The fact that Halide Edib Adıvar is most generally studied as one of the key figures of Turkish nationalism, feminism and of modernity in Turkey and the wider Middle East (as argued, for example, in Marilyn Booth’s May Her Likes Be Multiplied) overshadows her literary contributions to the development of the realist- psychological novel in Turkey. This presentation will try to address that gap and examine Halide Edib’s contribution to the development of the realist novel and of realism in Turkish literature as the very vehicle of her success as an ideologue. Halide Edib’s later friend and literary interlocuter Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, writing about her first two novels in the progressive journal Tanin, observed that Halide Edib “introduced a new and original imaginative climate which aimed at capturing reality while also idealizing it.” The coupling of the “real” and “ideal” may be construed as contradictory. I argue that what Yakup Kadri was referring to is Halide Edib’s creation of an everyday reality through a minutia of detail about locations, characters and events while creating characters that embody and actively articulate certain idealized positions on the subjects of modernity (East vs. West divide); women’s role in society; the place of religion in social life, and on nationalism. These characters standing for specific and opposing ideals are depicted as individuals with psychological depth, whose often overflowing emotions reflect their inner conflicts and, more importantly, their conscience. While Adıvar's concrete details (as argued by Barthes’ in L’effect de Reel) create the mimesis of social life, it’s the emotional excess and accessibility of her characters that create an internal depth to them, fostering identification. There’s also the appealing sense of growth depicted by the characters’ search for a synthesis that can be applied to the larger community they’re part of. I will examine the development of these techniques in Halide Edib’s Sinekli Bakkal, Vurun Kahpeye, Ateşten Gömlek, Kalp Ağrısı and Zeyno’nun Oğlu. While examining the ways she was able to effectively represent her ideological positions through a dialectical process leading to a synthesis, I will also interrogate if the ideals Adıvar presented, the positions she took, stand the test of time in our current moment vis-à-vis her nationalism amidst the accusations of her betrayal of the Armenians and Kurds; her feminism with her exclusive attention on elite extraordinary women; and her approach to religion both as an individual right and spiritual expression.