Novel and story writer,
critic. He was born on February 2, 1928 in Niksar / Tokat. He is the brother of
poet Bedrettin Aykın. His youth was spent in Tokat. He graduated from Tokat
High School and Ankara University, DTCF, Department of French Language and
Literature. Before completing his higher education, he worked as a civil
servant for some years in different places of the country. He worked as a
librarian in Ankara. He went to France in 1969. He worked as Turkish language
lecturer at “Universite de Provence, Faculte des Lettres et Sciences Humaines”
in Aixen-Provence. He has completed his doctoral studies alongside his duty (1975).
His doctoral thesis is named “Social and Cultural Appearances of French Impact
in Contemporary Turkish Poetry”. He also taught lectures on Turkish literature
at three different grades. He became a teaching assistant in 1979. With the
approval of National Jury, the higher council for scientific evaluation of
French Ministry of Education, he received the title of “Maitre de Conferences”
and was appointed as a lecturer to the same university (1986). He was retired
in 1994, after working for twenty four years at this university. He continued
his studies in Marseilles.
His career in literature
began with a poet published in Yedigün
journal with an explanatory note of Nihat Sami Banarlı; then he started to
write stories. His stories, reviews on stories and critics were published in
journals such as Varlık, Pazar Postası, Dönem, Dost, Türk Dili Dergisi,
Güzel Yazılar, Adam Öykü. He has also published some articles about the
theoretical problems of novel, methodology of critics and poetry of Baudelaire
in FDE Journal of Hacettepe University French Language and Literature
Department, and in books of Francophone and Ankara French Cultural Center, and
in former Türk Dili journal.
He has a planned novel
trilogy, and first one of them, Zor Zamanlar, was published in 2001, where he
covered the Ottoman world in 19th century by examining a city on the
shore of Danube River (Plevne). The texture of the novel consists of the lives
of two groups of people with separate religions, separate languages, separate
cultures and families; and the struggle between the dominant forces and those
who try to cope with the humiliating conditions of inequality. Besides his
novel and story book, he has several researches and reviews, unpublished and
written in French.
WORKS:
NOVEL: Zor Zamanlar (2001).
STORY: Uzaklara Yolculuk (2003), Gecenin
Bekçileri (2003).
REFERENCE: Fethi Naci / Bir
Eleştirmen (Dost, July 1959), Zor Zamanlar (Cumhuriyet
Kitap, 22.11.2001), Hasan Akarsu
/ Zor
Zamanlar (Cumhuriyet Kitap, 11.2.2002), Vedat Sarısözen / Cemalettin Aykın’la Söyleşi (Virgül,
24.6.2002), Ümit Sarıaslan / Zor Zamanlar
(Edebiyat ve Eleştiri dergisi, March-April 2003), TBE Ansiklopedisi (vol. 1, ed.2, 2003), Nihat Ateş / Drina Köprüsü’nün Zor Zamanları’ndan
Aykın’ın “Zor Zamanları”na, Çöküş Romanları (2003), İhsan Işık (TEKAA,
2009).
