İNKILAP, İNKİŞAF, İNKIRAZ: KARAOSMANOĞLU, TAHİR VE PAMUK ROMANLARINDA KEMALİZM DAVASI
REVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT, COLLAPSE: THE CAUSE OF KEMALISM IN THE NOVELS OF KARAOSMANOĞLU, TAHİR AND PAMUK

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to reinterpret the founding philosophy of the Republic by focusing on three different periods in the canon of Modern Turkish Literature. Our discussion aims to reveal the meanings and criticisms that the authors attribute to Kemalism by evaluating the basic theses of the founding in Yakup Kadri Karaosmaoğlu's Ankara (1934), Kemal Tahir's Crossroads (1971) and Orhan Pamuk's Cevdet Bey and His Sons (1982). From this point of view, the founding Kemalist narrative of Ankara, the anti-Kemalist critique of Croosroads, and the post-Kemalist interpretation of Cevdet Bey and His Sons will be read as three important junctures and historical analyses of the first century of the Republic. While evaluating the Republic in the context of the concepts of revolution (inkılap), Bildung (inkişaf) and collapse (inkıraz), the novels will highlight the possibilities and obstacles to understanding Kemalism as a cause of liberation and establishment – as an ideological ideal of the good life. Our study aims to develop a comparative and normative critique of the founding of the Republic through these three novels by pointing out the necessity of reevaluating the debates on the founding of the Republic on the axis of the critical framework of the concept of “post-post-Kemalism” proposed by İlker Aytürk and Berk Esen. In conclusion, our study argues that the attempt to understand Kemalism as a historical narrative from a critical perspective can be traced respectively in Ankara, Crossroads and Cevdet Bey and His Sons, and thereby this interpretive effort would enable a hermeneutical reading of the founding of the Republic that has perhaps been too often overlooked.

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