Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Velî Araştırma Dergisi (Dec 2023)
GÜVERCİNE AĞIT’TA BEKTAŞİLİĞİN İZLERİ
Abstract
Gürsel Korat stands out in the history of contemporary Turkish literature with his novels, stories and studies that he wrote about the multicultural, multilingual and multi-religious atmosphere of Anatolia. Korat’s novels Zaman Yeli, Güvercine Ağıt and Kalenderiye, in which he deals with Cappadocia with a historical background, form the famous Çiftaslan trilogy. The second novel of the Çiftaslan trilogy, Güvercine Ağıt, which made its first edition in 1999, is noteworthy for its focus on the historical accumulation, philosophy and traditional values of Bektashism as a belief system. This article deals with the traces of Bektashism reflected in Güvercine Ağıt in the light of the new historicist perspective, which proposes to look at the relationship that history establishes with reality with a distant and suspicious eye. The boundaries between the reality of literature and history are blurred. The narrator reconstructs reality with the help of his own and the reader’s intellectual equipment in a work of fiction. The analysis emphasizes the historical framework of Bektashism and the traditional specific values as a belief system, in addition to referring to the traditional images of Bektashism mentioned in the novel under the titles of “four doors forty maqams,” “being a babagan dervish,” “verses, breaths (nefesler) and folk poems,” and “metamorphosis, ordeal room, and cavlaklık.” In addition, the traditional accumulation of Bektashism such as transmigration, Ene’l hak and isolation from sexual life is reinterpreted in a direct world-centered approach, in line with the approach that evolution is a big process consisting of small processes. In this context, sexuality emerges from the love between “Saruca Abdal” and “Gülbeyaz” as a reality of humanity that cannot be ignored, suppressed or ignored. Güvercine Ağıt is a unique work in which the narrator brings a new understanding and interpretation of some traditional specific values of Bektashism according to the new historicist perspective with all its aspects. Also, I argue that the narrator presents new interpretations of various traditional values of Bektashism in Güvercine Ağıt and that the novel offers new critical perspectives on certain stereotypical belief assumptions, including Christianity and Islam.
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