Abstract
Banditry has an important place in Anatolia, which has been the cradle of many cultures. Zeibeks, considered as one of the last rings of the medieval Alperen type in Anatolia, have existed for centuries with their
own traditions and rituals. Zeibeks, which are also accepted as the symbol of Turkish peasantry and which can
be called bandits from time to time, have been based on Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of social banditry in recent
years. However, elements such as freedom, heroism, justice and benevolence in Hobsbawm’s definition of social banditry correspond to a value area rather than a class category. Zeibeks fulfilled a function in Turkish
history, which is one of the examples of non-Western modernization, to fill the gap arising from the depreciation
caused by modernity. The modern world has given traditional societies a kind of cultural schizophrenia. This
emerged as a traumatic experience arising from the fact that society, which is between the East and the West,
experienced modernization on the one hand and wanted to continue the tradition on the other. Being stuck between East and West and experiencing a kind of cultural schizophrenia, the individual has developed the
perception that the world of values is interrupted. Modernity has led not only to an economic development, but
also to a traumatic loss of value in the collective consciousness of society, especially in non-Western societies.
This loss of value has led to the emergence of a value gap between the state authority and peasantry, and zeibek
tradition has turned into a structure that fills this gap. Zeibeks filled this void created by this trauma through
values. When we look at the literary representations of cultural values, zeibeks primarily assumed a function of
establishing justice. Secondly, zeibeks kept their belief by maintaining the traditional culture in the field of
belief, thus resting on a ground that coincides with symbolic value areas of people. Finally, zeibeks represented
values such as custom, heroism and generosity peculiar to traditional societies. In order to reveal which value
areas zeibeks filled, Turkish modernization process is considered a breaking point; following, valid cultural
metaphors before and after this breaking point were determined and then literary representations of cultural
values were examined. The positive image of Zeibeks is closely related to the representation of traditional values. For this reason, a reading on values will reveal more consistent and meaningful results in the interpretation of the zeibek tradition in Turkish culture. This study will perform a close reading of the values (devaluation) on Kantarağasızâde Ömer Selahaddin’s novel Âdil Mevlâ (1927), Sabahattin Ali’s Kuyucaklı Yusuf (1937) and Yaşar Kemal’s Çakırcalı Efe (1972).