Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi (Jun 2014)
Construction of the capital of Republic of Turkey and the Kemalist ideology within the Context of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s Ankara
Abstract
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s Ankara carries a more didactic character, compared to his other novels, and this work reflects an idealistic conception system. The novel, which was completed in 1934, while building the story around the main figure, Selma Hanım, and those around her, relates the account of how Ankara first became to center of the War of Independence and then the capital of Republic of Turkey, and the stages of the Republic Period within this period of 25 years. Ankara is crucial in terms of fictionalizing both the turning points of Republic of Turkey and the process of Ankara becoming the capital city. In this work Yakup Kadri recounts the ideology of Atatürk and his reforms, which the author was bonded at heart, in the form of a novel with three independent male characters (Nazif Bey, Major Hakkı Bey and Neşet Sâbit) in three main accounts of space (Taceddin Quarter / Yenişehir / Cebeci). This novel is noteworthy in terms of writing up the spirit of the War of Independence Period by idealizing the Kemalist ideology, and the personality and identity of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who created it. This novel narrates, sometimes in a realistic manner and sometimes in a utopic one, the realities and the dreams, the past and the present towards an idealistic Turkey of the future.
