ABSTRACT
Shortly before the Golpe de Estado en España in 1936, Turkey established itself as a republic in the 1930s. This new government not only signed the non-intervention agreement but also actively tried to stop people from Turkey from becoming volunteers in the International Brigades. The question of whether to adhere to its non-intervention policy was not only a matter of discussion within the Turkish government but also a topic among many intellectuals and writers in Turkey. While the government mainly acted out of self-interest, several writers chose a mode of textual intervention in the Republican cause to counteract the non-intervention approach. The latter is the object of this work.
This chapter analyzes three different texts from Turkey: several essays from the magazine Yeni Adam, the poem “Karanlikta kar yağiyor” by Nâzim Hikmet, and the poem “Rapido’dan bir an?” by Beki L. Bahar. All three texts reflect on the Spanish Civil War from different angles, with each intervening in an event when involvement was forbidden. By drawing attention to the significance of the Spanish Civil War for the history of Turkey, this work also offers a more differentiated, transhistorical, and multi-layered understanding of the Spanish Civil War and its outreach.
