He had credited many writers with influencing his work: Stendhal, Cervantes, Chekhov, and Faulkner, among others. But in the 2005 introduction to his best-known novel, Memed, My Hawk, first published in 1955, Turkey’s greatest storyteller, Yasar Kemal, who died on February 28, at age 92, admitted to having another master: Charlie Chaplin.
Kemal was the underdog’s writer. It was the dirt-poor villagers squeezed dry by the great agas, the agas exploited by the corrupt landowners, and the outlaws of the Taurus Mountains, forced down to the plains, resettled, and brought to heel by the state, whom he cast as his heroes. Modernity, in its relentless sweep, tried to fling them aside. Through Kemal, they held fast and fought back.
Kemal came from a family of Kurdish origin, though he never…