Öztürk Emiroğlu Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, Turkish Neoclassical poet, former ambassador of Turkey to Poland (1926-1929) Introduction Y ahya Kemal Beyatlı was born in Skopje on 2 nd December 1884. His fa- ther Nişli İbrahim Naci worked there as an oicial and his mother Na- kiye Hanım took care of the house. Yahya spent his childhood years at his parents’ farm in Rakofci. Memories of this period can be found in his later works. Subsequently, his father registered him in the local primary school Mekteb-i Edeb. In 1892 he began his secondary education in Skopje. When the family moved to hessaloniki, he continued his studies in a high school there. Ater his mother’s death his father remarried and Yahya Kemal went back to Skopje. In the hessaloniki high school Yahya Kemal wrote his irst poem Esrar. Years later, when asked about the reason he became interested in poetry, he replied that it was his love to a girl named Redife who lived in the neighbour- hood. his irst poem was dedicated to her. It was composed in the form of a folk Turkish song türkü. When he was 18, Yahya Kemal let Skopje with his family and traveled to Istanbul to continue his studies. here they met with a young man from Serres named Şekip who belonged to a group of Young Turks. Because of his politi- cal views he had been dismissed from the army and later had to leave also his motherland and spent several years in Paris. Ater his return Şekip Bey began to gather around him students whom he was telling about Paris and European philosophers he had met.