[PRIVATE PUBLISHING IN EXILE / THE ÉMIGRÉ TURKISH POET IN CAIRO] شعرلرم / Siirlerim [First two books]

SERTER, IHSAN ADLI (1880-1956).

Privately Published, Kahire [Cairo], 1955.

Original wrappers. Cr. 8vo. (20 x 14 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). 192 p. A fine copy.

Exceedingly rare first and only edition of the first two volumes of collected poems (of three) by Serter, a politician and poet who vehemently opposed the Union and Progress Party triumvirate of his time. Due to this opposition, he was forced into exile as an émigré in Egypt, where he collected and privately published his poems.

The poetry book he personally published in 1955 contains approximately 150 poems written by the poet since the 1930s. Almost all the poems are filled with hatred towards the Committee of Union and Progress administration, particularly Talat Pasha, who played a systematic role in his forced exile to Egypt.

According to the poet, due to Talat Pasha, who rose to power under the guise of freedom but ultimately abolished it, Serter was forced to abandon politics early in his career. He was compelled to journey from Thessaloniki to Piraeus and then to Marseille, all of which were marked by great suffering. Ultimately, he was forced to flee to Cairo, Egypt, where he spent 45 years in exile. A year before his death, he fiercely criticized the party’s dictatorship in his collected poems.

Özege 18959., As of February 2025, we couldn’t trace any copies of this book. OCLC locates (41454484) the third book of the collection in three US libraries (UC Southern Systemwide Facility Southern Regional Library Facility, UCLA, Princeton University Library), and one in Turkey (Orient-Institut Istanbul).