The Star, Toronto
Feb 9 2007
Literature defies politics
Elif Shafak makes no apologies for provocative novel sparking strong
emotions in Turkey
Feb 09, 2007 04:30 AM
John Freeman
Special to the Star
NEW YORK-Salman Rushdie once noted that societies which emerged from
colonial rule in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s became hotbeds for literary
invention.
"The Empire Writes Back," he called the phenomenon, punning on George
Lucas’s Star Wars film.
That phrase is getting a new twist in Turkey, where according to
35-year-old writer Elif Shafak, a new generation of Turks is using
the novel – a form that came to them from the West – to reimagine
their society from within.
"Novelists have played a very, very critical role as the engineers of
social and cultural transformation in Turkey," Shafak says, sitting
in an empty hotel ballroom in New York City. "Maybe in that regard we
are closer to the Russian tradition then the western tradition."
The debate over what these novels say about Turkish society, and how
they say it, lurched to the forefront of life in Istanbul in recent
years, as the Turkish government began prosecuting writers for
"offending Turkishness."
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and several dozen other writers were tried
under this code of Turkish law. Last winter, Shafak, too, was put on
trial because of passages from her new novel, The Bastard of
Istanbul, which referenced the long fallout of what many call the
Armenian Genocide, when up to one million Armenians were forcibly
removed from Turkey and killed.
The book has become a bestseller in Turkey, selling more than 60,000
copies, but not without fallout for Shafak. Writing in The Washington
Post, Shafak explained how critics within Turkey claimed she "had
taken the Armenians’ side by having an Armenian character call the
Turks `butchers’ in a reference to the Ottoman Empire’s deportation
and massacre of Armenians during World War I."
While Shafak was acquitted, others have not been so lucky. On Jan.
19, her "dear friend," journalist Hrant Dink, the Armenian
editor-in-chief of a Turkish newspaper, was murdered on a street in
Istanbul, allegedly by an ultra-nationalist teenager. The
reverberations of this event are still etched on Shafak’s face.
"The debate on literature and art is very much politicized," she
says, her voice revealing palpable anguish, "sometimes very much
polarized. I think my work attracted it because I combined elements
people like to see separate."
Shafak is referring to sex and religion, faith and skepticism, and
all these elements come together in The Bastard of Istanbul, which
was recently published in Canada. The novel tells the story of two
families – one Turkish Muslim, the other Armenian – who discover they
are united by a shared secret.
Set mostly in Instanbul, it is a lively book, full of powerful,
talkative women, who are full of superstitions, folk tales, vengeful
schemes and codes of behaviour they resent and subscribe to at the
same time.
"Turkey is incomparable with any other Muslim country with regard to
the freedoms women exercise," Shafak says,
"But we have a tradition of state feminism. To this day, when we talk
about women’s rights, we say Ataturk gave us our rights," she says,
referring to the republic of Turkey’s first president. "And that
tells us a lot. What we need is an independent women’s movement."
In some people’s eyes, Shafak is a walking contradiction: a radical
feminist Muslim Turk who writes about sex and slang; a leftist on
some issues who believes in the power of religion. Every point of her
identity is politicized, even the types of words she uses.
"Turkish as we speak today is very centralized. We took out words
coming from Arabic origin, Persian origin and Sufi heritage. And I
think in doing so we lost the nuances of the language."
Born in France, Shafak spent her childhood shuttling between Germany,
Jordan and Spain, with stops in between in Turkey.
She earned a graduate degree in international relations and titled
her PhD thesis "An Analysis of Turkish Modernity Through Discourses
in Masculinities."
Since 2003, she has lived in Turkey and travelled to the United
States to teach. She calls herself a commuter, not an immigrant.
"There is a metaphor I like very much in the Qur’an, in the Holy
Book, and it’s about a tree that has its roots up in the air. When my
nationalist critics say you have no roots, you are a so-called Turk.
I say no, but I do have roots: they’re just not rooted in the ground.
They are up in the air."
In popular conception, Istanbul is the great meeting bazaar between
East and West, but Shafak says the city remains uncomfortable in some
ways with that role. "One thing that worries me is that there is no
geographical mobility between classes. There’s not that kind of
geographical mobility – east and west, north and south – that you
have in the States."
And yet, the city remains a source of endless inspiration for Shafak.
For all her frustrations with it, the city also remains her home.
It is where her she is raising her child, where she lives. For her it
is an important test case.
"For anyone, especially after 9/11, who is asking herself how western
democracy and Islam can co-exist side by side, how seemingly opposite
forces can be juxtaposed, for anyone asking these sorts of questions,
Istanbul is a very important case study."
As for how she is going to manage, given the controversy and the real
security issues, she’s up for the challenge.
"My relationship with the city has been like a pendulum. I am deeply
attracted to it, but sometimes suffocated by it.
"So I need to take a step outside of it and then come back."