Çukurova Üniversitesi Türkoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

Hilmi Ziya Ülken dealt with many issues related to Turkish cultural history in his works, which he created in the light of his expertise in philosophy and sociology. Hilmi Ziya, in his novel Yarım Adam, in which he brought his knowledge and competence in his scientific works to the literary field, refers to the political, social and economic life of the Ottoman Empire in the recent period. Based on the acceptance of the existence of the relationship between literature and society, the author's being a person who examines and researches the changes in the society in which he works, and the idea that various elements of the society influence the work, equips the novel Yarım Adam with a rich sociological content. In the novel, the narrator finds the opportunity to reflect the public and economy-oriented ideas of the Ottoman intellectuals, thanks to the basic person who finds himself in the thoughts and understandings such as liberalism, national economy and socialism, which were defended by the intellectuals of the last century of the Ottoman Empire, thanks to the economics education he received. The main character of the novel expresses the working conditions and physical possibilities of the workers working in tanneries and cocoons thanks to a local newspaper he founded in Bursa. The narrator makes descriptions and analyzes about the situation of the workers, peasants and capitalists of Bursa during the Armistice Period, through Mehmet Demir, the main person who refers to the situation of the peasants as well as the workers, and the economic pressure of the landlords called mutagallibe on the peasants. In the novel, the social and economic life of the Armistice Era Bursa was seen from the zaviye of Hilmi Ziya, who was also a scientist, and the intellectual movements and social life in both Bursa and the last years of the Ottoman Empire were examined. The fact that the analysis was carried out by using the field of economics, based on a literary work, brought the article to an interdisciplinary field and enabled the novel to be interpreted from a different disciplinary perspective. On the other hand, some issues that constitute the intellectual framework of the fictional world in the novel Yarım Adam are interpreted together with the novels dealing with similar themes in the Turkish novel, and different aspects of the work are discussed for the first time through elements such as fiction and type. The inability of the Turkish intellectual to be a part of the society he grew up in or the alienation of the intellectual to the society, the reasons for the break between the public and the intellectual, the vivid description of the capitalist type that shaped the Turkish intellectual, every issue in the novel in which the problems of peasants and workers are expressed, and without being able to reach any conclusion, the work was left unfinished.