Turkey's well-respected author Yaşar Kemal has passed away on Sunday at the age of 92.

The literary writer, who was of Kurdish origin from Van from which his family migrated to Çukurova region during the First World War, had been receiving treatment in intensive care unit of Istanbul University Medical Faculty Hospital for over a month.

The leading writer who worked as a letter-writer, then as a journalist, and finally as a novelist received international acclaim with the publication of Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed) in which he criticizes the fabric of the society through a legendary hero, a protagonist, who flees to the mountains as a result of the oppression of the aghas.

One of the most famous living writers in Turkey, Kemal was awarded 19 literary prizes and nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.