AUNTY ZARİFE AS A CULTURAL FIGURE OF TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION: RECONSTRUCTION OF MODERN LIFE IN TURKEY AS REFLECTED IN AHMET HAMDİ TANPINAR’S THE TIME REGULATION INSTITUTE
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Abstract
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar mainly focuses on the efforts of modernization and the adaptation of Western time concept in Turkey through the establishment of the Time Regulation Institute in his novel entitled in the same way as The Time Regulation Institute (1961). In his novel, Tanpınar draws attention to the socio-cultural changes, the changing roles of women and their changing perceptions of life in modern Turkey with the help of the unforgettable female character named Aunty Zarife. Tanpınar depicts the transformation of Aunt Zarife and how she becomes the master of her life and her destiny by determining to lead an active and independent life after her experience of lethargy. Meanwhile, Tanpınar employs the character of Aunty Zarife to illustrate “the death of Ottoman Empire and therise of Turkish Republic” in The Time Regulation Institute (1961). Thus, in this study, the character of Aunty Zarife and her adventures will be analyzed to show the socio-cultural changes and transformations that happened in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire and in the first decades of
Turkish Rebuplic by giving examples from the novel. Moreover, Aunty Zarife’s transformation or rebirth will be put under the lenses by providing examples from the novel. The paper discusses the possibility of a synthesis or consensus between traditional ways of life and modernity in detail concerning the issues raised by Tanpınar in The Time Regulation Institute.