Living to tell the tale: reading 12 september coup d'etat through novels written by socialist and nationalist authors

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1304489 (Table of Contents)

Today, 12 September coup d'état is once again in the center of Turkish politics. It is also noteworthy that, with the turn of the century, there has been a considerable increase in the number of works written on this catastrophic event. It should also be emphasized that, unlike it once used to be, the subject is not only taken by authors from the left, but also by those from the right. The phenomenon deserves critical attention. The aim of this study is the analysis of five novels written on the 1980 coup d'état after the year 2000. Two of these novels, Tol (2002) by Murat Uyurkulak and Imitating Bird Language (2003) by Ayşegül Devecioğlu, are written by socialist authors. The other three, The One Falling on the Fringe of Life (2002) by Naci Bostancı, My Name is Greenl (2005) by Remzi Çayır, The Storm Hit Us (2009) by Ahmet Haldun Terzioğlu, are written by nationalist authors. The central question this thesis asks is the following: How and to what extent has literature remembered 12 September 1980 coup d'état? In order to be able to answer this question, some of these novels' formal feautures and themes will be compared and contrasted. Finally, the similarities and differences will be interpreted, and thus, some major effects of the coup upon socialist and nationalist discourses will be explained through these novels.