Cultural schizophrenia in occupied Istanbul: wounded consciousness and spatial fractures in Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s Sodom and Gomorrah

This article examines Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s Sodom ve Gomore (Sodom and Gomorrah) as a literary diagnosis of the psychocultural fractures produced by belated modernity and the Allied occupation of Istanbul. Drawing on Daryush Shayegan’s concepts of wounded consciousness, cultural schizophrenia and patchwork modernity, the study argues that the novel stages the forced coexistence of two incompatible regimes on the same social surface: a local moral-symbolic order activated by biblical epigraphs and a cosmopolitan repertoire of fashion, salons, consumption, clubs and multilingual social codes intensified under occupation. Methodologically, the article adopts qualitative textual analysis informed by cultural theory and spatial literary analysis. It identifies the moral-symbolic framework of the novel, traces scenes of cosmopolitan performance and maps the spatial distribution of fracture across public space, Pera, Tarabya and the islands. The findings show that Necdet’s humiliation and resentment and Leyla’s desire for mondanité represent different affective responses to the same fractured order. Spatially, the city functions not as a passive background but as an experiential topography in which glamour, hierarchy, moral judgment and political asymmetry intersect. The article contributes to literary studies, cultural theory and urban sociology by showing how Sodom and Gomorrah transforms occupation from a political condition into a revealing moment in the crisis of Ottoman–Turkish modernization.