Türkiye emek tarihinin bir izdüşüm alanı olarak ‘edebiyat’

In this study we are trying to connect the labour history of Turkey with the Turkish literature. In looking at literature from the labour history perspective, the study has two basic problematic. The first problematic is to search for the reflections of the labour history in the literary texts. The second problematic is to evaluate whether the footprints of the labour history in the literature can be used as material for the Turkish labour history studies and if the answer is in the affirmative, to determine the degree of such utilization.

The reflections related to the working life in Turkey appeared in the literary texts at the beginning of the 20th century. This appearance, increased gradually in time but still remained very limited. This limitation is more marked for the period before 1963. But even in the period after 1963, where strike has been legalized as a labour struggle tool alongside with the organizations of unions and where important labour
movements took place, their reflection to the literary texts still remained very limited. Under these circumstances, it is not possible to say that a “worker literature” like the ones existed in the western countries has come to existence in Turkey. This situation must be due, on the one hand, to the delayed and weak appearance of the working class parallel to the process of industrialization in Turkey, with all its accompanying dimensions and consequences and on the other hand to the fact that, other than the writers in the socialist realist tradition, the men of literature did not show much interest in the subject and that there have been legal and de facto limitations which even reached the level of pressure both on the world of labour and on the cultural and artistic life. When we evaluate the literary texts as to their potential for being used as a resource for the labour history studies, we see that such works are very limited. However, even these limited resources have not been sufficiently evaluated.
 

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Turkish labour history ,

Turkish literature ,

Worker literature ,