The aim of this thesis is to examine the question of modernism in Turkish poetry within its historical context and with regard to the social conditions within which the development of Turkish poetry took place. The transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic was accompanied by an intense discourse on Turkish nationalism. The aim of reforms in this period was to replace the symbols of the heterogeneous Ottoman-Islamic civilization with their Western counterparts. Modernism was self critical of its socio-economic aspect. However, this critical approach took place under different circumstances in Turkey. The Kemalist reforms and their application of top-down policy shattered tradition long before the emergence of a critical conception of modernity which might have used the modernization project. In the 1940s, Turkey's political system, economic policies, and foreign relations all underwent fundamental changes. During this period, there were two modern movements in Turkish poetry: The First Modern movement (Garip) and Second Modern movement (Ikinci Yeni). In the Turkish context, modernist criticism and its Marxist criticism go hand in hand. Hence, a modernist perspective in the real sense and, to a degree, its Marxist criticism emerged in Turkish poetry with the Second Modern. The poets of Second Modern represent a significant breakaway from the poetry formerly produced, especially in terms of language, meaning and structure. Most importantly, the word Yasanti (experience present) was brought into Turkish poetry. The Second Modern poets experienced the sense of inadequacy caused by Westernization more consciously. They created a self-centered language which submitted to the realm of individual and psychological and provided them a defensive stance toward their own experience of inadequacy created by economic progress.
Walter Benjamin's dialectic method provides a means to find the critical potential to discuss the issues of modernism and tradition in Turkish context. His dialectical and non-evolutionist interpretation of history takes into account both progress and regression. This is the source of the unique value of Benjamin's Marxism, which provides us an understanding of a century characterized by the overlapping of modernity and barbarism.