Mehmed Enisî (Yalkı) as a Late Ottoman and Early Republican Thinker and "Equality in People: God of Socialists" as an Anti-Socialist Text

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the interrelationships between the life, ideology, and literary production preferences of a late Ottoman and early Republican thinker, based on archival research and analysis of a 1924 anti-socialist literary work translated from Ottoman to Turkish. The study corrects and expands the information in the literature about the life and works of Mehmed Enisî, a lesser-known Ottoman officer, traveler, writer, translator, and literature teacher who continued his creative output during the Republican period. Thus, the relations between Enisî, a positivist liberal, translating and printing an anti-socialist literary fiction from English into Ottoman as early as 1924, and his perception of socialism as a threat to his ideology and way of life are interpreted. In addition, in the study, the text that Enisî translated from English into Ottoman Turkish was translated into Turkish with Latin letters and made available to researchers.