Abstract

In Turkey Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is the subject of countless analyses and critiques. In ‘The Time Regulation Institute,’ Tanpınar offers a genuinely fascinating and engaging narrative set in post-Ottoman Turkey to the readers. The novel discusses the opposites; a family of wealthy aristocrats who are working hard to fix the old way of life against the entry of modern Western culture and parallels it with the days of the young Republic. The novel speaks of the heart and soul of a nation. The main character, Hayri, established the institute, but he is not a respectable person, and his personality is not fitted because of his father. He is stuck between old and new. The novel’s protagonist wanders from one temporal-historically absurd situation to the next. The meaning of this novel lies in the way it both examines the cultural effects of the reforms- without producing new logocentrism- and controlling the fantasy through its language.