Resimli Ay Magazine (1929-1931): the emergence of an oppositional focus between socialism and avant-gardism

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the two-year period of Resimli Ay magazine between 1929-1931, which was published between 1924-1931. This period bore witness to the magazine's transformation from an American-like popular magazine to a left-wing literary one. As a result of this transformation, not only the content of the magazine changed, but also the staff of magazine, which was leading by Nâzım Hikmet, involved in political struggles. These struggles are grouped in two in the study. The first one corresponds to the position of the magazine in radical left and the second one implies the magazine's challenge to the Single Party government. The thesis, focusing on the literary content of the magazine, attempts to analyze those political tensions; in other words, tries to define political equivalents for literary dynamics that sprouted through the publication process of the magazine. The literary content of the Resimli Ay was shaped by the interaction of socialist and avant-garde concerns of the period and thus it had an eclectic structure. Employing socialist and avant-garde formations and concepts that eclectic structure is analyzed and it is showed that the magazine was the house of a unique experience of transformation into an oppositional formation. This experience takes importance because of its housing a critical approach both to the populist discourse of the Single Party which prevented the development of radical left and to the rigid attitude of the Turkish Communist Party that was totally dependent on Soviet Russia.