Nazım Hikmet Ran (1902-1963)

Nazım Hikmet, the famous poet, novelist and writer of Turkish literature, was born on January 15, 1902 in Thessaloniki. His father is Hikmet Nazım Bey, one of the general managers of the Press, the son of Sivas Governor Poet Mehmet Nazım Pasha, and his mother is the painter Ayşe Celile Hanım. He completed his primary education at Taş Mektep in Göztepe, and after studying at Galatasaray High School for a while, he transferred to Nişantaşı Sultanisi. He was enrolled in the Heybeliada Naval School in 1917, and after studying there for five years, he was dismissed from military service by the Naval School Command when it was understood that he could not recover from the pleurisy (pleurisy) disease he had contracted. In 1921, he went to Ankara via İnebolu with his friends Vâlâ Nurettin, Yusuf Ziya Ortaç and Faruk Nâfız Çamlıbel to participate in the War of Independence, and was introduced to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk by İsmail Fazıl Pasha. Following Atatürk's advice, "Some young people choose to write poems without a subject in order to be modern, I advise you to write poems with a purpose", he was not sent to the front and was appointed as a teacher in Bolu Sultanisi Partial Primary School with a salary of 30 lira. His friend Vâlâ Nurettin was appointed as a French teacher at the same school with a salary of 56 liras.


Nazım Hikmet, who resigned from teaching because he was affected by the separation of his parents, left Bolu and went to Moscow via Trabzon and Batumi with Vala Nurettin. After becoming a member of the Communist Party in Batumi, he worked in the literary department of the Red Union newspaper. While he was studying in the French department of the Eastern Institute of Communism (KUTV) in Moscow, he was also interested in sociology, politology, constructivism and art history, met the futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, took part in cultural activities and married Nüzhet Hanım. He attended many of Trotsky's speeches as a listener, wrote down his impressions about him, and wrote poems about the Red Army Commander. He returned to Turkey in 1924 to attend the recovery and restructuring congress of the Communist Party of Turkey, and attended the party's congress held in Istanbul on January 1, 1925 as a KUTV delegate. He was assigned to Izmir in the same year for intra-party training and organization activities. When he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in absentia by the Ankara Independence Court for "violating the peace, public order and social order of the country" as the surveillance of communist activities and publications by the security forces intensified, he fled to Moscow again and married Lena Yurchenko there. When he returned to Turkey, taking advantage of the Amnesty Law enacted in 1928, he was sentenced to three months by the Ankara High Criminal Court for crossing the border without a passport and was released after being detained for a while in Istanbul. The case of Nazım Hikmet, who was taken to court on the grounds that he made communist propaganda in some of the poems and poems he wrote in 1931 (Jokond ile Si-ya-u, Varan 3, The City That Lost Its Voice), was heard in the 2nd Criminal Court on 7 May 1931, and the Prosecutor's Office was on 11 May. He was acquitted in accordance with his request. In 1933, as a result of an investigation conducted on the grounds that some of the poems in his poetry book "Telegram Coming in the Night" provoked the public to communism, a lawsuit was filed against him and the book was confiscated. Nazım Hikmet, who could not go to court due to his illness and sent a report, was arrested and sent to prison on 18 March 1933, after being heard by the 7th Inquiry Judge, when he recovered. Since Nazım Hikmet was sent to Bursa with those arrested for Communist activities, the trials continued there. On July 29, it was announced that he was sentenced to 6 months and 3 days in prison in the case filed against him on the grounds that he made communist propaganda in his work called The Telegraph From Night, and in August, he was sentenced to 1 year in prison, a fine of 200 liras and a fine of 200 liras due to the insult case filed against him by former Istanbul Deputy Süreyya Pasha. He was sentenced to pay compensation of 500 liras. On January 31, 1934, the verdict in the trials for the crime of Communism was announced. Although Nazım Hikmet, along with the five people tried in this case, was sentenced to 5 years of hard prison, he was granted the benefit of the Amnesty Law. After regaining his freedom, he took an important step in his private life and officially married Piraye Altınoğlu on January 31, 1935 and took the surname "Ran".


Nazım Hikmet's prison life, which would last approximately 15 years, began after the trials regarding the Military Academy and Navy cases. In the case he was tried in 1938 for allegedly giving directives on how to spread communism in the army so that the principles of socialism would spread in the army and the country would turn into a communist state through a revolutionary movement, he was sentenced to 15 years of heavy prison in the case he was tried in 1938, and in the Navy Case held on August 29, 1938, he was sentenced to "Erkin Ship". He was sentenced to 13 years and 4 months in prison for inciting military rebellion, for a total of 28 years and 4 months in prison. Following this decision, Nazım Hikmet decided to appeal to Atatürk. Nazım Hikmet wrote a letter with the title "To the High Floor of President Atatürk". In the letter, he stated that he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for allegedly inciting the Turkish army to rebellion, and that he was now accused of inciting the Turkish navy to rebellion. The full text of the letter is as follows: “I did not encourage military rebellion. I am not blind and I have a head that can understand every forward move you make and a heart that loves my country. I did not encourage military rebellion. My forehead is open before my country and you, the revolutionary. High military authorities, state and justice, petty bureaucrats are being deceived by the secret enemies of the regime. I did not encourage military rebellion. I am not a madman, a vagabond, a reactionary, a sellout, a traitor to the revolution and my homeland, so that I can think about this for a moment. I did not encourage military rebellion. I am a devoted poet of the Turkish language, which is your work and which is dear to you. I could have been patient enough to bear the years of imprisonment that were and will be imposed on me. Among your great works, I would not want to concern you with the disaster of a Turkish poet. Forgive me. If I kept you busy with myself for a moment, it is because I believe that this mark of 'inciting the soldiers of the revolution to revolt', which is wanted to be put on my forehead, can only be erased with your hands. You are the most revolutionary leader I can turn to. I want justice from Kemalism and you. I swear to the Turkish Revolution and to you that I am innocent. Nazım Hikmet Ran”. Nazım Hikmet's long prison life exhausted him and he was not freed with the amnesty he expected in the 12th year of his captivity. Intensive efforts were made both at home and abroad, especially in 1949-1950, to release him from prison. Local and foreign intellectuals, writers, democratic organizations, politicians and foreign writers' unions participated in this campaign. Many committees were established abroad to save the poet Nazım, protests were organized and publications were made about him. Protests were held in the USA, England, France, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, India, Iraq, Hungary, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. Many well-known intellectuals and writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Prévert, Raymond Queneau, Albert Camus, Oskar Daviço, Jеаn Paul Sartre also participated in these protests. These campaigns reached their peak in Turkey in 1950, but Nazım, who lost hope that justice would be served and would be forgiven again, started a hunger strike that lasted 18 days, despite his poor health. Nazım's hunger strike had great repercussions around the world, protest telegrams were sent to the Turkish government from 22 countries on May 15, 1950, articles about the hunger strike were published in many newspapers, famous poets wrote poems, and demonstrations were held in front of the embassies in Turkey. Women who supported Nazım went door to door and collected signatures from well-known intellectuals. Orhan Veli, Oktay Rıfat and Melih Cevdet went on a three-day hunger strike in support of Nazım. Despite her poor eyesight and old age, Nazım's mother, Celile Hanım, collected signatures on the Golden Horn Bridge with a cane and a banner in her hand to save her son. Turkish intellectuals, writers and artists showed great interest in these activities and requested, with their signatures, that the poet end his hunger strike and that the parliament enact a new amnesty law. These efforts yielded results and Nazım Hikmet's approximately 12-year imprisonment in Istanbul, Çankırı and Bursa prisons ended with the Amnesty Law enacted in 1950 and he was released.
After he regained his freedom, he divorced his wife Piraye Hanım and married his uncle's daughter Münevver Hanım. After the Secret Communist Party of Turkey decided that Nazım Hikmet would leave Turkey and work abroad, Refik Erduran, who was serving as a reserve officer in Tuzla, helped him escape to the Soviet Union on 17 June 1951 by boarding the Romanian-flagged Plekhanov freighter. . After reaching Moscow, he made speeches on Moscow Radio on July 20, 1951 and December 27, 1951, criticizing Turkish foreign policy, arguing that Turkey had become an American colony. On the grounds that he made statements against his country in Moscow, where he fled without a passport, and that he was performing the service provided by the Soviet Government with his publications aiming to spread communism by engaging in a wide propaganda campaign against Turkey's government and those in charge of the government in radio broadcasts, the notification to be issued for him to leave this service was also a He was stripped of his Turkish citizenship by the decision of the Council of Ministers on July 25, 1951, with the opinion that it would not benefit him. Four years after his escape from Turkey, Nazım applied to the Polish government for naturalization on September 28, 1955, on the grounds that he was expelled from Turkish citizenship and was stateless, and was granted citizenship with the surname "Borzecki" by the Polish state board on October 5, 1955. His great grandfather Konstanty Borzeçki (Mahmut Celaleddin Pasha) was born and raised in Poland, which was influential in his application for Polish citizenship. Nazım Hikmet used the surname Borzecki in the Soviet Union. Nazım Hikmet, who married Vera Tulyakova for the last time in 1959, died on June 3, 1963. His grave is in the Novodevich cemetery in the Russian Federation. When his last wife, Tulyakova, died on March 19, 2001, her body was cremated due to lack of space in the cemetery and her ashes were buried next to her husband. Turkish citizenship was restored to Nazım Hikmet, who spent nearly a quarter of his life in prisons in Turkey, after 58 years, with the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Turkey dated January 5, 2009.