A Survey of March 12 Novels Günay-Erkol, C
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Cold War masculinities in Turkish literature: A survey of March 12 novels Günay-Erkol, C. Citation Günay-Erkol, C. (2008, November 25). Cold War masculinities in Turkish literature: A survey of March 12 novels. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13287 Version: Publisher's Version Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral License: thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13287 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). Cold War Masculinities in Turkish Literature: A Survey of March 12 Novels Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. P.F. van der Heijden volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 25 November 2008 klokke 13.45 uur door C¸imen G¨unay-Erkol geboren te Ankara, Turkey in 23 November 1977 Promotiecommissie Promotoren: Prof. dr. E.J. van Alphen Prof. dr. E.J. Z¨urcher Referent: Prof. dr. V.R. Holbrook (Ohio State University) Overige leden: Dr. M. Aydemir (University of Amsterdam) Dr. P. de Bruijn Prof. dr. M. van Crevel Dr. P.W.J. Verstraten Contents Introduction 1 Dominant trends in reading the March 12 novel . 14 What is `new' in this study of the `old' March 12 novel? . 24 Theoretical foundations of my reading . 34 The March 12 novel revisited . 41 1 Under the Hammer Victimized Men as a Stable Ground (1972-1974) 49 1.1 B¨uy¨ukG¨ozaltı .............................. 56 1.2 Yaralısın ................................. 77 1.3 Isa’nın_ G¨uncesi ............................. 99 2 Masculinity is in the Eye of the Beholder Women Writers' March 12 (1975-1977) 121 2.1 S¸afak ................................... 129 2.2 Sancı ................................... 151 2.3 Yarın Yarın ............................... 174 2.4 Zor .................................... 196 iii iv CONTENTS 3 Masculinities, Femininities, and the Military The Impossible Modus Vivendi (1979) 219 3.1 Gen¸cli˘gimEyvah ............................ 224 3.2 Bir D¨u˘g¨unGecesi ............................ 244 Conclusion 269 Bibliography 287 Appendices 302 A Novels published in Turkey between 1970 and 1980 303 B Selected List of Post-1980 March 12 Novels 313 C March 12 in Pictures 315 Summary 327 Curriculum Vitae 331 Acknowledgments 333 Index 335 List of Figures C.1 Front page of Cumhuriyet on March 13, 1971. 316 C.2 Prime Minister S¨uleyman Demirel of Justice Party. 316 C.3 Street riots in 1970s. 317 C.4 Ministers Necmettin Erbakan, S¨uleymanDemirel, and Alparslan T¨urke¸s. ................................. 317 C.5 Deniz Gezmi¸sgoing to the courtroom. 318 C.6 Deniz Gezmi¸s,Yusuf Aslan, and H¨useyin Inan._ . 318 C.7 C¸etin Altan (b.1927). 319 C.8 C¸etin Altan released from prison on December 27, 1973. 319 C.9 Erdal Oz¨ (1935-2006). 320 C.10 Melih Cevdet Anday (1915-2002). 320 C.11 Students clashing with the police. The graffiti criticizes the transfer of the state industry to private ownership: it reads \Industry must be state owned." . 321 C.12 Sevgi Soysal (1936-1976) with her daughter. 321 C.13 Emine I¸sınsu(b. 1938). 322 C.14 Sevin¸cC¸okum (b.1943). 322 v vi LIST OF FIGURES C.15 March 12 was an era of overcrowded trials of students. 323 C.16 Pınar K¨ur(b.1943). 323 C.17 Street riots. 324 C.18 Adalet A˘gao˘glu(b.1929). 324 C.19 Tarık Bu˘gra(1918-1994). 325 C.20 Front page of Cumhuriyet on May 2, 1977. 325 List of Tables A.1 Novels published in Turkey between 1970 and 1980. 303 B.1 Selected List of Post-1980 March 12 Novels. 313 vii Introduction common figure of speech in Turkish that communicates the power of a A hardship, struggle, or burden on an individual is \having the milk one had drunk from his mother pumped out through his nostrils [anasından emdi˘gis¨ut burnundan gelmek]." The significance of this saying, besides the savage image of torture it implies of a fluid being forced out the nostrils, is its metaphorical suggestion of the mother's breast milk being stored in the adult individual's body for years. By means of such an imaginary, this figure of speech points out the special link between the past and the present despite the gap that separates them. It hints that people carry their pasts within them and also suggests that, when under repression, one encounters elements of his past. This figure of speech il- luminates the project of this dissertation for two reasons: first, with its violent imagery, it eloquently represents the extremity of the struggles with which the March 12 novels abound. It powerfully epitomizes the damage done by the mili- tary intervention of 12 March 1971, which forced tens of thousands of people to find themselves, in a sudden twist of the fate, as powerless children/citizens at the hands of an aggressive father/state. Second, by pointing out the ultimate presence of the past in the present, by means of its formula of \history" as metaphorical breast milk concealed in the adult body, this figure of speech suggests that what happened on March 12, 1971 actually keeps trembling the ground, especially for the people who encountered the period in traumatic ways. For those who recog- 2 Introduction nize how battles that evoked cultural and political conflicts in Turkey's past still reverberate in Turkey's present, this, of course, is no surprise. This dissertation focuses on a collection of literary works that deals with the merits and consequences of post-1968 radicalism in Turkey. It revisits the crises of this radicalism in the so-called March 12 novels to carry out a narratological analy- sis with a gender-conscious agenda. My hypothesis is that the March 12 novels carry out a cultural critique of hypermasculinity, by using excessive masculinity as a metaphor for the abuse of power that permeated the society, and that they reveal a contemporary account of the \Bihruz bey syndrome," a syndrome named after one of the most controversial fictional characters in the Turkish novel. The germ of the second part of this argument can be found in S¸erif Mardin's famous article on the outrageous Westernization of upper classes in the Ottoman Empire. In this article, Mardin discusses the literary representations of Ottoman Westernization by referring to Recaizade Ekrem's famous novel Araba Sevdası (The Carriage Affair, 1896). Following Mardin, several literary critics, who con- centrate on the reflections of Ottoman-Turkish modernization in literature, noted Bihruz bey, the archetypal protagonist of this novel. In addition to an extrava- gant snobbism, infatuation with Western culture, and estrangement from cultural values, the caricature dandy Bihruz bey also embodies feminine interests and manners, integrating liberalizing endeavors with a decay of indigenous masculine traits. S¸erif Mardin argues that the aversion felt for Bihruz bey is the product of a cultural antipathy, which targets individuals challenging the societal norms, and hints that a similar scapegoating can be found in the disdain for socialism in 1960s Turkey.1 Socialists, in other words, are the ones who found themselves as the new culturally-alienated \Bihruz bey"s in late 1960s, according to Mardin. When the horrific memories of the military intervention are considered, gender and sexuality might be seen as inappropriate subjects for scholarly study of the March 12 novels. This dissertation, however, is framed by an opinion quite the opposite because gender plays a crucial role, both in the history of March 12 and its literary accounts. I will elaborate on this role in the following paragraphs. The military intervention of March 12, 1971 punished 1968 radicalism \radically," and traumatized a mass of individuals of different generations, social statuses, 1S¸erif Mardin, \Super Westernization in Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century.", in Turkey: Geographical and Social Perspectives. (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1974), pp. 415, 442. 3 and political engagements. These people, in that period, may be said to have the milk they had drunk from their mothers pumped out their nostrils, as the saying goes. The concept of effeminacy and the fear of the feminine have a profound critical relevance to the gendered discourses of power that shaped the traumatization caused by the March 12 intervention. They are also relevant to Turkish modernization in general. That is why masculinity has been chosen as a research topic in this study. This thesis is intended to focus on the contemporary Bihruz bey syndrome as seen in March 12 novels. The main aims of this research are to explore and map masculinity-related issues in the March 12 novels; to investigate how such issues are presented and how masculinities are portrayed in the narratives; to explore how masculinity is intertwined inseparably with issues of power, identity, and prevailing ideology; and to find out what differences and similarities lay in the approach of men and women writers of the period to the perceptions of men and masculinity in 1970s Turkey. To understand the men and masculinities of March 12, it is necessary to grasp the atmosphere of March 12, 1971. This requires positioning the military inter- vention of 1971 within the greater political history of Turkey and between the two military interventions of 1960 and 1980. When a group of middle-rank officers as- sembled in a council called the National Unity Committee (Milli Birlik Komitesi, MBK), removed president Celal Bayar and the cabinet from power on May 27, 1960, and sent them to the court with various charges, their excuse was the gov- ernment's \ambivalence toward modernity and secularism, and ultra-conservative social and economical policies."2 The court passed death sentences on some of the detainees, but only three of those sentences were confirmed by the NUC.