One of the most striking aspects of the cultural reforms carried out in Turkey during the Republican era is the revolution implemented in the field of music. Opera, as the first and foremost art form of the Turkish Music Revolution initiated under Atatürk’s leadership, became a symbolic instrument of the modernization process. The opera Özsoy which composed by Adnan Saygun in 1934 in dedication to the visit of the Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi to Ankara, constitutes the starting point of this transformation as the first national opera composed in Turkey. Subsequently, with the operas Taşbebek and Bayönder, the visibility of Turkish composers on the stage increased, and this art form evolved into an artistic representation of Republican ideals. After the staging of the Yunus Emre Oratorio in 1946, Saygun’s first major operatic work, Kerem (1953), became a symbol of the fusion of Turkish music and Western form, both musically and thematically. This article examines the elements of Turkish music embedded in the structure of the opera Kerem within the framework of intertextuality theory and discusses the work’s function in the construction of a new national identity during the Turkish Music Revolution by situating it within the socio-political context of its period. Saygun’s approach of integrating local modal scales with modern harmony brings together musical colors unique to Anatolia with a universal aesthetic sensibility. Thus, opera becomes one of the most powerful carriers of the Republic’s cultural transformation project, both artistically and ideologically. The study demonstrates that the opera Kerem is not merely a musical work, but also an artistic representation of Republican ideology. The work’s structure, which brings together a mystical love narrative with the ideal of the “new individual,” concretely demonstrates the role of art in the construction of national identity.

Ahmed Adnan Saygun, Kerem Opera, Turkish Music Revolution, Republican Era, Intertextuality.