Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (original) (raw)
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Imperialism and literature: An imperialism-oriented reading of modern Turkish literature
Bağlama, S. H., & Güngör, B. (2023). Imperialism and literature: An imperialism-oriented reading of modern Turkish literature. Journal of European Studies, 53(3), 253–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472441231188782, 2023
Postcolonial theory perceives the world as divided between the coloniser and the colonised, thus indirectly reproducing the centrality of the West. For this reason, in literary studies, postcolonial theory fails to cover the literatures of those nations which were not colonised in a typical sense but rather occupied by Western imperialism, as was the case with Ottoman Turkey. This necessitates a convergent theoretical framework that might help evaluate the fictionalisation of the intersecting dynamics of oppression, violence, exploitation, and resistance in relation to the hegemonic narratives of imperialism and shape a new perspective regarding the politico-cultural dimension of imperial discourse. This article, in this respect, will critically develop the theoretical foundations of imperialism-oriented literary theory and construct it as an interdisciplinary field that has a potential to contribute to contemporary postcolonial theory and to encompass the intersectional dimensions of imperialism and imperial discourse for the articulation of the fictionalisation of imperialism-related issues in the under-considered corpus of modern Turkish literature.
Resistance of the Postmodern Turkish Novel to the Return of Nationalism
Colloquium: New Philologies, 2019
My aim in this paper is to survey the journey of Turkey's postmodern historical fiction, referred to as "historiographic metafiction" by Linda Hutcheon (1988). This genre of postmodern fiction designates a narrative with two predominant features: (a) it is principally a retelling of a historical occurrence from a counter-position against the supposed factuality of the original story, and (b) it contains the self-reflexivity of its author, which enables him/her to question the boundary between fact and fiction, if there is any at all. Obviously, Hutcheon's conception of this particular category of postmodern fiction was mainly derived from an approach which stresses inherent narratological characteristics in the writing of history, as argued by Hayden White and other historiographers. My research questions in this study are: How successfully is historiographic metafiction used by postmodernist writers in Turkish literature? When we consider the rise of nationalism in Turkey and in the world, can postmodern literature offer an alternative to authoritative discourses? Has postmodernism been able to challenge traditional representations in Turkey? An analysis of selected works of contemporary Turkish literature will supply an answer to these questions.
This study examines the conception of nationhood developed by a political movement referred to as Ulusalcılık (nationalism), which emerged at the turn of the century. We focus on ways in which the Ulusalcı movement makes use of nation-building techniques to establish and propagate its own version of Turkish nationhood as one that is primordially secular and patriotic. This is expressed in its opposition to Islamism, Ottomanism, and what it sees as imperialist Western powers. We argue that the most significant technique Ulusalcı nationalists use to rebuild Turkish nationhood is a relocation of the nation's founding moment, from the official Kemalist one marked by the founding of the Republic in 1923 to the War of Independence fought against the European powers between 1919 and 1922. Our premise is that nationhood is ultimately the product of storytelling, and that the politics of nationhood involves the contentious production, dissemination, and negotiation of different stories and their corresponding founding moments. We analyze the story of Turkish nationhood told in the bestselling book Those Crazy Turks, which became the bible of the Ulusalcı movement. We argue that the Ulusalcı narration of Turkish nationhood interpellates a new national subject that is primordially secular, militaristically patriotic, and adamantly anti-Western. These are projected as essential qualities that must, at all cost, be upheld and defended against Islamist, Ottomanist, and Western powers that are conspiring to bring Turkey down.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2021
Scholars of modern Turkish history have long asserted that Ottoman history and historiography were effectively silenced by the Kemalist elite in the early republican period. According to the existing scholarship, the Kemalist nation-builders regarded the new republic as the exact opposite of the ‘cosmopolitan’ Ottoman Empire, discrediting it as an illegitimate ancien régime. As a result of this break with the Ottoman past, which entailed the destruction or silencing of everything recalling it, the study of Ottoman history was discouraged and Ottoman historians were pushed to the margins of academic and intellectual life by the single-party regime. This article problematizes this widely accepted and oft-repeated argument that not only derives from but also reproduces the stereotyped perspectives on modern Turkish history. Focusing on the historical literature produced in the 1920s and 1930s, exploring the relationship between the single-party regime and Ottoman historians, and examining the temper and content of contemporary works on Ottoman history, this article aims to present a more nuanced picture of early republican Turkish history and historical writing, and argues that Ottoman historiography, which had already received a nationalized vocabulary and agenda before the republican era, continued to flourish in its own realm throughout all this period.
This article tells the story of the construction of Turkish national identity in the early republican era by addressing two canonical novels about occupied İstanbul: Sodom ve Gomore ("Sodom and Gomorrah") by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu and Biz İnsanlar ("We People") by Peyami Safa. Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Turkish nationalist intellectuals attempted to offer certain formulations and implemented various mechanisms to create a national self. The study aims to focus on the ways in which Karaosmanoglu and Safa create the new Turkish national identity and deals with the questions of how occupied İstanbul was perceived by these intellectuals and how the memory of the Allied occupation of İstanbul, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the National Liberation Struggle shaped Turkish elites' self-identification as well as their formulation of the national identity.
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Turkey between Nationalism and Globalization
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At the center of the various manifestations of modernity stands the nation-state. Expertise on the state and its institutions is habitually provided by academics, journalists and political practitioners. From time to time, in speaking about the state, we also hear voices on the role of literature. To associate fictional literature with state-building may at first seem like a far-fetched idea. On closer examination, however, it turns out to be decisive, especially when considering the modern state, which reaches deep into the daily lives of its citizens. For the role of the state in modern society is incomparably more intrusive and pervasive for individuals than ever was the case with central authorities in pre-modern societies. The American sociologist Dennis Wrong has called attention to the contributions of fictional literature to the understanding of political relationships. In his Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses (1979), he refers extensively to Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in his analysis of various forms of legitimation of power. 1 With regard to the relationship between fictional literature and political science, several initiatives have originated in literary circles. A recent contribution has been made by the Turkish professor of comparative literature, Azade Seyhan, with her 2008 book Tales of Crossed Destinies: the Modern Turkish Novel in a Comparative Perspective. Seyhan's analysis of the development of the modern Turkish novel is anchored in a theoretical perspective emphasizing the close relationship between literary narratives (especially the novel) and the formation of national identities in the modern era. This approach is eloquently summarized by the author as follows: Nothing allows us a more insightful access into other times and cultures than narratives. The relentless passage of time brings in its wake inevitable surges of amnesia and awakens in human consciousness a sense of irredeemable loss. From the desire to reclaim what is lost or beyond reach spring narratives that connect us to our pasts and to others in webs of intimacy and memory as well as in webs of enmity and error. Such narratives respond to the universal human need for identification or affiliation with a clan, a community, a religious or ethnic group, or a state. Contingencies of National identities in literary narratives One of the basic theoretical themes set out by Seyhan is drawn from George Lukács's The Theory of the Novel (1971 [1920])-"one of the most important
Conservative Narrative: Contemporary Neo- Ottomanist Approaches in Turkish Politics
Middle East Critique, 2020
Turkish politicians, intellectuals and ordinary citizens usually take an ambivalent view of the Ottoman state. The founding fathers of Turkey, mostly soldiers and bureaucrats in the Ottoman state structure had, for the most part, negative perceptions owing to the loss of territory and defeats during the latter days of the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, republican Turkey endeavored to create a modern Turkish nation that was very much part of Western civilization. Nevertheless, fascination with the Ottoman Empire rose to the fore during the multiparty era of the 1950s and further increased in the 1980s and now under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The AKP leadership has been articulating a new identity and historical perspective to create a new national identity for Turkey. This article analyzes the nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire in Turkish politics by focusing on the conservative ideologue Necip Fazıl Kısakurek (1904–1983), who had a significant impact on the AKP leadership as well as on efforts to create a new post-Kemalist Turkey.