Trends in Turkish play writing from 1970 to 1980

1970-80 is a socially and politically momentous and intricate period which started with a memorandum and ended with a coup d'etat. The Socialist view that spread the whole world in late 1960's and consequently social movement were intervened by the mem orandum of March 12th, 1971 and enlightened and progressive groups were made silenced in this period which started with the March Memorandum and ended with the martial-law and fol lowing coup d'etat. In late 70's, both the goverment forces and po litical groups used violence and thus the country was dragged into a chaotic atmhosphere. The Political movements and complications of this period re flected to dramatic literature, too. While the bannings and pre ventions were giving hard times to theatre people, aesthetic val ues were all confused and plays started to be considered only regarding their political content, and it repressed the creation of long-lived plays. The Turkish dramatic literature in 1970-1980's is a very inter esting period in many ways. Many of playwrights who started their career in 1960's shifted to other genres of literature and the new names, who carried out an active and successful career even in the following years, among the new generation of playwrights of the decade made their debuts. The social and political move ments, which is the most important factor impressing the dramat ic literature, lead to an increase in the creation of new plays; on the other hand the quality of the plays relatively declined. The most important feature of the dramatic literature in 1970- 1980's is the dominance of the political attitude. This attitude was to such a degree that, in most of the plays written in this period, the care for giving a political message was prior to the play itself. In all the plays- from the ones that dealed with the social changes in rural areas and immigration to the metropolitans, to those which questioned the history and myths or to those which dealed with the problems of the modern urban life- the political attitude is obvious. Furthermore many Socialism oriented plays which dealed with the corruption of the system from the view point of labourers were written within this period. On the other hand, some of the playwrights joined some thea tre companies as troupe dramatists, thus it caused theatrical prac tice and dramatic literature to converge and changed the de scription of "playwright".