The ecstatic
poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born in
1207, have sold millions of copies in recent years, making him the most popular
poet in the US. Globally, his fans are legion. “He’s this compelling figure in
all cultures,” says Brad Gooch, who is writing a biography of Rumi to follow
his critically acclaimed books on Frank O’Hara and Flannery O’Connor. “The map
of Rumi’s life covers 2,500 miles,” says Gooch, who has traveled from Rumi’s
birthplace in Vakhsh, a small village in what is now Tajikistan, to Samarkand
in Uzbekistan, to Iran and to Syria, where Rumi studied at Damascus and Aleppo
in his twenties. His final stop was Konya, in Turkey, where Rumi spent the last
50 years of his life. Today Rumi’s tomb draws reverent followers and heads of
state each year for a whirling dervish ceremony on 17 December, the anniversary
of his death.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad
Rūmī, simply Rumi (1207 – 1273), was a 13th-century Persian
poet, Islamic
scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan
in Greater Iran. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally
he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek in
his verse.
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently sued
a nationalist rival for comparing him to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, official media reported. Iyi Party (Good Party) leader Meral
Aksener, a conservative nationalist who has been dubbed Turkey's "Iron
Lady", said in parliament that
Netanyahu and Erdogan used similar tactics to hold on to power. She said
Netanyahu's recent campaign against armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, which
Erdogan has furiously opposed, was driven by politics and a desire to gain
public support after four inconclusive elections in two years.
Turkey is a
country straddling Western Asia and Southeast Europe. It shares borders with
Greece, Bulgaria, the Black Sea, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea. Istanbul, the largest city, is the
financial centre, and Ankara is the capital. Turks form the vast majority of
the nation's population, and Kurds are the largest minority.
Turkey aims to be among
the first countries to have an entirely artificial intelligence (AI)-controlled
unmanned warplane, with plans for it to take to the Turkish skies in 2023,
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said. The success of Turkish unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAV) in the field has produced results that "require war
strategies to be rewritten," the president said. Erdoğan was speaking at
the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) parliamentary group
meeting in the capital Ankara. The president added that currently a total of
180 Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) are operated in four
countries, including Turkey. Previously, Turkish drone magnate Baykar's Chief
Technology Officer Selçuk Bayraktar said the maiden flight of the prototype of
the country's domestically-made unmanned fighter jet is scheduled for 2023.
Covid aid material, delivered by
two Turkish A400M military cargo aircraft on Wednesday, were packed in boxes
that bore the words of 13th century Sufi poet Rumi – “There is hope after
despair and many suns after darkness”. Turkey invoked
Mahatma Gandhi and Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi as it delivered 50 tonnes of
relief material, including five oxygen generators, to support India’s response
to a devastating second wave of coronavirus infections.
Turkey has joined dozens
of countries that have delivered hundreds of tonnes of medical supplies and
equipment, including oxygen generation plants, to help India overcome a severe
shortage of oxygen and other materials amid the second wave that saw the daily
infection rate breach the 400,000-mark. A statement from the Turkish embassy
referred to the delivery of the supplies, including five oxygen generators, 50
ventilators, 680 oxygen cylinders, and 50,000 boxes of antiviral medicine, late
on Wednesday and recalled the role played by Indian leaders in Turkey’s
history.
“The assistance and
contribution of Indian people and prominent Indian figures like the Father of
the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, who collected funds to support Turkey’s
Liberation War [during] 1919-1923, and Dr Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, who led the
medical mission to Ottoman Empire and set up field hospitals to treat wounded
Ottoman soldiers during the Balkan Wars in 1912, are still very much alive in
the memories of Turkish people,” the statement said. Turkish ambassador Firat
Sunel said the aid from his country was one of the largest consignments sent
out amid the second wave. Foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had offered to send
the relief materials during a conversation with his Indian counterpart S
Jaishankar on April 26, and Ibrahim Kalin, special adviser to President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, oversaw the delivery of the aid.
The Turkish aid was seen
in some quarters as a move by Ankara to put bilateral ties on an even keel
after they were hit in recent years by differences on the Kashmir issue and
other matters. Erdoğan’s remarks on the Indian government’s handling of the
situation in Kashmir had been criticised by New Delhi as interference in
internal matters. Jaishankar and Çavuşoğlu met in Dushanbe on the margins of
the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan in March, the first such
interaction in more than a year. Turkey recently took on a key role in the
Afghan peace process as it is set to host US-proposed talks between the Taliban
and the Afghan government.
The aid from Turkey also represents the success of the foreign
policy pursued by the present Govt headed by Shri Narendra Modi.
28.5.2021
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