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Laurence Raw
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008
(2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008) The Blue
and the Black, translated by Hughette
Eyüboğlu and Lynne Saka; Bengisu
Rona (2008) Orhan Kemal in Jail with
Nazım Hikmet.
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Electronic reference
Laurence Raw, « Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman
Deniztekin (ed.); Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008) The
Blue and the Black, translated by Hughette Eyüboğlu and Lynne Saka;
Bengisu Rona (2008) Orhan Kemal in Jail
with Nazım Hikmet. », European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online],
Book reviews, Online since 20 avril 2010. URL :
http://ejts.revues.org/index4253.html
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Éditeur : European Journal of Turkish Studies
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Document généré automatiquement le 21 avril 2010.
© Some rights reserved / Creative Commons license
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 2
European Journal of Turkish Studies
Laurence Raw
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008)
Osman Deniztekin (ed.); Sabahattin
Eyüboğlu (2008) The Blue and the Black,
translated by Hughette Eyüboğlu and
Lynne Saka; Bengisu Rona (2008) Orhan
Kemal in Jail with Nazım Hikmet.
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.),
İstanbul, Varlık Yayınları, 343
p., ISBN 9789754243571;
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008) The Blue and the Black, translated by
Hughette Eyüboğlu and Lynne
Saka, Istanbul, Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 198 p., ISBN
9789944884686;
Bengisu Rona (2008) Orhan Kemal in Jail with Nazım Hikmet, Istanbul,
Anatolia Publishing,
181 p., ISBN 9789789275860.
1 In recent years there has been protracted debate both inside and
outside the country about
Turkey’s future as a prospective member of the European Union, as a
mediator in the Middle
East peace process, and as a secular Islamic nation with strong
links to the west. In January
2009 we witnessed the sight of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
walking out of a Davos
debate in protest at what he perceived as an excessively pro-Israeli
stance adopted by the
mediator, the journalist and novelist David Ignatius. The reaction –
especially from sections
of the Turkish media – was ecstatic as they claimed that Erdoğan had
made a stand on behalf
of the nation against western and Zionist interests. Six months
later the journalist Nedim Şener
from Milliyet stood trial for having written a book about the
killing of the activist Hrant Dink, a
case that prompted one American journalist to suggest that ‘with its
recent record of judiciary
mishaps, Turkey should be banned from all international forums let
alone EU membership.’
2 These incidents brought contradictory demands to the fore. On the
one hand, Erdoğan’s act of
‘nationalism’ could be seen as an expression of resentment against
the west – both America
and the European Union – which still refuses to accept the Turkish
Republic as an equal peer.
On the other hand, Şener’s arrest also reminded us of the
pre-election demonstrations in 2007
when thousands of Turkish citizens marched through the streets of
İstanbul and other major
cities, shouting slogans in support of Atatürk and laicism, and
portraying Erdoğan and the
AKP as a major threat to the country’s secular future. They
deliberately evoked memories of
the Hrant Dink funeral (where the mourners had shouted ‘We are all
Hrant Dink’) by wearing
Atatürk masks and shouting ‘We are all Atatürks.’
3 As Michel Foucault reminds us, however, ‘where there is power,
there is resistance.’ There
are still a remarkable number of independent publishers prepared to
issue material written
by intellectuals – both past and present – who envisaged a better
world in which people of
different political persuasions (socialist, liberal, Islamic) could
learn from one another. It is
this spirit, I believe, which has inspired the translations of
Selections from Varlık, The Blue
and the Black, and Orhan Kemal in Jail, all of which are designed to
help western readers
make sense of the contradictory positions characteristic of Turkish
political life. The first two
books have been issued by established outfits (Varlık, Türkiye İş
Bankası), both of which have
substantial back catalogues of books on Turkish culture (in Turkish
as well as English). Orhan
Kemal in Jail has been issued by Anatolia Publishing, a small outfit
backed by a textile firm.
The translations seek as far as possible to recreate the rhythms of
the Turkish text, and thereby
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 3
European Journal of Turkish Studies
help readers understand the significance to the Republic of
principles such as secularism,
westernization and democracy.
4 Selections from Varlık brings together forty prose pieces from the
literary magazine,
established in 1933 by Yaşar Nabi Nayır, which has regularly
published work by major
Turkish writers. Most authors and critics who have established a
reputation both at home
and internationally have appeared in the journal: the poets Orhan
Veli, Melih Cevdet Anday
and Hilmi Yavuz, the novelists Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Selim İleri,
the poet/ critic Talât
Halman, and the cultural critic Hasan Bülent Kahraman. The editor of
Selections from Varlık,
Osman Deniztekin, claims that the book’s basic aim is to examine key
concepts such as
modernization and westernization and their relationship to twentieth
century Turkish history:
‘In their [the contributors’] thinking, as probably in the mind of
Atatürk, “civilization” […]
would be taken to mean “modernization,” all amounting to the same
idea: the process of socioeconomic
development’ (10). The experiment with the Village Institutes in the
mid-twentieth
century was an important example of this: ‘[it] signified a kind of
“Rural Enlightenment” or
even Renaissance’ (11), as the government embarked on a campaign of
mass education. In
this case, modernization and westernization were interchangeable, as
the government tried to
implement Atatürk’s desire to emulate European standards. The
contemporary relevance of
this statement is obvious – although the Village Institutes are long
gone, Deniztekin implies
that the process of development continues to this day, as the
Turkish Republic accommodates
itself ‘to the globalizing world’ (13); and thereby renders itself
suitable for EU membership.
5 However such processes have often encountered considerable
resistance from writers of
different political persuasions. In a 1939 essay included in the
anthology, the writer/translator
İsmail Hüsrev Tökin observed that ‘a deep traditionalism dominates
Turkish village life
entirely. Inhibition against innovation, commitment to wisdom and
methods acquired from
forefathers is ingrained in the Anatolian villagers’ mentality’
(33). Eight years later the
academic and poet Sabahattin Eyüboğlu pointed out that many of the
educated elite were
opposed to the Village Institutes, in the belief that their social
position might be under threat:
‘These retired and naïve reactionaries of the revolution period
hamper the revolution, not so
much with their presence as with their way of thinking and acting
which they pass on to young
generations’ (70).
6 In modern times many artists have encountered similar resistance,
not so much from the
educated elite, but from successive governments living in the shadow
of the military’s 1982
constitution and the oppressive laws enacted by the government at
that time. The critic Göksel
Aymaz’s article ‘The City in the Distance, the Distance in the City’
(2003) claims that ‘he
[the artist] could only be a run-of-the-mill photographer who does
cheap work, and the reality,
which did not grant what he wanted, which kept him from his
aspirations and dreams, stands
relentlessly in the way’ (266). This statement expresses many of the
contradictions inherent
in contemporary Turkey: artistic expression is suppressed by those
in power who profess to
be democratic and/or independent-minded, yet practice censorship in
the interests of state
security.
7 Nonetheless Selections from Varlık celebrates successive
generations of creative artists and
intellectuals who have transcended such difficulties and contributed
to the advancement of
the Republic’s intellectual culture. In the poet Yakup Kadri
Karaosmanoğlu’s words (written
in 1953), they have ‘achieved greater command of our beautiful
Turkish language […] and
achieve[d] the pleasure of expressing the myriad manifestations of
life with the voice of their
own flesh and blood’ (116). Sometimes this can be achieved by
imitating western models, but,
as the poet Atilla İlhan observes in 1966, many writers preferred to
find their own distinctive
voices and thereby created ‘a significant, expansive and interesting
national literature’ (175).
Varlık has continually provided an outlet for those who have
followed this advice. The
sociologist Adnan Binyazar’s 1992 essay ‘A Turkish Culture Emerging
in Germany’ shows
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 4
European Journal of Turkish Studies
how writers from Gastarbeiter families began to develop their own
voices, expressing both
longing for their homeland and yet celebrating plural identities.
The literary critic Jale Parla
writes about her colleague Berna Moran – one of the pioneers of
comparative literature study
in Turkey – who discovered motifs pertaining to Turks in Renaissance
literature, and showed
how ‘pioneering novelists such as Ahmet Murat Efendi and
Samipaşazade Sezai have not only
been inspired by bard’s tales, but have been intrigued by this genre
enough to translate Western
romances’ (258-9). Esra Akcan’s sociological study of neighborhoods
in Germany and Turkey
(2005) concludes that Turkish writers have embraced ‘a new kind of
intertwinedness, one that
can tell the individual […] interrelated stories of different
countries, and one that does not
unify merely by assimilating the non-dominant to the dominant’
(306).
8 Selections from Varlık ends on a somber note by returning once
again to the case of Hrant
Dink, who was slain for speaking ‘whatever is on his mind, hid[ing]
nothing, and open[ing]
his entire heart and mind to others via his discourse’ (328). Editor
Deniztekin understands
that there are forces within the ruling elite which would like
nothing better than to suppress
dissenting viewpoints, and who are prepared to commit murder to
achieve their aims. One of
the ways of fighting back in a struggle which might not be
successful, but which might help
intellectuals of all persuasions, whether Turkish or non-Turkish, to
learn how to ‘fail better,’
as Beckett once put it. This helps to explain why Selections from
Varlık is such an important
book.
9 Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (1908-1973) worked for the Ministry of
Education until 1947, as well
as directing the government-sponsored Translation Office. A strong
supporter of the Village
Institutes, he taught at İstanbul University on and off until 1960,
when he was one of a group
of 147 professors who lost their jobs in the wake of the military
takeover. Thereafter he taught
Art History at the Technical University. A prolific translator and
essayist, Eyüboğlu firmly
believed in opposing those hegemonic forces in government which
tried to restrict freedom
of expression. The Blue and the Black (1965) is a collection of his
pieces from a forty-year
writing career, which now appears in English for the first time,
co-translated by his sister-inlaw
Hughette Eyüboğlu.
10 Eyüboğlu’s emphasis on intellectual resistance as a way of
ensuring the Republic’s future is
as important today as when the book first appeared over four decades
ago. He despises those
who treat writers ‘with suspicion and answering with unfair
accusations’ (184). In an essay
‘The Witch-Hunt for the Left’ (1960), Eyüboğlu asks why ‘the
authorities should deprive
the citizen, innocent in the face of the law, of his job for having
said, read or written this
and that, or for pursuing a new idea instead of buying property or
goods?’ (154) Despite
their claims to believe in Atatürk’s dictum (‘Peace at home and
peace throughout the world’),
the ‘leeching parasites’ of the ruling oligarchy have absolutely no
intention of promoting
dialogue, enabling people to develop a genuine curiosity about what
others are saying within
the Turkish Republic and abroad. By such means Eyüboğlu shows how
Kemalism can be
identified with repression and censorship. The only way to challenge
this viewpoint is to
modernize, which in Eyüboğlu’s opinion means to trust in the people,
who in the past ‘resisted
the church and the palace in order to enhance their voice, their
language, their own color’ (39).
Such resistance, he believes, would help to create a pluralist
society guaranteeing freedom of
speech, in which an individual ‘talks as much as he [sic]
understands; he asks questions as
much as he can, even at the cost of falling into […] intrigues’
(40). To lay the foundation for
this kind of world, however utopian it might be, Eyüboğlu proposes a
wide-ranging program
of educational reform designed to develop new ways of thinking into
the young: ‘The great
majority of the schools […] have not been able to free themselves
from memorization, from
the spirit of the middle Ages [….] This is why our top students have
no opinion about the
world, or even about themselves, add the reason why, once their
schooling is complete, they
are transformed into some kind of sleepwalker’ (146-148). This
process does not involve
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 5
European Journal of Turkish Studies
slavishly imitating previously formulated models, but developing
strategies for independent
thought. In Eyüboğlu’s view this is what the Village Institutes were
endeavoring to achieve
by ‘transform[ing] pain into joy, weakness into strength, difficulty
into pleasure, the teacher
into a friend, [and] the blackboard into soil’ (152).
11 In some ways the experience of reading The Blue and the Black is
a depressing one, as it
demonstrates how little the conservative mentality pervading the
institutions of power (e.g.
the judiciary, the Ministry of Education) has changed over the last
five decades. The Turkish
Republic can only develop intellectually if it permits independent
thinking, tolerance and
the recognition of difference at all levels of society. This process
would be greatly helped if
western attitudes also changed: rather than adopting essentialist
positions (e.g. that the Turkish
Republic is an ‘Islamic’ or ‘a developing country’), people should
try to understand better
what is ideologically important to Turkish intellectuals of all
political persuasions.
12 Both Nazım Hikmet and Orhan Kemal might subscribe to this view;
as the two writers were
imprisoned during the mid-twentieth century for expressing their
political views. Hikmet’s
cause became something of a cause célèbre, as a 1949 international
committee that included
Picasso, Paul Robeson and Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned unsuccessfully
for his release. Orhan
Kemal (the nom de plume of Mehmet Raşit Öğütçü) was a novelist
imprisoned for five
years during the 1940s for expressing supposedly subversive
political views. Bengisu Rona’s
compilation Orhan Kemal: In Jail with Nazım Hikmet, translated from
letters and essays
written by Kemal himself, tells the story of how his political and
artistic views were shaped
through regular association with Hikmet in Bursa prison. The essay
‘Three and Half Years
with Nazım Hikmet’ (Nazım Hikmet’le 3.5 Yıl), informs us that Hikmet
‘had the utmost
respect for working people,’ while at the same time insisting upon
the individual’s right to
self-expression: ‘He respected people who believe in a cause,
whatever it might be. That’s
why he respected Mehmet Akif […] for being “a man of character” who
believed in his
cause’ (76-7). Like Eyüboğlu and Hrant Dink, Hikmet would never be
dissuaded from
expressing his opinions, despite all attempts to silence him.
Inspired by Hikmet’s example,
Kemal stresses the importance of giving artists the freedom to
develop their own idiosyncratic
forms of discourse even if they challenge received opinions: ‘He
[Hikmet] loved words which
were a combination of originally Turkish words and ones which people
were in any case
already using colloquially.’ Hikmet believed that artists had a
central part to play in Turkish
intellectual life, as they were capable of using language creatively
– unlike the members of
the conservative oligarchy whose ‘top-down commands’ imposed
constricting verbal forms
on to daily conversation (80).
13 Hikmet believed that the only way to initiate ideological change
this was to rely on creative
artists, who not only wrote for themselves but fought for the rights
of their people as citizens
of the Turkish Republic. They could not use weapons; but like
Eyüboğlu they understood the
capacity of words to persuade or to move. In the light of recent
events – for example, the killing
of Dink and the ensuing trials – I would argue that the state
(backed by the military) are well
aware of such possibilities, which helps to explain why they are so
keen to silence, imprison
or even liquidate anyone questioning their views. Or perhaps, as
Meltem Ahıska recently
observed, their response consists of organizing apparently
spontaneous demonstrations in
support of the nationalist cause, such as those taking place in
2007: ‘The intimacy produced
through the displayed form becomes the medium for redefining Turkish
“native” modernity
and the dangerous others within – and of course Orientalizing them’
(Ahıska 2007, 142). On
this view, intellectuals are categorized along with ‘Islamıst’
politicians as potential threats to
social stability.
14 In Jail with Nazım Hikmet ends with a series of extracts from
Kemal’s notebooks covering
the period 1941-1943. From these we learn something about Hikmet the
man, who sometimes
appeared ‘so impervious that [Kemal] […] became consumed with anger
and ran away’ (144).
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 6
European Journal of Turkish Studies
On other occasions Hikmet would look ‘meaningless and vacant,’ with
a facial expression that
could only be understood by his fellow-intellectuals. Like Mahatma
Gandhi he understood
the value of passive resistance; it was better to allow others to
voice their opinions – however
superficial they might be – rather than talking too much. By doing
so he became renowned as
someone whose life and work captured the spirit of ‘the Turkish
people, of honest humanity,
of our country and of this beautiful world’ (159). Although spending
much of his life either in
prison or exiled from his country of birth, Hikmet contributed far
more to the cause of Turkish
intellectual life than an entire cabinet of politicians: ‘[T]he
artist is an engineer of the psyche
[….]. What is developing is not without hope, it is not without joy’
(166).
15 Taken together, all three translations tell us a lot about
Turkish history, and how intellectuals
of all political hues have struggled to make themselves heard in the
face of continual repression
from the state. Moreover, it is clear that such struggles remain as
significant today as they
were seven decades ago when Hikmet was imprisoned – otherwise the
publishers would
not have commissioned the translations in the first place. On the
one hand all three books
celebrate the capacity of the creative imagination to overcome
adversity – whether mental
or physical. Whatever hardships they might have endured, writers
such as Hikmet, Kemal,
Eyüboğlu and the Varlık contributors show how intellectuals
continually reframe the nation’s
cultural agenda, despite repeated attempts by the authorities to
suppress them. On the other
hand the translations stress the importance of understanding the
lessons of the past as a way
of looking at the Turkish Republic’s future both internally and in
terms of its future relations
with the west. Perhaps one day the members of the ruling oligarchy
might come to appreciate
this point.
Bibliography
Ahıska, Meltem (2008) ‘Orientalism/ Occidentalism: The Impasse of
Modernity,’ in Müge Sökmen,
Gürsoy & Ertür, Başak (eds.) Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute
to Edward W. Said, London & New
York, Verso, pp. 137-155.
References
Electronic reference
Laurence Raw, « Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman
Deniztekin (ed.); Sabahattin
Eyüboğlu (2008) The Blue and the Black, translated by Hughette
Eyüboğlu and Lynne Saka; Bengisu
Rona (2008) Orhan Kemal in Jail with Nazım Hikmet. », European
Journal of Turkish Studies
[Online], Book reviews, Online since 20 avril 2010. URL :
http://ejts.revues.org/index4253.html
About the author
Laurence Raw
Laurence Raw teaches in the Department of English at Başkent
University, Ankara, Turkey. His latest
book, Türk Sahnelerinden İzlenimler/ Impressions from the Turkish
Stage (Mitos Boyut Yayınları,
2009), offers a view of contemporary Turkish theatre and its
enduring significance to the Republic’s
cultural development.
Copyright
© Some rights reserved / Creative Commons license
Selections from Varlık 1933-2008 (2008) Osman Deniztekin (ed.);
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (2008 (...) 7
European Journal of Turkish Studies
Abstract
This extended review of three recently published English
translations of the works of
intellectuals such as Nazım Hikmet, Orhan Kemal and Sabahattin
Eyüboğlu shows how they
emphasized the importance of freedom of thought, in a context that
continually sought to
suppress them. In the light of recent events, such as the killing of
Hrant Dink, the review also
suggests that their struggles are as important today as they were
seven decades ago.
Keywords : littérature, Censure, démocratie, intellectuels,
politique, Literature, Politics, Censorship,
Intellectuals, Democracy |