Religion perception and religious life in the works of Ayşe Şasa

Ayşe Şasa is known as a scriptwriter and she is one of the prominent names in the cinema of Turkey. Additionally, she produced work in many different forms of literary. In this study, Ayşe Şasa's thoughts about religion, perception of God, causes of her religious conversion, a period of her religious conversion, her later life will be issued based on her life and her works. This study aims to analyze her religious life psychologically especially by examining works in form of biography and autobiography about Şasa. According to the information we detected, she had lived her life according to the Westernization and modernization brought by age until she was 40. As a result of the crisis and searches, she struggled with the illness brought by mental disorders for 18 years. Şasa's religious conversion process started with reading the book called "Fusûsu'l-Hikem" written by İbn Arabî. Şasa who made peace with Islam took a new identity as Ayşe Şasa through the society in which she was involved to know Islam. Şasa who tried to find place in which she belongs from her childhood tried to satisfy her searching for meaning with different ideologies in her youth. She found searching for meaning with Sufism on the way from the word truth to hakikat. Besides the factors which affect Şasa's religious conversion as we listed; upbringing style of governesses, lack of mother love, neglecting of the father, fear of death, hatred from the West, desire for the meaning, mental satisfaction, loneliness, exclusion from the society and the family. Şasa who was active for all the process of searching for meaning throughout his life, made sense her life by finding answers given by İslam religious her questions which can not be answered in the search for meaning by science and mind. Keywords: Ayşe Şasa, scriptwriter, religion, religious life, religious change