Kemal, Yasar

(b. 1922), Turkish novelist, journalist, short-story writer. One of Turkey's most prominent writers, Yasar Kemal draws his ideas from Turkish folklore, cultural traditions, and everyday life. Yasar Kemal's real name is Kemal Sadik Gogceli. He was born in the small village of Hemite (Gokceli) in the province of Adana. His father, while praying in a mosque, was shot dead in front of five-year-old Kemal, and the shock caused a speech impediment until the boy was twelve. He later lost his right eye in an accident. He finished elementary school in 1938, the first person in his village to do so. Kemal moved to Adana (the provincial capital) the same year to continue his education, but had to quit to support himself before he finished the eighth grade. Between 1941 and 1946 he held menial jobs until he became a schoolteacher. During the same period he studied folklore and wrote poems, which were published in several journals.

Kemal was arrested in 1950 for contributing to the organization of a communist party and spent a year in prison. The following year he earned fame as a journalist while working in Istanbul for the newspaper Cumhuriyet. In 1952 Kemal married his closest companion, Thilda, the English translator of his work. He received his first journalism award in 1955 from the Society of Journalists. In the same year Kemal's novel, a tale about a bandit and a folk hero, Ince Memed (Memed, My Hawk), was published and immediately became a national and international success. It earned him the Valik Literature Prize for best novel of the year in Turkey and has been translated into more than twenty-six languages. Kemal's other literary honors include the French Légion d'Honneur, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and a spot on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1962 Kemal became a member of the Workers' Party of Turkey but resigned in 1969. In 1971 he was imprisoned for twenty-six days, then released without being charged. Kemal took an active role in organizing the Writers' Syndicate of Turkey in 1973 and became its first chairperson in 1974. In 1995, following the publication of an essay in the German weekly Der Spiegel (The Mirror), which accused the Turkish government of oppressing the Kurds in Turkey, Kemal was accused of "separatist propaganda" undermining the "indivisible integrity of the state." Himself of Kurdish descent, Kemal, however, had not advocated a separate Kurdish state.

Kemal is considered Turkey's most influential living writer, who speaks for the persecuted and dispossessed. His novels and short stories, based on epic tales, folk songs, and popular literature, poetically describe the beauty of the Cukurova plain in southern Turkey and life in the countryside and coastal villages. His works include Ince Memed II (They Burn the Thistles), the three-volume Orta Direk (The Wind from the Plain), Yer Demir Gok Bakir (Iron Earth Copper Sky), Olmez Otu (The Undying Grass), and Yilani Oldurseler (To Crush the Serpent).

Kemal, Yasar. (1999) Yasar Kemal on His Life and Art. Trans. from the French by Eugene Lyons Hebert and Barry Tharaud. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

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