Aziz Nesin
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Aziz Nesin (1915-1995) has published over one hundred books. He is a popular Turkish humorist. His birth name was Mehmet Nusret.
After serving as a career officer for several years, he became the editor of a series of satirical periodicals with a socialist slant. He was jailed several times for his political views. Nesin provided a strong indictment of the oppression and brutalization of the common man. He satirized bureaucracy and exposed economic inequities in stories that effectively combine local color and universal truths. Aziz Nesin has been presented with numerous awards in Turkey, Italy, Bulgaria and the former Soviet Union. His works have been translated into over thirty languages.
In 1972, he founded the Nesin Foundation. The purpose of the Nesin Foundation is to take, each year, four poor and destitute children into the Foundation's home and provide every necessity - shelter, education and training, starting from elementary school - until they complete high school, a trade school, or until they acquire a vocation. Aziz Nesin has donated, gratis, to the Nesin Foundation his copyrights in their entirety for all his works in Turkey or other countries, including: all of his published books, all plays to be staged, all copyrights for films, and all his works performed or used in radio or television.
Aziz Nesin was a political activist. After the military coup led by Kenan Evren in 1980, the entire country, including intellectuals, were under strong opression. Aziz Nesin led a number of intellectuals to an oppositionary action against the military government, known as "Aydınlar Dilekçesi" (Petition of Intellectuals). In the last years of his life, he devoted himself to fight against ignorance and religious fundamentalism.
He championed free speech, especially the right to criticize Islam without compromise. In early 1990's he started a translation of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, Satanic Verses. This made him a target for radical islamist organizations who were gaining popularity throughout Turkey. On July 2nd, 1993 while attending a cultural festival in eastern Anatolian city of Sivas a big mob organized by radical islamists gathered around the Madimak Hotel at which he was staying, calling for the Islamic Law and death to infidels. After hours of siege to the hotel and failure of police and military to intervene, the mob set the hotel on fire. After flames took over several of the lower levels of the hotel, the firefighter trucks managed to get close to the Hotel and Aziz Nesin and many guests of the hotel escaped with their lives. However not everyone was so lucky and 37 people staying at the Madimak Hotel lost their lives in the fire that day. This event was one of the most tragic assault on free speech and human rights in recent turkish history and it depened the rift between religious and secular minded people in Turkey.
After his death, his body was buried into an unknown location in the land of Nesin Foundation without any ceremony, as suggested by his will.
External links
- Aziz Nesin Foundation (http://www.nesinvakfi.org/). In Turkish
- Autobiography (http://menic.utexas.edu/menic/cmes/pub/iboy/iboy.html) by Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin
- Poems of Aziz Nesin (http://www.turkishclass.com/poems_1_averageVisitor_author_Aziz%20Nesin) Poems of Aziz Nesin, translated into Englishde:Aziz Nesin