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MEHMET CINARLI Turkish poet and writer

Born in 1925, Ermenek, Turkey, died in Ankara, August 19, 1999. He graduated from the Political Sciences Faculty (which dates back to 1856) of Ankara University in 1948. He started working as a civil servant with the Ministry of Finance. Later, in 1967 he was chosen by the Parliament to be a member of the Court of Account. In 1981, after 14 years, he was elected to be a judge of the Supreme Court. He retired from this position in 1990.

He is one of the founders of Hisar (Fortress) periodical, which is one of the longest published periodicals of Turkey. Hisar was published for 30 years and Cinarli was always one of the responsible owners and publisher. All through those years Hisar was published without compromising on principles. It became a "fortress" for the poets and writers who support the new without giving up the ties with the traditional. They were called as "Hisarcılar"

Cinarli used prosodical meter and wrote verse expertly according to this form without compromising content. After Mehmet Akif and Yahya Kemal, he is considered as one of the last prosodists. In their original Turkish, most of his poems sound musical.

In 1977, he was invited by the Egyptian government to visit Cairo. In 1980, he represented Turkey in the international poetry festival in Struga, former Yugoslavia.

Some of his poems have been translated into English, French, German and Macedonian. Prominent Turkish composers such as Rüşdü Şardağ, Bilge Özgen, Cinuşen Tanrıkorur and Gültekin Çeki melodized his poems. The following poem of Mehmet Cinarli was translated by Talat Sait Halman:

They

Patiently, we stood still, but they forced us to prate

The deeper was our love the more taught us hate.

In one fell swoop, they became the prophets of the land,

And heaped sins upon us as we bowed to our fate.

With a thousand deceits they killed respect and faith,

Coerced us to doubt, to bear malice, to negate.

While hell’s crucibles were raging in the open,

They told us stories about peace and Heaven’s gate.

Without us they lacked the strength to stand on their feet,

Usurping our power, they crushed us with their weight.

(Translated by Talat Sait Halman, 101Poems by 101Poets An Anthology of Turkish Poetry)