Effect of language and literature on individiuals and society during war atmosphere: a textbook example

The wars broke out after the Balkan War and immediately after it left deep scars in the memory of Turkish nation. These war years when thousands of Muslim Turkish people were slaughtered were called “disaster years” and they were printed in history as disgrace because these conflict years were full of real life stories which were painful and miserable. For example, cross was drawn on their foreheads without considering whether they are children or not, religious men were hanged from their turbans, and innocent girls were dragged along and exposed to any kind of cruelty. During this period, such disadvantages as an enormous empire and her remaining balance facing extinction due to the conspiracies of European states and emergence of treachery from everywhere caused sorrow and despair on Muslim Turkish nation and therefore, various movements of ideas were introduced; however, they did not yield results and anywhere in the motherland was occupied and tyrannized. In such an atmosphere, many patriotic intellectuals and writers who chose ideology of Turkish nationalism as their motto made an effort to bring educational aspect of language and literature into the forefront. For that purpose, they performed tasks to increase the motivation and morale of Turkish nation. Specifically, Young Pens (Genç Kalemler) which was begun in the city of Thessalonica in 1911 by the three writers who were most representative of the movement: Ziya Gökalp , Ömer Seyfettin, and Ali Canip Yöntem, had many fans as a result of the Balkan wars and had a very important role for the Turkism to gain strength. With New Language Movement " (Turkish: "Yeni Lisan"), they pointed out that language must be simplified, the effects of foreign language and rules on Turkish must be removed and the differences between the oral language and the written language must be removed. Therefore, this language and literature movement aimed at unity and nationalization in language. In this period, many nationalistic intellectuals and writers such as Ömer Seyfettin, Ali Canip Yöntem, Ziya Gökalp and M. Fuad Köprülü used language and literature as a means of education to educate and raise the awareness of the society. Moreover, they were not indifferent to the conditions of the country; on the contrary, examples of patriotism were actively exhibited, and remedies were searched for the liberation of the Turkish nation. For that purpose, national sensitivity was mentioned extensively primarily in Tasvir-i Efkâr (Picture of Ideas) newspaper, such magazines as Türk Yurdu, Türk Ocağı and Türk Derneği and in the TurkishLiterature textbooks written for the courses which were going to be taught in schools belonging to Maarif Nezareti (Ministry of National Education) and it was the aim to wake up people from “dreaming” and to raise their awareness. In this sense, language and literature was used as a means with the pens of intellectuals and writers in the war of independence during the Balkan wars and afterwards. The aim of the study was to detect and evaluate for what purposes language and literature was used as educational means during the war atmosphere in the Balkan Wars and afterwards . For that purpose, the example texts in Turkish-Literature textbook called Millî Kıraat (Fifth Part) by M. Fuad Köprülü for the 8th grades in primary education and the 9th grades in secondary education in Ottoman Period were used. This study was carried out via document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. The study shed light on the history, the attention was drawn on the roles and functions of literary texts in language and literature education and it aimed at making contributions to the future studies