Turks are guinea pigs of global political changes
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish journalist-author whose work deals with women’s emancipation, Turkish-Kurdish and Turkish-Armenian devide and many other culturally and politically engaged issues. She is a of winner of Turkish Journalist of the Year, the Pen for Peace Award and the Freedom of Thought Award from the Human Rights Association of Turkey. Due to criticism of Erdogan’s government in 2012, she was fired from her newspaper Habertürk. Since that time, Some of her investigative journalism books that touch controversial topics Deep Mountain, Banana Sounds, and Women who blow on knots.
It makes sense to start with literature since you are momentary at the Edinburgh International Book Festival where there’s a lot of interest in your book ‘’Women Who Blow on Knots’’. The book has already been reviewed as a very important story on women fighting for their place in the world and a thrilling novel celebrating female empowerment. But what was your premise and inspiration to write it? And how specific, again, was this process of documenting heavy reality by means of literature?
The main inspiration were woman that I met throughout my life. And my life as a journalist was mostly about woman struggling with extremely difficult conditions. So, all the characters are, in a way, combination of those woman that I’ve met throughout years of journalism: in several countries, in several incredibly hard conditions etc, but this is only one perspective. When I look from another perspective I can say that all these woman are living inside me. So, I can also define these characters as — me, cut into pieces. Because, when I look closely, every one of them is me. And yet, none of them is me. I choose to write fiction somewhere in between reality and fiction. And it’s not only my personal preference. I think when you come from such a country, from such a land of insanity, this already thin line between the real and the unreal becomes even more blurry. Not only fiction but also life takes place on that thin line. Therefore, my literature has been always somewhere in between. All the novels I’ve written have something of a documentary inside, in a way. When I was writing ‘Sounds of Banana’’ in Beirut I’ve researched for six months, and when I was writing ‘’Woman who blows on notes’’ in Tunisia, another months of research took my time. My recent novel which is going to be publishes in English in November — ‘’The Time of Mute Swans’’ (which is about 1980 Turkey military coup) it is also documentary. I would say that all this documentaries are taking place within a story. So, my main inspiration is reality, but insane type of reality that I am subjected to.
Again, you are very deeply facing woman issues and questions that are openly political. Literature, for some of your colleagues who are writing under the conflictual circumstances, is understood as a very helpful way to emancipate. But, it is quite difficult to incorporate political terms into the stories correctly. What are your experiences in this regard?
In the context of woman emancipation, I do think that woman learn throw stories. And this is almost inhabitable, almost a code in their DNA that goes back thousands and thousands of years. Therefore, stories are important in terms of learning from each other, but also of learning from ourselves as well. Because, woman tend to forget what they know, very quickly. Life teaches us many things and finally we grow up, get mature etc, but woman, now and then, often forget how strong they are and how capable they are. And most importantly — how precious they are. Storytelling reminds woman at their value, their strength and their presence in this world.
And, in terms of general politics, storytelling and stories mostly go beyond the terminology of real-politics which is usually very narrow and limited. I sow this when I was writing ‘’Deep mountain across the Turkish-Armenian divide’’. There’s a G word for genocide, and the world itself has become a battlefield. So I sow two sides of this, Turks and Armenians where having problems getting their stories across. As if this word genocide was operating as an electrical fence. Therefore I tried to write a story of the Armenians without the G word. And this was, I think, the book about Armenians that Turks mostly read. Because, stories can enlarge your understanding, and widen your vision about the things. Stories enable people to grasp the meaning of life far better that political terminology.
The fact you lost job as a consequence of writing against Erdogan’s regime speaks a lot for itself. How dangerous is it really to be a journalist out there — I think on Turkey but on a global scope, as well?
The price that I’ve paid was the least comparing to others. My 20 years carrier was taken away from me. Still, it was the least a journalist could pay in Turkey when he or she is critical of political power. Anyone could end up in prison. You don’t even have to be a professional journalist. You tweet something and there’s a knock on your door. But on the other hand, there is a global side to this issue. As you can also observe, all the rising popular policies all over the world, not only the Middle East but in Europe and US too, all this rising political tendencies put journalism and media on their target. It seems to me like journalists have become a catch of the day for this rising populist leaders. All the right wing leaders point at the journalists; Trump points at the journalists. As if they are the scapegoat of this entire collapsing global system. Therefore, I see the case of Turkey as an experiment to the coming age of post-truth and rising authoritarianism in other countries. And, it is as if the Turkish people have been the guinea pigs of this global political change, which will bring more and more authoritarianism around the world.
Despite an ongoing crisis in Turkey, in many areas, there have been some significant uprisings in the past few years that seem to be a spontaneous reactions to dictatorship that can be largely numbered by people on the streets. Can you predict something like that happening in the near future?
When Gezi Park protests started in Turkey in 2013., on the first day of the protest, which was in very small scale, I sad this is going to be Tahrir (Square protests). And there were many people that mocked my prediction, so I don’t want to be mocked again and make more predictions. But, the reason I predicted Gezi, and that it is going to be a huge thing, is because I thought there was this feeling that enough is enough in the society. Unfortunately, we passed the threshold of enough is enough. We are beyond that as a country and as a people who suffers from rising authoritarianism. There is a large scale of ethical collapse in the country and sense of low. And when this happens, and when any kind of rights are violated — there is no state power that will protect us — this means total feeling of insecurity for half of the country. So, I really can not predict at this moment what will come out of this, but the light at the end of the tunel seams very week to me at the moment. But, I would say this: only one day before Gezi protest started in 2013., nobody, including me, predicted that it is going to be this big. So, any unpredictable thing can happen in Turkey. And this is the beauty and insanity of my country.
Article also published by Al Jazeera Balkans.
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