Abstract:

Halide Edip Adıvar, who closely observes the destruction caused by war, from the Balkan Wars to the end of the Turkish War of Independence, publishes stories which mostly depict the period during the Turkish War of Independence in Dağa Çıkan Kurt (1922). She aims to illuminate the conditions of that period and the sufferings of the war by bearing vivid witness to them. She also narrates to the next generation, telling of the victory gained in spite of all the destruction, and explaining disappointing challenges by drawing attention to common history in order to unify them. In addition, she aims to unite Turkish people who are in the process of becoming a nation state. In order to persuade readers and make a strong impression on them, in almost every one of her stories in the book, she emphasizes how the situations, events, and characters in her narration are not fictional; that they all literally reflect reality. That is why, as a part of making her stories real, she includes historical events that she observed and witnessed herself. Some assert that the stories told by Halide Edip in Dağa Çıkan Kurt are fiction, but just the opposite is true: they are real and they reflect situations, events, and characters in a realistic way. On the other hand, we also see that Halide Edip insists on moving away from reality when discussing children in her stories. While she does describe each child of war according to the child’s personal geographic, social and economic circumstances, and she reflects their physical appearance realistically, when she describes their emotional and psychological world, she does not reflect simple reality. Instead, she creates a new, distinctive, and idealized reality. This attitude is closely related to the new roles she attributes to children after the war in Turkey during the national process of change. This article discusses how her idealized image of children originating from war conditions weakens her insistence on reality in her stories and her focus on children’s characters in Dağa Çıkan Kurt actually creates a new reality. We also look at how and why she created her stories this way.

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