Yaşar Kemal (; born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; and a human rights activist. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of his 1955 novel Memed, My Hawk.

An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for Der Spiegel highlighting the Turkish Army's destruction of Kurdish villages during the Turkish–Kurdish conflict. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for another article he wrote criticising racism in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.

Early life and education

Yaşar Kemal was born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli to Sadık and Nigâr on 6 October 1923 in Hemite (now Gökçedam), a Turkmen hamlet in the province of Osmaniye in southern Turkey. He lost his right eye in a knife accident while his father was slaughtering a sheep for Eid al-Adha. When he was five years old he witnessed his father being stabbed to death by his adoptive son Yusuf while praying in a mosque. He became interested in writing as a means to record his work after talking to an itinerant peddler, who was doing his accounts. His village paid his way to university in Istanbul. He visited Akdamar Island in 1951, where he saw the beginning of the planned demolition of the island's Holy Cross Church. Using his contacts, he helped stop the demolition (the church was restored by the Turkish government in 2005).

Professional and political career

He then moved to Istanbul to work for the Cumhuriyet newspaper, where he adopted his pen name.

In 1962, Kemal joined the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP) and "served as one of its leaders until quitting after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968". In 1967, Kemal established the Marxist magazine Ant together with Dogan Özgüden and Fethi Naci. The magazine published articles about Engels, Marx, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. In the aftermath of the military coup in 1971, the magazine was closed during the crackdown on left-wing politicians. In December 2000, he was involved in negotiations over the hunger strikes against the F-Type prisons.

Later years and death

On 14 January 2015, Kemal was hospitalised at Istanbul University's Çapa Medical Faculty, due to respiratory insufficiency. During the afternoon of 28 February 2015, he died in the intensive care unit, where he had been admitted for multiple organ dysfunction syndrome,

In 1943 Kemal published his first book Ağıtlar ("Ballads"), a compilation of folkloric themes. This book brought to light many long-forgotten rhymes and ballads, which he had begun to collect at the age of sixteen. The novel was adapted into a 1984 film of the same name, starring Peter Ustinov.

His 1955 novel Teneke was adapted into a theatrical play, which ran for almost a year in Gothenburg, in Sweden, the country in which he lived for about two years in the late 1970s. Italian composer Fabio Vacchi adapted the same novel with its original title into a three-act opera, which premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy, in 2007.

Personal life

In 1952, Yaşar Kemal married Thilda Serrero, a member of a prominent Sephardi Jewish family in Istanbul. Her grandfather, Jak Mandil Pasha, was the chief physician of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. She translated seventeen of her husband's works into English. In 2001 Thilda predeceased Yaşar, dying, aged 78, from pulmonary complications in an Istanbul hospital. She was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.

Bibliography

Stories

  • Sarı Sıcak ("Yellow Heat") (1952).

Novels

  • İnce Memed (Memed, My Hawk) (1955)
  • Al Gözüm Seyreyle Salih (The Saga of a Seagull) (1976)
  • Kale Kapısı/Kimsecik II (Kimsecik II – Little Nobody II)(1985)
  • Fırat Suyu Kan Akıyor Baksana (Look, the Euphrates is Flowing with Blood) (1997)
  • Tanyeri Horozları (The Cocks of Dawn) (2002)

Reportages

  • Yanan Ormanlarda 50 Gün (Fifty Days in the Burning Forests) (1955)
  • Bir Bulut Kaynıyor (Collected reportages) (1974)
  • Varlik Prize for Ince Memed ("Memed, My Hawk"), 1956
  • Madarli Novel Award for Demirciler Çarşısı ("Murder in the Ironsmith's Market"), 1974
  • Stig Dagerman Prize (), Sweden, 1997.
  • The Bjørnson Prize (), Norway, 2013.
  • Krikor Naregatsi Medal of Armenia, 2013.

Honorary doctorates

  • Doctor Honoris Causa, Strasbourg University, France, 1991.
  • Doctor Honoris Causa, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey, 1992.
  • Honorary Doctorate, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, 2009
  • Honorary Doctorate, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2009
  • Honorary Doctorate, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2014

References

  • Obituary – New York Times