Bir Sürgün Şarklılaştırılmaya Karşı

Abstract

In his work entitled Orientalism (1978), Edward Said brings to light some documents on the visions of the Orientalists and objectively clarifies the truth. He does this by going back to Herodotus to what he otherwise calls `political teaching’. According to Said, the role of the Occident to modernize the people of the Orient through native intellectuals served various purposes. This seems to have made victims on both sides because individuals, who were not able to live their illusion, perished and were uprooted by the influence of the visions that were meant to confuse their identity and their intellectuality. Dr.Hikmet, a Young -Turk exiled in France, is one of these hero- victims who is ensconced in a false commune of Paris, a city he imagined in his dreams. And Yakup Kadri is the Turkish novelist who, already in Bir Sürgün (1937), shared with Edward Said, his wish for a conscience that is more evolved than cultural independence: that which would have removed the distinction between Occident and Orient.