Nihad Sâmi Banarlı
Ahmet Kabaklı, a journalist and writer, carried out his literary activities through the Turkish Literary Society (1972), of which he was one of the founding figures. He published the magazine Turkish Literature as the publication of that society in January 1972, and pioneered the establishment of the Turkish Literature Foundation in 1978. He remained the chairman of that foundation until the end of his life. Kabaklı had a polemical style and was very much identified with the newspaper Tercüman as the public voice of the conservative Anatolian people. The same polemical drive can also be observed in his more literary writings. As a cultural nationalist, he always defended the idea of a cultural continuity. His major work, Turkish Literature, which was written from a nationalist-conservative point of view, was born out of his lecture notes at the Çapa Education Institute, where he taught literature. Despite the lack of an assertive claim –at least in appearance-, this work is both a sort of literary history -for it comprises the old times of our literature too-, and a wide anthology –since it includes a bundle of carefully selected literary texts-. Especially the last two volumes of this book is of great significance, since it necessitates a wide array of reading activity that can be undertaken by only a few literary historians and critics.
ŞEYMA GÜNGÖR
