Book 1: Mehmet

Mehmet: Fay Kırığı 1 begins with Mehmet Esen’s arrival in Istanbul in July 2005 after receiving an attractive job offer from his army friend Cenk Plevneli. After he completed his military service some ten years before, Mehmet returned to settle in Izmir, but he has not had a permanent job since. Soon he is reunited with four other men who in 1993 fought together as thirdlieutenants in Hakkari, a flashpoint in the TurkishKurdish conflict: Cenk Plevneli, born to an established family of Istanbul, the successor of L&M Holding, which is about to go bankrupt and is being bought by the Kadıoğulları Group; Altan Kısa, a union manager; Professor Müşfik Alaçam, a weary scholar; and Yakup Kadıoğulları, the eldest son of a rich and conservative family, who does not believe that Islam and capitalism can exist together. The history of the conservative Kadıoğulları Group forms much of the novel’s background. The Plevneli family is rich, secular, bourgeois, and modern; their holding company is one of the city’s oldest and respected. On the other hand, the Kadıoğulları family—wealthy, conservative, and religious—comes from Kayseri, a central Anatolian city, and is new to the high society and business world of Istanbul. The Kadıoğulları Group takes over half of the shares of Plevneli’s L&M Holding. The other focus of the novel is on the love story between two people from different worlds: Mehmet, a man who has no religious faith; and Emine, Yakup’s sister, who quit her university education because wearing a hijab, or turban—a symbol that indicates she is an observant Muslim—was banned on university campuses.