Emigration to Germany in Turkish literature of the XX–XXI centuries

Abstract

The article deals with the history of Turkish emigration to Germany in the 20th-21st Cent. This is in a way a novelty both in the modern Turkish literature as well as in the studies, which analyze the reflection of this process in modern Turkish literature. For the first time, this topic was raised in the 1940s, in the novel by Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948), who had been studying in pre-war Germany for some time/ Based on his personal impressions and recollections he wrote a love/political novel “Madonna clade in a fur coat” (1943). Subsequently this topic was also raised in the works by Füruzan (born 1932) and the Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk (born 1952). The present article discusses the phenomenon of transformation of either personal or somebody else’s experience as reflected by a number of Turkish authors. This fact has ultimately shaped the acute problems as discussed in the Turkish literature and was instrumental for the formation of a whole trend in the modern Turkish literature, i.e. the Turkish émigré literature (Emine Sevgi Özdamar, (born 1946)). The aim of the article is to show the trends in the modern Turkish literature, which preceded the making of the literature of the Turkish diaspora abroad.