Karacaoğlan

Who was Karacaoğlan?

Karacaoğlan is a 17th-century Ottoman folk poet and ashik. His exact dates of birth and death are unknown but it is widely accepted that he was born around 1606 and died around 1680. He lived around the city of Mut near Mersin.

His poetry gave a vivid picture of nature, and village life, in Anatolia settlements. This kind of folk poetry, as distinct from the poetry of the Ottoman palace, was rediscovered only after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and then became an important influence on modern lyric poetry, with Karacaoğlan being its foremost exponent.