Kurtuluş Kayalı’s Reading of Kemal Tahir: Indigenous Thought, Historical Continuity, and Intellectual Criteria

Abstract

Kurtuluş Kayalı’s approach to Kemal Tahir can be understood within the framework of Kayalı’s general methodology and evaluation criteria regarding Turkish intellectual history and indigenous intellectual production. Behind Kayalı’s emphasis on Kemal Tahir lies not only a literary analysis but also a search for intellectual continuity in Türkiye, the relationship between history and society, the issue of indigeneity, sensitivities regarding the relationship between theory and practice, the ideal of intellectual autonomy, and a critique of extraversion. Kayalı has developed a set of criteria for evaluating Turkish intellectuals: distance from Western theories; the intellectual’s selective engagement with foreign thinkers; independence; ability to explain one’s own intellectual transformation; levels of interest, curiosity, knowledge, and effort regarding Türkiye; distance from politics; and being an extra-statist intellectual autonomous from the state. The study discusses how Kayalı applied these criteria to his comparative reading of Kemal Tahir in relation to other figures he evaluated, such as Berkes, Mardin, Kıvılcımlı, Erksan, Sezer, and Karakoç. Kayalı assesses Kemal Tahir’s original contributions under such contexts as historiography, intellectual fashions, criticism of Kemalism, and debates on localism. The article examines Kayalı’s critique of historiography, the Ottoman-Republic continuity debates, and Kemal Tahir’s approach to history and the recent past. The research argues Kayalı to have carefully determined Kemal Tahir’s place and importance in the history of Turkish thought using objective criteria, Kayalı to have placed Kemal Tahir in a unique position, particularly with his stance against intellectual fashions and his emphasis on autonomy, and Kayalı’s reading of Kemal Tahir to have distinct importance within the sociology of Turkish thought.