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CHAPTER 6 – VURUN KAHPEYE 
193 
figures such as Ferit Pasha providing chronological markers
1
) but also the war is 
essentially the focal point of the plot: after the display of much heroism and self 
sacrifice the nationalist forces triumph and with their triumph order and justice are 
restored to the country. 
Aliye
’s
father was a junior officer and died fighting in the east. From him she 
inherited her inner strength while from her ill mother, whom she lost when she was 
still a very young child, she inherited her sensitivity. Consequently, Aliye spent all 
her childhood among the school desks of the ‘Kız Öğretmen Okulu’ and as soon as 
she graduated she set out to become a teacher in one of the most undesirable posts in 
a backward small town in Anatolia. In her decision to go to Anatolia one can see 
both the desperation of somebody who has nowhere to turn to and her enthusiasm to 
teach in Anatolia as a true believer in improvement under the influence of one of her 
teachers. 
The image we get from the description of Anatolia is pretty grim in the novel and the 
differences between life in the village and the life lived by the heroine in Istanbul is 
strongly marked. This is a feature of a number of novels written in this period, not 
only 
Çalıkuşu
but also 
Yaban
.
The school where Aliye teaches is in a derelict, miserable state. But this does not 
take away any of her enthusiasm. In the small town there is a number of people who 
are portrayed as being evil, treacherous, lustful, fanatical and ignorant: Hacı Fettah 
1
Adıvar1995, 18. Ferit Pasha held the office of Grand Vezir under the Sultan between March 1919 and October 
1920: Bernard Lewis, 240. 

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CHAPTER 6 – VURUN KAHPEYE 
194 
Efendi, Kantarcıların Hüseyin and Kantarcıların Uzun Hüseyin, among the notables, 
the Maarif Müdürü (Director of Education), the teacher Hatice Hanım. But in the 
town there are some kind people who resemble Aliye: Ömer Efendi and his wife 
Gülsüm Hala, an old couple at whose house Aliye stays. They have lost their 
daughter and Aliye naturally takes her place. They are kind and unlike most of the 
notables Ömer Efendi supports the nationalists. Another important figure is one her 
pupils, Durmuş, who is a poor but brave child. 
Aliye immediately distinguishes at school two kinds of children: The children of the 
lower classes who look lively and clever in their darned woollen breeches with their 
runny noses and black hands on the one hand and the children of the notables on the 
other who are weak, ugly, with dirty noses and badly looked after. Her heart is 
clearly won by the former. Aliye immediately takes the situation of the badly ran 
school into her hands and she does not hesitate to confront the notables, unlike her 
corrupt, ugly and frightened colleague, Hatice Hanım, when it comes to fight 
injustice and inappropriate behaviour by the children of the notables. That 
immediately sparks the beginning of the enmity between her and the three malicious 
notables who possess all the bad qualities of the leaders of a conservative and 
reactionary society based on the old order of things, exemplifying corruption, 
injustice and superstition: Hacı Fettah Efendi, Kantarcıların Hüseyin Efendi and his 
son Uzun Hüseyin.
At a time when the enemy and the nationalists are fighting not far from the town 
Aliye is openly, as one would have expected, on the side of the national forces, while 
the notables see the latter as a threat to their status and property so they are openly 

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