The Republic of Turkey quickly gained dominance over the rest of the Turkic world due to a number of political and economic reasons. For centuries it influenced cultural processes in Turkicspeaking regions, sometimes even those far from the borders of the empire. Many Turkic-speaking thinkers studied in Istanbul, spoke Ottoman / Turkish, and worked with an eye to their Turkish colleagues. Tatarstan was no exception. In the 20th century the tradition of cultural continuity was largely preserved despite the fact the founders of the Turkish Republic found new ideals that had little to do with religion and established the secular ideology. Thinkers of the Turkic world in general and Tatarstan in particular looked up to Turkey when it came to ideology. Turkey was the avant-garde of the Turkic world and it “borrowed” not the religious ideas, but the ones that were advanced and relevant. For centuries Tatar literature was developing in the context of a lively dialogue with Turkish literature. Nazim Hikmet Ran (1902–1963), the Turkish humanist, thinker and communist writer, occupies an important place in the history of Tatar literature of the 20th century; his works were on everyone‟s lips and had a profound influence on the cultural life of the Tatars. The article aims to systematize the materials related to the perception of work and personality of the Turkish writer in Tatar literature. We focus on the history of the translations of N. Hikmet‟s works into the Tatar language and show how special N. Hikmet‟s image in Tatar poetry is. Our analysis of his poetic texts revealed a typological similarity with the works by Tatar writers. The article also summarizes the material on the history of the stage interpretations of the works of the Turkish writer in the Tatar theatre.