Deutsche Welle, Germany
June 23 2005
Turkish Writer Picks up German Peace Prize
A literary ambassador for Turkey
Turkey’s best-selling novelist Orhan Pamuk has been awarded the
German Book Trade’s Peace Prize, reflecting a growing awareness that
many of the issues preoccupying Turkey these days have a profound
global resonance.
Just one week after demonstrations took place in Berlin against the
German parliament’s resolution in memory of the massacre of Armenians
by Turks in 1915, Germany has awarded one of its most prestigious
cultural prizes to Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, an outspoken critic of
his country’s inability to own up to its often harrowing history.
Born in 1952, Pamuk grew up among Turkey’s secular upper classes.
After spending several years in New York, he was given a mixed
reception when he returned to Istanbul, the city where he was born.
The country’s Islamic intellectuals accused him of exploiting
religious and historical themes to pander to Western tastes. Still,
however progressive and pro-European he may be, his support of
Turkey’s westward development is far from unconditional.
Admirers see his work as a rejection of a recent intellectual
tradition that aspires to be western by ignoring the past. “If you
try to repress memories, something always comes back,” Pamuk once
said in an interview with Time magazine. “I’m what comes back.”
A love-hate relationship
According to the selection board that chose Pamuk, in novels such as
“Snow” (2002), “he follows the historical traces of the West in the
East and of the East in the West in a way no other writer does.”
He enjoys both commercial success and critical acclaim in his home
country. His 1990 novel “Kara Kitap” is widely seen as one of the
most controversial and popular readings in Turkish literature.
But despite his phenomenal popularity, Turkey itself has a love-hate
relationship with Pamuk. Nationalist groups angry at his criticism of
Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish minority want to see his books
removed from public libraries.
And while many welcome the attention he brings Turkey as its literary
ambassador, others envy his international stature. “There is a lot of
jealousy that Orhan Pamuk has been translated into so many
languages,” said one anonymous source in an interview in the
Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Yavus Baydar from the newspaper Sabah has described the award as
“very significant for freedom of speech in Turkey.” He knows what
he’s talking about. Earlier this year, he asked Pamuk to write an
article for Sabah about South Korea. After it was published, he was
bombarded with outraged readers’ mail, accusing him of having given a
voce to a “traitor.”
A relevant writer
The prize jury’s decision continues a tradition of honoring writers
whose works have a topical significance. In 2003, US essayist Susan
Sontag (photo) received the award for her reflections on the fragile
state of post 9/11 trans-Atlantic relations. A year later, the
selection of Hungarian novelist Peter Esterhazy came shortly after
the EU’s eastwards enlargement. In 2005, the choice of Pamuk serves
as a reminder of just how much Turkey and Turkish issues factor into
Germany’s political and cultural debate.
“My novel (“Snow”) is about the inner conflicts of modern Turks,” he
told Die Zeit in April. “It’s about the contradictions between Islam
and modernism and the desire to be integrated into Europe — and the
simultaneous fear.”
In 1998, Ankara wanted to present him with Turkey’s highest cultural
accolade, the title of state artist. He rejected the honor. “For
years I have been criticizing the state for putting authors in jail,
for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its
narrow-minded nationalism,” said Pamuk. “I don’t know why they tried
to give me the prize.”
This time, though, Pamuk will be accepting his award — at the
Frankfurt Book Fair in October.