Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Turkey's Bosphorus University (BU) has decorated renowned author Yasar Kemal with an honorary doctorate degree on Monday.
Speaking at the ceremony where Kemal was presented with the honorary doctorate degree, the Rector of the BU Prof. Dr. Kadri Ozcaldiran said that Yasar Kemal is the first window of Turkish literature to the world and is one of the most prominent names in global literature in the 20th century.
Yasar Kemal (born Kemal Sadik Gokceli in 1923) is one of Turkey's leading writers. He has long been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, on the strength of "Memed, My Hawk".
He published his first book "Agitlar" ("Ballads") in 1943, which was a compilation of folkloric themes. This book brings to light many long forgotten rhymes and ballads and Kemal had started to collect these ballads at the age of 16.
He received international acclaim with the publication of "Memed, My Hawk" (Turkish: Ince Memed, in 1955). In "Ince Memed", Yasar Kemal criticizes the fabric of the society through a legendary hero, a protagonist, who flees to the mountains as a result of the oppression of the Aghas.
One of the most famous living writers in Turkey, Kemal is noted for his command of the language and lyrical description of bucolic Turkish life. He has been awarded 19 literary prizes so far.
His 1955 novel "Teneke" was adapted into a theatrical play, which was staged for almost one year in Goteborg, Sweden, in the country where he lived for about two years in the late 1970s. Italian composer Fabio Vacchi adapted the same novel with the original title into an opera of three acts, which premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milano, Italy in 2007.
Kemal lays claim to having recreated Turkish as a literary language, by bringing in the vernacular, following Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's sterilization of Turkish by removing Persian and Arabic elements.
Receiving his doctorate degree from the BU, Kemal said that those who read my novels should be anti-war and be against the exploitation of humans. Humans should not let states and governments assimilate individuals. Those who read my works should understand that individuals involved in the destruction of a culture are actually destroying their own culture. This is a problem of our own country. Languages were banned in Turkey, for 80 years. No one understands that their own culture has slipped out of their hands.
