|
ORHAN KEMAL: THE GEM OF THE TURKISH
LITERATURE
By
Dr.Seyhan Aydýnligil
Orhan Kemal is one of Turkey’s greatest novelists and storytellers. His
novels and stories reflect not only a high literary value equaling to
that of the world’s most reputed writers, but they also provide for both
Turkish and for the world readers an understanding of genuine Turkish
values, the people, and the changing values of working class and small
town people in the face of socio-cultural and psychological transitions
and transformations.
Orhan Kemal is truly a novelist of universal value. His stories and
characters are genuinely local, yet, their needs and efforts to survive
as human beings are truly international. They try to live with a human
face despite that they face many forms of poverty, impoverishment and
sometimes social exclusion. In this respect, Orhan Kemal always writes
about the so called small people who become squeezed in the urban
fringes. Orhan Kemal, through his characters, touches the hearts of all
humanity as their stories very often describe the adverse social and
economic realities- a state which is experienced by many in all corners
of the world -in the developing and even in the most developed countries
alike.
Orhan Kemal’s characters are poor and deprived people who always try
desperately to cope with their new and adverse social and economic and
psychological situations. They usually find themselves in social
arrangements which are conflicting with and different from what they
have been accustomed to. They are always in social situations and in
locations where they do not belong to. They are also there because of
forced life situations, never a choice of their own. Coping with
joblessness, homelessness, marginality and alienation are situations
they often face. They are perplexed by their own transformations, their
loss of innocence and uprootedness when in such situations. In his most
reputed novel titled “On Fertile Lands”, Orhan Kemal introduces the
reader three characters –three seasonal workers who come to fertile
Cukurova region from a rural village in the South East in search of work,
Very soon they find themselves overwhelmed by the new social, economic
and the human environment. Despite difficulties, however, Orhan Kemal’s
characters are always proud and they stand up to despair and misery
while trying to hold on to the traditional values that they are most
familiar with -with much compassion and communal solidarity. In the
midst of their despair, they never stop to hope for better days. It will
not be an overstatement to say that, in literary value terms, Orhan
Kemal’s novel “On Fertile Lands” and the manner in which he constructs
his characters equal to that of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”.
In sociological terms, I believe that
Orhan Kemal contributes to our understanding –at almost the same
intellectual level as many of the well reputed international and Turkish
social scientists, economists and development experts –on what really
happens to people /individuals when development does not take its
appropriate course, when development is not focused on human well-being,
when inequalities become plentiful, when poverty becomes a widespread
phenomenon, and, finally when joblessness and social marginality take
away so much more than just economics from the individual human being.
Orhan Kemal does all these with a style of writing/ story telling which
is simple yet profound, realistic yet story like, sophisticated yet
easily read, and, locally thematic yet highly relevant for all readers
at the international level. He is truly a universal author with an
unending curiosity to know and tell about the human behavior in changing
social circumstances. This fact by itself calls for our responsibility
to introduce Orhan Kemal, his works and his characters to the readers
everywhere on the globe and bring his works close to the purview of the
world literary community.
Dr.
Seyhan Aydinligil
Sociologist / Development Cooperation Expert
24 June, 2006, Ankara
|