A Journey Between Genes from Yahya Kemal to Nazım Hikmet

We think that most of what happens in our lives is influenced by it. Is it our destiny to be lazy or hardworking, healthy or unhealthy, social or asocial, happy or unhappy? Can we defeat the gene through education, sports, diet, doping, medical operations and intervention in environmental factors? Or does it have its own way?

The gene is the functional unit of heredity that can be copied, expressed, mutated and stores information. Evolution allows the most suitable of these units to survive through natural selection. Every living thing evolves to do something for the good of its species. According to Richard Dawkins, we are survival machines, robotic vehicles programmed to blindly protect selfish molecules known as genes. While genes are mostly selfish, we see some genes shaping personalities that are artistic and rebellious, rational, realistic, progressive and creative.

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His maternal great-grandfather was a Polish Catholic named Konstantin Borjecki. In his youth, Konstantin joined the groups that attempted a revolution against Prussia's occupation of Poland, and after being captured and imprisoned for a while, he sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire, which declared that it did not recognize the occupation of Poland. Arriving in Istanbul, Constantine converted to Islam.

The Sheikhulislam named this young man with bright blue eyes and a pale complexion Mustafa Celalettin, saying "he would either become a great man or a terrible criminal". Due to his success in drawing and mapping, he was assigned to Erkan-ı Harbiye in Istanbul. He married Mrs. Saffet, daughter of Mirliva Ömer Pasha and had two children from this marriage. His first child was Ali Seyfi, who died of croup in infancy, and his second child was Hasan Enver. Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha, who participated in many conflicts against Greek and Serbian gangs, was wounded and martyred in the Montenegrin rebellions. He was interested in history. 

His book "Eski ve Yeni Türkler" (Old and New Turks), published in French in 1869, which claimed that Turks belonged to the Aryan race and which Mustafa Kemal also benefited from, influenced the transition from dynastic historiography to national historiography.

He claimed that the Turks were the oldest and most civilized nation in history, advocated the use of the Latin alphabet and can be called the oldest Turkist. Hasan Enver, the son of Mustafa Celalettin, graduated from Galatasaray Sultanate at the top of his class. He was then accepted to Mekteb-i Harbiye. He joined the aides of Abdülhamit II and received the rank of Mirliva. He is assigned by Abdülhamit II to Cuba and China to investigate distant popular uprisings. Enver Pasha married Leyla Hanım, the second daughter of Müşir Mehmet Ali Pasha, and had five children, three girls and two boys. These children were Ayşe Celile, Mustafa Celalettin, Mehmet Ali, Münevver and Sare. Enver Pasha was nicknamed Gavur Enver due to his Polish origin. During his mission in China, he also married Hortance Leffine Kinyoli of Croatian descent and made her his wife. Leyla Hanım then separated from Pasha. Enver Pasha had two sons, Ömer Songar, Suzan and Enver Songar, and a daughter from this second marriage. He founded a private high school in Erenköy and wrote history articles. His daughter Münevver Hanım was the mother of the poet Oktay Rıfat.

His mother's other great grandfather was a German named Ludwig Karl Friedrich Detroit. As a young man, he jumped overboard from the ship where he was working as a mate during a visit to Istanbul and took refuge in the Ottoman Empire. He studied at the Mekteb-i Harbiye under the patronage of Ali Pasha, the grand vizier of the time, whom he met somehow, and converted to Islam by taking the name Mehmet Ali. He received military training in France and Germany and participated in the Crimean War, Bosnia and Montenegro campaigns. In 1878, Mehmet Ali, who rose to the position of commander-in-chief of the Danube army and became a Pasha, was beheaded by the rebels during the Albanian rebellion. Pasha was known as a man of philosophy and literature, and was able to write poetry in German, French, Greek, Persian and Arabic with equal skill. He married Ayşe Sıdıka, the daughter of Chechen Hafız Abdi Pasha, and had four daughters, Hayriye, Leyla Kadriye, Zekiye and Adeviye. Mrs. Hayriye was the mother of Mehmet Ali Aybar, a record-breaking national athlete, lawyer and former leader of the Turkish Labor Party.

Mrs. Zekiye was married to İsmail Fazıl Pasha, who would later become Turkey's first Minister of Public Works, and was the mother of Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Mustafa Kemal's classmate and a prominent figure in the national struggle.

Ayşe Celile, the daughter of Hasan Enver, was raised in a monden family environment, taking French, painting, piano and general culture lessons from private teachers. She continued her painting education in Paris. Her French is as perfect as her Turkish. She was a beautiful and free-spirited woman who mesmerized those who saw her. She married Hikmet Bey in 1901 and they separated in 1908 due to incompatibility. Celile Hanım was the woman with whom poet Yahya Kemal, his son's tutor, fell in love and made her the subject of his poems. Celile Hanım's being a member of the British Correspondents' Society and her close relations with Sait Molla, the pioneer of the society, and Yahya Kemal's being warned by the Organization of Intelligence and Intelligence Services (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa), which warned Yahya Kemal, who was a neurotic man, ended this relationship. A famous painter of landscapes, still life and portraits, Celile Hanım's later years were spent trying to save her son from prison.

Her paternal grandfather, Mehmet Nazım Pasha, was the last governor of Thessaloniki, which had fallen out of our hands in 1912. He was on the board of directors of the British Correspondents Association, which was founded five days after Mustafa Kemal landed in Samsun. He was close friends with Sait Molla, the president of the association. He had three children, Hikmet Nazım, Mediha and Güzide, from his marriage with Saime Hanım.

He was known for his literary talent, his poems and writings influenced by Sufism. His father Hikmet Nazım graduated from Galatasaray High School. He worked as the General Directorate of Publications. After the occupation of Izmir, since the salaries of civil servants were not paid, he took over as the Managing Director of the newspaper Alemdar, which was owned by Refii Cevat and functioned as the publication organ of the British Correspondents' Society. He publishes a magazine called Sinema mecmuası. In the last years of his life, he was the manager of Kadıköy Süreyya cinema. He married the painter Ayşe Celile and had three children, Nazım Hikmet, Ali İbrahim and Saniye. The second child, Ali İbrahim, died of dysentery as a baby. After divorcing Mrs. Celile, Hikmet Nazım married a woman named Cavide and had children named Fatma Melda and Metin Yasavul from this marriage.

The genetic influence of the above-mentioned personalities on the shaping of Nazım Hikmet, real name Mehmet Nazım, a poet, joke, theater and scenario writer, novelist, journalist, dubbing artist, painter and opposition politician Nazım Hikmet, who is one of the remarkable names of the Turkish literature of the Republican period and whose name is the subject of many different discussions, is certain.

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Francis Galton, who recommended that successful people should have many children, had no children when he died in 1911. According to Galton, if human mating could be controlled, the inheritance of many human traits could be controlled. This also meant artificial selection. Parents with superior intelligence, intellectual achievement, artistic talent, etc. would be encouraged to create larger families. Those with low intelligence, sexual deviants and habitual offenders would be restricted from reproducing. This is known as eugenic policies and was practiced in the USA and Nazi Germany.

It should be important for our society to make a contribution to world culture, not eugenic policies; a good idea; a beautiful melody; an invention that makes life easier; a poem that moves...

Even if your genes melt away, the beautiful will continue to live on intact.