Author(s): Ensar KESEBÄ°R
Literary texts help the understanding of social structure. We can find the interests of society and individual in fictive works such as novel and story as well as memoirs. Even memoirs are more realistic in the context of place, time and person compare to novel and story. They present the told period, event or the person in a more realistic and detailed way. This paper compares the Halide Edip Ad?var’s perspective on Rums by analyzing her memoirs Mor Salk?ml? Ev and Türk’ün Ate?le ?mtihan? and her novels Ate?ten Gömlek, Vurun Kahpeye, and Yeni Turan. The Rums whom Halide Edip Ad?var mentions in her memoirs and the Rums whom she characterizes in her fiction are quite different. The Rums in Ate?ten Gömlek are enemies; some of the main characters of the novel; Ay?e’s husband and her son are killed by Rums in the occupation of ?zmir. While the Rums in the novel are ‘others’ and tyrants, the Rums in Mor Salk?ml? Ev are different. For example Halide Edip’s ‘the deepest and the longest love’ is her old nursemaid Kiria Eleni. Halide Edip always remembers that her Rum neighbors gives her candy. She does not feel alienated in ?skenderiye as she can speak Greek from her early childhood. When she was away from her family and was all alone in ?skenderiye, she got the greatest support from a Rum doctor who was benevolent, merciful and kind old man. Halide Edip whose nursemaid was a Rum also hires a Rum nursemaid for her children. She entrusts a rum girl to her little boy. Ate?ten Gömlek was published for the first time in 1922 when the bloody memoirs of Turkish War of Independence were fresh. The newly established State of the Republic of Turkey is a nation state and the ‘other’ of the independence war is Rums. The killer and cruel Rum characters in Ate?ten Gömlek which can be classified as a thesis novel are depicted in accordance with this perspective. On the other hand the Turkish version of the Mor Salk?ml? Ev was published for the first time in 1963. In Mor Salk?ml? Ev which was published after 40 years of the publication of the Ate?ten Gömlek, Halide Edip tells her memoirs from her early childhood to the year of 1918. While she depicts her Rum neighbors, nursemaid in a more humanitarian perspective in her memoirs, she changes this perspective when she writes a thesis novel. Consequently, this paper analysis the Halide Edip Ad?var’s perspective on Rums on the basis of this difference. The perception of Rum is not only limited to the Ate?ten Gömlek. This situation can be observed in many of her stories primarily such as Yeni Turan. Thus, when this paper analyzes the Halide Edip Ad?var’s envision about Rums, it partly refers to these stories as well. The second subject analyzed and questioned in the article is why not Halide Edip is not classified as one of the Anatolian nationalists according to the Herkül Milas’s classification.
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