Oktay Hoca

If I remember correctly, when I was in Kabataş 2nd Science B, one day, Professor Oktay asked how many people in the class had fountain pens. Everyone raised their hand because they were obliged to have a fountain pen at school. In other words, everyone had a fountain pen to use in their term papers in one way or another.

Professor Oktay continued. This time, he asked who used fountain pens out of necessity. Not many people in the class raised their hands on this question. In the face of this situation, the teacher went into the connections between using fountain pens and the history of civilization.

He stated that civilization gained momentum with writing, that science was produced, archived, conceptualized, and that humanity progressed thanks to this. He told the class that when information was archived, this was not done with a pencil but with an ink pen, and that the 20th century version of the ink pen was the fountain pen. However, he did not advise the class to use a fountain pen. With this attitude, I am sure that many people who watched that lesson would say that the teacher had done his duty as a teacher and educator inadequately. However, the basis of what he told us was everything from the power that literature can have over societies to the most basic elements of science, the conceptualization of knowledge, in the speech titled fountain pen.

I don't know about my other friends in 2 Science B, but I almost only use fountain pens today.

Oktay Hoca was a very deep person with his stance in class. He would not say everything openly, but he would emphasize the messages he gave with very striking examples and always with a philosophical dimension. We would listen to Oktay Hoca with great pleasure in his classes. However, even today, we still have the regret that none of our rash attempts have yielded a successful result in Oktay Hoca's classes. Whenever we made an attempt, Oktay Hoca would take the subject to a different ground, give his message and leave us with all our enthusiasm. In short, he never fell for any of our traps.

When we tried to start a conversation about sexuality on the sly, we found Yahya Kemal's poem Vuslat in front of us in the next class. We learned that everything can be explained with such finesse through literature that Yahya Kemal wrote a long poem about the things we tried to laugh at. Besides, while we were trying to analyze tons of poems in the literature book, we also had no energy to make a fuss in the class and when we found Vuslat in front of us, we couldn't be bothered. Are you the one who tried to be so sly!

When we tried to ramble on by mixing the words kalafat and malafat, we learned that slang has a special place in Turkish literature and that literary works can be created by playing with words that sound similar but have very different meanings with a two-volume slang dictionary. Later, countless examples of the use of swearing and slang in literature were before us in the next lesson, just like in the Vuslat example: Tahrib-i Harabat, Takib-i Tahrib-i Harabat, Neyzen Tevfik, etc.

So, if a group of students are still angry with Oktay Hoca, it is because they cannot enjoy Oktay Hoca's lessons to the fullest and be a daredevil. For this and many other reasons, Kabataşlıs have not been able to fit Oktay Hoca into any mold for 27 years. Whenever he tried to turn the class into a Chaos Class, with a deep philosophical talk but always in the simplest way, the student took the lesson he was supposed to take and sat in his seat.

Because Oktay Hoca could not be fitted into any mold, the student could not find a nickname that would suit him. Oktay Hoca also always said, "If there is someone, let them tell me, but I have never heard a nickname given to me." If he believes in us, his students, at least we have never heard one, Hoca.

The only situation where we see our teacher Oktay, who does not fit into these molds and therefore cannot be given a nickname by his students, as being molded is the statue in the school yard. But, don't the above lines explain, even if only a little, why that statue is there?

With my most sincere respect and love to my teacher Oktay.