From the moment of my birth, the Aegean Sea's gentle, shimmering green expanse embraced my soul.
These words belong to Neyzen Tevfik. His given name was Mehmet Tevfik Kolaylı. He was born in Bodrum, the eldest son of Emine Hanım and Hasan Fehmi Bey. His father was an enlightened teacher — a man who loved poetry, music, wit. But no one knew that the child who would emerge from this house was to become one of the freest, most extraordinary and most profound voices in Turkish history.
The Night at Tepecik Café
Tevfik was seven or eight years old. His father had taken him to the coffeehouse near Bodrum's Tepecik Mosque. At that time, dervishes were known to visit. And one of them drew something long from within his robe.
"It was that divine voice which, within the immortal backdrop of the Aegean Sea, enveloped my very being that night — and made me the vagabond Neyzen Tevfik I am today: sometimes as wise as Plato, and often as mad as a man who seeks refuge in an asylum."
That night he heard the ney. And he never came back to himself.
He had grown up on the shores of Bodrum already. His father would walk him along the seafront — the road to school passed by the sea. Childhood friends recalled: Tevfik made whistles and gathered the children around him. His source of inspiration was always the sea.
Both Mystic and Madman
He came to Istanbul. He played the ney. Wrote poetry. Satirised. Drank raki. Entered the asylum and left. Satirised the Sultan, then sat at Atatürk's table. Roamed the streets like a vagrant, prayed in the lodges like a dervish.
One of the greatest poets of his age, the country's finest ney player — yet homeless, penniless. He would play the ney at a restaurant door; those inside would abandon their meals and listen. Then they would invite him to the table. Tevfik would sit, eat, rise and leave. He would take no money. Why would he?
"All my life I sought freedom, and whenever I seemed to find it, they either seized it or stole it away. I am the servant of those whose hearts are open and whose hearts are burned."
Bodrum's Gift
Today, everyone who visits Bodrum encounters him. In front of the castle, along the marina, in the streets — statues of Neyzen Tevfik are everywhere. The city claimed him, or he claimed the city.
In 1953, aged 74, he closed his eyes to life in Istanbul. His ney was beside him.
The sound of that night on the Aegean still echoes somewhere. Perhaps in Bodrum's old coffeehouses. Perhaps in an open cove, in the early hours of the morning, at the moment the wind strikes the shore.