The İmportance of Theatre in Bringing up People as İdeological Beings

In this study we have attempted to analyse theatre plays as one of the basic means used by political systems to turn individuals into ideological beings. With this goal in mind we looked upon theatre from the point of view of its function of conveying a particular ideology as a means used for forming the social and cultural structure of the society in the political system along with the Turkish National Struggle and the announcement of the establisment of the Turkısh Republic. The Republic being established in some aspect upon the refusal of the cultural inheritance of the Ottoman Empire had to reshape the past along with shaping the future and all its components like politics, science, administration, law, etc. It is natural that during this indispensable process of establisment the function of art began to serve the goal mentioned above, together with politics, science and law. Our study is built around theatre plays as one of the most suitable means of reading the mass and motivating it in a particular direction in the period of time right after the Republic was established. When chosing the literary works for this study we took pains to pick the ones that belong to the particular period of time, written in 1923-1940, the years when the ideology of the Republic was being shaped. Thus, the historical teatre plays written in this period of time can be classified according to the period they describe into four groups. These periods are: The history of Turkey before accepting Islam, last period of the Ottoman Empire, the period of the Turkısh National Struggle and the period after the Rebuplic was İdeolojik Bireylerin Yetiştirilmesinde... 575 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 5/2 Spring 2010 established. It is possible to see that the chosen theatre plays represent these four periods in the Turkish History.