A STORYTELLER’S QUEST
by Khatchig Mouradian
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March 14, 2006
A Great Turkish Author
“Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers, filling the world with
flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today”
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of
the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see
today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What
was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians,
Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized
through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples
that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently
allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face
its past and recognize the “mosaic of flowers” that Anatolia once
was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the
changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one
of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation
of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey
today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
“I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in
Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting
world of superstitions, my grandmother’s almost magical cosmos,
my mother’s humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people,”
Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. “At the same time
I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state
structure and army,” she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the
laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic
and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy
and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on
schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published
novels. “I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very
old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The
other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second
tide that I feel connected to,” she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with
her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to
her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
“The nationalist discourse in Turkey– just like the Republicans in the
USA– is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like
your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something
you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about
Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country,” she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence
in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything
but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way
in the last few years. “There are very important changes underway
in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white
than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey’s civil society
is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades
there have been fundamental transformations,” she says.
“The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to
preserve the status quo,” she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb
says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union
(EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent,
which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who
have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum
of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment,
and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in
time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU.
Shafak herself believes that Turkey’s bid to join the EU “is an
important process for progressive forces both within and outside the
country”. She adds: “Definitely the whole process will reinforce
democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the
role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of
the military in the political arena.”
Dealing with the Turkish Society’s ‘Underbelly’
“For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy
and human rights,” says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish
government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian
population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest
of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide
scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish
government’s official stand maintains that the Armenians were not
subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more
than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were,
the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife
or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman
Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography
in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these
“unfortunate events” is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against
this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. “If we had been able
to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia,
it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit
atrocities against the Kurds,” she argues.
“A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy,” she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well
that harassment and threats were inevitable? “I am a storyteller. If I
cannot “feel” other people’s pain and grief, I better quit what I am
doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always
felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather
than those at the center”, she notes. “This is the pattern in each
and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society’s underbelly.”
Her upcoming novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul”, is no exception. The
Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in
Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released
in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. “The novel
is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish
society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At
some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman
and, thereby, an Armenian-American family.
I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul
as mirrors,” she explains. “Basically, the novel testifies to the
struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at
the individual and collective level,” she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian
genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known
for the better part of the past century. It is “a Turkey that is
part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of
“family honor”, a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination,
no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic,
homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably
as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty.”
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she
envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance
emerge victorious over denial.
Khatchig Mouradian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer and journalist.