Irfan Orga

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Paperback version of "Portrait of a Turkish Family"

Irfan Orga (1908 - 1970) was a Turkish author, writing in English. He wrote books on many areas of Turkish life, cookery, history, a biography of Atatürk, as well as, the autobiographical story of his family ("Portrait of a Turkish Family", 1950). He also wrote children’s books.

Orga was born on 1 March, 1908 into a wealthy Ottoman Turkish family in Istanbul. Soon World War I broke and his life was changed forever. Orga witnessed the atrocities and hardships of war. His novels display the common everyday life of an Ottoman Turkish family. He starts with the beginning of World War I, and then continues through the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, and finally, the end of World War I and the modern republic in Turkey.

Orga opens his autobiography with imagery of his childhood. He tells of his wealthy bourgeois family in Istanbul, Turkey, in the early 1900s. His mother is a young Turkish woman, aged seventeen. His father, aged twenty one, is running his own business. He describes his grandmother as an eccentric socialite.

Orga tells his stories with multiple layers of complexity. He quickly makes clear his changing environment, with the death of his grandfather, the main provider of two generations of his family and their servants. His father, being a worldly man, understands that war is imminent. He proposes that his family sell their family home in Istanbul, and move to another less expensive home, outside the city. However, his mother is reluctant. Orga captures the fear that a man can be suddenly in charge of a large group of people who depend on him for their survival.

Orga was well-traveled, and was lucky enough to have been able to write about his experiences. "The Caravan Moves On" is a story about the Yoruk nomads of the Taurus mountains in southeastern Turkey.

Portrait of a Turkish family received many positive reviews from critics such as (Arthur Anderson), and Peter Quenelle of the "Daily Mail", Liverpool, England.

Orga’s malcontent with the government, probably stemmed, not from his childhood, but from his adulthood. It was during his adulthood in 1942, when he met a young Norman-Irish woman, Margaret Veronyca, while he was on a three-year posting in England from the Turkish air force. However, the Turkish Air Force did not approve of his living with a foreign woman in England, and Orga was stripped of his rank, forced out of the air force. After Veronyca’s divorce had been finalised in 1948, they married. While his wife began working her way up the hierarchy of publishing, Orga pursued several menial jobs. He also began writing and publishing books.

Orga’s son sums up his father by saying: “My father was an intellectual person, and a good man. He faced adversity, many times in his life, but he persevered to come out a better person” (Ates Orga (son of Irfan)).