Bilgiye açılan kapılar : Ahmet Mithat Efendi ve İsmail Gaspıralı'nın eserlerinde Avrupalı kadınlar

This thesis explores European women characters in selected works of Ahmet Mithat Efendi (1844-1912) and İsmail Gaspıralı (1851-1914). This particular focus allows the reader to revise some major claims and generalisations that have been made on post-Tanzimat literature and brings to the fore the plurality of views and approaches existing during that period. In the first part of the thesis, the novels of Ahmet Mithat Efendi titled Acâyib-i Âlem (1881-82) and Felâtun Bey ile Râkım Efendi (1876) are analysed. It is pointed out that in those novels the European women guide the Ottoman men thanks to their knowledge. European women are depicted as dominant characters who control Ottoman men and reverse the traditional hierarchy between genders. In the second part of the thesis, the focus is on İsmail Gaspıralı's novels who display similar characteristics: ―Frengistan Mektupları‖ (1887), Darürrahat Müslümanları (1887–89/1906), ―Sudan Mektupları‖ (1889), ―Kadınlar Ülkesi‖ (1890–91), ―Molla Abbas Fransevî‘ye Tesadüf: Gülbaba Ziyareti‖ (1908). Here too European women introduce positive sciences to ―Eastern‖ men and are portrayed as dominant characters in their relationship with ―Eastern men‖. Moreover Gaspıralı's utopian and dystopian novels are discussed with particular reference to the representation of women.