Three Ottomans win Nobel Prizes

As two Turkish Nobel laureates have been awarded for their extraordinary contributions to literature and biochemistry have come to the forefront, three Ottoman citizens were awarded by the Nobel committee years ago, according to an article published in the Turkish monthly Derin Tarih magazine.

Orhan Pamuk, an Istanbul-based Turkish writer, was the first Turkish citizen who awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Committee for his novel of Kara Kitap (the Black Book) in 2006.

Though there were concerns within Turkey that the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Pamuk was politically motivated, the prize made him the country's best-selling writer of the year. His work has sold over eleven million books and been translated into 60 languages.

And, this year, Aziz Sancar, another Turkish scholar, was awarded by the committee for his mechanistic studies of DNA repair.

However, years ago, three prominent scholars from what was once Ottoman land and had to migrate to other places after the fall of the Empire -- Ivo Andriç, George Seferis and Elias Canetti --- also received highly prestigious Nobel Prizes.

George Seferis was born in Izmir's Urla district on March 13, 1900, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

His father, Stelios Seferiadis, was a lawyer, and later a professor at the University of Athens, as well as a poet and translator in his own right.

While he was continuing his studies in Paris, Seferis' family had to relocate from İzmir to Athens after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.

Seferis did not visit his birthplace again until 1950, though most of this diplomat-cum-poet's poetry was related to the place where he spent his childhood.

Seferis made use of his position in the diplomatic service to push for a resolution of the Cyprus dispute between Turkey and Greece, investing a great deal of personal effort and emotion.

This Ottoman-born writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, “for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling of the Hellenic world of culture."

Ivo Andrić, another novelist and short story writer born in Ottoman-ruled Bosnia, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country."

He was born in Travnik in central Bosnia, on October 9, 1892. After the death of his father when he was two years old, his mother Katarina was too poor to support him. He was raised by his father's sister, Ana, and her husband Ivan Matković in the town of Višegrad on the river Drina in eastern Bosnia, where he saw the 16th-century Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, later made famous in his novel The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini ćuprija).

Andric was arrested and held prisoner by Austro-Hungarian authorities for political involvement in pro-Yugoslav youth organizations during World War I.

Most of his works described the history, folklore, and culture of his native Bosnia.

Another author, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, was Bulgarian novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer Elias Canetti.

Canetti was born on July 25, 1905, in Ruse, a city on the Danube in Ottoman-ruled Bulgaria. He was from a Sephardic Jewish family; his ancestors had been expelled from Spain and settled in Ottoman Adrianople [today's Edirne] in 1492. His parental ancestors traveled to Ruse and settled there.

This German-language writer, who then took British citizenship, won the Noble Prize in 1981 for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power."

His passion for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey was shown in writings published after his death. “I always felt as I had come from Turkey."