To My Mother, Zafer Akgol ANALYZING THE EARLY REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGYWITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO THE TURLISH LITERATURE: 1930-1945 The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent University by R. ÖMÜR BİRLER In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ART IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION In THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION BILKENT UNIVERSITY ANKARA September 2000 I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is full adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Political Science and Public Administration. ----------------------------- Assist. Prof. E. Fuat Keyman Supervisor I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is full adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Political Science and Public Administration. ----------------------------- Assist. Prof. Mehmet Kalpaklı Examining Committee Member I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is full adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Political Science and Public Administration. ------------------------------ Dr. Necmi Erdoğan Examining Committee Member Approval of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences ------------------------------ Prof. Ali Karaosmanoğlu Director ABSTRACT ANALYZING THE EARLY REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGY WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO THE TURKISH LITERATURE: 1930-1945 Birler, R. Ömür M.A., Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Assist. Prof. E. Fuat Keyman September 2000 Having taken for granted that there exists a certain but nonlinear relation between political ideology and literature, this thesis seeks to trace the early republican political project vis a vis development of the Turkish literature. In this respect, two fundamental dimensions of the republican ideology, modernization and nationalism are considered; and the reflection of these two motives on the political agenda is analyzed through both the works and the debates of period’s Turkish literary world. Further, this thesis attempts to develop a proper theoretical framework derived from the Post-colonial literature theory in order to have a better understanding of the investigated case. Keywords: Literature, Turkish Poetry, Turkish Novel, Modernization, Nationalism, Homi Bhabha iii ÖZET ERKEN CUMHURİYET İDEOLOJİSİNİN TÜRK EDEBİYATI ÜZERİNDEN İNCELENMESİ: 1930-1945 Birler, R. Ömür Master, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Yrd. Doç. E. Fuat Keyman Eylül, 2000 Siyasi düşünce ve edebiyat arasında kesin, fakat doğrusal olmayan bir ilişki olduğunu temel alarak, bu tez erken dönem cumhuriyet politikaları ve Türk edebiyatı arasındaki ilişkiyi incelemiştir. Modernleşme ve milliyetçilik düşüncelerini cumhuriyet idolojisinin iki temel dayanağı olarak alıp; her iki düşüncenin siyasi gündemki yansımalarının hem Türk edebiyatının gelişme sürecine hem de oluşan tartışmalara olan etkisi araştırılmıştır. Bu tezde incelenen konunun uygun bir çerçevede anlaşılabilmesi için, sömürgecilik sonrası edebiyat teorilerinden faydalanılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Edebiyat, Türk Şiiri, Türk Romanı, Modernleşme, Milliyetçilik, Homi Bhabha iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank to Orhan Tekelioğlu for his support and trust during the whole period of this study. He, as the first supervisor of this thesis, gave me a lot, despite the limited time and chance we had. I am grateful to Fuat Keyman, who offered me great assistance and encouragement before the defense of my thesis, although he became the supervisor of this study at the last moment. I would also like to thank Necmi Erdoğan who provided me a detailed and enriched look on theory for both during my study and for a further inquiry. Finally, I wish to express my gratefulness to Çağla Gülol, Burçin Türkmenoğlu and Emre Üçkardeşler for their limitless support and patience during this whole ten-months of study. Without them this thesis would not have been. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….iii ÖZET…………………………………………………………………………………iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………..v TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………….vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER II: THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE: WESTERNIZATION, POLITICS AND LITERATURE……………………………………………...9 2.1 Westernization Movements: 1808-1908......................................................9 2.2 The Ottoman Literary Works.....................................................................22 2.2.1 The Poetry.........................................................................................22 2.2.2 The Novel..........................................................................................31 CHAPTER III: THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD: 1923-1945.........................…..........37 3.1 The Republic Project: “Will to Civilization”.............................................37 3.1.1 The Roles of the Republican Institutions and Reforms in the Process of Making a Modern Nation………………………..52 3.2 The Republican Literature……………………………………………….61 3.2.1 The Script Reform…………………………………………………61 3.2.2. The “Revolutionist” Literature……………………………………64 3.2.3 The Poetry.........................................................................................72 3.2.4 The Novel..........................................................................................80 vi CHAPTER IV: EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AND LITERATURE – A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK……...…………………………………90 4.1 A Review of the Nationalism Theories…………………………………..90 4.1.1 Gellner, Anderson, and Chatterjee Revisited………………………95 4.2 The Nation and the Narration……………………………………………103 4.3 A Comparative Framework: The Case of Greek Literature in 20th Century……………………………………………………………..112 4.4 The Analysis of the Republican Literature……………………………..117 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION………….…………………………………………124 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..128 vii Chapter I: Introduction The overall aim of this thesis is to understand the role of literature in the construction of the republican ideology. While most of the studies conducted on the foundation years of the Turkish Republic, had focused either on the institutional structure or the political economy of the period, with the starting of the 1980s the general vein of the academic researches turned their attention to the investigation of the cultural formation of the republican ideology. In this respect this thesis could be located in the latter line since it examines particularly the political role of poetry and novel in the process of nation building in Turkey. Considering the two-fold idea, founding of a nation-state and attempt to civilization, as the basic motives in the building of the Republic, it would not be a mistake to define the essential subject of the Turkish Republic as a new concept of ‘Citizen’. This new identity search in the name of the people has necessarily employed the objective of developing a new culture, again, for the people (Tekelioğlu, 1996: 194, Keyman, 1995:103-104). Therefore, the cultural politics has been assigned a peculiar role in the process of nation building and national identity, as the articulating principle of which was the concept of citizenship. The broad field of cultural politics has showed its effects in many different spheres, from the Turkish music to the development of sport activities. The Turkish literature, in this respect has constituted one of the major fields. Throughout the early years of the republican period, both the verse and the prose form have carried the effects of the conducted cultural politics, and they became political means to express the message of the republican ideology. Therefore, it might be said that the 1 construction of the nation-state and the idea of civilization constituted the two main themes of the Turkish literature. In this thesis the development of the republican ideology is examined through the study of the Turkish literature. The notion of ‘revolutionary’ literature that addresses to the ‘glorious’ emergence of Turkish Republic is the main trait for both the poetry and the novel during the early years of the republican period. Therefore, this thesis is in fact an examination of the notion of ‘revolutionary’ literature that took part in the building of a nation-state with a strong attempt to civilization. This is also to say that the early republican literature mirrors us the underlying ideology of these two basic motives. In this respect, throughout the thesis I argue that the Turkish nationalism and its political reflection were based on a self/other relationship. While this ‘self’ was composed of the notion of ‘people’, the Turkish nation and its culture, the ‘other’ basically referred to the recent Ottoman past and its cultural artifacts. In the examination of the ‘revolutionary’ literature this separation appears more apparently. The narration of the Turkish Republic, in both verse and prose forms becomes the point where the tension between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ surfaces. In this respect the making of the ‘self’ that is included as opposed to the excluded ‘other’ in literary works is the primary point in this thesis to trace. While the case study conducted on the early republican literature presents the concrete examples of this process, the theoretical examination of the relationship between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ is introduced to the reader in the following chapter. Following the line of Homi Bhabha’s analysis on the post-colonial