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CHAPTER 7 – ERGENEKON 
224 
similar to Anatolian characters. For this reason all the beggars and the 
outcasts there are considered to be either immortals who have come to 
the rescue at the right moment or saints. In the soul of the idealistic 
Anatolian people the commonest of the events takes a heroic or a mystic 
character. 
Because the sensitivity and exuberance of this people is so deep and 
extraordinary they are mistaken as being lethargic and primitive. How 
wrong this is! They only see the outside of Anatolia and cannot perceive 
its soul. Under the ruins, the swamps and the piles of dung stretching all 
the way from the white summits of the Caucasus to the green Taurus 
mountains there quivers a noble fire
. 
Because, if one pays attention, one will see that this blessed country’s 
soil has suffered every hardship and enjoyed every pleasure in the world; 
but Anatolia looks like the man who, having gone through the most 
exceptional, the most dangerous and the most delicate psychological 
states with his wrinkled face appears to be worn out, exhausted and pale. 
Anatolia contrary to what some people think, is not the captive of a 
sickly stagnation, but Anatolia is captive to its excessively deep 
sensitivity. Behind its simple and primitive appearance, the life of the 
people there hides the secret of an ample inner world which we are 
unable to comprehend with our eyes muddled by the smoke of today’s 
industrial world and technical civilisation.
When he wrote this, Yakup Kadri’s direct experience of Anatolia was limited to the 
western edge of the peninsula where his family came from. After he travelled to 
Ankara in the spring of 1921 he published his new impressions. A series of six 
articles which first appeared in July of 1921 was reprinted in 
Ergenekon.
In the first 
of these he describes his journey from Inebolu regretting that he did not have with 
him Evliya Çelebi for his Baedeker because he is sure that nothing has changed. He 
continues
42
: 
Yarabbi, buralarda da size İsvirçe’den söz eden kimseler var! Kendimizi 
durmadan Avrupa ile karşılaştırmak zihniyeti buralara kadar işleyip 
yayılmış. Halbuki ben, bu viran ana yurdunda Avrupa’ya dair ne varsa 
hepsini unutmağa gelmiştim. Fakat şimdiden anlıyorum ki, bu arzumu 
42
Karaosmanoğlu 1973, 49-51 

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