Disabled charcters in Turkish novel (1923-1938)

The notion disabled, which has constantly evolved, has been hardly defined and processioned. Thus, very different creterion and definitions has been used for it. In the widest sense, disability might be defined as having difficulties in daily life because of congenital or acoulithic reasons. In the past, disability used to be simply considered as the loss of limb, however, today, as it is taken into consideration more widely and handled with modern approaches, varieties have occured. These are vision impairment, deaf or hard of hearing, physichal disability, intellectual disability, mental and emotional disorders, motor speech disorder and chronic illnesses. Together with the changes in the definition and borders of disability, there have also been crutial changes in the approches to disability. The moral model which sees the disability as the punishment of god have turned to be a solution oriented social model which shares the responsibility with society. The disabled population exceeds one billion around the world and is millions in Türkiye, Eventhough disability, which is regarded as the most crowded minority in the world, stands out more in the 21st century, it is still undervalued in politics, art and sports. We have aimed to find out in our thesis, how much and how disabled characters took place in Turkish novels during the period between the declaration of republic in 1923 and the death of Atatürk in 1938 which is one of the most important milestones of Turkish literature. That's why we have primarily emphasised on the definition, classification and modeling of disability. Later on, we have specified the role of disabled people in novels written between 1923-1938, examining 39 novels in which disabled charaters took place and determining attitudes towards them.