While giving an interview for his latest novel "A Strangeness in My Mind" to daily Hürriyet, one of the best-selling newspapers among elite Turks, renowned author Orhan Pamuk was finally asked the question he had been expecting for a long time: "Why didn't you incorporate the Gezi crisis into your novel?"
He tried to justify his decision to omit mentioning the Gezi crisis, saying "I was expecting such a question." He then felt compelled to add: "I am not required to add Gezi to my novel in order to be able to defend freedom of thought," finally uttering the words expected from him: "Unfortunately, freedom of thought is in a critical condition in Turkey." (08.12.2014, Hürriyet).
It is significant to hear these words from a Nobel laureate man of letters who once supported the cause of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to the extent that he risked being excluded by his own social peers, and had praised the ongoing democratic transformation for 21 years.
In another interview to Die Zeit on Feb. 19, 2015, the famous author said, "A populist and intolerant democracy prevails in Turkey." These words mask a critical feebleness. Pamuk does not actually think there is a dictatorship in Turkey, and so he tries to avoid saying that Turkey is not a democracy. He must also avoid contradicting himself. But still, he is required to meet an overwhelming expectation placed on him. Therefore, he must resort to an oxymoron like "intolerant democracy."
There is nothing like the fascism imposed by white Turks in Turkey. Just like Pamuk, I am also expected to criticize in my own sociological background. I am an Istanbul Armenian with a Western upbringing. But I must take time to decide whether or not to sue a certain group that has pro-Gezi, left-wing and secular leanings and that asserts that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a dictator. Consequently, I am constantly attacked for breaking out of the dichotomy, as I refuse to join the chorus of: "Erdoğan is a dictator, thus he must be overthrown." I have been demonized so unfairly that I cannot walks the streets of the city where I was born, where Pamuk also belongs, without being harassed.
White, secularist and elite Turks control two-thirds of the media outlets in Turkey. They out-sell the others by nearly 100 percent in terms of newspaper circulation. The media and the academy machine controlled by them has the power to create or destroy anyone it wishes. The media outlets and nongovernmental organizations belonging to the Gülen Movement have also recently attached themselves to this machine. Besides, their relations with foreign media outlets and NGOs date back a century. However, the power and influence of the government on that matter is quite limited.
This is a cutthroat fight for sovereignty. Pamuk also knows that he has no chance in the face of a machine that tries to represent Erdoğan as a dictator - a man who has won nine elections, managed to receive 52 percent of the votes by gradually increasing his vote rates and place marginalized figures into the center of the system. Therefore, he tries to find a solution of sorts by conforming to the expectations of his background, but only to the bare minimum, even though he understands the real features and dynamics of the fight for sovereignty in Turkey.
So I do not resent Pamuk. What attracts my attention is Pamuk's other feature that alleviates such actions of his. I think peer pressure cannot be the sole reason for such actions, when a world-acclaimed author is in question.
Orhan Pamuk is a modernist. Yes, he knows postmodernism very well and his novels are replete with postmodern strategies. However, unlike the new generation, Pamuk believes that Turkey can only achieve a bright future if it adopts a Western lifestyle and Western/EU norms. In the West, his novels draw great interest, as he is an Eastern author emphasizing this belief. So Pamuk knows that he is acclaimed, since he approves the superiority and uniqueness of Western civilization through his own identity. He believes in it and is aware of the prestige that this belief grants him. Consequently, a Western but original civilization/politics proposal which externalizes Erdoğan is problematic for Pamuk, as well. In fact, Erdoğan and his grassroots support have arisen out of a process in which modernity was dominant. However, Erdoğan is at peace with this hybridity and tries to reconstruct a different, original order that would also reflect his own features on this hybridity, which is a subject that involves many ambiguities and threats for Pamuk.
Pamuk and other alike thinkers suffer from a mental limitation that cannot imagine anything beyond postmodernism. And when this situation is combined with peer pressure, it causes explicit contradictions and oxymorons, which nevertheless are perceived as consistent. Such a tactic is easy, profitable and risk free.
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