Echoes across the National Divide: Common Topoi in the Turkish Literature of the War of Independence and the Greek Literature of the Asia Minor Disaster

Authors : Anastasia Aglaia Lemos

Pages : 32-56

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Publication Date : 2021-06-30

Article Type : Research

Abstract :This paper draws attention to common features of the early literatures of the Turkish War of Independence and of the Greek Asia Minor Disaster. The salient feature is the emphasis on victimhood, with each literature presenting the sufferings of its own side. This explains the different choice of subjects, for the Turks the Muslim peasantry during the war, for the Greeks Christian captives and refugees at and after its end. To convey these sufferings as lived experience both literatures use first person narration and in both literatures the boundaries between fact and fiction are hard to determine. Works in both literatures are also strongly influenced by political and other circumstances at the time of composition rather than of the war itself. These points are illustrated by examples from the work of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Halide Edip Adıvar and Elias Venezis. Finally the treatment of the refugee experience both in literature and the recording of oral history is briefly surveyed and reasons are suggested for its prominence in Greece and its absence in Turkey.
Keywords : Halide Edip Adıvar, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Elias Venezis, Stratis Myrivilis, national narrative