He graduated from Gazi High School and for a while began studying sociology in Belgium on a State Railways scholarship but had to return home in 1940 after the German invasion.

After he retired from his position in the Conservatory in 1977, Anday was assigned to UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as Cultural Attaché until recalled after a change of Government.

According to the preface of their joint collection, published in 1941, poetry should abandon the formalism and rhetorical classical style of previous centuries, making itself simple, colloquial, and matter of fact—an artless art designed to serve the common people.

[3] However, present there even then was an uneasy acknowledgement of French Surrealism, and Anday was eventually to change his engaged style to a cerebral neo-surrealism as he cautiously navigated beyond the difficult political waters of his country.

[8] Another play, Ölümsüzler ya da Bir Cinayetin Söylencesi (The Immortals or the Legend of a Murder) won the Enka Art Prize in 1980.

In 1994 the sculptor Metin Yurdanur cast a seated statue of him in bronze which is now sited in the park named after him at Ören on the Gulf of Gökova.