Taking up the gauntlet: fictionists in the Turkish parliament

There have been a considerable number of writers who seek public office and politicians who write novels and short stories; Mario Vargas Llosa have run for presidency of Peru, André Malraux served as Minister of Culture of Général de Gaulle and plenty of politicians like Jimmy Carter, Winston Churchill etc. wrote novels at a certain point in their lives. Such an intersection of literature and politics is not alien to Turkey, a country where the involvement of (wo)men of letters in sociopolitical transformation processes is an intellectual custom and imaginative writing is a privileged sign of intellectuality. This essay will chart, in the presence of the strong interconnectedness between politics and literature in Turkey, the political and literary positions of some prominent fiction writers who accessed the parliament. It will allude at a spectrum of political atmospheres from the single-party state to the multi-party rivalry in the parliament, and a spectrum of writers that ranges from enthusiastic servants of the Kemalist revolution to the contemporary ones, who now are more intoxicated with a sense of their own importance.

[2] Although political engagements have been intrinsic to the philosophy and works of most of the literary figures, seeking office in the parliament appears as a seldom choice, especially when fiction writers are considered. Most of the fictionists have engaged in political activity as members of civil organizations and pressure groups or simply as intellectuals who evaluate the realpolitik and take political sides. In contrast to those who find literature and politics incompatible, try to avoid the amorality of politics in their life, or reject any link to politics whatsoever in their ivory tower, there have also been literary figures who, both in political terms and in their capacity as writers, evaluated contribution to parliamentary politics as an intellectual duty, a distinguished form of political act, and a risk to be ventured.

[3] A recent article published in the journal Hece provides a list of men of letters who served as MPs in the TBMM (Turkish Great National Assembly) for certain periods since the first parliamentary convention of 1920 (Özcan 2004: 581). The list comprises a heterogeneous group who, in critical and creative writing, touched upon several components of the culture of Turkey and includes 92 names - poets, short-story and drama writers, novelists, columnists and journalists etc. - some of whom gained reputation as distinguished avatars in the politics of Turkey.

[4] Various names in this list are important figures in Turkish literary and political history. Among them, this essay focuses on a limited number of fictionists partly because of its confined space and partly due to fiction’s specific role in the literary and political culture of Turkey. It has been fiction, what possessed an immense political power mediating between the reality and its representations, captivated an eminent popularity among many other prose genres and became one of the driving forces of the modernization process in Turkey. Although poets and writers engaged with some other kinds of prose writing (journalistic essays, cultural commentary, travel writings etc.) have also appeared as influential agents of political transformation, fiction writers have been the most significant and popular ones.

[5] This essay is intended to cover the engagement of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Memduh Şevket Esendal, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Halide Edip Adıvar, Çetin Altan and Yılmaz Karakoyunlu with parliamentary politics and comment on their political experiences under the chastening effects of membership in the parliament. I will sketch how they organized themselves in parliamentary politics i.e. how much of a diligent MP could they become, in which ways they wrote – in case they did – during their terms of office, to what extent they could subscribe to their roles in the parliament and to the party solidarity etc. and comment on the continuity of certain limiting aspects of the political culture of Turkey, that put all of these names in trouble within different conditions.

[6] It is important to note that this essay does not presuppose a prototypical writer/MP image which connotes that being a fiction writer implies a certain type of MP position or being a MP implicates a special way of writing. The choice of writers to be analyzed is intended to reflect the diversity of the writer/MP position; all of the above mentioned names are writers who gained reputation as a literary figure in the fields of novel, short story or drama before they are appointed as MPs and resemble each other only in their intellectual commitment to the transformation of their country and society. They have different social, and educational/occupational backgrounds and entertain diverse interests in politics and literature.

[7] It should also be underlined that neither the selected names nor the writer/MP position itself, does not suggest a specific attitude in terms of the individual position taken in the monopoly of power. Among these names, there are writers who as MPs faithfully defended the status quo and others who fiercely opposed to it. Each writer has a unique history in terms of entrance to the field of parliamentary politics and the abandonment of it. In the selected group of writer/MPs, there are intellectuals picked up by party leaders for parliamentary politics as well as others who initiated earlier connections with the political parties via their youth organizations. The reasons for the abandonment of parliamentary politics also differ; some of these names quitted the political arena due to intra-party problems, whereas some others had to leave the MP position as a result of the decline in the electoral support to their party.

[8] A period of more than three decades is present between Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and Yılmaz Karakoyunlu’s terms of office in the parliament. There have been significant changes both in the field of politics and literature from 1920s to 1990s. The attempt to cover the political and literary positions of such diverse figures scattered throughout a time span of almost 70 years hence is also, in a way, an effort to chronicle the changes in the literary and political fields. To concretize their positions in the political and literary circles during their appointments, I will situate Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and Memduh Şevket Esendal in the Kemalist single-party period of reformist endeavors (1923-1938), Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar in the single party years dominated by the supremacy of the ‘national chief’ (1938-1950), Halide Edip Adıvar in the tensions of the premature multi-party period of 1950s, Çetin Altan in the spirit of freedom of 1960s which nurtured the rise of protest discourses and Yılmaz Karakoyunlu in the multivocal political atmosphere of the 1990s.

[9] A turbulent change marks the 1920s Turkey, where the institutionalization of secularism manifested itself in radical reforms like the abolition of the Caliphate, religious courts, Sufi sects and Islamic educational institutions, modernization attempts targeted several peculiarities from language to dress codes and the new leadership acknowledged the synthesis of Turkish culture and Western civilization as the founding principle of the new state. The literary boom of patriotic heroism, which was outpoured during the war, immersed the social, political and cultural aspects of this profound transformation as moralizing themes, and imaginative writing became a powerful instrument to mobilize the masses for the adoption of the premises of the revolution. It is in such a vibrant atmosphere that the new political authority recognized the power of literary communication and transformed literature into an arresting means of indoctrination. Writers became prominent icons of the multi-leveled transformation process and settled in the political monopoly of power more visibly than ever before.

[10] In the joy of establishing a new state after the triumph of the War of Liberation, a consequential support was accorded to the new political power. Those who implicitly or explicitly took contrapositions either left the country or positioned themselves at a point more closely conforming to mainstream norms in the following periods. Intellectuals in favour of the new regime experienced the privileges of their political support and became appointed to key positions as MPs and bureaucrats after the foundation of the Republic in 1923. Several recognized men of letters, vanguards of the cultural revolution, were invited to the parliament upon the demand of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk after 1934), the leader of the independence movement and the Halk Fırkası (People’s Party) – later Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP – Republican People’s Party). This esteemed award, which in spirit resembles the Ottoman Sultans’ tutelage over poets who celebrate their supremacy in poems, orbited several acclaimed writers closer to the centre of political power and established a tenacious link between literary and political circles.

[11] The glamour of the Kemalist revolution was alluring and most of the respected literary and intellectual figures yielded themselves to it. The deputy position for them was a sign of honor that distinguishes the torchbearers of the new regime. On the one hand, the MP position was a distinguishing emblem but on the other, it was a political investment that party authorities kept under a strict surveillance, to record challenges and disobedience. Opposition or expression of alternative and rival thoughts was a troublesome task since party interests were justified as state interests during the consolidation of the new regime and loyalty to them defined the fundamental rule of parliamentary politics. Various oppositional gatherings were denied the opportunity to become stable institutions in this interval. The ruling power dissolved two utmost experimentations of parliamentary democracy initiated by accumulations around the Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Progressive Republican Party) in the early 1920s and the Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Free Republican Party) in 1930, before growing roots.

[12] In this framework, the task of ideologically remolding and educating people in the line of the revolution settled in the literary agendas of writer/MPs as a principal exercise of their political career. Poets glorified the charismatic leadership and authority of Mustafa Kemal. Fictionists published a significant corpus of novels and short stories devoted to the consolidation of the new regime and dissemination of its values; the patriotic hero/heroines of the wartime novels gained didactic overtones and turned into cultural reformers in the Republican novel. The socio-political atmosphere had already inspired a literary manifesto, a new social novel dedicated to the Kemalist synthesis of Turkish culture and Western civilization; but for writers engaged with parliamentary politics, the idea of this new social novel was settled in a project of spiritual engineering more conspicuously.

[13] Mustafa Kemal motivated writers to reiterate the concerns of the reforms in their writings and sometimes explicitly assigned themes to them. Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s Yeşil Gece (Green Night, 1928) for example, is acknowledged to be a product of Mustafa Kemal’s advice to the writer to work on the harmful consequences of religious conservatism (Emil 1989: 24). Although Güntekin achieved a kind of balance criticizing people who make profit out of religion and some corrupt revolutionaries concurrently, the novel was mobilized as a powerful and plausible criticism of blind religious engagements for its sharp and distasteful interpretation of the religious sects. It is interesting to note that, in contrast to his contemporaries who in a privileged manner became MPs one after another, Güntekin found such a chance in 1939, only after the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

[14] Partisanship was evidently an expectation, but not all the writings were fulfilling such expectancy; although being a part of the executive and legislative power mechanism in a non-competitive political system made it difficult for writer/MPs to oppose, question or criticize party/state interests, some writers confronted them on fictional grounds. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and Memduh Şevket Esendal are the two writer/MPs who as politicians played distinguishable roles in the authoritarian atmosphere of the single-party years and who as writers, used the arena of fiction as a political challenge.

[15] Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (Cairo 1889 – Ankara 1974) was a dedicated writer who quitted law school for a career in literature. He was among the intellectuals that left İstanbul in the outsets of the War of Liberation, and joined the resistance in Anatolia. When the war was over, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk invited him to the TBMM as a MP of Mardin and his constituency was changed to Manisa in 1931 (Aktaş 1987: 42). Karaosmanoğlu was a dedicated Kemalist who found the long-term interests of the country in bureaucratic bodies. Despite his manifest support to Kemalism in its unitary and progressive goals, he was also a critical voice of it, who exercised criticism mostly on paper. Karaosmanoğlu was an intellectual who made his views expressly visible by writing rather than clashing with fellow MPs in the parliament on everyday issues. In his political memoirs, he considers the clashes in the parliament as consequences of personal interests and political greed, rather than simply oppositional thoughts and chronicles them with a tone of dislike (Karaosmanoğlu 2002: 38). He mentions the field of politics as a ‘tormenting and corrosive arena’ because of this fierce monopoly of power (Karaosmanoğlu 2002: 47).

[16] His occupation with politics provided Karaosmanoğlu with a genuine motivation and inspiration in the literary domains. During his membership in the parliament, Karaosmanoğlu made important contributions to the development of a theoretical vision of Kemalism by his articles in the journal Kadro (Cadre) and also published four remarkable novels: Hüküm Gecesi (Night of Decision, 1927), Sodom ve Gomore (Sodome and Gomorrah, 1928), Yaban (The Outlander, 1932), and Ankara (1934) – all of which attentively deal with the socio – political struggles of the society. In his articles and novels, he made a passionate call for an uplifting nationalist consciousness and self-assuredly supported the nationalist project pioneered by the bureaucratic elites; but he also chronicled the deficiencies and susceptibilities of this project.

[17] Karaosmanoğlu’s illustration of the huge gap between the intellectual elites and the peasants in his famous novel Yaban, was a big challenge to the promotion of the idea of a classless and homogeneous society of the Kemalist ideology. In Yaban, Karaosmanoğlu skillfully portrayed the gap between the intellectuals and ordinary peasants and dethroned the illusions of progress, regarding the villages of Anatolia. His utopian novel Ankara, which depicts the capital of the state in its early years and envisions its future social and political life, also had critical overtones in its look at the growing financial interests of the ruling elite, those who no longer consider revolution of primary importance. As reminders that point out at the controversial future of the Kemalist revolution, both novels attracted tremendous attention. Karaosmanoğlu also took this discussion to a more theoretical ground in the journal Kadro, and argued in simple terms that revolution cannot be considered successful in case it remains as the oeuvre of a single person or a group of elites. When divorced from fiction, these lines triggered the discipline committee of CHP, which was already alerted by Karaosmanoğlu’s alternative voice, and jeopardized his political life. Although he was loyal enough to offer to terminate the journal by himself, when he was informed about the unrest in the government, Karaosmanoğlu could not prevent being ‘exiled’ to a foreign embassy (Karaosmanoğlu 2002: 102). CHP authorities dismissed Karaosmanoğlu with an appointment to Albania, where he resentfully devoted himself to writing his memoirs.

[18] Memduh Şevket Esendal (Çorlu 1883 – Ankara 1952) was also an ardent supporter of Kemalism but just like Karaosmanoğlu, he was painfully aware of the gap between the modernized elites and the ordinary members of his society. As a self-educated intellectual, who became one of the eminent names of Turkish short story, often acknowledged as ‘the Turkish Chekhov’, Esendal draws an image slightly different than that of Karaosmanoğlu. He was an intellectual dedicated to the enlightenment of masses, and a naive supporter of the idea that ‘elite can change the world and teach people what is good and bad’ but he was also an intellectual who, in his retrospective interpretations of civic life, stressed the importance of public goals and the power of masses much more explicitly (Karaömerlioğlu 2002: 148).

[19] Esendal became engaged with parliamentary politics during Mustafa Kemal’s presidency but his membership in the parliament spans to the İnönü period, in which he became much of a public political figure. Before becoming a MP, Esendal served in several foreign posts, which made him entertain an enriching experience of diplomacy and adjust to the political doublespeak relatively easier than several other writers. Early in 1920s, he served as the first ambassador of the government of TBMM in Baku. He was called back from duty in 1925 because of his former links to the Committee of Union and Progress. Esendal published a journal called Meslek (Profession) in İstanbul with the former Unionists until their dissolution following the İzmir conspiracy, in which he made his literary debut as a short-story writer. While several Unionists were sent to courts and eliminated from their positions, Esendal was appointed to Tehran embassy. The government dismissed him from this post after a short time, for being pro-Kurdish and critical of its Kurdish policy (Çetinsaya 2003: 124). Back in Ankara, Esendal became a deputy (Elazığ) and served in the parliament between 1930-1932, until he was sent as a diplomat to Kabul with another appointment. Upon his return to Turkey, Esendal became a MP of Bilecik in 1938 and mounted in the hierarchy of the party up to the secretary general position in 1941. The diplomatic skills he developed during his international office made Esendal a successful appeaser in politics and paved the way to the secretary general position under İnönü’s leadership.

[20] Fragments of Esendal’s political views are scattered in the letters written to his daughter and sons during his service in foreign countries and lonely years in Ankara bureaucracy; these letters, which have been recently issued in two separate volumes titled Kızıma Mektuplar (Letters to my daughter) and Oğullarıma Mektuplar (Letters to my sons) prove Esendal’s respect for the ideals of the Republic yet also chronicle his frustrations due the exploitation of political privileges for financial interests, and depict the financial and familial struggles of the Esendal family. In his letters, Esendal appears as an intellectual dedicated to education, a man of action who is unselectively at service when needed, and a finicky and candid bureaucrat with a firm belief in İsmet İnönü.

[21] Esendal published most of his literary works under pennames (M. S, M. S. E, Mustafa Yalınkat etc.) and gained mass recognition as a writer in a late period in his life. He differs from Karaosmanoğu as a man of letters who more expressly separates his literature from politics, writes in a more personal key and occupies himself with the daily struggles of the ordinary man. Esendal’s skills for balancing the different faces of reality introduces a bittersweet accent to his fiction; in Esendal’s novels and short stories, political criticism strikes its targets in an indirect, good-humored and constructive manner, which despite the unpretentiousness leaves a sharp taste. In all his three novels Miras (Inheritance, 1925), Ayaşlı ve Kiracıları (Ayaşlı and His Tenants, 1934), Vassaf Bey (Mr.Vassaf, 1938) and several short stories, Esendal reflects the monopoly of power between individuals, employing a friendly but challenging criticism against bureaucracy and its ills. In numerous short stories, he vividly and captivatingly portrays the predatory activities of individuals with official sanction in the countryside and questions the links of ordinary people to bureaucrats, intellectuals and local officers, who often celebrate themselves as champions of the common good for their own benefits.

[22] Although they were identified closely with the Kemalist ideology, as loyal political figures that adjust themselves to the will of the ruling authority for the sake of the revolution, both Karaosmanoğlu and Esendal were at the same time writers who attempted to chronicle the ills of the revolution. When compared to the fiction of Karaosmanoğlu, Esendal’s literary works were politically modest and less dangerous, but similarly challenging in the single-party atmosphere. As writers they entertained some tolerance for their literary challenges but both had to abandon their influential positions in CHP when they refused or failed to compromise at a certain point in their political career. Following his retirement after fulfilling several posts in foreign countries, Karaosmanoğlu returned to Ankara and became a MP (Manisa) of CHP in 1961. He resigned in 1962, arguing that the party had dissociated itself from Kemalist principles, but remained in the TBMM as an independent deputy until 1965. After leaving the political arena, Karaosmanoğlu was selected to the administrative board of Anatolia Press Agency, which he presided until the end of his life. Esendal on the contrary, kept himself distant to multi-party politics. Resigning from the secretary general position in 1945, he served in the assembly until the heydays of Democrat Party in 1950 and then abandoned the TBMM and concentrated more explicitly on literature.

[23] As the experiences of Karaosmanoğlu and Esendal in parliamentary politics suggest, alternative views were encouraged in a mediocre manner during the presidency of Mustafa Kemal; what was tolerated was not too much, not too explicit, and not too creative criticism. Under the sovereignty of the single-party and single-leadership atmosphere, writer/MPs utilized the carnivalesque privilege assigned to them within these limits. The restraining accounts of the missionary atmosphere of the period ascribed a dutiful obedience to writer/MPs, which induced the self-neutralization of oppositional and alternative views or their transference to ideas in conformity with the current affairs, with an aim not to force the political vulnerability of the young state in the primary years of the revolution. After the consolidation of the nation-state, different political agendas surfaced more explicitly and following the shift of the leadership title to İsmet İnönü, they gradually accumulated into a multi-party state.

[24] In the wake of the death of Mustafa Kemal in 1938, the one-party state power concentrated in the leadership of İsmet İnönü, the prime minister during his entire presidency. Under the rule of İnönü, Turkey experienced the sociopolitical upheavals of the WWII. Although she maintained neutrality, despite German pressure throughout the war, Turkey found herself in a deep economical crisis, dominated by a steep rise in expenditures and the emergence of a privileged class profiting from the war. The government introduced a tax on wealth, announcing its will to fight war profiteering in 1942, which dispossessed mainly the properties of non-Muslim businessmen. It was only after the end of the Second World War, that fundamental political changes took place; a greater freedom of speech was gradually permitted in political circles and in 1945, CHP authorities allowed the establishment of opposition parties. The first competitive elections, which were held in 1946, restored the political power of CHP. Yet four years after, in the elections of 1950, DP (Democrat Party), the opposition movement originated from CHP, obtained a massive electoral support and relegated CHP to opposition. DP also won the elections of 1954 and 1957 by popular vote and remained in power until the parliamentary democracy was interrupted by a military intervention in 1960.

[25] The parliament, under the supremacy of İnönü in the early 1940s, was still an institution that legitimized the decisions of the ruling cadres of CHP (Koçak 2001: 122). Criticism and opposition were intolerable behavioral patterns that risk political censure for MPs, since disobedient and rival voices were eliminated by party authorities. İnönü, who proclaimed the title ‘the national chief’ in the December 1938 congress of CHP, immediately eliminated some MPs who had accessed the parliament with substantial support of Mustafa Kemal, as he became the head of the political power, but he did not discontinue the tradition of initiating close links with literary circles. He followed the path of ‘the eternal chief’ and motivated writers in CHP’s line of thinking for parliamentary politics.

[26] As a circular issued by Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1937 that asks for the adaptation of heroes/heroines of folk stories to ‘the spirit of the regime’ indicates, fiction kept being appreciated as a collection of exemplary modes of thought and behavior, and retained its importance and prestige in the field of politics as a tool for mass communication, in the outsets of İnönü’s presidency (Erdoğan 1998: 118). Political atmosphere was still authoritarian; nevertheless the new leader of political power did not bother himself with the task of recommending themes to writers. It was circulars and party owned literary prizes what stimulated the writers of this period. CHP announced an annual prize for novel and established national competitions in poetry and drama writing, in which some contemporary names of Turkish literature made their first literary appearances.

[27] Among literary figures that were members of the parliament during the transitional period to competitive politics, two renowned novelists come to the fore; Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Halide Edip Adıvar, both of who occupy distinguished places in the history of Turkish literature. The parliamentary experiences of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar illustrate the complexities caused by the principles of party solidarity in the life of an aesthete and a freethinker. Similarly, Halide Edip Adıvar’s engagement with politics, both during the turbulent years of the Turkish nation-state and in the premature years of the multi-party period, manifests the intellectual troubles due the monocratic attitudes of party authorities.

[28] Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (İstanbul 1901 – İstanbul 1962), the renowned poet, novelist, essayist, literary scholar and critic of Turkish literature, was an intellectual who believed in the progressive goals of the new regime, just like Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and Memduh Şevket Esendal. Nevertheless, as a syncretistic thinker, he was doubtful of the political power’s hostility at the Ottoman past. The idea of ‘synthesis’ at the center of his critical thinking, distinguished Tanpınar from his Republican contemporaries as an intellectual dedicated to the project of civilization and progress, with a specific concern for the reconciliation of the values of the past and present rather than a complete refusal of the past, like Kemalism did prefer.

[29] Tanpınar was the son of a government official; he spent several years in Kerkuk, Mosul and some cities in Anatolia because of his father’s duties and could return to his town of birth only by late 1910s for graduate study. After completing his studies at the University of İstanbul Faculty of Letters, he worked as a teacher but soon returned to the university and became a professor in 1939. Tanpınar accessed the parliament in 1942 as a deputy of Kahramanmaraş, with the friendly propaganda of Memduh Şevket Esendal, who was in that period influential in the organization of party lists (Ağaoğlu 1978: 50). Although he published, with a sense of duty, a few critical essays in the journal Ülkü, some of which support the actions of the CHP with a sharp-tongued discourse, Tanpınar failed to provide his party with the image of a writer dedicated to the party’s line of thinking (Okay 2004: 500). He served until 1946 and left parliamentary politics in a desolate vein in the outsets of the multi-party period. Tanpınar became an inspector in the Ministry of Education after he abandoned the TBMM. He returned to his academic career at the university in 1949 and devoted himself to his literary studies until the end of his life.

[30] In one of his letters to his close friend Cevat Dursunoğlu, Tanpınar specifies his motive for accessing the parliament as ‘to initiate stronger links with life and society as a MP’; in the informal atmosphere of a casual friendly conversation, he adds that he also aims to ‘discard academic pressure and spare time to work on his literary projects’ in the parliament (Okay 2004: 499). Tanpınar’s seeing the deputy position as a solution to his financial problems also appears in between the lines of some other letters (Örgen 2004: 539). Although he succeeded in ameliorating his financial position a little and sparing time to write, Tanpınar hardly turned his eager interest for politics to a diligent membership in the parliament. As a political novice, he soon recognized that ‘to initiate stronger links with life and society’ was nothing but a naïve hope.

[31] After completing his first year in Ankara, Tanpınar was already in a less enthusiastic mode for politics. The way he explains his struggles in the parliament to a friend in a private conversation in 1943, expounds his aversion; Tanpınar illustrates the hierarchical atmosphere of the TBMM and emphasizes his helplessness in there, describing the parliament to one of his former students as a ‘dervish lounge’ where ‘there is a leading sheik, around him there are sheiks of various ranks and around them there are apostles of various ranks. The sheik and his accompanies wander in the corridors with their head up and eyes monitoring around. The apostles are lined next to the walls in terms of their ranks’. Newcomers like him, Tanpınar adds, ‘almost crawl along the walls looking down and trying to communicate by means of gestures’ (Ağaoğlu 1978: 50).

[32] It is against the backdrop of this imposed pantomime that Tanpınar transformed himself into a sole observer of the activities in the single-party parliament. He did not become politically at odds with the party authorities explicitly but the absence of his name in the records indicates that Tanpınar kept himself distant to delivering speeches and getting engaged with commission activities during his tenure (Okay 2004: 500). When he realized that parliamentary politics has its own indigenous rules and little can be done to change the monocratic attitudes of his party in a limited interval of time, Tanpınar chose to invest his energy solely to literary projects. In four years, he translated four books, wrote a short story and four poems, and serialized his first novel Mahur Beste (The Mahur Mode, 1944) in Ülkü (Okay 2004: 501). After he left the political arena in 1946, Tanpınar published novels that question, as a subtext, the prospects of reformist attempts from above with an exquisite irony. In his novels Huzur (Peace of Mind, 1949), Sahnenin Dışındakiler (Those Outside the Scene, 1950) and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (Time Setting Institute, 1951) he transformed the Westernization of Turkey to an arresting theme and illustrated the ‘psychological effects of the Kemalist cultural revolution’ (Göknar 2003: 647).

[33] As a writer who participated in parliamentary politics in the last years of the single-party era, Tanpınar suffered from CHP’s attempts to keep full control of the political dynamics in the transition to a multi-party system with authoritarian attitudes. When this transition took place in 1946, Turkish politics encountered a challenge both in terms of parliamentary democracy and in terms of the political mobilization of masses. Unlike CHP, which had the image of an elite-dominated cadre party, DP was acclaimed to be a party mobilizing masses which made an opening for various sections of society to access contemporary politics. The substantial decrease in the number of official and military group of deputies from 38% in 1920 to 13% in 1954 clearly illustrates the shift in the political mobilization (Frey 1965: 197). This transition in political elites changed the prominent actors of politics; in DP’s governance, local notables and businessmen became more visible in parliamentary politics.

[34] The dualistic political structure opened little room for the development of democratic values and principles although it initiated fractures in the politics of Turkey. DP appealed to masses with manners against the centralist and bureaucratic CHP rule. However, as former CHP deputies, who practiced parliamentary politics under an authoritarian atmosphere, MPs of the DP had a lot in common with their contenders in terms of the single-party political culture. After 1950, when it obtained the majority in the parliament with a landslide victory, the residual single-party political culture intervened to the policies and acts of the DP more visibly, introducing a very powerful polarization between the two parties which, with its increasing degree, influenced the contemporary politics of Turkey in various contexts in the following years.

[35] Writing did not become a liberated occupation overnight by the transition to a multi-party political system; ruling cadres of both camps kept a close concern in literature and attempted to establish control over it. In the conditions of a bipolar political universe, the burden of writer/MPs intensified, as literature became a more evident locus in the monopoly of power, in the domains of which both camps fought for domination and control. Some of the norms inherited from the non-competitive period kept influencing the literary and political activities of writer/MPs in these years. The literary patronage system, which granted privileges to writers in line with the present state of affairs, gradually got divided into two opposite poles. One camp popularized writers who shed a critical eye on issues disturbing the other. Although this polarization introduced a massive tension to literary circles, it also provided the necessary support for some writers to defend themselves against the ruling power; Mahmut Makal, a graduate of Village Institutes, who was arrested in 1950 after the publication of his candid observations of an isolated Anatolian village arranged in a form of novella titled Bizim Köy (Our Village, 1950) was immediately released as DP started publicizing his work as a proof of the failure of elitist CHP policies in the outset of the 1950 elections (Tonguç 1997: 410).

[36] Tolerance to opposition kept being a problematic issue and constituted the most important continuity in the period of competitive politics that affected the agenda of writer/MPs. In the premature years of the multi-party period, the writer/MPs experienced the difficulties of this limiting political legacy in different contexts. Halide Edip Adıvar, who is one of the rare female novelists of the Republican period that published sagas of the War of Independence and the following reformist endeavors, experienced such an intolerance in the parliament and just like Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, left parliamentary politics in despair at the end of her term of office.

[37] Halide Edip Adıvar (İstanbul 1884 – İstanbul 1964) was one of the most controversial figures elected as an independent deputy of İzmir from the lists of DP in 1950. She was the first Muslim girl to graduate from American College for Girls in 1901, who later worked as a teacher at the Teacher Training College and Girls Secondary School, and went to Syria to found schools and orphanages for girls. Following the occupation of İstanbul, Adıvar fled to Ankara to join the resistance and served as a nurse, interpreter, press advisor and secretary to Mustafa Kemal during the war. In the aftermath of the war, she became a political opponent of Mustafa Kemal and her links with the Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Progressive Republican Party), the oppositional accumulation that had developed within the Kemalist chamber, forced Adıvar to a leave as the party was abolished in 1925. At that time, she was already chosen as a candidate for membership in the parliament by women’s organizations that were advocating women’s political suffrage (Adak 2003: 511). Adıvar then found herself in a self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom. After her return to Turkey in 1939, she became a professor at the Department of English Language and Literature at İstanbul University.

[38] As a victim of lack of tolerance to opposition who had to spend several years abroad in an involuntary exile, Adıvar was a deliberate choice for DP to symbolize the beginning of a new era in Turkish politics. She was a figure dedicated to the modernization of the country and the progress of women in the society; yet, she was at the same time an individual influenced by the mysticism of the Islamic faith. With the intellectual synthesis of Adıvar, DP found the chance to appeal both to the modernist and the traditionalist minds. Recalling her involuntary exile, Democrat Party not only gave the message that the new political power positioned itself against Kemalist type of authoritarianism and distaste for Islam, but it also asserted with Adıvar’s feminist intellect in its display, that the party will stand for a progressive politics that subsume the equality of women in its goals. Adıvar was a symbol for DP but DP was a symbol for Adıvar as well; for her, DP was an original and promising symbol of democracy and freedom. In her first years as a MP, Adıvar was so enthusiastic about this first genuine experience of democracy in Turkey that she proposed in the TBMM to celebrate 14 May, the day DP relegated RPP to opposition, as the Democracy Day (Ayın Tarihi 1950).

[39] Since 1934, when they were granted suffrage for the national elections, there have been several women in the parliament. In 1950, Adıvar was among the three of them, in a total number of 491 deputies (Keskin-Kozat 1997). During her membership in the parliament, she exposed herself more as an academic figure and gave several talks that focus on issues mostly related to ‘educational reforms’ (Yücebaş 1964: 11). Although her involvement in nationalist politics during the War of Liberation provided her with an inspiration in literary domains, her DP adventure did not have a direct impulse on Adıvar’s literature. She pulled herself back from literary projects during her appointment; in the interval of her tenure, Adıvar published only a single novel titled Döner Ayna (Revolving Mirror, 1954).

[40] As an intellectual known for her obstinate and oppositional personality, Adıvar quickly lost the sympathy of the party officials. In the polemical atmosphere of the first years of the DP rule, the informative speeches of Adıvar attracted scarce attention but as the tone of her remarks became critical of the government, she caught some angry eyes. Adıvar became marginalized within the party ironically on the grounds of her former disagreement with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; she resigned in 1954, blaming the party as an institution tending towards dictatorship and abandoned the political arena by publishing a ‘Farewell to Politics’ (Koloğlu 1998: 182). Adıvar returned to her academic career and confined herself to writing and translating some of her previous works, written during her exile and first published in English, after leaving the TBMM.

[41] Adıvar’s experience in the TBMM indicates that opposition was interpreted more as a sign of crossing from one side to the other rather than a critical contribution, in the early years of the multi-party experience. Until the polarized atmosphere of this transitional period was replaced by a more pluralistic atmosphere in 1960s, the notion of democracy was often recalled as the distribution of power and policy making privileges via competitive elections rather than a wide scale development of certain values that appreciate individual political perspectives. Assuming itself as the genuine representative of ‘the people’, DP increased its authoritarian measures after Adıvar’s resignation; it imposed ‘restrictions on the campaign activities of the opposition parties and leaders’ in 1954, forbid ‘opposition parties from mounting a unified campaign against the majority party’ in 1957, and established ‘a parliamentary investigation commission equipped with some judicial powers to investigate subversive activities of the opposition’ in 1960 (Turan 1998: 75). These measures initiated a decrease in the popular support to the party and as DP attempted to compensate this loss by appealing to the religious sentiments of the public, the military assumed the role of a political actor and intervened.

[42] In 1960, antidemocratic measures of D