Modernism Disfigured: Turkish Literature and the "Other West"

Turkey constitutes something of an aporia on the critical-modernist typological grid. The problem presented by the idea of "Turkish modernism" involves the possibility of addressing the absence of an authentic Turkish modernism within national-critical discourse itself. While Turkey certainly has generated various recognizably modernist aesthetic practices, these have certainly not coalesced into a contemporaneous, continuous modernist movement that can neatly be aligned with transnationalized modernisms derived from European and Euro-American orbits of influence. This article explores the alliance between conservatism and the "other West" in the writings of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpi{dotless}nar, Ismayil Hakki{dotless} Baltaci{dotless}oĝlu, and Necip Fazi{dotless}l Ki{dotless}sakürek.