We All Came out of Peyami Safa’s So-Called Girls

The article examines the ambivalent attitude of Turkish melodramas, known as Ye？il？am films, towards tradition and modernity, east and west, alaturca and alafranga in the context of love stories between generally a poor, rural and a traditional woman and a westernized, urban and a rich man. The ambivalence arises from the desire to balance the eastern and western in a single person (society) – a person with an eastern and traditional soul and a western and a modern body. It argues that the narrative, characters, symbolisms and signifiers used to identify the binary characters, life styles, values and moralities in these films are reminiscient and evocative of Peyami Safa’s novels which dichotomize east and West in terms of spirit vs. matter, soul vs. body. It futher argues that the modernization Project which positioned the ideal woman between tradition and modernity, was valid for men, too