Abstract
CONSERVATIVE MODERNIZATION MODEL IN THE YAKUP KADRI KARAOSMANOGLU’S ANKARA NOVEL
Conservatism is a concept associated with the phenomenon of change and argues that modernization should be maintained in harmony with traditional values. In the West, conservatism, which emerges as a reaction to the Enlightenment and its rationality, becomes functional in the contrast between traditional habits and new values in societies undergoing modernization. Conservative thinking plays an active role in adapting to change in Turkish modernization that began in the 18th century and extended to the Republic.
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu witnessed the de facto destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of the new state and the revolutions it brought with as a journalist, novelist and politician. Yakup Kadri, who deals with the problems of modernization in his novels, takes a critical approach to the conditions in which change occurs, while maintaining the values of the process. In this study the Ankara novel is examined and the conditions of ideal modernization are investigated by questioning the teachings of Kemalist ideology. In the novel, which consists of three chapters, the process of the foundation and early period of the Republic extending to the twentieth year of the republic is narrated through the environment of Selma Hanım and her three different marriages. The new social order, daily habits, urbanization structure, family relations, livelihoods, the idea of equality, the mode and manner of rule, tradition and the opposition to future that came with the Republic are among the issues raised in the axis of modernization in the novel. In this study, the idealized conditions and the alternatives offered against the rapid change process that was brought about by the Republic and experienced by the society will be evaluated through three chapters of the novel.
Keywords
Yakup Kadri, Ankara, Turkish modernization, War of Independence, Republic, Conservatism, Kemalism
