Tevfik learned
Persian as a young man, and became a
Mevlevi in
İzmir. He then moved to Istanbul and continued his Mevlevi practice in
Galata and
Kasımpaşa. In 1902 he became a
Bektashi dervish. His interest in poetry influenced him into meeting with
Mehmet Akif Ersoy. As was the case with many other intellectuals of his period, Tevfik's satirical poetry critical of the conservative sultan
Abdul Hamid II resulted in his exile to
Egypt in 1903, which he later visited again between 1908 and 1913. Neyzen Tevfik's fame in popular
Turkish culture is mainly due to his virtuosity with the ney. Moreover, he was also a heavy drinker while practicing a form of
Islam as it was common among Bektashis. He therefore is also a symbol of a clash between the orthodox Islamic doctrine, and the
Bektashi order that he was in, as illustrated in the following translation of his writing: His religious views were highly mixed and tend to change in accordance with his mood. Yet, in his last years, he wrote a poem "Türk'e Birinci Öğüt" (First counsel to the Turk) in which a verse, regarding religious institutions mentioned before the verse, says:
"Varsa aslı bunların alemde siksinler beni." (If any of these are true, well, fuck me.) Therefore, he can be considered a radical, if not directly atheist or non-theistic. Yet, in a scholarly article He belonged to the Bektashi Lodge and spent much of his life in inns in Istanbul. In his later years, he stayed in the 21st ward at Bakırköy Mental Hospital. He did not have a regular income, other than the monthly pension he received for a short time in the 1930s. Tevfik was epileptic. He drank lot of alcohol, especially Rakı. == Poetry ==