289 TUBA / JTS 58 2022 THE REPRESENTATION OF NATIONAL LITERATURE MEETING THE INTERNATIONAL: TURKISH THRILLER Seval ŞAHİN * Abstract 1930s in Turkey was a period in which nationalism was on the rise as a state policy; solidarity against enemies within and without the country to look after the state interests was constantly underlined. This political ideology also brought forth a transformation in Turkish detective fiction; the criminal who used to be depicted and caught within the borders turned into an enemy of the state, beyond being a simple criminal. Fikret Adil’s Kadınlara Hakim (1933) and Peyami Safa’s Ben Casus Değilim! (1939) transform the criminal into an enemy for the state, they push him abroad situating him into an international setting. This article argues that by moving the definition of the enemy into an international dimension, Turkish political thriller compels the reader to also seek the national within the definition of this enemy and to consider the national in relation to the international. Keywords: Peyami Safa, Fikret Adil, thriller, nationalism, crime fiction, Turkish detective fiction. Introduction The novel in Turkish emerged in the second half of the 19 th century, primarily with translations from French. After these translations, it has become a form where realism reflects daily life focusing specifically on time and space. Evidently, adopted from the West, this new genre brought together new debates; the form and content of the genre has been incorporated into the long-existing East-West debate in Turkey. Various issues such as the novel being an imported genre, its localisation and adaptation to Ottoman morality have been hotly debated since the end of the 19 th century. After the emergence of the novel genre, first through translations in 1840s and later through native examples in the 1870s, the first national detective novel in Turkish was Ahmet Mithat’s Esrar-ı Cinayat (Murder Mystery) in 1884. The East-West dichotomy also became part of the narrative entangled with crime since the inception of detective novel, which situates crime at its core. While the East-West discussion within the novel genre is based on localness and Westernisation, detective fiction adds crime as a second layer to this discussion. Turkish detective fiction started receiving considerable attention from the reader and became a best-selling genre, especially with several protagonists such as Milli Cinayat Koleksiyonu (1914), Fakabasmaz Zihni (Undeceivable Zihni) (1922), Amanvermez Avni (Remorseless Avni) (1914), Pire Necmi (Flea Necmi) (1928), Elegeçmez Kadri (Elusive Kadri) (1928) whose stories were serialised. This continued well after 1928, the year when the Latin script was accepted as the official alphabet. In the initial examples, authors themselves emphasised that their protagonists were cleverer as thieves and policemen than the precursory examples in the West such as Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin. These texts were usually comprised of adventures centring around a single protagonist. 1 * Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Universitey, sevals@gmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0003-1548-6763