Oppressed writers of the world and of Turkey

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries… asks one of my favorite women artists, the impressive American poet Maya Angelou.

  “Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries…” asks one of my favorite women artists, the impressive American poet Maya Angelou.

  Had she lived in Istanbul or come here for a short visit, she couldn t have described any better the very course that some recent events took in literary-political circles this week. Had she journed here, she would have been surprised to see how acutely relevant her lines were in deciphering an anti-intellectual discourse that is circulating widely in the political and cultural life of this country. After all, we come from the tradition of belated modernity, wherein a novelist has always been more than a novelist. After all, to be a novelist in Turkey first and foremost means being a public figure in an environment where conversely, “writers” are analyzed in depth rather than their books or “the art of writing” itself. Being a Turkish writer requires getting used to slander in lieu of “feedback” and getting used to the hatred of complete strangers, if such a thing can ever become accustomed to. It thus means being surrounded with a political and cultural elite who would like to see you with head bowed and eyes lowered. When you are a writer here, complete strangers might hate you so badly they will wish to see you broken. Consequently, if this labyrinthine house of literature where the ghosts of myriad preceding writers still breathe and freely roam carried a sign at the entrance, it would be a blatant warning that would go like this: THOSE IN NEED OF LOVE AND APPRECIATION NEED STAY AWAY FROM THIS GATE. ACCORDINGLY, THOSE WILLING TO RECEIVE PRIVATE BLOWS AND READY TO SEE PUBLIC HATRED, MIGHT AS WELL KEEP WALKING… 

  This week the Italian paper Corriere della Sera published a list of “writers subject to oppression all around the world.” Four names were chosen from Turkey: Orhan Pamuk, Yasar Kemal, Murathan Mungan and Elif Safak. I, like many readers, learned about this when I opened the mainstream paper Hürriyet, which publicized this news in bold letters. The very next day the editor in chief of Hürriyet wrote a critical article about all four writers in question, asking us to clarify why on earth we had been picked and exactly what kind of oppression we had been subjected to.  

  In the meantime, my publishing house busied itself trying to send a “correction” to the source of the article. After all no Italian journalist had asked my opinion or felt the need to verify this information when writing the article. Facts were not checked and the list was misleading and simplistic at best. Nonetheless, this thorny issue could have ended at this point as far as I was concerned. Alas! It got out of hand. Many in the Turkish media went overboard and made a mountain out of a molehill. Some conservative columnists lost no time in becoming furious. One after another articles were written to goad us writers to “acquit” our names, as if there was a guilt to confess, as if “we had betrayed our nation” and asked the Western media to feel sorry for us. As if we had been involved in an act of espionage...

  Leaving the slander targeted at myself neatly aside and not caring to respond to any of them, there is, however, a fundamental and taxing matter that I would like to probe here. There operates a two-way road, if not a vicious circle between some Western media and some Turkish media. On the one hand, several people in the Western world like to pity non-Western writers and reduce structural problems to a matter of names and heroes. This superficial approach will do us no good. In a world where unfortunately many vehemently believe in the Clash of Civilizations, it is vital to refrain from all sorts of sweeping generalizations. Many a time Western journalists make such generalizations about Turkey without grasping its internal dynamics and multiple layers, without distinguishing the state apparatus and the civil society. A crucial distinction indeed. On the other hand, and just as shoddily, some in my country act as if any Turkish intellectual who criticizes the Turkish state, especially when talking to Westerners, is a potential traitor. You can say anything you like as long as you are among the family but you better keep quiet vis-à-vis outsiders. Both approaches are equally problematic in my eyes.

  One thing is crystal clear. This list should not have been concocted, not like this. In Turkey there are countless journalists, humorists, writers, editors, artists, publishers who have gotten in trouble numerous times or might easily end up there. This is a wider problem. It is a structural problem. It is not a matter of this or that particular name. The Western media needs to recognize this complexity. And yet at the same time, no one in Turkey should be so intrepid so as to deny that so many writers, particularly the great author Yasar Kemal paid a high price all throughout his life for his critical opinion and voice. To forget that so easily, to indulge in such collective amnesia is frightening.

  And for those who want to see writers as victims, Angelou s poem incorporates an answer: “Does my haughtiness offend you? Don t you take it awful hard. Cause I laugh like I ve got gold mines. Diggin in my own back yard…”