Perspectives

Studies in Translation Theory and Practice

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Darwin translated into Turkish with a Marxist

agenda: a sociological inquiry into the agents of
translation

Nesrin Conker

To cite this article: Nesrin Conker (2023) Darwin translated into Turkish with a Marxist
agenda: a sociological inquiry into the agents of translation, Perspectives, 31:3, 548-561, DOI:
10.1080/0907676X.2022.2152353

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PERSPECTIVES
2023, VOL. 31, NO. 3, 548–561
https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2152353

Darwin translated into Turkish with a Marxist agenda:

a sociological inquiry into the agents of translation
Nesrin Conker
Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper studies the agents of translation who introduced Charles Received 27 October 2021
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man and Accepted 22 November 2022
Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) into Turkish more than one
KEYWORDS
hundred years after their original publication in England. Charles Darwin; Pierre
Elaborating on the agents’ motives for translating and publishing Bourdieu; Marxism; agents of
Darwin’s works in the Turkish (leftist) publication field, the study translation; habitus; field
considers translator Öner Ünalan (1935–2011) and publisher
Muzaffer İlhan Erdost (1932–2020), within the framework of Pierre
Bourdieu’s theory of action. The findings of the study epitomize
the ‘two-way relationship’ between the habituses of the agents of
translation and the social dynamics of the field(s) in which they
operate. The article demonstrates that Ünalan and Erdost’s
translatorial interest in Darwin’s works was closely linked to the
strong influence of Marxism on their social dispositions and to
the dynamics of the Turkish publication field between the 1960s
and 1980s. As a result, Ünalan and Erdost’s Darwin translations
contributed to an increase in the scientific and social distinction
of both the Marxist movement and the Turkish leftist publication
field during a period of growing tension between right – and left-
wing ideologies in Turkey.

Introduction
After its publication in 1859, On the Origin of the Species or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life (henceforth abbreviated as The Origin) sparked much con-
troversy, which was destined to last for decades to follow. In The Origin, Darwin (1859)
presented his theory of evolution, which introduced the concept of natural selection as
the primary evolutionary mechanism, and which concluded that all species had des-
cended from a common ancestor. There is no doubt that Darwin’s theory had serious
ontological, theological, scientific, and political implications, and will do for generations
to come. Darwin’s theory situates him in the center of what is probably ‘the earliest inter-
national scientific debate to appear in a worldwide range of geographical and cultural
milieus’ (Browne, 2010, p. 351). Underscoring Darwin’s contribution to the formation
of the modern zeitgeist, Mayer (1995) states that Darwin’s theory can be viewed as an
attack on certain sets of philosophical and scientific ideas—such as creationism,

CONTACT Nesrin Conker [email protected] Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bogazici
University, Çeviribilimi Bölümü John Freely Hall Güney Kampüs 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 PERSPECTIVES 549

natural theology, anthropocentrism, essentialism, physicalism, and teleology—that had

governed the mindset of the Victorian era. For this reason, it is not surprising that
Darwin is credited today as being not only ‘the father of evolution’, but also one of the
leading scientific figures to contribute to the rise of positivism.
In parallel with the scientific and intellectual value attributed to Darwin’s theory in the
contemporary world, Darwin translations have attracted the attention of Translation
Studies scholars. One of the leading works in this regard belongs to Brisset (2002),
who analyzes Clémence Royer’s first French translation of Darwin’s The Origin. Brisset’s
analysis finds that Royer made certain linguistic manipulations in her translation, result-
ing in an increased degree of certainty in the target text, a strategy that demonstrates the
translator’s endeavor to adjust Darwin’s text to the French positivistic style. In a later
study, Brisset (2004) draws attention to certain peculiarities of various Darwin trans-
lations, perhaps most notably, the absence of a unique and stable source text, due to
changes made to the original over the course of different editions. Brisset (2004) notes
that the textual peculiarities of Darwin’s works and their retranslations epitomize the
various textual and epistemological challenges involved in the enterprise of translation.
In a more recent study on the French translations of The Origin, Vandaele (2019) per-
forms a lexicometric analysis on six English editions and six French retranslations of
The Origin. Vandaele states that French-speaking readers lack the same access to the con-
cepts of Darwinian evolution afforded to readers of the original English editions, since
‘access to the original text is immediately ‘corrupted’’ (2019, p. 417, emphasis in original).
Darwin (re)translations performed in(to) other settings and languages have also been
subjected to academic elaboration. For example, Vandepitte et al. (2011) conduct quan-
titative and qualitative analyses on two Dutch translations of The Origin. Their compara-
tive linguistic analysis, informed by the epistemic scale of ranking, shows that the earliest
translation has a more dominant positivistic voice whereas the second translation is free
of such linguistic alteration. In a more recent study, Acuña-Partal (2021) approaches The
Origin’s European versions with a focus on Darwin’s own involvement in the translation
process, which aimed to prevent such ideological manipulations and censorship within
the translations.
The aforementioned studies provide invaluable insight into the complex nature of
translation by problematizing the role translation has played in different representations
and receptions of a classical scientific text in different locales. However, reviewing the lit-
erature on Darwin translations, one sees that the majority of these studies investigate the
linguistic properties of translated texts whereas sociology-informed contextualization of
Darwin (re)translations and translators is largely absent. One rare exception is Jin’s
(2019) study, which explores the first translation of The Origin into Chinese. Jin takes
into consideration ‘the translator’s personal background, the history of evolutionary
thinking, the development of biological sciences, and political history in China’ (2019,
p. 128). Although Jin does not embed his findings within a sociological framework, he
concludes that the translation was distorted and presented Darwin’s theory as pointing
to a linear progressive evolution. Jin’s study confirms how important it is to study trans-
lations with reference to translators’ sociological backgrounds and to the sociocultural
and political dynamics of their target contexts.
When we examine the literature on the reception of Darwin’s works in the Turkish
context, we see that the translations and translators of Darwin, as well as translations
550 N. CONKER

of other texts concerning the theory of evolution, have been neglected areas of research.
One exception to this is Emine Bogenç Demirel and Zeynep Görgüler’s (2019) study,
which conducts a netnographic analysis on the translatorial practices of Evrim Ağacı
(The Tree of Evolution), an online open science community dedicated to promoting
the theory of evolution. In their concluding remarks, Bogenç Demirel and Görgüler
also point to the need for a detailed elaboration on Darwin translations in Turkey.
With the purpose of filling an evident gap in the literature concerning the reception
and circulation of Darwin’s theory and his works in Turkey and around the globe, this
paper concentrates on Öner Ünalan, the first translator of Darwin’s two major works
in Turkey, and his publisher, Muzaffer İlhan Erdost. The study aims to understand the
sociocultural and political dynamics that triggered the first Darwin translations into
Turkish and the function(s) the agents of translation expected their translations to
serve in the receiving Turkish context. It follows the trajectory of the socio-translation
studies initiated by Simeoni (1998, 2007a, 2007b), who argued that greater attention
should be given to the translating subject rather than concentrating on translating prac-
tices per se. Informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of action (1994/1998), this paper
explores Ünalan and Erdost’s Darwin translations project with a focus on ‘the two-
way relationship’ (Gouanvic, 2005, p. 148) between their habituses and their fields of
operation.
Following a brief discussion of Bourdieu’s key concepts to guide our sociological
analysis, the study first provides a brief overview of the reception of the theory of evol-
ution in the Turkish context. Then, the sociopolitical dynamics of the decades in which
Ünalan and Erdost realized their Darwin translations project are discussed. The study
goes on to situate Ünalan and Erdost’s Darwin translations in the two-way relationship
between their habituses and their fields of operation by drawing upon both biographical
information and the epitextual materials they produced after having translated and pub-
lished Darwin’s texts.
Following the sociological turn in Translation Studies (TS), a variety of other textual
materials that can be associated with translations have become significant instruments of
analysis with which to examine the ‘sociographies of single translators’ professional tra-
jectories’ (Simeoni, 1998, p. 31). One of the major textual elements to which researchers
turn their attention while studying translators’ sociographies is paratexts, which sur-
round and extend the literary work with the purpose of presenting it (Genette, 1987/
1997, p. 1). Based on their spatial properties, Genette (1987/1997, p. 344) places paratexts
into two categories—peritexts (the framing elements inside the text, such as the author’s
name, the title, the preface, etc.) and epitexts (the framing elements outside the text, such
interviews performed with the author and/or the publisher, posters, critical reviews, etc.).
As Kathryn Batchelor (2018, p. 25) states, many studies in TS have incorporated paratexts
of translations into their research frameworks, with more than one hundred such articles
in English alone. These studies elaborate on the production, circulation and consumption
of diverse translated genres in different historical and sociopolitical contexts, from the
seventeenth century English translations of the Decameron (Armstrong, 2007) to the
Arabic translations of Shakespeare’s tragedies in Egypt (Hanna, 2016), to the translation
of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics into Chinese during the Late Qing Period
(1840–1911) (Cheung, 2010). On the other hand, Batchelor (2018, p. 26) observes that
TS scholars have primarily shown an interest in analyzing peritextual material ‘although
 PERSPECTIVES 551

there are some studies on epitextual material such as translators’ memoirs’. In attempting
to contextualize Darwin’s Turkish translations with reference to the sociographies of the
agents of translation, this study also aims to emphasize the potential contributions of epi-
textual analysis in TS research.

Bourdieu’s theory of action and socio-translation studies

Following Simeoni’s (1998) pioneering study, which laid the groundwork for socio-trans-
lation studies, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of action has become one of the leading theoreti-
cal frameworks for exploring the sociographies of translators. Bourdieu aims to construct
a universally applicable and ‘general theory of the economy of practice’ (1994/1998, p. 93)
by studying ‘the principles of construction of social space or the mechanisms of repro-
duction of that space’ (1994/1998, p. 3). He uses certain conceptual tools in his effort
to formalize a model for analyzing social spaces and the behaviors that individuals and
groups exhibit in accordance with the social positions they assume within these
spaces. Habitus and field are two major concepts through which Bourdieu explains the
objective relations that shape social reality. It is these two concepts which form the
basis for the sociological inquiry into the translatorial actions of the agents of translation
that are studied in this paper.
Bourdieu (1991, p. 29, emphasis in original) states that his notion of habitus was
designed with the purpose of overcoming the dichotomy within which human action
was viewed as taking place either ‘under the influence of external ‘causes’ or under the
impulse of internal ‘reasons’’. Thus, he defines habitus as:
[S]ystems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to func-
tion as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices
and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presuppos-
ing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order
to attain them. Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product
of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of
the organizing action of a conductor. (Bourdieu, 1980/1990, p. 53, emphasis in the
original)

Habitus operates and stands in constant relation to field. A field constitutes ‘the objective
external structure’, whereas habitus constitutes the ‘internal, subjective structure born
from the incorporation of the objective structures’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 20). The habituses
of social agents are shaped by the principles of vision and division and the categories of
perception that govern the social universes (fields) into which the agents are born and in
which they position themselves throughout the course of their lives. For this reason,
habitus and field are two notions that complement one another as an outcome of the
inevitable intersection between them. Within the scope of this intersection, agents and
groups struggle over valued resources to reinforce their position-takings. This struggle
is performed not only individually but also collectively, since habitus is a ‘generative
and unifying principle which retranslates the intrinsic and relational characteristics of
a position into a unitary lifestyle’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 8), which is done by choosing
the same sets of people, goods and practices as valued resources. When individuals
and groups accumulate these unitary sets of valued resources, they not only obtain per-
sonal distinction in their fields of operation but but also contribute to the conservation
552 N. CONKER

and/or transformation of the structure of their respective fields within ‘the global social
space’ (Bourdieu, 1994/1998, p. 32).
According to Jean-Marc Gouanvic (2005, p. 147), translation practice can also be inte-
grated into Bourdieu’s heuristic model since it is an outcome of the relation between the
external instance of texts, which Gouanvic links to Bourdieu’s concept of field, and the
internal instance, which incorporates ‘textual productions and products, the producing
agents and their ‘habitus’’. Reflecting further on the relationship between the social tra-
jectories of agents and the fields in which they operate, Gouanvic (2005) highlights the
aspect of mutuality. According to this ‘two-way relationship’ (Gouanvic, 2005, p. 148),
while agents contribute to the structuring of fields through their incorporated disposi-
tions—in other words, their habituses—fields also continue structuring the habituses
of agents, as habitus should not be conceptualized as a strictly fixed construct. Thus,
in order for research to benefit from Bourdieu’s theory of action, it is crucial to under-
stand how translators’ translatorial work is influenced by, and/or contributes to, this
mutually structuring two-way relationship between their respective fields of operation
and habituses. Within this scope, Gouanvic (2005, p. 148) suggests that research
informed by Bourdieu’s theory of action in Translation Studies should prioritize analyz-
ing ‘the differential relationship between the habitus of translation agents […] and the
determinant factors of the target field as the site of reception of the translation’.
In what follows, I will outline the motivations behind Ünalan and Erdost’s translator-
ial interest in Darwin’s works and pinpoint the contributions their work made to the
Turkish Marxist movement and the leftist publication field. This analysis will take
account of the mutually structuring relationship between the respective habituses and
fields of operation of these agents. Before that, in order to obtain a better understanding
of the sociocultural dynamics of their fields of operation, I will briefly discuss the recep-
tion of the theory of evolution in Turkish intellectual life and the sociopolitical dynamics
of the period in which Ünalan and Erdost produced their translations.

Turkish politics and the theory of evolution in the Turkish publication

field
The theory of evolution began attracting the attention of Ottoman intellectuals with
materialist dispositions during the Tanzimat Period (1839–1876), a time which witnessed
a modernization movement primarily in the military and educational contexts (Öktem,
2011, p. 241; Toprak, 2012, p. 22; Karaömerlioğlu & Yolun, 2020, p. 2). By the end of the
Second Constitutional Era (1908–1920), several books on evolution by well-known
Western scientists, such as Ludwig Büchner, Herbert Spencer and Ernest Haeckel, had
been translated into Turkish (Alkan, 2009). Karaömerlioğlu and Yolun (2020, p. 2)
state that prominent Ottoman intellectuals saw the popularization of evolutionary
ideas as part of their general attempt to boost progress and secularism, since they
regarded catching up with the scientific fashion of the day as the only possible path to
a secular state and society.
Interest in the theory of evolution continued after the establishment of the Turkish
Republic in 1923. The early Republican Era in Turkey witnessed ‘a transformation
from a multilingual and multinational Islamic regime under the Sultan-Caliph to a
monolingual and one-national secular state’ (Berk, 2004, p. 93), with a number of
 PERSPECTIVES 553

reforms targeting social and political life being introduced within a short span of time.
Not surprisingly, a substantial number of these reforms aimed at eradicating the
strong influence of Islam in all areas of life, and in turn, placing a greater emphasis on
Western science and culture. During this period of rapid change, a modern scientific
approach was adopted in the field of education. High school biology course books
started to discuss the theory of evolution during the first decades of the Republican
Era (Toprak, 2012). These course books gave a detailed overview of the theory of evol-
ution although at that time no Turkish translations of Darwin’s full texts were yet
available.
Alkan (2009, p. 26) states that until the 1970s evolution was discussed in the Turkish
educational setting outside of the dichotomy between religion and positivism, despite
the resurgence of the Islamist discourse in Turkish politics after World War II. The
mid-nineteenth century witnessed a gradually increasing political polarization in
Turkey. In 1950, with the election of the Democrat Party (DP), which can be positioned
on the center-right within the traditional left-right spectrum, Islamist and right-wing
political views began to find broader popularity. As an outcome of the dichotomy
between secularism and Islamism that had been present since the early days of the
Turkish Republic, an Islamist publication field started to proliferate in the 1950s. The
Islamist front found a more favorable political atmosphere in which to manifest its reac-
tionist character. Several Islamic periodicals came into existence in this period, whereas
before the DP’s victory, the Islamic publication field had had a limited operation ground
with ‘the few publications of [the] Ministry for Religious Affairs and so-called under-
ground works of influential Islamic figures’ (Üstün-Külünk, 2019, p. 95). As Tanıl
Bora asserts (2017, pp. 415–19), the Islamist discourse that was forming in the aftermath
of the Second World War also bore traces of the reactionary stance within Islamist
circles to the modernity movement of the early Republican governments. In this politi-
cal environment, the theory of evolution became politicalized by Islamists and ‘discus-
sions on whether the theory of evolution should be included in school curriculums or
whether creation should also be taught at schools alongside evolution became heated in
the 1970s’ (Alkan, 2009, p. 26).1
In the 1960s, a similar proliferation took place in the Turkish leftist publication field.
In 1960, the Turkish army carried out a coup d’état with the purpose of curtailing the
escalating polarization between left – and right-wing political sectors. Following the
coup, which ended the 10-year rule of the DP, the military cabinet ordered the prep-
aration of ‘a new and liberal constitution, and a variety of other laws, which permitted
Turks to enjoy democratic politics for the first time’ (Ahmad, 1993, p. 11). In this
relaxed political environment, the socialist movement in Turkey, which had been oper-
ating underground for decades, became more visible. In this period, several leftist
periodicals came into existence and had a major impact on the circulation of leftist
ideas, especially among university students (Zürcher, 1993/2004, p. 254). Leftist pub-
lishing houses also played a crucial role in disseminating leftist and Marxist ideas by
publishing the major works of Marxist literature in Turkish. According to Erkal Ünal
(2006, p. 41), a total of 347 non-fiction leftist works were translated and published
during the period from 1960 until 1971, when another military intervention took
place following the escalation of street violence between leftist and rightist student
groups.
554 N. CONKER

It was in this sociopolitical context that Erdost embarked on his Marxist publication
activities and established Sol Yayınları (Left Publishing House) in 1964. Ünalan’s trans-
lation of Darwin’s The Origin (1859) was published by Erdost’s Sol Yayınları in 1970. In
the following years, Ünalan translated for Sol Yayınları Darwin’s The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) as two separate titles. İnsanın Türeyişi (The
Descent of Man) was published in 1973 and replaced a previous translation by Yavuz
Erkoçak2, whereas Seksüel Seçme (Sexual Selection) was published in 1977 by Onur
Yayınları (Honor Publishing), a subsidiary of Sol Yayınları that was established by
Erdost’s brother, İlhan Erdost.

Darwin translations situated into Bourdieu’s theory of action

A brief elaboration on the available biographical information about Ünalan and Erdost
shows that Marxism and leftist thinking in general constituted an integral part of their
habituses. Both agents obtained their bachelor’s degrees from Ankara University,
which housed one of the most prominent left-wing political debating societies for stu-
dents, owing to the fact that Professor Sadun Aren, a leader in the Workers Party, was
a full-time faculty member (Zürcher, 1993/2004, p. 255). Considering the growing
tension between right- and left-wing ideologies in Turkey as of the 1950s, and the cata-
lyzing effect of universities in this political atmosphere, one can easily suggest that
Ankara University played a critical role in strengthening the influence of Marxism on
Ünalan and Erdost’s respective habituses.
After graduating from the faculty of agricultural engineering in 1957, Ünalan pursued
a master’s degree in educational sciences in the United States. Upon returning to Turkey,
he worked as a government officer until his retirement. In the meantime, he translated
books for various leftist publishing houses, including Sol Yayınları and Onur Yayınları.
Ünalan’s translations include not only Darwin’s works but also books authored by pro-
minent Marxist figures. Among these are a selection of writings by Karl Marx and Frie-
drich Engels, On Literature and Art (1973) (translated as Yazın ve Sanat Üzerine in 1995),
Friedrich Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) (translated as Ütopik Sosyalizm
ve Bilimsel Sosyalizm in 1970) and Fidel Castro’s The World Economic and Social Crisis:
Its Impact on the Underdeveloped Countries, Its Somber Prospects, and the Need to
Struggle If We are to Survive (1983) (translated as Dünya Bunalımı, Azgelişmiş Ülkelere
Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Etkisi in 1987). Ünalan also wrote essays for leftist periodicals
of the time. He used pseudonyms, such as Ragip Gelencik, in order to escape persecution;
this was a common practice at the time.3
Muzaffer İlhan Erdost graduated from the faculty of veterinary medicine in 1956.
Erdost’s interest in publishing started while he was a student. He worked as a co-
editor of Pazar Postası (Sunday Mail), a newspaper which first came out in 1951 and
gradually aligned itself with radical leftist ideology (Aksaç, 2019). After establishing
Sol Yayınları in 1964, Erdost started publishing translations of major Marxist works,
including Das Kapital. He also published books on a range of other topics, including
Turkish and Ottoman history, socialism, democracy and agriculture. Between the
1960s and 1980s, Erdost was arrested and convicted several times on the grounds that
his publishing activities violated the Turkish Penal Code4 by contributing to communist
propaganda (T24, 2020). Following a conviction in 1971, Erdost’s brother, İlhan Erdost
 PERSPECTIVES 555

(1944–1980), established Onur Yayınları as a subsidiary of Sol Yayınları, in order to con-

tinue their publishing activities.5
Reflecting on the biographical information about Ünalan and Erdost, one can
easily conclude that both agents had internalized Marxist views and values, which
had a clear influence on their later dispositions in life. Their cultural production,
both in the form of translation and individual writings, was in general shaped by
Marxism. Here I should underscore that I position Ünalan and Erdost in the
Turkish leftist publication field as opposed to the Turkish leftist translation field
since this study focuses on their Darwin translations project with reference to the
polarized political atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s and its direct repercussions
on the Turkish publication sector. However, it is clear that translation constituted
an integral part of the general leftist publication field in this period, when the
explosion experienced in the number of Marxist periodicals and translations is
taken into consideration.
The link between Ünalan and Erdost’s interest in Darwin’s works and their Marxist
dispositions (as part of their habituses) can be better understood by revisiting Marxist
circles’ long-lasting preoccupation with Darwinism. According to Stack (2000), in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Marxists’ interest in Darwin’s theory
led to an explosion of literature that aimed to demonstrate ‘the intellectual compatibility
of Marxism and Darwinism’ (p. 682-83), an intellectual campaign that was closely
related with ‘the left’s enthusiasm for scientific legitimation’ (p. 710). As Rullens
(2019, p. 157) points out, it was Friedrich Engels who first claimed in his 1880 pamphlet
Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) that
‘socialism had become a scientific doctrine’. In the following decades, a general consen-
sus was reached among socialists that socialism was the scientific theory, which poten-
tially ‘explained society’s development through predetermined laws of social evolution’
(Rullens, 2019, p. 157). For this reason, Marxists’ praise of Darwin’s works on many
occasions seems closely related to their quest for scientific legitimation when we con-
sider the high authority Darwin’s works carried under the steady rise of positivism.
However, it should also be noted that certain aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution
were in strict conflict with key Marxist ideals since Darwin had modeled part of his
theory, i.e. the struggle for existence, after Malthus’s population theory.6 Thus, as
Runkle (1961, p. 116) states, most Marxists chose to concentrate on Darwinian
biology instead, arguing that ‘their view of social change through class struggle was
confirmed by Darwin’s work in biology’. Marx and Engels, on the other hand,
attempted to invalidate the Malthusian aspect of Darwin’s theory from the perspective
of historical materialism. They argued that by developing the capacity to use tools with a
conscious purpose—in other words, through labor—humankind had ripped itself from
the rest of the animal world, making natural law no longer applicable to the human
world (Stack, 2000, p. 703).
Upon examination of the epitextual material that Ünalan and Erdost produced in the
aftermath of their Darwin translations, it becomes evident that they were aware of the
significance attributed to Darwin’s theory in the history of Marxist thinking and
the different ways Marxists had incorporated Darwinism into Marxism. For example,
in an essay he wrote for the influential Marxist journal Yeni Ülke (A New Country)
about the key arguments of Darwin’s theory, Ünalan comments:
556 N. CONKER

In a speech delivered at Marx’s funeral, Engels makes the following remarks: ‘Just as Darwin
found the law pertaining to the evolution of organic nature, Marx found the law pertaining
to the evolution of human history’. Although Engels was critical of Darwinism because of
the relationship Darwin had established—or had been thought to establish—with
Malthus’ teachings, and although Darwin did not mention the significance of labor in
man’s rise to humanity out of the kingdom of animals, Engels still believed that Darwin
deserved this praise. […] Biology gained a materialist and dialectic ground with and after
Darwin and became a true scientific endeavor thereafter. In all conservative circles,
Darwin’s name is as unpleasant as the names of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. (1978, p. 237)

As is understood from his essay, Ünalan prioritizes the biological nature of Darwin’s
theory, as did the majority of Marxists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries. The fact that he underscores the significance of Darwin and his theory in modern
positivist, materialist and dialectical thinking can be interpreted as a continuation of
Marxism’s quest for scientific legitimation, this time in the local Turkish context. In
similar fashion, Erdost (2004, p. 61), in one of his articles about Darwin, also underlines
that ‘Darwin is a benchmark in humankind’s adoption of the scientific approach’. As
already discussed, one of the fundamental aspects of Bourdieu’s theory is his emphasis
on ‘how cultural socialization places individuals and groups within competitive status
hierarchies, [and] how relatively autonomous fields of conflict interlock individuals
and groups over valued resources’ (Swartz, 1997, p. 6), whatever their symbolic form.
From this perspective, one can argue that establishing an intellectual compatibility
between Marxism and Darwinism was one of the strategies Marxists used to gain
broader scientific and, thereby, social distinction in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries. In conjunction with this trend, it can be further argued that Ünalan
and Erdost also saw Darwin translations as valued resources that could contribute to
the scientific and social distinction of the Turkish Marxist movement in the socio-politi-
cal context of the period between the 1960s and 1980s.
While reflecting on Ünalan’s comments, his reference to historical materialism should
not be ignored. Ünalan refers to Engels’ criticism of Darwinism and concordantly refutes
the relationship Darwin had established between Malthus’ population theory and natural
evolution. Thus, while underscoring the intellectual compatibility between Marxism and
Darwinism, Ünalan aligns himself with Marx and Engels, who interpreted Darwin’s
theory of evolution through the lens of historical materialism. Viewed from this angle,
the fact that Ünalan’s translation of Engel’s pamphlet Socialisme utopique et socialisme
scientifique (1880) was published by Sol Yayınları in the same year that his translation
of The Origin (1859) was published does not seem a coincidence. In fact, in the 2010 cat-
alogue of Sol Yayınları, Erdost specifically underlines how important it was at that time to
bring the ideas of scientific socialism (from the perspective of Marx and Engels) into
Turkish society, stating ‘ … with an indescribable self-sacrifice, we [Sol and Onur Pub-
lishing Houses] tried to introduce scientific socialism in(to) Turkey and the Turkish
language through genuine resources. […] in a total of ten years, we published
Marxist-Leninist classics and books that introduce scientific socialism’ (Gemalmaz,
2020, p. 167). Based on this, Ünalan and Erdost’s Darwin translations can be viewed
as part of their common translatorial effort to increase the scientific and social distinction
of Marxism in Turkey, and in the Turkish publication field, as a repercussion of the sub-
stantial influence of Marxism on their respective habituses. It goes without saying that as
 PERSPECTIVES 557

an outcome of their efforts, Ünalan and Erdost simultaneously made an invaluable con-
tribution to the Turkish scientific field by introducing Darwin’s works to a Turkish read-
ership after the one-hundred-year delay.
From a translatorial perspective, Ünalan and Erdost’s interest in Darwin’s works
become more meaningful when we revisit the dichotomy between secularism and Isla-
mism in the Turkish sociopolitical setting between the 1950s and 1980s. As discussed
earlier, the proliferation of the Islamist publication field in the post Second World
War era and the similar boost experienced in leftist and Marxist publications in the after-
math of the 1961 constitution catalyzed a stark opposition and a growing tension within
the Turkish publication field. In this dichotomic context of power relations, Ünalan and
Erdost’s endeavors to introduce and popularize Darwin’s works through translation
gains stronger political ground. The fact that Ünalan, in his above-quoted article,
places Darwin in the same oppositional corner with Marxism against conservativism is
noteworthy. In a similar manner, Erdost emphasizes the positivistic value of Darwin’s
theory in the struggle against conservatism, which he views as one of the major causes
of scientific backwardness in Turkey:
As I was preparing On the Origin of the Species, which was first printed in 1859, and, The
Descent of Man, which was first printed in 1871, and then finally Sexual Selection, for pub-
lication a hundred years after their first appearance in print, I realized that not a single one
of the scientific works cited in these books had been published in Turkey. That helped me
better understand why we lag scientifically, why we cannot break through the darkness of
faith and step into the light of wisdom in any [scientific] field, and why we are made a
toy in the hands of the West, its colonial system and cruel imperialism. (2004, p. 61)

It is clear from his remarks that Erdost blames conservatism as the leading reason for the
scientific backwardness he observes in Turkey. On the other hand, he regards the popu-
larization of Darwin’s works and the general literature on evolution as significant steps
towards the development of a more scientific approach in society, a strategy that could
help to diminish conservatism. Based on this, one might argue that Ünalan and
Erdost’s efforts to translate and publish Darwin’s works into Turkish also served the
purpose of strengthening the counter-conservatist discourse of Marxists against Islamists,
contributing to the secular ideology against its dichotomic struggle with the Islamic pole.
Applying his theory of action to the French publication field, Bourdieu states that ‘every
position in the publishing field comes with a system of objectives and constraints that are,
at least negatively, defined and often reinforced by the dispositions of the agents involved’
(2008, p. 124). From this perspective, it can be argued that Ünalan and Erdost’s position
within the broader Turkish publication field was defined by their Marxist, secular and
counter-conservatist dispositions. Thus, Ünalan and Erdost’s ideological dispositions
and their resulting effort to increase the scientific and social distinction of Marxism con-
cordantly contributed to an increase in the scientific and social distinction of the leftist
publication field. As a result, Darwin’s works became valuable resources in the leftist
repertoire to strengthen Marxists’ materialist and counter-conservatist stance.

Conclusions
As indicated by the sociological analysis conducted on Ünalan and Erdost, the first
Darwin translations in Turkey were undertaken not only on scientific but also on
558 N. CONKER

ideological grounds. Thus, we can argue that the politicization of the theory of evolution
by the progressist and secularist governments of the early decades of the Turkish Republic
(Karaömerlioğlu & Yolun, 2020, p. 2) and by the right- and left-wing political poles of the
1970s (Alkan, 2009, p. 26) continued with these first translations of Darwin’s major works.
In addition to filling a crucial scientific gap by translating and publishing Darwin’s major
titles into Turkish, Ünalan and Erdost were also following a Marxist agenda in accordance
with their Marxist dispositions. As a result, they instrumentalized their Darwin trans-
lations as valued scientific and symbolic resources in order to increase the scientific
and social distinction of Marxism in the Turkish political field, an attempt which concor-
dantly contributed to the dichotomic struggle between the leftist and the Islamist publi-
cation fields. By doing so, they also contributed to the structuring of the Turkish leftist
publication field by introducing the works of a scientist who had always had significant
value for leftist and Marxist thinking on scientific, ontological, and political grounds.
The present work demonstrates that studying the translations of Darwin’s works per-
formed in different periods and locales provides new insight into the complex nature and
power of translation. Whereas the first French translation of The Origin served, for
instance, to further the French positivistic discourse (Brisset, 2002), and the first
Chinese translation to provide scientific grounds for anti-colonial Chinese nationalism
(Jin, 2019), its first translation into Turkish emerged as a complementary scientific
and symbolic asset for the intellectual rise of the Turkish Marxist movement. These
findings clearly demonstrate the close links between the sociological background of
the agents of translation, the texts they choose to translate and the impact of their
work on the sociocultural spaces to which they belong.
The general findings of the study further demonstrate the applicability of Bourdieu’s
conceptual framework to research concerned with exploring the links between the socio-
graphies of the agents of translation and their translatorial production. The sociological
analysis conducted on Ünalan and Erdost also highlights the mutually structuring
relationship between the habituses of the agents of translation and their fields of oper-
ation, underscoring the structuring power of translation as a means of creating valued
resources through transfer in the struggle for social distinction among individuals,
groups, and institutions. Further, this study emphasizes the advantages of concentrating
not only on the translator per se, but also on the other agents of translation, such as the
publisher, for gaining broader sociological insight. Methodologically, the study highlights
the contribution of epitextual analysis in establishing new sociological links between the
agents’ backgrounds and their translatorial trajectories. Lastly, it is clear that further
research on the Darwin (re)translations in particular, and the translated literature on
the theory of evolution in general, can potentially provide deeper insight into the recep-
tion of this crucial theory, both in the Turkish and the global setting, while highlighting
the role translation plays as a leading tool of transfer.

Notes
1. Unless otherwise specified, all quotations from Turkish resources are my translation.
2. Yavuz Erkoçak (1925–2016), a medical doctor, was an eminent member of the Turkish
Labor Party. He translated the first chapter of Darwin’s The Descent of Man, and Selection
in Relation to Sex in 1968 for Sol Yayınları, using its German translation as his source text.
 PERSPECTIVES 559

3. The biographical information about Öner Ünalan is retrieved from http://www.

ragipgelencik.net/, a website which was prepared in his honor by his family following his
death in 2011.
4. As Ahmad (1993, p. 136, emphasis in original) stresses, the political atmosphere of the 1960s
offered only an ambiguous freedom since the penal code ‘included restrictive provisions […]
which did not permit what was nebulously described as ‘communist propaganda’’.
5. Commenting on their Darwin translations, Erdost (2017, p. 26) states that he was convicted
and imprisoned between 1970–1974 due to his Marxist publication activities. For this
reason, it was his brother, İlhan Erdost, who prepared the first edition of The Origin’s trans-
lation for publication. In the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, İlhan Erdost tragically lost
his life due to the torture he suffered while he was under arrest with his brother. Following
this tragic loss, Muzaffer Erdost annexed İlhan’s name to his own to honor his brother.
6. Malthus (1826) argued that population would always grow faster than the available food
supply. This would gradually lead to food shortages, which predominantly affects the
poor. He further argued that the shortage of food against the exponential population
growth could only be resolved either through nature-made factors, such as natural disasters,
or through human-made factors, such as war, famine, or population control.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Nesrin Conker is a PhD candidate at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies,
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. She works as a research assistant at the same department.
Her research interests cover a wide range of areas within Translation Studies, such as translation
history, science translation, translation sociology, community interpreting and sign language
interpreting.

ORCID
Nesrin Conker http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5940-1832

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