The Theatres of Ahmet Mı̇that Efendi in The Transition to Modern Turkish Theatre

Ahmet Mithat Efendi is one of the most productive intellectuals of Tanzimat Reform Era created works in almost every field varying from novels, stories, philosophy to religion, history and music. The content and nature of his works are intended for educating and improving society he lives in, so he wrote a play as well. We aimed to examine Ahmet Mithat Efendi's copyrighted plays within the context of content, structure, traditional elements and intertextuality. What makes this study so important is that there are not any academic studies/ researches on plays written by Ahmet Mithat Efendi. The focus of our study is to detect Ahmet Mithat Efendi's opinions on theatre and determine how much he reflected these opinions in works written by him. It reveals the importance of his plays during transition to Modern Turkish Theatre. Ahmet Mithat Efendi considers theatre as a means developing civilization for places not reached maturity. According to him, theatre is a school. He aimed to create a national theatre. He thinks theatre is more outstanding than novel and story. Ahmet Mithat Efendi has written plays. His play named "Gönül" has been turned into a play by Mehmet Rıfat. In his play, you cannot see characters who know a lot about both East and West. As he has written his plays with an understanding of thesis play, the characters are in the position of spokesman of Ahmet Mithat Efendi. Ahmet Mithat Efendi has mostly implemented his opinions on theatre in his copyrighted plays. His novels are like novels narrated since Ahmet Mithat Efendi has written his plays imprecisely with turn of expression of encomiast telling stories as a conversation and his knowledge on scene has not sufficient.