Journalists on the Way to Idealist Identity from Cultural Alienation in the Turkish Novel (1950-1980)

In Tanzimat, degeneration or alienation to national culture is one of the topics dealt with frequently in Turkish novel. In that, destructive effects of alienation to national culture on individual and society are processed especially in novels from the Tanzimat reform era. Whereas some authors display how the increasing corruption along with the Tanzimat reform era affects the individual and the society through the individual by means of the negative effects of the characters; some others come up with a “liable/ideal person” transforming these people who are “alienated to their own culture” The most known of these is Hakkı Celis in Kiralık Konak. In this study, the focus will be the ones who are journalists. We see journalist characters who are alienated to their own national culture but then turn to be idealistic individuals in the novels Refik Erduran’s Yağmur Duası (1954), which deals with press life between 1950 and 1980, Kemal Tahir’s Esir Şehrin İnsanları (1956), Attilâ İlhan’s Kurtlar Sofrası (1963), Bıçağın Ucu (1973), Yaraya Tuz Basmak (1978) and Meliha İksel’s Deli Kız (1960). The journalists in the novels we mentioned reveal how to determine the characters who are culturally degenerated impersonate an ideal intellectual identity.