Erol Köroğlu THE PAST IN THE ATTIC WORLD WAR ONE IN YAKUP KADRI KARAOSMANOĞLU’S NOVELS

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, who lived between 1889 and 1974, ranks among the most signi—icant writers of modern . The novels of his political period occupy a particularly seminal role in the Turkish literary canon. However, his political identity has traditionally taken precedence over his authority as a literary —igure. Born in the , Yakup Kadri became a devoted Turkish nationalist over time; as such, he was a Jacobin public intellectual inimical towards anything and everything hav - ing to do with the Ottoman State, which had ceased to exist in 1923 with the establishment of the Republic of , and a believer in the need to sever all manner of ties with the past. In the epilogue of his non-—iction book , published in 1928, he explained in a striking way how in his youth he had come to make this political choice:

“When I was eighteen years old, I was an anarchist. My big - gest goal in life was to assassinate a powerful, important man. Later on, I wanted to become a revolutionary leader and mobilise the masses. When I was thirty years old, I gave up on all of that, and instead became cynical and indulged in material pleasures. However, a spiritual sickness eventually woke me up from the sickness of the flesh. A mystical love struck me. That’s when I discovered the love of nation and desired to sacri—ice my life for this love. Yet I was my own prophet in this new religion. Therefore, my soul was yearning for a leader. Whence I heard His [sic] voice beyond Anatolian plateaus, I understood the difference between illumination and —ire, ecstasy and fever. Only under the command of this teacher of my nation, was I illuminated. My soul found a  EROL KÖROĞLU

divine order. Shame on those vagrant souls that lack such an order!”1

In this passage, Yakup Kadri gives us a teleological narrative of his conversion to nationalism between 1900 and 1928. He was a Young Turk in 1900 and wanted to kill Sultan Abdulhamit II (1876–1909). He wanted to be a revolutionary who would lead the masses after the Young Turk Revolution against the sultan. He was desperate around 1912–1913 because of the tragedies of the Balkan Wars, and became a nationalist during World War One. Yet, the Unionist warlords could not ful—il his ideals, and he found his real leader, the teacher of the nation, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), during the War of Independence.2 One might therefore conclude that Yakup Kadri would not have been in favour of the war, Ottoman participation in which was initiated and directed by the leaders of the Union and Progress Party (İttihat ve Terakki Partisi), who might be thought of as the pre - decessors of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. However, during the summer of 1916, when —ighting was at its most intense, Yakup Kadri wrote six propaganda stories for a pro-government newspaper. The titles and publication details of the stories are as follows:

– “Dokunma Belk Br Kahramandır” (“Don’t Mess wth Hm, He Mght Be a Hero”), İkdam , 19 June 1916. – “Küçük Zabt” (“The Young Of—cer”), İkdam , 3 July 1916. – “Sılada” (“Back Home”), İkdam, 7 July 1916. – “Br Yüz Karası” (“A Source of Shame”), İkdam, 14 July 1916. – “Altıpatlar” (“Sx-shooter”), İkdam, 22 July 1916. – “Zeynep Kadın”, İkdam, 7 August 1916.3

These six short stories are strange, disturbing propaganda texts of the kind not to be expected from someone with Yakup Kadri’s intellect and literary skill. Readers not familiar with the circumstances might wonder why the writer wrote and published these stories in quick succession and then suddenly stopped.

 Yakup Kadr Karaosmanoğlu, Ergenekon: Mll Mücadele Yazıları [Ergenekon: Natonal Struggle Wrtngs], Istanbul 1973, pp. 227 f.  For the Turksh hstory of ths perod see Erk J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern Hstory, revsed ed., London and New York 1997, pp. 80–173.  Yakup Kadr Karaosmanoğlu, Hkâyeler, Istanbul 1985, pp. 78–116.