Conceptual indicators of ideological discourse in Turkish novel (1920-1940) in the Turkish nation building

In this thesis, it is aimed to conduct a discourse analysis on the Turkish Novel of 1920-1940. As the scope of this analysis would be greatly broadened by discussing all writers who published novels in this period, a limitation is made about the included writers. The first part presents a theoretical framework for the concepts of ideology and discourse, and the relationship of the novel with ideology and discourse is discussed. The second part draws a historical, political and social background for the discourse analysis of the Turkish novel of 1920-1940, the main outlines of the novel of the period and a general framework of the writers and novels that are studied. The third part includes the reflections of conceptual indicators such as nation, religion, modernization, man-woman and education encountered in the novels of the period on the contexts of these novels, and it is aimed to decode the discourse. In our study, primary texts are examined using the close reading method and the field of semiotics, and it is aimed to determine the projections of the ideological discourses of the writers on the characteristics of their contents and styles by making comparisons among the examined novels regarding the obtained findings. Consequently, it is determined that the writers in the scope of this study considered literature and the novel as an instrument of reflecting one's ideological discourse, and the novel had a highly functional and ideological role in the nation-building process. It is seen that writers that could not be considered side by side in terms of their ideologies adopted a similar discourse, and they defended the official ideology by using the novel as one of the ideological instruments of the state. The nationalism and nation-building process found a very broad place for itself in the novel, and it was aimed to create new literature for the new nation.