Nâzım’s Struggle

Atilla COŞKUN

THE STRUGGLE OF NÂZIM

Nâzım is one of the greatest masters of Turkish. He is not only a poet, but a writer of stories, novels, dramas, and also journalist. In short, he is a versatile artist. He is one of the original personalities of literature world with his poems, novels, dramas & articles that amount to thousands of pages… He is an artist who can assemble our national identity with common values of publics & humanity. And he is a man of thought. He is a personality who produces conceptions on either art, philosophy, politics and also basic problems of humanity and our country. He is an evident school in our art of literature.

He acts with dialectic materialist philosophic concept in art. What determined his politic life is the communism conception. He made war during all his life for a classless regime in which there cannot be sovereignty of any class and clan. He believed that the world in which a human can improve himself freely can come true only with this kind of regime, and had struggled stubborn in this direction.

This belief and approach of him was clearly and definitely in contradiction with sovereign political conception and political regime of Turkey of the years he lived. It was undoubtedly difficult to realize his conception by saying his mind and could cause a lot of problems and various troubles. And for this reason, significant years of his short life passed in courts, prisons and migration. He was judged eleven times, convicted for totally thirtyfour years of prison punishment and lied in prisons sixteen years. Thirteen years of it is ceaseless. On the other hand, there exist thirteen immigration years which he called “difficult craft” and ended with his death…

Nâzım lived this suffering because of his thoughts and beliefs. This is undoubtedly a situation that a free and civilized society & a free person can never understand and embrace. But it was lived. Moreover in heaviest way…

Generally, accusations of being against political and social regime constituted the subject of all investigations and judgings. That is to say, Nâzım was in principle accused with objecting to the established regime. Those kinds of judgings, “political crime” as attorneys define, have peculiar attributes. “Political crime” and “political case” are mostly tied up to special legal arrangements in various legal systems. Political cases are constituted and result generally according to political predilection of power and political circumstances. An objective legality cannot be mentioned in this kind of cases. State-sovereign powers become effective and determinative on either dishing up, development and also results of these cases. This attribute was clearly lived also in the cases regarding Nâzım Hikmet. As clearly known, there proceeded against Nâzım with special endeavors of a lot of people and compasses in influential positions in state government.

For example, special endeavors of CHP’s (Republican People’s Party) reactionary compasses and of especially Minister of Internal Affairs proceeded against Nâzım regarding the poems he published at the beginning of 1930s. Similarly, either Army School and Navy lawsuits were filed by the attempts of fascist, panturkist environs and Chief of the General Staff, and after an under pressure judging, Nâzım’s being drawn to heaviest imprisonments was provided.

History of Humanity is a witness of this kind of enforcements in many instances. A lot of lawsuits such as the judgings in French Revolution Courts, Captain Dreyfus’s case, judging of Rosenbergs, judging of Dimitrof in 1930s and Moscow cases; and in our country, besides the cases in Liberation Courts, and Nâzım’s cases, Yassıada Case, judgings during 12 March and 12 September periods are the examples of such enforcements.

Doubtlessly, political lawsuits decrease in the rate of getting stronger of democracy and open society life. That is why the only way to back-progress this kind of lawsuits, or “political complots” in exact saying, is making the society more democratic, and besides, rendering the open social relations sovereign. The first step to take in this way is to handle these cases again and to quash the convictions.

I do not believe that the walk in democracy way will be able to be completed before meeting the requirement of handling this kind of cases in our history again. To consider & revise such “political complots” in our history including Nâzım’s cases are on the shoulders of next generations as an unavoidable mission.

(See: A.Coskun, By Political Living of Sections about Nazım’s Trials, Cem Publishing, 1989, p.62-63, 116 etc. and 157, etc.)

Translated From The Turkish By Tuğrul Asi Balkar