A successful novelist as well as an engineer, Mehmet Eroğlu in his novels explores the political complexities of characters living in a modernizing country beset with miscarriages of justice, coups, and conspiracies. In his first four novels Eroğlu deals with the 12 March 1971 military coup and its consequences; following his fifth novel, the third and the most devastating military coup of 12 September 1980 became the linchpin of his works. While political change provides the pulse of his novels, Eroğlu is also interested in the alienation of the apolitical and inactive generation that was created by the military coups. He deals with tragic themes such as death, love, sacrifice, and loneliness in an existentialist vein.
Mehmet Eroğlu was born on 2 August 1948 in Izmir, the city of Homer. Owing to the appointments of his father, Faik Eroğlu, who was a teacher of literature, he spent his childhood in several different cities, including Adana, Osmaniye, Aydın, Uşak, and Izmir. He started primary school in Uşak, and after spending a short period in Edremit, he completed his primary education in Ankara Primary School in Karşıyaka, Izmir, in 1960. The same year, he passed the entrance exam for Izmir College, now Bornova Anatolian High School, and studied there for seven years as a boarding student. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Dünya (World, 18 May 1979) he states that being a boarder became one of the constituent aspects of his personality and that it greatly contributed to his understanding of friendships, loneliness, sacrifice, strength, and endurance, as well as shaping his reading habits. He was a successful student, participating in athletics and playing soccer for the school team. Interested in geography and history since childhood, he especially excelled in history classes. He told interviewer Orhan Tüleylioğlu of Cumhuriyet Kültür Sanat (Republic Arts and Culture, 2 February 2012) that his interest in geography was related with his passion for adventure, which he related to living and writing.
Accepting his high school philosophy teacher’s belief that the highest position a man can achieve in life is “having a place in the pages of an encyclopaedia as a scientist, artist, or an explorer,” Eroğlu was determined to become an artist. Later on, he often mentioned that he was influenced by a text this same philosophy teacher read to his class before their graduation. Although he asked the name of the writer after hearing the reading, his teacher refrained from revealing the name and only said that the composition was written by a seventeenyearold boy.
Graduating from Izmir College in 1967, Eroğlu passed the university entrance examination and went to Ankara to study in the Department of Civil Engineering of Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Middle East Technical University), or ODTÜ. ODTÜ was one of the most politically radical universities of Turkey at that time. During this period of intense student activism in Turkey, he became a president of a student society and Eroğlu became politically involved. At the university’s library, he came across the text his philosophy teacher had read—a composition Karl Marx had written in 1835 when he was seventeen. This incident motivated him to become a writer and increased his interest in Marxism. He spent his university years reading works both in Turkish and English. During a visit to İzmir, Eroğlu and his friends visited the poet and writer Atillâ İlhan, the older brother of his high school philosophy teacher. This acquaintance evolved into a long-term friendship after İlhan came to Ankara as the editor of Bilgi Publishing House in 1973.
Eroğlu graduated from ODTÜ in 1971, the year the military took over the government, and soon registered for the M.S. program in his department. When he was put on trial with members of DevGenç (Revolutionary Youth) in a military court after the 12 March 1971 coup, he was expelled from the program. During the two years of the trial, he was unable to find a job because of his political background and gave physics and math lessons to make a living. In 1972, while he was being prosecuted, he married İnci Ertaş, whom he met while he was a student at ODTÜ. Eroğlu was finally sentenced to eight years of prison and two years of exile, but his imprisonment ended with the general amnesty of 1974.
In such a period of hardships, his wife gave Eroğlu a typewriter as a gift to encourage him to write. His daughter, Çağla, was born in 1974, when Eroğlu started writing and working at the same time at the State Hydraulic Works as an engineer. He was supported in his writing by Atillâ İlhan, who read his first novel while it was still a draft and suggested that he enter it in a competition. He completed this novel, Issızlığın Ortasında (1984, In the Middle of Desolation), in 1976. It won the Milliyet Novel Award in 1979, sharing the prize with Orhan Pamuk’s first novel, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Cevdet Bey and His Sons). In his April 1979 review in Dünya Gazetesi (World Newspaper), Selim İleri suggested that Eroğlu’s work marked “a turning point in the Turkish novel,” comparing its artistry to that of works by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Despite the recognition it received, Issızlığın Ortasında was not published for five years. On 1 February 1979 the general publishing manager and head columnist of Milliyet, Abdi İpekçi, was assassinated in his car, initiating a series of events, including the transfer of the newspaper Milliyet and its sub company, Milliyet Publishing, into other hands. After the coup of 12 September 1980, the publishing company no longer wanted to publish the novel. Dismissed from his job in the aftermath of the coup Eroğlu started writing his second novel, Geç Kalmış Ölü (1984, The Delayed Dead), which was completed in 1981. Because of political pressures, however, his second novel was not published, either. These first two novels were both published in 1984 after the end of the military government.
In 1985, the year his daughter, Damla, was born, Eroğlu won two of Turkey’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Orhan Kemal Novel Award and the Madaralı Novel Award. In his 1 October 1985 review in Cumhuriyet (Republic), Gürsel Aytaç praised Geç Kalmış Ölü as “an internal settling of accounts.” He claimed it demonstrated that Eroğlu “grasped that the novel is foremost a product of language before social criticism, psychological analysis, and cultural philosophy.”
Following the publication of Yürek Sürgünü, Eroğlu concentrated on writing screenplays for television. In 1986 he had written the screenplay for “Sızı” (Pain), which was aired on TRT in four episodes. In 1996 he adapted his novel Yarım Kalan Yürüyüş to cinema as 80. Adım (80th Step), directed by Tomris Giritlioğlu. The movie received the Best Turkish Film of the Year award at the 1996 International Istanbul Film Festival and other awards. Eroğlu also wrote the screenplay for Solgun Bir Sarı Gül (A Withered Yellow Rose), a 1996 movie directed by Canan Evcimen Obay, based on a short story of Ayla Kutlu. The movie won the Antalya Golden Orange Jury Special Award and the Adana Golden Cocoon, The Third Best Movie Award in 1997. He wrote two other screenplays for TRT, Issızlığın Ortası (The Middle of Desolation) and Tutku Çemberi (The Circle of Passion), which were broadcast in 1991 and 2001.
Deeply influenced by Paul Desmond’s famous jazz track “Take Five” and having just quit smoking—a habit of twenty years at two packs a day. Eroğlu in 1994 decided to play the saxophone, an instrument he had never laid hands on before. In order to stress the importance of stubbornness and determination in learning, he tells his writing students about his learning to play the saxophone at fortysix, suggesting that they can succeed in writing a novel if they commit themselves to the endeavor.
At the beginning of his professional life, Eroğlu had promised himself that he would not work after he turned fifty. He retired as an engineer on 31 December 1999 and since then has devoted himself to his writing, while sometimes participating in projects with nongovernmental organizations. He started to teach writing seminars and classes on analyzing novels at Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation. His starting point in these courses is his belief that writing is not something that can be taught, but it can be learned. To the question “How do we write?” Eroğlu answers “by reading” and “having a great life.” To the inquirers, he suggests writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevski, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Andre Malraux, Joseph Conrad, Pierre Schoendoerffer, Dino Buzzati, Paul Nizan, Jorge Semprun, Michel del Castillo, Romain Gary, Graham Greene, and Marguerite Yourcenar. He explains having a great life as “living close to adventure.”
Throughout his career Mehmet Eroğlu, who teaches and writes in Ankara, has used literature to explore socio-political memory, reflecting the social reality of his country in the lives of his characters. In his 2004 interview with Ertekin Akpınar and Yücel Göktürk in the PostEkspres (Post Express), Eroğlu describes what he sees as his mission as an artist:
Hep insanları, kendilerine tehlikeli sorular sorup bunların ardına takılan, trajik yazgıları olan yalnız insanları yazacağım; içlerindeki insanlık durumlarını keşfetmeye çalışacağım; merhamet ve kıyıcılığın, düşmanlık ve kardeşliğin birlikte var olduğu, insan yaratılışının bu karanlık katmanında dolaşan insanları romanlarımın odağına alacağım. (I will always write people, people who ask themselves dangerous questions and search for their answers, who have tragic fates; I will try to discover the human conditions within them; I will make people who walk on this dark layer of human creation, in which mercy and cruelty and hostility and brotherhood coexist, the center of my novels). —translated by İbrahim Katip
A successful novelist as well as an engineer, Mehmet Eroğlu in his novels explores the political complexities of characters living in a modernizing country beset with miscarriages of justice, coups, and conspiracies. In his first four novels Eroğlu deals with the 12 March 1971 military coup and its consequences; following his fifth novel, the third and the most devastating military coup of 12 September 1980 became the linchpin of his works. While political change provides the pulse of his novels, Eroğlu is also interested in the alienation of the apolitical and inactive generation that was created by the military coups. He deals with tragic themes such as death, love, sacrifice, and loneliness in an existentialist vein.
Mehmet Eroğlu was born on 2 August 1948 in Izmir, the city of Homer. Owing to the appointments of his father, Faik Eroğlu, who was a teacher of literature, he spent his childhood in several different cities, including Adana, Osmaniye, Aydın, Uşak, and Izmir. He started primary school in Uşak, and after spending a short period in Edremit, he completed his primary education in Ankara Primary School in Karşıyaka, Izmir, in 1960. The same year, he passed the entrance exam for Izmir College, now Bornova Anatolian High School, and studied there for seven years as a boarding student. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Dünya (World, 18 May 1979) he states that being a boarder became one of the constituent aspects of his personality and that it greatly contributed to his understanding of friendships, loneliness, sacrifice, strength, and endurance, as well as shaping his reading habits. He was a successful student, participating in athletics and playing soccer for the school team. Interested in geography and history since childhood, he especially excelled in history classes. He told interviewer Orhan Tüleylioğlu of Cumhuriyet Kültür Sanat (Republic Arts and Culture, 2 February 2012) that his interest in geography was related with his passion for adventure, which he related to living and writing.
Accepting his high school philosophy teacher’s belief that the highest position a man can achieve in life is “having a place in the pages of an encyclopaedia as a scientist, artist, or an explorer,” Eroğlu was determined to become an artist. Later on, he often mentioned that he was influenced by a text this same philosophy teacher read to his class before their graduation. Although he asked the name of the writer after hearing the reading, his teacher refrained from revealing the name and only said that the composition was written by a seventeenyearold boy.
Graduating from Izmir College in 1967, Eroğlu passed the university entrance examination and went to Ankara to study in the Department of Civil Engineering of Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Middle East Technical University), or ODTÜ. ODTÜ was one of the most politically radical universities of Turkey at that time. During this period of intense student activism in Turkey, he became a president of a student society and Eroğlu became politically involved. At the university’s library, he came across the text his philosophy teacher had read—a composition Karl Marx had written in 1835 when he was seventeen. This incident motivated him to become a writer and increased his interest in Marxism. He spent his university years reading works both in Turkish and English. During a visit to İzmir, Eroğlu and his friends visited the poet and writer Atillâ İlhan, the older brother of his high school philosophy teacher. This acquaintance evolved into a long-term friendship after İlhan came to Ankara as the editor of Bilgi Publishing House in 1973.
Eroğlu graduated from ODTÜ in 1971, the year the military took over the government, and soon registered for the M.S. program in his department. When he was put on trial with members of DevGenç (Revolutionary Youth) in a military court after the 12 March 1971 coup, he was expelled from the program. During the two years of the trial, he was unable to find a job because of his political background and gave physics and math lessons to make a living. In 1972, while he was being prosecuted, he married İnci Ertaş, whom he met while he was a student at ODTÜ. Eroğlu was finally sentenced to eight years of prison and two years of exile, but his imprisonment ended with the general amnesty of 1974.
In such a period of hardships, his wife gave Eroğlu a typewriter as a gift to encourage him to write. His daughter, Çağla, was born in 1974, when Eroğlu started writing and working at the same time at the State Hydraulic Works as an engineer. He was supported in his writing by Atillâ İlhan, who read his first novel while it was still a draft and suggested that he enter it in a competition. He completed this novel, Issızlığın Ortasında (1984, In the Middle of Desolation), in 1976. It won the Milliyet Novel Award in 1979, sharing the prize with Orhan Pamuk’s first novel, Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Cevdet Bey and His Sons). In his April 1979 review in Dünya Gazetesi (World Newspaper), Selim İleri suggested that Eroğlu’s work marked “a turning point in the Turkish novel,” comparing its artistry to that of works by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Despite the recognition it received, Issızlığın Ortasında was not published for five years. On 1 February 1979 the general publishing manager and head columnist of Milliyet, Abdi İpekçi, was assassinated in his car, initiating a series of events, including the transfer of the newspaper Milliyet and its sub company, Milliyet Publishing, into other hands. After the coup of 12 September 1980, the publishing company no longer wanted to publish the novel. Dismissed from his job in the aftermath of the coup Eroğlu started writing his second novel, Geç Kalmış Ölü (1984, The Delayed Dead), which was completed in 1981. Because of political pressures, however, his second novel was not published, either. These first two novels were both published in 1984 after the end of the military government.
In 1985, the year his daughter, Damla, was born, Eroğlu won two of Turkey’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Orhan Kemal Novel Award and the Madaralı Novel Award. In his 1 October 1985 review in Cumhuriyet (Republic), Gürsel Aytaç praised Geç Kalmış Ölü as “an internal settling of accounts.” He claimed it demonstrated that Eroğlu “grasped that the novel is foremost a product of language before social criticism, psychological analysis, and cultural philosophy.”
Following the publication of Yürek Sürgünü, Eroğlu concentrated on writing screenplays for television. In 1986 he had written the screenplay for “Sızı” (Pain), which was aired on TRT in four episodes. In 1996 he adapted his novel Yarım Kalan Yürüyüş to cinema as 80. Adım (80th Step), directed by Tomris Giritlioğlu. The movie received the Best Turkish Film of the Year award at the 1996 International Istanbul Film Festival and other awards. Eroğlu also wrote the screenplay for Solgun Bir Sarı Gül (A Withered Yellow Rose), a 1996 movie directed by Canan Evcimen Obay, based on a short story of Ayla Kutlu. The movie won the Antalya Golden Orange Jury Special Award and the Adana Golden Cocoon, The Third Best Movie Award in 1997. He wrote two other screenplays for TRT, Issızlığın Ortası (The Middle of Desolation) and Tutku Çemberi (The Circle of Passion), which were broadcast in 1991 and 2001.
Deeply influenced by Paul Desmond’s famous jazz track “Take Five” and having just quit smoking—a habit of twenty years at two packs a day. Eroğlu in 1994 decided to play the saxophone, an instrument he had never laid hands on before. In order to stress the importance of stubbornness and determination in learning, he tells his writing students about his learning to play the saxophone at fortysix, suggesting that they can succeed in writing a novel if they commit themselves to the endeavor.
At the beginning of his professional life, Eroğlu had promised himself that he would not work after he turned fifty. He retired as an engineer on 31 December 1999 and since then has devoted himself to his writing, while sometimes participating in projects with nongovernmental organizations. He started to teach writing seminars and classes on analyzing novels at Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation. His starting point in these courses is his belief that writing is not something that can be taught, but it can be learned. To the question “How do we write?” Eroğlu answers “by reading” and “having a great life.” To the inquirers, he suggests writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevski, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Andre Malraux, Joseph Conrad, Pierre Schoendoerffer, Dino Buzzati, Paul Nizan, Jorge Semprun, Michel del Castillo, Romain Gary, Graham Greene, and Marguerite Yourcenar. He explains having a great life as “living close to adventure.”
Throughout his career Mehmet Eroğlu, who teaches and writes in Ankara, has used literature to explore socio-political memory, reflecting the social reality of his country in the lives of his characters. In his 2004 interview with Ertekin Akpınar and Yücel Göktürk in the PostEkspres (Post Express), Eroğlu describes what he sees as his mission as an artist:
Hep insanları, kendilerine tehlikeli sorular sorup bunların ardına takılan, trajik yazgıları olan yalnız insanları yazacağım; içlerindeki insanlık durumlarını keşfetmeye çalışacağım; merhamet ve kıyıcılığın, düşmanlık ve kardeşliğin birlikte var olduğu, insan yaratılışının bu karanlık katmanında dolaşan insanları romanlarımın odağına alacağım. (I will always write people, people who ask themselves dangerous questions and search for their answers, who have tragic fates; I will try to discover the human conditions within them; I will make people who walk on this dark layer of human creation, in which mercy and cruelty and hostility and brotherhood coexist, the center of my novels). —translated by İbrahim Katip