| Summary: | In the cultural narratives of Akdeniz (White Sea), the Turkish name for the Mediterranean sea, the people living on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean shores have been defined in terms of their interconnections with their seas. For example, the Sumerians in 3000 BC called the western Anatolians the “people living in the sunny garden by the sea,” and later the Egyptians referred to the Aegeans as “the people living in the art of the sea.” The ancient traditions, and the biodiversity of Turkey’s Mediterranean shores have produced a polysemic cultural imaginary reflected in the writings of Turkish novelists and poets. This essay focuses on the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, the pen name of Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (1886-1972), who depicted the Mediterranean landscapes and the marine environments as powerful sites of ecological enchantment. I discuss his poetics of marine life, and the flora and fauna specific to Bodrum peninsula, as literary reflections of quantum nonlocality, the principle of inseparability of all material processes. The permeable boundaries in his narratives between life in the sea and on the land inevitably recall this quantum principle. He also launches the sea fauna as translocal entities without any sense of demarcations. Epitomizing Mediterranean ecocriticism, his emphasis on the ethical partnership between human and nonhuman life has immensely contributed to bringing the biological diversity and cultural richness of the region to public attention and in raising ecological awareness about the endemic species of the Bodrum peninsula. En las narrativas culturales del Mar Blanco—el nombre que el Mediterráneo recibe en turco—los habitantes de las costas mediterráneas y egeas de Turquía se han venido definiendo por sus interconexiones con los mares Mediterráneo y Egeo. Por ejemplo, en el año 3000 a.C., los sumerios se referían a los anatolios occidentales como “los pueblos que vivían en el jardín soleado junto al mar,” y, más tarde, los egipcios llamaron a los egeos “los pueblos que vivían en el arte ...
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