The suicides in Peyami Safa's literature: Victims and Agents

This thesis focuses on the relationship between the victim-agent dynamic and the representations of suicides in the literary works of Peyami Safa. The primary objective of this study is to examine the roles of characters contemplating or committing suicide within the framework of sacrifice thematically, while exploring the formal changes and transformations in the structure of the text. The study focuses specifically on Peyami Safa's novels Sözde Kızlar (1923) and Mahşer (1924) from the Armistice period, and Bir Tereddüdün Romanı (1933) from the transitional period. Through close readings and considering their historical contexts, the aforementioned novels are analyzed. In Sözde Kızlar, Belma's suicide is portrayed not as an act of rebellion, but rather as a representation of a "scapegoat" sacrificed for the Turkish and Muslim community. While Belma atones for her "sin" with her bodily destruction, the text is simultaneously destroyed aesthetically. In Mahşer, Nihad, a war veteran, is ostracized socially due to his failure to conform to the victim role on the battlefield, This information puts him in conflict with the law/divine, leading to his tragic agency and eventual suicide. Transitioning from the bodily to the textual, Bir Tereddüdün Romanı explores mimetic desire for suicide as a central motif in its intertextual network. The denial of this mutual desire culminates in mimetic violence between Vildan and the narrator. In the transition from the bodily to the textual, mimetic desire for suicide emerges as the founding motif in the intertextual network in Bir Tereddüdün Romanı.