Imagining Climate Futures in Contemporary Turkish Literature: A Critical Approach to Buket Uzuner’s Novel Hava

This study explores how climate change is represented in Turkish literature through Buket Uzuner’s Hava (2018). Climate change’s vast temporal and spatial dimensions challenge literary depiction. Hava draws on Turkish shamanistic traditions to revive ecological awareness but centers on localized environmental disruptions, limiting its engagement with global, systemic climate processes. Unlike speculative climate fiction that uses non-linear structures to depict climate change’s slow violence, Hava employs a conventional narrative focused on immediate human experiences. This restricts its ability to represent structural transformations and global interconnections. The novel’s portrayal of local anomalies lacks connection to transnational climate crises and overlooks the unequal impacts on marginalized communities. The study argues that Turkish climate fiction should incorporate speculative elements, non-human agency, and experimental narrative techniques to better reflect the planetary scale and temporal complexity of climate change. Expanding literary strategies is essential for a more effective and inclusive climate discourse in Turkish literature.