Mehmet Akif Ersoy

From Freepedia

Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873 - 1936) was a Turkish poet. He wrote the lyrics of the Turkish National Anthem, Istiklâl Marsi (The March of Independence in English) – which was adopted in 1921. The lyrics were originally written as a poem in a collection of his writings. Paradoxically, one of his most famous works, a book called Safahat, was not widely read or published until recently.

He is also said to have written a commentary upon the Qur'an which he later burned on discovering that it was to be published by the new secular government in Turkish instead of the original Arabic, and used in secular education.

Although Albanian by birth and deeply religious, he is held as a nationalist figure in Turkey. In fact his real allegiance was somewhere in between Turkish and Islamic identities, and he was something of the Namik Kemal of his time. Deeply upset by the strongly secular nature the republic took soon after the sultanate was abolished in 1923, he left Turkey for Cairo to teach Turkish, and returned only shortly before his death in 1936.

He was interned in the Edirnekapi Cemetery in Istanbul.