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.

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.

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.

All at the same time preserving residence in a yalı in the chic Istanbul quarter of Arnavutköy,[1] 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.