In loving memory of my mom’s cousin Şakir Derkut and all his friends who had envisioned a better future for our country!
By the time I was at university at the end of the 1980s, all leftist movements had been brutally wiped out in Turkey. 1980 military coup had either butchered or tortured leftist youth to erase them from Turkish history very similar to the experience of Chile at the time. Being a ‘child of the neoliberal times’ with its Thatchers and Reagans, I never came across a ‘leftist at heart’ during my university years. These were the initial years of the rising islamofascism that still governs Turkey today. The islamofascism that has crushed the ‘left’ and reduced it to its ashes.
But I also recall a beautiful song about Istanbul from the following years. A song that is asking Istanbul to wait for the victory of the masses; a song declaring that none of the agonies were endured in vain; a song declaring that Istanbul belonged to ‘them’. I was fascinated by the lyrics and I loved the melody without being quite sure what it referred to.
Vedat Turkali (1919-2016)
I later learned that the song was composed of the lyrics of a poem by a famous leftist writer and poet who suffered immense pain starting from his early youth due to his political views: Vedat Turkali. And I learnt that the lyrics of the song are echoes of the lines of this poet who was longing for Istanbul when he was a literature teacher in another city in the eastern part of Turkey. His poem was the expression of his longing for Istanbul and his wife. In the poem, he was keen on depicting the other side of Istanbul. That is a poor Istanbul with its ‘dirty children who sell toffee for a penny and sleep huddled together in Tophane’s dark alleyways’ and an Istanbul that needs to wait till the victory of those who want to build a just world just like himself.
The poem was written in 1944 and composed in 1987 by Onur Akin. The song was made popular by the famous singer Edip Akbayram.
Let’s lend an ear to the song with the lyrics of this famous poem by Vedat Turkali in which he says:
‘When the dawn winds blow in clusters
I think of you Istanbul from far away
Your ships that rend the blue canvas
Night in your Golden Horn of a thousand and one masts
Spring-tide in your islands
Sun on your Siileymaniye Mosque
Oh, city of our struggle, you are so comely!
And these days as I think of you from far away Istanbul
The darkness of your nights in my gaze
Your voice in my ears
And from far away
As I think of you from far away these days
You are now in the clutches of the forty thieves
…
We haven’t endured all these agonies for nothing Istanbul
Wait for us
Wait with your grand and serene Suleymaniye Mosque
With your parks bridges towers squares
Wait with your white-tabled cafes that lean against your blue seas
Wait for us
With your dirty children
Who sell toffee for a penny
And sleep huddled together in Tophane’s dark alleyways
Wait for us to march through your streets singing songs of victory
Wait for history’s dynamite
Wait for our fists to crush the empire of the forty thieves
Wait for those days to come Istanbul wait
You are worthy of us!
And a final tribute to the great master who left us these beautiful lines of poetry!
