Poverty in Orhan Kemal's stories from the Istanbul period

Orhan Kemal is one of the important writers known for his novels and stories in the Turkish literature of the Republican period. The author, who examines everything human in his stories, created his works with realistic observations and created the characters inspired by the people in his life. While fictionalizing the people he encounters in real life in his stories, he mainly includes a fact, a social phenomenon, that he knows. This social phenomenon is the poverty that affected the author's life and that he had to face at a young age. Orhan Kemal, who spent his life among poor people from his childhood until his death, did not break his relationship with this life in Istanbul, choosing his friends, even his life partner, among poor people. The workers, beggars, prisoners, farmhands, homeless people and vagabonds he includes in his fictional works are people from the author's close circle. In Orhan Kemal, the story heroes' attitudes and resistance to difficulties and poverty vary from person to person. In the plot, men, women and children differ in their ability to endure the desperation and hunger resulting from poverty. In this context, in this study, which is limited to poverty in Orhan Kemal's Istanbul period stories, the effect of the theme of poverty on women, men and children and the effect of poverty on social virtues are examined. In the stories of the Istanbul Period, poverty is a social phenomenon that negatively affects human values and virtues. Orhan Kemal wrote the painful scenes of poverty in his stories of the Istanbul period with a Social Realist approach. In this context, the harsh living conditions imposed by poverty are not an "immutable fate" but a fate that must be fought. While the poverty of the society is conveyed in all its nakedness, the corruption in human values is highlighted as the dominant element. The basic starting point of the study is to determine the damage caused by poverty on human virtues in the eyes of individuals and society in the stories of the Istanbul period. Keywords: Orhan Kemal, Story, Istanbul Period, Poverty