Comparison of Kiralık Konak by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and The Cario Trilogy and Naguip Mahfouz

Considering the historical data, it is seen that Western culture, which is ahead of the East in terms of scientific studies, has started to influence the Eastern nations due to the developing and changing world view and necessities. As a natural result of this, a process that can be called as Westernization / Modernization for Eastern culture and a conflict situation emerged in this process. For westernization, countries took some steps to save the day. They sometimes planned these steps while they sometimes did not consider the consequences. These steps had profound and shocking effects on the cultural worlds of these countries. Literary studies are the elements that can most clearly reveal the cultural conflict that arose as a result of the Westernization movements. In this study, the subject of Westernization will be discussed through examples from Turkish literature and Egyptian literature, which have common grounds such as a common historical period, religion and politics. Kiralık Konak by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, who had an important place in Turkish literature, and Cairo Trilogy (es-Sülâsiyye) by Nobel Prize winner Necip Mahfûz, who is considered as the founder of modern Egyptian literature, are considered to be suitable for comparison within the scope of this specific study as they have common fictions and themes. In the novels describing the westernization and the cultural conflict brought about by westernization through three generations living in the same house, generation conflict was discussed. In these novels, references are made to the historical processes by emphasizing the spaces. In this study, it is aimed to reveal how these two different literatures with common cultural properties deal with Westernization and generation conflict and what kind of attitudes these writers have towards Westernization, cultural conflict and chaos.