The Eastern and Western civilization elements in four Turkish novels of the Tanzimat period (Felâtun bey ile Râkım Efendi, İntibah, Sergüzeşt, Araba Sevdası)

The Turkish society, which turned its face to the West with the Tanzimat movement, was influenced by the West in terms of political, social and literary fields. It is known that each literary period feeds on the social events of its own time. In the new period that emerged with the Tanzimat, the changes in the structure of the state and society also affected the literature. This thesis aims to reveal how the East-West conflict was reflected on the literature of the Tanzimat period, which is the most prominent period in which Turkish literature began to be under the influence of the West, by examining the important novels of the period. In order to achieve this goal, four Tanzimat period novels, which are thought to have revealed the Western influences, are examined. These novels are important works of four authors who were pioneers in the literature of the Tanzimat period, Ahmet Mithat Efendi: Felâtun Bey ile Râkım Efendi (1875), Namık Kemal: İntibah (1876), Sami Paşazade Sezai: Sergüzeşt (1888), and Recâizade Mahmut Ekrem: Araba Sevdası (1896). In these four novels, the phenomenon of East-West conflict is examined. The method of this thesis is descriptive research method. Document scanning method was used to analyze the novels. Each novel was read in detail and the expressions that were thought to belong to Eastern or Western cultures were collected and interpreted. The phenomenon analized in this thesis has been evaluated in the novels in terms of the characters of the novel, place, time and the events/situations that occur depending on them. This thesis consists of four main parts. The first part is the Introduction, which contains information such as the purpose, importance and method of the study. In the second part, under the title of theoretical framework, the effects of Westernization before and during the Tanzimat period, an overview of the important novels and writers of the Tanzimat period are studied. In the third chapter, the summary and the elements reflecting the conflict between East and West of the four novels are given in detail. In the fourth chapter, the results obtained from the study are given in general and suggestions for further research are made. Key Words: Tanzimat literature, Turkish novel, Westernization, East-West conflict.