On the 57th anniversary of his death, several Turkish verses from the poetry of Turkish writer and political activist Nazim Hekmat who passed away on June 3, 1963 in Moscow where he was buried far from his country from which he was exiled, were covered in Turkish newspapers.

Despite the diversity of his traditional and modern poetic forms, Hikmat was known for his care for free poetry close to the vernacular, and his poetry was characterized by simplicity, clarity and directness, and because of his numerous moves and friendships with Turkish, Russian, Arab and European writers, his words fed on various cultural backgrounds influenced by him, which enabled him to be a famous Turkish poet. International.

Hekmat was in favor of the movement of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the beginning, but he opposed the political system that was built after that, and spent years in prison and exile, and when his poems were banned in his native country, he wrote many of his poems under pseudonyms.

The famous Turkish poet and writer has recorded many features of his autobiography in poems organized in the Turkish language, and recorded stages in his life, starting from childhood to adulthood, including the experience of his imprisonment and his movement between countries, and he says in a "biography".

I was born in 1902

I never returned to my hometown

I don't like going back

In the third, I was the grandson of a pasha in Aleppo

Nineteen students at the Communist University in Moscow

At forty-nine I returned to Moscow as a guest of the Czech Party

And I was a poet since I was fourteen

Hikmat completes his poem as a shorter narrator, including his political ups and downs in prison for 12 years, exile, flight, asylum and movement between countries. He wrote in East Berlin in the early sixties of the last century saying:

At thirty they wanted to hang me

At forty-eight they give me a peace prize

And that's what they did

In thirty-six four square meters of reinforced concrete spread for half a year

At fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I never saw Lenin and stopped watching his coffin on the twenty-fourth

In the sixty-first tomb that I visit is his books

They tried to push me away from my party

And they did not succeed

Nor am I crushed under the falling idols

At fifty-one she sailed with a young friend through the teeth of death

At fifty-two, I spent four months lying on my back with a broken heart

Waiting for death

I was jealous for the women I loved

I never envy Charlie Chaplin

I deceived my woman

I never bored my friends

I drank but not every day

I earn my money with honesty and happiness

Busy life

Turkish newspaper Haber Turk reviewed glimpses of his life, saying that Hekmat was born in Thessaloniki (present-day eastern Greece) on January 15, 1902, and spent his life in prison and exile, and died in his last exile in Moscow at the age of 61 on June 3 1963.

His grandfather is Nazim Pasha al-Mawlawi, who was a close friend of the well-known Ottoman politician Medhat Pasha, his father Hikmat Bey secondary school graduate Galatasaray and a member of the Foreign Pen Bureau and an officer in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, and his mother Jalila Hanim, daughter of the teacher Anwar Pasha.

He began writing poetry, influenced by his grandfather, Nazem Pasha. He entered the naval school on Hebli Ada Island in 1917 and graduated from it in 1919, then appointed a naval officer on the Al-Hamidiya ship, and in the same year he developed pneumonia and was forced to leave the army in 1920.

Meanwhile his name became well known among young poets, and admired Yahya Kamal Beatli, a teacher at the Naval School, and in 1920 he won first place in the competition organized by Elmdar newspaper, which increased his reputation among poets.

He wrote poems urging resistance during the days when Istanbul was occupied, and he and his friend, Fala Nur ad-Din moved to Ankara in 1921, and wrote a poem that called on the youth of Istanbul to struggle. The poem met a great reputation, and they were appointed teachers in the Turkish city of Bolu located between Istanbul and Ankara.

According to the report, Nazem Hikmat and a companion who had been trained began their struggling lives when he learned that the police in Polo were following them, which made them travel to Moscow, and when they arrived there, they joined the Communist University of Oriental Workers and learned free poetry.

Nazim Hikmat wrote his first free poems in 1923, and some of them were published in several magazines such as Yeni Hayat and Idanlik, and Nazim Hikmat finished his university studies in 1924, and he entered Turkey secretly through the border, and he started working in the Idnlak magazine, and as before he moved to Izmir When he realized he was under observation.

He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison during the investigations that started in 1925 during the Sheikh Saeed Kurdish revolution in southeastern Turkey, so he fled abroad again, then he was sentenced to another three months in prison for belonging to a secret organization.

In 1928, he published his first book, “The Folk Song of the Lovers of the Sun,” in Baku, and then returned in the same year to Turkey, but this time he was arrested and exiled to Ankara, then he was released shortly after, so he joined the book “Al-Qamar Al-Mawsoor” magazine, which It was issued in Istanbul.

He ruled in some of his verses:

"The most beautiful seas

It is that which we have not yet gone.

The most beautiful children

Who hasn't grown up yet.

The most beautiful of our days

We haven't lived it yet.

The most beautiful thing I would like to tell you

I didn't say it yet ... "

Turkish exile writer

In 1929 he wrote an article entitled "We are destroying idols" defending influential Turkish poets of that period, such as Abdul Haq Hamid Tarhan and Muhammad Amin Yurdakul, and the article received great resonance.

In 1929 he was published two books "835 lines" and "Jocund with Se Ya", and the following year "Varan 3 + 1 + 1 = 1". In 1930, the poems of Salkim Sugut and Bahri Hazer were recorded with the help of the Columbia Company, and when the recordings were very popular, a lawsuit was filed against him, but he continued his struggle and published the book "Why Banaraji Killed Himself" and "The House of the Deceased" .

In 1933 he was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment, then he was released and married Praya Altinoglu in 1935, after which he started writing comic in Aksham newspaper using a pseudonym.

In 1936, he was arrested again on charges of inciting students to oppose the authorities, and he was placed in Ankara Prison and sentenced to 15 years 'imprisonment, then he was brought to Istanbul Prison and sentenced to another 20 years' imprisonment in the Military Court, and in 1940 he was transferred to Çankırı Prison and then to Market.

Hikmat says about his prison experience

They recognized us,

We are both in prison,

I am inside the walls,

And you are outside it.

But worse

It is to hold prison in our souls.

The report stated that Nazem Hikmat continued to write poetry and write books despite his inability to publish them, and in 1950 he went on a hunger strike and was transferred to Jarrah Pasha Hospital in Istanbul because of his deteriorating health.

Nazim Hikmat left prison, taking advantage of the amnesty law that entered into force in 1950, separated from his wife, Praia Hanem, and married his cousin, Munfir Andach, who was constantly visiting him in prison. When he realized that he was under observation, he decided to travel abroad, so he arrived in Moscow in 1951 via Bulgaria and Romania by the Black Sea.

Turkish citizenship was withdrawn from Nazem Hikmat by ministerial decision in the early 1950s, but he was greatly appreciated outside Turkey as a Turkish poet and writer, as he attended many international conferences and his books were translated into many languages. His citizenship was restored to him in 2009 by an official decision of the Justice and Development Party government.

In 1959, he married the Russian Vera Tolyakova, who was thirty years younger than him, before he was given a term in 1963 by a heart attack, and he was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

When his poetic book "835 Lines" was published, he was admired by many of the great Turkish poets of the period, such as Ahmed Hashem and Yaqoub Qadri (Qara Osmanoglu), and influenced a number of young poets who switched to writing free poetry following his example.

As for his most important books, he is "Scenes from My Hometown", he started writing him in prison in 1941, and through him he presented his vision for a sensitive stage in the history of Turkey, extending from the period of the second constitutional rule in the time of the Ottoman Empire to the Second World War in the time of the Turkish Republic, and it was This book, in which poetry and prose are intertwined, is a literary legacy that commemorates a poet from the clay of great men.