The Family System, Historical Time, and Construction of Childhood in Kemal Tahir’s Bir Mülkiyet Kalesi: Property, Paternal Authority, and Developmental Vulnerability

Abstract

This article offers a developmental and family-systems reading of Kemal Tahir’s Bir Mülkiyet Kalesi (A Fortress of Property) arguing property in the novel to exceed its economic meaning and work as a symbolic-relational mechanism that regulates family anxiety, organizes paternal authority, defends class dignity, and shapes childhood under historical rupture. The household formed of Mahir Efendi, Canseza, Murat, and Cemal is read as a living emotional system exposed to the late Ottoman dissolution, war, occupation, legal uncertainty, patronage, class vulnerability, and the early Republican transition. Methodologically, the article combines theory-driven qualitative case analysis, interpretive close reading, narrative psychology, phenomenological sensitivity, and reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis discusses property as a psychic and moral anchor; the house/fortress image as a security paradox; Mahir Efendi’s fragile paternal authority; Canseza’s invisible emotional labor; Murat and Cemal’s differentiated childhood positions; the formation of political and moral concepts in the household; the role of craft, play, humor, and secondary figures in resilience; and the fire as the collapse of the family myth. The article reads Kemal Tahir’s social realism through the micropolitics of family life, where property, care, debt, dignity, gender, and childhood become tightly entangled.