Turgut Uyar (1927–1985), a poet. He is regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Second New poetry movement. In his poems, he explored individual and social themes through a unique linguistic and formal approach.

Life and Education

Turgut Uyar was born on 4 April 1927 in Ankara. He was the fifth of six children of Hayri Bey and Fatma Hanım. His father, Hayri Bey, was a map captain in the military. As a result, Uyar spent his childhood in various cities. Due to financial difficulties, he continued his education in military schools. In 1946 he graduated from Bursa Military Işıklar High School and enrolled in the Military Officers School for higher education.

Turgut Uyar - GZT

Career and Civil Service Years

Uyar began his civil service career in the Posof district of Kars. He later served in the Terme district of Samsun. In 1954 he was transferred to Ankara. He voluntarily left his position as a military officer in 1958 and began working at the Ankara branch of Türkiye Selüloz ve Kâğıt Industry, where he remained until his retirement in 1967. After retirement he moved to Istanbul and lived there until the end of his life.

Personal Life

In 1947, while studying at the Military Officers School, Uyar married Yezdan Şener. They had three children: Semiramis, Şeyda and Tunga. The couple divorced in 1966 following marital difficulties.

In 1969 Turgut Uyar married Tomris Uyar, a poet in her own right. Their marriage produced one son, Hayri Turgut. This union was also notable as an intellectual partnership. The couple were remembered as a mutually supportive literary pair. Their marriage lasted until Turgut Uyar’s death in 1985.

Literary Identity

Turgut Uyar began his poetic career under the influence of the Garip movement but gradually shifted toward individualistic and abstract expressions, becoming one of the foremost figures of the Second New movement. From the 1950s onward he moved away from conventional poetic structures and developed a layered, image-rich style of expression.

In his poetry he addressed the inner world of the individual, alienation, the constraints of life and societal contradictions. His language was fluid, non-linear and abstract, fragmenting traditional usual meaning and associations to create new contexts.

Turgut Uyar’s interest in poetry dates back to his childhood. His first poem, “Yâd,” was published in 1947 in the journal Yedigün. His first major recognition came in 1948 when he won second prize in a poetry competition opened by Source journal with his poem “Supply-ı Hal”. He received high praise from juror Nurullah Ataç and attracted considerable attention. This success encouraged him to pursue poetry more seriously.

Turgut Uyar - GZT

Uyar’s literary life can be divided into distinct periods. His earliest works, Arz-ı Hal (1949) and Türkiyem (1952), reflect the influence of Garip poetry. During this period he portrayed the lives and struggles of ordinary people in a simple, unadorned language, addressing themes such as love, separation, death and others.

The most significant turning point in Turgut Uyar’s poetry came with the publication of Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı in 1959. This book is one of the foundational works of the Second New movement. After moving to Ankara, the social and personal conflicts he experienced deeply influenced his poetry, bringing to the fore the loneliness and tragedy of urban life. In this volume he transformed poetic language, introducing formal innovations and surreal elements.

In his 1962 collection Tütünler Islak, he further advanced his formal and semantic explorations, rendering his imagery more complex. In 1968 he published Her Pazartesi, and in 1970 he released Divan, a work drawing on the forms and genres of classical Ottoman poetry. In this volume he fused traditional divan poetic structures with modern meanings.

In Toplandılar (1974) and Kayayı Delen İncir (1982), Uyar turned toward greater simplicity in his poetry, reducing his use of imagery and adopting a more direct mode of expression.

Uyar’s poems have been translated into many languages, including English, French and Serbian.

Inci Enginün wrote about Turgut Uyar: “Turgut Uyar, who received military training and served as an officer, attracted Nurullah Ataç’s attention in his youth through his poetry, engaged deeply with its subject and form, and entered the ranks of the pioneering poets of the Second New. (...) Uyar’s poetry, like a persistent thread in Turkish poetry, centers on ‘loneliness.’ The poet reaches out to ordinary people, as if to share their solitude.”^【1】

Works

Poetry

Arz-ı Hal (1949)

Türkiyem (1952)

Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı (1959)

Tütünler Islak (1962)

Her Pazartesi (1968)

Divan (1970)

Toplandılar (1974)

Kayayı Delen İncir (1982)

Büyük Saat (Complete Poems, 1984)

Critical and Translation Works

In addition to poetry, Turgut Uyar wrote essays and criticism on literature. He compiled his reflections on poetry under the title Bir Şiirden. The first edition, published in 1983, examines 21 poets through individual poems.

In 1974 he translated the Roman thinker and poet Lucretius’s work De Rerum Natura into Turkish together with his wife Tomris Uyar.

Awards

Throughout his literary career, Uyar received numerous awards:

Yeditepe Poetry Prize for Tütünler Islak (1963),

Turkish Language Association Translation Award for the translation of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura with Tomris Uyar (1975),

Behçet Necatigil Poetry Prize for Kayayı Delen İncir (1983),

Sedat Simavi Foundation Literature Prize for the collected poems in Büyük Saat (1984).

Turgut Uyar - GZT

Death

Turgut Uyar died on 22 August 1985 in Istanbul at the age of 58 following complications from cirrhosis. He was buried at Aşiyan Cemetery. In Turkish literature, particularly within the Second New movement, he occupies an important place as a poet whose distinctive language and innovative modes of expression transformed poetic expression.