Elif Shafak: The Turkey critic falls silent
The water glitters indigo blue in the sunlight. Motorboats cruise, ferries over the Bosphorus across to Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul. We are in Bebek, on the European side. This is where the Turkish bourgeoisie lives. Women in business attire, with Prada glasses, laptop and cell phone on the table, are sitting on the terrace of the elegant hotel "Bebek". We have an appointment with Elif Shafak. She is one of the most famous authors in Turkey, her nine novels are bestsellers and many are decorated with prizes.
This could become the portrait of a smart political scientist
However, even her beginning says a lot about the great concern the author seems to master. Shafak is invited to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, this year's host country is Turkey. Shafak's German publisher Eichborn has many requests from German media. The author does not respond to e-mails or calls. After weeks of silence rejects all interview requests, Except for a report for ChroniquesDuVasteMonde, as she tells me in an e-mail. A few days later I receive a call. Elif Shafak has a sympathetic voice. She looks forward to my coming, I could accompany her one day. But I have to promise that in the interview I will not focus on politics.
In my cover letter, I had previously touched on a few topics: her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" and the charges against her for "insulting Turkishness", You have to know that Shafak two years ago broken a political taboo with her bestseller and attracted international attention. The novel is about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Turkey does not recognize the expulsion and extinction of the Armenians 1915/1916 until today.
Writers and publicists are brought before the Kadi, if they dare speak of it. For "insulting and denigrating Turkishness" (Section 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code), around 60 intellectuals were charged, the most famous being Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. International authors (including Günter Grass) and the EU Commission stood up for him. The indictment was dropped.
On the next page: Elif Shafak escaped a possible six-month sentence
A Turkish citizen of the world. Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg in 1971 as the daughter of Turkish diplomats. She lived in Spain, Jordan, Germany and the USA. She is married to Eyüp Can, editor-in-chief of a business newspaper, and lives with her family in Istanbul.
Elif Shafak was also charged in September 2006. Thankfully, she was not convicted and escaped a possible six-month prison sentence. What was new about her case was that the prosecution relied not on statements by the author, but on those of her novel characters. The Armenian-American protagonist is the "grandchild of genocide survivors" and speaks of "Turkish butchers". But Elif Shafak tells in her novel clever and differentiated with many different, mainly female voices, from Turkish and Armenian perspective.
Now she asks on the phone, Politics not at the center put. But does not belong to a portrait of the writer Shafak also "The bastard of Istanbul" as well as the lawsuit? "Okay," she says finally, the policy should not be "disproportionately bloated".
Shortly before the appointment, I receive an SMS in the hotel, the agreed meeting place: Shafak. She is sitting in the "Gloria Jeans Café", just around the corner. Maybe she'll tell us the place just now to make sure nobody else knows about it. Since the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in January 2007, many intellectuals in Istanbul are worried. Dink was a friend of Elif Shafak, I had read her horrified obituary for him. For years, the editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly "Agos" was indicted, and the judges recently sentenced him to six months' imprisonment for an article.
In January 2007, he was shot in the street, from behind. The culprit was a 17-year-old Turk, a boy instigated by nationalist Armenian haters. "Critical writers must even fear for their lives in Turkey," wrote the "mirror" after the assassination. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk hired a bodyguard on the recommendation of friends and the government.
Elif Shafak has no bodyguards. She is waiting for us on the first floor of the café.She is a beautiful woman: big eyes, a sensual mouth, exotic jewelry, a necklace with a turquoise amulet engraved with the seal of a sultan from the Ottoman period. She is petite and narrow, a small belly bulges under her blouse. She expects her second child in August. Her voice is gentle. She is photographed for ChroniquesDuVasteMonde, but only indoor, the café does not want to leave her.
On the next page: On the Internet, the author was called a "puppet of the West"
Is she afraid of being photographed in the street? Elif Shafak looks at me. Her tone is sharp: "How do you feel about it? I love this city, I'm happy here, I've never had problems here, these are the Western media writing such stories that have nothing to do with my reality." I do not remind them now that their perception 20 months ago was very different. Before their trial, nationalists had started a hate campaign.
On the Internet, the author was called a "puppet of the West"All "Turkish patriots" were invited to protest against them in the court. On the street, nationalist demonstrators burned their photo. Shafak said then: "The attacks scare me." Since her trial she answers political questions evasive or meaningless. I apologize for the misunderstanding".
Elif Shafak, 37, is an educated, eloquent and emancipated woman, her husband left her "big room". She is fluent in English and Spanish, the daughter of a single-headed diplomat, she attended the British School in Madrid. Her mother was 21 when she separated from her husband after the birth of her daughter. Shafak says about her father's absence: "I learned to appreciate that I did not have Baba to control me, My mother treated me as an individual from childhood. She was not a typical mother, she could not even cook. "At 18, Elif dropped her paternal surname and chose Shafak, her mother's first name," Dawn. "Her first name Elif is the first letter in the Arabic alphabet, meaning Sufi, the Islamic mystics, "the gateway to the universe".
Shafak calls himself spiritual. In her debut novel "Pinhan" (not yet in German) is a hermaphrodite and Sufi dervish the main character. For the book she received in 1998 the "Rumi", a Turkish prize for transcendental literature. However, with her language Shafak provoked a controversy, Because it consciously draws on Ottoman traditions and uses "old" words from Persian and Arabic sources.
In 1923, when Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey, uniting the various ethnic groups and cultures in the ruined Ottoman Empire, these words were deleted from the lexicon. Shafak's vocabulary is therefore suspect to national-minded modernists, "The modern Turkish state," says Shafak, "came from a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious empire that lasted more than 600 years, and as a writer, I want words to flow from one island to another, from the old Time in the new, so there is continuity, which I consider important for a nation. "
In her new novel "The Bonbon Palace" (translation: Eric Czotscher, 472 pages, 24.95 euros, Eichborn Verlag) tells the story of an Istanbul house and its inhabitants, linking past stories with today's everyday life. The scene is the current intellectual quarter Cihangir, where the author herself lived. "This part of the city," says Shafak, "feels like a boat on which passengers change every twenty years.
If you look at the history of a single street, you'll find something amazing: like the slices of a cake, one layer lies above the other. At the bottom are cemeteries - Muslim and Christian. And among them Byzantine. "Her eyes light when she speaks of Istanbul, the city has a" female character "for her, constantly renewing and reinventing himself. Fascinating were the different cultures that did not collide, but how different streams flowed into a sea.
On the next page: Elif Shafak's multicultural dream
In addition to her most important novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", the following appeared in German: "The Voices of the City", a novel about the coexistence of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, as well as "The Saint of Imminent Insanity" about a Turkish emigrant in the USA.
Elif Shafak's multicultural dream In her controversial novel "The Bastard of Istanbul", she even lives in a single Turkish-Muslim family. Women of four generations live together under one roof and are as different as the streetscape of Istanbul. The main character wears super-slim miniskirts, has a tattoo parlor in the prostitute district, one sister is a believing Muslim woman with a headscarf, the other a feminist blue stocking, the superstitious grandmother protects herself with fetishes against the evil eye.
Differences, opposites under one roof: Turkey, Elif Shafak believes, would be an asset to the European Union, "The polarization between Eastern Islam and Western capitalism does no good to anyone, and we need to lift those boundaries for the European community. Europe needs an Islamic country to better understand and exist in the world. We need to understand that Islam and Western democracy can co-exist and live side by side. "Better than she could have expressed it even a Turkish diplomat.
But for the accession to the EU full freedom of speech in Turkey is an important prerequisite. At the end of April this year, the Turkish parliament approved a new version of the criminal law paragraph: Now no longer the "insult of Turkishness", but only those of the "Turkish nation" punished. "Of course," says Shafak, "this is an improvement." Critics call for the complete removal of the paragraph.
Istanbul human rights lawyer Eren Keskin described in interviews the change as "make-up"whose sole purpose is to please the EU. You do not know Eren Keskin, says Elif Shafak. It's hard to believe that because the warlike Eren Keskin is as famous in Istanbul as the Blue Mosque. There were more than a hundred cases against them. In March, she was sentenced to six months in prison for criticizing the Turkish army. Elif Shafak looks at the clock: "The time is up, I have to go to a doctor's appointment."
Too bad, because we had actually arranged that she shows me this afternoon scenes of her novels ... Again a look at the clock: "The driver of my husband is already waiting for me." Well, I suggest, I accompany her to continue the broken conversation in the car. She fends off first: on the Asian side, where she lives, I would not find a taxi.
Finally, I drive along the narrow, steep streets of Bebek. We cross the Bosphorus and drive on the highway. Shafak evades all other "political" questions. "The Bastard of Istanbul" is "no political book" for her today, But a story about Armenian and Turkish women, about their culture, their memories, about cooking, about folk tales ".
On the next page: Today Elif Shafak is silent
She used to say differently, Therefore, I come once again to the delicate Armenia issue. Why is Turkey denying its history and threatening other countries with diplomatic sanctions when addressing the genocide? Shafak himself has come to the conclusion that there can be a way from denial to recognition, Did not she write that in the 2005 Washington Post? Shafak refers to our "agreement" - no political questions.
The car stops. We are standing in front of a blue-and-white building. Ikea! While I wonder if the author might want to pick up a piece of furniture, she explains to me: "Here we can easily find a taxi that will take you back to the European side." Maybe my questions are so uncomfortable that she'll drop me off here.
Later she calls me. She apologizes that I should have taken a taxi. And she asks me to understand her silenceAlso, where it relates to articles that she herself has written; already published articles that can be found in archives with little effort. But the Turkish press, she says, is watching the German media and will pick up on her statements back then. "I went through hell," she says, referring to the indictment and campaign against her. "I do not want to experience that again." She would soon become a mother and would like to have her child in peace. This talented writer has raved about Turkish culture and history in our interview in Istanbul. She used to write critical political columns in international papers. Today Elif Shafak is silent.
The longer I think about her personal decision, the more the question comes to my mind: Did nationalist extremists manage to silence this wonderful author, star of this year's book fair?
