The first print-house appeared in the Ottoman Empire in 1720s in Istanbul, a century after Ottoman historian Peçevi (1572-1650) informed Ottoman Turkish readers about a new technique of reproducing texts.First works of literature, on the other hand, would be printed in 1830s at the Bulak press, Alexandria. Istanbul print-houses would catch up with Bulaq press by 1850s, upstarting a new form of literature. This new literature enabled by printing would shift the ground beneath the feet of Ottoman littérateurs and produce a new process of literary production which would eventually create a new kind of writer: the author. The gradual appearance of print technologies in a vibrant manuscript culture shifted the forms of production, distribution and readership of poetry and prose, but more importantly these technologies created new challenges and opportunities for the writers of literary texts. With a focus on the demise of littérateurs and the birth of the author, this paper first briefly presents the initial findings from a project on earliest printed literary texts in Bulak and Istanbul in order to discuss the complex relationship between print and literature in the first half of the 19th century, then focuses on two periods of print-boom in the Ottoman Istanbul in the second half of the century. I argue that the development of printing didn't bring literature to the foreground initially, rather, printing gradually redefined the concept of literature in Turkish by distancing the writer from the act of publishing, and endowing him with a new form of agency in a counter-intuitive manner. This agency was determined by the material conditions of book production in the print era. The paper stresses the role of the print-houses, new editing processes, and the connections between the print-house and the producers of literature in the emergence of this new authorial agency.

In Halit Ziya's seminal novel entitled Mai ve Siyah (“Blue and Black,” published in 1898), the protagonist Ahmet Cemil, an aspiring poet, describes the literary field in quite bleak terms. As a young poet hired by the Mirat-i Suun (Mirror of Affairs) magazine, Ahmet Cemil's daily life revolves around writing like a machine in order to meet deadlines, filling up columns with uninteresting news or other miscellanea, hunched over the worn-out desks of the old and gloomy office, smoking chains of cigarettes with the hope to appease his overworked mind, all of which, in his opinion, cause a gradual and painful death of his intellectual abilities. And all of this for a very small monetary gain. Halit Ziya himself expresses similar frustration in his personal memoirs, contrasting the disappointing realities of the publishing world with the bright pictures he had in mind before coming to Istanbul. Ironically, then, the publishing house, the very place where aspiring writers seek to realize their dreams of becoming successful men of letters also becomes the location where those dreams come to an end, unless they already have the economic means that will allow them to survive in this profession. This irony, I argue, is a major consequence of certain transformations within the literary field at this particular juncture of Ottoman literary history. During the 1890s, first, the fast growth of print capitalism allowed the fast multiplication of printing houses in the imperial capital, and second, the decreasing importance of the sultan as the patron of the arts caused the members of the field (e.g. writers, publishers, book sellers) to be mostly left to their own devices to sustain the literary market. As more and more publishing houses emerged at this particular juncture in Ottoman literary history despite Abdul Hamid II's harsh censorship policies, definitions of authorship increasingly polarized into two major 'writerly categories', insinuated by Ahmet Cemil's observations above. This paper explores the contrast between these two new categories of participation in the literary world, i.e. 'writing for much-needed income' and 'writing out of a higher existential urge' and highlights the causes and consequences of this polarization, which also came to impact authors of later generations in Turkey.

During the decades of the 1950s and 60s Turkey experienced not only fundamental political transformations, including the transition to a multi-party system and the 1960 military coup, but also the concurrent consolidation of political ideologies and the development of an increasingly polarized political environment. Since many Turkish writers maintained strong party or ideological identifications and approached authorship as a political act, this evolving political climate profoundly influenced the literature and the literary market. In addition, these decades represent a critical moment in Turkish literary history because of the vibrancy of the literary and publishing scenes, the changeover from the formative authors of the late Ottoman/early Turkish Republican era, and the gradual replacement of serialization with book form as the preferred method of publication. Within this altering political and literary context, censorship—both state and self enforced—provides a productive frame for the analysis of the era’s literature and literary market; it demonstrates the material impact of the political conditions on the literary product as well as its publication, distribution, and readership. This paper will investigate the historical legal alterations to state sponsored pre and post publication censorship and the impact of these practices on the literary market, particularly in relation to the atmosphere of literary freedom that accompanied the 1960 military coup. As illustrated by the works of politically active and prolific authors such as the rightist Necip Faz?l K?sakürek and the leftist Naz?m Hikmet, literature still reached publication, distribution, and popularity despite its being repeatedly targeted by government censors and the periodic imprisonment of the authors. However, censorship was not restricted to the realm of the state but progressively assumed the form of self-censorship within the increasingly politically divisive context of the 60s. While state censorship carried explicit consequences, such as imprisonment or the suppression of publication, it also mobilized political literary markets to ensure the publication and distribution of literature; in contrast, auto-censorship and intensifying political polarization produced significant implicit consequences for the literary market, most especially modifications to the literary product itself.

During 1980s and ‘90s, we witness a trend of ethnic expansion in Turkish literary market with an increasing number of books that are written by authors who situate themselves from an ethnically marginalized position. In order to understand this phenomenon, it is imperative to look at the different approaches that publishing houses take and the kind of narratives they put forward. Publishing houses Belge (founded in 1977), Metis (1981), and Aras (1993) came to have significant roles in the process, particularly questioning the Turkish-Armenian identity in Turkey. Belge and Metis were founded in the wake of the 1980 military coup during the heavy censorship of leftist publications and began to tackle instead ethnic identity positions. These two publishing houses paved the way of breaking the silence of ethnically marginalized voices. A decade later, Aras came to the literary scene as a publishing house that has a distinct Armenian voice in Turkey. However, it was not until 2004 that Aras had remarkable visibility for the mainstream Turkish readership. It was only after the publication of “My Grandmother” by Fethiye Çetin, published by Metis that the question of Armenian-Turkish identity became the source of a general anxiety within the Turkish readership. In this autobiographical story, Fethiye Çetin writes as a Turkish woman who comes into realization of her Armenian heritage. However, it is a puzzle why authors like Fethiye Çetin do not publish from a publication house that specifically focuses on Armenian identity. It is of great significance that Aras questionably excludes authors that do not fully “represent” Armenian identity in Turkey. This paper questions the ways in which the above-mentioned publishing circles enabled Aras to reach out to a broader audience and discusses the dynamics behind the increased interest in the Armenian identity, with a focus on how Aras publishing house flourished within a multicultural context both seeking visibility among Turkish readership and distinguishing itself as a representative of the 'true' Armenian identity in Turkey, fundamentally different from other publishing houses such as Belge and Metis. Arguing that the rise of heterogeneous ethnic identity politics in Turkey owes its visibility to the transformation of the publishing houses after the 1980 coup d'état, the paper for the first time presents a critical approach to printing and publication scene in 1980-2010 Turkey.