Turkey has place in a Europe of "liberté, egalité, and fraternité" says Pamuk

Turkey has place in a Europe of “liberté, egalité, and fraternité” says Pamuk - Literature : news, interview | euronews

He is not just the 2006 Nobel Literature Laureate.
Orhan Pamuk is also a symbol of Turkey’s struggle to be part of the EU.
In recent weeks, he has been travelling around Europe and the US to promote his latest novel, ‘The Museum of Innocence’.
Yet just as he was being honoured in France, where the Season of Turkey is underway, the Turkish High Court ruled that anybody who “suffered mentally” because of what Pamuk had said about the Armenian genocide could sue him for pain and suffering.
euronews met Orhan Pamuk at Villa Gillet, in Lyon.

Watch my interview on euronews

My interview to Nedim Gürsel on YouTube

Available also in 7 other languages (the original one is in French). If you are interested, just ask.

My interview to Nedim Gürsel

I wish to announce the interview to Nedim Gürsel, the Turkish writer, which will be on air on euronews starting from tonight at 21.45 (CET). I met him in Paris to talk to him about his trial in Turkey and the implications in Turkey's accession to the EU.
It should be on air all over the weekend, although I don't know the exact timetable. Should you miss it, don't worry: it will soon be on air on euronews' website.

Turkey rehabilitates poet Hikmet

From Bbc.co.uk:

Turkey says it is to restore the citizenship of one of its most illustrious poets and playwrights.

Nazim Hikmet was stripped of his citizenship for his Marxist beliefs in the 1950s after he fled the country, having spent years in Turkish prisons.

Hikmet, who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, revolutionised Turkish poetry during the 1930s and has had his work translated into some 50 languages.

Deputy PM Cemil Cicek said it was time for the government to change its mind.

"The crimes which forced the government to strip him of his citizenship at that time are no longer considered a crime," he said.

Read the full story

Turkey at the Frankfurt Book Fair

I'm writing from the Frankfurt Book Fair, where this year Turkey is the guest of honour.

Yesterday, at the opening ceremony, there was a clash. Oh, if you had just passed by and had a look at it, you might not have noticed it, everyone looked very happy and friendly. Orhan Pamuk was sitting next to Adullah Gül's wife, and they all smiled from time to time when the Director of the German Publishers & Booksllers Association Gottfried Honnefelder or the German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier named one or both of them.

But you had to listen to their speeches. Pamuk spoke of freedom of expression in quite hard terms toward Turkey: "The State's habit of penalising writers and their books is still very much alive - he said -; Article 301 of the Turkish penal code continues to be used to silence and suppress many other writers, as it was use against me; there are at this moment hundreds of writers and journalists being prosecuted and found guilty under this article. While I was working on the novel that I published earlier this year, I needed to research old Turkish films and songs. I did it easily on YouTube, but now I would not be able to do the same. Because YouTube, like many other domestic and intrnational websites, has been blocked for residents of Turkey for political reasons".

As soon as he finished his speech, Pamuk left the hall in a hurry. Did he just have another appointment, or was it perhaps to avoid getting angry at what his president would say soon after him? Because Abdullah Gül critisized the lack of respet of freedom of speech in other countries, speaking of Turkey as a paradise in that respect, where the "biggest achievement" is multiculuralism. He said that in Turkey there are "Books and magazines published in different languages, as well as TV and radio programmes in different languages", even though in Turkey broadcasting in languages such as Kurdish or Arabic is still strongly limited.

This morning I went to a panel about Islam in Europe or European Islam. The guests were Islamic European scholar Tariq Ramadan and Albert Schmid of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Actually the two agreed on almost everything, so there wasn't much of a debate, which was undoubtedly dominated by Ramadan. I was quite stunned by his charisma. He's a star, of course, and especially in France, but I had never bothered to learn more about him or to look for anything (a book, some TV appearance...), also because of him being a star, and my natural suspicious attitude towards such "vedettes". But I must admit he has arguments, and looks as if he believed in what he says, namely that Sharia does not mean denial of separation between the Church and the State, or that the people who are Muslim by religion but European by culture abide by what he calls "the 4 l'", that is the law of the country where they live, its language, loyalty to it, and liberty. It would deserve that I speak more about it, especially about his position on the stoning of adulterers, but unfortunately I don't have the time now.

The rest of the Fair is waiting for me (and lunch as well!).

Turkey's poisoned pens

Here is a very interesting and very comprehensive article about the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Turkey is this year's guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. For months now, the country's writers and critics have been embroiled in a bitter feud over the politics of participation. By Constanze Letsch

The 60th Frankfurt Book Fair opens in just a few days time, a moment that has been eagerly awaited in Turkey, this year's guest country, for almost two years. The Turkish government set aside a budget of seven million euros, and rented 4.260 m² of exhibition space. The country will be represented by 100 publishers, 350 authors, translators and academics, 320 artists, 10 literary and licensing agency representatives, 110 curators, presenters and coordinators and 120 media representatives: almost 1000 people in total.

1000 minus 20. Since July, a bitter feud has been bubbling away in the Turkish media over a controversial boycott of the Book Fair, in which to date, 20 of the invited authors and literary critics are participating.

Full story on Nomadics

Tracking Orhan Pamuk

I've been tracking Orhan Pamuk lately, and I have found a couple of interesting things. First of all, this interview on France 24 (in French. I couldn't find the English version, I'm sure it is somewhere); I don't know when it was done, probably when he went to France last Spring, certainly not a few days ago, since he is currently in the US. Where, among other things, a couple of days ago he met another literary giant, Salman Rushdie.

(The picture is mine: I took it at the Mantua Literature Festival last month)

Update 18.10.2007: I think now the France 24 interview was actually made at the end of September, when Pamuk was briefly in Paris.