The anxiety of cultural authenticity in Turkish communitarian thought: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Peyami Safa on Europe and modernity

Sezer, Devrim

doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.06.002

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…9 Many of Tanpınar’s works convey a mood of post-imperial melancholy ( hüzün ), a gloomy state related to unease and unrest about Turkey’s severed ties with the Ottoman legacy. His political orientation has been a cause of debate (see Sezer 2010). As the writer Elif Shafak (2014, 20) has remarked, ‘[d]uring Tanpınar’s lifetime he was misunderstood and underestimated by both the Left and Right; today, decades after his death, he is adulated in Turkey almost to the point of worship’.…”

Section: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Chovanec

2024

Philosophy & Social Criticism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How does literature engage with the legacies of Empire? This article examines how imperial decline and nation building are reflected in textual production after the First World War. With Turkey as a case study, it focuses on the post-imperial narrative as a form of narration dealing with the experience of imperial loss, political contingency and possibilities of national belonging. I argue that Turkey’s post-imperial condition is shaped by coming to terms with the loss of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and a nationalising present embedded in the experience of Western-dominated modernity, on the other. Against this backdrop, I examine essays from the compilations Yaşadığım Gibi (1970, ‘As I lived’) and Beş Şehir (1946, ‘Five Cities’) by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, a key intellectual of the early republican era. The analysis of these post-imperial narratives reveals how Tanpınar tries to root Turkey’s national modernity in selected elements of the imperial past. For Tanpınar, continuity with (Turkified) imperial heritage is a prerequisite for a strong nation-state.

show abstract

Section: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Chovanec

2024

Philosophy & Social Criticism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the other hand, the extant literature does not indicate such a drastic change in the representations of Europe in Turkey. Turks continued to perceive Europe both as a source of inspiration and anxiety in the post-Cold War era ( Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2012 ; Helvacıoğlu, 1999 ; Kuniholm, 2001 ; Kuzmanovic, 2008 ; Macmillan, 2013 ; Pesmazoglu, 1997 ; Sezer, 2010 ). However, similar to the previous periods, there is still a lack of a detailed analysis on how Europe was perceived in Turkey and how Turkey was received by European society in a comparative fashion.…”

Section: The Third Period (1946–1998)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In comparison to the previous periods, there is a remarkable decrease in the number of scholarly works informed by History ( Aktürk, 2007 ; Atakuman, 2010 ; Döşemeci, 2013 ; Yıldırım, 2014 ). Moreover, there are also a number of works informed by other genres such as Literary studies ( Aydın, 2003 ; Sabatos, 2000 ; Sezer, 2010 ; Soenen, 2000 ), Communication ( Buğday, 2003 ; Rougheri, 2000 ; Yanovski, 2000 ) and Sports ( Şenyuva & Tunç, 2015 ) that offer a nuanced approach to the prevailing literature.…”

Section: The Third Period (1946–1998)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although several studies scrutinize political discourses with reference to the speeches of prominent political figures in Turkey such as Turgut Özal, İsmet İnönü, Süleyman Demirel, Necmeddin Erbakan, Feridun Cemal Erkin and Fatin Rüştü Zorlu ( Atakuman, 2010 ; Bilgin & Bilgiç, 2012 ; Döşemeci, 2013 ; Robins, 1996 ), these studies rather use these texts as discursive tools to uphold their own arguments than comprehensively evaluating the meanings of political/cultural expressions in different political/cultural contexts. The literature also analyzes Turkish and European novels and other literary texts ( Aydın, 2003 ; Sabatos, 2000 ; Sezer, 2010 ; Soenen, 2000 ), Turkish and European press ( Buğday, 2003 ; Rougheri, 2000 ; Yanovski, 2000 ) and history textbooks ( Aktürk, 2007 ; Antoniou & Nuhoglu Soysal, 2005 ), although the main methodological focus of the literature remains on political discourses.…”

Section: The Third Period (1946–1998)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

Gulmez¹,

Topal²,

Rumelili³

2023

Open Res Europe

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research aims to offer a valid answer to the question of how Turks and Europeans perceived each other in cultural and identity terms throughout history. With this purpose, it makes a thorough analytical review of the extant scholarly literature on identity relations between Turkey and Europe. There is an evident lack of scholarly attention on the evolution of mutual representations comparatively in the long durée. Most scholarly works focus on specific periods of time and investigate either how Turks view Europe or visa-versa. This systematic review provides the basis for an evolutionary analysis of mutual identity representations between Turkey and Europe over more than a two-hundred-year period. The period under focus starts with the French Revolution (1789) triggering intensive identity debates between Ottomans and Europeans and lasts until mid-2010s when bilateral relations between Turkey and the European Union went into disarray. This long period has been divided into four shorter periods each starting and ending with a remarkable event in world politics or bilateral relations. The study examines each period in relation to four focal issues, namely, nationalism, civilization, status in international society, and state-citizen relations generating intensive identity discussions in both Turkey and Europe. The article first presents the key findings of the relevant literature on European representations of Turkey and on Turkish representations of Europe in the four historical periods. Then it scrutinizes the extant literature on each period with respect to the four focal issues. Overall, the study, through a comprehensive literature review, demonstrates the ways in which mutual identity representations in Turkey and Europe have been contested over a two-hundred-year period.

show abstract

“…I argue that the ideas and formulations of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu were fit for the modem and secular identity that was put forward by the Turkish ruling elites. On the other hand, Peyami Safa advocated a third alternative, a "synthesis" between past and future, East and West, modernity and tradition (Sezer 2010). In away, Safa tried to overcome the contradictions and disputes about Europeanization, nationalism, and Islamic conservatism in Turkish political and social thought with the idea of "synthesis."…”

Section: Nationalist Perspectives In Formulating Turkishness In the Ementioning

confidence: 99%

The allied occupation of İstanbul and the construction of Turkish national identity in the early twentieth century

Şenışık

2018

Natl. pap.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 Karaosmanoğlu andBiz 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 Karaosmanoğlu 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.

show abstract

The anxiety of cultural authenticity in Turkish communitarian thought: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Peyami Safa on Europe and modernity

Cited by 5 publications

References 1 publication

Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

The allied occupation of İstanbul and the construction of Turkish national identity in the early twentieth century

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About