Some Memoirs and Notes of Yahya Kemal Previously Unrevealed on Recent Turkish Politics and Literature

Abstract

Yahya Kemal, one of the founding writers of 20th-century Turkish poetry, soon established his ideas, taste and aesthetics with his conversations, lectures, poems and articles which he published shortly after his return from Paris to Istanbul in 1912. Although he passed away at the age of 74, which meant he had had a long life, he did not publish a book when he was alive. Yahya Kemal, who experienced the years of the occupation, the National Struggle and the Republican period, focused on newspaper articles during those years. His books, handwritten manuscripts, poems and articles published in the newspapers of that time, and also the documents and letters he sent to his friends, form the corpus of his writing. As is well known, Yahya Kemal did not publish a book while he was alive. These poems, writings or notes were published by the Yahya Kemal Institute, which was established within the Istanbul Conquest Society, after the death of the poet, and the same Istitute signed an agreement with his heirs. However, this collection of 12 books has been enriched and expanded by several researchers at various times since new research, studies and archives have continued to reveal the writings and verses belonging to Yahya Kemal. This article contains the transcriptions of 18 articles and memoirs of Yahya Kemal in the Taha Toros Archive, which has recently been accessed and shared by Istanbul Şehir University.