Suicide/attempted-suicide death in the works of Turkish female literary writers

The expansion of Turkish women's presence in social and cultural life has occurred under challenging circumstances. Especially in the field of education, the rate of literacy among women has increased. This rise has enabled women to play an active role in the field of literature and ensured that their works have reached the present day. The way female writers advanced after difficult living conditions was reflected in their works of art. This reflection aims to illustrate the difficulty of circumstances and to articulate the emotions they have evoked as a consequence of these conditions. Throughout their lives, the pressures they feel, the melancholy and degradation they encounter, as well as taking place in the works of perpetrators, can also reflect their attitude towards death. The death that every human being will surely encounter one day is actually a phenomenon that people wonder about throughout their lives. The challenging circumstances of life and the emotions that individuals experience in such situations often foster a sense of curiosity about death and can influence one's perspective. The contemplation of death leads to suicide. Suicide is an individual behavior and it determines one's own fate. The complexity of suicide as a phenomenon allows for various approaches to address it. These aspects include psychological, sociological, philosophical, and religious elements. One of the most significant themes in literature is death, which also includes suicide. The literature dealing with the phenomenon of death enables individuals to understand their thoughts when confronted with death. There are also writers who not only contemplate death but also commit suicide. Those writers explore the themes of life and death, while also giving clues about their own suicides. This study aims to identify the thoughts of female authors in Turkish literature who have either attempted suicide or expressed suicidal tendencies. The authors in focus are Yaşar Nezihe Bükülmez, Rabia Bayraktar, Tezer Özlü, Nilgün Marmara, Kanat Güner, and Ayşe Altan and to reveal the underlying causes of suicide in their works.