My Trouble with Turkey
Two years ago we gave our daughter a phone and showed her how to make her way around town on transit, and now our girl of 15 was about to fly solo to visit her grandparents in the old country. After maneuvering her through Ataturk International Airport on Google Street View one last time, we waved her off direct to Istanbul with a backpack and a list of phone numbers. That was July 14, 2016 — Bastille Day, actually. Next morning, we saw that her flight had arrived safely but she failed to call and her phone didn’t respond. We could only hope she was trundling over to the domestic terminal to fly on to Antalya.
As we anxiously awaited news from her and her family, we learned that Turkey was in a state of siege. A military coup was in progress, it seemed. Dissident Turkish military units were arresting other officers. Tanks had surrounded public buildings and were blocking bridges over the Bosphorus. People were taking to the street in support of one side or the other, and President Erdoğan was nowhere to be found. Nobody knew what was happening, least of all us.
Then came news that Ataturk Airport was under lockdown and all flights suspended. We learned that President Erdoğan had evaded capture and managed to escape in his private jet. Circling over the Sea of Marmara, he tweeted to the nation to support him before setting down at Ataturk after forces loyal to him seized the airport and cancelled all flights.
We spent a sleepless night imagining her curled up confused and incommunicado on a concourse bench overnight or worse. But next morning we connected to her via Skype from her destination. She had made her connecting flight, one of the last to depart before the airport was shut down, and was safely lodged with her grandparents. Battles continued to rage between rebel and loyalist troops, the outcome uncertain. Soon, Turkey was blaming America for fomenting the coup. Would my wife would be able to join her in two weeks, as planned? It turned out she did go, still not knowing what to expect on the other end, and managed to escort the kid home as martial law and mass arrests gripped the fatherland.
There’s a strange subtext to this. Three months before I had drafted the last chapter of a novel featuring an assassination attempt on the President of Turkey. In the attack’s chaotic aftermath, I had written, the Prime Minister resigned and then the military took control of the country, outlawing protests. In July those fictional events materialized; the president was attacked, the Prime Minister was forced out, and a state of emergency ensued. It felt quite spooky to have predicted that and then to have our daughter step into the midst of it. She was safe, but once order was restored thousands of Turks and several Americans were hauled in accused of collaborating with a terrorist organization. Had my novel been published in the interim, I could very well have become a marked man in Turkey.
It’s just a story I made up, you might say; stop being paranoid. Perhaps, but you should know that thousands of journalists, professors, and even users of social media have been dismissed or detained under various Erdogan edicts for expressing the slightest hint of criticism of the Turkish Republic or him. Under the current state of emergency, newspapers and TV stations have been shut down or taken over by the state. Some political parties have been dissolved and their leaders arrested. If MIT–the Turkish CIA–knew what I had written I could easily be banned and my family put under watch. Things remain that politically unhappy over there.
In a middle chapter written well before the 2016 coup, one of my conspirators rants “while Turkey has plenty of bad actors, it always seems to come down to one person: the President of the Turkish Republic. He bends state power to turn public high schools into religious academies. He aids and abets ISIS, attacks Kurds, represses free speech, and has jailed opposition figures and even top military officers. He himself alludes to establishing an Islamic state that would absorb Kurdistan and some of Syria. He’s subverted the republic. Thinks he should be Sultan. Thirteen years of this is way too much. He must be stopped.”
I ask you, what dictatorial autocrat would tolerate such a harsh judgment in a subversive book? Might its revolutionary rhetoric have occasioned scores of agents and publishers to reject my manuscript, as they have? My book’s publication could put us and our relatives in something like a hostage situation, especially were a Turkish translation to come out (which almost certainly would quickly be banned). For my family and I, the book’s a rock in between several hard places.
My worries might puzzle you. Let me explain. The novel portrays a radical conspiracy from inside out, focusing mostly on its characters’ situations and longings rather than their ideologies or antagonists. As political thrillers go, it’s pretty laid-back; no explosions, car chases, gun play or death struggles–just the everyday adversities facing a group of wannabe terrorists. In a way, they’re the monkey wrench gang that couldn’t shoot straight, until they maybe do. I shan’t elaborate, as most everything you might want to know about it is explained on my website, starting with the inevitable pitch, plus pages that set the scene, give it a geopolitical context, list who’s who and what’s where in the book, and even ten audio chapters to listen to at leisure. Unlike me, you have nothing to lose, and if you give it a gander, please advise. Is it worth publishing? Should I redact, rewrite, or just forget about it?
Some people, not just my brave beta readers, seem to think the book has potential. A Florida literary journal just awarded its first chapter a prize and will include it in a writing anthology coming out in a few months. Scant recognition given all the hyping and hawking I’ve done. Still, it might be enough to kickstart the book into circulation and encourage me to put out a sequel featuring my remaining characters. Could be something about the end of Trump that will make me a famous author and persona non grata in two countries. Maybe I should think about that.
