In the Tanzimat Period social criticism in the Turkish novel

Social life has the closest relation with novel among literary genres. With this perspective the novel has a great importance with its observing the stages social life has and some social evetns. The author of novels reflects either positive or negative point of view with undertaking a critical position while narrating the social events.The cultural, economical and political life of Ottoman in Tanzimat reform era experienced very deep changes in accordance with the state?s westernization effort; the new life style which came into use with westernization affected the existing social life of Ottoman in a negative way. Besides this, social flaws inside the society?s own structure also caused the social structure to suffer damage. The fact that novelists of Tanzimat era?s first period were sensitive to social issues let them to reflect these changes to their novels. In respect to this, we can evaluate Tanzimat novel as the one of best areas to determine the 19th century social life the most accurately. Tanzimat novelist especially Ahmet Midhat Efendi criticised the Ottoman and Eurooean social life mostly by comparing them. This approach creates the worry of showing the true and false to the reader at the same time.The social issues of Tanzimat era which were reflected to novels were dealt as three categories consisting of socio politic, socio economic and socio cultural and were criticised. Criticism and ideas about social issues were narrated with notion passages besides being treated about plotline. Critical attitudes of Tanzimat novelists also made their expectations from novel clear. They believed that they could retrieve the wrong in the social life by using social criticism language they used in their works.Key words: Tanzimat period, novel, social criticism, socio-economic life, socio-cultural life, socio-political life