Poet’s City: Aesthetic and Ideological Transformation of Istanbul in Turkish Poetry

Abstract

In Turkish literature, few cities have captured the imagination and inspired literary works as profoundly as Istanbul. A city steeped in history, culture, and myth, Istanbul embodies the complexities of urban life. It is a captivating canvas upon which writers have painted vivid portraits of human experience. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre's urban theory, this article embarks on a journey to unravel the multifaceted representation of Istanbul in Turkish poetry, exploring how poets navigate the dynamic interplay between space, society, and symbolism. Birhan Keskin's deconstruction of Yahya Kemal’s “From Another Hill”, whose İstanbul poems have a solid place in the history and tradition of Turkish poetry, with a single line in her poem "Zillet" is not only a reflection of a new face of Istanbul, which has turned into an uncontrollably growing monster but also a result of changing poetic conceptions. Taking this example as its touchstone, this article follows the textual traces of Istanbul from Yahya Kemal, through the socialist poets of the 40's generation, to the modernist poetry of the second new generation, and on to the present day. This reveals the differences and similarities between the poems that describe the city as a lived space (Lefebvre) and poems that glorify it as an imagined space.