Zekai Özger

On 5 May 2010, a "Poet Arkadaş Z. Özger Meeting" was organized in Ankara during the 5th "International Meeting Against Homophobia" for the first time.

The Mayıs Publishing created an award in honor of Arkadaş Z. Özger in 1996. The award is given annually on his death anniversary to a selected literary work of Turkish literature.

During his life, he had no opportunity to publish his works in a book. A year after his death, a collection of his poems that have been published in various newspapers and magazines, was gathered by his friends and published in a book titled Şiirler ("Poems") by Nadas in 1974. This book's expanded second edition was released under the title Sevdadır ("It's Love") by Mayıs Publishing. The poetry book of Özger has reached its 6th edition in an expanded version.

One evening, he left his home, where he had no television set, to watch the broadcasting at the TV, he had co-worked. That night, he did not return home. In the morning hours of May 5, 1973, he was found dead in a street. The forensic autopsy showed no sign of injuries, but it stated death by cerebral hemorrhage. It was assumed that this could be the result of a severe head injury he had suffered during a police raid on the university campus in the chaotic era of March 12, 1971.

His first poem, Tragedy of a beardless son, was published in 1967. Publication of his poems and writings continued to appear in the magazins Soyut, Forum, Papirüs, Yordam, Dost and Yansıma, as well as in the newspaper Ulus.

Zekai Özger (January 8, 1948 – May 5, 1973), better known under his pen name Arkadaş Z. Özger, was a young Turkish poet.

Zekai Özger was born on January 8, 1948, in Bursa, Turkey to a low-income family as the fifth child of seven siblings. His father Ali was a public worker and his mother Fahriye a homemaker. In his youth, he spent months in hospital due to bone disease he caught.