Identity construction of istanbulites in Elif Shafak's the bastard of Istanbul

The modernity in this late era has made the issue of identity become more complex and complicated. This phenomenon happens as the complexity and instability of identity are believed widely pervaded by the vast changing of social condition in human life. As a result, the rapid flux of identity can somehow be considered threatening the stability of identity itself, particularly in the era of modern technology, migration, urbanisation, and globalisation on which people live nowadays (Rutherford in Howarth, 2002).

The Bastard of Istanbul’s main theme is identity and its relation to social remembrance in multicultural society. The Bastard of Istanbul describes how Turkey forgot the social memory of Armenian Genocide which is considered as a backdrop of Turkey’s violent history by presenting characters with their conflicting identity as Turk and Armenian American who keep denying on one side, and keep remembering on the other.

This study aims to describe the process of identity construction of Istanbulites consisting of Turks and Armenians as two conflicting identities depicted in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul. Besides, it is also projected to recognise how the identity of Turks and Armenians in multicultural places, which in this case are Turkey and the United States of America, can be constructed by doing a study on a well-known literary work telling a story about identity and social memory like The Bastard of Istanbul.

The present study is literary criticism focusing on the issue of identity construction in the novel seen from the sociological perspective. It employs theory of identity construction proposed by Castells (2010) covering the legitimising identity, resistance identity and project identity and theory of social remembering by Misztal (2003) in forming the identity of people in the society through social memory.
This study reveals that the identity construction of Istanbulites involves three main aspects which constitute the dispute of two conflicting identities, Turks and Armenians. Turkish identity as legitimising identity is strongly controlled by its dominant social institutions in constructing the identity of Turks through the creation of norms, traditions, belief, and memory. Additionally, the Armenians identity is found to be the resistance identity which aims to resist and survive from the domination of the legitimate group. While the project identity which is another type of identity building process referring to the desire of being independent individuals liberating from any social influences brought by the powerful institutions is found on the character Asya and Zeliha.