Vedat Türkali

Vedat Türkali — Biography

Vedat Türkali, the pen name of Abdülkadir Pirhasan (born Abdülkadir Demirkan; 13 May 1919, Samsun - 29 August 2016, Yalova), was a Turkish novelist, screenwriter and film director. He studied Turkology at Istanbul University and worked as a teacher before writing full time.

From the early 1960s he became one of the most prolific screenwriters of the Yeşilçam era, credited with more than forty scripts, among them The Bus Passengers (1961), Stranger in the City (1962), Beyond the Walls (1964) and Bedrana (1974). For Those Who Wake in the Darkness he received the best screenplay award at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. He also directed three features, Sokakta Kan Vardı (1965), Kopuk and Korkusuz Aşıklar (1972).

Türkali wrote eight novels, four plays and poetry, securing a lasting place in modern Turkish literature; Bir Gün Tek Başına and Mavi Karanlık are his best-known books, and he was among the winners of the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize. Associated with the Communist Party of Turkey, he was detained dozens of times over his writing and political activity, and in later years stood with the Democratic People's Party. He was the father of the actress Deniz Türkali and the screenwriter Barış Pirhasan.