Browsing by Subject "Detective story"

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Open Access
Istanbul
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Kennedy, Valerie; Tambling, J.
Asked what he liked most about Ankara, the poet Yahya Kemal replied, ‘Returning to Istanbul.’ However unfair to Ankara, the reply conjures up Istanbul’s special place in the minds of Turks and non-Turks alike. Located in both Europe and Asia, with a current population estimated at 17 million (‘Istanbul, the Queen of Cities’ 2016), divided by the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s geographical situation suggests the brassage de peuples which has characterized the city for much of its existence. For Western travellers from at least the sixteenth century onwards, the city has symbolized, variously, aesthetics, exoticism and/or sensuality, Oriental despotism, and the seclusion of women, functioning as Europe’s ‘Other’ (Said 1995) in terms of culture, government, and religion. The European Capital of Culture in 2010, today, with Turkey’s candidature for membership of the European Union seemingly eternally deferred, and Istanbul struggling to cope with the influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the city once again symbolizes the complex relationship between East and West. Moreover, the heavy-handed government reaction to the summer 2014 Gezi Park protest against the destruction of an Istanbul city park spiralled into countrywide demonstrations against the AKP (the ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey [conservative]) government of Recep Tayyib Erdoğan, revealing Istanbul’s position on Turkey’s political fault line, just as the 1999 Izmit earthquake reminded us of Istanbul’s geological vulnerability. (Such heavy-handedness was more than repeated in the summer of 2016.) Nowhere is the complex relationship between Istanbul and literature or Istanbul as the meeting place of East and West more clearly dramatized than in the works of Orhan Pamuk, a writer who is controversial at home while being seen as the Turkish author abroad, although there are many other significant Turkish writers.
Open Access
Türklerin Sherlock Holmes'ü Amanvermez Avni
(2005) Balcı, Ayşe Altıntaş
The subject matter of this thesis is Türklerin Sherlock Holmes’ü Amanvermez Avni, a series of ten detective stories by Ebussureyya Sami which were published between the years 1913-1914. It is the first of the series of detective stories published in the pre-Republic period. The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate to what extent those stories are original. As the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’ were taken as a reference in the title of the series, they have been compared with the stories of Sherlock Holmes, a series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published between the years 1887-1977. Through this comparison, the differences and similarities between the stories, characters and the crime detection methods used have been revealed. Besides, the general characteristics of the stories of Türklerin Sherlock Holmes’ü Amanvermez Avni have been examined to show that to what extent they are successful as being detective stories. In conclusion, it has been seen that they are original stories although they were inspired, to some extent, by the stories of Sherlock Holmes. And the similarities were incorporated into the atmosphere and structure of the stories, achieving different and original characteristics. On the other hand, Amanvermez Avni is an original character who differs from Sherlock Holmes with his character traits and with the crime detecting methods he used. Furhermore, the stories have been seen to be successful to a great extent when they are evaluated in themselves as being detective stories.