War perception in socialist realistic Turkish poetry (Generation of '40)

As one of the rigid realities of human history, war does not only determine geographic sharing, geopolitical and economic balances on earth, but continues to shape both the past and the present. It also provides the subject for literary texts since it is one of the biggest problems of humanity except that it is a part of political-military forces history and strategy science based on numbers and maps. The Republican era, in which Turkish poetry is enriched in terms of political content, offers interesting yields in this context. "Socialist realism", which emerged as one of the main tendencies of poetry in this period, has been represented by a generation, with many poets beginning to write in line with this understanding since the 1940s. Poets such as Hasan İzzettin Dinamo, Rıfat Ilgaz, Cahit Saffet Irgat, A.Kadir (Meriçboyu), Fethi Giray, M. Niyazi Akıncıoğlu, Suat Taşer, Enver Gökçe, Ömer Faruk Toprak, Mehmed Kemal (Kurşunluoğlu), Attilâ İlhan, Arif Damar (Barikat), Ahmed Arif and Şükran Kurdakul, who are counted in the generation, have opened the doors of poetry to the problems of the world because they consider art as a means of reaching the order they dreamed of. The First World War in which they were born into its destructive effects, The War of Independence, which ensured their national existence, World War II, which they feel their impact on both social and individual levels, apart from witnessing its hurtful and exasperating progress, provides natural causes for them to open up space for the war in the literary field. However, the main weight of this interest is shaped by humanist sensitivities such as anti-violence and emphasis on freedom. Poems in which anti-imperialist attitude is highlighted against exploitation-oriented wars, or poems in which the idea struggle is emphasized for an egalitarian future ideal, or poems in which the masses of people represented by worker/peasant portraits are portrayed in a struggle for life, point to the socialist foundations of generation poets in the approach to the notion of war. It must be said that the framework of the "war", as a macro theme of the Generation of '40, has shaped by the divergences that mark the intellectual contradictions as well as military conflicts. Moreover, the attitude that appears in these poems offers an opportunity to be more clearly observed a world view that has gained identity with its positivist/materialist aspect and Kemalist background rather than its Marxist origins. Key Words: War and Literature, Republican Period Turkish Poetry, Socialist Realism, Generation of 1940, Ideology in Poetry.