Vâlâ Nureddin

Ahmed Vâlâ Nureddin (1901–1967) was a Turkish writer and journalist, also known under his pen name Va-Nu.

Early life and education

Vala Nureddin was born in Beirut, as a son to a Vali of Beirut, but his birth was registered in Constantinople as there the citizens wouldn't have to serve in the military.^[1] Vala moved to Constantinople, where he attended the Galatasaray high school between 1911 and 1916.^[1] He then settled to Vienna, Austria-Hungary where he enrolled in the Vienna School of Economics, focusing on financial studies.^[1] By 1917, he was in Istanbul and employed at the Türkiye Millî Bankası [tr] and the Ministry of Finance. He was not satisfied with what he did and therefore began to write and publish poetry.^[1] In 1921, Vâlâ and Nazim Hikmet, attempting to join the Kemalist forces in the Turkish War of Independence, went to Inebolu at the Black Sea.^[2] But their communist views were not popular among the Kemalist forces, so they moved on to the Soviet Union.^[2]

In the Soviet Union

They initially travelled to Batumi, but by 1922, they were staying in the Oriental Hotel in Tiflis.^[3] There they made contact with the Turkish linguist Ahmet Cevat Emre.^[3] Later, both Nazim and Vala lived together with Emre in the Hôtel de France in Batumi at the Black Sea^[3] where Emre offered them to write for the newspaper Yeni Dünya [tr].^[3] As the political situation became dire due to the relations Nazim and Vala maintained with Pan-Turanists willing to create a Turkish state from Edirne to China, the social family decided to leave the Hotel and went to live in the house of Emres printer.^[3] There the social family was joined by Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, who'd stay with the three others until the late 1920s.^[3] Between 1922 and 1925, the four friends went to Moscow where Emre was offered a job as a Professor for Turkish language at the Oriental Institute of the University of Moscow, and the four kept having a common household in the Hotel Lux.^[3] Vala enrolled in the Communist University of the Workers of the East, where he and Hikmet were introduced to Marxism-Leninism and additionally occupied lessons in French and Russian.^[4] By the end of his studies he taught as well.^[1] In 1923, he developed a health issue which caused him to be sent for some weeks to a sanatorium in Caucasus.^[5]

Return to Turkey

Having returned to Turkey in 1925, he began to write for a variety of newspapers mostly using his pen name Va Nu but at times also writing under a pseudonym.^[1] During his journalistic career in Turkey he wrote for newspapers like Yeni Sabah, Cumhuriyet, Yeni Gün.^[1] He was one of the contributors of Resimli Perşembe, a weekly literary magazine founded and edited by Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel, between 1925 and 1929.^[6] He wrote articles for the Akşam from 1927 until 1966 with an interval between 1933 and 1939.^[1]

Personal life

Nureddin was married twice. His first wife was Meziyet Çürüksulu, who he married in 1932, but became a widower as she died in 1939.^[1] Then he married his second wife Müzehher, who was also a journalist.^[1] As he lived in a social family together with Nureddin and Hikmet in Georgia, he would teach Turkish to Azerbaijani, Hikmet wrote articles and poems while Emre was in charge of cooking.^[7]

Works

He translated several works from Russian, English, or French to the Turkish language^[1] and was the biographer of Nazim Hikmet.^[8]