Sedat Simavi

Sedat Simavi — Biography

The son of Samsun district governor Halil Hamdi Bey and grandson, through his mother, of former Grand Vizier Saffet Pasha, Simavi attended Saint Joseph French High School in Kadıköy before graduating from Galatasaray High School in 1912, having already begun drawing cartoons there under the pen name "Paramparça." He entered publishing in 1916 with the magazine Hande, followed by humor magazines such as İnci, Diken and Karikatür; he launched his first daily newspaper, Dersaadet, in 1920, published the era's leading weekly, Yedigün, from 1933, and supported the Kuvayi Milliye during the War of Independence through the magazine Güleryüz. Between 1917 and 1918 he directed and co-wrote the films Pençe, Casus and Alemdar Mustafa Paşa, becoming one of the pioneers of early Turkish cinema.

A founding member of the Turkish Journalists' Association in 1946, which he chaired until 1949, Simavi's most lasting legacy was Hürriyet, the newspaper he founded in 1948 and quickly built into Turkey's most-read daily; he also wrote a novel and two plays, Ceza and Hürriyet Apartmanı.

Married to Melek Simavi and father of Haldun and Erol Simavi, he died at his house in Kanlıca on 11 December 1953 and was buried at the Mihrimah Sultan Cemetery. The Sedat Simavi Awards, established in his name by a foundation in 1977, are still presented today by the Turkish Journalists' Association.