Written on the Forehead
Writing and letters have deep meaning in Turkey. As the cradle of different religions and nations, Turkish, Armenian, Greek and Ottoman letters can be seen everywhere in Turkey. Some old alphabets previously used still have a place in our lives today, trails of old Turkish runic letters can be seen in the motifs of Anatolian carpets.
In our daily language we give a very special connotation to writing. The word yazı, meaning writing in Turkish, also means destiny. We say one’s destiny is written on a person’s forehead.
In this issue, we present to you a special feature about the alphabet and focus on letters and their various reflections in art and religion.
There exists within Islam a little known sect dating back to the 14th century known as Hurufism, which has a very interesting philosophy based on letters. The believers of Hurufism tried to find the secrets of life in letters, they believed there are hidden letters in the human face and body. They analysed the relationship between letters and numbers, and searched for the mystic information in the letters of the Quran. Members of the sect were killed when they started to have an influence on the heir of the Ottoman Padishah, Mehmed II, the future conqueror of Istanbul. This sect, which has influenced many heterodox religious movements in Islam like Sufism and Bektashism, is now a part of Islamic history; although it continues to inspire contemporary authors like Orhan Pamuk, Elif Şafak and Hilmi Yavuz. This issue includes a review of the first book written in Turkish on this very delicate subject, Hurufism by Ömer Tecimer. In this feature, besides Hurufism, there is a review on a publication on the Ottoman Art of Calligraphy and an interview with the prominent author Tahsin Yücel on the relationship between language and writing, contemporary literature and semiotics.
There exist some special letters in the Turkish alphabet which are not used in other languages. Over the last years, especially with the rise of the internet, we have become used to converting them into standard letters in the Latin alphabet. On the covers of most Turkish literature books which are published in other languages, we see Turkish authors’ names are also transliterated. In the first issues of the Turkish Book Review, we also chose not to use these special characters; since Turkish literature is already a new subject for many readers, we wanted to make it easy for you to become acquainted. In the first three issues we succeeded in reaching a significantly large audience. Now, in this issue, we would like to introduce you to Turkish letters as well.
For many years Turkish literature did not received the interest it deserved from the literary world. But looking at the positive feedback we are receiving from our readers and the increasing number of translated works of Turkish literature, we can say that this trend is on a turning point; there is a very bright future is written on its forehead…
