Literature—Turkey
Turkish literature is traditionally said to begin with the Kokturk inscriptions of the eighth century. Found in the region of the Orhon River in northern Mongolia, these inscriptions are the major written source for the history of all Turkic languages. Yet their influence on various national literatures in these languages can be dated only from the end of the nineteenth century, when the inscriptions were discovered.
Although today modern Turkish literature in the Republic of Turkey is considered to have developed from Ottoman Turkish literature, conceptualizing Ottoman Turkish literature as the traditional predecessor to modern Turkish literature is problematic. The influence of Ottoman Turkish literature on modern Turkish literature is overshadowed by the influence of Western literatures.
Development of Ottoman Literature
In Anatolia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, under the patronage of several Turkish frontier states, a written language based on the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages was developed. The first written compositions in this language were Islamic treatises translated from Arabic and Persian. Under the influence of Islamic literary genres and themes, this literary production reached its culmination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the centralization of the Ottoman state. The Ottoman sultans and bureaucratic elite supported a class of learned men, most of whom were involved in writing poetry.
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