This paper examines Kentukis (2018) by Samanta Schweblin and Topaç (2004; reissued 2016) by Gülayşe Koçak, two dystopian novels which, though shaped by different cultural horizons, converge in their critical interrogation of intimacy and subjectivity under regimes of surveillance. In Schweblin’s novel, the seemingly innocuous electronic plush toy operates as a vehicle of horizontal and commodified surveillance, where exposure is transformed into both spectacle and market value. Koçak, by contrast, imagines a society ravaged by collective anesthesia, regulated through mechanisms of desensitization (özlük, filtre, hiskov, kalkanmak) and constrained by the linguistic purism of the Pure Names Movement.

Although divergent in style and form, both narratives probe the fragile balance between vulnerability and control, empathy and normalized violence. Situating these non-Anglophone dystopias within global debates on surveillance capitalism, the psychopolitics of consent, and the biopolitics of language, this study underscores their dual resonance: they intervene in universal concerns while also inscribing the distinct marks of their contexts—the digitalization of intimacy in Schweblin’s work and the imprint of political violence in Koçak’s. Ultimately, both novels warn that the most insidious danger lies not only in systems of control, but also in the complicity of subjects who acquiesce to, or even desire, their own exposure or emotional numbness.