more orhan pamuk (and more turkish nationalist asshats!)

Orhan Pamuk's speech from the Frankfurt Book Fair (at which he was awarded a peace prize) has been translated and published as an essay in the Guardian Review. It's a long, thoughtful, interesting ramble through interconnected ideas about Turkey, Europe, politics, and the novel, and echoes some of the very cogent points he's made about the EU topics in recent interviews.

I particularly like the section about the liberatory promise of fiction; read the novel and the novel shall set ye free! And he's got some very perceptive things to say about the links between nationalism and shame--about the way a particular prideful and paranoid streak of Turkish nationalism is all tied up in the humiliation of Ottoman decline and the fear of the nation's dismemberment at the hands of imperialist outsiders and rebellious minorities. But I'll quote instead his comments on the topic that's been so much on my mind lately:

We've arrived at a point where we must choose between the power of a novelist's imagination and the sort of nationalism that condones burning his books. Over the past few years, I have spoken a great deal about Turkey and its EU bid, and often I've been met with grimaces and suspicious questions. So let me answer them here and now. The most important thing that Turkey and the Turkish people have to offer Europe and Germany is, without a doubt, peace; it is the security and strength that will come from a Muslim country's desire to join Europe, and this peaceful desire's ratification. The great novelists I read as a child and a young man did not define Europe by its Christian faith but by its individuals. It was because they described Europe through heroes who were struggling to free themselves, express their creativity and make their dreams come true, that their novels spoke to my heart. Europe has gained the respect of the non-western world for the ideals it has done so much to nurture: liberty, equality and fraternity. If Europe's soul is enlightenment, equality and democracy, if it is to be a union predicated on peace, then Turkey has a place in it. A Europe defining itself on narrow Christian terms will, like a Turkey that tries to derive its strength only from its religion, be an inward-looking place divorced from reality, and more bound to the past than to the future.

Having grown up in a westernised secular family in the European part of Istanbul, it is not at all difficult for me - or people like me - to believe in the European Union. Don't forget, since childhood, my football team, Fenerbahçe, has been playing in the European Cup. There are millions of Turks like me, who believe heart and soul in the European Union. But what is more important is that most of today's conservative and Muslim Turks, and their political representatives, want to see Turkey in the European Union, helping to plan Europe's future, dreaming it into being and helping to build it.

Coming as it does after centuries of war and conflict, this gesture of friendship cannot be taken lightly, and to reject it outright would be cause for huge regret. Just as I cannot imagine a Turkey without a European prospect, I cannot believe in a Europe without a Turkish prospect.

Oh, just go read the whole thing. I should also share the exasperating news that hardcore nationalists are going after Pamuk again--not satisfied with having him brought to trial once, Kemal Kerincsiz (the nationalist lawyer/reactionary dumbass who also tried to misuse the court system to stop the Armenian genocide conference last month) is once again trying to get a public prosecutor to charge Pamuk. This time, it's because Pamuk very rightly said (on TV, in interviews, etc). that the army is a greater threat to Turkish democracy than the AK Party. Alas, the Turkish penal code has yet another stupid provision--legacy of many years of a military death-grip on politics--that makes "defaming the armed forces" a crime. This is exactly how all these recent cases work: nationalist asshole convinces nationalist prosector to file suit, and like-minded reactionaries in the judiciary (the deep state lives on) convict; thereby penalizing those who speak out, and simultaneously damaging Turkey's reputation and jeopardizing its chance at EU membership. Unless the government gets its act together and reforms the damn penal code, this is just going to keep on happening, since it's an all-round winning strategy for the anti-EU nationalist right.