Female identity in İnci Aral's Novel Ölü Erkek Kuşlar

Although the expression of gender identity is constructed with the definitions of difference between the sexes, in the classification of the binary category, which is located at the two ends of the axis and which social fiction distinguishes from biological difference, with the answer to the question the "who am I?", reveals the intertwined, inseparable nature of one shaped according to the other. Gender, which creates the 'other' identity as the sum of all kinds of institutional structures, cultural transfers, social expectations and laws that determine the role distribution of the gender hierarchy, the trajectory of behavior, gives the topography of the gender identity included in the self-definition of individuals. For this reason, the analysis of women's identity requires that the dynamics that reveal gender be addressed together with their consequences. The primary aim of this thesis is to analyze the woman who shares a similar feeling, thinking, living, and destiny, based on the subjectivity of the protagonist Suna in İnci Aral who is one of the important contemporary Turkish literature, in his novel, Ölü Erkek Kuşlar, which rises on women's feelings and women's sensibility. In addition to seeming to prioritize the personal passion/history of the heroine, the work transcends the individual experience and incorporates similar ones into the analysis, as the social/cultural one surrounds the personal in this life. The novel presents a model for male-female relations, social values and judgments. In the study, it is aimed to reveal the link between cultural transfers, gender stereotypes, patriarchal perception and attitude that legitimize gender inequality and the 'production' of femininity. For this purpose, content analysis was made using qualitative research method in the thesis and a result was reached. According to this result, the socialization process that starts in the family and the social norms and moral values that are reproduced by supporting various social structures and cultural units are determinative in the shaping of women's identity. It turns out that the production of femininity is not independent of social and cultural patterns, and the act of resistance against them is sometimes passive in favor of the historical, social and cultural ones. This provides evidence of the workings of gender. Accordingly, it is thought that this study, which demonstrates that some of the dominant issues of the feminist agenda are up-to-date and gives information about the position of femininity, will expand the bracket that opens to the literary foot of the feminist discourse.