A DERVISH ON TRIAL: OĞUZ TANSEL

 Fakir Baykurt

Translated by Ülkün Tansel

I spotted and read his volume of poetry titled Savrulmayı Bekleyen Harman / The Harvest Waiting to be Winnowed while serving as a teacher at Dereköy. During those years both my wife and I used to become sick frequently. How many times did we verge on death.  Having graduated from a Village Teachers’ Training Institute, I was determined to serve as a village teacher till the very end. I was ordained for twenty years of compulsory service anyhow.  Does it sound little? A third of one’s life; a whole block of it. But starting from 1946 on, in the 1950’s, the State had turned into something totally different. They breached the terms of agreement unilaterally. They simply deserted us in the villages, leaving us defenseless before the big land owner, the partisan village prefect and the pompous gendarme sergeant.

People complain of reactionism today. Years ago, reactionism had pounced on us, the village teachers, with all its might. It looked as if the State had fastened all stones on earth and set the dogs free. The State had already been seized wholly from within by then. Educators of the Republic in the villages did not give up. But the State supported those who attacked us. We were surrounded and under siege with hands tied up. One cannot be expected to climb up the pine tree with hands tied up. It was indispensable that we go into a school of higher education so that we could face the reactionaries after having grown stronger and organized.

The only schools of higher learning which we could attend were teachers’ training institutes. So I drew up a plan for myself.  I was unable to pass the entrance exams into art school. If I were to study at the department of literature in Ankara for two more years I would get a chance to explore the capital from within, I thought.

Mahmut Makal was teaching at Demirci village during the same period. We corresponded and he used to visit us at Dereköy. We planned to take the entrance exams together. Service to the village could be realized from without the village as well. In order to reach Demirci where I would meet Mahmut I would first have to get to Aksaray from Burdur with a stopover at Konya riding on trucks over the earth roads, getting on the train and off to ride a bus again. From Demirci we would move on to Ankara.

I stayed in Konya for a day and looked for Oğuz Tansel. I knew he was teaching either at the high school or the middle school. The town schools were about to go on vacation for the summer, following the rural schools. Each one of the people whom I asked about Oğuz Tansel asked me: “What have you got to do with him?”

Despite my insistence, saying “I wish to get to know him. I have read his volume of poetry. He is an important poet,” people would not believe me and stare at me suspiciously.

Finally, they said that I would be able find him at his home. His home was in the Teachers’ Quarter, a newly built neighborhood. It was a home share in a slow moving joint cooperative initiative. It was Oğuz Tansel’s wife who opened the door. I introduced myself. I said that I was teaching at a village in the Burdur province. To my surprise, she too, like Oğuz, was a teacher. Unfortunately, Oğuz was not at home. He had gone to his village. Who knows when he would be back. I remember having asked: “Which village is that?” If it were nearby I would hurry on at once.

“It is Meyre, a village with no proper road access in Bozkır township. If you happen to come across a truck, it will take you at least a day to get there. By the way, in which village of Burdur province do you teach? Do you happen to now Doctor Enver Barlas? He is married to my sister. Such jubilation! Oğuz Tansel is not at home; but, his home is there. I was offered tea. His children were small then. The year was 1953.

Why do I narrate the trial of my being unable to meet him in such lengthy detail, rather than the occasion of my being introduced to him; it is because I had been highly impressed by his book. He was a poet of sharpened steel, achieving limpidity under the light of consciousness in masterly fresh, new expressions with a strong folkloric aspect. But how would I know his origins and the course his path rode. Mine was just a hunch. Oğuz Tansel is among those poets who take poetry seriously. Only after three years were we able to meet.

After graduation from Gazi Teachers’ Training Institute in Ankara, I got a teaching job in the Hafik township of Sivas province. I came to Konya to do compulsory military service. As soon as I got off the bus, the first thing that I did of course, was to dump my luggage at the Seljuk Hotel and look for Oğuz Tansel before even reporting for  military duty. This time I found him. It was as if we had known each other for ten or twenty years. We started as if continuing a friendship that had withstood storms and deluges over the years and suffered no harm.

Just as the saying goes among commoners, Oğuz Tansel had heart like a huge hearth. It warmed one. He was a personality that could not be contained. But under circumstances of a rural society and inside Konya of those years he was made to suffer a lot, Let alone being spied on at every move, and being prevented by the Medieval mind from moving around and expressing himself freely. The misled apprentices on the market place would follow up on him, shouting: “Get the hell out of here, you communist!” Occasionally he would  be forced to seek refuge at the City Club to play bezique with high ranking bureaucrats.

The former People’s Home had been supposedly turned into a library, supposedly. I remember an evening of poetry there. A contest was held and prizes were to be given to the winners. Poets Sunullah Arısoy and Arif Nihat Asya had been invited from Ankara. Poets surely do some aggrandizement, don’t they? Sunullah praised the poem by a girl who received the first prize a little out of proportion, saying a poem of such quality had not yet been written. How dare you say? Maestro Arif Nihat  Asya immediately rose and said: “This is an insult to Turkish poets and it is a leftist tactic!” His followers jumped into the air shouting: “Go to Moscow!  To Moscow!” I and a friend in military uniform, along with Oğuz and tailor Mehmet carried Sunullah away and took him to Oğuz’s home. Two days later we were questioned by the military command as to what we were doing among the communists of Konya.

People spoke of twenty seven years of dictatorship about the People’s Republican Party (CHP) rule. Nazım Hikmet had been thrown into prison. Sabahattin Ali had been assassinated in Thrace. It was truly a terrible period; but, what   followed it was a period unmatched in oppression. The Democratic Party which took over the Country’s rule from the People’s Republican Party was oppressing the intellectuals even more, pressing them to leave just the residue. The difficult situation in big cities like İstanbul and Ankara becomes thousand times more so in small rural towns like Konya and Sivas. In such towns of no more than the size of a palm, people around one grow scarce. The opportunity to publish does not exist. Your writings are not published and those that get published are not read by anyone. So you eventually dry up. At most, you lock up your essence like the ochre colored grain of the steppe and remain short and stout. Never the less, Oğuz Tansel managed to break up his husk and bloom under all that ice cold climate.

The Harvest Waiting to be Winnowed  was followed by the poetry volume Gözünü Sevdiğim  and the folk tales which he rewrote in a poetry like narrative style. Volumes of folk tales followed one another. He had recorded those folk tales in yet untapped areas. He was a student of Prof. Pertev Boratav and he knew how to go about it. I am not sure if all his works have been published and came into day light. For those which have been published,  (Üç Kızlar, Altı Kardeşler, Yedi Devler, Al’lı ile Fırfırı, Mavi Gelin) he was given the Children’s Literature Award by the Society of the Turkish Language. Furthermore, Oğuz –jointly with Metin Eloğlu- rewrote the Bektashi Dervish anecdotes in poetry form. Have people been sufficiently aware of those poems each of which stands like a sculpture by Rodin?

Like all other basic substructure in Turkey, the climate and the medium of art and philosophy is degenerate. The situation in the area of literature is even more so. While the establishment oppresses you with a Medieval understanding, the collection of authors and poets in the large cities praise only one another and ignore their colleagues in the periphery.  To put it shortly, Turkey, instead of hugging and caring for such diligent sons, oppresses them as much as it can. Hans Christian Andersen  of Denmark too, was a poet to start with. Great poets, simultaneously write plays, folk tales and do translation too. It is a tradition. In such works, the language blooms even more, just as it does in poetry. But with us it is almost a tradition to tread on flowers. In a society under pretense of capitalism, a human being can only flourish so much. Those flourishing the best suffer in prisons and experience misery in courts, get assassinated. The end result is naught.

Should one be so pessimistic? Definitely no. But this is the reality. Nevertheless, under these conditions, the commoner which has been left in darkness and more oppressed than his poets, stands together with his poets. However, this solidarity usually occurs after it is too late as in the Madımak Hotel fire in Sivas.

Speaking of Oğuz’s endeavors, one should also speak of his students. Just as the saying goes, “do good or service and throw it in the sea; if, the fish is oblivious of it, the deity will not be,” I say, “throw it in the sea; the commoner shall give you credit for it.”  His students whom Oğuz loves regardless of all conditions are also loved by the people too. I believe Oğuz was one of those who had come a bit early to the world. I remember a trip we had together to the Kazdağı mountains: It was in that medium of freedom that he bloomed like prolific, multilayered blackish red roses. In the mountains he turned into a totally different person among the medium of legends. His loss was experienced silently, without echoes in Turkey. We are going to realize the value of intellectuals   like him much later, I believe.