Christian influences in the works of Halide Edip Adıvar

Halide Edip Adıvar is one of the most important Turkish writers who had a huge impact on three generations of Turks. Her works accurately reflect historical reality and even very small cultural details. Halide Edip lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At this time the Christians in the Ottoman Empire rather were not presented in a positive way in the literature. The writer buck the trends, she grew up surrounded by Greeks, Armenians and American missionaries, thanks to which on the one hand she knew them better and on the other was not prejudiced. The article analyzes the life of Halide and her most important works– the novel “Rabia”, the opera libretto “Shepherds of Kenan” and the theater art “Mask and Soul”. It is clear from them that Halide in her work takes Christians into account, rather as positive heroes, but also did not fail to take into account their disadvantages. It accurately reflected reality and captured various nuances related to the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Bosphorus country.