Two Poets, Tevfik Fikret and Nazım Hikmet

"The lion roared, who would not be afraid.

God has spoken, who will not be a poet."

He who cannot silence his inner voice has no choice but to become a poet, whether he is tending his flock, tending his field or drifting in the sea of ideas. It is the poet's duty to show the truth and to oppose it. It is his duty to speak his thoughts aloud in order to rouse man from his habitual slumber, to awaken him from his slumber, and to have a profound effect on humanity.

To be a poet, it is not enough to express ideas, one must also live them and put them into action. Poets are people to whom humility, justice, love and reason are inextricably linked. Poets are not swayed by power, they always speak the truth, even if it leads to imprisonment, exile or death. They feel responsible for the happiness of all human beings, not for keeping themselves on the sidelines of society and waiting to see what happens.

Every nation has had its poets. The works of great poets are known by millions. The spiritual value of these works is very high. Although the voice of the poet is a voice in the crowd, it is not an isolated voice. He is the leader of a great choir that destroys idols. Obedience, which is considered the most important virtue in most social systems, is not blind obedience in the poet. He knows how to disobey because he obeys his own conscience and the principles he has chosen.

Tevfik Fikret's mother and uncle died of cholera on the pilgrimage. The Suraj emir said, "They died on the way to Hajj, and their places are in paradise. Allah gives this bliss to few. What can we do? It is God's will." According to Tevfik, their deaths on the way to Hajj were due to sheer negligence and incompetence. Everything happened by God's command, but God had given human beings a will, albeit limited, and imposed responsibility on them. The blame lay with those who did not know how to use that will.

When he left Galatasaray after teaching there for two years, he was brought his four unpaid salaries. When he learned that other teachers did not receive their salaries in full, he said, "If my friends are suffering, so am I." He did not take their salaries.

Fikret was one of the poets who sincerely defended women's rights. "A nation that does not educate its daughters condemns its sons to spiritual orphanhood. ... if women are miserable, human beings will be degraded!" Fikret was the first voice to speak out against violence against women in Turkey.

Fikret was also disturbed by the sacrifices. He said that lives like these were being slaughtered every day. For what? For religion! For the sake of rulers! For black beliefs!

Tevfik Fikret was one of those who resisted the pressure on writers, the closure of newspapers, arrests, jurnals and exile the most during the reign of Abdülhamit. Intellectuals and the whole people were crushed under this oppression and were looking for ways out. There was an army of forty thousand sleuths in the country. There were jurnalists from every class, from neighborhood watchmen to tekke sheikhs and hodjas. They were investigating who was meeting with whom, who was going to whose mansion, what they were talking about, and when they couldn't find anything, they made it up.

The state feared its people, feared its intellectuals, feared its bureaucracy, feared its students, and viewed them as potential threats. Students were expelled from their schools for having harmful ideas, books, magazines and newspapers were banned as harmful publications, various enlightened officials were either dismissed or exiled to the remotest parts of the empire, and all this was done in the name of the survival of the state, the unity and integrity of the country.

Every day there were exiles, corruption, lies, lies, jurnals, frauds, turncoats, deceit, deceitfulness, sycophancy, lawlessness... This environment of oppression drove Fikret mad. He put his thoughts and feelings into words. He was now immersed in the intensity of poetry. In his poems, he called for freedom, truth and valor. He liberated his poetry by keeping his identity a secret and did not send it anywhere to be published. He wrote Fog, Tarih-i Kadim and Song of the Nation.

When the Second Constitutional Monarchy was proclaimed, there was a tremendous atmosphere of celebration in Istanbul. While everyone was arguing that the Constitutional Monarchy would end oppression and tyranny, Fikret could not look at the coming days with exaggerated hope since he knew most of the Unionists closely and could not trust some of them. The Unionists offered him a parliamentary seat and the post of Minister of Education, but he refused. He thought that he would lose his independence if he worked with the Unionists. The Unionists failed to bring freedom, justice and honest governance to the country. Fikret was rebelling against these oppressors who trampled on the people.

He was angry, he was petulant... He wrote Towards 95 and Haluk's Amentü. In The Plunder Table, he addressed the rulers:

"Eat, masters, eat...

Eat until you are full, until you are stuffed, until you are bursting."

In his poem If Morning Comes, he was of the opinion that a firm and strong hand would change the destiny of the country. A hero would emerge, lead the way and the youth would wake up and bring light to the country. This hero was Mustafa Kemal. Mustafa Kemal had read all Tevfik's works and memorized most of them. He considered himself unfortunate not to have met the poet.

Nazım's poems Bahri Hazer and Salkımsöğüt were recorded on vinyl and the record was very popular with the public. It was played everywhere. Mustafa Kemal was told about this interest during a conversation at the Dolmabahçe Palace. Gazi was curious and wanted to listen to it. The record was found, brought and put on the gramophone. After listening carefully to the poems, Mustafa Kemal said, "I would like to know this poet closely. Let them find and bring him and let him read his poems to us this evening." The Governor called the Kadıköy police station and said, "Find Nazım Hikmet immediately and bring him to the Palace. His Highness the Pasha is ordering it." Kadıköy police were mobilized. Police teams came to Nazım's house at midnight, woke him up and explained the situation.

Nazım thought. To go or not to go. What would happen if he obeyed the invitation and went to the Palace? What could happen? He would have escaped the trials he was facing for propagandizing communism, he would no longer be in trouble, he would no longer be in prison, perhaps he would have become the semi-official poet of the regime. But was he the kind of man to accept this? After thinking for a moment, he said to the policemen, "Say hello to His Excellency the President for me. I am not Mermaid Eftalya."

The policemen were stunned. They tried to convince Nazim, but he refused. Gazi was informed in an appropriate language that the poet could not come. So what happened? Did Gazi force the poet to come? No. Did Gazi have the poet arrested? No. The Gazi said: "Good boy, this is how you call a poet."

Nazım was on trial at the Bursa High Criminal Court and was asked to be executed. It was during those days that he wrote the following poem to his wife:

Be sure, dear

I don't want some poor gypsy

his hand like a hairy black spider

if he's gonna put a rope around my throat,

to see the fear in your blue eyes

they'll look at Nazim in vain

Nazım was acquitted. To win him over, the government called him to Ankara through his old friends. The Minister of Interior invited him to the safe wings of the Six Arrows to avoid trouble and imprisonment. He knew that if he worked with the government he would gain office but lose his free thought. Nazim thanked him and left. He had made his own path. The road of prisons and exile.

The results of the 1822 Chios and 1848 Polish Revolts gave us these two great poets. Two great poets who aimed to make the future of society better than today, to leave a better, more livable environment for our children. Unfortunately, neither of them could find happiness with their own children.

A poet is someone who can leap beyond the visible in the search for truth. In order to make this leap, he must first pass through his own darkness. He tells what cannot be told with talismanic words. His poetry is a state-of-the-art time machine, freeing the person from the bondage of existence. The poet may not be prosperous, but he has an honorable conscience. A very important contribution to the values that make us who we are will perhaps sprout with the seeds of a poet brought by a far away rebellion. Just like Tevfik and Nazım...