Nazim Hikmet (on right, with mustache)

Over 50 years since it branded him a traitor, and over 40 years since his death, Turkey has restored citizenship to its most famous poet of the 20th century, Nazim Hikmet, who died in exile in 1963. The poet, who introduced free verse to Turkey and wrote most of his poetry in Turkish prisons, has been translated into over 50 languages, although as this Guardian report by Alison Flood notes he has “remained one of Turkey’s best-loved poets.” Hikmet was long persecuted by the Turkish government because he was a communist, and he was eventually kicked out of the country in 1951, despite world-wide support from other internationally acclaimed artists such as Pablo Neruda, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Pablo Picasso. Now, his family is permitted to reinter his body from its burial place in Russia back to Turkey if they like. Despite his persecution it seems Hikmet would have wanted them to. “I love my country”, he wrote in one of his poems. “I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons. Nothing relieves my depression like the songs and tobacco of my country.”