Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey's post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

How does literature engage with the legacies of Empire? This article examines how imperial decline and nation building are reflected in textual production after the First World War. With Turkey as a case study, it focuses on the post-imperial narrative as a form of narration dealing with the experience of imperial loss, political contingency and possibilities of national belonging. I argue that Turkey's post-imperial condition is shaped by coming to terms with the loss of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and a nationalising present embedded in the experience of Western-dominated modernity, on the other. Against this backdrop, I examine essays from the compilations Yasadigim Gibi (1970, 'As I lived') and Bes Sehir (1946, 'Five Cities') by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, a key intellectual of the early republican era. The analysis of these post-imperial narratives reveals how Tanpinar tries to root Turkey's national modernity in selected elements of the imperial past. For Tanpinar, continuity with (Turkified) imperial heritage is a prerequisite for a strong nation-state.