When we look at the development of dystopian literature in Turkey, which started to be popular in Turkish literature after the 90s, it is seen that the first dystopian novel was written by Yaşar Kemal in 1977. Known as a socialist realist novelist, Yaşar Kemal’s Filler Sultanı ile Kırmızı Sakallı Topal Karınca was identified as the first dystopian novel in Turkish literature. In this novel, which Yaşar Kemal wrote as a serious social criticism, just like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the social distortions in the human world are treated with a dystopian fiction based on the animal world. In this novel, Yaşar Kemal underlines what kind of losses the passion for power and consumption can lead to. The novel emphasises how societies that do not heed the warnings can turn the world they live in into hell with their own hands and how the basic values that hold societies together must be protected. In this study, Yaşar Kemal’s novel Filler Sultanı ile Kırmızı Sakallı Topal Karınca is analysed in the axis of dystopian novel both in terms of fictional elements and thematic context.
Dystopia, utopia, Yaşar Kemal, anti-utopia, dystopian.