THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION OF THE SECOND CONSTITUTIONAL ERA IN HALIDE EDIB ADIVAR’S YENI TURAN: UTOPIA AND THE DECENTRALIST DESIGN OF THE FUTURE Halide Edib Adıvar’ın Yeni Turan’ında II. Meşrutiyet Dönemi Siyasi Tahayyülü: Ütopya ve Geleceğin Adem-i Merkeziyetçi Tasarımı
Turkbilig, cilt.2026, sa.51, ss.457-480, 2026 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 2026 Sayı: 51
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.59257/turkbilig.1739894
- Dergi Adı: Turkbilig
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Linguistic Bibliography, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, MLA International Bibliography
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.457-480
- Anahtar Kelimeler: adem-i merkeziyetçilik, decentralization, Halide Edib Adıvar, Halide Edib Adıvar, II. Meşrutiyet, Second Constitutional Era, Utopia, Yeni Turan, Yeni Turan, Ütopya
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır
Özet
Utopias are fundamentally rooted in the individual, political, and social aspirations of humanity throughout history. The proliferation of creative and intellectual leaps during periods of social and political crisis underscores the fact that utopias, as both symptoms and proposed solutions, gain prominence at such historical thresholds. Similarly, in Turkish literature, the genre of utopian writing accelerated notably during the Second Constitutional Era, a period of crisis and new directions for the state. Halide Edib [Adıvar]’s novel Yeni Turan (1912) is one of the seminal works of early Turkish utopian literature. Yeni Turan stands as an original Turkish utopia that embodies the ideals and political aspirations of the Second Constitutional Era, transmuting the period’s socio-political imaginings into literary form. Set in 1932, the novel diagnoses the problems of its time and proposes solutions. Inspired by the idea of decentralization, the novel suggests a new political structure based on individual autonomy and local decision-making. While examining Yeni Turan as a utopian text within the intellectual and political context of the Ottoman Second Constitutional Era, this article explores the specific conditions of this era that fostered the creation of the novel. This study analyzes the manifestation of decentralization in Yeni Turan, distinguishing it from other utopian elements of the Second Constitutional Era, such as the rise of Turkism, the emergence of women as public actors, and the ideological search for a compromise between Islam and secularism. The novel thus envisions a future ideological program. This article argues its decentralist design constitutes the utopian core, transmuting the Era’s political imagination into literature.