Abstract:

Kadınlar Tekkesi is one of the novels written in the same direction with those produced in the first period of the republic considering the thesis that the dervish lodges and zawiyas continued their existence after they had been closed during the republican period. The work, which adopts a critical approach to religion, religious institutions, and religious lifestyles on the example of degenerating dervish lodges and zawiyas, mainly mentions how a fake sheikh named Baki lured women into his trap and how women consented to him. While Refik Halid Karay bases the work on a true story in the introductory part of his novel named Kadınlar Tekkesi and states that the introductory part, which he calls a true story, is a novelist's tactic and its subject can be a figment of imagination. This article tries to summarize the novel named Kadınlar Tekkesi, which is a voluminous work, to introduce its characters, to examine how, with which characters and through which concepts the phenomenon of religion in the novel is handled, and to analyze whether the novel is based on a true story or is it a figment of imagination.

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