The Turkish revolutionary poet who survived a 28-year sentence with verse: giant of 20th-century letters who fused modernism and communism
“Bury me under a plane tree in any village cemetery in Anatolia” — his last wish, Moscow, 1963
Born in Ottoman Salonica, Nâzım Hikmet encountered Mayakovsky and Lenin in 1921 and became a lifelong communist, returning to Turkey to pioneer free verse and transform its poetry. From "835 Lines" to the 16,000-line epic "Human Landscapes from My Country," his vast body of work sang the lives of ordinary people and the War of Independence. A military court sentenced him to 28 years; he served 12, his imprisonment sparking a global campaign by Picasso, Sartre, and Robeson. After escaping to the USSR in 1951 he spent 13 years in the peace movement and anti-colonial solidarity. His poetry is translated into over 50 languages; UNESCO declared 2002 the 'Year of Nâzım Hikmet.'
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1913Publishes first poem, "Feryad-ı Vatan" (The Cry of the Homeland)
- 1918Graduates from the Ottoman Naval Academy; serves as naval officer
- 1921Travels to Anatolia to join the War of Independence; meets Mustafa Kemal
- 1922–1924Studies at KUTV, Moscow; joins the Bolshevik Party
- 1924–1925Returns to Turkey; edits Aydınlık, organ of the illegal Turkish Communist Party
- 1929Publishes "835 Lines" — revolutionises Turkish poetry with free verse
- 1933–1935First imprisonment for "Gece Gelen Telgraf"; writes "The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin" in Bursa Prison
- 1938–1950Sentenced to 28 years for inciting mutiny; serves 12 years across four prisons
- 1939–1960Writes 16,000-line epic "Human Landscapes from My Country" in prison
- 1950Amnestied after international campaign and hunger strike; awarded International Peace Prize
- 1951–1963Exiled in the USSR; Bureau member of World Peace Council, anti-colonial and anti-war activism
- 1963.6.3Dies of a heart attack at his dacha in Peredelkino; buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
The 1938 trials and the 1950 hunger strike
In 1938, a military court sentenced Hikmet to 15 years on a charge concerning propaganda among cadets at the Army War Academy; the Naval Command Military Court imposed a further 20 years on a separate charge. Reductions under the penal code brought the total to 28 years and four months. He served in prisons in Ankara, Çankırı, Bursa and Istanbul. In April 1950, he began a hunger strike in Bursa prison to protest Parliament’s failure to take up an amnesty bill. His health deteriorated; he suspended the strike and later resumed it. His mother, Celile, and poets Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet and Oktay Rifat also undertook hunger strikes in solidarity. The strike developed into a public campaign involving petitions and a magazine. The new government enacted a general amnesty law. Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism says he was released after 13 years in prison; the Nâzım Hikmet Culture and Arts Foundation records that he had served 12 years and seven months and was notified of his release on 15 July 1950. Some English-language accounts place his release with the end of the strike on 19 May, while Turkish accounts identify 19 May as the day he suspended the strike and 15 July as the actual release date. Sources thus also differ in describing his time in prison as 13 years or 12 years and seven months.
After release, Hikmet struggled to find work or publish. Following a military-service call-up in 1951, he feared remaining in Turkey while ill and left aboard a Romanian-flagged vessel crossing the Black Sea.