[THE FIRST TURKISH DRACULA / STOKER'S VAMPIRE TRANSPLANTED TO ISTANBUL / UNAUTHORISED ADAPTATIONS] Kazıklı Voyvoda [i.e., Vlad the Impaler]; [with two pieces of Ali Rıza Seyfi's personal ephemera from his wartime residence in London]

SEYFİ[OĞLU], ALI RIZA (1879-1958), adapted from Bram STOKER (1847-1912).

Istanbul: Resimli Ay Matbaası Türk Limited Şirketi, 1928.

Original publisher's red cloth, representing the red of the two known binding variants (the other being black), elaborately embossed with a repeating geometric diamond pattern within blind-ruled borders; recessed central panel to upper cover lettered “Kazıklı Voyvoda” in gilt in Ottoman Turkish; spine lettered in gilt "Resimli Ay - Meraklı Romanlar Serisi 1 - Kazıklı Voyvoda", with the publisher's device in gilt. Cr. 8vo. (19 x 13 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic script). 240 p. Slight rubbing and surface wear, more pronounced at extremities, with minor fraying; lower portion of rear board faded and discoloured. Occasional marginal browning. Overall, a very good copy.

Rare first edition of this first Turkish adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction in Turkish literature. A remarkable and highly original rewriting of Stoker's novel, transplanting Dracula from Victorian England into the historical and cultural imagination of the newly established Turkish Republic. Seyfi's adaptation would later provide the literary basis for Mehmet Muhtar's landmark 1953 film Drakula İstanbul'da, for which Seyfi himself wrote the screenplay. Accompanied by two pieces of Ali Rıza Seyfi's personal ephemera from his wartime residence in London: his Royal Automobile Club temporary honorary membership card, dated 12 June 1942 and signed in ink by the Chairman and Acting Secretary; and his named invitation to the private view of the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, 1-2 May 1942, bearing the Secretary's signature.

Published in Istanbul in 1928, only months before the official adoption of the Latin alphabet, Kazıklı Voyvoda represents the first substantial appearance of Stoker's Dracula in Turkish. Far from being a straightforward translation, however, Ali Rıza Seyfi's work is an extensive adaptation, or cultural transplantation, of the original. Stoker's characters are recast as Turks, the action is transferred substantially to Istanbul, and the vampire narrative is reinterpreted through Ottoman history, Turkish nationalism, and indigenous beliefs concerning the supernatural. Modern scholarship consequently treats the work not merely as an abridged translation but as a distinctive rewriting of Dracula. (Gürçaglar).

Jonathan Harker becomes the Turkish lawyer Azmi, Mina Murray is transformed into Güzin, while Count Dracula becomes Kont Drakola, explicitly associated with the historical Vlad III, the fifteenth-century Wallachian prince remembered in Ottoman historiography as Kazıklı Voyvoda, “Vlad the Impaler”. The transformation fundamentally alters the cultural geography of Stoker's novel. Whereas Stoker's Dracula embodies an exotic Eastern threat invading Victorian England, Seyfi reverses the perspective: the vampire returns as a figure already embedded in Ottoman-Turkish historical memory, an old enemy confronting modern Turks in the capital of the former Ottoman Empire. (Gürçaglar).

Seyfi further naturalises Stoker's supernatural world for his Turkish readership. Vampirism is rendered through the familiar concept of the hortlak, while Balkan traditions surrounding the vampire are brought into dialogue with analogous beliefs familiar from Ottoman and regional folklore. The result occupies an unusual position between translation and original composition, European Gothic fiction and an emerging Turkish supernatural literature.

Neither Bram Stoker nor Dracula is acknowledged in the 1928 edition. Seyfi's book appeared under his own name without declaring its relationship to Stoker's novel, and modern translation scholarship has consequently described Kazıklı Voyvoda as a “concealed translation” and an unauthorised adaptation. No evidence appears to have surfaced that Stoker's estate became aware of the Istanbul publication or acted against Seyfi or Resimli Ay. This is particularly striking given the determined defence of Stoker's copyright by his widow Florence Stoker in connection with other adaptations of Dracula. (Gürçaglar).

The adaptation is equally noteworthy for its political and cultural dimensions. Published only five years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Seyfi’s version introduces a distinctly Turkish national consciousness absent from Stoker’s original. By presenting Dracula’s threat in relation to Turkish identity and historical memory, Seyfi reflects the nationalist atmosphere of the early Republican period. These alterations make Kazıklı Voyvoda a revealing example of how literary translation and adaptation contributed to the emergence of a new Turkish popular literature.

The book was issued by Resimli Ay as no. 1 of its Meraklı Romanlar Serisi [i.e. Curious Novels Series]. Although a larger series was envisaged, research has identified only a very small number of titles issued under the imprint. The present copy retains the publisher's distinctive red binding, one of two known variants, the other being in black cloth. (Yaltırık).

The work was eventually reissued in 1946, now in the Latin alphabet, by Çığır Kitabevi. Its most celebrated afterlife, however, came in cinema. In 1953 Seyfi's adaptation provided the literary basis for Mehmet Muhtar's Drakula İstanbul'da, starring Atıf Kaptan as Dracula, with the screenplay written by Seyfi himself. Thus, a quarter of a century after first adapting Stoker's novel for Turkish readers, Seyfi personally returned to his version of the story to reshape it for the screen. Now regarded as a landmark of early Turkish horror cinema, the film is particularly significant in the international history of Dracula on screen for explicitly associating the vampire Count with the historical Vlad the Impaler, an identification that would become ubiquitous in later popular culture.

Ali Rıza Seyfi was himself considerably more than an author of popular fiction. A naval officer, journalist, translator and prolific writer whose career bridged the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, he wrote extensively on history, naval affairs, politics and literature. Kazıklı Voyvoda, however, has become his most internationally discussed literary work: a book poised unusually between translation and authorship, Ottoman and Republican print culture, European Gothic fiction and the beginnings of a distinctly Turkish tradition of vampire literature.

Overall, a highly desirable first edition of a landmark of Turkish Gothic literature: the first Turkish Dracula, an unacknowledged and radically localised adaptation of Stoker's novel, preserved in the red variant of its original publisher's binding and published at the very end of the Arabic-script era of Turkish printing.

Provenance: 1-) Apparently Ali Rıza Seyfi's own copy, preserved with two pieces of his personal ephemera from his wartime residence in London, providing remarkable documentary evidence of a little-recorded episode in the author's biography. The first is Seyfi's Royal Automobile Club temporary honorary membership card, dated 12 June 1942 and issued at Pall Mall in the name of "Bay [i.e., Mr.] Ali Riza Seyfi", admitting him as a temporary honorary member “for period of appointment in London”, and bearing the ink signatures of the Chairman and Acting Secretary. The second is his personal invitation, under the name “Mr. A. R. Seyfioglu”, to the private view of the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, 122 May 1942, likewise bearing the Secretary's signature.

Seyfi's wartime London sojourn is notably absent from the biographical account published by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Other biographical sources, however, record that his former Naval School classmate Rauf Orbay took Seyfi with him to London when appointed Turkish Ambassador, where Seyfi served as Agricultural Attaché. A contemporary memoir preserves a still more revealing account: Orbay specifically wished to bring Seyfi to Britain in order that he might pursue research into Turkish naval history within English club circles. The Royal Automobile Club card preserved with the present volume provides striking contemporary evidence of precisely such access, while the Royal Academy invitation further documents Seyfi's participation in London's wartime cultural and social milieu. Neither document, nor the institutional connections they reveal, appears to have been recorded in the principal published biographies consulted.

2-) Refik Ahmed Bey (1903-1970), journalist and member of the editorial staff of the Istanbul daily Vakit. Presentation inscription in Ottoman Turkish on the titlepage: “Vakit, Refik Ahmed Beyefendi'ye” [“To Mr Refik Ahmed of Vakit”].

3-) Ali Enver Eke. Two ownership inscriptions to the titlepage, one in Ottoman Turkish and the other in modern Turkish, both recording his name. Eke is independently recorded as a member of the Istanbul Chamber of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (Istanbul Gemi Mühendisleri Odası), under membership no. 2886. Acquired from the grandson of Ali Enver Eke in 2026.

References: Özege 10497; As of October 2026, OCLC records only six copies outside Turkey, four of which are held in North American libraries (OCLC 49370073): Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, and Illinois; no copies are recorded in British institutions.; Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, “Adding towards a nationalist text: On a Turkish translation of Dracula”, Target, 13:1 (2001), pp. 125-148; Mehmet Berk Yaltırık, “‘Kazıklı Voyvoda’ yahut ‘Drakula İstanbul'da’”, Türk Dili, no. 849 (September 2022).