THE LAND REMEMBERED BY THE HEART: THE SILENT CALL OF THE HOMELAND IN YAHYA KEMAL
THE LAND REMEMBERED BY THE HEART: THE SILENT CALL OF THE HOMELAND IN YAHYA KEMAL
When a homeland settles into a person’s heart, it can never be torn out. The homeland that settled into Yahya Kemal’s heart was not just the breeze of the land where he was born; he loved the scent of a civilization, the time carried by the call to prayer, the sorrow hidden in the shadow of a cypress, the curve on a gravestone. His love was not tied to a border or a map; it was bound to a time, a state of spirit, a silence. Because for Yahya Kemal, homeland was a calmness that echoed in a person’s memory. The heart that trembled at the first call to prayer he heard as a child in Skopje would become the Istanbul of a lifetime. That call to prayer fell into his heart like a voice of the homeland.
People may forget some sounds, but others always remain. That first sound that stayed inside Yahya Kemal later turned into poetry. In those poems, there was neither a loud cry nor dry praise. There was a soft sorrow, a dignified devotion, and an endless longing.
For Yahya Kemal, homeland was not only a place to die for, but a climate to be loved by living in it. He found the homeland in a morning call to prayer, in the stone of a mosque courtyard, in a shadow swaying over the Bosphorus in Istanbul. Can the pulse of a nation beat in the silence of a poem? In Yahya Kemal, it did. When he spoke of his nation, he would not describe crowds, but the cypresses in cemeteries. Because those cypresses showed that it was possible to speak without words. And love of the homeland could sometimes be lived without shouting.
The shade he saw under a mosque dome was, for him, a homeland descended from the sky. A pair of eyes looking at that dome carried all traces of the past. In Yahya Kemal’s poetry, there is “a hill” from which he watches Istanbul. That hill is not just a piece of geography; it is his view of the past, the future, and the nation. To look at Istanbul from above is like leaning over a civilization. Every time he looked, he saw Istanbul not with his eyes, but with his heart. He did not watch the water flowing through the Bosphorus, but the memory that the water carried. Each wave carried a name, each wind brought a time. He was the poet who best understood both the weariness and the patience of a nation. When the nation was tired, his poetry became a place to lean on. When patience was needed, it became a calm. Yahya Kemal chose to write without shouting. From that silence flowed a love. His words came not from on high, but from within. The sorrow that came with the “Silent Ship” was like the ship of a nation.
For him, every port was a piece of homeland. And every farewell was a longing for the homeland.
Yahya Kemal never gave up hope of one day returning to his homeland. But his homeland was not only Skopje. For him, homeland was the morning light of Istanbul, the silence on the hills of Eyüp, the curve of a gravestone in Karacaahmet. This homeland did not belong only to the living; it was also the land of the dead. That’s why, in his view, homeland was the soil that gave a nation not only the right to live but also the right to die. Because homeland is what makes those left behind offer prayers. Just as a mother looks at her son, the nation looks at its land. In that gaze lies the weight of a thousand years.
He stood far from the hurried patriotism of modern times. There was no rush in him. Everything came in its own time. To love the homeland, one did not need to shout. To describe the homeland, watching a sunrise was enough. In those sunrises, Yahya Kemal saw not only the sun, but the patience of a nation. Because what we call a nation was, in fact, a shared destiny born from a thousand acts of patience. And the shadow of that destiny always fell beneath a cypress. While watching the Bosphorus, he looked not only at the water, but also at history. That water flowed from Byzantium to the Ottomans, from there to the Republic. And Yahya Kemal wrote a poem that embraced them all. Excluding none, favoring none. He carried both the pain and the pride of the nation. Yahya Kemal’s homeland did not belong to a single era, nor could it be contained within a single border. His homeland was a compassion expanding over time. Sometimes a sound, sometimes a shadow, sometimes the old color of a wall.
While walking in Istanbul at dusk, he would even look at the stones beneath his feet. Because those stones carried the traces of a nation. Every step was an echo of the past. Every wind brought news from the ancestors. For Yahya Kemal, homeland was in the stone, the bird, the water. Homeland was the mercy that descended from the sky. And that mercy always touched the nation with the same dignity.
He did not see the nation as an ethnic community; rather, he saw it as people who heard the same call to prayer, looked up at the same sky, and whispered the same poem. That is why there was no division in his poetry. Everyone came together in the same wind. Because what we call homeland is the gathering of many solitudes. And Yahya Kemal became a heart that united those solitudes.
Can one belong to a nation through a poem? According to Yahya Kemal, yes. Because the feeling carried by a poem could sometimes shoulder the burden that a whole country could not bear. That’s why his poems were not just verses; they were letters the nation wrote to itself. Every letter was a greeting to the past, a caution to the future. In those letters, a quiet love for the homeland flowed. It did not shout, nor cry out. It simply stood still. And the place it stood was the heart of the nation. He was never a poet of speeches. His love for the homeland was quiet, elegant, and deep. He wrote as if sitting under the shade of a plane tree. The trunk of the tree was history, its shade the nation, its roots the homeland. He wrote poems so that the nation would remember itself. He formed verses so that even when the homeland was silent, it could still speak. And he kept silent — so the voice of the nation could be heard. While walking through a cemetery, he could see the homeland even in the space between the stones. Because those spaces carried the echoes of lives gone but not forgotten. Homeland meant not forgetting. And Yahya Kemal was the one who expressed remembrance in the most beautiful way. He lived like the memory of a nation that never forgets.
To love the homeland is sometimes like standing in sorrow at the end of a poem. In Yahya Kemal’s poetry, the homeland never ends — it only falls silent. That silence is something no other nation can understand. But we understand it, because we grew up with that poem. We walked through it. And we remained in it. While Yahya Kemal lived, he wrote a homeland for this nation. That homeland was not on a map; it was a place in the heart. That is why his homeland never died. Every generation found it anew. Maybe they never went to Skopje, but they felt the morning of Skopje through his poetry. Maybe they never climbed the hills of Eyüp, but they felt the silence there thanks to Yahya Kemal. And every feeling is a homeland.
To love the homeland is not only to fight for it; it is to feel the awakening of the nation in the coolness of a morning. Yahya Kemal wrote that coolness — so that a nation could awaken once more.