Kemal Tahir - Ideology

Ideology

The foundation of Kemal Tahir's ideology can be broadly described as Marxist. As a writer and a political activist, he saw a contradiction between the socio-cultural and political structure of Turkey and solutions that Marxism offers. Due to his belief that Westernization was something that did not quite fit Turkish society, he found Marxism somewhat lacking. Marxist historical theory is based on the existence of a bourgeois class, something that did not develop in the Ottoman Empire (as in many other 'peripheral countries'). Perhapd the greatest intellectual struggle was in reshaping Marxist historical theory to the reality of Turkish history.

After studying Marx and Engels' opinions about eastern societies, Kemal Tahir worked on historical theories of historians and sociologists like Ömer Lütfi Barkan, Mustafa Akdağ, Halil İnalcık, Niyazi Berkes and Şerif Mardin. His conclusion was that Ottoman-Turkish society does not follow euro-centric primitive/slavery/feodality/capitalism socio-historical model. İt has its own special evolution process, structural differences, dynamics and conditions based on its cultural and social structure. So Westernization, whether in form of capitalism or communism, is trying to bring an abstract and formal superstructure to a society which does not have the necessary substructure. Without a fundamental economic and social revolution this kind of exercises would be nothing but an absurd mimicry.

In frame of this ideology, Kemal Tahir aimed to describe the Ottoman society in his works which was based on a humanist foundation which was very different from European feudal and later capitalist society. He tried to emphasize a "Turkish reality" in his novels.

In his writing career, which was in socio-realist line, he used a simple language that was enriched with dialogues and charismatic characters. He was one of the most productive novelists of Turkish literature.