Âşık Özlemî, whose real name was Muammer Badem, was a folk poet raised in the village of İmirler in Gümüşhacıköy who matured within the Alevi-Bektashi minstrel (âşık) tradition through the master-apprentice relationship. The türkü known as "Değme Felek", also called by its first line "Bugün Benim Efkârım Var", is his; songs of his such as "Gidiyorum Suna Boylum", "Açma Yaramı" and "Yalan Dünya Senden Usandım" entered the Turkish folk music repertoire of TRT, the state broadcaster. The poetic world of the minstrel, who died in 2014, has been examined in an undergraduate thesis prepared in 2011 and in the first academic article, published in 2021. This page covers Özlemî as a poet, his works and the subjects of his poetry; the details of his life story are in his biography in the Historical Figures section.

Life

Muammer Badem was born in the village of İmirler, in 1957 according to most sources and in 1951 according to some records. He took up the saz at an early age and, while at middle school in Gümüşhacıköy, met Âşık Mahzuni Şerif, who was visiting the town, and travelled Anatolia with him for about a year and a half. While studying at the School of Press and Broadcasting in Ankara he was arrested after the coup of 12 September 1980, because a poem called "Bir Tanem" (My Only One), which he had written to the girl he loved, was found on the noticeboard of an association, and he spent twenty-eight months in prison. After military service he returned to his village and married, and while working for Gümüşhacıköy Municipality he taught the saz to hundreds of young people at a course he opened in 1989. After 1992 he appeared on radio and television programmes. On 2 March 2014 he was badly injured in a traffic accident in Okmeydanı, Istanbul; he died the next day and was buried in İmirler. All the details of his life, together with the differences between the sources, are given in the article Âşık Özlemî: The Gümüşhacıköy Poet Behind Değme Felek.

Connection with Amasya

Özlemî's connection with Amasya is certain through his birth, upbringing and death. He was born in the village of İmirler in Gümüşhacıköy, attended middle and high school in the town, spent most of his life there and was buried in his village cemetery. Şerife Özer and Mustafa Topal place the region in which he grew up within the area that takes in Amasya, part of Suluova, and the plains of Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy, known among the people as "Gaziler Ovacığı" (the Little Plain of the Gazis). This region, where Alevi-Bektashi culture is widespread, has produced many minstrels such as Kul Fakir, Âşık Musa, Rıza Çulha and Halil İbrahim Alkaç. Özlemî also appears in the list of the region's minstrels cited by Özer and Topal. An overview of this tradition is given on this site in the article on the minstrel tradition in Amasya.

Minstrelsy and Pen Name

Özlemî is not counted among those who became minstrels by drinking the bade (the dream-cup of inspiration); he learned the tradition by serving as an apprentice to a master. Özer and Topal, drawing on G. Uzun's undergraduate thesis, write that his first masters were the Çorum folk minstrels Âşık Borani and Âşık Şekip Şahadoğru. He then became the apprentice of Mahzuni Şerif and played and sang with him at Bektashi gatherings and at the Balım Sultan fellowship meetings. After becoming a master himself he took part in gatherings with Davut Sulari, Âşık Hasan, Murat Çobanoğlu, Hüseyin Çırakman, Âşık Borani and Âşık Gülabi and entered competitions, and in later years he also learned from Âşık Haydar Öztürk and Hüseyin Çırakman. According to Uzun, his family traced its descent to a lineage linked to Hacım Sultan, who served at the Hacı Bektaş lodge; the family had come from Khorasan to Hozat in Tunceli and from there to its present home.

There are two accounts of where his pen name came from. Özer and Topal state that it was given to him by his first master, Âşık Borani. Another account, used in the biography on this site, says that the name "Özlemî" was given to him by Mahzuni Şerif at the Hacıbektaş festival. Özlemî himself, in words reported in Dünden Bugüne Gümüşhacıköy, published by Ankaralı and his colleagues in 2000, linked the meaning of the name (özlem means longing) to his childhood: he told how, while tending sheep, his first saz had been heard only by the flock, how he poured his troubles and longings into the saz, and how the reason he became a minstrel was a childhood spent without his parents' affection and the longing for that love. According to Uzun, at one month old he was given as an adopted child to his great-grandfather, who had no child left at his side, and he did not know his own parents until his great-grandfather died. This detail explains the meaning the pen name carries. The surname of Şekip, one of his first masters, is written in the sources both as "Şahadoğru" and as "Şahatoğlu"; the correct spelling could not be established.

Works

Özlemî's poems were never gathered in a book prepared by his own hand. The main source for the texts known today is G. Uzun's unpublished undergraduate thesis Âşık Özlemi'nin Hayatı ve Eserleri (The Life and Works of Âşık Özlemi), prepared at the State Conservatory of Sakarya University in 2011. Most of the poems quoted in Özer and Topal's article are taken from pages 28 to 71 of this thesis; a few are cited from Dünden Bugüne Gümüşhacıköy. The works named in these sources by title or first line are as follows:

  • "Değme Felek" (first line "Bugün benim efkârım var, zarım var"); three quatrains and a refrain.
  • "Gidiyorum Suna Boylum Sen Ağlama"; regarded as the first work of his mastery, it is in the TRT repertoire.
  • "Açma Yaramı" and "Yalan Dünya Senden Usandım"; both entered the TRT repertoire.
  • "Bir Tanem"; a love poem in free, unmetred lines, the grounds for his arrest in 1980.
  • A düvaz naming the Twelve Imams in order, with the refrain "Medet ya Allah ya Muhammed ya Ali".
  • A Sufi deyiş with the refrain "İnsan Hak'ta Hak insanda".
  • A deyiş with the refrain "Gider Ali Ali diye" and a fellowship poem ending with the line "Doldur da ver içelim Ali Baba".
  • A güzelleme (poem in praise of a beauty) beginning "Gönlüm düştü güzel bir canana".
  • A poem with the refrain "Vay başıma gelene bak gelene".
  • A poem with the refrain "Geçip gitti benim ömrüm".
  • A poem of counsel beginning "Dinle beni ey Keziban bacı".

The biography on this site adds the songs "Ben Gülmedim", "Felek Beni Adım Adım", "Deli Gönül" and "Ömrüm Ömrüm". Since no list of works or discography has been published, this list should not be regarded as complete.

Poetry

Copyright note: Since Âşık Özlemî died on 3 March 2014, his poems remain under copyright protection for seventy years after his death, that is, until the end of 2084. For this reason his poems cannot be published on this site as separate pages, and only two quatrains are quoted below.

Özer and Topal regard Özlemî's poetry as a whole fed by two main sources: the religious upbringing he received within the Alevi tradition and the separation he lived through in his own life. In his poems of faith, love for Ali, the Twelve Imams and the Ahl al-Bayt (the Prophet's family), and devotion to Hacı Bektaş Veli and Balım Sultan come to the fore. The düvaz in which he names the Twelve Imams in order connects directly with the tradition of Alevi-Bektashi poets in this form. In another deyiş he expresses, in a plain series of quatrains, the understanding of the unity of being (vahdet-i vücûd), of dying before death, and of God becoming manifest in the human being:

Ayet-i kuran insanda
Kabey-i mekân insanda
Suret-i ayan insanda
İnsan Hak'ta Hak insanda

In English: The verses of the Qur'an are in the human being, the Kaaba itself is in the human being, the form of all that is visible is in the human being; the human being is in God, God is in the human being. The quatrain expresses the idea of the "perfect human" (insan-ı kâmil), often treated in Alevi-Bektashi poetry, through the thought that what is held sacred, such as the Kaaba and the Qur'an, is found within one's own being. The eight-syllable lines and the refrain repeated at the end of every quatrain show the deyiş's structure, suited to being sung with the saz at cem gatherings.

The second large group of his poems concerns love and separation. In the güzelleme describing his love for a schoolmate, the beloved's cheek is likened to a rosebud and her figure to a branch that has just blossomed, and the tradition's images of Mecnun, the nightingale and the rose are used. The marriage of the girl he loved to another man after his own arrest, and her death years later, are the subject of Özlemî's best-known poems. Özer and Topal describe "Değme Felek" as a lament he sang with his saz on a television programme on the day he received the news of his beloved's death. The first quatrain of the türkü runs:

Bugün benim efkârım var zarım var
Değme felek değme telime benim
Gül yüzlü cananı elden aldırdım
Ecel oku değdi gülüme benim

In English: Today there is a heaviness in me, a lament; O fate, do not touch my string, the string of my saz and of my heart. I let my rose-faced beloved be taken from my hand; the arrow of death has struck my rose. The word "telime" (my string) refers both to the string of the saz and to the string of the heart; "gül" (rose) is the best-known image the tradition uses for the beloved. Some recordings of the türkü show variant readings such as "aldırdın" and "tenime"; such differences are usual in a work passed from mouth to mouth. In the last quatrain the poet speaks his pen name and closes the separation with a seasonal image, telling how the autumn wind has touched his rose.

According to Özer and Topal, "Değme Felek" spread across the country after it was given to Sabahat Akkiraz; it has been sung by many artists including Zafer Gündoğdu, Mustafa Uğur, Sümer Ezgü, Cengiz Özkan, Zara, Esat Kabaklı, Oğuz Aksaç, Ender Balkır, Sevcan Orhan, Emel Taşcıoğlu and Tolga Sağ, and has also been used in television series. In his other poems on separation the feeling of life passing swiftly comes to the fore: life is likened to a dream, to a bird flown from its cage, to a word that leaves the lips, to a rose that blooms and fades and to a rushing flood. In the poem with the refrain "Vay başıma gelene bak gelene" the poet describes a heart struck by fate's arrow, once a wild torrent and now stilled.

A third group consists of poems of counsel. In the poem beginning "Dinle beni ey Keziban bacı" he advises not breaking a friend's heart, not walking the road with the ignorant, not setting one's heart on money and not forgetting one's master; in the last quatrain he introduces himself as "the people's bard". This poem is Özlemî's example of the habit of giving counsel that is widespread in the minstrel tradition. "Bir Tanem", by contrast, is one of his rare poems written in free lines outside the syllabic metre; it places anger against oppression and fate within an address of love, and in 1980 it was read as a political call.

Literary Character

Özer and Topal regard Özlemî as a minstrel who contributed to the survival of oral culture through his training in the master-apprentice relationship and his role as the voice of the community he lived in. In the authors' view, at a time when minstrels of conservatory background with weak ties to the tradition were multiplying, Özlemî, having been trained alongside masters who knew the tradition, is an example that carries its essence. His poems voice both the religious world of the Alevi tradition and the pain of one man's own life; the article stresses that these two sides are found together in him. His language is plain and his expression sincere; he uses the syllabic metre, the quatrain as the stanza unit, the refrain and the signature quatrain in keeping with the tradition. His poems are made to be sung with the saz, and the melodies of some of them are his own as well.

State of the Sources

What is known about Özlemî's poetry rests largely on an unpublished undergraduate thesis and a single article based on that thesis. The authors of the article state that their study is the first scholarly work on the minstrel. On some points the sources differ: his year of birth appears as 1957 and as 1951, the master who gave him his pen name as Âşık Borani and as Mahzuni Şerif, and the surname of one of his first masters as Şahadoğru and as Şahatoğlu. The occasion and year on which "Değme Felek" was first sung also vary from one account to another. No entry devoted to Özlemî has been found in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature).

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Şerife Özer – Mustafa Topal, "Âşıklık Geleneği ve Geleneğin Çerağlarından Amasyalı Âşık Özlemî", Motif Akademi Halkbilimi Dergisi, 14(34), 2021, pp. 652-665. https://doi.org/10.12981/mahder.869864
  • G. Uzun, Âşık Özlemi'nin Hayatı ve Eserleri, undergraduate thesis, Sakarya University State Conservatory, 2011, pp. 23-71 (as cited by Özer – Topal 2021).

Books

  • A. Ankaralı – S. Cin – A. G. Tuncay, Dünden Bugüne Gümüşhacıköy, Gümüşhacıköy: Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2000, p. 188 (as cited by Özer – Topal 2021).

Online sources