Yunus Emre Commemorated on his 700th Death Anniversary

Izmir Metropolitan Municipality commemorated the folk poet Yunus Emre, one of the pioneers of sufi poetry, on his 700th death anniversary with the “Yunus Emre Oratorio” concert at the Ahmed Adnan Saygun Art Center.

On the 700th death anniversary of Yunus Emre, one of the pioneer poets of Sufism, İzmir Metropolitan Municipality organized a Yunus Emre Oratorio Concert in cooperation with the International Organization of Turkish Culture (Türksoy), İzmir State Opera and Ballet. At the concert within the scope of the Izmir Cultural Summit, the Hand in Hand Music Symphony Orchestra, which was established by the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality to support the artists affected by the pandemic, Izmir State Opera and Ballet Choir and Türksoy Choir took the stage together.

Türksoy Choir, Mayor of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality Tunç SoyerHe presented a plaque of appreciation to Ertuğrul Tugay, Deputy Secretary General of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality, received the plaque.

Who is Yunus Emre?

Yunus Emre (1238 – 1328), sufi and folk poet who was the pioneer of Turkish poetry in Anatolia. Yunus Emre was born in the 13th century from the middle of the 14th century, when the Anatolian Seljuk State began to disintegrate and large and small Turkish Principalities began to be established in various regions of Anatolia. Until the first quarter of the century, he grew up in Sarıköy, located in the Sivrihisar district of Eskişehir in the Central Anatolian basin, and lived in the Taptuk Emre Lodge in the Nallıhan district of Ankara.

Yunus Emre, the founder of a unique style in the field of Turkish Sufi literature, reintroduced the tradition of lodge poetry, which started with Ahmed Yesevi, in a unique way in Anatolia. Yunus Emre, who influenced not only folk and dervish poetry but also divan poetry, dealt with the relations of man with himself, objects and God in his verses nourished by mysticism, and discussed subjects such as death, birth, commitment to life, divine justice, and human love. He expressed the way of thinking and culture of his age in the spoken language, with a simple and fluent expression. Yunus Emre's poems started to be memorized and read from the date they were sung and written, and from the 14th century onwards, they spread throughout Anatolia and Rumelia in parallel with the Ottoman conquests through abdals and dervishes. At the same time, his poems became the common thought and voice of the sects operating in Anatolia and Rumelia for centuries, and became the source of the folk literature that created the Alevi-Bektashi literature and the Melamî-Hamzavi literature. He is considered to be supra-sectarian. Yunus Emre attracted attention again in the 20th century and was evaluated with a new perspective in terms of the love for humanity he reflected. 1991 was commemorated by UNESCO as the 750th anniversary of Yunus Emre's birth.