Nâzım Hikmet lives in İzmir

I will attempt to describe the “Nâzım Hikmet / Romantika: A Journey of a Lifetime” exhibition, which Folkart has opened at the İzmir Kültürpark Atlas Pavilion. In all likelihood, I cannot fully capture such a magnificent exhibition, but I can convey what I felt. 

His family tree, prison years, loves, friends... Nâzım's photographs, manuscripts, letters, books, personal belongings... Moscow... Longing for his homeland... His poems.

The exhibition, which spans an area of approximately 2,125 square meters and 15 halls, features hundreds of documents, manuscripts, photographs, rare books, personal items, and audiovisual materials brought from Turkey and various parts of the world.

While walking through the halls, one does not merely observe the life of a great poet. At the same time, one reflects on Turkey's nearly century-long struggle with Nâzım Hikmet, and even, in my opinion, Turkey's struggle with its own culture and its own people.

This country realized the value of Nâzım Hikmet very late. Nâzım Hikmet was one of the greatest poets of world literature. What did we do?

For years, we debated him not through his poems, his literature, or his contributions to the Turkish language, but through his political views.

He was a communist. And in Turkey, being a communist was a crime punishable by heavy sentences…

Especially for circles that placed the fight against communism at the center of their politics, Nâzım Hikmet was not a poet, but a political figure to be fought against. The state also fought against Nâzım. He was tried. He spent years in prisons. He was stripped of his citizenship. In the end, he was forced to leave the country he loved so much.

But there was a strange situation. While Turkey was throwing him into prisons and feeling threatened by his books and poems, the world was reading Nâzım. His poems were being translated into other languages, he was accepted among the world's important poets, and he was seen as one of the greatest literary figures Turkey had ever produced. We, however, continued to argue about whether Nâzım was a communist or not.

I thought about this once again while visiting the exhibition. To not see Nâzım's love for his homeland, one must have never read his poems. Look at that magnificent metaphor he used when describing Anatolia in his poem "Invitation":

Galloping from Far Asia

Stretching out like a mare's head to the Mediterranean

this country is ours.

Wrists in blood, teeth clenched, feet bare

and this soil that resembles a silk carpet,

this hell, this paradise is ours.

Let the gates of others close, never to open again,

destroy the servitude of man to man,

this invitation is ours…

To live like a tree, single and free

and like a forest, in brotherhood,

this longing is ours…

***

Then, the Epic of the National Forces (Kuvâyi Milliye)...

He does not tell the War of Independence merely as a history of commanders, armies, and battles. He tells the story of the people of that war. The villager, the woman, the oxcart, those carrying ammunition to the front, the hunger, the fear, and the courage…

And the struggle for independence against imperialism...

When you read Nâzım's Kuvâyi Milliye, you do not just read a great work of literature. You also feel the conditions under which this country was founded. It contains literature, it contains the homeland, it contains the people. And it has a very strong anti-imperialist vein.

Let us quote a short section from that magnificent epic for Mustafa Kemal Pasha.

He asked for the time.

The Pashas said: "Three,"

He looked like a blonde wolf.

And his blue eyes were flashing.

He walked to the edge of the cliff,

he leaned, he stopped.

If they had let him

Springing on his thin, long legs

and gliding like a star flowing in the dark

he would have jumped from Kocatepe to the Afyon plain.

***

This was the great contradiction that Turkey could not see for years. While excluding a person for being a “communist,” we also excluded our poet who wrote one of the most beautiful works describing the Turkish nation's struggle for independence. Years passed. The walls slowly crumbled. Nâzım's poems were no longer read only by leftists, socialists, or intellectuals. We began to remove the walls in front of him.

One of the most striking symbols of this is Alparslan Türkeş. It was not an ordinary event that Türkeş, one of the most important names in the fight against communism in Turkey, read verses from Nâzım Hikmet's "Invitation" poem, which I quoted above, at his party's congress in 1994. It was as if it were a hand extended to Nâzım from the segments of Turkey that had once fought against him. In my opinion, it was even like an unspoken apology.

By now, the vast majority had begun to see the same truth:

Nâzım Hikmet was this country's poet.

NOW NÂZIM IS IN İZMİR

The “Romantika / A Journey of a Lifetime” exhibition, prepared with the sponsorship of Folkart, is a great cultural service. The exhibition contains almost everything about Nâzım Hikmet. 

There are items that came from the house of Nâzım's son, Mehmet Hikmet, in France. 

There are remnants from his life in Moscow.

There is Vera's archive.

There is Nâzım through the lens of Ara Güler.

There is Nâzım's study.

There are the prisons.

There are the loves.

There is the longing for the homeland.

And while wandering among all these, what appears before you is no longer a “historical figure” you read about in books, but a living human being. The exhibition's curator, M. Melih Güneş, describes this very beautifully:

“This exhibition does not tell the story of a life completed by death, but of a life that continues to live through its works and cultural heritage.”

I am not addressing only the people of İzmir here. Wherever you live in Turkey... Create an opportunity, come to İzmir just to visit this exhibition. The exhibition is open until January 15, 2027, and admission is free…

You will not only see the life of Nâzım Hikmet here. You will see a cross-section of Turkey's recent history.

You will see how a country excluded one of its great artists... Then how it rediscovered him... And finally, how it embraced him. Perhaps the most important thing this exhibition made me think about is this:

Nâzım Hikmet had never left Turkey.

His body had gone. But his Turkish, his poems, his Anatolia, his Kuvâyi Milliye had remained here.

And in the end, Turkey also returned to Nâzım.

I heartfully thank Folkart Chairman of the Board Mesut Sancak, who realized this tremendous work, the exhibition's curator M. Melih Güneş, the exhibition's director Ünal Ersözlü, the designer Ömer Durmaz, and everyone who contributed to this exhibition.

Let us end the article with Nâzım Hikmet again. From "Letters to Taranta-Babu," published in 1935...

HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS TO LIVE

How beautiful it is to live

Understanding, like a master, like a book

Like a love song

Living with wonder like a child...

To live one by one and all together

Like weaving a silk fabric

Like reading an epic all in one voice, joyfully…