Turkey: From a Different Angle

A lot has been written and said about Turkey in recent weeks. The bulk of it concerns the abortive coup attempt and the reprisals that ensued. Czechs have indeed become used to looking down upon Turkey from the vantage point of their hysterical fear of refugees. However, Turkey is a country with a rich cultural heritage, informed by domestic as well as Western traditions. Regrettably, Turkey’s modern as well as classic literature goes largely ignored by Czech publishers, who prefer the much-advertised written heritage of Euro-Atlantic provenience, notably siding with authors writing in English.

Putting aside the obvious interest in the Nobel Prize winner, Orhan Pamuk, who has been heavily promoted by advertisers, our perception of other Turkish authors is ruefully negligible. But it has been lately possible to introduce the Czech reader to Turkish books of a very modern outreach. Among them is Serenade—an intriguing novel by Turkish folk singer, musician, film director, writer and politician rolled in one, Zülfü Livaneli, which uses the contemporary Turkish context to hark back to the tragic fate of Jews under the Nazi rule of terror, an issue certainly worth considering in the context of the present-day migration crisis and the Czech Republic’s attitude towards this charade.

Zülfü Livaneli is a leading liberal figure. He served long as Turkey’s honorary ambassador to UNESCO. But he recently gave up his post in protest against the destruction of Turkey’s global architectural riches at the hands of Turkish troops operating in the Kurdish regions. It was a supremely political gesture on the part of Livaneli, a victim of persecution after the Turkish military coups, who was forced to seek and find a safe haven in Sweden. His status of folk bard remains unparallelled in Turkey. His rare performance at an international writers’ meeting in the Czech Republic filled the concert room with Turks living in this country, as well as his Czech fans.

Subtle political gestures are the domain of Turkey’s popular writer, Ayşe Kulin, who wrote two ironic letters to Turkey’s present leader, earlier this year. The coming autumn will see the release of a Czech translation of her novel, Last Train to Istanbul, which again deals with the rescue of Jews from Nazi reprisals.

It wouldn’t be out of place to quote a few phrases from her book.

The main character, a Muslim woman, marries a Jew and they flee the local ire to safety in France, where her husband once faced mortal danger. She asks a Turkish-born resistance activist, who helped save Jews from occupied France:

“Why are you doing all this? Your wife is not Jewish, anyway.”

And he says:

“In these times, I must prove to myself that I am human, Selva.”

“But what if your life is at stake?”

“Depends on what you call life. We will all die in the event.”

Another quote reflects the postures of a papal nuncio in Turkey, who came to be Pope John XXIII at a later date:

“A Christian cleric is trying to save Jews,” Margot wondered.

“If he is a real priest, who believes in God, then he surely must. Aren’t we all the servants of the Lord,” Selva noted.

Let’s say refugees instead of Jews and here comes an urgent message today, especially to Christians and Roman Catholics, for whom an example of charity was set by Pope Francis.