We Humans (Book)

Peyami Safa’s novel Biz İnsanlar was first serialized in 1937 in the newspaper Cumhuriyet but was never published as a book due to various reasons. The novel was finally published in book form two years before the author’s death, in 1959, becoming Safa’s last published novel. Eser portrays the conflict between East and West in Turkish society through the relationship between Orhan and Vedia.

Roman is set in Istanbul during the Armistice period, just before the National Struggle. The story begins with Orhan, a primary school teacher, who is sensitive to class discrimination. The narrative escalates when the wealthy and spoiled student Cemil insults the poor student Tahsin by calling him “Donkey Turk,” prompting Tahsin to throw a stone he picked up from the ground at Cemil’s head. This incident deepens through Orhan’s interventions and his subsequent resignation from the school. Following this event, Orhan contacts Cemil’s family and meets Vedia, whom he will later become interested in.

The central conflict of the novel is the East-West dichotomy. Orhan is portrayed as a traditionalist, nationalist, poor and muhafazakâr figure representing Eastern values, while Vedia is an indecisive character raised in the superficial aspects of Western culture but unable to fully identify with it. Vedia’s hesitation between two men — the Westernized Rüştü and the Eastern Orhan — aims to provide a psychological analysis of an individual caught in an identity conflict between East and West. In this context, Vedia is not merely a karakter but also Safa’s intellectual allegory of the clash between civilizations.

Moreover, the author highlights Westernization and the West through the leisure activities, conversations and even the musical instruments played by residents of the seaside mansion, primarily Samiye Hanım and Besi Teyze. At the same time, he depicts the East through the habits and behaviors of those living in the provinces.

The novel’s settings — Beyoğlu representing the West, the okul symbolizing the existing order, the mansion embodying moral decay, the seaside serving as a stage for inner reflections, and the hospital where both the story’s beginning and end unfold — all carry symbolic meaning. Particularly Halim Bey’s mansion is the center of Western lifestyle, where characters who speak French and have become alienated from Turkish are prominently featured.

The novel is generally written in third-person omniscient narration. However, at times it shifts to first-person singular narration, especially through Vedia’s diaries, which directly expose her inner world. This technique aims to enhance the narrative’s polyphony and psychological depth.

The novel’s central theme is the conflict between East and West not only on a cultural level but also on social and moral levels. While the author criticizes characters who blindly admire the West, he does not merely defend Eastern traditional values; he also offers suggestions on how these values might be preserved during the process of modernleşme. Cemil’s insult to the poor Tahsin and Tahsin’s reaction are interpreted as a reflection of the suppressed anger of the people against the elite who have lost their national identity:

“In the stone thrown by this child, there was not only the violent legacy of hatred passed from father to son but also the national conscience against a cosmopolitan family and the people’s fury against a privileged class.”^【1】

This emphasis reveals that what appears to be an individual incident reflects deeper historical fractures within collective consciousness.

Peyami Safa employs a plain language in the novel. In particular, inner monologues and dialogues continuously explore the psychological states of the characters. This style, also evident in Safa’s other works, serves as a key element in enhancing the psychological depth of Biz İnsanlar.

Biz İnsanlar is a novel that seeks to expose not only conflicts between individuals but also the pains of a nation undergoing Westernization. In this work, Peyami Safa addresses the East-West conflict in a multidimensional way, arriving at social and cultural analyses through individual dramas.