Yahya Kemal

Yahya Kemal (1884–1958) is a seminal modern Turkish poet who wrote at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Like Yeats, a contemporary, he was both a public servant and a poet. Educated in France, Kemal served as ambassador to Warsaw, Madrid, Lisbon, and Karachi. As the Ottoman Empire expired, his work helped in the reevaluation of Turkish history and the resurrection of what was essentially Turkish in the culture. Thus, he glorified Turkey’s past in many of his poems and promulgated the idea that landscape, or the geographic factor, is primary to the formation of a nation. This was an essential corollary to the rebuilding process that the Turks were going through as they retreated from the shaggy and troubling frontiers of their once-widespread empire and consolidated a solid Turkish core in the Anatolian heartland. Many of Kemal’s poems are intimate portraits of the landscape of his beloved Istanbul. (Photo credit: image courtesy of Alchetron)