Themes of social remembering and forgetting in the novels of Peyami Safa

Social memory is one of the prominently discussed fields in recent times within the realm of social sciences. Developments within society due to modernization and the erasure policies pursued by nation-states have led this subject to become central in the realm of social sciences. Social memory can be understood from psychological, historical, and anthropological contexts. One of the fields where social memory is most evident is literature. Within literature, the most suitable domain is the genre of the novel. This is because novels provide a broad perspective to address diverse subjects and forms of thought. Novelists can tackle various topics and adopt different styles. Even if novelists are criticized for the subjects they explore or the styles they embrace, they can express that their works are products of imagination and that they present reality in altered forms. This circumstance always portrays authors as innocent and enables them to defend their viewpoints. Of course, literary works do not emerge independently from the society the author comes from and the author's personal experiences. In this context, literary works become objects of social memory. This is because the author's memory is the memory of society. Considering the explanation of the social structure of the Republican era, Peyami Safa's novels can be read in terms of the point modern society has reached, human psychology, and societal disintegration. How societies remember, how modernity makes them forget, space, body and East-West synthesis are evident in Peyami Safa's novel Keywords: Social memory, social forgetting, novel, literature, Peyami Safa