The Notion of Scholasticism in Ömer Seyfettin

Abstract

It is known that Ömer Seyfettin announced a program for the simplification of Turkish in his "Yeni Lisan" articles published in Genç Kalemler magazine in 1911. This program, which put forward some proposals such as removing words that the public did not understand or did not prefer to use from the literary language, saving Turkish from the dominance of Arabic and Persian, and taking Istanbul Turkish as the basis, was also mentioned by Ömer Seyfettin in other magazines of the period. One of the concepts that attracts attention in these articles is scholastic. With expressions such as scholastic literature, scholastic language, Enderun literature, Enderun slang, divan mentality, and ummahreligious literature, Ömer Seyfettin criticizes the literary figures of classical Turkish literature who use an "incomprehensible" language with the predominance of Arabic and Persian words in poetry and prose. At the center of these criticisms is the concept of scholasticism. In this article, the meaning attributed to the concept of scholasticism on the path to the simplification of Turkish in Ömer Seyfettin's prose, and the relations of Turkish writers with Turkish from the Tanzimat to the first quarter of the 20th century will be seen through Ömer Seyfettin's criticisms and observations. © 2024 Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.