Classical Turkish poetry and poets in Aegean islands

The Aegean Sea which connects Turkey and Greece was called the Sea of Islands in the Ottoman period, and the area covering the islands there was called the province of Cezâyir-i Bahr-i Sefîd. The Aegean Sea, where the first Ottoman conquests were seen in the 15th century, became a completely Turkish inland sea in the 17th century. This domination, which lasted until the 20th century, ended with the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the historical scene. Most of the islands in the Aegean Sea were left to Greece with different treaties and wars, especially the Treaty of Lausanne. Ottoman-era Aegean islands have a cosmopolitan structure with Muslim Turkish, Orthodox Greek, Catholic Latin and Jewish people. This cosmopolitan structure has revealed an "Island Culture" extending from spoken language to literature, from social life to architecture. In this prepared thesis, the islands of Euboea, Crete, Lemnos, Lesbos, Rhodes, Chios, Kos, Skiathos and Samothrace, which are in the borders of Greece today, were examined. In the first part of the study, which consists of three parts; The pre-conquest situation of the mentioned islands, the historical process until their conquest and withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire are explained in a concise way. In addition, the settlements, zoning activities and Sufi formations done by Ottoman Empire on the islands are shown in order to give the islands a Turkish-Islamic identity. Furthermore, people who revive the religion, literature and cultural aspects of the islands and their literary gatherings such as dervish lodges and mansions are pointed out. In the second part of the thesis, biographies of 107 poets who were born and died in these nine islands or of those who were born elsewhere but came to these islands for diffrent reasons and died and were buried there during the Ottoman period were written. Truthful life stories were tried to be created by cross-reading between classical sources and current studies, and poetic aspects were shown by presenting sample poems belonging to poets. In addition, it was possible to create a bibliography by giving information about the works they owned and their current status. In the third part, the place of the islands in the poems of the island poets was investigated. Issues such as the geography of the islands, the religious, mystical, social and cultural structure of the islands, relations with non-Muslims and the poets view of love and beauty have been studied thematically in many sub-titles by scanning the divan and verse works of the determined poets.