Johanna Chovanec

The concept of Occidentalism is connected to the notion of modernity and its effects on those contexts often labelled as “non-Western”. Turkey is in this regard a unique space, where Ottoman and European, post-imperial and post-colonial, narratives meet. Post-imperial novels’ literary return to Ottoman times deals with the impact of westernization efforts on Turkey’s society. Applying “Occidentalism” to the post-imperial narrative, this project examines images of self and other by a comparative analysis of selected literary texts such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Huzur and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul.