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Turkish literature (Turkish: Türk edebiyatı or Türk yazını) is the collection of written and oral texts composed in the Turkish language, either in its Ottoman form or in less exclusively literary forms, such as that spoken in the Republic of Turkey today. The Ottoman Turkish language, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, was influenced by Persian and Arabic and used a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. The history of Turkic literature spans a period of nearly 1,500 years. The oldest extant records of written Turkic are the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon River valley in central Mongolia and dating to the 8th century. Subsequent to this period, between the 9th and 11th centuries, there arose among the nomadic Turkic peoples of Central Asia a tradition of oral epics, such as the Book of Dede Korkut of the Oghuz Turks—the linguistic and cultural ancestors of the modern Turkish people—and the Manas epic of the Kyrgyz people. Beginning with the victory of the Seljuks at the Battle of Manzikert in the late 11th century, the Oghuz Turks began to settle in Anatolia, and in addition to the earlier oral traditions there arose a written literary tradition issuing largely—in terms of themes, genres, and styles—from Arabic and Persian literature. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the oral and written traditions would remain largely separate from one another. With the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time.
[edit] Ottoman literatureThe two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry and prose. Of the two, poetry—specifically, Divan poetry—was by far the dominant stream. Moreover, it should be noted that, until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of fiction; that is, there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European romance, short story, or novel (though analogous genres did, to some extent, exist in both the Turkish folk tradition and in Divan poetry). [edit] Early Ottoman proseFurther information: Prose of the Ottoman Empire Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose never managed to develop to the extent that contemporary Divan poetry did. A large part of the reason for this was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of sec' (سجع, also transliterated as seci), or rhymed prose,[1] a type of writing descended from the Arabic saj' and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be a rhyme. Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time. This tradition was exclusively nonfictional in nature—the fiction tradition was limited to narrative poetry.[2] A number of such nonfictional prose genres developed: 
[edit] The 19th century and Western influenceFurther information: Poetry of the Ottoman Empire, Prose of the Ottoman Empire By the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had become moribund. Attempts to right this situation had begun during the reign of Sultan Selim III, from 1789 to 1807, but were continuously thwarted by the powerful Janissary corps. As a result, only after Sultan Mahmud II had abolished the Janissary corps in 1826 was the way paved for truly effective reforms (Ottoman Turkish: تنظيمات tanzîmât). These reforms finally came to the empire during the Tanzimat period of 1839–1876, when much of the Ottoman system was reorganized along largely French lines. The Tanzimat reforms "were designed both to modernize the empire and to forestall foreign intervention".[3] Along with reforms to the Ottoman system, serious reforms were also undertaken in the literature, which had become nearly as moribund as the empire itself. Broadly, these literary reforms can be grouped into two areas:
The reforms to the literary language were undertaken because the Ottoman Turkish language was thought by the reformists to have effectively lost its way. It had become more divorced than ever from its original basis in Turkish, with writers using more and more words and even grammatical structures derived from Persian and Arabic, rather than Turkish.[4] Meanwhile, however, the Turkish folk literature tradition of Anatolia, away from the capital Constantinople, came to be seen as an ideal. Accordingly, many of the reformists called for written literature to turn away from the Divan tradition and towards the folk tradition; this call for change can be seen, for example, in a famous statement by the poet and reformist Ziya Pasha (1829–1880): 
At the same time as this call—which reveals something of a burgeoning national consciousness—was being made, new literary genres were being introduced into Ottoman literature, primarily the novel and the short story. This trend began in 1861, with the translation into Ottoman Turkish of François Fénelon's 1699 novel Les aventures de Télémaque, by Yusuf Kâmil Pasha, Grand Vizier to Sultan Abdülaziz. What is widely recognized as the first Turkish novel, Taaşuk-u Tal'at ve Fitnat (تعشق طلعت و فطنت; "Tal'at and Fitnat In Love") by Şemsettin Sami (1850–1904), was published just ten years later, in 1872.[7] The introduction of such new genres into Turkish literature can be seen as part of a trend towards Westernization that continues to be felt in Turkey to this day. Due to historically close ties with France—strengthened during the Crimean War of 1854–1856—it was French literature that came to constitute the major Western influence on Turkish literature throughout the latter half of the 19th century. As a result, many of the same movements prevalent in France during this period also had their equivalents in the Ottoman Empire: in the developing Ottoman prose tradition, for instance, the influence of Romanticism can be seen during the Tanzimat period, and that of the Realist and Naturalist movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other hand, it was the influence of the Symbolist and Parnassian movements that became paramount. Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously: for instance, the poet Nâmık Kemal (1840–1888) also wrote the important 1876 novel İntibâh (انتباه; "Awakening"), while the journalist Şinasi (1826–1871) is noted for writing, in 1860, the first modern Turkish play, the one-act comedy "Şair Evlenmesi" (شاعر اولنمسى; "The Poet's Marriage").[8] In a similar vein, the novelist Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844–1912) wrote important novels in each of the major movements: Romanticism (حسن ملاح ياخود سر ايچيكده اسرار Hasan Mellâh yâhud Sırr İçinde Esrâr, 1873; "Hasan the Sailor, or The Mystery Within the Mystery"), Realism (هﻨﻮز اون يدى يشکده Henüz On Yedi Yaşında, 1881; "Just Seventeen Years Old"), and Naturalism (مشاهدات Müşâhedât, 1891; "Observations"). This diversity was, in part, due to the Tanzimat writers' wish to disseminate as much of the new literature as possible, in the hopes that it would contribute to a revitalization of Ottoman social structures.[9] [edit] Early 20th-century Turkish literatureFurther information: Poetry of the Ottoman Empire, Prose of the Ottoman Empire Most of the roots of modern Turkish literature were formed between the years 1896—when the first collective literary movement arose—and 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was officially founded. Broadly, there were three primary literary movements during this period:
[edit] The Dawn of the Future movementIn the 24 February 1909 edition of the Servet-i Fünûn magazine, a gathering of young writers—soon to be known as the Fecr-i Âtî ("Dawn of the Future") group—released a manifesto in which they declared their opposition to the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde movement and their adherence to the credo, "Sanat şahsî ve muhteremdir" (صنعت شخصى و محترمدر; "Art is personal and sacred").[10] Though this credo was little more than a variation of the French writer Théophile Gautier's doctrine of "l'art pour l'art", or "art for art's sake", the group was nonetheless opposed to the blanket importation of Western forms and styles, and essentially sought to create a recognizably Turkish literature. The Fecr-i Âtî group, however, never made a clear and unequivocal declaration of its goals and principles, and so lasted only a few years before its adherents each went their own individual way. The two outstanding figures to emerge from the movement were, in poetry, Ahmed Hâşim (1884–1933), and in prose, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (1889–1974). [edit] The National Literature movement In 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II had instituted a constitutional government, and the parliament subsequently elected was composed almost entirely of members of the Committee of Union and Progress (also known as the "Young Turks"). The Young Turks (ژون تورکلر Jön Türkler) had opposed themselves to the increasingly authoritarian Ottoman government, and soon came to identify themselves with a specifically Turkish national identity. Along with this notion developed the idea of a Turkish and even pan-Turkish nation (Turkish: millet), and so the literature of this period came to be known as "National Literature" (Turkish: millî edebiyyât). It was during this period that the Persian- and Arabic-inflected Ottoman Turkish language was definitively turned away from as a vehicle for written literature, and that literature began to assert itself as being specifically Turkish, rather than Ottoman. At first, this movement crystallized around the magazine Genç Kalemler (کنج قلملر; "Young Pens"), which was begun in the city of Selânik in 1911 by the three writers who were most representative of the movement: Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), a sociologist and thinker; Ömer Seyfettin (1884–1920), a short-story writer; and Ali Canip Yöntem (1887–1967), a poet. In Genç Kalemler's first issue, an article entitled "New Language" (Turkish: "Yeni Lisan") pointed out that Turkish literature had previously looked for inspiration either to the East as in the Ottoman Divan tradition, or to the West as in the Edebiyyât-ı Cedîde and Fecr-i Âtî movements, without ever turning to Turkey itself.[11] This latter was the National Literature movement's primary aim. The intrinsically nationalistic character of Genç Kalemler, however, quickly took a decidedly chauvinistic turn,[12] and other writers—many of whom, like Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, had been a part of the Fecr-i Âtî movement—began to emerge from within the matrix of the National Literature movement to counter this trend. Some of the more influential writers to come out of this less far-rightist branch of the National Literature movement were the poet Mehmet Emin Yurdakul (1869–1944), the early feminist novelist Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964), and the short-story writer and novelist Reşat Nuri Güntekin (1889–1956). [edit] Post-independence literatureFollowing the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First World War of 1914–1918, the victorious Entente Powers began the process of carving up the empire's lands and placing them under their own spheres of influence. In opposition to this process, the military leader Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), in command of the growing Turkish national movement whose roots lay partly in the Young Turks, organized the 1919–1923 Turkish War of Independence. This war ended with the official ending of the Ottoman Empire, the expulsion of the Entente Powers, and the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The literature of the new republic emerged largely from the pre-independence National Literature movement, with its roots simultaneously in the Turkish folk tradition and in the Western notion of progress. One important change to Turkish literature was enacted in 1928, when Mustafa Kemal initiated the creation and dissemination of a modified version of the Latin alphabet to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman script. Over time, this change—together with changes in Turkey's system of education—would lead to more widespread literacy in the country.[13] [edit] Book Trade30,000 new titles appear yearly, often in small numbers. 9 verso 17 Euro (pro pocket book/hardcover) - at an average earning of less than 600 Euro monthly - are rather unattractive, where illegal copies at bazaars cost two thirds less. "Official Certificates" for legally published books do not solve the problem, because controlling the illegal book trade remains difficult. 5,000 of 10,000 book shops in Turkey are in Istanbul, including the bookfair and growing licence trading. Turkey was a guest of honour at the Frankfurt Bookfair in 2008.[14] [edit] See also[edit] Notes
[edit] References
[edit] External links[edit] In English
[edit] In Turkish
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