ISKENDER PALA WAS THE SPEAKER of MEET WITH THE TURKISH AUTHORS SERIES

DATE: Monday, March 26, 2007

   On March 26, 2007 Dr. Iskender Pala, a prominent scholar of Turkish literature, concentrating on Ottoman studies, gave a conference at our center. Dr. Pala’s conference on Ottoman literature focused on a poem about a farmer going to a mill to make flour. In his analysis of the poem, Dr. Pala stressed that Turkish literature had its essence in the people. Each line of the poem had a double meaning, one stressing what it meant to the farmer and one we would take at face value. Therefore, to understand the deeper meaning of the poem, one would have to look at the use of the phrase among the population.