WOMEN’S CHANGING IDENTITY IN AYLA KUTLU’S NOVEL ENTITLED EMİR BEY’İN KIZLARI (DAUGHTERS OF MR. EMIR)
Ayla Kutlu ranks top among authors in the Turkish literature who have focused on the question of woman and used woman’s point of view in the most effective way. Kutlu’s originality lies in her placing the women in the context there she belongs rather than separating them from the society where they live and the historical periodIn this way, she saves women from getting lost among abstract discourses and reflects the process of social changes, to which she attaches very importance, in a clearer mirror. The purpose of my study is to reveal the women’s changing identity and to analyze the reflections of the modernization in the Turkish literature within the framework of fictional reality which Ayla Kutlu created without ignoring the historical perspective and probe the social equivalent of the intellectual woman identity by acting from this novel. At the center of the novel is Eyyübe Cevahir Yeşil, who is referred to Leyla for short. Ayla Kutlu renders visible the changing identity of the woman in the Turkish society through Leyla. Leyla is the last member of a large family who has epitomized the breakdown of whole lifespan of that family in her person, and a synthesis of two mothers. Nevnihal and Gülhayat’s shortcomings in society have been completed in the person of Leyla. Her elder sister Hüsra, on the other hand, is a character who has been disillusioned in the course of her life, which she had begun without a guide. Emir Bey’s elder daughter Hüsra is an “Assyrian beauty of two thousand years ago” with her limited point of view, her weakness, frigidity and lack of willpower; she belongs to ancient times. His younger daughter Leyla, on the other hand, has won the battle she has fought against life, though at a heavy price, with her culture, idealism, her fondness for uniqueness, her strong personality and willpower, and with her identity gained by these qualities, she is woman of new ages. The function of Emir Bey in the novel is to serve as an axis where the lives of these four women converge.

Keywords
Ayla Kutlu, Emir Bey’in Kızları, woman, novel.