INTERVIEW WITH ELIF SHAFAK: "IN TURKEY, A NOVEL IS A PUBLIC STATEMENT"
Interview by: Lewis Gropp
Yemen Times, Yemen
Aug. 24, 2006
Elif Shafak’s latest novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", has been
tremendously well received in Turkey. However, Shafak is now facing
a trial for "denigrating Turkishness" – because of comments made by
one of her characters in the novel.
After having already tried to, unsuccessfully, sue Orhan Pamuk
for "denigrating of Turkishness", Turkey’s prominent and infamous
right-wing lawyer, Kemal Kerinsciz has now filed a lawsuit against
you. In how far are liberal intellectuals in Turkey networked to resist
right-wing, nationalist pressure, how do they support one another?
Elif Shafak: Unfortunately the liberal intellectuals are not as good
at combining forces as the ultranationalists. I liken the Turkish
society to a tapestry of clashing and coexisting forces. The liberal
intellectuals do indeed constitute a weighty force in this context,
but oftentimes they fail to work together.
Unlike the state and the bureaucracy, both the media and the civil
society is multilayered and composed of multiple actors. Thus, these
ultranationalists do not represent the majority of Turkish society.
Their number is small and yet their voices are so loud. There is an
ongoing clash of opinions. On the one hand are the ones who want Turkey
to join the EU, democratize further and become an open society. These
are the ones who support the reforms and question the status quo.
On the other hand are the ones who want to keep Turkey as an insular,
xenophobic, nationalistic, enclosed society. And precisely because
things are changing in the opposite direction, the panic and backlash
produced by the latter group is becoming more visible and audible.
You have stated that the Turkish language has become a battleground.
Is the country in the middle of a "kulturkampf", a cultural struggle,
and if so, what role is the Islamist government playing?
Shafak: Culture was the cement of the "nation-building process"
in Turkey. After 1920s, the homogenization, Turkification and
centralization of culture were at the top of the Kemalist elite’s
political agenda. In order to be able to establish a new state
the reformist elite first and foremost created a new language and
culture. In time Ottoman words were discarded, Sufi words were
taken out.
As for the other side of the coin, both the government and the
conservative forces in the society aim at venerating the Ottoman
past, at the expense of critical thinking. There is a duality: the
modernists Kemalists are future-oriented and pay no attention to the
past and historical continuities. The conservatives, on the other hand,
in the endeavor to value all that was devalued by the reformists, have
made the past unquestionable. Both are reductionists, in my opinion.
Your novels are drawing on a wealth of literary resources, and you
have purposefully employed Ottoman language in them. Would you say
that Ottoman language culture was more pluralist and richer than
today’s Turkish? Has the Kemalist language revolution "flattened"
the linguistic varieties the Ottoman Empire provided?
Shafak: Ottoman language and culture was much more multilingual,
multicultural and multireligious. It was, after all, a multiethnic
empire, widely extended and deeply varied. I am one of the very few
authors who openly criticizes the Turkification of our language. I
use a lot of old words and Sufi concepts in addition to new ones.
That is why my linguistic style has upset many among the Kemalist
elite.
I think in time we became more intolerant and bigoted regarding
"cosmopolitanism". In the late Ottoman era there were for instance
woman writers writing in both Turkish and English and French. That
was considered normal.
Today, I am being extensively criticized for writing fiction in
English. Many see this as a "betrayal", as if I am betraying my
language and therefore my nation.
Ataturk had introduced a rigid nationalism in order to safeguard
Turkey’s political stability with an iron fist policy. At the same
time, he was also a bold reformer who admired Europe for its cultural
achievements and wanted Turkey to profit from them. So does Turkey have
any post-Kemalist intellectuals that promote a moderate nationalism
while, at the same time, rejecting the chauvinist-nationalist
excesses we’re currently witnessing? In other words: in order to be an
intellectual in Turkey today, do you have to be liberal and left-wing?
Shafak: Not necessarily. There are intellectuals left and right,
sometimes collaborating, sometimes clashing head-on. By and large
to be an "intellectual" is an important public role in Turkey. In
this sense we are closer to the French tradition rather than the
British tradition. An intellectual has a public role here. There are,
however, glass barriers when it comes to gender and age. It is not a
coincidence that the intelligentsia is mostly composed of men above
middle age. To be a woman and to be young is a disadvantage.
In a country like Turkey, a novel is first and foremost a public
statement and a novelist is always more than a novelist. In the
interviews I give in Turkey I talk more about politics than aesthetics
or art. In Turkey novelists are public figures. As a result, we have a
writer-oriented literary world rather than writing-oriented. Literary
criticism has remained feeble but the criticism of writers has
soared. We are either loved or hated.
Ironically, it is under the Islamist government of Erdogan that
Turkey that far-reaching social, political, and economic reforms
were introduced. The country has taken major steps towards Europe
within the past few years. How do you think can deep-rooted fears of
identity that were induced by these changes be alleviated?
Shafak: I personally do not label the AKP government "Islamist". I
think we need another concept to define them – either "Muslim
democrats", like Christian democrats, or perhaps "Muslim conservative
party". But "Islamist" can be quite confusing.
It is true that major steps have been taken by this government in
terms of accelerating Turkey’s EU bid. They supported the EU process
more wholeheartedly than the conventional political and military elite
who wanted to keep the status quo intact. At the same time the world
is becoming increasingly polarized.
People on both sides draw cultural frontiers. In such a framework
it is extremely important for Turkey and the EU to prove that yes,
indeed Islam and Western democracy can coexist. It is important to
blur the boundaries that many people dangerously take for granted.
"The Bastard of Istanbul" is the second novel you have written in
English; your first novels were all written in your native tongue. Do
you think the attacks on your book would have been less severe had
you written it in Turkish?
Shafak: It is a whole package. When you choose to write in English,
"the language of imperialism", some people get all the more annoyed
and reactionary. This kind of knee-jerk inflexibility can come from
both leftists and right-wing.
That said, I also would like to add that, although the novel was
difficult to digest for some people, in general, the reception in
the society and media has been very positive. The novel has become
a bestseller and sold more than 50,000 copies and was discussed,
circulated and read freely. I gave numerous readings, talks, book
signings all over Turkey, extending from Y’zmir to Diyarbaky’r. The
feedback I received from people of different walks, extending from
leftists, minorities, Kurds, housewives, mystics, Alevis to headscarved
female students has been very, very positive.
Interestingly, the hate messages that I received mostly came from Turks
living abroad. The Turks living abroad as immigrants can be much more
nationalist and conservative and rigid-minded than the Turks in Turkey.
Your new novel deals with the Armenian tragedy. Do you know of any
other Turkish novel who has explicitly dealt with the issue?
Shafak: There are traces here and there but for decades and decades,
Turkish literature has been startlingly silent in this issue.
How much research have you been doing in preparation for the novel?
Shafak: I wrote this novel while teaching and living in the USA. In
addition to doing my own research, I also collected oral histories,
watched documentaries and interviews, talked to numerous Armenians
in the Diaspora, visited many Armenian homes, and had the chance to
observe both the Turks and the Armenians in the USA.
I am a Turkish writer and wherever I go I will take those cultural
traces with me. And yet at the same time, my writing is nomadic and I
want to surpass national and nationalistic boundaries. The boundaries
of a nation-state do not constitute the boundaries of my imagination.
Where do you think are the limits to freedom of expression? Would
you want to see novels banned that promote, for instance, racial
hatred, terrorism, the superiority of men over women or other silly
and uncivilized ideas?
Shafak: I do not want to see novels being banned for even outrageous
reasons, such as racism. "The written word" should be free to
circulate. Human individuals are not sheep that can be guided as
designed by an invisible hand. Readers should have the right to but
whichever book they want, to read it and then to make their own mind
about it. Oppression only yields to further subjugation.
The novel has originally been written in English, and is to be
published by Viking Press in spring 2007. Why is it taking so long
to get the English version onto the market?
Shafak: The two literary markets operate so differently. The literary
world in Turkey is smaller but more dynamic and flexible. The one in
the USA, though larger and robust, can be confined in other ways.
Yet, on a separate note, the novel being so critical and controversial
for the Turks, I too wanted to have the novel published in Turkey and
Turkish first because it was important to me to see the reaction of
the Turkish readership first.
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