Oktay Rifat had a great influence on modern Turkish poetry, standing outside traditional poetic conventions and creating a new movement.
In 1937, he was appointed to Paris, France by the State Ministry to do his PhD, however came back after three years without completing his degree due to outbreak of World War II.
Oktay Rifat started writing poetry as a high school student, and his first poems were published between 1936 and 1944 in the literature journal Varlık (Existence).
[1] His poems, which use all the richness of his native Turkish language, include Karga ile Tilki (The Crow and the Fox), for which he won the Yeditepe Poetry Prize in 1955.
[2] Oktay Rifat also published novels such as Bir Kadının Penceresinden (Through a Woman’s Window) and Danaburnu (Calf Nose), theatre plays such as Kadınlar Arasında (Among Women, first staged in 1948) and translated older works into Turkish from Latin and Greek.