I shall first present the main points of my findings, then attempt to interpret them. defining the communal and/or ethnic (Turkish) identity, and how these perceptions of the ‘Other’ can be evaluated in terms of ideological and political tendencies. In this article I shall show how the Greek community of Istanbul has been presented in Turkish novels, from 1870 up to the present day, how this image of the ‘Other’ can be interpreted as a manifestation of defining ‘oneself’, i.e. The deconstruction of literary texts reveals a world of perceptions almost as rich as our complex real world. The study of the Turkish novel, for example, sheds light on many aspects of Turkish society: the way the authors perceived their social, political and cultural environment, how they compartmentalized these ‘realities’, how these perceptions changed over time, how and when different ideologies appeared and vanished within the society, how identities vis à vis the ‘Other’ developed and were expressed, how all these developments were accompanied by a related language and use of words and symbols, etc. Published in Intercultural Aspects in and around Turkic Literatures, Matthias Kappler (ed), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2006.Īpart from being a source of aesthetic pleasure, literary texts are rich in information.
The image of the Greek minority of Istanbul in Turkish literature: past and recent tendencies
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