FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR: ORHAN PAMUK DENOUNCES TURKISH OPPRESSION
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk
October 15 2008 09.49
UK
BST Article historyNobel prize-winner Orhan Pamuk, tried in 2005 under
Turkish law for criticising the state, used his opening address at
the Frankfurt Book Fair to decry the "oppression" of Turkey’s writers.
Speaking alongside Turkish president Abdullah Gul, Pamuk deplored how
"a century of banning and burning books, of throwing writers into
prison or killing them or branding them as traitors and sending them
into exile, and continuously denigrating them in the press" has made
Turkish literature poorer.
Turkey is the country of honour at this week’s Frankfurt Book Fair,
and hundreds of Turkish writers and publishers have descended on the
city to celebrate "Turkey in all its colours".
In August 2005, Pamuk was charged with "public denigration of Turkish
identity" under Article 301 of the penal code after he said in an
interview with a Swiss newspaper that "30,000 Kurds and a million
Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk
about it".
The case against him was subsequently dropped, and Article 301 was
amended earlier this year, but Pamuk said yesterday afternoon in
Frankfurt that "the state’s habit of penalising writers and their
books is still very much alive; Article 301 of the Turkish penal code
continues to be used to silence and suppress many other writers,
in the same way it was used against me; there are at this moment
hundreds of writers and journalists being prosecuted and found guilty
under this article."
Turkish authors who have been tried under Article 301 include
novelist Elif Shafak over a remark by a fictional character in her
novel The Bastard of Istanbul referring to the Armenian massacre
as genocide, and writer and journalist Perihan Magden, who said in
her weekly magazine column that Turkey needed an alternative to
compulsory military conscription. Both were acquitted. Publisher
Ragip Zarakolu was convicted in June this year of having "insulted
the Turkish republic" after publishing The Truth Will Set Us Free,
which acknowledges the Armenian genocide.
Pamuk called on the Turkish writers and publishers present at the
fair, including Magden and Shafak as well as Aslı Erdogan and Sebnem
Isiguzel, to "speak openly about [their] experiences over the past
century".
"Since they have come to Frankfurt to let the whole world hear their
voices, it follows that we can shake off just a bit of our gloom about
no one understanding us," he said, referring to his depression when
starting out as a novelist over the lack of interest or understanding
in Turkish writing in the west. "Are we going to convince ourselves
that our own culture and identity is unique, and then shut ourselves
away, or are we going to value the richness of our cultural traditions
and our own uniqueness while giving equal value to free expression?" he
asked.
Pamuk said that while he was working on his novel Museum of Innocence,
published earlier this year in Turkish, he needed to research old
Turkish films and songs. He did this easily enough on YouTube, but
after the site was banned in Turkey in 2007, he would no longer be
able to do so.
"YouTube, like many other domestic and international websites,
has been blocked for residents of Turkey for political reasons,"
Pamuk said. "Those in whom the power of the state resides may take
satisfaction from all these repressive measures, but we writers,
publishers, artists feel differently, as do all other creators of
Turkish culture and indeed everyone who takes an interest in it:
oppression of this order does not reflect our ideas on the proper
promotion of Turkish culture."
But Pamuk said that despite the obstacles Turkish writers and
publishers face, they have not let their spirits flag. "Over the past
15 years, Turkish publishing has expanded at an astonishing rate;
there are more books being published in Turkey than ever before,
and in my view, Istanbul’s vibrant book trade at last represents its
rich and layered history," he said.
"When young writers coming from Turkey to Frankfurt see how large
the world publishing industry is, I can well imagine that they will
feel as empty and useless as I did. But when Turkey’s young writers
turn in on themselves to find the inner voices that will turn them
into interesting writers, they will no longer need to succumb to
dark thoughts like, ‘No one would be interested in a Turkish writer
anyway.’ May the Frankfurt Book Fair bring hope and happiness to
us all."
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