A Character Borned By The War: The War Profiteer

French novelist Stendhal said: “a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet…” The World War the first had not only the social, economic and political results but also literary results. One of the literary results was the theme of “harb zengini” (the war profiteer). In the last year of the World War the first one can see a statement of “Rich men of the War” in the Turkish press. The Turkish press criticized the rich men earning a lot of money with corruptions during the war and called them as “Rich men of the War”. In addition to this, Turkish authors wrote and published some novels and stories concerning the “Rich men of the War”. Such as Omer Seyfettin, Orhan Mithat, Aka Gündüz, Huseyin Rahmi. This article focuses on their works. Because of they wrote in newspapers and magazine, their stories and novels couldn’t release up to the present. The aims of this study are to reveal the novels and stories concerning the “Rich men of the War” and to evaluate the reflections of this statement on the Turkish literature.

Keywords

harb zengini (the war profiteer), novel, story, Turkish literature, World War the first.