FROM PUBLIC ENEMY TO TURKEY’S NATIONAL HERO
Independent
Thursday, 16 October 2008
UK
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was persecuted in Turkey. Now he is a
global ambassador for his homeland. Boyd Tonkin meets him
The route that takes an enemy of the state on to the global stage
as a national icon can be as short as the flight from Istanbul to
Frankfurt. This week, Turkey is enjoying its status as "country of
honour" at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair. The programme, backed by
the government in Ankara, began with an address by a writer who knows
that parts of his country’s armed forces once plotted to assassinate
him. Orhan Pamuk may have won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006,
but in that year he also survived a prosecution for "insulting Turkish
identity", under the infamous but now reformed Article 301 of the
penal code, after he spoke abroad about the Armenian massacres of
the First World War.
Pamuk’s role at the head of the 300 writers and 100 publishers who
are showcasing the multi-cultural "colours" of his country’s life and
arts at the book world’s annual marketplace highlights the Turkish
paradox: a country where state and government often pull fiercely in
opposite directions. Pamuk’s swing from ostracised zero to poster-boy
hero is another odd outcome of the stand-off between the elected,
soft-Islamic government and the "deep state" – with its strongholds
in the army and courts.
In recent months, Turkey has been riveted and outraged by revelations
from the so-called "Ergenekon" scandal: the latest evidence of the
army’s chronic itch to meddle in politics and society in order to
protect the secular nationalism of the state founded by Ataturk in
the ruins of the Ottoman empire. As for the justice system, in July
the supreme court avoided by one vote a calamitous decision to ban
the ruling AKP party, which has Islamist roots, for violating the
constitution. Indeed, six judges out of 11 voted to outlaw a movement
that won 47 per cent of the vote and a crushing majority in the 2007
elections – but seven was the majority required.
The Ergenekon exposés and shocks, such as the murder of a Turkish-
Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink in 2007, have given Pamuk and
other free-thinking writers a local boost after years of being treated
as unpatriotic whipping-boys by vindictive courts and their tabloid
allies. "I think the bad times are over for me now," Pamuk told me in
his flat overlooking the Bosphorus in central Istanbul. When his new
novel, The Museum Of Innocence, appeared, he says, "for the first time,
the Turkish media gave me a sweet reception". Now, the culture ministry
has sanctioned a Frankfurt Book Fair pitch celebrating the diversity
of Turkey’s cultural heritage – Kurdish, Jewish, Armenian, gypsy
and Anatolian Muslim. A committee chaired by the radical publisher
Muge Sokmen has shaped the "country of honour" jamboree. For Pamuk,
the AKP government’s long-held desire to join the EU means it knows
it has to put on a pluralist face "in order to be more attractive,
to appear more European".
Pamuk, like many of Istanbul’s most liberal and cosmopolitan
artists, is not as worried as outsiders about how deep the AKP’s
pluralism really runs. For them, the real threat still lurks among
the hard-line secular chauvinists in the army and judiciary who have
for decades banned and jailed authors and journalists. Perihan Magden,
an outspoken popular columnist, thinks readers see her as a "national
bitch" as well as a successful novelist.
She also suffered an Article 301 prosecution in 2005 for defending the
right of a conscientious objector to refuse military service. "I don’t
see a fundamentalist threat in my country," she says. "I don’t think
the AKP has a hidden agenda. They’re not hiding in the closet ready
to jump out at us." Even if they merely follow the old maxim of "my
enemy’s enemy is my friend", Turkey’s frankest authors clearly distrust
behind-the-scenes ultra-secularists more than upfront, vote-chasing
Islamic politicians. "I’m not pro-AKP," adds Magden. "I’d never vote
for them. But as long as they are democratic, I support them."
Elif Shafak, a best-selling novelist indicted and then cleared in court
for the Armenian themes of her novel The Bastard Of Istanbul, recently
joined other writers for lunch with Turkey’s AKP president, Abdullah
Gul. Often treated with suspicion in Europe as a crypto-Islamist,
he is controversial at home as well, not least because his wife
wears that most emotive of Turkish garments, the headscarf. For
Shafak, this dialogue "is symbolic, but in this country, symbols
are important". Her writing aims to build cultural bridges and to
show the gulf between Muslim and non-religious Turkey may not run
as deep as outsiders imagine. In ordinary homes and in the streets,
"They manage to co-exist," she says. "I feel that’s healthy – but
the elite draw the boundaries more clearly. Real life is more fluid."
For Frankfurt organiser Muge Sokmen, whose publishing company Metis
is still "harassed" by cases under Article 301 even after its terms
were tightened up in April, the fair should at last allow observers
to see a hybrid Turkey. Above all, she wants to tell the story of a
people more creatively mixed up than foreign headlines ever admit. "The
outside world presents Turkey as either black or white. Our colours
are never seen". This week, Orhan Pamuk is opening the paintbox.
Dissident Turks: Writers who fell foul of the law
Perihan Magden
A columnist for Rakidal newspaper and Aktuel magazine, Magden, 48, has
published poetry and novels, including The Companion, Messenger Boy
Murders and Two Girls. In 2006, she was prosecuted but acquitted for
defending a conscientious objector who refused military service. Last
year, Magden received a suspended sentence for "defaming" a provincial
governor.
Elif Shafak
The columnist and writer was born to a diplomatic family in 1971 and
has published seven novels, including The Flea Palace and The Bastard
Of Istanbul, whose discussion of Turkish-Armenian history provoked
a court case in 2006 that led to her acquittal on an Article 301
charge. Her new book is a memoir of surviving post-natal depression.
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