Tuncay Opçin
I would like to begin this week’s column by sharing a small detail from my personal history. I was fifteen when I first became acquainted with Turkey’s Islamic circles. One of the most striking moments of that encounter came when I learned that Necip Fazıl Kısakürek was “one of us.” Somewhere in my subconscious, I had somehow acquired the notion that no famous person could possibly be “one of us.” I was an avid reader as a teenager and, of course, I had heard Necip Fazıl’s name. Discovering his Islamist identity delighted me—“shocked” me, to use today’s expression—and suddenly gave me a powerful intellectual and cultural point of reference.
Many years later, I experienced a similar surprise in a Sufi lodge located in an ordinary apartment. After Tuğrul İnançer became sheikh, the figures to whom Safer Dal had granted khilafa—spiritual authorization—left the Cerrahi Asitane one by one. Each was effectively a sheikh in his own right; they established their own lodges and continued their spiritual guidance. My path crossed with one of them, and because I enjoyed his conversations, I began attending his lodge.
Beside the lodge’s small tevhidhane, the room where the ritual remembrance of God was performed, there was a room reserved for conversation. Photographs hung on its walls, some of people I recognized and others I did not. I pointed to one of the unfamiliar faces and asked who it was.
It was Hüseyin Siret.
According to what I was told, Hüseyin Siret had been a disciple of Fahreddin Erenden and belonged to the Cerrahi order. Yet in my memory, Hüseyin Siret was primarily a fierce opponent of Sultan Abdülhamid II. His association with the Young Turks was so prominent in my mind that it had never occurred to me that he might also have had a deep religious and spiritual life.
Born in 1872, Hüseyin Siret spent much of his life in exile simply because of his political opposition. He first opposed Abdülhamid II and spent nine years in exile. Later, during the split within the Committee of Union and Progress, he sided with Prince Sabahaddin. That choice condemned him to another ten years abroad.
He had written poetry since his youth and eventually took his place among the poets of the Servet-i Fünun generation. He was known for the poems he wrote in exile, but the wider Turkish public knew him through the lyrics of a song that, for a time, was on everyone’s lips:
“My life has passed amid loves; today I have grown old,
With my hair turned pure white, today I have become restless.
With the joy of a new affection, today I have become spring once more.
I kissed the ground in his presence; today I have become one who wears the crown.”
The song, performed by Müzeyyen Senar in the Hüseyni makam, was composed by Şükrü Tunar. Yet the lyrics were, in fact, the story of Hüseyin Siret’s transformation and of finding his spiritual master.
His youth had been consumed by political struggle and exile, and it was only in middle age that he was finally able to establish a more settled life. Then, through a calling whose precise story we do not know, he became a disciple of Fahreddin Erenden. The poem was, in a sense, Hüseyin Siret’s spiritual autobiography. Its secret was revealed in the line:
“I kissed the ground in his presence; today I have become one who wears the crown.”
HIS LIFE CHANGED ON THE PRINCES’ ISLANDS
But Hüseyin Siret had other secrets he did not reveal himself. Those stories were told by his fellow initiates and passed down from one person to another.
As a young man, he had attended the Mülkiye, the Ottoman School of Political Sciences, but was forced to abandon his studies after suffering from pneumonia. He later attended a French school and became highly proficient in French. When he returned to Turkey after years of exile, this enabled him to find employment quickly in the young Republic, and he began teaching literature.
Whenever he had the opportunity, he would go to coffeehouses to meet friends. One day, while sitting in a café waiting for them, fate was about to open an unexpected door.
A man whom he disliked—and with whom he occasionally quarreled—entered the café.
Let İskender Cüre, known for his research on the history of Sufism, tell the rest:
“One day, while Hüseyin Siret was sitting in a coffeehouse, a man who was constantly at odds with him and who never missed an opportunity to provoke him verbally walked in. In a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, he said, ‘Şeddeli üdeba, so you’re here too?’ It was a mocking insult, roughly implying ‘a donkey pretending to be a man of letters.’ Hüseyin Siret, a refined man, responded in kind and delivered the perfect retort: ‘If the literary men of this nation are donkeys, then those who are not literary men are sons of donkeys.’”
But like any ordinary person, Hüseyin Siret was deeply disturbed by the encounter. He went directly to his sheikh, Fahreddin Erenden, and told him what had happened.
Erenden handed him the key to the tomb of Nureddin Cerrahi and told him to go and tell his troubles to the Pir himself.
Hüseyin Siret followed his sheikh’s instruction exactly. He went to the tomb of Nureddin Cerrahi and complained about what had happened.
A short time later, the man who had insulted him was killed by an accidental gunshot.
Shaken by what had happened, Hüseyin Siret expressed the experience in verse:
“I sanctify the mystery of Nureddin Cerrahi;
Whoever bows his face at the Pir’s threshold becomes complete on every side.
Such a sovereign fulfiller of needs is he
That whoever looks askance at even his humble dog shall be vanquished, though he be a king.”
This was not the only extraordinary event associated with Hüseyin Siret.
One day he went to the Princes’ Islands with his sheikh, Fahreddin Erenden. During their excursion, Erenden asked him:
“Siret Bey, you are indeed a fine poet. But why have you never written a poem about our Prophet?”
Embarrassed and saddened, Hüseyin Siret replied:
“I have never seen him, Efendim. How could I write about him?”
Fahreddin Erenden smiled.
“You will see him, and you will write, God willing.”
Early the following morning, Siret Bey appeared at Erenden’s home in Karagümrük. In his hand was a sheet of paper bearing the dedication:
“For the acceptance of my Sheikh Fahreddin Efendi Hazretleri, servant of Nureddin Cerrahi, pride of the pure, honor of the perfected ones. Hüseyin Hamdullah Siret.”
He handed the paper to Erenden and said:
“Here it is, my Sheikh. I saw him—and I wrote.”
HE COMPLETED THE SONG AFTER HIS DEATH
If I have not bored you yet, let us continue with another poet, another composer, and another song.
“That first glance that filled the heart can never be forgotten…”
“Sing me songs from a tale of love…”
“Even if there were poison in your glass, I would drink it—bring it to me…”
“My beloved has burned the corner of the letter again…”
“Why do you wander here weeping, troubled one?”
“Because you are gone, no flowers bloom in my garden…”
These were among the songs that defined an era and became what we would today call “hits.” Their composer was Erol Sayan.
Born on January 17, 1936, in Araç, Kastamonu, Sayan had been involved with music since his youth and composed his first works in his late teens. His passion for music naturally brought him into close contact with radio. But eventually he had to complete his military service, and when he returned, he faced a more mundane problem: finding a job.
Sayan was a young man of many talents, but if he wanted to establish a life for himself, he needed steady employment.
An acquaintance who knew of his musical abilities offered to introduce him to Reşide Bayar, the wife of President Celal Bayar. Reşide Bayar loved music, and the acquaintance told Sayan that if he composed a beautiful piece, he might arrange for her to be the first person to hear it.
Perhaps this powerful woman could also help him find employment.
Erol Sayan was mature enough to recognize the opportunity before him. Before long, he had composed a song based on Enis Behiç Koryürek’s poem Hatıra—“Memory”:
“Let days and weeks pass,
Months, seasons, years;
Let time flow like the wind
And like water.
You shall remain
A color in my eyes,
A voice in my ears,
And a breath within me.”
The music and words complemented each other beautifully, and Sayan was delighted with his work.
There was only one problem.
The lyrics were too short. The song did not even last three minutes.
Apart from music, Erol Sayan had another passion: Spiritualism. Until the 1980s, Spiritualism maintained a noticeable following in Turkey, and it was particularly popular in Ankara during the 1950s and 1960s. Private gatherings known as celse—séances—were held in homes and attended by senior bureaucrats, even, according to accounts, by a president of the Constitutional Court.
At these gatherings, spirits were summoned, and mediums supposedly established contact with figures such as Napoleon, Yunus Emre and Orhan Veli.
Erol Sayan was among those who regularly attended.
Sayan eventually came up with a solution to the problem of the short lyrics of Hatıra: during a séance, he would summon the spirit of Enis Behiç Koryürek, the poet who had written them.
After all, Koryürek himself had been interested in Spiritualism and had been a close friend of Bedri Ruhselman, one of the movement’s most important representatives in Turkey.
At a séance in Ankara, a medium attempted, at Sayan’s request, to contact Koryürek—and, according to the account, succeeded.
Koryürek answered their questions and eventually agreed to Sayan’s request to extend his poem. Through the medium, the following additional lines were supposedly dictated:
“Even if my life passes without you,
May your love remain within my heart.
May your smiling eyes look upon me
With a thousand consolations.
You shall remain
A color in my eyes,
A voice in my ears,
And a breath within me.”
Turkey now had a song that would remain popular for decades.
And Sayan, thanks to the composition, found a job at Ziraat Bank.
But this was not Koryürek’s first extraordinary feat.
Born in Istanbul in 1891, Enis Behiç Koryürek graduated from the Mülkiye, served as a diplomat, and took part in the resistance movement in Istanbul during the Turkish War of Independence. He later became one of the senior bureaucrats of Ankara.
Like Hüseyin Siret, he had been interested in poetry from his youth. His earliest poems, written in the classical aruz meter, appeared in Servet-i Fünun. Encouraged by Ziya Gökalp, he later joined the National Literature movement and began writing in the syllabic meter. Alongside Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel, Yusuf Ziya Ortaç, Halit Fahri Ozansoy and Orhan Seyfi Orhon, he became one of the celebrated “Five Syllabists.”
Later in life, Koryürek met Bedri Ruhselman and began attending séances.
Among those attending these gatherings, only mediums were believed capable of communicating with spirits. Koryürek was one of them, relaying to the others what the visiting spirit supposedly told him. When contact was established, the medium would enter an altered state; his blood pressure and pulse would reportedly fall dramatically, and every séance was recorded.
These records were later turned into articles and published in international Spiritualist journals.
During one séance in which Koryürek served as medium, a spirit appeared claiming to be Çedikçi Süleyman Çelebi, who said he had lived in Trabzon in 1734. As his name and discourse suggested, the spirit identified himself with the Mevlevi tradition and allegedly remained in regular contact with Koryürek.
He would appear at séance after séance and dictate poems on Sufism.
These poems were eventually collected and published under Koryürek’s name in a book titled Varidat-ı Süleyman. Çedikçi Süleyman Çelebi’s name also appeared on the cover. The work consisted of thirty-eight sections.
Even more remarkably, sometime after the book appeared, Ömer Fevzi Mardin, the famous Arusi sheikh of the period, wrote an eight-hundred-page commentary on these poems.
Enis Behiç Koryürek died in 1949.
Yet, according to the story, years after his death he made contact with Erol Sayan and helped give Turkish classical music one of its enduring works: Hatıra.
Is there another story quite like this in the history of music?
I do not know.
What I do know is that the history of music in Turkey is a vast sea filled with extraordinary stories, mysteries and coincidences. Today, I have tried to offer you just two drops from that sea.
With that, I leave you to enjoy two songs: Geçti Sevdalarla Ömrüm and Geçsin Günler Haftalar.
Until next time, stay well.
