Türk Edebiyatını Ne Yana Yaslamalı? Nihal Atsız'ın Milli Kanonu

This article reads Nihal Atsız’s Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi as a project of national canon formation, showing how literary history transformed the pre-Islamic Turkic past into an aesthetic and political foundation for racialized Turkist-Turanist nationalism.

About the Article

This article reinterprets Nihal Atsız’s Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi not simply as a work of literary historiography, but as a political intervention into the making of a national canon. Situating Atsız within the Turkological trajectory established by Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, it argues that he radicalized that inheritance by recasting the pre-Islamic Turkic past as the purified origin of an authentic and essential national identity. Through his periodization of Turkish history, his conception of language, and the privileged place he assigns to national heroes, Atsız turns literary history into a means of producing continuity between an imagined primordial past and a Turkist-Turanist political future. The article thus demonstrates that Atsız’s literary historiography cannot be separated from his political thought: the canon he constructs translates racialized nationalism into powerful narrative and aesthetic forms that continue to shape Turkish nationalist imaginaries.

Contribution

• Repositioning Nihal Atsız within debates on national canon formation.
• Reading literary historiography as ideological practice of myth-making.
• Interrogating the aesthetic power of racialized nationalism.