Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

1942: Tanpınar publishes his famous literary history The History of 19th Century Turkish Literature .

1943: Tanpınar publishes his first short-story collection, The Dreams of Abdullah Efendi .

1944: Tanpınar’s first novel, Song in Mahur , appears in serial form.

1946: The beginning of multiparty politics in Turkey after decades of single-party rule by the Republican People’s Party. Tanpınar publishes his seminal collection of essays on art and urban culture, Five Cities: Istanbul, Bursa, Konya, Erzurum, Ankara .

1948: A Mind at Peace appears in serial form in the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet and is published in book form a year later.

1950: In the first free elections in more than twenty-five years, voters send the Republican People’s Party out of office, putting the Democratic Party in power. Tanpınar’s novel on the Allied occupation of Istanbul, Waiting in the Wings , appears in serial form.

1954: Tanpınar’s parodic novel of the Kemalist cultural revolution, The Time Regulation Institute , appears in serial form.

1956: Tanpınar publishes Summer Rain , a short-story collection.

1960: A military coup ousts the Democratic Party. The Constitution of 1961 replaces the Constitution of 1924. The “Second Republic” begins.

1961: Tanpınar’s collection of thirty-seven poems appears under the title Poems . He also publishes a monograph on poet Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (the basis for the character İhsan), his mentor.

1962: The Time Regulation Institute is published in book form. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar dies of a heart attack. He is buried in Istanbul’s Aşiyan Cemetery, next to Yahya Kemal Beyatlı. Tanpınar’s tombstone is inscribed with his own famous lines of verse: “Neither am I inside time/Nor altogether without.” A novelist of later acclaim, his posthumously published works in book form include Essays on Literature (1969); Waiting in the Wings (1973, novel); Song in Mahur (1975, novel); Lady in the Moon (1987, novel, incomplete); As I’ve Lived (1996, collected essays); Between Two Fires (1998, screenplay based on Waiting in the Wings ), The Secret of Gems (2002); Lessons in Literature (2002); and The Complete Stories (2003).

1971: Military coup by memorandum ousts Justice Party. Leftist organizations are targeted for closure and their members imprisioned. Thus begins a period of marginalized voices in Turkish literature, including existentialism and feminism as represented by Oǧuz Atay and Adalet Aǧaoǧlu, respectively.

1970s: Tanpınar is rediscovered among the intelligentsia and his works are reissued or published for the first time.

1980: Military coup ousts government. Leftists are targeted in mass roundups. New Constitution of 1982 replaces that of 1961. Regarded by some as the beginning of the “Third Republic”. Ushers in a period of postnational, magical realist, and/or historical Ottoman novels in Turkish literature, as represented by Latife Tekin and Orhan Pamuk.

1997: Necmettin Erbakan of the Welfare Party resigns under pressure from the military in what the press dubs the “Postmodern Coup”. The Welfare Party is subsequently banned in the courts for antisecular activities.

2002, 2007: The Justice and Development (AK) Party wins national elections, signifying a fundamental transformation of the secular state. Beginning of a period of transcultural themes in Turkish literature, as represented by Elif Şafak.

2005: Turkey begins official negotiations with the European Union for full membership.

2006: Orhan Pamuk is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and acknowledges Tanpınar’s oeuvre as a formative influence.