The Turkish novel became a national chronotope proper with the founding of the Republic in 1923 and the emergent conception of the national geography following the War of Independence (1919-1922). This was the Anatolian territory, with Ankara as the new capital of the nation instead of İstanbul which had been the Ottoman Empire's center for almost five centuries. Anatolia became the motherland on which the national consciousness of the new nation would be inscribed. In the novels of the republican era, Anatolian iconography and mythography illustrate how this setting became a persistent element of narrative structure as a significant topos in both senses of the word: as place and theme. An inquiry into the permutations of the theme of Anatolia since the War of Independence will reveal the changing attitudes and ideas related to Turkish nationalism and its most outstanding component, the cult of the father personified by Atatürk. This essay, however, does not only aim at a survey of an ideology's history via literature; it also investigates the Anatolian iconography and mythography, as they figure in the Turkish novel of the republican era, and touches upon the various narrative strategies that major Turkish novelists have employed in their search for the right form for this important content, the right form to either reinforce or undermine a sacred story.

This paper explores modes of autobiographical writing by female authors in the early republican period. Women's autobiographies draw a strict distinction between the narration of the private and the public self, as they promote the narration of the undomestic, professional self at the expense of the private. Ironically, even if the autobiographers in question were politically active in suffrage, women's autobiographies either do not represent the authors' involvement in such campaigns, or praise state feminism for granting emancipation. “Personal is political” only becomes a maxim for a later generation of women writers, with autobiographies and autobiographical novels of the post-1970 period underscoring the importance of exploring the subjectivity of the adult woman/narrator. More recent examples of auto/biographical writing blur the boundaries between private and public and narrate gendered accounts of republican history.

The aim of this study is to explore the nature of Turkish literary utopias written in the early republican period. As a study in history and literature, it contextualizes the ideal social order envisioned in these works. My main argument is twofold: First, I claim that these works reflect Kemalism as an ideal system. They presuppose that the present regime has in itself the dynamics that enables an ideal social order and that this ideal social order can be attained by getting rid of the practical irregularities that prevent a full-fledged realization of the present regime. With these presuppositions, they serve the efforts to turn Kemalism into a hegemonic discourse. Secondly, through a detailed analysis of these texts, I argue that Kemalism has not been a monolithic discourse, but rather that it contained different and sometimes competing currents.

This article examines the portrayal of Mehmed II, the conqueror of Istanbul, in Turkish historical fiction, as well as the literary and ideological implications of his portrayal with regard to Turkish national identity. Since the early Turkish Republic, Mehmed II has been described as a major character in over thirty historical novels. The article argues that over time the literary characterization of Mehmed II in Turkish fiction has undergone substantial change. During the early republican period, historical fiction adopted an ambivalent attitude toward Mehmed II. While one historical novel under discussion focuses mostly on Mehmed II's despotism and aggressive tendencies, another novel contemplates his military bravery and his ability to govern. However, with the arrival of the multi-party system in 1950, these ambivalent approaches toward Mehmed II changed, and he began to be portrayed as the ideal Turkish statesman, gaining the status of a national hero. The latter attitude toward him dominated historical fiction writing as late as in the early 1990s. At that time, Turkish historical meta-fiction began to portray a more complex and ambiguous Mehmed II, thus both challenging as well as re-producing his previous representations.

The aim of this essay is to read Attilâ İlhan's novel Gâzi Paşa, a historical novel about the Turkish Independence War, with a focus on the distinction between history writing and historical novel. I begin my analysis of this novel from the narratological perspective developed by Dorrit Cohn, who emphasizes two aspects of this distinction: different reference fields of history and fiction, and fiction's distinctive ability in reaching into the minds of characters. These aspects will help me to unravel the production of meaning in Gâzi Paşa through its ambivalent and intentional border crossings between the two fields. Then, I will explain this intentional textual swing through an analysis of its roman à thèse features, which I ground on Susan Rubin Suleiman's description of the genre. Finally, the essay will discuss Gâzi Paşa's authorial intention that aims at instructing an audience through a narrative of charisma, founded on a specific representation of Mustafa Kemal for the purpose of propagating a black-and-white perception of history and politics.

This article traces the patterns of irony and the carnivalesque in Murat Uyurkulak's fantastic fiction Har, focusing especially on the depiction of a group of misfits, yamuklar (the crooked), as portrayed in the central chapter, “Cinema Grande.” Arguing that a reconfigured carnival spirit finds its way into Uyurkulak's novel, the article explores from a Bakhtinian perspective the ways in which the author offers a modern version of popular festive elements, especially the jester or the fool who signifies the symbolic destruction of authority and resistance to the mechanisms of power. The employment of the carnivalesque enables the author not only to speak of what is essentially unspeakable, but also to displace the illusion of progress fabricated by authority. This turns out to be possible only through artistic illusion. By focusing on the portrayal of the outcasts in Cinema Grande, this article also draws attention to the different representations of madness in Atay's “disconnected” and Uyurkulak's “crooked.”

Literary narratives offer their audience opportunities to surpass existing monolithic social and cultural identities through reflecting on and representing the past from new perspectives. This article aims to elaborate this argument by a discussion of multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism, reflective nostalgia, and cultural intimacy in the portrayals of Diyarbakir's “Infidel Quarter” in two literary works: Mıgırdiç Margosyan's Gavur Mahallesi and Mehmed Uzun's Nar Çiçekleri. Both works, the former as a short story collection and the latter as a collection of essays, share autobiographical features and reflect the multiculturalism of Diyarbakır in the 1940s and 1950s from the point of view of an Armenian and a Kurd with similar sensitivities. Margosyan and Uzun's works indicate a cultural pluralism in Diyarbakır where different religious cultures used to exist side by side. The intermingling of languages in this neighborhood shows a kind of “inclusive multiculturalism.” Svetlana Boym's differentiation and discussion of two kinds of nostalgia as restorative and reflective, the former as nationalist and the latter as individual or collective memory oriented, help us to evaluate Margosyan and Uzun's works as alternatives to nationalist narratives. Both of these works, dealing with reflective nostalgia through the depiction of cultural intimacy between ethnic groups, provide their audience with possibilities for the future.