. However, in his home country Hikmet was condemned for his commitment to Marxism and remained decades after his death a controversial figure. His writings were filled social criticism and he was the only major writer to speak out against the Armenian massacres in 1915 and 1922. For the 100th anniversary of his birthday MokumTV broadcast a new documentary, made by Mohamed el-Fers in association with Türkevi Amsterdam, to be broadcasted on the Amsterdam Channel on January the 14, 15 and 17 february (showed simultanous with the UNESCO celebration of Hikmet's 100st birthday in Paris, France).

The inauguration of the Unesco-celebration will be held on the 15th January 2002 together with a photograph exhibition of Nazim Hikmet, from 15th to 18th January 2002 at the UNSECO Headquarters, Fontenoy building, Paris – France. In this the UNESCO is associated with the Ministry of Culture of Turkey and the Nazim Hikmet Foundation.Turkey fights over memory of exiled poet

Nationalists are resisting demands to restore the late Nazim Hikmet's citizenship

Chris Morris in Istanbul
Thursday February 22, 2001
The Guardian

Rightwing politicians in Turkey are fighting a rearguard action to head off a campaign to restore citizenship to the country's most famous 20th century poet, Nazim Hikmet, who died in exile in Moscow in 1963.
The culture ministry is keen to reinstate Hikmet's citizenship in time for the centenary of his birth next year, which the ministry wants to celebrate in conjunction with Unesco.

Many Turks would be embarrassed to see their greatest poet still treated as an outcast.

Hikmet was a committed socialist who revolutionised Turkish poetry in the 1930s by overturning Ottoman literary traditions and introducing free verse and colloquial diction. The subjects of his poetry ranged from universal themes of war and suffering to intensely personal romanticism.

Leftwing groups have gathered half a million signatures in support of their campaign, and they have made a successful appeal for help to the prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, himself a poet and translator.

But some nationalist politicians are adamant that they will not be persuaded. Ministers from the rightwing Nationalist Action party (MHP), which is part of a coalition government, are refusing to sign a decree restoring citizenship. The decree has to be approved by every member of the cabinet if it is to become law.

"There would be trouble from our party supporters if I signed this decree," said the communications minister, Enis Oksuz. "He [Hikmet] was anti-Ataturk [the founder of modern Turkey] and anti-state. I will not give back citizenship to someone who was a traitor."

The MHP fought street battles against the Turkish left in the 1970s, and although it is now in government and trying to present a more moderate image, the party is still distrusted by its opponents.

In terms of political ideology, nationalist antipathy to Hikmet is not surprising, but as a poet he was also a patriot who had a deep attachment to Turkey and its people.

"I love my country..", one of his poems runs. "I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons. Nothing relieves my depression like the songs and tobacco of my country."

Hikmet produced a vast body of literature during his life, much of it from exile or from a prison cell. He was jailed for a second time in 1938 for promoting rebellion among military cadets who were reading his verse.

Eleven years later an international committee including Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso was established to campaign for his release and in 1950, after a change of government, he was freed as part of a general amnesty.

As a prominent critic of the system Hikmet was still in danger, however, and there were several threats to his life. He fled into exile on a freighter bound for Romania, leaving his family behind him.

He remarried in the Soviet Union but never forgot his roots. He died in a Moscow hospital in 1963, having spent much of his life deprived of real liberty.

Hikmet's poems often sided with the dispossessed and the politically exploited. He also explored themes of personal loss and separation, as in this extract from a poem written to his wife while he languished in a Turkish prison:

"You say: 'If they hang you, if I lose you, I'll die!' You'll live, my dear, my memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you'll live, red-haired lady of my heart: in the 20th century grief lasts at most a year."

"Nazim's importance cannot be overstated," said one of Turkey's leading poets, Ataol Behramoglu. "He was the person who brought modernism to Turkish literature, and I find it hard to forgive the caveman mentality of parts of the MHP."

Hikmet's supporters are now considering how they might get round the nationalist veto. Many of them would like to bring his remains home and fulfil his wish to be buried in an Anatolian village.

His poetry has been translated into 50 languages, but it was neither published nor publicly sold in his home country between 1938 and 1965. He was stripped of his citizenship and condemned as a traitor in 1959.

His admirers say rehabilitation is long overdue. They believe it would be an important sign that, after three military coups between 1960 and 1980, Turkey can overcome the bitter political divisions of the past.

"Nazim is known around the world," Ataol Behramoglu said. "He doesn't need this recognition, but the Turkish republic does".

Last Will and Testament

Comrades, if I don't live to see the day - I mean if I die before freedom comes - take me away and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.

The worker Osman whom Hassan Bey ordered shot can lie on one side of me, and on the other side the martyr Aysha, who gave birth in the rye and died within 40 days.

Tractors and songs can pass below the cemetery - in the dawn light, new people, the smell of burnt gasoline, fields held in common, water in canals, no drought or fear of the police.

But I sang those songs before they were written, I smelled the burnt gasoline before the blueprints for the tractors were drawn.

As for my neighbours, the worker Osman and the martyr Aysha, they felt the great longing while alive, maybe without even knowing it.

Comrades, if I die before that day - and it's looking more and more likely - bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia, and if there's one handy, a plane tree could stand at my head, I wouldn't need a stone or anything.

• Nazim Hikmet, 27 April 1953, Moscow

Chronology
1902 : He was born in Salonica on 15th January.
1913 : He writes his first poem titled "Feryad-i Vatan". He starts to attend school at Galatasaray Sultani.
1914 : He passes to Nisantasi Sultani because of economic reasons.
1917 : He enters the Naval School.
1918 : One of his poems is published for the first time. This first poem of him published in Yeni Mecmua has the title "Hâlâ Servilerde Agliyorlar mi".
1920 : He has to leave several months prior to his graduation from the Naval School for health reasons. Istanbul is under military occupation. He secretly goes to Anatolia together with his friend Vâ-lâ Nurettin. He is assigned to Bolu as a teacher by Ankara Government.
1921 : He goes to Moscow via Azerbaijan. He witnesses the first years of revolution. He studies economy-politics. He participates in artistic studies.
1924 : His first poetry book published in Moscow, "28 Kânunisani" is staged. This performance takes place in Pravda with admiration on 12th March. He returns to Turkey and starts to work at Aydinlik magazine.
1925 : He is prosecuted in his default in Ankara Tribunal of Independence with the charge that he is a member of a secret organization and sentenced to "fifteen years of rowing". This leads to his leaving the country. He goes to Moscow.
1926 : He passes to Vienna and attends the "party" meeting, which becomes the subject of his accusation in the future. The penalty of "rowing" is abandoned upon the enforcement of Turkish Penal Code.
1927 : He is prosecuted in Istanbul Penal Court in his default because of the "Vienna Conference" that he had attended. He is sentenced to three months of imprisonment.
1928 : He applies to the Embassy at Moscow to return home. He wants to take a passport. However, he does not receive a reply and then although he crosses the border secretly, he is seized at Hopa. He is taken to Ankara via Istanbul. The judgements previously made in his default are repeated in Ankara Penal Court. He is sentenced to three months of imprisonment. He is released through the consideration of the period that he remained in prison previously.
1929 : He works at Resimli Ay magazine. His first poetry book "835 Satir" is published. Others follow it.
1930 : A lawsuit is lodged against his poem "Sesini Kaybeden Sehir". He is acquitted by the Court of Appeal.
1931 : Once more a lawsuit is lodged against his books "Sesini Kaybeden Sehir" and "Varan 2" with "1+1=1", "835 Satir" and "Jokond Si-Ya-U". He is acquitted from all.
1932 : His play "Kafatasi" is staged at Istanbul City Theatre.
1933 : He is prosecuted because of his poem "Gece Gelen Telgraf". He is sentenced to six months and three days of imprisonment. His father died after an accident. He writes the poem "Hiciv Vadisinde Bir Tecrübei Kalemiye" upon his death. A lawsuit is lodged against him with the carge that he intimidated Süreyya Pasa, the employer of his father, in the poem. He is sentenced to one year of imprisonment and a fine of 200 liras. Meanwhile, he is prosecuted with the claim of sentence of death in a Separate case lodged in Bursa Penal Court with the indictment that he established a "secret organization". He is sentenced to four years of imprisonment with hard labor.
1934 : He benefits from the amnesty law introduced because of the 10th year of the Republic. He is released.
1936 : he is prosecuted with the charge of establishing and managing a secret organization and is acquitted.
1937 : His "Simavne Kadisi Oglu Seyh Bedrettin Destani" is published.
1938 : "Navy" lawsuits are lodged with the accusation that he encouraged the military students for revolting. He is sentenced to totally 28 years and 4 months of imprisonment with hard labor.
1941 : He starts writing "Memleketimden Insan Manzaralari" in Bursa.
1943 : His prison colleague Orhan Kemal is released. He assists the painting studies of Balaban, provides his training.
1944 : His liver and heart diseases start.
1949 : Writings on his unjust imprisonment start to increase in the press. Ahmet Emin Yalman attracts attention to the unjust imprisonment of Nâzim by publishing an article with the title "Tevfik Fikret ve Nâzim Hikmet" in Vatan newspaper.
1950 : "Campaigns for Freedom for Nâzim" are launched by various institutions at home and abroad. Upon the closing of the parliament without introducing the Amnesty Law in its agenda, Nâzim commences a hunger strike on 8th April. On the same day, he is taken to Istanbul Pasakapisi Prison from Bursa. He temporarily ceases his strike on 23rd April upon the request of his counsels. He is seriously ill, the doctors state that he should be treated in a hospital during three months. However, as there is no change in his status, he restarts the strike on 2nd May. The hunger strike causes great reaction of people. Signature campaigns are launched. A magazine called "Nâzim Hikmet" is published. His mother Celile Hanim commences a hunger strike on 9th May and poets Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet and Oktay Rifat commence it on 10th May. Upon the new situation that occurs upon the elections on 14th May, the strike is discontinued on 19th May. He is released through the General Amnesty Law. On 22nd November, it is announced by the World Council of Peace that he is entitled to receive the "International Piece Award" together with Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Wanda Jakubowska and Pablo Neruda. Neruda would receive his award in the ceremony that he can not attend.
1951 : His son Memed is born. He is called for military service, he is 49 and ill. Moreover, the periods that he passed in the military school as a student should substitute military service according to the law. He leaves the country because of the threats against his life. It is announced on 15th August in the official journal that he is "dismissed from citizenship". He receives the "International Peace Award" that the World Council on Peace had awarded to him one year ago with a ceremony held in Prague.
1952 : He goes to China. However, he has to discontinue his journey when he gets ill. He had a coronary thrombosis. He lays ill during four months. His life will pass under the supervision of physicians after then.
1953 : He continues to attend international meetings. His play "Bir Ask Masali" is staged in Moscow. The staging of his other plays follow.
1958 : He goes to Paris. He meets many writers and artists including Aragon and Picasso.
1962 : His 60th birthday is celebrated by the Soviet Writers' Union. A second meeting is held at the Polytechnic Museum for his readers on the day following the night arranged at the Writers' House. Ilya Ehrenburg coordinates the night.
1963 : He goes to Africa, Tanganica. He writes his poem "Cenaze Merasimim" (My Funeral) (April). He dies in his house on the morning of 3rd June.

Nâzim Hikmet Ran (1902-1963)
One of the most important figures in the 20th century Turkish literature and one of the first Turkish poets to use more or less free verse.

Hikmet proclaimed in the early 1930s that "the artist is the engineer of the human soul." Hikmet spent some 17 years in prisons and called poetry "the bloodiest of the arts." His poem 'Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison' reflected his will to survive.

"To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advice weaving
and making mirrors."
(from 'Some Advice', 1949)

Nazim Hikmet was born in Salonica, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki) and had the most impeccable bourgeois antecedents. His grandfather had been the governor of Salonica and his father consul at Hamburg. His father, Nazim Hikmet bey, was a civil servant, and his mother, Aisha Dshalila, was a painter. He studied briefly at the French-language Galatasary Lycée in Istanbul and was enrolled at the Naval Academy but after five years he suffered repeated bouts of pleurisy and was given a medical discharge.

During the Nationalist struggle he went to Anatolia and taught school in in Bolu; Nationalist territory but swiftly became disillusioned and went on to Batum in 1921. The next year he left for Moscow, together with Ahmed Vâlâ Nûreddin (Vâ-Nû,: Born in Beyruth 1901, died in Istanbul 1967; journalist and writer; and friend since they studied at the French-speaking Galatasaray Lyceum in Istanbul. In 1965 his reminiscences of Nazim Hikmet, 'Bu Dünyadan Nazim Geçti', were published.

Nazim Hikmet was in 1921 accepted into the Department of Economic and Social Studies at the Kommunisticeskij Universitet Trudjašcichsja Vostoka (Communist University of the Workers of the East) of Moscow where he remained until 1924, coming under the influence of the Futurist poet Mayakowski and into contact with Vera, Piraia and the other women who inspired some of his poetry and prose. He studied sociology and economics at the University of Moscow (1921-28) and joined Turkish Communist Party in the 1920s.

After his return to Turkey in 1928 without a visa Hikmet wrote articles for newspapers and periodicals, film scripts and plays. From the age of 14 he had written poems. Because of his unauthorized reentry, he was sentenced to a prison term but pardoned in 1935 in a general amnesty. In 1938 the author was condemned to prison for 28 years and four months for anti-Nazi and anti-Franco activities. Hikmet spent the following 12 years in different prisons.

In the Hikmet Kivilcimli papers (partly in old Turkish handwriting): personal notes on the trial against Turkish naval cadets, Nazim Hikmet and Hikmet Kivilcimli in 1938;

During this period he married Münevver Andac - it was his second marriage. Hikmet was released in 1950 because of international protests and escaped in a small boat from his home country due to fear of an attempt on his life. His wife and his son, Memet, were not allowed to leave the country.

After losing his Turkish citizenship, lived in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

In 1950 he shared with Pablo Neruda the Soviet Union's International Peace Prize.

Hikmet became a Polish citizen and lived from 1951 his remaining days in Sofia, Warsaw, and finally in Moscow. In spite of his heart disease and warnings of his doctors and he also travelled in Africa, China, Cuba, and spent time in Paris, Rome, and Prague. In Moscow he married the third time. Many of Hikmet's poems, written during the years of exile, are nostalgic.

In Warsaw in 1958 he wrote about platans, "white houses" and "an autumn morning in a wine yard" - there are no wine yards in Warsaw and the city is not white. A poem about Donau from the same year brings his thoughts to Istanbul.

Broken in heath, he died on June 3, 1963 in Moscow. Just a few months before his death Hikmet had written a poem, in which he bids his farewell to his neighbors in his Moscow apartment building and ponders over how his coffin is transported down from the fourth floor.

"I mean you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you will plat olives -
and not so they'll be left for your children either,
but because even though you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weights heavier."
(from 'On Living')

--------

Yasamak sakaya gelmez,
buyuk bir ciddiyetle yasayacaksin
bir sincap gibi mesela,
yani, yasamanin disinda ve otesinde hicbir sey beklemeden,
yani butun isin gucun yasamak olacak

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Hikmet's first poems appeared in the 1920s.

In 1936 appeared The Epic of Sheik Dedreddin, which depicted a 15th century revolutionary religious leader in Anatolia.

Among his later works is the five-volume MEMLEKETIMDEN INSAN MANZARALARI (1966-67), a 20 000 line epic.

In his early poems Hikmet showed the influence of Mayakovsky, although he never used completely free verse. Hikmet had met the Russian writer in Moscow and worked with his at the satirical Metla theater. Typical for Hikmet's poems was change of metre and unregular use of rhymes. Hikmet combined Turkish traditional poetry with avant-gardist trends, and influenced deeply Turkish literature in the 1920s and 1930s.

As a playwright Hikmet applied the techniques of Brecht's epic theater. His Marxist-inspired dramas enjoyed success in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Hikmet's first published play,

In 1932 he made a strong impact with his innovative play KAFATAS. Hikmet's dramatic works that year include The House of the Deceased (1932) and By the Fireside (1932), a verse drama about a poet's love.

He consolidated his reputation with UNUTULAN ADAM (1935), which demonstrated the dubiousness of fame and the frequent discrepancy between one's success in the world and one's unhappiness in private life.

Ferhad and Sirin (wr. 1945) was based on a Persian love legend. It was adapted into a three-act ballet and the story was filmed as a Turco-Russian coproduction. IVAN IVANOVIC VAR MIYDI YOK MUYDU (1956) was written shortly after Stalin's death and attacked the cult of personality and the new hierarchy that replaced the old. The play was first time performed Moscow and compared to Mayakovsky's The Bedbug. Sword of Damocles (1974) depicted the threat of nuclear holocaust, and SABAHAT (1977) revealed the exploitation of the hardworking people by the civic leaders.

In France and Greece, Hikmet's poetry and plays gained a wide popularity, and in 1970 he received critical praise from some prominent American poets. In Turkey the ban on Hikmet's works was lifted in 1964. A.vast numbers of books and articles about the author and his work were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The multivolume complete works project, started in 1968, has remained incomplete by early 1980s. The only complete edition of his poems have appeared in Bulgaria in the 1960s.

Hikmet did not consider his theater works to b