Necati Cumali

Necati Cumalı was a Turkish writer and poet who was born in Florina, Greece to a Turkish family. His family had settled in Urla near İzmir in the framework of the 1923 agreement for the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. He grew up in Urla and did his studies in İzmir. He started his law education at İstanbul University then completed it in the Law School of the University of Ankara. He started writing poetry while he was still a student and his poems were published as of early 1940s in such prominent Turkish literary periodicals as Varlık and Servet-i Fünun. Toward the end of that decade, while he was doing his military service, he also started writing short stories in which the profound influence of another important Turkish writer, Sabahattin Ali, could be felt. His themes of social consciousness and his vivid portrayal of women in his works were particularly noted. He was sometimes cited in the same title as other "writers of the left", although he never actively engaged in political issues. He became a professional writer in 1959. He wrote about 15 books of poetry, and that many books of short-stories and novels, as well as plays. One of his best known works is the short-novel, "Dry Summer" (Susuz Yaz), adapted by the film director Metin Erksan to cinema in 1964, starring Hülya Koçyiğit and Erol Taş, and which won the Golden Bear award in Berlin Film Festival that year. Another famous novel by Necati Cumalı is "Devastated Hills: Macedonia 1900" (Viran Dağlar: Makedonya 1900), where he relates the history of his own family which descended from a long line of Turkish Beys (Cuma Beyleri, "the Beys of Djuma"), with the turmoil in the Balkans providing the background. Necati Cumalı died of liver cancer on 10 January 2001 in Istanbul three days before his 80th birthday. His valuable collection of books was donated to Koç University after his death. In 2002 a sculpture of Necati Cumali by the sculptor Gürdal Duyar was erected in the Şairler Sofası Park, a park in the Vişnezade neighborhood of Beşiktaş, Istanbul.