Abstract:

Abstract This study aims at comparing the two most influential manifestos of the early Republican Period in Turkey, Sedad Hakkı Eldem’s Towards A Local Architecture (Yerli Mimarîye Doğru, 1940) and Orhan Veli Kanık’s Foreword to the Strange Anthology (Garip Antolojisi Önsözü, 1941). The texts include several common features along with comparable differences exemplifying the cultural shift in Turkey in the late 1930s. The international economic crises in 1929 triggered a process of enclosed economies and nationalist governments around the world followed by a cultural shift from international avant-garde to an intrinsic populism. Especially the countries founded after the First World War, such as the Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and Turkey, experienced the process as a very sharp turn. The discrimination in Nazi Germany and the total control of arts in the Soviet Union were the extremes, which Turkey has not undergone, but the change of focus towards folk culture and popular taste accompanied by intolerant Statist restoration was conspicuous. Eldem and Veli’s manifestos are based on the principal traits of the transformational role of arts, the search for a social self-identity, and the need for communication with the masses. Whereas their ideological attitude toward society’s identity differs, they separately argue that art should be part of the social transformation and modernization. They assert that their respective fields should be suitable for the lifestyle, taste, and the country’s conditions. In terms of style, they argue that a regionalist attitude in architecture and the use of daily language in poetry could facilitate the necessary communication with the masses. The manifestos of Eldem and Veli constitute essential and rare theoretical ventures, which have determined the framework of art in popular opinion for a few decades, while their parallelism exemplifies the outlines of the cultural shift in the 1930s.

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