Fransızca Türk Şiiri

Abstract

It is unknown whether the Turks produced Chinese works under the influence of the Far East civilization which was one of the three civilizations that contributed to the Turkish culture. When the Eastern civilization was adopted, the Turkish governors and well-known poets were very keen to produce Persian and Arabic divan literature. Likewise, during the early periods of westernization, the Turkish culture was heavily influenced by the French culture from the very beginning of the Reformation period to the Second World War; therefore some of the Turkish newspapers and journals written in French devoted particular pages to literature, and some Turkish poets wrote poems in French. This study intends to focus on the French poems written by the Turkish poets. The adventure of the French poems written by the Turkish poets was inaugurated by the four lines which Şinasi included – with hesitation, though - in Terceme-i Manzume in the mid 19th century, and reached its peak in the early 1900s with Abdullah Cevdet’s five poetry books that led to wide-spread repercussions both within and outside of the country. The adventure continued with the contributions of various poets’ published and/or unpublished poems. The latest work that has taken place in this adventure is Prof. Dr. Mehmet Bayraktar’s (Faculty of Theology, Ankara University) Du Coeur à Toi - a work which explores a particular situation rather than the common popular culture, and is, hence, an exceptional work in this adventure.