MİDHAT CEMAL KUNTAY’IN GARB’A TENKİTLERİ: İFTİRA-YI TAASSUB
MIDHAT CEMAL KUNTAY’S CRITICS TO THE WEST: İFTIRA-YI TAASSUB

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to present and expose a less known text written in 1911 by Midhat Cemal Kuntay (1885-1956). This tractate is also going to translate to modern Turkish from Ottoman letters. İftira-yı Taassub that Midhat Cemal wrote at the age of 28, has signature of one of the young pens of the old empire. On the other hand, this study will also take into account the autonomy of the text and but it will not be neglected that the subjectivity of the author and his text was created by variable of a certain historicity. Midhat Cemal's place in the history of Turkish literature will be explained by taking into account his personal characteristics. It is a distinctive feature of reflecting his national feelings in his works. It is not surprising that the presence of these national feelings in the works of a litterateur who witnessed collapse of Ottoman Empire. The year when he wrote İftira-yı Taassub, Tripoli the last Ottoman land in Africa, was occupied by Italians and afterwards the Balkan wars broke out. İftira-yı Taassub is only one of the examples of the impact of the collapse of the Empire on the Turkish intellectuals. In addition, in this work the criticism of an intellectual from East towards West will be taken into consideration. This tractate is a critique of Orientalism and it was written with the intention of explaning the relation with religion and bigotry with examples from the history of Europe.

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