SHAHABEDDIN UZUNKAYA AND HIS NOVEL SEYID VAKKAS

Historical novels, exploring past events, intend to convey certain messages to the future generations. This provides a sense of security and helps people develop a sense of belonging. The Journalist and writer Shahabeddin Uzunkaya worked with various significant Turkish political, cultural, and literary circles. Uzunkaya, who also served as Cumhuriyet Newspaper’s Black Sea regional correspondent, had earned himself a sound reputation regarding the media sector in Samsun and Giresun as well. In addition to his fifty-year career in Giresun journalism, he penned four novels. One of his novels, Seyid Vakkas, which sheds light on Giresun’s history, deals with the spiritual figures of the city within a fictional framework. This study briefly relates on the relationship between the novel and history. After some biographical details, the study analyses the novel Seyid Vakkas with reference to plot, temporal and spatial setting of the novel, the narrator, and characters. The events and characters in the novel are compared/contrasted with the historical facts mostly in the footnotes. It is concluded that this historical novel which was constructed with the language, tone and concerns of a journalist was written based on the folk stories