Ottoman foundation narratives: Context, genre, and generic instability

This thesis focuses on the Ottoman foundation narratives, which were born as a product of certain historicity and continue to exist today. Proceeding through three different routes, this thesis, with an emphasis on context, questions the meaning of the absence of Ottoman foundation narratives on the one hand and seeks the condi-tions of possibility of its existence on the other hand. In the genre section, which comes after the context subtitle, which is claimed that the Ottoman founding narra-tives are a thematic subgenre, first of all, the relationship between literature and history is examined. Some claims about the foundational period of the Ottoman Empire as the subject of the discipline of history are presented, and then perspecti-ves offered by genre theories and narratology are discussed. In this way, the focus is on the Ottoman foundation narratives, which started in 1949/1950, was written one after the other in the second half of the 1960s, and continued to exist with some consensus after 1980. In the subtitle of generic instability, the repetitions mentioned in the genre section are underlined, and the route leading to difference is followed. The route that started with Osmanoğulları, deviated to a different route with Devlet Ana, gained its dominant characteristics with Ovaya İnen Şahin, Osman Gazi, Tur-gut Alp, and Kutlu Dağ in the 1970s, and reached a consensus with Osmancık, will be discussed with the emphasis of difference and repetition. On the one hand, the meanings of repetitions that make the Ottoman foundation narratives thematic sub-genres will be questioned; on the other hand, "literature as a socially symbolic act" will be underlined by focusing on oscillations by considering the route leading to difference.