Yaşar Kemal

Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 – 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist and one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of ''Memed, My Hawk''.

An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for ''Der Spiegel'' highlighting the Turkish Army's destruction of Kurdish villages during the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for another article he wrote criticising racism in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.

Kemal was a major contributor to Turkish literature in the early years after Turkish fell into decline as a literary language after Atatürk's language reforms of the 1930s.

Early life and education

He was born Kemal Sadik Gökçeli to Sadık and Nigâr on 6 October 1923 in Hemite (now Gökçedam), a Turkmen hamlet in the province of Osmaniye in southern Turkey. He was born into the only Kurdish family in the village but didn't face discrimination despite his ethnic difference. According to Kemal, some of his family members came from the Caucasus, while some were of Assyrian origin. Kemal had a difficult childhood, and his family had to flee from Van province to Diyarbakır province. From there, they were deported to Adana province. He lost his right eye in a knife accident while his father was slaughtering a sheep for Eid al-Adha. When he was five years old he witnessed his father being stabbed to death by his adoptive son Yusuf while praying in a mosque. These traumatic experiences left Kemal with a speech impediment, which lasted until he was twelve years old. At nine, Kemal began school in a neighbouring village; he continued his formal education in Kadirli in Osmaniye province.

Kemal was a locally noted bard even before he began school but was unappreciated by his widowed mother until he composed an elegy on the death of one of her eight brothers, all of whom were bandits. He became interested in writing as a means to record his work after talking to an itinerant peddler, who was doing his accounts. His village paid his way to university in Istanbul.

He worked for a while for rich farmers as a labourer in the Çukurova cotton fields, ostensibly guarding river water against poor farmers' unauthorised use for irrigation. However, he actually taught the poor farmers how to steal the water undetected, by taking it at night. Later he worked as a letter-writer, then as a journalist, and finally as a novelist. The Turkish police confiscated his first two novels. In 1950, Kemal was imprisoned for alleged communist activities. He visited Akdamar Island in 1951, where he saw the beginning of the planned demolition of the island's Holy Cross Church. Using his contacts, he helped stop the demolition (the church was restored by the Turkish government in 2005).

Professional and political career

He then moved to Istanbul to work for the ''Cumhuriyet'' newspaper, where he adopted his pen name.

In 1962, Kemal joined the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP) and "served as one of its leaders until quitting after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968". In 1967, Kemal established the Marxist magazine Ant together with Dogan Özgüden and . The magazine published articles about Engels

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