Abstract:

Novels are intertwined with social and political life in terms of dealing with social conditions, presenting a critical point of view, and making sociological determinations. Authors express the issues of the society in which they live by reproducing these through time, space, and hero fictions. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s novel Sodom and Gomorrah was published in 1928 and tells of the events that took place in Istanbul between the occupation of Constantinople, a period in which the independence of the Turkish nation was in danger, and the period of the National Struggle. On the occasion of the invasion, the Entente soldiers had left their homeland and come to the East, which the West had viewed as the “other” for centuries. With the strength of winning World War I and the stereotypical historical theory produced by Orientalism, these soldiers who had marginalized Istanbul and its people realized that the reality they encountered at the end of the novel did not match the landscape they had imagined. For Turks, the foreign soldiers who carried out the occupation were the “other” in terms of their identity, appearance, lifestyle, behavior, and Western representation. This struggle that manifested itself after the victory of the War of Independence ended, and everyone went back to where they belonged. This study examines the concepts of self and the other through the foreign soldiers who are the heroes in the novel Sodom and Gomorrah by taking into account historical and sociological perspectives.

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