Sırrî Hanım

One of the few women poets in the Diwan tradition, Sırrî Hanım¹ was born in Diyarbakır in 1814. Her name at birth was Rahile. Her mother Fatma Hanım, a descendant of the Sheikhzadeh family, and her father Ahmed Bey paid the utmost attention to the education of Rahile and their other daughter Khadija İffet, who also became a poet. After learning Arabic and Farsi, Sırrî Hanım delved deep into Arabic and Persian literature.

Sırrî Hanım married Taher Aghazadeh Bekir Bey, with whom she had two sons named Muhammed Amin and Rifat, and a daughter named Nihal. The untimely death of a child – Nihal according to some sources, and Rifat according to others – took a heavy toll on the poet, and this tragedy led her to write the famous marsiya (elegy) by which she is known.

My back turned on this mortal world, my beloved I forswear
Unknowing of compassion, too callous at heart to bear
Fate denies me my heart’s desire, my world in despair
Torn from my precious darling, I live a nightmare
          My soul a pool of blood like a crimson rosebud
          Unwilling to blossom, though a thousand springs may come

For a while after 1873, Sırrî Hanım resided in Yusuf Kamil Pasha’s mansion in Istanbul, himself an important representative of Tanzimat era literature who was responsible for the first translation of a novel (Telemachus, François Fénelon) into Turkish. In this period, she became more established under Yusuf Kamil Pasha’s patronage. Although it is known that she had diwans (collections of poetry) in Farsi and Turkish, these works are lost to us. All that remains is a “diwanche” or “divançe” (mini, incomplete diwan) consisting of poems Ali Amiri has been able to track down. Some of her poems were also featured in Ziya Pasha’s anthology Harabat. Sırrî Hanım passed away in 1877.

¹ Translator’s note: ‘Hanım’ is a respectful term of address added after women’s names in Turkish, meaning ‘lady’, ‘madam’ – the male equivalent of which is ‘bey’.

Ekrem Cemilpaşa

Born in Diyarbakır in 1891, Ekrem Cemilpaşa belonged to one of the prominent families of the city – the Cemilpaşazades. After finishing the Diyarbekir Military Junior High School (1908) and Galatasaray High School (1912) he joined the membership of the newly founded Kürt Talebe-Hêvî Cemiyeti (Kurdish Students’ Hope Society), the first Kurdish students’ organization in history.

World War 1 broke out while he was away at university in Lausanne, Switzerland, causing him to cut his education short and return home. He fought in Gallipoli and was then sent to the Eastern front, where he was wounded. He served as second-in-command of a military base in Diyarbakır and as cipher officer to Mustafa Kemal. He was at the Palestinian front when the war ended, after which he came back to his city. He spearheaded the founding of the Kürt Teali Cemiyeti (Society for the Rise of Kurdistan) in 1918, and the Kürt Teşkilat-ı İçtimaiye Cemiyeti (Kurdish Society for Social Organization) in 1920 that aimed to create an independent state in his region. Though informants turned him in while he was on visits in Anatolia for this work, he was acquitted of all changes. Later on, however, he was arrested during the Sheikh Said Rebellion and sent to the Kastamonu Prison, from where he was transferred to Istanbul in 1928. He crossed over to Syria in 1929, where his life in exile in Damascus – that was to last until his death in 1974 – began. His life was one marked by struggle at every turn.

Cemilpaşa’s Muhtasar Hayatım (A Brief Account of My Life) was printed by Beybun Publishing in 1992. Among his works are: Hînkerê Zimanê Kurdî, Rehberê Ziman ê Her Du Kurdî: Kurmancî, Babanî (Kurdish Language Education, Guidebook for Both of the Two Kurdish Dialects: Kurmanji and Babani,1921), and Dîroka Kurdistan Bi Kurtebirî (A Short History of Kurdistan, 1972). Although Cemilpaşa is mostly known as a political personage, his intellectual pursuits stemming from this political position gave him an important standing in the cultural life of Diyarbakır and in Kurdish culture in general. Along with his widely-appreciated contributions as a historian, Cemilpaşa also wrote profusely in the cultural domain with his dedication to language. He is known to have written poetry as well.

The Cemilpaşazades were influential in the cultural life of the city as a family. Many of their members, with Ekrem and Kadri Cemilpaşa as primary examples, received their early education in the family mansion, from notable scholars of the city. They crowned this with a higher education abroad, applying the learning they acquired to regional politics, as well as in their contributions to the arts and culture of the city, which left a mark that lasted over generations.

Fatma Bacı

One of the few woman saz poets (poet-singer) in history, Fatma Bacı’s¹ birth name and year remain a mystery. She is a member of the Dalkabak family of Diyarbakır. What has reached our day from her works are an epic/saga, a lament and a lullaby. Her Karakış Destanı (Saga of the Dead of Winter) on the arduous winter of 1886-87 also serves as an important document as to how a certain period was experienced in the urban history of Diyarbakır.

In the calendar year three hundred and two
Frozen fruits on trees, a cold so blue
Hens and roosters dying in the coop
Everyone wearing boot instead of shoe
O Lord! Deliver us from this cold.

(…)

The Tigris River ‘tis but a chunk of ice
Rumi’s night of reunion went by with rites
Everywhere they promised ‘twould suffice
But wood and coal’s never a cheap price
O Lord! Deliver us from this cold.

The date of Fatma Bacı’s death is also unclear, yet she is thought to have passed away sometime in the years 1895, 1896 or 1897.

¹ t.n. Though ‘bacı’ means ‘sister’ in Turkish, it is also added to women’s names even when they aren’t necessarily relatives to indicate a sense of familial respect.

Melek Tigrel

Born in 1919, poet Melek Tigrel is the daughter of prominent politician İhsan Hamid Bey of the Tigrels, one of the city’s long-standing families. She started her studies in Diyarbakır and continued in Istanbul where her family settled at a later date. Her interest in literature was already apparent in high school, where she would write poems. She had sent some of these in letters to Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı, whom she had met through their families’ connection. From letters that Tarancı wrote to Ziya Osman Saba in 1942, it was clear that their communication wasn’t limited to this, and that in fact Tarancı had been influential in Tigrel’s choice of enrolling in the Istanbul University Department of French Language and Literature. Thought to have much in common and much to share, these two poets were encouraged by their families to marry. Tarancı’s rising excitement was evident from his letters to Saba:

“Her demeanor, her conduct, the way she speaks, her sense of ease coming from a certain gravitas, and most of all the bold interest she showed me simply enchanted me. If you were there, you would most certainly have said, Cahit is about to soar with delight. Yes, indeed he is over the moon, high as a kite… She read me some of her poems, spoke about books she had read, listened to my poetry, even took the time to transcribe some of them. (…) She recited some of her prose as well, all from memory. Let me give you a line of hers I liked: ‘So deep inside of me are you that I catch myself about to call you ‘me’ instead of ‘you’!’”

Tarancı also supported Tigrel in getting her poems published, some of which later appeared in certain issues of the Varlık magazine. With a year left to her graduation from university, Tigrel married Muammer Öktem, a foreign trade consultant working in the Ministry of Trade. They moved to Rome for his job.

Tigrel’s correspondence with her relative Faik Ali Ozansoy¹ provides a crucial insight into the sociocultural life and literary gathering places of the period. Her poem “Yankı” (“Echo”) was published in the Anthologie de la Poésie Féminine Mondiale’de (World Anthology of Women’s Poetry) in Paris in 1973. Investigative writer from Diyarbakır Reşit İskenderoğlu’s 1995 book titled Zarif Bir Şaire (An Elegant Poetess) offers information on Tigrel’s family as it does on her poetry and life.

¹ Selahattin Çitçi (ed.), Hanım Kızım Kıymetli Şairem [Dear Daughter Precious Poetess], Akademi Titiz Yayınları, 2018.

İhsan Fikret Biçici

One of the first to come to mind when speaking of the poets of Diyarbakır, İhsan Fikret Biçici was born in 1936. He studied law. His interest in literature formed while he was yet a student, and his first poems and writings were published in the Çizgi magazine in 1953. He worked with Ahmed Arif at the copy-editing desk of the Öncü newspaper. His poems were published in many arts and culture magazines while he worked as a lawyer, and he never severed his close ties particularly with Diyarbakır-based magazines such as Yaratım, Palto, and Pitoresk up to his dying day. He was on the inside team of the magazine Amida, and also served as chair of the Diyarbakır Poets and Writers Association (Diyarbakır Şair ve Yazarlar Derneği) founded after 1980 and the Diyarbakır Association for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets (Diyarbakır Kültür Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Derneği – DKVD).

Biçici wrote poems that circulated widely in Diyarbakır and were on everyone’s tongue. Though his love for Diyarbakır shines through in many of his verses he was more than a simple town poet. He was a master at bringing his local context into the universal sphere of poetry. Here is what he said in an interview with Suzan Samancı,¹ also a poet and writer from Diyarbakır:

“I’ve always been drawn to poems marked by love and beauty rather than to poets themselves. To me, it doesn’t matter which poet that poem may belong to. A lovely evening, a calm and quiet night, a flower, a tree, a warm glance, a trustworthy friend’s hand – these are what touch me deeply, and poems in which these are reflected of course. Perhaps for this reason I’ve never been able to bear animosity, never wished ill on someone, even if they did on me. I never tried to emulate another poet – nor did I have the desire to.”

İhsan Fikret Biçici was one of the main characters of the novel Ben û Sen.² He passed away in 2013. His three books of poetry, Şıpka’ya Mektuplar (Letters to Şıpka) (1997), Vay Limin (Woe is Me) (1997), Adınla Vurulup Ölmek (Shot Dead by Your Name) (2004) were compiled into one in his Bütün Şiirleri (Collected Poems).³ DİTAV (Diyarbakır Tanıtma, Kültür ve Yardımlaşma Vakfı / Foundation for Culture, Cooperation and the Promotion of Diyarbakır) started granting poetry awards in İhsan Fikret Biçici’s name in 2022.

¹ Gündem, 19 September 1997.
² Ahmet Çakmak, İletişim Yayınları, 2019.
³ Öncü Yayınları, 2009.

Veysel Öngören

Born in 1931 in the village of Hacikan in Diyarbakır’s Bismil district, poet and writer Veysel Öngören is the older brother of caricaturist-writer Ferit Öngören and writer, actor and director Vasıf Öngören. Öngören completed the greater part of his studies in Kütahya and Afyon, where his family had been resettled due to antagonisms between Kurdish tribes in the region. He dropped out of the Istanbul University Faculty of Literature, Department of Turkish Language and Literature where he was studying to return to Diyarbakır and spent the latter half of the 1950s in his village. In 1959, he entered the Ankara University Faculty of Language, History and Geography, Department of Philosophy, from where he eventually graduated. His home destination was once again Diyarbakır.

Öngören worked in the Vatan newspaper and the TRT Foreign News Service, but literature was always his main passion and occupation throughout his life. He burned all the poems he wrote until the age of thirty. In 1960, he entered the literary world with writings he published in the Dost magazine and later Yeni Ufuklar magazine in Ankara. His first book of poetry was published in 1979. Along with poetry, he continued writing essays on Turkish literature as well.

He worked for while in the management of Ankara Birliği Sahnesi (Ankara Union Theater), founded by his brother Vasıf Öngören. Veysel Öngören then became artistic director of the Diyarbakır City Theater, serving here from the early 1990s until his death. Countless actors achieved success in theater and cinema with the training they received from him. He had a way of teaching you about “life” itself, alongside his areas of formal education such as aesthetics and philosophy.

Öngören passed away in 1998 in his village where he had been farming. The words “child, flower, window” from a poem of his are indeed a perfect summary of his life.

Poetry books: Remo ve Salo (Remo and Salo) (Türkiye Yazıları, 1979), Vay Gözüm (Oh, My Dear) (Türkiye Yazıları, 1981), Remtelebe (Türkiye Yazıları, 1982), Koca Ülke (Big Old Country) (Türkiye Yazıları, 1983), Arif’in Kızı (Arif’s Daughter) (Memleket Yayınları, 1987)

Prose: Şiir ve Yenilik (Poetry and Novelty) (Broy Yayınları, 1997)