New Zealand Herald, New Zealand
Aug 11 2007
Novel tilt at Turkish society
Saturday August 11, 2007
By John Freeman
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’ Star Wars films.
That phrase has a new twist in Turkey, where, according to
35-year-old writer Elif Shafak, a new generation of writers 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," says Shafak, when we
meet in a New York hotel. "Maybe in that regard we are closer to the
Russian tradition than 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. 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 best-seller 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 Empires deportation
and massacre of Armenians during World War I."
While Shafak was acquitted, others were not so lucky. In January, 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 debate on literature and art is very much politicised," she
says, her voice revealing palpable anguish, "sometimes very much
polarised. I think my work attracted it because I combined elements
people like to see separate."
She is referring to sex and religion, faith and scepticism, and all
these elements come together in The Bastard of Istanbul. 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 Istanbul, it is a lively book, with 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 to any other Muslim country with regard to
the freedoms women exercise," says Shafak. "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’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 politicised, even the types of words she uses.
"Turkish as we speak today is very centralised. 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 along the way 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 Koran, in the Holy Book,
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. I
do have roots, they are 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 the classes. There’s not that kind of mobility – east and
west, north and south – that you have in the States."
And yet, the city remains a source of endless inspiration for her.
For all her frustrations with it, the city also remains her home. It
is where 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 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 is 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 go back."
– John Freeman is president of the American National Book Critics
Circle.