Bingöl University Journal of Social Sciences Institute

Abstract

This study aims to reveal how Yaşar Kemal handles human rights and bureaucratic corruption in his novels. In the study, text/document analysis was preferred as a qualitative research method. This study will examine the author's approach to this subject in his novels and opinion pieces, focusing on the novel series Akçasazın Ağaları, Kimsecik, Dağın Öte Yüzü and Bir Ada Hikâyesi. The modern understanding of the state is based on democratic human rights and solid public administration. Bureaucracy, on the other hand, is generally used to evoke the negativities in public organisations that Max Weber laid the foundations for and that carry out the executive processes of the state power. Bureaucratic problems in the state structure also lead to some other problems. Yaşar Kemal, who always voices human rights, criticises bureaucratic corruption in some of his novels as he is one of our Republic Era novelists who carries universal issues into his works and whose novels have been translated into more than 50 languages and nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. In his novels, the author tries to explain that the Republic of Turkey, which was founded on solid principles under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on October 29, 1923, experienced bureaucratic problems and human rights violations as a result of incorrect practices. The author says that bureaucratic corruption is the basis of many negativities in our country. Although Mustafa Kemal Atatürk aimed to establish the Republic of Turkey on democratic, fair, transparent and economically strong principles that respected human rights and freedoms, where there was equality between men and women, where no class was superior, where the security of life and property of the people was guaranteed, it is seen that the governments in the following periods deviated from these principles. The departure of bureaucrats, who are extensions of the government, from these principles leads to injustice in society and the economic impoverishment of the people. The more the classes that have close relations with the government are materially richer, the more the ordinary people are poorer. Yaşar Kemal also criticizes in his novels that some opportunities that are the rights of ordinary people are given to the privileged classes due to bribery and corruption. Yaşar Kemal, who touches upon human rights violations in many of his novels, emphasizes that poverty does not suit a person and that it is his most natural right to eat to live. Therefore, this study will analyse how Yaşar Kemal deals with human rights and bureaucratic corruption in his novels.