Book: "Memed My Hawk" Author: Yashar Kemal Text: 1920, Turkey - A time which peasants and serfs after the just fallen Ottoman Empire should have been acquiring their own land and own sense of independence. Most were, as well as benefiting from the new found government. Although, not all fractions of Turkey had been influenced by the change in supervision. As Yashar Kemal writes in his heroic novel Memed, My Hawk the isolated secluded lands of …showed first 75 words of 1140 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1140 total…still unlawfully under an Agha's possession. Ali Safa was able to obtain land first through legal means, then by force with a band of brigands, and through the help and support of other Agha's. And this is precisely why Ali Safa is in the novel - to characterize the rich upper class which Memed was against. All this combined made Ali Safa Bey one of the most powerful and largest landowners in the uninfluenced Turkey.