Zeki Beyner

Zeki Beyner ( March 5, 1930 in Kayseri - September 8, 2002 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish cartoonist who grew up as a street child.

childhood

Zeki Beyner grew up on the streets of Istanbul without parents or family. He spent his childhood in Üsküdar . He lived in the Karacaahmet cemetery, in the Şemsipaşa tobacco warehouse or in the waiting rooms of the ferries. Zeki sold Simit at Haydarpaşa station or picked up coal from the track bed and made a living from it, or he lived on what the rubbish dumps produced. Hilmi Bey, teacher at the Nuhkuyusu elementary school, awarded him as a visiting student a symbolic certificate with the assessment “must repeat the class due to discontinuity”.

Life

There are conflicting statements about Zeki Beyner's life. According to his own statements and press card, Zeki was born in 1936 in Istanbul, according to his ID card, which he received in 1993, on March 5, 1930 in Kayseri. Due to the deprivation of childhood, Zeki only reached a height of 1.60 m. He was lean in stature and striking in appearance. Unkempt, with a bit too long and tangled hair and a coat that he hardly ever took off, and chain smoker. Who gave him the surname Beyner and what the name means is unknown. Yusuf Ziya Ortaç , who was his supervisor for 25 years, described Zeki Beyner in his memoir entitled Bizim Yokuş as a lonely person who smiles at pigeons and pensively looks at falling leaves. Zeki is a man who never said "mom" or "dad". But all of nature and humanity are his friend. The flowers, children, birds, young, old, cats, dogs and arms on the pages of the satirical magazine Akbaba are self-made relatives. Zeki hardly speaks, he prefers to be silent. If you hear him laugh and joke, you know that Zeki is tipsy. When he laughs it is natural, when he speaks it is without hurting. That is Zeki.

job

While rummaging through the rubbish around 1950, Zeki came across newspapers and drawings that he later learned were caricatures. He also looked at the newspapers for passengers on the ferries. According to his own statements, Orhan Ural , a cartoonist at Son Posta , has particularly influenced him . When Zeki Beyner started drawing, he only owned his coat. He decided he could too. He conducted his first interview in the mid-1950s with Elif Naci, Cumhuriyet draftsman . He sent Zeki to the editorial office of Akbaba , a magazine run by Yusuf Ziya . There he met Aziz Nesin , who then appeared under the pseudonym Ateş because he was prohibited from publishing. Nesin judged the drawings as rather weak, but the wit as strong. Zeki Beyner was a political cartoonist with a special take on social issues.

Thanks to the art, he was able to afford a third-class hotel in the Sirkeci district. He associated with artists such as Aziz Nesin, Mim Uykusuz and Cafer Zorlu. His caricatures were without words. Zeki Beyner never signed his caricatures either. Many cartoons deal with poverty. Beyner worked for the magazines Akbaba and Çarşaf . Beyner published only one anthology during his life. This was called Keşkül-ü Fukara . It was published in 1970. Two years before his death, a cartoonists' association published a little book about Zeki Beyner entitled Nasreddin Hoca'nın Torunları .

After the closure of the Çarşaf magazine , Beyner was unemployed. However, he did not give up drawing. He always carried a drawing book with him. He called it "humor without mediation by the producer for the consumer". Those who wanted could look inside for a fee.

death

His old colleague from his time at Akbaba , Vedat Saygel, brought Beyner over and gave him a room in his house in Basınköy. After Saygel's death, his wife and daughter looked after Zeki Beyner until his death. Zeki Beyner died on September 8, 2002 in a hospital in Kartal . He was buried in the Kanarya Cemetery in Basınköy. The Hürriyet reported about it in a short message.

source

• Ümit Bayazoğlu: Uzun, İnce Yolcular. 42 portre. Istanbul 2014, p. 22ff. ( as PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Yusuf Ziya Ortaç: Bizim Yokuş. Istanbul 1966, p. 221
2. ^ Hürriyet of September 11, 2002