Mehmet Kaplan: The intellectual position about turkish modernization and political life and the works

This study is composed of three parts. In the first part, the study approached Mehmet Kaplan's life and works. In the second part, the study investigated Kaplan's opinions about Turkish modernization. In the third part, the study focused on his current political articles in search of his intellectual position about Turkish political life. In the first part, the study approached Kaplan's life in terms of his intellectual story. This part focused on his family, the social context of his life, his education process and the intellectuel environment which he has been involved. Furthermore, the dominant roles of Kaplan in the disciplines of Modern Turkish Literature and Turkish Folk Literature and his scientific position on the literature have been mentioned. Lastly, his works has been also evaluated. In the second part, the study focused on how Kaplan evaluated the Turkish modernization in line with his scientific position and his intellectual networks. In this context, Kaplan's understanding of culture and civilization and the background of this have been focused on. In addition to this, Kaplan's approach to Turkish history and his ideas which is derived from the works of Turkish Folk Literature on the Turkish history of changes in terms of culture and civilization have been mentioned, too. In the third part, Kaplan's anticomunist approach which has been revealed in his articles on the current Turkish politics has been concerned. In this last part, the themes about his anticomunist agenda in the context of the Cold War have been discussed, too.