Asaf Halet Çelebi

After graduating, he worked at the Ottoman Bank and the State Maritime Administration. However, he has worked through most of his life as a librarian, and at the time of his death in 1958, he was employed as such at the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Letters in Istanbul.

Asaf Halet Çelebi died on 15 October 1958, age 51, and is buried at the Beylerbeyi Küplüce Cemetery in Üsküdar, Istanbul.

Çelebi has translated Rumi's quatrains into Turkish and French, in 1939 and 1950, respectively.

During his youth, Çelebi wrote, without publishing them, poems in the classical Eastern formats of the ghazal and Rubaʿi quatrain. He only started publishing in magazines and newspapers in 1938, becoming known for his mix of Eastern "exotic, mystical and warm" qualities with an understanding of Western culture. He became the only Turkish abstract poet of his time, basing most of his poems on fairy tales, religions or oneiric symbols. Although a fellow supporter of 'pure poetry', Çelebi's work differs from that of Yahya Kemal Beyatlı in that he regards poems in a more holistic manner, and his disregard for storytelling makes him also leave the Garip movement. He even considers metre and rhyme unnecessary, but without renouncing form; instead, he searches for a new form, a position that puts him ahead of his time and makes him fit into the latest currents of today.

In his youth Çelebi was still influenced by Ottoman court literature, but starting from 1937 he adopted Western poetic styles and techniques, such as free-form verse. In his poems one finds themes originating in the cultures of Persia and India.

Asaf Halet Çelebi (27 December 1907 – 15 October 1958) was a Turkish mystical poet. Although not very widely known, due to his erudite and often foreign-influenced style, he is considered to be Turkey's first surrealist poet.

Çelebi was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire in 1907, as the son of Mehmet Sait Halet Bey, an official of the Ottoman Ministry of Internal Affairs. Asaf Halet's surname at birth was not Çelebi, but he adopted it due to his reverence to the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, Rumi. Descendants of Rumi established the Sufi Mevlevi Order, which they led for 800 years under the name or title Çelebi, translating to 'gentleman', 'well-mannered' or 'courteous'. Asaf Halet Çelebi, however, was not a descendant of Rumi.