Mehmet Emin Yurdakul was born in Istanbul in 1869 in Beşiktaş. His father was a fisherman, Salih Reis, and his mother was Emine Hanim, who migrated from Edirne and settled down in Istanbul. Mehmet Emin went to college after he completed Beşiktaş Military High School, but could not graduate from the same. He went to Law Faculty for some time.
When he was working in Grand Vizier Office without salary, upon his presenting his booklet named Fazilet and Asalet to Grand Vizier Cevat Pasha, which he published in 1890, he was appointed as the Customhouse Clerk with a salary of 700 kurus and afterwards as the Director of Customs. His being known is after his small poetry book named Türkçe Şiirler published during Greece war in 1897. His poem in this book:
Ben bir Türküm, dinim, cinsim uludur,
Sinem, özüm ateş ile doludur,
İnsan olan vatanının kuludur,
Türk evladı evde durmaz giderim.
cried out the excitement and ideal of being a Turk with people's language and told the good news of a new era.
After 1908 Revolution, Mehmet Emin was appointed to Naval Ministry Undersecretariat from Erzurum and Trabzon Customs Ministry. Afterwards, he became Musul deputy. Then he served as Eastern Karahisar deputy and Urfa deputy. He died while he was serving as Istanbul Deputy and was buried in the new graveyard in Balmumcu.
Mehmet Emin was not a great artist or poet. However, he was the first messenger of awakening of Turk thought. He challenged Rubab-ı Şikeste with Turkish saz. He wrote in Turk awareness in syllable meter against the pompous and splendid air of prosody.
Many poems reached the summit of poetry from the path he opened after him. His running to Ankara in the first days of Independence War with his clean, believing lines containing national excitement pleased Ataturk as if a commander attended his army.Mehmet Emin tried to declare the native emotions of the people in a language they could understand and in a meter suitable for Turkish language's structure.
He is a poet who cried out "I am a Turk" in a period in which our literature was influenced by Arabic and Persian poetry and everyone insulted each other saying "Rude Turk". German, Russian and Hungarian Turkologs understood his relations with Turkish awakening before Turkish intellectuals and they qualified him as "the first voice of a nation trying to find its own literature".
The following lines explains Mehmet Emin Yurdakul very well:
Ey mübarek Anadolu toprağı!
Hani senin bahtiyarlık hukukun,
Hür düşüncen, milli duygun, kanunun?
Hani senin yeni ruhlu çocuğun?
Yazık sana ağlamayan şiire...
He cried out the tears of Anatolia and how noble Turkish nation was all his life.
Mehmet Emin Yurdakul died in Istanbul in 1944.
His most famous works are Türkçe Şiirler, Fazilet ve Asalet, Zafer Yolunda, Mustafa Kemal, İsyan, Dante'ye Sesler, Kıvılcımlar ve Yıldırımlar, Türk Sazı, Turana Doğru.