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Turkish Studies
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Fine-Tuning Nationalism: Critical Perspectives from
Republican Literature in Turkey
D. Köksal

Online Publication Date: 23 January 2001

To cite this Article: Köksal, D. (2001) 'Fine-Tuning Nationalism: Critical Perspectives
from Republican Literature in Turkey', Turkish Studies, 2:2, 63 - 84
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Fine-Tuning Nationalism:
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Critical Perspectives from Republican

Literature in Turkey
DUYGU KÖKSAL

This article reconsiders the role of nationalist literature in the making of Republican Turkey. In
the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey witnessed the rise of identity politics and ideologies with Muslim
and Ottomanist-oriented tones. It is often asserted that the major contradiction of identity politics
in Turkey is between what can broadly be called the “Turkish-Islamic synthesis” and the radical,
modernizing, official Kemalist nationalism. This article questions such a simplistic understanding
of Turkish politics by articulating nationalist perspectives which oppose and criticize these two
major ideologies. It discusses the work of three well-known nationalist writers, Kemal Tahir,
Cemil Meriç and Attila İlhan in order to demonstrate the nuances of nationalist thinking and the
possibilities that literature provides for extending the existing definitions of national identity in
Turkey.

The 1980s and 1990s marked a politics of identity in Turkey that included
a stronger emphasis on Islamist views, the rise of different types of
nationalist ideas and the political participation of traditionally marginal
cultural and economic groups. At the same time, this period saw the
development of liberal demands for a “second Republic” which would be
more tolerant of ethnic, religious and political differences than “the first
Republic.”1
The rise of the Islamically oriented Welfare (later Virtue) Party, the
ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party, an influential popular Islamic
leader like Fethullah Gülen and a new, urban, Muslim intelligentsia and
media reflect the strength of cultural cleavages in shaping Turkish politics.
New developments, such as the demands for the acknowledgement of the
cultural rights of the Kurdish minority, the debate over the right of
Islamist female university students to wear headscarves in school and the
growing propensity of the masses to their nationalist identity should be
analyzed within the context of this new identity politics.
The cultural politics of the era have challenged the official nationalist
paradigm or what has sometimes been called the paradigm of the “first
Republic.” Among the nationalist and Islamist ideologies, some clearly
carry authoritarian and exclusivist tendencies as a major element in their
relative success. In these circumstances, it is important to examine
Turkish Studies, Vol.2, No.2 (Autumn 2001), pp.63–84
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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64 TURKISH STUDIES

ideological positions that can incorporate demands for identity within a

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democratic system. This article proposes that Turkish Republican

literature has provided a range of alternative definitions of national
identity, offering the opportunity to challenge both official and opposition
concepts of identity.
Literary texts provide formidable sources for research into politics and
history. This article does not propose to equate fiction with historical
studies or to confuse historical facts with literary texts. What it does instead
is to approach the literary text as reflecting the intended or unintended
observations and representations of the author. The reception of literary
works by particular audiences provides the researcher with more material
on how specific interpretations of national identity find resonance with the
public at large and this will also be briefly discussed here.
This article examines the works and ideas of three pre-eminent figures
of Republican literature in Turkey in the context of alternative nationalist
perspectives. The writers are Kemal Tahir (1910–73), known for his
unorthodox Marxist interpretation of Ottoman history; Cemil Meriç
(1916–87), Muslim essayist and critic; and Attila İlhan (1925–), neo-
Kemalist novelist, poet and journalist.

Contesting National Identities in Turkey

The post-1980 era has intensified the clash between definitions of national
identity by the official Republican nationalism, the Turkish-Islamic
Synthesis (hereafter TIS) and Islamism in its various shades. The official
nationalism can be described as an ideology concerned with building and
consolidating the power of the nation-state through an uncompromising
cultural project of Westernization and secularization. The initial
revolutionary nationalism, originating from the liberation war of 1919–22,
was populist and “Anatolianist” in its symbolism. Republican
nationalism, however, developed a rigid elitist, official character in the
years following the establishment of the Republic and the consolidation of
single-party rule (1923–45).2
The TIS, in its widest sense, includes all nationalist perspectives that
build upon a combination of the pre-Islamic and Islamic cultures of Turks.
Its particular and systematic formulation was realized by a group of
intellectuals known as the Aydınlar Ocağı (Intellectuals’ Hearth).3 This
synthesis dwells on a particularly authoritarian and militaristic notion of a
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 65

Turkish identity built around a strong state as an end in itself. It has served
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to legitimize the authoritarian practices of the 1980 military intervention

and the culturally conservative ideologies of the post-1980 era. Many
argue that in recent years the TIS has actually replaced Republican
nationalism and become the official nationalist paradigm.4
Official Republican nationalism, through the cultural policies of the
single-party rule, came up with its own version of the Turkish ethnie,
while unofficial nationalisms drew upon different myths of descent,
shared historical memories and culture, alternative sources of solidarity
and even alternative territorial aspirations.5 Each brought forth its own
version of the nation’s cultural roots. According to Republican
nationalism, these roots lie in the nation’s pre-Islamic past,6 according to
the TIS, they lie in a combination of the steppe culture of Central Asia and
the Islamic culture of jihad.7
Islamists stress the capacity of Islam to make this community a nation
or a brotherhood. Islamism refers to a broad ideological spectrum ranging
from Islamic modernists, to fundamentalists, to the new urban intellectual
Islamists. With varied degrees of radicalism, these perspectives share the
idea that the Muslim identity of the masses is being oppressed by the
secular nation-state. For the purposes of this article, only those Islamist
ideologies that can be considered loosely nationalist8 are relevant. The
more radical versions that categorically reject the nation-state remain
outside a discussion centered on national identity. The milder versions of
Islamism, then, are included in the category of the TIS.
Official nationalism and the TIS share the belief in the nation as a
timeless entity waiting to be rediscovered in its Central Asian roots. Both
perspectives argue the necessity of the state orienting or manipulating the
nation’s culture. Both ideologies tend to regard the nation as an ethnically
monolithic unit and are uncomfortable with the cosmopolitan mentality of
the earlier Ottoman Empire. Official nationalism, much more than the
TIS, stresses the liberation war as having been a grassroots movement or
popular front while downplaying the revolutionary or leftist tones in this
early nationalism. In other words, while it is asserted that the Turkish
people fought the war as a nation, possible revolutionary or radical
interpretations of this war are overlooked.
However, the nationalist views of Tahir, Meriç and İlhan can be said to
move beyond the limited definitions of national identity provided by the
official nationalism and the TIS. In their writings, these pillars of Turkish
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66 TURKISH STUDIES

Republican literature share a concern with cultural authenticity. They all

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criticize the official nationalist narrative for having established a break

with the nation’s Islamic/Ottoman past while rejecting exclusivist and
authoritarian interpretations. The nation’s Islamic/Ottoman past is to be
acknowledged not for its glory and victories, as many proponents of the
TIS do, but more importantly for its cultural wealth.

Republican Literature, Intellectuals and Nationalism

The first step in understanding these alternative accounts is to situate
Tahir, Meriç and İlhan within the broader framework of Republican
literature, paying attention to their idiosyncratic experiences as well as the
ground they share. A key element here is the ideological dilemma of the
nationalist intellectual.
Frederic Jameson claims that it is not easy for Third World literature to
escape from simple national allegories.9 Similarly, Barbara Harlow claims
that resistance literature, in colonial and post-colonial contexts, is
essentially political.10 Literature continues to be political in a late
modernizing country like Turkey, though the nature of its politics has
changed over time. Not unexpectedly, modernization, the idea of the nation
and the arrival of Western literary genres were parallel developments in the
late Ottoman Empire. The gradual formation of a national(ist) literature
went hand in hand with the development of Turkism in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, gaining impetus with the establishment of the
Republic in 1923. The particular concerns of Republican nationalist
ideology, that is, Westernization, secularization, a national economy and
creating a hard-working, patriotic and selfless Republican individual, can
easily be followed in the literary products of the first two decades of the
Republic characterized by single-party rule.
The 1940s were characterized by the rise, from the Left and the Right,
of a viable opposition to single-party rule. Tahir, Meriç and İlhan belong
to a generation of intellectuals repressed by the authoritarian regime. Like
most leftist intellectuals opposing the single-party regime, they were
preoccupied with the poor living conditions of the lower classes and the
peasantry, contrasting them to the privileged positions of the bureaucrats
and newly forming bourgeoisie. They subscribed to the socially realistic
school of thought, the major trend in Turkish literature, perhaps until the
late 1970s. However, these writers differed from other social realists, who
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 67

were occupied mainly with themes of inequality, class struggle or agrarian

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feudal relations, in the additional emphasis they placed on the culture of

the masses or on cultural authenticity. All faced the dilemma of being
explicit nationalists themselves while questioning the logic of the official
nationalism of the single-party regime.
The 1980s and 1990s have seen the rise of a post-modernist literature
preoccupied with questions of identity and a rising interest in the
representations of Turco-Ottoman identity, a much more complicated
identity than the one proposed by the nationalist literature of earlier
decades.11 While not openly political, these works reflect the recent concerns
of cultural politics in Turkey. Unlike mainstream nationalist works which
are considered quite outmoded and dogmatic, those of Tahir, Meriç and
İlhan have retained their interest or even gained popularity in this era since
they were forerunners in positing questions of national identity.
These writers witnessed the early years of the Republic as well as its
maturation. Themes of the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, the nationalist
struggle and the early Republican era feature prominently in their works.
Interestingly, they share similar personal backgrounds. All came from
modest families in state employment, spent much of their younger years
in provincial towns and cities and received a French-language Western
education. All three were influenced by the Turkish Marxist poet Nazım
Hikmet and by socialist thought in general, suffering some political
suppression as a result. However, in time they either distanced themselves
from Marxist thought (Meriç) or joined the opposition within socialist
thinking (Tahir and İlhan).
All three authors challenged the binary oppositionalist categories—
such as traditionalist versus modernist and leftist versus rightist—that
customarily dominated the intellectual scene of the Republic. Until
recently, intellectuals with a diffuse Marxist, socialist, or social
democratic background who believed in radical secularism and
understood culture in cosmopolitan/internationalist terms generally
formed the leftist camp. Themes of national history, Ottoman heritage,
state tradition, as well as any allusion to Muslim culture, were designated
as projects of the Right. This crossing of categories can be seen in the fact
that Tahir can be called a Marxist-Ottomanist; Meriç, a rationalist
Muslim; and İlhan, a leftist neo-Kemalist.12
Tahir was sentenced to a 15-year prison term for attempting to incite a
Naval rebellion after he delivered three leftist books to his brother who
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68 TURKISH STUDIES

was a student in the naval academy. He spent 12 years (1938–50) in

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various Anatolian prisons among the rural folk, a period that brought
about the transition of his thoughts from a vulgar Marxism to populism.
After his imprisonment, Tahir began to search for the meaning of the so-
called Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) in the Ottoman Empire,
combining Ottomanism with a revised Marxist perspective, a unique
stance for intellectuals of his generation. His historical novels opened the
way for the heated AMP debate among Turkish social scientists.
Meriç was born and raised in Hatay (ancient Antioch), a southeastern
city in the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Hatay was a French protectorate
between 1920 and 1936 and enjoyed the status of an independent Republic
until its unification with Turkey in 1939. Therefore Meriç spent his youth
in a French colonial setting under the influences of French culture, exiled
Ottoman intellectuals and the underground activism of the emerging
Turkish nationalists. This period (1916–40) had a deep impact on the
nationalist synthesis he made later in his life. Passing through stages of
Marxism and Turkism, Meriç became a modernist cosmopolitan
intellectual steeped in Western literature and social thought. In the 1970s,
he began to write primarily on Islamic and Ottoman cultural heritage
while maintaining his interest in Western letters.
The turning point in İlhan’s life was his voluntary exile in Paris from
1959 to 1965. After winning second prize in the poetry contest organized
by the Republican People’s party in 1945, İlhan became more critical of
the party. Like many Westernized, late-Ottoman and Republican
intellectuals, he sought refuge in the bohemian and Third-World/anti-
colonialist circles of Paris, hiding from political pressure in his homeland.
His Marxism and his interest in the Islamic/Ottoman past of Turkey
developed during these years as well as his interest in ethnic, religious and
sexual minorities. İlhan’s work, with its emphasis on the Ottoman/Seljuk
cultural synthesis, does not fit easily into the frameworks of Kemalism or
socialism. He was deeply impressed by the initial popular, revolutionary
coalition of the nationalist struggle and the early Republic. Remaining
faithful to a radical, populist Kemalism led him to question the
authoritarianism of the single-party regime as well as the pompous
“Atatürkism” of the three military coups which took place in 1960, 1971
and 1980.
It is not so unusual for nationalist intellectuals around the world to
work for the anti-colonial cause to establish an independent nation-state,
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 69

then fall into opposition after the consolidation of an authoritarian regime

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there. Similarly, this trio moved from a modernist stance with leftist
tendencies toward an oppositional nationalism based on the
Islamic/Ottoman past as a critique of the Republican modernization.

The Islamic/Ottoman Past and a Critique of Republican

Modernization
The understanding of nationality in the works of Tahir, Meriç and İlhan is
to some extent close to theories stressing the pre-modern origins of
national identity,13 which suggest that pre-modern historical and cultural
communities provide an ethnic core for the subsequent development of
modern nations and nationalisms. However, all three intellectuals
internalize a simultaneous recognition of the impossibility of fixing this
ethnic core, which changes with time. This is what renders their respective
nationalism critical.
The debate concerning continuity and discontinuity, with respect to the
Islamic-Ottoman past, continues to provide a major question in studies
conducted with a historical perspective. Scholars of the Kemalist national
project have perceived it as revolutionary in some respects while noticing
elements of continuity with the ancién regime in other respects. Samuel
Eisenstadt observed that discontinuity was best observed in a shift in “the
bases of political legitimation” and “symbols of the political
community;”14 in this sense, the Kemalist nation-state project could be
called revolutionary. Other scholars have focused on the elements of
continuity, pointing out that the bureaucratic code of the Ottoman Empire,
reflecting the symbolic and cultural properties of the imperial center,
continued into the Republic embodied in the regime of the Republican
People’s Party (RPP).15
The vocabulary of discontinuity reigns in the official nationalist
paradigm, while an emphasis on continuity is a vital element for the TIS.
In contrast to these ideologies marked by grand and sweeping
generalizations about discontinuity or continuity, the three writers chose
to stress the discontinuities and continuities in an attentive and realist
manner. It is in this sense that their literary works constitute honest and
true representations of national identity.
Tahir, for example, locating the sources of the nation’s collective
identity in the historical establishment and development of the Ottoman
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70 TURKISH STUDIES

Empire, defies purely modernist accounts of nation-building. Yet this

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eagerness to underline continuity does not make Tahir an “Ottomanist” in

the sense designated by the Ottoman dynastic nationalism of the
nineteenth century.16 That sort of Ottomanism aimed at securing the
survival and rejuvenation of the Ottoman State. Tahir accepts that socio-
economic circumstances caused the eventual dissolution of the Empire.
Tahir claims that continuity exists between modern Turkey and the
Ottoman Empire through the particular relationship of power that still
exists between the central state and its subjects/citizens. Geographic,
socio-economic and cultural factors underlie this specific relationship
which, for Tahir, constitutes an ethnie. Yet this ethnie is apt to change over
time as material conditions shift. There is no ethnic essence ascribed to
Ottoman Turks but rather a certain historically adaptive administrative
capacity.
Tahir’s definition looks like a state-centered definition of national
identity, since the Ottomans are seen as administrative cadres whose sole
aim was to preserve the state and their positions in it. Yet he always
emphasizes the fact that it was the Anatolian people ruled by the Ottomans
who provided the other part of this collective identity. Therefore, the
strategic attitudes of submission, resistance, or indifference to the central
authority by ruled populations constitutes a crucial facet of the Ottoman-
Turkish identity. Tahir has written a number of novels concerning the
economic, social and cultural constitution of the rural people. These
generally deal with the oppressive relationships of the village’s big land
owner and the villagers, the sexual affairs of the village or the townsfolk,
the role of the banditry, the role of the state in the form of the local
gendarmerie and the feelings and responses of the rural people towards the
state. In these novels, the Anatolian people are neither glorified nor
denigrated.
For Tahir the typical Anatolian is a pragmatist who is after his daily
bread. This type is not usually disturbed by the pillage around him,
patiently waiting for his turn to come. Such a simple personality has a
witty side along with his banality, as do all folk characters in world
literature. Obviously, Tahir’s nationalism idealizes neither the Ottoman
state nor the Anatolian rural people as constituents of identity. His
emphasis on the Ottoman past helps unravel the inherited and continuing
nature of Republican Turkey’s culture in its positive and negative aspects.
Tahir demystifies the populist rhetoric and practices of the single-party
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 71

era, best exemplified by his novel Bozkırdaki Çekirdek (The Seed in the
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Steppe). The novel builds on elements of irony, humor and absurdity in the
establishment of the Village Institutes in 1940, which aimed to create
teachers from among the villagers to work in the village, in line with the
ideology of the RPP that the state would be the vanguard and educator of
the people.
Meriç, too, resorts to the Ottoman/Islamic past as a source of criticism
of Republican modernization, saying: “The expression ‘Ottoman’ is my
challenge to the present era. This is a commitment with my language, my
religion and my terminology. There is nothing else to Ottomanism. A
commitment to its ideals.”17 For Meriç, the nationalist narrative
emphasizing a break from Islamic/Ottoman civilization invites an
impoverishment of national identity. Following historians of civilization
like Arnold Toynbee or Oswald Spengler, Meriç views societies from the
perspectives of the civilizations they belong to. Civilizations may differ
from each other but they are all equal from a universal perspective:
“Thinking cannot be local. Thinking is universal ... [Taste] is different.
Literature, history, art ... these should be one hundred percent local.”18
Meriç emphasizes the importance of rational thinking in the
foundations of the Islamic and Ottoman cultural heritage. He criticizes the
Republican representations of the Islamic/Ottoman heritage as irrational
and superstitious: “They always say, ‘Sir, there is no thought and
philosophy in the Ottoman.’ However, he did not write. He did not put it
into books. He realized what he wanted to do through his sword and his
administration.”19
In accordance with his emphasis on continuity, Meriç disapproves of
the Republic’s attempts at the modernization of the Turkish language. He
argues that, since language is memory, it cannot be reformed without
damaging a society’s received values and perception of history: “How
many academics do we have who can reach a century back? With [only]
a fifty-year past, neither philosophy nor civilization is possible.”20 Meriç
himself wrote in a unique literary style that is called “a kind of neo-
Ottoman Turkish.”21 Interestingly, he is also credited as the writer who
introduced French syntax into Turkish, extending the limits of the
contemporary language.
Though Meriç’s language relies heavily upon Ottoman words, when
read out loud it creates a new, vitally energetic and poetic sound. This
language carries a composite quality and when addressing a contemporary
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72 TURKISH STUDIES

Turkish audience it becomes a strategy for presenting the Ottoman

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cultural past. Once again, as in Tahir’s works, the emphasis on continuity

in Meriç’s writing comes at a later stage in his life and career. This is
probably why he writes: “In order to return to ourselves we had to reach
the climax of alienation.”22
İlhan, like Tahir and Meriç, demands acceptance of the fact that a
complete break with the cadres and the mentality of a bureaucratic empire
is impossible. He too distinguishes carefully between ‘Ottomanism’ and
his own position. For him, there is no question that the Ottoman system
disappeared because it had outlived its life but he advocates utilizing the
Ottoman heritage for the development of a national synthesis for modern
Turkey:
Why, why, why? While the Atatürk revolution was achieved in
Ottoman society, with the resources provided by Ottoman society,
and by Ottoman intellectuals, why was the social and historical
context in which this revolution was prepared and carried out not
conveyed to us in its true sense? Why were we fooled with stories of
the “senile and ignorant sultans”?23
According to İlhan, the Seljuk/Ottoman synthesis displayed an
enormous cultural wealth in its military organization, architecture, music,
literature, cuisine and entertainment. A modern ‘national cultural
synthesis’ should provide for the use of this diverse inheritance, which
Republican nationalism portrays as aristocratic and archaic. His stance on
using the Ottoman past as a cultural reservoir for creating modern and
national art and literature is reflected in his modernist poetry, written with
the sound and patterns of Ottoman classical (divan) poetry. İlhan’s poetry
is searching for the sound of classical Ottoman divan poetry, he has named
a series of poems “Free Gazels,” gazel being a genre in divan poetry. The
themes of these poems are not at all traditional and are usually of a
modernist nature. To the extent that İlhan is reconstructing the rhythm,
sound and sensitivity of the classic Ottoman poetry, he is actually
extending his modernist poetry. Opposed to the radical purification of
Turkish, İlhan’s late works even suggest creating an Ottoman-Turkish
suitable for a modern audience.
It is not solely the contents of the cultural synthesis inherited from the
Seljuk/Ottoman past that matter to İlhan but also the manner in which this
composition is created. For him, the Ottoman cultural whole is certainly
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 73

more than the sum of its parts. The capacity of the Ottomans to borrow
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and incorporate could provide a model for a national synthesis, which, of

course, could itself be challenged and recreated historically.
İlhan, much more than Tahir and Meriç, stresses that the nation is a
modern phenomenon although it is built on pre-modern ethnic and
cultural origins:
A Turkish national composition doubtlessly incorporates all the
heritage of the Turk/Islam synthesis yet it makes use of it at a secular
and not at the religious level; because the nationalization process is
a fundamentally secular and positivist one. Then could this mean the
following? The Turkish composition does not reject the religious
element of the Turk/Islam synthesis, but does not take it as the
determining element either.24
To İlhan, while imitation of an alien culture is unacceptable, absorbing and
benefiting from it are acceptable: “We have borrowed earlier; it means we
are making a synthesis now, just as we did then.”25 He points out that the
early Turks changing their alphabet from Uighur to Arabic and the
Republican reforms that shifted to the Latin alphabet were similar attempts
at cultural rejuvenation.26 With his emphasis on the necessity of
incorporating diverse and alien components within national culture, İlhan
diverges from the proponents of the TIS who concentrate solely on
Turkic/Islamic elements.27 He also diverges from official nationalist views
with his emphasis on the Seljuk-Ottoman synthesis and with his questioning
of the radical language and cultural policies of the single-party era.
The article has thus far focused upon how the Islamic/Ottoman past is
incorporated into the writers’ nationalist perspectives. The rest of the
contribution concentrates on what they have chosen to criticize in the two
major ideologies of the Republic, that is, the official nationalism and the
TIS.

Tahir and the Demystification of Nationalist Narratives

Tahir’s writings have aroused much agitation and excitement in his
audience in their disputing of the mainstream assumptions of the official
nationalist paradigm and the TIS. This section of the article will
demonstrate three things: (1) Tahir’s resistance to the perception of the
historical origins of the nation as one monolithic and constant entity, as
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74 TURKISH STUDIES

proposed by the TIS; (2) his objection to the symbolic representation of

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Mustafa Kemal as a figure of the establishment by the official

nationalism; and (3) his challenge to the representations of the nation-
people as an already existing whole by the official nationalism.
First, in contrast to the TIS ideology which glorifies the central state
and a homogenous Ottoman-Turkish identity, Tahir’s emphasis on
Ottoman-Turkish identity incorporates an important element of the
periphery and is actually built upon the tension between the state and this
periphery.28 The frontier is an especially important concept for Tahir in this
respect. In his award-winning historical novel Devlet Ana (The State
Mother), he describes the origins of the Ottoman state as a frontier
province29 of the Anatolian-Seljuk realm. Devlet Ana portrays all the
initial constituents of the Ottoman State, the Turkomen tribes, ahi’s,30
nomadic/militant dervishes, Byzantine peasants, Christian Turks, etc. This
mix reflects all the complexity and diversity of the frontier. There is a
slowly emerging Islamic identity but the novel is basically a
representation of the heterogeneity of the Ottomans or of the nation’s
ancient origins. The frontiersman is represented as an adventurer, a
marginal figure or loner. A young Christian boy in the novel describes the
people of the frontier:
My father would laugh at my mother’s curses. He used to say: You
stupid woman, what is this land? Is this not the land of the cast-offs
of humankind offended by their mothers and tired of their fathers,
who come having severed their ropes and carrying them along? Why
do you think they did not settle in Sivas or Kayseri as tax farmers?
Because they are weary of routine work.31
The frontier is a land without homogeneity. The two sides of the
frontier are politically divided yet in many ways they resemble each other.
Although some critics have interpreted Devlet Ana as a glorification of the
Ottoman system, the fact that there is no essential Ottoman identity in this
novel has been overlooked; the Ottoman society is a historical entity
situated between the East and the West.
It should be noted that Tahir always uses the term “Anatolian peoples”
in the plural, acknowledging the ethnic diversity of the region, but he
perceives most of these peoples as Turkified. Obviously for him,
Anatolian Turkishness does not convey racial Turkishness. The concept of
Anatolian peoples is one of the ways Tahir can point to the sphere of the
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 75

“periphery” since these people are members of the Ottoman state without
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being “the Ottoman” of the bureaucratic ruling class.32 However, Tahir

also shows the constant penetration of the center by the periphery. For
him, the whole dynamic between the center and the periphery is not one
of polarity but of constant negotiation and tension.
In this context, Tahir constructs Mustafa Kemal as the Commander-in-
Chief of the anti-imperialist struggle who established a particular
charismatic relationship with the Anatolian people. This perception
challenges the official nationalist identification of Kemal with the state
and the law, and downplays the rebellious and charismatic quality of the
early nationalist movement.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (though not yet Atatürk or Father Turk, as he
later came to be known) represents the revolutionary cadres who lost
power after the consolidation of the nation-state, while İsmet Pasha,33 his
Comrade-in-Arms, represents the Ottoman statesman who recaptured
power during the period of single-party rule.34 The relationship of the
masses with the charismatic leader is personal and direct. The statesman,
on the other hand, is a figure of an established and rational structure. The
relationship of the charismatic leader to the collectivity is an oral and
spontaneous one. Tahir portrays this capacity in his depictions of Kemal,
especially in his meal-time gatherings and in chats with ordinary people.35
In his novel Yol Ayrımı, Tahir depicts Kemal’s authority as original,
outside all law and customs. The fact that he was dismissed from the army
and declared an outlaw by the Istanbul government is emphasized as well
as his distance from the central circles of the Committee for Union and
Progress.36 As is typical of charismatic authority, Kemal’s authority
depends on the repetition of past symbols and allegiances; that is, on
“collective memory.” Until the Republic became fully established, the
rhetoric of Mustafa Kemal and the Ankara government was based on the
mission of protecting the Caliphate and the lands of Islam against the
infidels. Tahir, well aware of this, often alludes to the equivalence of the
symbolic power of Atatürk’s presidency in Republican Turkey to that of
the Ottoman sultan.
Tahir questions the mythology of official nationalism perceiving the
nation as an already existing monolithic whole. For him, the forces
fighting the liberation war should not be perceived as a uniformly co-
ordinated, unified body representative of an already existing nation-
people. The Kuvayi Milliye (National Forces) were organized in Anatolia
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to fight against the occupying forces in spite of the existence of an

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Ottoman government and the sultan in Istanbul (1919–23). The official

narrative of Republican history perceives the Kuvayi Milliye as a broad
coalition of voluntary and mostly civil forces. To the extent that it was a
peoples’ front led by local notables from various sectors of the society, the
Kuvayi Milliye can be considered to have been a civil movement.
However, Tahir suggests that it was mostly organized and represented by
disenchanted pashas and frustrated or unemployed lesser army officers,
rather than by the Anatolian people.
Indeed, Tahir’s novels stress the often unreceptive manner in which the
Anatolian people regarded the national forces. Especially in Yorgun
Savaşçı (The Weary Warrior), he portrays the indifference of the western
Anatolian townspeople toward the approaching Greek invasion forces.
Thus, from the point of view of the Istanbul government, and of at least
some part of the local peoples, the Kuvayi Milliye were unlawful.
The army officers leading the national movement were almost always
connected with the Committee for Union and Progress, a disillusioned,
out of power group. They are represented by Tahir as despised by the
civilians. The typical officer in the National Forces is portrayed as a
stranger, an adventurer and an eternally fatigued figure. In Tahir’s novels
these people seem to have satisfied their childish aspirations in the
national movement and to have been left aimless after the founding of the
Republic, alcoholics, bad fathers, forgotten heroes. A folk figure, Sergeant
Șaban, describes the nationalist officers:
These are deserters of their homes. Fleeing their parents … the kind
fed up with their women. This is why they are never tired of
fighting. What are these fellows who have not seen their homes,
their wives and children doing in our lands? Evidently, they who do
not long for their homes, their lands … They surely won’t care for
us!37
The theme of banditry is another way for Tahir to demystify the myth of
a unified, heroic national front. Tahir actually condemns banditry as the
robbery and exploitation of the poor Anatolian people, especially in
novels such as Rahmet Yolları Kesti (Rain Blocked the Roads) and
Yediçınar Yaylası (The Plateau of Seven Plane Trees). Yet in Yorgun
Savaşçı Tahir describes the brigand leader, Çerkes Ethem,38 who co-
operated with the national forces, as a positive character.
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In Yorgun Savaşçı, Çerkes Ethem is portrayed as exerting a mythical

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influence over the people of the region, his authority is acknowledged

much more readily than that of the army officers trying to organize the
resistance against the Greeks. The novel is based on the constant tension
between the officers of the Ottoman army and the western Anatolian
people. Ironically, it is the bandits, the outlaws, who are asked for help.
This is a time, as one character remarks, when the irregulars have turned
into soldiers and the soldiers into irregulars. Through the character of
Ethem, Tahir draws attention to the paradoxical position of the national
forces, their double estrangement from both the Ottoman center and the
people of occupied western Anatolia. In this and other novels, Tahir
questions the nationalist narration that depicts a monolithic nation in
timeless existence, which is so central to the official nationalist ideology.

Meriç and the Narrative of the “Orient”

Meriç’s approach to national identity moves beyond the crude perceptual
dichotomy of the Orient versus the West present in all these diverse, and
even opposite, ideologies. He believes that civilizations can revitalize
themselves by encountering other civilizations, as the West did by
encountering Asia. In the East, the West not only found its “other,” but
was changed through this encounter. His belief in the universality of
humanity and rationality renders Meriç tolerant of a selective, conscious,
gradual Westernization. This is not the simple utilitarianism or selective
borrowing principle of either the Islamic modernists or of the TIS
ideology; it is an emphasis on the commonalities as well as the differences
between civilizations.
Meriç opposes the notion that oriental cultures are anti-rational and
speculative: “The reality is such that neither the Orient nor the West are
monolithic wholes. Thinking is not the monopoly of any one continent.”39
He historicizes both the rise of Western civilization and the decay of
Islamic civilization. The problem is not necessarily with the West but with
the Westernized intelligentsia of the Turkish Republic who alienate
themselves from their Islamic/Ottoman heritage and history: “We are
faced with the severest of struggles: The struggle with ourselves.”40
Meriç relies heavily on the works of classical orientalist writers like
Anqueteil Duperron, Edgar Quinet, Eduard Schure, and Raymond
Schwab. His work on Indian literature41 is based entirely on the writings
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78 TURKISH STUDIES

and translations of western orientalists. Though he praises Edward Said’s

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call for an abandoning of orientalist discourse as a defense of the silent

masses and as destroying the prejudices of western scholarship of the
East, Meriç sees inherent dangers in the interpretation.42 Said’s view can
be taken to its logical extremes and lead to the conception of a science of
the imperialists versus a science of the colonized.
Meriç’s intellectual formation allows him to shift between the role of
an orientalist and a critic of orientalism from the Orient. Meriç welcomes
Western scholars who introduced Islam to the world: “The most complete
dictionary of the Turkish language was written by Redhouse, the best
history by Hammer.” He writes: “We need the light brought by the West.
I learn of Islam from The Legacy of Islam, I read Ibn Khaldun in
English.”43 Meriç laments that these Western sources are not widely
known or read. Without sufficient knowledge of these sources, without
being aware of the arguments and viewpoints of orientalists, the eastern
(Turkish) intelligentsia cannot begin to ask universal questions that
transcend relativism. The orientalists’ questions are important, in that they
open the possibility of civilizations’ complementing each other.
Meriç goes as far as subscribing to the orientalist cliché of the
Ottomans having been a martial race: “Ottoman civilization is a
civilization of belief and action ... a country victorious with its sword and
justice did not need to defend itself in words.”44 Yet he does not accept the
well-known cliché of orientalist literature, generally shared by the official
nationalist history, that the multi-ethnic Ottoman realm was composed of
Arabic and Persian elements, without which it would not have built any
culture.45 In this issue, Meriç differs from mainstream orientalism by
stating that the Ottomans added their own values to this bigger
composition: “This was not submission, but a becoming.”46
It is interesting to note that there are at least two Orients present in the
works of Meriç: the Muslim Orient and the Indian Orient as well as a less
elaborated Persian Orient. When Islamists and proponents of the TIS talk
of the Orient, they are referring to a Muslim Orient as the superior and
dominant representative of the entire non-Western world. By recognizing
the multiplicity of Orients, Meriç is actually challenging not only such
idealizations of the Islamic Orient, but also its categoric rejection by the
official nationalism. It is his peculiar approach to the concept of the Orient
which renders Meriç’s thinking as original in Turkish intellectual history.
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İlhan and the ‘Dialectics of Identity’

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This article defines İlhan’s nationalism as “neo-Kemalism” partly because

of his critique of the radical secularization policies and official national
culture designed during the single-party era, as discussed above. A second
reason is İlhan’s emphasis on the revolutionary character of Kemalism,
leading to changes in the foundations of political rule. Here, İlhan differs
from Tahir and Meriç, who view the nationalist takeover as an officers’
coup. Kemalist nationalism is important for İlhan in its socially and
politically radical activism. The Kuvayi Milliye, as in Tahir, is emphasized
as a movement of revolt and insurrection but in the form of an urban
underground network. İlhan’s specific interpretation of socialism, largely
influenced by the Muslim nationalist communism of the Tatar leader, Sultan
Galiev, is differentiated by his stress on national demands and culture from
a socialism emphasizing cosmopolitan internationalism. A third reason,
which makes İlhan a revisionist Kemalist, lies in his peculiar handling of the
concept of national identity. İlhan has problems with essentialist accounts of
Turkish nationalism: first, with ideologies that take the traditional cultural
heritage as complete and self-sufficient and defend it against any rivals from
the West (as in the case of Islamists or the TIS); and second, with the
ideology that accepts only the Anatolian culture as the national culture and
defends it against Arab or Persian influences (as in the extreme versions of
official nationalism).47 If a nationality is defined as “opposed to something,”
this means the identity sought does not actually exist:
Every thesis carries its anti-thesis within. In this sense the national
culture involves a dual opposition: A. with the feudal cultures
preceding it and in favor of the latter; B. with the proletarian culture
to follow, in favor of the latter. The national culture is the whole of
these oppositions, but not one or the other by itself.48
Besides historicizing the formation of the nation, İlhan pushes his
nationalism further to emphasize the existence of ethnic, religious and
sexual minorities. Minorities such as Jews, blacks and homosexuals
abound in this and other novels as well as in his poetry. The Jewish figures
are usually portrayed as compradors threatening the national project, the
blacks as figures of sexual aggression and deviance and homosexuality is
described in disturbing detail, but İlhan’s writing cannot do without these
identities and rejoices in them.
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80 TURKISH STUDIES

Unconventional sexuality is a central trope of İlhan’s fiction and

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poetry. He has evidently been influenced by his bohemian years in Paris

and by the covert permissiveness in the Ottoman divan poetry as well as
the atypical sexual relationships of his friends. In representing Ümid, a
young woman and a leading character reappearing in four of his novels,
for example, İlhan does not stick to the model of the canonic nationalist
literature. Ümid is the prototype of a journalist working for nationalist
causes, yet she differs from the more official, promoting the decent, hard-
working professional woman, or the well-educated homey wife/mother. In
short, İlhan breaks with the tradition of using the female protagonist as
representative of the nationalization project and instead amplifies a
capacity to break social rules, norms and prejudices about women.
For İlhan, as all identities are accepted as representations or ways of
imagining oneself as another, the sphere of national and political identities
is paralleled in the sphere of gender identity.49 In Haco Hanım Vay (So,
Haco Hanım) İlhan describes the private lives of some Ottoman families
in Damascus and in Izmir at the beginning of the century. The story takes
place in the three-wife-harem of a prominent Ottoman bureaucrat in
Damascus. The reader witnesses a lesbian community in the harem, a life
beyond the public’s eye. Here the cliché of the Ottoman patriarchal harem
is challenged by the portrayal of an extended family in which the first
wife, rather than the husband, is the leader of the household.50
By demonstrating that the roots of heterodox sexuality can be found in
the Ottoman cultural past, İlhan is combating the norms of the nation-state
as well as the Islamic interpretation of Ottoman society as the source of
chastity, virtue and honor. He is questioning the concept of morality of
Republican nationalism, which relegates such sexual experience to the
underground.
On the other hand, Fena Halde Leman (Desperately Leman), is based
on the shifting of national and gender identities within a couple, portrayed
by a the Turkish politician, Ekrem, and a German Jew, Jeanne (or Leman).
This is a story of sexual and cultural ambivalence. Jeanne adapts easily to
Turkish culture and becomes a tough businesswoman. Ekrem seeks refuge
in Paris and is engulfed in painting and Sufi philosophy. It is in these
foreign contexts that they discover themselves.51 İlhan, in this and other
novels, shows that national identity, just like sexual identity, can be
learned and unlearned.
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İlhan’s preoccupation with shifting identities reflects both the unease

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of the nationalist project with such ambivalence and its inescapable and
enriching reality for a literary figure like himself. İlhan’s writing is an
exception to the nationalist literary canon because of the sensitivity he
shows to the complex reality of identity formation.

Conclusion
Literature, through its power to (re)present history, has the enormous
potential to criticize given identities and offer new ones. The works of
Tahir, Meriç and İlhan should be read as alternative interpretations of
Turkish national identity since they differ not only from the official
nationalist paradigm but also from the range of ideas broadly called the
Turkish-Islamic Synthesis. They challenge the official Republican
nationalism by reinterpreting its modernization, secularization and
democratization projects. On the other hand, they challenge the Turkish-
Islamic Synthesis’ appeal to an idealized, unified and just Ottoman rule by
positing the ambivalence of the Ottoman identity. Their own aesthetic
representation of the Ottoman past and the Muslim Orient is used to
challenge the undemocratic tendencies within Turkish modernization and
is therefore both critical and oppositional.
The rise of a new identity politics in Turkey has rekindled academic
interest in national identity, along with religious and ethnic identity. In
recent studies on the construction of identities, the important role of some
nationalist writers of Turkish literature in reconsidering and revising
Turkish nationalism has passed unnoticed. Although Tahir, Meriç and
İlhan’s work is defined by their own nationalist perspectives, their ability
to question and surpass this perspective makes their writing particularly
interesting. These three figures perceive identity as born out of social
relationships, attitudes and position-taking rather than as a pre-existing,
static trait in the community’s history. Their nationalist perspectives attest
to the impossibility of studying the conception of the nation-state
separately from conceptions of popular participation, popular culture and
democracy. They also attest to the shortcomings of perceiving it through
the lens of oppositions such as modern or traditional, material or spiritual,
individualist or collectivist. For Kemal Tahir, Cemil Meriç and Attila
İlhan, national identity, although deeply related with the nation’s past, is
an issue to be resolved in the present.
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NOTES
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1. The term “second Republic” was also voiced by the late Turgut Özal (first Prime Minister,
then President) in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
2. The Republican People’s Party (RPP), governed Turkey during this period. An opposition
party, the Democrat Party, was established in 1945 and came to power in 1950.
3. Binnaz Toprak, “Religion as State Ideology in a Secular Setting,” in Malcolm Wagstaff (ed.),
Aspects of Religion in Secular Turkey, University of Durham, Center for Middle Eastern and
Islamic Studies, Occasional Paper Series, No.40 (1990), pp.10–15.
4. Etienne Copeaux, Tarih Ders Kitaplarında (1931–1993) Türk Tarih Tezinden Türk-İslam
Sentezine, trans. Ali Berktay (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), p.307; for a political and
socio-economic explanation of the rise of Turkish-Islamic Synthesis ideology, see Faruk
Birtek and Binnaz Toprak, “The Conflictual Agendas of Neoliberal Reconstruction and the
Rise of Islamic Policies in Turkey,” Praxis International, Vol.13, No.2 (1993), pp.192–212.
5. These are the basic components of the ethnie as defined by Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic
Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.66.
6. This viewpoint is well reflected in the work of Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), the father of
Turkism. See, for example, Robert Devereux’s translation of The Principles of Turkism
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), pp.102–17. For an analysis of the ‘official history thesis,’ see
Büşra Ersanlı-Behar, İktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye’de Resmi Tarih Tezinin Oluşumu (1929–1937)
(Istanbul: Afa, 1992), especially pp.89–117.
7. Toprak (1990), pp.10–15. The TIS viewpoint is summarized in the work of one of its
advocates, İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk-İslam Sentezi (Istanbul: Aydınlar Ocağı, n.d.), pp.43–75.
8. It is necessary to see how milliyetçilik, or nationalism, in Turkey has become a mission of
the religious/conservative Right, while the term yurtseverlik, or patriotism, has been adopted
by the Left and by Kemalists.
9. F. Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text
Vol.5, No.15 (Fall 1986), p.69.
10. B. Harlow, Resistance Literature (London: Methuen, 1987), p.30.
11. The best example of this group of works is the novel White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, a
bestseller which has also been translated into English. Other authors writing about the
complexities of Turco-Ottoman identity include İhsan Oktay Anar, Ahmet Altan, Nedim
Gürsel and Elif Şafak.
12. It is interesting to realize that their works are recently being read by new and young
audiences with leftist, rightist or Islamic tendencies. Tahir’s work has become a classic
Turkish Republican novel. Nowadays his novels are reprinted by popular publishers like
Tekin and respectable publishers like Adam alike, while his recently released notes have
been printed in 16 volumes by the leftist oriented publisher Bağlam. Meriç was usually read
as one of the intellectual leaders of the Turkish right and was embraced by Islamic
intellectual circles. In the late 1980s his work began to draw a wider and more diverse
audience. Volumes of his collected work have been reprinted in new editions by İletişim
Yayınları, a well-known publishing house with a progressive reputation. İlhan’s work has
been published by numerous presses, since his inherant saleability is well recognised. A
series of his collected and recent works are being released as new editions by the well-known
publishing house Bilgi. İlhan also makes weekly appearances on the state TV culture channel
TRT 2, with a one-man show on history, culture and identity.
13. Anthony Smith, “The Myth of ‘Modern Nation’ and the Myths of Nations,” Ethnic and
Racial Studies, Vol.1, No.1 (1988), pp.1–26; and idem., “The Nation: Invented, Imagined,
Reconstructed?,” Millenium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.20, No.3 (1991),
pp.353–68.
14. Samuel Eisenstadt, “The Kemalist Revolution in Comparative Perspective,” in Ergun
Özbudun and Ali Kazancıgil (eds.), Atatürk, the Founder of a Modern State (London:
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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 83

C. Hurst, 1981), p.135. Ergun Özbudun cited the Kemalist transformation as a political and
not a social revolution, see “The Nature of the Kemalist Political Regime,” in Özbudun and
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Kazancıgil (1981), p.83.

15. Şerif Mardin, “Center-periphery relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?,” Daedalus, Vol.102,
No.1 (Winter 1973), p.183.
16. For a discussion of dynastic nationalism see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
(London: Verso, 1991), Ch.6. For a discussion of dynastic nationalism in the late Ottoman
Empire, see Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman
Empire, 1808–1908,” Comparative Study of Society and History, Vol.35 (1993), pp.3–28;
Masami Arai, “An Imagined Nation: the Idea of Ottoman Nation as a Key to Modern
Ottoman History,” Orient, Vol.27 (1991), pp.1–11; B. Lewis, “Watan,” Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol.26 (1991), pp.523–33.
17. Halil Açıkgöz, Cemil Meriç ile Sohbetler (Istanbul: Seyran, 1993), p.285.
18. Ibid., p.120.
19. Ibid.
20. Cemil Meriç, Kırk Ambar (Istanbul: Ötüken, 1980), p.453.
21. Alexander De Groot, “Yalnız Bir İslami Liberal: Cemil Meriç,” Tarih ve Toplum, No.126
(1994), pp.4–11.
22. Yeni Sanat, “Muallim Naci Üzerine Cemil Meriç’e Sorular (Interview with Cemil Meriç),”
No.8 (1974), p.50.
23. Atilla İlhan, Hangi Batı? (Ankara: Bilgi, 1976), pp.88–9.
24. Atilla İlhan, Hangi Sağ? (Ankara: Bilgi, 1980), p.178.
25. Atilla İlhan, Hangi Atatürk? (Ankara: Bilgi, 1982), p.110.
26. Ibid., p.109.
27. Ibid.
28. For a discussion of the realm of the periphery as the realm of the just see Şerif Mardin, “The
Just and Unjust,” Daedalus, Vol.120, No.3 (Summer 1991), pp.113–29.
29. For a summary of the concept of the Ottoman Empire as a frontier state with a gaza ethos
see Paul Wittek’s classic work The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London: Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1963). For an account of the frontier society as a broad
canvas of various social forces see Fuad Köprülü, The Origins of the Ottoman Empire, trans.
and ed. Gary Leiser (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1992). Scholars such as
Halil İnalcık and Bernard Lewis also employ this concept in their analysis of the early
Ottoman state, see H. İnalcık, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol.1,
1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and B. Lewis, Istanbul and the
Rise of the Ottoman Empire (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). For criticism
of this thesis, see Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds, The Construction of the Ottoman
State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). For a cultural studies approach
to the frontier values and their later negation by the central state, see Anne Norton, The
Reflections on Political Identity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
30. Ahi’s are defined as “artisans organized in guild-like bodies with a strong religious coloring,”
in Şerif Mardin, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History, Vol.11 (1969), pp.258–81.
31. Kemal Tahir, Devlet Ana (Istanbul: Tekin, 1993), pp.24–5.
32. Mardin (1973), pp.170–75.
33. İsmet İnönü (1884–1973), the Comrade-in-Arms of Mustafa Kemal during the national
struggle, first became Prime Minister of the Republic in 1923 and then again during
1923–27, and 1961–65, with a period of 12 years, 1938–50, as president.
34. Kemal Tahir, Notlar/Çöküntü (Istanbul: Bağlam, 1992), p.40.
35. Mustafa Kemal, like all charismatic leaders, is renowned for his oral prowess. His fondness
of drink and long discussions at dinner further emphasize this trait. In the popular mind, he
was a man of action and of spontaneous contact with the people, not a man of theory or
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scholarship. His famous Nutuk (The Speech), though presented in the form of a book, was
originally a long oratory given to the parliament and to the public at large. Atatürk is
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commonly portrayed in the history textbooks and popular nationalist history as talking with
small children, with the elderly or with the peasants. He is thus both visually and orally
identified with the dispossessed and the subordinate, a common trait of the charismatic
leader.
36. The CUP was a bourgeois-modernization movement started by a group of westernized young
military students of medicine around 1889, who were organized under the name of
Committee of Union and Progress in 1895. The CUP remained a secret, albeit powerful,
committee until 1913 when it became a formal political party. It formed the cadres of
modernization both in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic. Mustafa Kemal
himself was a member of CUP. However, the Kemalist regime explicitly disowned the
Unionist heritage and had completely repressed the remaining Unionist leaders by 1926. See
Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor, The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in
the Turkish National Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1983).
37. Kemal Tahir, Yorgun Savaşçı (Istanbul: Tekin, 1993), p.305.
38. A famous brigand leader in western Anatolia and the son of a local notable, Çerkes Ethem
co-operated with the national forces in the early phases of the movement. Later outlawed by
the Ankara government, Ethem took refuge on the Greek side.
39. Cemil Meriç, Mağaradakiler (Istanbul: Ötüken, 1978), p.56.
40. Ibid., p.388.
41. Cemil Meriç, Bir Dünyanın Eşiğinde (Istanbul: Ötüken, 1979).
42. Cemil Meriç, Kültürden İrfana (Istanbul: İnsan, 1986), pp.65–8.
43. Ibid., p.348.
44. Cemil Meriç, Jurnal 2 (Istanbul: İletişim, 1993), p.210.
45. V.R. Holbrook, The Unreadable Shores of Love (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1994), p.16.
46. Meriç (1978), p.51.
47. İlhan (1982), p.96.
48. Ibid., p.97.
49. Attila İlhan, Yanlış Kadınlar, Yanlış Erkekler (Ankara: Bilgi, 1993), pp.16–17.
50. Attila İlhan, Haco Hanım Vay (Istanbul: Özgür, 1986).
51. Attila İlhan, Fena Halde Leman (Istanbul: Özgür, 1986).