Symposium in memory of Cengiz Dağcı to be held in Aqmescit

Announcement - 31 January 2012, Tuesday 14:05

AQMESCIT/ SIMFEROPIL (QHA) - On September 21-23, the Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University (CEPU) will host an international symposium in memory of the outstanding Crimean Tatar writer Cengiz Dağcı. The event will be dedicated to the first anniversary of his death, QHA learnt from the lecturer at Literature Department (CEPU) Dr. Leniâr Selim.
The symposium will be organized by the Eurasian Writers’ Union, the CEPU and Atatürk Cultural Centre (Ankara, Turkey).
About 30 people have already expressed a wish to take part in the meeting and speak about Cengiz Dağcı’s life and career. Among them are producer and director of the Turkish TV Company TRT Zafer Karatay, the Head of Women’s Club ‘Nenkencan’ Zera Bekir, well-known Crimean Tatar writer Ablâziz Veli, the Head of the Crimean Tatar Literature Department at CEPU, Prof. İsmail Kerim and others.
The international symposium will use two languages – Turkish and Crimean Tatar.
Organizers noted that at the end of the symposium, all reports will be compiled into a book, which will then be edited and published.

Reference: Cengiz Dağcı is known as the best novelist who described life in Crimea before the World War II and the misery that the Crimean Tatars had gone through. His novels were published in Turkey. He was born in Qızıltaş, a village near Yalta. He spent his childhood under the Russian imperialism and had his primary education in his village and Aqmescit/ Simferopil. After finishing his secondary education in 1938, he went to Crimean Pedagogy Institute where he studied for two years. Before finishing school, he was called for military service in 1940 and trained in a military school in Odessa. When Nazi-Germany attacked the Soviet Union, he was a tank lieutenant at the Ukrainian front. In 1941 he fell into the hands of Germans. He escaped from the prisoner camps when the Germans started retreating from the Russian front and sought asylum in Great Britain. In 1946, he settled in London together with his Polish wife.
In his novels, he describes the tough life of Crimean Tatar between the years 1932-1945. He tells the tragedy of people who try to find a way out from the war between the German and Russian armies. His novels are significant in keeping the Crimean Tatar cause alive and communicating this to large masses in Turkey.
He died in London on September 22, 2011 at the age of 91.

Susana Üseyin – Aliye Bekir


 
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