You know Ali Ekrem Bolayır was the son of Namık Kemal. He was Poet and writer. (b. 1867, İstanbul – d. 27 August 1937).. He sometimes used A. Nadir and İlhâm as pen names in his poems. He was educated by a tutor during his father’s official service on Rhodes (1884) and on the island of Chios (1887). During the reign of Abdülhamid II, he served as the clerk to the chamberlain until he became the Administrator of Jerusalem (1888-1905). Later he served as the Governor of Beirut and the Mediterranean Islands Province, as a professor of text interpretation at İstanbul University (1913-1933) and as a teacher at Galatasaray High School. In the last years of his life he struggled to make a living. When he became ill, he was treated by the famous physician, Mazhar Osman. His grave is in Zincirlikuyu, İstanbul.

Ali Ekrem, whose first poem was published in Resimli Gazete, became famous for his poems published in the review Servet-i Fünun in 1896. As he disagreed with Tevfik Fikret, sometimes he wrote for the review Musavver Malumat, which had opposing opinions to those of the Scientific Wealth Movement. He was banned from writing until 1908. He acquired a great reputation with his poem Vasiyet (Testament) inspired by the Greek War of 1897. He wrote epic poems during World War I and the National Struggle. He was one of the first poets to try the syllabic “Lisân-ı Osmânî” Üzerine Bir İnceleme 679 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/1, Winter, 2013 meter but his poems never passed an average level. He also produced work in the areas of theatre, literature and history.

      WORKS: POETRY: Zilal-i İlham (Inspiration of the Humbled, 1908), Kaside-i Askeriye (Military Eulogy, 1908), Kırmızı Fesler (The Red Fezzes, 1908), Ruh-i Kemal (The Spirit of Maturity, 1909), Ordunun Defteri (The Inventory of the Army, verse and prose, 1918), Anavatan (Motherland, 1921), Vicdan Alevleri (The Flames of Conscience, 1925), Şiir Demeti (Bundle of Poems, 1925). PLAY: Baria (Perfect, 1908), Sultan Selim (Sultan Selim, serialized, 1910), Sükût (The Silence, serialized, 1919), Mama Dadım Darılır (Mama, Nanny will Scold, comedy, serial, 1919) STUDY-MONOGRAPHY: Lisan-ı Osmanî (The Ottoman Language, 1914), Lisan-ı Edebiyat (The Language of Literature, 1914), Recaizade Ekrem (Recaizade Ekrem, 1924), Mesalik-i Edebiye (Ways of Literature, 1928), Namık Kemal (Namık Kemal, 1930), Lisanımız (Our Language, 1930).