The Reverberations of the Korean War in the Turkish Literature

Abstract

After the Second World War, Turkey wanted to align itself with the Western Bloc and join NATO, and therefore the country sent troops to fight in the Korean War (1950–1953). The resistance of the Turkish soldiers in Korea was closely monitored in Turkey. On this topic, many news, writings, poems, stories, and serial novels were published in different newspapers. For example, Peyami Safa, Yusuf Ziya Ortaç in Ulus, Ahmet Muhip Dranas, Aka Gündüz in Zafer, Behçet Kemal Çağlar, Feridun Fazıl Tülbentçi in Vatan, Etem İzzet Benice, Nizamettin Nazif in Son Telgraf, İsmail Hami Danişmend in Milliyet, and Hikmet Feridun Es in Hürriyet were some of the newspaper columns that mentioned the Korean War. Journals, such as Varlık, Kaynak, Orkun, Tanrıdağ, Ufuklar, and Türk Dili, included poetry and writings about the Korean War. In addition, Nazım Hikmet wrote critical poems. Apart from the stories and novels published in newspapers, the Korean War was mentioned in Faruk Güventürk’s novel and in Fahri Celal Göktulga’s storybook. In this study, in the light of the literary texts and the writings that we have obtained, we will try to determine how the war was reverberated in Turkish press and literature by emphasizing the attitudes of the different literary authors about the war.