The making of the image of İstanbul in Turkish literature (1930-1945)

İstanbul is usually told in negative imagery, or even ignored in the literature of the Truce Years or the Republican era. After Ankara became the capital of the Republic, İstanbul is wholly sidelined, and thus a robust new Anadolu literature emerged. While the occupied İstanbul fell out of favour, Ankara and Anatolia came into the forefront. Nevertheless, this literary perception and trend continued only for a decade. Since the 1930s, with the introduction of Bergsonian philosophy and Freudian psychology to the literary circles, the literary perception of Istanbul turned upside down. Accordingly, İstanbul gradually came back into the centre place in Turkish literature around the mid-1930s. Thus, a new genre of poetry and prose centring around İstanbul re-awoke. Initially stirred by the memoirs of Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, this sentiment dominated the mindset of the literature of 1930s and 1940s through Yahya Kemal's poetry. These developments are followed through by Hisar's Boğaziçi Mehtapları and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's Beş Şehir. As a result, this new sentiment that centres around İstanbul became established. This thesis analyses this new sentiment and the literary fashion that surrounds it. It argues that this new way of literary perception can only be made sense of by realising how multiple elements like poetry, music, history and nature enmesh together. Such a realisation informs us of the arrival of a new literary era as well as providing us with the opportunity to recognise the background of the urban culture, which is quite prevalent today.Key words: Image of Istanbul, Istanbul in the Truce and Republican Eras, 1930-1945, Bergson.