TRANSCRIPT: ELIF SHAFAK: ON BEING TRIED IN TURKEY FOR DENIGRATING TURKISHNESS
WHYY.
FRESH AIR
SHOW: Fresh Air 12:00 PM EST NPR
February 6, 2007 Tuesday
Elif Shafak, author of "The Bastard of Istanbul," on being tried in
Turkey for denigrating Turkishness, her fascination with language,
and women’s roles in Turkey
ANCHORS: TERRY GROSS
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross.
My guest, Elif Shafak, faced three years in prison for comments made
by characters in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul," which has just
been published in the US. Shafak is from Turkey, where Article 301 of
the penal code makes it illegal to insult Turkishness, and for those
Turks behind this law, one of the most egregious ways of insulting
Turkishness is to use the word "genocide" when describing the mass
killings and deportations of Armenians by Ottoman Turks beginning in
1915. Shafak has acknowledged that her novel tackles a political taboo,
quote, "what we in Turkey call the Armenian question," unquote. One
of the characters in Shafak’s novel uses the word genocide.
"The Bastard of Istanbul" tells the story of two families, a Turkish
Muslim family in Istanbul and an Armenian-American family in San
Francisco. Shafak says the novel is about the tension between the
need to examine the past and the desire to erase it. Shafak was
acquitted of violating Article 301, but a journalist who described
himself as an Armenian from Turkey was found guilty. That journalist,
Hrant Dink, was assassinated last month. Now many Turkish writers
and intellectuals, including Elif Shafak and the Nobel Laureate Orhan
Pamuk, find their safety threatened. It’s unsafe for some of them to
publicly discuss what happened to the Armenians in 1915. I spoke with
Elif Shafak yesterday.
Elif Shafak, welcome to FRESH AIR. What was the significance in Turkey
of the murder of Hrant Dink?
Ms. ELIF SHAFAK: I think the best way to understand that is to look
at Hrant’s funeral. It brought people of all sorts of ideological
backgrounds, people of all walks of life, ethnicities, religions,
were there, and it was a very poignant, moving experience. Everyone
was chanting, `We’re all Hrant. We’re all Armenian," and Christians
and Muslims buried him together.
GROSS: What was he tried for before he was assassinated?
Ms. SHAFAK: He was tried several times for insulting Turkishness. He
was an outspoken critic of lots of things, but basically he was someone
who wanted to bridge the gap between Armenians and Turks. I think he
wanted to be a bridge, and he believed that these two communities
had much more in common that they wanted to recognize because of
politics. And he very much believed in the need to empathize with
the others.
GROSS: What does this mean for other Turkish intellectuals and writers
and journalists who are independent thinkers?
Ms. SHAFAK: Well, I think in Turkey, ever since the late Ottoman
era, intellectuals, intelligentsia has played a very fundamental
role in terms of triggering social transformation. This is the case
right now. It was the case in the past but of course after Hrant’s
assassination, everybody is very nervous and lots of–I mean,
not lots of, but several writers and intellectuals have been given
police protection. Right now everything is quite tense, and we–the
investigation is still going on. It’s still too early to talk about,
but the government’s taking the investigation very seriously and,
hopefully, everyone who is culpable will be brought to trial because
of this.
GROSS: Would you describe Article 301, which is the law that Hrant
Dink was tried under and you were tried under?
Ms. SHAFAK: It’s quite ironic, actually, because Article 301 was
part of the reforms process. I mean, it was introduced as a positive
step, as a progressive step, in terms of bringing the country to
EU standards. And when compared with the older articles that were a
stumbling block in front of freedom of expression, it was in itself
a step forwards. Nevertheless, the problem with Article 301 is that
it’s quite vaguely formulated. What does it mean to insult Turkishness?
GROSS: Right. It prohibits public denigration of Turkishness. What…
Ms. SHAFAK: Right.
GROSS: What does that mean?
Ms. SHAFAK: Right. But what exactly that means, I mean, nobody’s
quite sure of, and that’s where the problem lies because it’s so
vaguely formulated. It is open to interpretations and therefore
misinterpretations. So that’s the problem with the article. But
in addition to that, what some civil groups within civil society,
groups with more ultranationalistic tendencies, have exploited this
article in order to silence critical minds, in order to bring critical
minded people to court. So the article is open to exploitation. And
that was the biggest problem with it.
GROSS: You were the first person charged with violating Article 301
because of a work of fiction.
Ms. SHAFAK: Right.
GROSS: What were the parts of your novel that came into question,
you know, that were accused of insulting Turkishness?
Ms. SHAFAK: I mean, my case was a bit surreal. Until today, Article 301
has been used to bring various people, various journalists, editors,
publishers, even translators, to court for denigrating Turkishness. So
in that regard, my case was yet another one. But in another sense,
it was quite unusual because, as you said, this time it was a work of
fiction and, more precisely, the words of fictional characters that
were seen as a problem. Basically, some of the Armenian characters in
my novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" say negative things about Turks
or the history of Turks and Armenians, so those words were singled
out and used as evidence that I was denigrating Turkishness, and that
was quite surreal.
GROSS: And let’s talk about some of the things those characters said.
Ms. SHAFAK: There are some Turkish characters in the book who have a
negative opinion of Armenians, and there are some Armenian characters
in the book that have a negative opinion on Turks that the book, the
novel, is composed of multiple characters, you know. There are many
different characters. One of them, for instance…(unintelligible)…at
some point talks about the 1915 events, massacres and deportation of
Armenians, so that paragraph has been cut out and used has evidence.
Let me give you another example. At the beginning of the book,
there’s a very vivid character called…(unintelligible)…Zehila
and she’s walking on the streets of Istanbul. She’s very angry, you
know, furious, and she’s swearing at the rain, at God, at everything,
including the Ottoman dynasty for once upon conquering Istanbul and
then sticking to the mistake.
So that paragraph has a certain, you know, level of humor in it,
but the whole paragraph has been singled out, and I was accused of
denigrating, belittling our ancestry. So it wasn’t only the Armenian
characters in the book, but each time a character said something
negative about our past, that was singled out and cut and used as
evidence.
GROSS: Now, the prosecutor in your trial said he saw no grounds for
indictment, but a judge reversed that and you were indicted and tried
anyways. And how did you finally get off?
Ms. SHAFAK: Well, we went through several stages. At first, there was
an interrogation and that was dropped, and we were happy. I mean, I
thought I was off the hook, to tell the truth, because the prosecutor
concluded, you know, there was no ground for that. But what happened
was, this ultranationalist group of lawyers, they took the case to
an upper court and somehow the upper court reversed the decision of
the lower court, and the trial was automatically initiated and that
was quite unexpected, frankly. It was a legal twist that I wasn’t
expecting.
GROSS: And were the charges finally dropped?
Ms. SHAFAK: They were. I was acquitted at the first hearing.
GROSS: Now you didn’t go to the trial because you were about to,
or had just delivered your baby.
Ms. SHAFAK: I had just delivered my baby, yeah. I was at the hospital
still.
GROSS: That must have made it even more surreal.
Ms. SHAFAK: It was. And I remember at some point, you know, I was in
the hospital room and I was watching TV, the case was all over Turkish
media on the Turkish channels, so I was watching a group of protestors
burning my picture on the street, and on the one hand, you see such
violence, such hatred; and on the other hand, you’re in this hospital
and babies are born every minute, you know. There’s optimism, there’s
hope, there’s faith. The dark side of life, the bright side of life,
you know, it’s always side by side. That was quite surreal. I mean,
the whole experience was very, very surreal.
GROSS: Now, the group behind these trials is called the Unity of
Jurists.
Ms. SHAFAK: Right.
GROSS: It’s an ultranationalist group.
Ms. SHAFAK: Right.
GROSS: What do they stand for?
Ms. SHAFAK: What makes me sad is they’re a very small, you know,
limited number of people but sometimes, especially people in the West,
think that they compose–they represent the whole Turkish society, or
the majority of Turkish society. I don’t think that’s the case at all.
Let me tell you my experience. This novel came out on the 8th of
March, the International Women’s Day, because it’s a book in which
women played a very, very, you know, fundamental role. And ever since
the day it came out, it became a best seller in Turkey, it was read,
circulated, and discussed freely. It sold more than 120,000 copies
to this day, and I had a tremendous positive feedback from very
different segments of Turkish society. So my general experience with
the readership in Turkey has been quite positive.
But then, after three or four months, like a backlash coming, this
group sued me and, because of that, I was interrogated and brought to
trial. But what I’m trying to say is Turkish society is composed of
different voices. And this group is only one among many voices. They
do not represent the majority of the society.
And, frankly, my opinion is they are targeting intellectuals and
writers precisely because they want to stop the EU process. They
have made it very clear that they’re against Turkey’s EU membership
and they would like to see the country as a more insular place,
a more xenophobic, you know, nation state, a closed society. That’s
what they would like to see happening, so I think we’re not the real
targets there. The real target is Turkey’s EU membership.
GROSS: One of the real controversies, and something that’s gotten
several people into trouble, including yourself, in Turkey, is the
question of whether, in 1915, Armenians were killed by Turks in which
has often been described as a genocide. And what’s–you know, there are
many Turks now who deny that that happened, and so the whole question
of history is at stake here, and the meaning of history for Turks and
Armenians is one of the subjects of your book. Can you talk a little
bit about how you see Turks and Armenians having a different sense
of history during that period? Or a different sense of the importance
of remembering history.
Ms. SHAFAK: Right. When I set to write this novel, I did not want to
deal with macro questions. You know, that wasn’t my starting point.
My starting point, you know, was the very simple fundamental duality
between memory and amnesia, and I think that’s an important duality
for individuals, as well as for collectivities for societies. It
intrigues me to see how Armenians, especially the Armenians in the
diaspora, how they tend to be past-oriented, memory-oriented.
Whereas, when you look at the Turks in Turkey, that’s not the case
at all. We are more future-oriented. And in some ways, we are a
society of collective amnesiacs. So it’s not only 1915 that we are
unable to talk about but the whole past. For many people in Turkey,
history starts in 1923, the day the Republic was established. That
is the beginning, and anything that might have happened before then
is of no real interest. I mean, people have lost their connection,
their sense of continuity with the past.
GROSS: Why did you want to go there, you know, to go to what is
perhaps the most controversial question in Turkey and deal with it
in your novel and deal with characters who are facing it?
Ms. SHAFAK: As I said, my starting point was this duality between
memory and amnesia and, basically, I was dealing with one simple,
fundamental question. If the past is gloomy, is it better to know more
about it or is it, you know, preferable to know less about it and to
let bygones be bygone and be more future-oriented. I think that’s a
very central question not only for, you know, societies, but also for
individuals. And maybe my own childhood was my inspiration because
my childhood was a bit gloomy, too, and that was a question I asked
myself, you know: Is it better to probe it, to know more about it,
or shall I see the past as a completely different country and be
more future-oriented.
GROSS: My guest is Turkish novelist Elif Shafak. Her novel "The
Bastard of Istanbul" has just been published in the US. We’ll talk
more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Announcements)
GROSS: My guest is Turkish novelist Elif Shafak. Her new novel,
"The Bastard of Istanbul," was a best seller in Turkey, but it was
also accused of insulting Turkishness, which is a crime under Article
301 of the penal code. She was tried and acquitted.
Your new novel "The Bastard of Istanbul," among other things, deals
with out-of-wedlock sex and abortion. Now, in writing about female
sexuality in a secular-but-predominantly-Muslim country, what were
some of the issues that you faced? I mean, for instance, in an essay,
you asked the question, `How could a Turkish woman novelist approach
eroticism and sexuality in her writing?’ I mean, how did you answer
that for yourself?
Ms. SHAFAK: I think the Turkish case is quite unusual, and it’s very
interesting because we have a tradition of state feminism. And this
sounds like an oxymoron, but this is precisely what happened in my
country. With the establishment of the new Turkish nation state,
creating a new Turkish woman became one of the biggest ideals, one
of the biggest goals of the reformist Kemalist ideology, and they
introduced lots of legal reforms to accomplish that. On the one hand,
it was great because more and more women were able to enter into the
public space and to be visible in professions like lawyers, doctors,
you know, you name it. But on the other hand, women’s visibility in
the public space was possible when they defemininized themselves,
and I think that’s very important. And in addition to that, the state
was above everything, so, I mean, it was a feminism introduced by
the state and controlled by the state.
To this day, when women are talking about those reforms, they say,
for instance, `Ataturk gave us our rights.’ Or, `The early reformists
gave us our rights.’ Now when you say, `The state gave me my rights,’
that’s something else than saying, you know, `We women earned our
rights by an independent women’s movement.’ It’s a big difference
because in the former, you are grateful to the state, and when you’re
grateful, you can’t question it anymore. I think what we need is an
independent women’s movement in Turkey.
GROSS: So do you think that women ended up having to publicly
desexualize themselves…
Ms. SHAFAK: Right.
GROSS: …in order to have the freedoms?
Ms. SHAFAK: Right. And in time, this created a tradition. Even today
in the intelligentsia, I can see this pattern repeating itself over
and over again. The best way to ensure that a women is respected by
her brains rather than, you know, by her work, is for her to age
as quickly as possible. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in
non-Western societies or in societies like Turkey, women age very
quickly, especially, you know, women who want to prove themselves
with their work, because when you’re old in the eyes of the society,
that’s OK, then you have no connection with femininity, with sexuality
any more. And people respect you more. So to become old in the eyes
of the society is safe ground, but when you’re young and when you’re
a woman, that’s not a good combination in the eyes of the society.
What I have observed is, women intellectuals, women writers, have
developed different strategies to deal with this patriarchal pattern.
They either try to age themselves very quickly or they try to
defeminize themselves, and I think these are different strategies to
cope with the same problem.
GROSS: What was your strategy?
Ms. SHAFAK: Well, I try not to do either, you know. I try to follow
a different path, which I see as the Sufi path because, you see,
although sexuality is repressed, at the same time, we also have, in
the Middle East, in the Islamic tradition, a very rich literature in
which sexuality and pleasure and delight is venerated, is praised,
and there’s a huge literature, you know, a big history behind that.
So my path, my strategy, has been to dig into that literature and
to bring back those roots in which delight and body and sexuality
and especially love has been praised and emphasized. I like that
literature. I like that tradition very much and I think it’s time to
remember it.
GROSS: Elif Shafak is the author of "The Bastard of Istanbul," which
has just been published in the US. She’ll be back in the second half
of the show.
I’m Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.
(Announcements)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross, back with Elif Shafak. Her
latest novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul," was a best seller in Turkey,
but it also led to charges that she denigrated Turkishness, which
is a crime under Article 301 of the penal code. She was tried and
acquitted. The charges came from tackling a subject which she describes
as a political taboo in Turkey: the mass killings and deportations
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915, which is described
by many journalists and historians as genocide. Shafak’s novel also
deals with sexuality, abortion, and pregnancy out of wedlock.
You’ve written that you had two grandmothers, one who believed in
the religion of fear, the other the religion of love. What were
their differences between how they approached life and how they
approached love?
Ms. SHAFAK: Right. You know, my point is, sometimes Islam is seen as
a monolithic whole in the West, as if it is composed of one single
interpretation, or as if it were something static. That’s not the
case at all. There are different interpretations of Islam. There
always have been, and I have experienced this, you know, firsthand
in my childhood. There was a time when I grew up with two different
grandmothers. The mother of my father was a woman whose interpretation
of Islam was much more based on the element of fear, so her god was
like an omnipresent celestial gaze always watching you from above
and writing down your sins, and I learned to be afraid of Allah from
her. It was the Gelal side of God, a more masculine God.
But when I came to this other grandmother, her world–her
interpretation was quite different. It was a world full of
superstitions. You know, you could always negotiate. It was more
fluid. You could always flow, and it was based on love, not fear. At
the first glance, these two women belonged to the same age group,
they are coming from the same society, from the same culture, both
are Muslim, but their interpretation was completely different. And
I think the difference between a more orthodox interpretation of
Islam and the more heterodox or Sufi-based interpretation of Islam,
is very much alive today as it was in the past.
GROSS: Well, you’ve described yourself as attached to Islamic as well
as Jewish and Christian mysticism. What do you mean by that?
Ms. SHAFAK: Well, if you’re interested in mysticism, it means you’re
always traveling in the–you’re trying to transcend the boundaries
between religions because the Sufi’s someone who is after the essence
of religion, not the outside appearance, but the inside, to the very
essence. And when you’re after that essence, there’s very little
difference between religions. I’m very interested in Sufi thought,
in Islamic mysticism, that tries to look at the inner meaning, not
the outside appearances.
GROSS: You wrote your new novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" in English,
and you’ve described the Turkish language as having been purged when
the modern Turkish state was created. Are there aspects of the Turkish
language, the way it’s spoken now, that you find to be inhibiting or
not quite what you need to express what you want to say?
Ms. SHAFAK: I wrote my first five novels in Turkish, but in a
Turkish which is replete with old words, Ottoman words, expressions,
and especially Sufi words. And that was a surprise for many people
because they were saying, you know, `If you’re not older than, you
know, 60 years or if you’re not a conservative person, this is not
the language you should be speaking.’
In Turkey, what we did was to Turkify the language to get rid of words
coming from Arabic origin or from Persian origin, and I think, in time,
our vocabulary shrunk and when our vocabulary shrunk, our imaginations
shrunk rapidly. When we lost the words, we lost the meanings, the
cultural heritage that they carried with them so we didn’t only lose
the letters, we lost–you know, there’s a huge cultural loss there and
I’ve always been very critical of this. I think when we’re learning a
new language, like when you’re learning French or German or English,
you spend more time, more energy, money for that. But you see your
own language, your mother tongue, as a given, and you don’t spend
any energy for that.
So my approach has been just the opposite, and that’s maybe because
I had to spend part of my childhood abroad so I could never take my
language for granted. And every time I came back to Turkey I had to
spend more time for it, and I had to realize that language was not a
static thing, you know. You might lose your language. That fear of
losing my mother tongue made me more sensitive to this question in
time, and I’ve started to study dictionaries, Ottoman dictionaries.
So, today, my Turkish is very rich, precisely because I feared losing
my Turkish as a child.
GROSS: So when the Turkish state was created in 1923, certain Ottoman
words were purged from the language, you say, and you’ve been trying
to recapture some of those words. Can you give us an example of a
word or a phrase that you think is really rich that you’ve used even
though it was basically written out of the language after 1923?
Ms. SHAFAK: Well, one, you know, very crucial example for me is colors
and hues. In modern day Turkish and can, let’s say, use 10 different
words for colors, but we have lost the shades in between because most
of those shades, I mean the names for the shades and hues in between,
let’s say between yellow and red, were coming from Persian origin. By
taking out those words, you’re losing the shades.
What I’m trying to say is we lost the nuances of the language, and I’ve
been very critical of that. But basically, people used to criticize me
for, you know, my passion for Ottoman words and then they criticized
me more when I started writing in English because they saw it as a
cultural betrayal. The thing is, language is a very politicized theme
in Turkey. Culture is a very politicized arena in Turkey.
But basically, although these two things might look very, you know,
disconnected, for me they’re very much related, because at the root
of everything lies my passion and my love for language. Language,
for me, is not a tool. It’s not an instrument. I don’t think I’m a
writer who uses language. I breathe inside language, I write with
and within language. So it is the labyrinth of language that makes
it possible for me to imagine to write. That’s crucial for me. I’m in
love with the letters, like a Jewish or Muslim mystic is in love with
letters, with the meaning, with the miracle behind letters. That’s
a fascinating experience for me.
And to this day, I think, I do not have to make a choice between
English and Turkish. There are certain things I’d rather write in
Turkish, especially…(unintelligible)…I find it easier to express
in Turkish, but maybe certain other things I’d rather write in English
because English is the language of precision. If you’re looking for
the precise word, it’s out there, the vocabulary is immense. It’s
amazing. It’s a more mathematical language for me. So depending on
the theme, depending on the story, I might choose to write it either
in Turkish or in English.
GROSS: You said that you can’t write anything with an ironic tone in
Turkish, that that would be hard for you to do. You turn to English
if you want to say something ironic.
Ms. SHAFAK: Right. Because–it’s a bit difficult to talk about this,
but the tradition of irony–I mean, we have a very solid tradition
of black humor, but black humor is not irony. Black humor has a very
specific target. Or, we have a very solid tradition of political humor,
but other than that, irony, making fun of yourself, not only of the
world outside, this carnivalesque tradition in which the writer turns
herself, the whole world upside down, that’s more difficult to do in
contemporary Turkish. I find that easier to do in English.
But basically, for me, and I think people who are, you know, grown up
bilingual, or who have been traveling, commuting between different
cultures, might agree with me. Every language brings you a new
zone of freedom, a new zone of expression. It’s a very existential
journey. It’s not only a linguistic journey. I have, for instance,
met various middle class or upper class Turkish women who can never
swear in Turkish because of the way they have been raised. You know,
they always need to behave like good women in Turkish, but when
they’re speaking English, they can swear freely because it’s OK to
swear English. Every language gives you a new zone, and I find that
experience, that discovery fascinating.
GROSS: You faced trial in Turkey because of things that you said in
your new novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul." An Armenian journalist in
Turkey was killed by somebody who objected to things that he wrote,
and now there are many Turkish intellectuals and writers who are
facing related threats. When you decided to become a writer, did you
think that bravery was going to be one of the credentials that you’d
need to be a novelist? Courage?
Ms. SHAFAK: No, I didn’t think–that never occurred to me. And you
know, when I look at myself, I am not a brave person at all. Just the
opposite. I’m a person who has lots of anxieties, lots of fears. But
the thing is, I think I’m curious. I just like to ask questions. When
somebody says, you know, `Don’t transcend this frontier, this is
a mental frontier,’ I’m curious about what’s beyond that mental
frontier. So curiosity’s my guide, not courage.
GROSS: Well, do you feel like you’re becoming a courageous person
even though you don’t think of yourself as being that way?
Ms. SHAFAK: No. I really don’t see myself as a courageous person. The
only thing I can tell is, when I’m writing fiction, my personality
changes, you know. It is as if you’re using a different part of your
brain, because when I’m writing, I’m following a story. I’m just
following the footsteps of the characters as they shape themselves.
So it’s a completely different psyche. It’s very different than who I
am in my daily life. When the book is over, when the novel is over,
I’m a more anxious, more timid person. I wish I could always be the
person I am while I’m writing.
GROSS: Well, I wish you the best and I thank you for very much for
talking with us.
Ms. SHAFAK: Thank you for having me.
GROSS: Elif Shafak’s novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" has just been
published in the US. She divides her time between Istanbul and Tucson,
Arizona, where she’s an assistant professor of near-Eastern Studies
at the University of Arizona.
Coming up, we talk about the experience of illness.
This is FRESH AIR.