Nail Çakırhan (1910-2008) was a Turkish poet and journalist in his career in the beginning, and later a self-taught and award-winning architect and restorer who left his print particularly in the architecture of the coastal township of Akyaka in southwestern Turkey through old houses he had repaired and restored or new houses built in accordance with the traditional styles and approaches of Turkish/ Ottoman/ Aegean houses, supplemented with innovative conceptions and designs.

Early career

Nail Çakırhan was born in Ula in southwestern Turkey, and studied in the provincial center of

Muğla Muğla () is a city in southwestern Turkey. The city is the center of the District of Menteşe and Muğla Province, which stretches along Turkey's Aegean coast. Muğla's center is situated inland at an altitude of 660 m and lies at a dista ...

and later in

Konya Konya () is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium (), although the Seljuks also called it D ...

Central Anatolia The Central Anatolia Region ( tr, İç Anadolu Bölgesi) is a geographical region of Turkey. The largest city in the region is Ankara. Other big cities are Konya, Kayseri, Eskişehir, Sivas, and Aksaray. Located in Central Turkey, it is bordered ...

. He started writing poetry while in Konya where he also published a literary magazine named "Kervan", due to which he went into trouble with the police and had to move to

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

. During his university years, he changed branch several times, skipping from medicine to law and later to the study of literature. It was during this time that he became a close friend of

Nazım Hikmet A nazim is the coordinator of a city or town in Pakistan. Nazim or variant spellings may also refer to: *Nazim (given name), including a list of people with the given name *Nazim (surname), including a list of people with the surname See also *N ...

and he started working as an editor both in the daily Cumhuriyet and in the literary and political journal published by the famous poet, with whom he also published his first book of poetry jointly. He was arrested at the same time as Nazım Hikmet in 1932 and he remained in prison until the beginning of the following year. In 1934, he went to the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in secret where he remained until 1937. NailCakirhan OwnHouse Akyaka Mugla Turkey

Back in Turkey by divorcing from his Russian first wife in 1937 (he was going to be able to see his son only in 1979), he started working in the leftist newspaper "Tan" and married the well-known and respected Olympics pioneer athlete and archaeologist Halet Çambel. Imprisoned again for his

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

views between 1946 and 1950, he left for

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

with his wife for two years afterwards.

Architect's career

His first venture into the art of architecture came in the 1950s, when he constructed by learning from the scratch and assisted by several professional architects and on the late- Hittite site of Karatepe in southern Turkey, where Mrs. Halet Çambel was conducting excavations, an open-air museum. His obvious talents and his rapid acquisition of the science led him to assume, by the 1960s, the building of the

Turkish Historical Society The Turkish Historical Society ( tr, Türk Tarih Kurumu, TTK) is a research society studying the history of Turkey and the Turkish people, founded in 1931 by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with headquarters in Ankara, Turkey. It has been ...

and the German High School in Ankara and once again buildings for the usage of archaeologists in Ergani where Mrs. Halet Çambel was once again managing excavation work. All at the same time preserving residence in a

yalı A yalı ( tr, yalı, from Greek ''yialí'' (mod. ''yialós''), literally "seashore, beach") is a house or mansion built right on the waterside (almost exclusively seaside, particularly on the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul) and usually built with ...

in the chic Istanbul quarter of

Arnavutköy Arnavutköy ( Albanian village; el, Μέγα Ρεύμα, Mega Revma) is a neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey renowned for its wooden Ottoman mansions and seafood restaurants, as well as for the campus of the prestigious Robert College with its h ...

, the couple chose to live on a permanent basis in Akyaka in south-western Turkey as of 1970. Here, Nail Çakırhan constructed his own house, considered a classic by its blend of characteristics proper to traditional Ottoman/Turkish/Aegean architecture and modern requirements, as well those of its environment. Commands for other constructions from his circle of friends and contacts found him having concretized in a few years a local school of architecture termed under the name of the locality of Akyaka to whose general settlement patterns Çakırhan contributed a lot. He received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983, principally on the basis of his legacy in Akyaka. He contributed to the design and construction of several projects in

Muğla Province Muğla Province ( tr, , ) is a province of Turkey, at the country's south-western corner, on the Aegean Sea. Its seat is Muğla, about inland, while some of Turkey's largest holiday resorts, such as Bodrum, Ölüdeniz, Marmaris and Fethiye, are ...

region, notably the restoration of the 18th Konakaltı Caravanserai in the province center, as well as of private houses, hotels and other buildings for the tourism industry. Nail Çakırhan died on 11 October 2008 in his hometown of

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cakirhan, Nail Turkish architects Turkish male poets Turkish journalists 1910 births 2008 deaths People from Muğla 20th-century Turkish poets 20th-century journalists Istanbul University Faculty of Law alumni