Yasar Kemal

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Kemal wax figure in Yılmaz Büyükerşen's museum
Kemal's signature

Yaşar Kemal (* October 6, 1923 as Kemal Sadık Gökçeli in Hemite ; † February 28, 2015 in Istanbul ) was one of Turkey's most important contemporary novelists . He was of Kurdish descent.

Life

Origin, childhood and youth

Yaşar Kemal's birthplace, Hemite, was then in the Adana province , but today it belongs to Osmaniye with the place name Gökçedam . His parents came during the First World War as a Kurdish immigrant from the village Erni in the province of Van in the Çukurova . His father Sadık earned his living as an orange seller and achieved relative wealth in the process.

Yaşar Kemal had a difficult childhood. He lost his right eye in an accident. As a four- or five-year-old, he had to watch his father being stabbed to death in a mosque while praying.

Career and political activity

Yaşar Kemal first went to school in Berhanlı village and later in Kadirli county town . As the only child in his village of Berhanlı, he learned to read and write. During this time he wandered from village to village and collected, among other things, the lamentation and mourning songs (Turkish: Ağıt ). He attended middle school in Adana and at the same time earned his living in a cotton factory. He later worked as a cotton worker and substitute teacher. In Adana, he met the Turkish artist Abidin Dino , who had been exiled by the government, and became friends. He was arrested for the first time at the age of 17 for a poem. Yaşar Kemal was detained a total of three times during his career.

After his military service he came to Istanbul for the first time in 1946 and returned to his homeland in 1948. After serving another prison sentence, he returned to Istanbul in 1951. There he met his wife Tilda, who was of Jewish origin. She was very supportive of her husband and, among other things, translated his works into English. Tilda Kemal died in early 2001. Between 1951 and 1963 he worked as a journalist and wrote for the daily Cumhuriyet . It was then that he started using the name Yaşar Kemal. As a journalist, he traveled all over the country and reported on the situation of workers and the underprivileged.

When Yaşar Kemal visited Akdamar Island in Lake Van in 1951 , he saw the beginning willful destruction of the Armenian monastery complex there with the Church of the Holy Cross . He used his contacts to stop the destruction. The church remained in a neglected condition until 2005 when the Turkish government initiated a restoration.

In 1962 Yaşar Kemal joined the Türkiye İşçi Partisi (Workers' Party of Turkey) (TİP) and assumed important functions there.

He became a critical and active observer of politics in Turkey. He always campaigned for the observance of human rights and for the people of Anatolia , including the Kurds.

Turning to socialism

Yaşar Kemal was a staunch socialist and at the same time a critical observer of socialist-minded states in which the workers did not really rule. In an interview with the famous Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi , for example, he said that he was against those who plunder and oppress the workers as well as those who want to come to power on behalf of the workers. He was always convinced that the working class had to build its own socialist form of government.

Yaşar Kemal was also a critical observer outside Turkey. Among other things, he gave an interview to the British broadcaster BBC , in which he also criticized Great Britain in some respects. But this interview was never broadcast by the BBC, which the author complained about years later. So he said that he got money for the interview, but it was still not published. Yaşar Kemal was convinced that England, compared to other “ capitalist ” systems, offered a certain degree of freedom for the proletariat . This freedom is conditioned by the fact that the bourgeoisie is so firmly anchored in England that it does not need to oppress the working class.

In addition, Kemal said that the bourgeoisie in Germany had come under so much pressure from the proletariat that Nazism was seen as a way out, which made Hitler's seizure of power possible. Yaşar Kemal justified Mussolini's seizure of power in Italy in a similar way.

Yaşar Kemal said that the USSR would not be a country completely dominated by the proletariat until the proletariat removed the last remnants of the bureaucracy. However, in 1971 he still had the hope that the Soviet proletariat would succeed.

Yaşar Kemal as a writer

In 1951 Kemal's first stories were printed in the Istanbul newspaper Cumhuriyet . They received a lot of attention because they dealt with the daily life of ordinary people and the Turkish colloquial language used made them stylistically striking. This was new in Turkish literature at the time.

Monument to the fictional character İnce Memed in Kemal's birthplace Hemite (Gökçedam)

Yaşar Kemal published his first book in 1952 under the title Sarı Sıcak , which featured Çukurova - one of his popular motifs. His most popular work is Memed mein Falke (1955). It is the story of a farmer boy who, out of anger at the dictatorial and exploitative rule of the landowner Abdi Ağa over five villages in Çukurova, becomes a robber, rebel and avenger of his people. The novel , translated into over 40 languages , became a legend. It was read aloud in Turkish coffee houses, and wandering singers recounted it. In 1984 the novel by Peter Ustinov was made into a film with little success under the title Memed, mein Falke . Performers included Peter Ustinov (Abdi Ağa), Herbert Lom (Ali Safa) and Simon Dutton (Memed).

Yaşar Kemal's work was published in German in 1992 by Unionsverlag in Zurich .

In his last cycle of Inselromane he deals with the topics of home, emigration, expulsion and finding your way around in a strange world.

Awards (selection)

Yaşar Kemal has received numerous international awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972 . In 1984 he received the Order of the Legion of Honor in France and was thus appointed Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur . In 1985 he was awarded the Sedat Simavi Prize for Literature and in 1986 the Orhan Kemal Prize for Literature .

In 1997 Yaşar Kemal received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade . In his laudation for the award winner, Günter Grass said among other things:

“In Yaşar Kemal's books, the portrayal of racial madness as an expression of official government policy is recognizable. Therefore the author is a nuisance to the rulers. That's why they keep dragging him to court. Therefore, he suffered imprisonment and torture. For this reason - and to avoid right-wing extremist attacks - he sought refuge abroad for a few years. But he returned to Istanbul and will continue to be a nuisance to the ruling government wherever he is embedded in his language and its legends. "

In 2007, Yasar Kemal and Ute Bock were awarded the Weltmenschpreis of the Weltmenschverein in Baden near Vienna .

On December 4, 2008, Kemal was awarded the Culture Prize of the Turkish President Abdullah Gül . This highest Turkish cultural prize was awarded to Kemal in the presence of Prime Minister Erdoğan . "I would like to see the award of this prize as a sign that political steadfastness and the struggle for peace and human rights are no longer a reason for exclusion and that a path to peace is gradually opening up in our society," said Kemal at the Receiving.

Works (selection)

The memed cycle

    • İnce Memed (German: Memed my falcon . ) 1955.
    • İnce Memed II (Eng .: The thistles are burning. Memed II. ) 1969.
    • İnce Memed III (German: The Realm of Forty Eyes. Memed III. ) 1984.
    • İnce Memed IV (German: The last flight of the falcon. Memed IV. ) 1987.
  • The Anatolian Trilogy
    • Orta Direk (German: The wind from the plain. ) 1960.
    • Yer Demir Gök Bakır (German: iron earth, copper sky ) 1963.
    • Ölmez Otu German: The herb of immortality. Unionsverlag Zurich 1968, ISBN 3-293-20035-4 .
  • Teneke (German: Anatolian rice ) 1962.
  • Ağrıdağı Efsanesi (German: The Ararat Legend. ) 1970.
  • Binboğalar Efsanesi (German: The Song of a Thousand Bulls ) 1971.
  • Yılanı Öldürseler 1976. German: Kill the snake. Unionsverlag, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-293-20060-5 .
  • Kuşlar da Gitti (German: The birds are gone too. ) 1978.
  • Deniz Küstü (German: Wrath of the Sea ) 1978.
  • Yağmurcuk Kuşu (German: Salman. ) 1980.
  • The island novels
    • Fırat Suyu Kan Akıyor Baksana.
      • German: The Ant Island. 1998.
      • The storm of the gazelles. 2006.
      • The roosters of dawn. 2008.
  • stories

About Yaşar Kemal

  • Altan Gökalp (ed.): The tree of the fool. My life. In conversation with Alain Bosquet. (Original title ( French ): Entretiens avec Alain Bosquet , translated by Nevfel Cumart and Ursula Marty). Union, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-293-20132-6 .
  • Helga Dagyeli bean: Yaşar Kemal - singer of the Cukurova. Dağyeli, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-935597-40-1 (= literature in intercultural language teaching ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurdish-Turkish writer: Yasar Kemal is dead , Spiegel Online , February 28, 2015.
  2. ^ Yüksel Pazarkaya: Roses in the Frost. Insights into Turkish culture. Zurich 1989, p. 181.
  3. ↑ a b Union Publishing House - Yaşar Kemal. Retrieved March 6, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Mass at Akhtamar, and What's Next. In: Asbarez. October 1, 2010.
  5. ↑ friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de
  6. ↑ G. Grass: Literature couples us together and makes us accomplices. Laudation for Yasar Kemal in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. October 20, 1997.
  7. ↑ Yasar Kemal receives the highest cultural award. In: Dorstener Zeitung. December 4, 2008.
  8. ↑ Year of publication Ince Memed IV 1987 according to the imprint of the German first edition.
personal data
SURNAME Kemal, Yasar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gökçeli, Kemal Sadık (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Kurdish author, novelist of Turkey
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Hemite
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 2015
Place of death Istanbul