Culture of Turkey

[1] During the early years of the Republic of Turkey, established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the government invested large sums of resources into fine arts such as architecture and sculpture, and other artistic fields around the country in-line with the newly implemented reformist and West-leaning policies.

The Tanzimat reforms of 1839–1876 brought changes to the language of Ottoman written literature and introduced previously unknown Western genres, primarily the novel and the short story.

Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously: for instance, the poet Namık Kemal also wrote the important 1876 novel İntibâh (Awakening), while the journalist İbrahim Şinasi is noted for writing, in 1860, the first modern Turkish play, the one-act comedy "Şair Evlenmesi" (The Poet's Marriage).

Accordingly, the magazine's literary ventures, under the direction of the poet Tevfik Fikret, were geared towards creating a Western-style "high art" in Turkey.

Furthermore, as partly evidenced by the prevalence of the still-existent ashik ("aşık" or "ozan") tradition, the dominant element in Turkish folk poetry has always been song.

The development of folk poetry in Turkish—which began to emerge in the 13th century with such important writers as Yunus Emre, Sultan Veled, and Şeyyâd Hamza—was given a great boost when, on 13 May 1277, Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey declared Turkish the official state language of Anatolia's powerful Karamanid state; subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region.

The aşıks were essentially minstrels who traveled through Anatolia performing their songs on the bağlama, a mandolin-like instrument whose paired strings are considered to have a symbolic religious significance in Alevi/Bektashi culture.

From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظير mura'ât-i nazîr / تناسب tenâsüb) and opposition (تضاد tezâd)—were more or less prescribed.

Examples of prevalent symbols that, to some extent, oppose one another include, among others: the nightingale (بلبل bülbül) — the rose (ﮔل gül) the world (جهان cihan; عالم 'âlem) — the rosegarden (ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن gülistan; ﮔﻠﺸﻦ gülşen) the ascetic (زاهد zâhid) — the dervish (درويش derviş)[citation needed] In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, there were a number of poetic trends.

[citation needed] The first radical step away from this trend was taken by Nâzım Hikmet, who—during his time as a student in the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1924—was exposed to the modernist poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and others, which inspired him to start writing verse in a less formal style.

Another revolution in Turkish poetry came about in 1941 with the publication of a small volume of verse preceded by an essay and entitled Garip (meaning both "miserable" and "strange").

[21] To this end, and inspired in part by contemporary French poets like Jacques Prévert, they employed not only a variant of the free verse introduced by Nâzım Hikmet, but also highly colloquial language, and wrote primarily about mundane daily subjects and the ordinary man on the street.

The poets of this movement, soon known as İkinci Yeni ("Second New"[22]), opposed themselves to the social aspects prevalent in the poetry of Nâzım Hikmet and the Garip poets, and instead—partly inspired by the disruption of language in such Western movements as Dada and Surrealism—sought to create a more abstract poetry through the use of jarring and unexpected language, complex images, and the association of ideas.

The best-known poets writing in the "Second New" vein were Turgut Uyar (1927–1985), Edip Cansever (1928–1986), Cemal Süreya (1931–1990), Ece Ayhan (1931–2002), and İlhan Berk (1918–2008).

Outside of the Garip and "Second New" movements also, a number of significant poets have flourished, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1914–2008), who wrote poems dealing with fundamental concepts like life, death, God, time, and the cosmos; Behçet Necatigil (1916–1979), whose somewhat allegorical poems explore the significance of middle-class daily life; Can Yücel (1926–1999), who—in addition to his own highly colloquial and varied poetry—was also a translator into Turkish of a variety of world literature; and İsmet Özel (1944– ), whose early poetry was highly leftist but whose poetry since the 1970s has shown a strong mystical and even Islamist influence.

Stylistically, the early prose of the Republic of Turkey was essentially a continuation of the National Literature movement, with Realism and Naturalism predominating.

In a very different tradition, but evincing a similar strong political viewpoint, was the satirical short-story writer Aziz Nesin.

Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, is among the innovative novelists, whose works show the influence of postmodernism and magic realism.

Important poets of the Republic of Turkey period include Ahmet Haşim, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı and Nâzım Hikmet (who introduced the free verse style).

Outside of the Garip and İkinci Yeni movements, a number of other significant poets such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, Behçet Necatigil and Can Yücel also flourished.

[2] Architecture under the Anatolian Seljuks incorporated an eclectic mix of influences,[3] adopting local Byzantine, Armenian, and Georgian elements and combining them with designs from Islamic Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Central Asia.

[9] This style, drawing strong influence from the Hagia Sophia, produced grand imperial mosques designed around a central dome and a varying number of semi-domes.

[11][12] In the 19th century, Western European influences increased and architects such as the Balyans produced eclectic works like the luxurious Dolmabaçe Palace.

[13] In the early 20th-century, a kind of Ottoman revivalism known as the First National Architectural Movement was led by architects like Mimar Kemaleddin and Vedat Tek.

[20] In the late 19th century, human figure in the Western sense was being established in Turkish painting, especially with Osman Hamdi Bey.

[21] Carpet (halı) and tapestry (kilim) weaving is a traditional Turkish art form with roots in pre-Islamic times.

During its long history, the art and craft of weaving carpets and tapestries in Turkey has integrated numerous cultural traditions.

[27] Other important films of Akın, such as Kurz und schmerzlos (1998), In July (2000), Solino (2002), and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) won numerous awards.

[29] The annual international yağlı güreş (oiled wrestling) tournament that's held in Kırkpınar near Edirne is the oldest continuously running, sanctioned sporting competition in the world, having taken place every year since 1362.

The establishment of Nowruz has a long history, so much so that it has been celebrated in different parts of Asia for the past three thousand years, especially in the Middle East.