Turkey’s first Nobel Prizer for literature Yasar Kemal has died on Friday in an Istanbul hospital following respiratory and organ failure.

He was an ethnic Kurd born in south-eastern Turkey who won international fame for his first novel, Memed, My Hawk, published in 1955.

It became a worldwide success and was published in 40 languages.

Nine of his novels were made into films, and he is credited for re-establishing Turkish as a literary language.