Namık Kemal

Namık Kemal (1840–1888) was an Ottoman poet, journalist, playwright and political thinker, born in Tekirdağ. A leading figure of the Young Ottomans, the reform-minded circle of the Tanzimat era, he argued for liberty, constitutional government and love of the fatherland in newspapers, plays and verse, and was later known as the "poet of the fatherland" (vatan şairi).

His writing brought him repeated trouble with the authorities: he spent years in exile in Europe in the 1860s, and after his patriotic play Vatan yahut Silistre (1873) he was banished to Magosa (Famagusta) in Cyprus. He later served as an Ottoman provincial governor and died on the island of Chios on 2 December 1888. The eight pieces here are taken from Turkish Wikisource, which lists his death year as 1889; the standard date is 1888.