{"id":13328,"date":"2017-03-15T21:16:55","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T18:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/?p=13328"},"modified":"2020-10-29T18:50:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T15:50:55","slug":"fakir-baykurt-cile-eri-oguz-tansel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/fakir-baykurt-cile-eri-oguz-tansel\/","title":{"rendered":"Fakir BAYKURT, A DERVISH ON TRIAL: OGUZ TANSEL"},"content":{"rendered":"

A DERVISH ON TRIAL: O\u011eUZ TANSEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Fakir Baykurt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by \u00dclk\u00fcn Tansel<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I spotted and read his volume of poetry titled Savrulmay\u0131 Bekleyen Harman \/ <\/em>The Harvest Waiting to be Winnowed <\/strong>while serving as a teacher at Derek\u00f6y. During those years both my wife and I used to become sick frequently. How many times did we verge on death.\u00a0 Having graduated from a Village Teachers\u2019 Training Institute, I was determined to serve as a village teacher till the very end. I was ordained for twenty years of compulsory service anyhow.\u00a0 Does it sound little? A third of one\u2019s life; a whole block of it. But starting from 1946 on, in the 1950\u2019s, the State had turned into something totally different. They breached the terms of agreement unilaterally. They simply deserted us in the villages, leaving us defenseless before the big land owner, the partisan village prefect and the pompous gendarme sergeant.<\/p>\n

People complain of reactionism today. Years ago, reactionism had pounced on us, the village teachers, with all its might. It looked as if the State had fastened all stones on earth and set the dogs free. The State had already been seized wholly from within by then. Educators of the Republic in the villages did not give up. But the State supported those who attacked us. We were surrounded and under siege with hands tied up. One cannot be expected to climb up the pine tree with hands tied up. It was indispensable that we go into a school of higher education so that we could face the reactionaries after having grown stronger and organized.<\/p>\n

The only schools of higher learning which we could attend were teachers\u2019 training institutes. So I drew up a plan for myself.\u00a0 I was unable to pass the entrance exams into art school. If I were to study at the department of literature in Ankara for two more years I would get a chance to explore the capital from within, I thought.<\/p>\n

Mahmut Makal was teaching at Demirci village during the same period. We corresponded and he used to visit us at Derek\u00f6y. We planned to take the entrance exams together. Service to the village could be realized from without the village as well. In order to reach Demirci where I would meet Mahmut I would first have to get to Aksaray from Burdur with a stopover at Konya riding on trucks over the earth roads, getting on the train and off to ride a bus again. From Demirci we would move on to Ankara.<\/p>\n

I stayed in Konya for a day and looked for O\u011fuz Tansel. I knew he was teaching either at the high school or the middle school. The town schools were about to go on vacation for the summer, following the rural schools. Each one of the people whom I asked about O\u011fuz Tansel asked me: \u201cWhat have you got to do with him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite my insistence, saying \u201cI wish to get to know him. I have read his volume of poetry. He is an important poet,\u201d people would not believe me and stare at me suspiciously.<\/p>\n

Finally, they said that I would be able find him at his home. His home was in the Teachers\u2019 Quarter, a newly built neighborhood. It was a home share in a slow moving joint cooperative initiative. It was O\u011fuz Tansel\u2019s wife who opened the door. I introduced myself. I said that I was teaching at a village in the Burdur province. To my surprise, she too, like O\u011fuz, was a teacher. Unfortunately, O\u011fuz was not at home. He had gone to his village. Who knows when he would be back. I remember having asked: \u201cWhich village is that?\u201d If it were nearby I would hurry on at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is Meyre, a village with no proper road access in Bozk\u0131r township. If you happen to come across a truck, it will take you at least a day to get there. By the way, in which village of Burdur province do you teach? Do you happen to now Doctor Enver Barlas? He is married to my sister. Such jubilation! O\u011fuz Tansel is not at home; but, his home is there. I was offered tea. His children were small then. The year was 1953.<\/p>\n

Why do I narrate the trial of my being unable to meet him in such lengthy detail, rather than the occasion of my being introduced to him; it is because I had been highly impressed by his book. He was a poet of sharpened steel, achieving limpidity under the light of consciousness in masterly fresh, new expressions with a strong folkloric aspect. But how would I know his origins and the course his path rode. Mine was just a hunch. O\u011fuz Tansel is among those poets who take poetry seriously. Only after three years were we able to meet.<\/p>\n

After graduation from Gazi Teachers\u2019 Training Institute in Ankara, I got a teaching job in the Hafik township of Sivas province. I came to Konya to do compulsory military service. As soon as I got off the bus, the first thing that I did of course, was to dump my luggage at the Seljuk Hotel and look for O\u011fuz Tansel before even reporting for \u00a0military duty. This time I found him. It was as if we had known each other for ten or twenty years. We started as if continuing a friendship that had withstood storms and deluges over the years and suffered no harm.<\/p>\n

Just as the saying goes among commoners, O\u011fuz Tansel had heart like a huge hearth. It warmed one. He was a personality that could not be contained. But under circumstances of a rural society and inside Konya of those years he was made to suffer a lot, Let alone being spied on at every move, and being prevented by the Medieval mind from moving around and expressing himself freely. The misled apprentices on the market place would follow up on him, shouting: \u201cGet the hell out of here, you communist!\u201d Occasionally he would \u00a0be forced to seek refuge at the City Club to play bezique with high ranking bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

The former People\u2019s Home had been supposedly turned into a library, supposedly. I remember an evening of poetry there. A contest was held and prizes were to be given to the winners. Poets Sunullah Ar\u0131soy and Arif Nihat Asya had been invited from Ankara. Poets surely do some aggrandizement, don\u2019t they? Sunullah praised the poem by a girl who received the first prize a little out of proportion, saying a poem of such quality had not yet been written. How dare you say? Maestro Arif Nihat \u00a0Asya immediately rose and said: \u201cThis is an insult to Turkish poets and it is a leftist tactic!\u201d His followers jumped into the air shouting: \u201cGo to Moscow!\u00a0 To Moscow!\u201d I and a friend in military uniform, along with O\u011fuz and tailor Mehmet carried Sunullah away and took him to O\u011fuz\u2019s home. Two days later we were questioned by the military command as to what we were doing among the communists of Konya.<\/p>\n

People spoke of twenty seven years of dictatorship about the People\u2019s Republican Party (CHP) rule. Naz\u0131m Hikmet had been thrown into prison. Sabahattin Ali had been assassinated in Thrace. It was truly a terrible period; but, what\u00a0\u00a0 followed it was a period unmatched in oppression. The Democratic Party which took over the Country\u2019s rule from the People\u2019s Republican Party was oppressing the intellectuals even more, pressing them to leave just the residue. The difficult situation in big cities like \u0130stanbul and Ankara becomes thousand times more so in small rural towns like Konya and Sivas. In such towns of no more than the size of a palm, people around one grow scarce. The opportunity to publish does not exist. Your writings are not published and those that get published are not read by anyone. So you eventually dry up. At most, you lock up your essence like the ochre colored grain of the steppe and remain short and stout. Never the less, O\u011fuz Tansel managed to break up his husk and bloom under all that ice cold climate.<\/p>\n

The Harvest Waiting to be Winnowed <\/em>\u00a0was followed by the poetry volume G\u00f6z\u00fcn\u00fc Sevdi\u011fim\u00a0 <\/em>and the folk tales which he rewrote in a poetry like narrative style. Volumes of folk tales followed one another. He had recorded those folk tales in yet untapped areas. He was a student of Prof. Pertev Boratav and he knew how to go about it. I am not sure if all his works have been published and came into day light. For those which have been published, \u00a0(\u00dc\u00e7 K\u0131zlar, Alt\u0131 Karde\u015fler, Yedi Devler, Al\u2019l\u0131 ile F\u0131rf\u0131r\u0131, Mavi Gelin) he was given the Children\u2019s Literature Award by the Society of the Turkish Language. Furthermore, O\u011fuz \u2013jointly with Metin Elo\u011flu- rewrote the Bektashi Dervish anecdotes in poetry form. Have people been sufficiently aware of those poems each of which stands like a sculpture by Rodin?<\/p>\n

Like all other basic substructure in Turkey, the climate and the medium of art and philosophy is degenerate. The situation in the area of literature is even more so. While the establishment oppresses you with a Medieval understanding, the collection of authors and poets in the large cities praise only one another and ignore their colleagues in the periphery.\u00a0 To put it shortly, Turkey, instead of hugging and caring for such diligent sons, oppresses them as much as it can. Hans Christian Andersen \u00a0of Denmark too, was a poet to start with. Great poets, simultaneously write plays, folk tales and do translation too. It is a tradition. In such works, the language blooms even more, just as it does in poetry. But with us it is almost a tradition to tread on flowers. In a society under pretense of capitalism, a human being can only flourish so much. Those flourishing the best suffer in prisons and experience misery in courts, get assassinated. The end result is naught.<\/p>\n

Should one be so pessimistic? Definitely no. But this is the reality. Nevertheless, under these conditions, the commoner which has been left in darkness and more oppressed than his poets, stands together with his poets. However, this solidarity usually occurs after it is too late as in the Mad\u0131mak Hotel fire in Sivas.<\/p>\n

Speaking of O\u011fuz\u2019s endeavors, one should also speak of his students. Just as the saying goes, \u201cdo good or service and throw it in the sea; if, the fish is oblivious of it, the deity will not be,\u201d I say, \u201cthrow it in the sea; the commoner shall give you credit for it.\u201d\u00a0 His students whom O\u011fuz loves regardless of all conditions are also loved by the people too. I believe O\u011fuz was one of those who had come a bit early to the world. I remember a trip we had together to the Kazda\u011f\u0131 mountains: It was in that medium of freedom that he bloomed like prolific, multilayered blackish red roses. In the mountains he turned into a totally different person among the medium of legends. His loss was experienced silently, without echoes in Turkey. We are going to realize the value of intellectuals \u00a0\u00a0like him much later, I believe.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A DERVISH ON TRIAL: O\u011eUZ TANSEL \u00a0 \u00a0Fakir Baykurt Translated by \u00dclk\u00fcn Tansel \u00a0 I spotted and read his volume of poetry titled Savrulmay\u0131 Bekleyen Harman \/ The Harvest Waiting to be Winnowed while serving as a teacher at Derek\u00f6y. During those years both my wife and I used to become sick frequently. How many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13328"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13992,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13328\/revisions\/13992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oguztansel.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}