Tevfik Fikret

Tevfik Fikret (born in Istanbul on 24 December 1867 – died there on 19 August 1915), the pen name of Mehmed Tevfik, was an Ottoman poet and educator considered the founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry and the leading figure of the Servet-i Fünun circle. ^{1 2} His volumes Rubab-ı Şikeste (1900) and Haluk'un Defteri (1911) and his open criticism of Abdul Hamid II's absolutism made him the immortalised "freedom poet". ¹

Fikret was born in Istanbul's Kadırga quarter; his father Hüseyin Efendi came from Çerkeş in Anatolia and served as an official and district governor, and his mother Hatice Refia Hanım, from a Greek family of Chios that had embraced Islam, died when he was young, while his father spent nineteen years in exile and died there. ^{2 1} He graduated from Galatasaray High School in 1888 as valedictorian, married his cousin Nazime in 1890 (their son Haluk was born in 1895), left Galatasaray in 1894, and from 1896 taught at Robert College on the Bosphorus until his death; the house he built on its campus, Aşiyan, is now his museum. ¹

In 1894 he published the magazine Malûmat, and in 1896 he became chief editor of Servet-i Fünun, working with Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, İsmail Safa, Mehmet Rauf and others until the government banned his works in 1901. ¹ After the 1908 revolution he published the newspaper Tanin in support of the CUP, but, disappointed, he returned as principal of Galatasaray; during the 31 March Incident of 1909 he chained himself to the school gates in protest and resigned the same day. ¹ He refused treatment for his diabetes and died of its complications in 1915, and was buried in the family plot at Eyüp. ¹

His books of verse are Rubab-ı Şikeste ("The Broken Lute", 1900), Tarih-i Kadim (1905), Haluk'un Defteri ("Haluk's Notebook", 1911, written for his son), Rubabın Cevabı (1911), Şermin (1914, for children) and the posthumous Son Şiirler (1952); his poem Sis ("Fog") denounced dictatorship and repressive politics. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

Fikret advocated free speech and constitutional government, was investigated by the police repeatedly for his views and associations, and saw his works censored in 1901; he wrote "my patrie is the world and my nation is humanity", and the sources credit him with influencing a generation of intellectuals, Mustafa Kemal among them. ^{1 2} He was also critical of Islamic conservatism and of nationalism. ¹

On his faith: no consulted source names a school for him, and Wikidata carries no religion value at all. ^{1 3} His criticism of Islamic conservatism is an intellectual position, not an affiliation; his mother's Greek conversion is family background; and his upbringing in a very religious environment, as the Turkish article puts it, is upbringing. ^{1 2} Under the doubt rule his faith is recorded as unknown. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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