AVAROĞLU, Ertuğrul Şevket

Journalist and storywriter (b. 1909, İstanbul – d. ?). He left Heybeliada Naval School because of a physical incapacity and entered the Advanced Teacher Training School, Department of History in 1925. He left the school once again and, encouraged by Sadri Edhem, the storywriter, he began to work as a journalist on the newspaper Son Telgraf. After working in several newspapers in İstanbul until 1934, he left for Ankara and began to work at the General Directorate of the Press. He served as the Ankara correspondent of the newspapers Tan, Vatan, Tasvir and Akşam. He returned to İstanbul in 1944 and worked as the Chief of the Editorial Department of the newspaper Tan. He published the review Mizah in collaboration with Ramiz, the caricaturist and Devran with M. Faruk Gürtunca; he served as the Chief of the Editorial Department at the review Aydede, which was edited by Refik Halit Karay and later on, he wrote articles for the newspaper Yeni Sabah. In 1959, he became the General Director of the Ülkü companies owned by M. Faruk Gürtunca.

He wrote anecdotes under the title “Sapantaşı” in the newspaper Her Gün. His novels which number more than twenty, such as Nevres Baba (Father Nevres) and Aşkın Ölümü (Death of Love) were serialized in several newspapers. Besides short stories and novel, he wrote the three-act play Şeriatcasına (Like it’s Islamic Law) staged at the People’s Houses. He did not publish his poems; however, some of them were set to music. The most famous of these is Kalbimdeki Son Aşka İnerken Yine Perde (As the Curtains Fall on the Last Love in my Heart), which was set to music in the style of medieval music by Osman Nihat Akın.

WORKS:

SHORT STORY: Köse Fuad (Bald Fuad, 1929), Olmıyan Şeyler (Things That Do Not Exist, 1938).

PLAY: Şeriatcasına (Like it’s Islamic Law, 1938), Vatan Çocuğu (Child of the Homeland, 1945).

OTHER: Zeki Müren’in İlk Filmi: Beklenen Şarkı (The First Film of Zeki Müren: The Expected Song).