The representation of Abdülhamid II's era in the post 1908 plays in the national tragedy genre

Abstract

This dissertation examines the political-documentary (siyasal-belgesel) theater plays written between 1908-1914. I aimed to carry out the textual analysis of the thirty-three plays, on which the dissertation is built, in a holistic way in the light of the data presented by the period's citizenship course books, Ottoman Archive documents, Tanin newspaper, Aşiyan and Millet ile Musahabe magazines. In addition, support was obtained from secondary literature. This dissertation suggests that the political documentary theater texts are the main tools used by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP/ITC) government in the process of creating the ideal world and its members with the proclamation of the 2nd Constitutional Monarchy. This dissertation also suggests that the plays, which began to be written after the Second Constitutional Monarchy declared in 1908 and whose content and scope were shaped by the Counter Revolution (Karşı Devrim/31 Mart Vakası) in 1909 and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, were formed as a result of the change in the mentality of the state. In this context, the role of ideology in the creation of the ideal world and ideal member that the CUP mentality aimed at through a new discourse by instrumentalizing the theater, making use of the possibilities of the stage, was specifically examined. The dissertation is built on two main pillars. First of all, political and historical events were evaluated in order to make sense of the changing mentality of the period in which these texts were written. Considering the French Revolution, which is frequently emphasized as an example in the plays, as well as the Iranian and Russian Revolutions, the relationship between revolution, ideology and theater is approached from a comparative perspective. Then, detailed reading of the plays was carried out in the context of conceptual and genre discussions. These texts are characterized by derogatory expressions such as “shallow, empty, fashionable” in most of the theatrical literature. Although they are utopian, as a result of conceptual and generic reading, it is understood that these texts are very powerful propaganda products that were presented as if they were historical documents, with an effort to make the masses believe in the illusion created, thanks to the many elements these texts contained, as a part of the efforts of the period power to create the “revolutionary members of the community” (cemaatin devrimci efradı).