This paper examines the effects of existentialist philosophy on the prominent Turkish and Islamic intellectual, writer and poet Sezai Karakoç (b. 1933). With his doctrine of revivalism and his unique perspective of what I call an Islamic existentialism, Karakoç remains a pivotal figure when it comes to explaining existentialism from conservative/religious standpoint in Turkish politics and literature. Karakoç is both one of the most significant poets of the Second New movement in Turkish poetry, and an influential intellectual who has put his mark on Turkish Islamism through a project he called “Revival” (Dirili?) based on his writing in the journal of the same name (1960-1992). I argue that his doctrine for Islam’s revival was heavily influenced by the flourishing existentialist thought in the 1950s. Through an analysis of Karakoç’s writings and poems in Dirili? journal and elsewhere, this paper aims to analyze the effects of existentialist thought on Karakoç’s own doctrine of revival in three perspectives. First, the political background of Turkey during the 1950s when Turkish poetry starts to diversify by extending its scope and by opening to foreign influences in response to the ending of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, Turkey’s transformation into a multi-party system in politics, and Turkey’s alignment with the US and NATO will be analyzed. Second, the effects of existentialist thought on Turkish Second New Poetry will be discussed in relation to the polarized atmosphere of the Cold War, and the concerted social and political defiance of young generations in Turkey. The Second New poets were affected by existentialism, surrealism and dadaism, which have appeared during the second half of the 1940s in Europe, and the general depressive mood of the world at the time. Political content of socialist/realist poems was replaced with a multi-layered, abstract and dark imaginary, and an experimentalist and existentialist exploration of self in Second New. Lastly, Sezai Karakoç’s own contribution to Turkish intellectual scene will be analyzed by introducing the term Islamic existentialism as it appears in Karakoç’s own doctrine of revival. In dealing with the question of existence, Karakoç denies the well-established judgement that existentialism is pessimistic, refuses Sartrean atheism or Camusian absurdism to understand the laws of existence, and links both nature’s and human’s reason of existence to a mighty Creator (i.e. God) and the fundamental belief that everything is linked to Him.

Why are pivotal moments of political transformation in modern Turkey marked by both severe censorship and an explosion of cultural production? This paper will examine the roles of censorship and literature in recent political events, primarily the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the July 2016 failed coup and its aftermath. Present studies of the political upheaval in Turkey fail to consider the fundamental role of literature to the protest movements and how authors and publishers use literature to circumvent censorial restrictions on traditional media. Current President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has adopted authoritarian tactics to check popular opposition, such as violently suppressing demonstrators gathered in peaceful protest of the government-ordered demolition of ?stanbul's Gezi Park, purging roughly a third of civil servants for alleged ties to the unsuccessful coup, and a continued assault on free speech through censorship, prosecution, the government takeover of the mainstream media, and scores of arrests. Yet, these efforts have precipitated a surge of new literature. From satirical literary journals and dystopian fiction to collaborative poetry movements shared through social networks, Turks under an increasingly autocratic government are using literature to popularize revolutionary thought. This paper focuses on three seminal publishers-Yap? Kredi Yay?nlar?, ?leti?im, and Metis-to argue that publishing houses function as critical and often overlooked centers of collaboration in the broader networks that mobilize political resistance. Founded amidst severe censorship in the aftermath of Turkey's brutal 1980 coup, these publishers share an ideological drive that is reflected in their individual mission statements and ranges from the restoration of Turkey's literary heritage to the more political. While the current conditions have forced many Turkish authors and journalists into exile abroad, these publishing houses continue to operate within Turkey and increasingly serve as vital hubs to a growing Turkish transnational literary network. Select publications, including reclaimed classics and new works of transgressive fiction, have been seized as symbols of resistance, such as Sabahattin Ali's 1943 novel Kürk Mantolu Madonna (Madonna in a Fur Coat), which has topped Turkey's bestseller's list for over three years. This paper will bridge area studies and world literature studies to investigate the antagonistic coexistence of censorship and literature through three representative publishing houses working through the contemporary social transformations in Turkey.

Turkish author Murat Mentes’s (b. 1974) speculative fiction novel Dublörün Dilemmasi (2005) [The Dilemma of the Double] depicts the lives of two friends who invent a technology that allows people to take on the appearances of others. The invention turns into a business when they get hired as stunt-doubles for real-life situations. The novel tackles the existential dilemmas of Turkish youth who struggle to define their identities in a society where an idealized image of the West has long served as the roadmap to modernity. In this paper, I focus on the novel’s presentation of an encounter between the two friends and French philosopher Jean Baudrillard at a lecture in Istanbul and argue that the text’s allusion to Baudrillard serves two purposes. First, it problematizes the Occidentalism of Turkish society illustrated by the philosopher’s reception in Istanbul as a fetishized superstar Western intellectual. Drawing from sociologist Meltem Ahiska’s analysis of Turkish modernity, I define Occidentalism as the discursive and practical engagements with an idealized, imaginary notion of “the West.” I argue that the lecture scene depicts how Baudrillard, as a critic of the commodification of Western culture, turns into an object of desire, situated in the networks that tie knowledge production, capital, and power. Second, the scene allows the young characters of the novel, who has access to multifarious cultural registers due to their liminality in global knowledge production, to formulate a critique of Western critical theory. The text argues that Baudrillard's own relationship to the world is mediated by a theoretical language that translates life into abstract terms. Theory thus becomes the discursive space where the instability of meaning that marks contemporary world is acted out. Reading Mentes’s novel in conjunction with Baudrillard’s discussions on hyperreality and theory-fiction, I argue that the text mobilizes Baudrillard to illustrate the dilemma of the intellectual who cannot but address the Western philosophical tradition to discuss the crisis of modernity in the Turkish context. The ultimate dilemma of the intellectual is to either hold onto his anxiety over authenticity or accept inauthenticity as his ontological condition. The novel demonstrates that the second path allows the non-western intellectual to situate himself in a global cultural network in order to create new forms of expression. This paper contributes to discussions on Turkish speculative fiction by investigating how contemporary authors use the genre to tackle questions of modernity, identity, and representation in a globalized world.