Power and women in the works of Sabahattin Ali

Sabahattin Ali (1907-1948) is a 20th century author who deals with social issues and love in his works. The social structure and atmosphere in his works is described based on his opponent attitude towards state understanding and higher socioeconomic status groups of the early Republican period. His fictions based on dichotomous characters such as the oppressor and oppressed, the ruler and ruled, the arrogant and honorable the unjust treatment of weak social groups by institutions and actors representing state authority, and by despotic social actors. The distribution of roles in his works on male-female relations reflects also this dichotomy. In this study, the personalities in the works of Sabahattin Ali and the social atmosphere, which gives birth to those personalities, are analyzed by relating them to the dichotomies in his own biography. As he himself admits, Sabahattin Ali designs his characters mostly based on himself, which makes easier to build relations between his characters and himself. Sabahattin Ali cannot find the care he expected from his mother since his childhood, tries to get into his mother's good books, but at the same time he criticizes and fights her. This relationship to the "mother figure" is similar to the relationship of his male main characters to other women and to the state. Imposing his own weaknesses to the male characters, and features of his injurers to the antagonist, he comes to terms with the state, women and his mother. According to his approach, the role of men given by the government of that age is problematic. The social positions of his all-unhappy male main characters are similar to Sabahattin Ali's position, who never reaches to the point he deserves in his real life. So, his relationship to his mother, women and the state, as a female authority figure in his eyes, is a key element to understand Sabahattin Ali's imagination regarding social structure in the early Republican period.