For sev­er­al rea­sons Kedis­tan insist­ed on trans­lat­ing this inter­view with Aslı Erdoğan which went par­tial­ly unno­ticed in the media, and total­ly ignored in the French lan­guage ones.


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First of all, when we joined into the cam­paign for Aslı Erdoğan, we did so going far beyond it being a cam­paign against attacks on free­dom of expres­sion. When we trans­lat­ed Aslı’s texts and invit­ed peo­ple to read them or to share them in pub­lic read­ings, it was pre­cise­ly because her polit­i­cal, and non-politi­cian, approach called for an awak­en­ing through the art of writ­ing at which she excels, of what she describes in the inter­view as the trans­gres­sion of thresh­olds beyond which every­thing becomes pos­si­ble. What she then described in let­ters as what will inevitably shake Europe and the exis­ten­tial cri­sis of Europe”.

We had just wit­nessed the mas­sacres in Cizre. Zehra Doğan then gave us her inter­pre­ta­tion of Nusay­bin destroyed… With­out know­ing one anoth­er, the two women used their art in order to com­mu­ni­cate the unsayable to the whole world. One Kur­dish, the oth­er who describes her­self as pos­si­bly a White Turk…Does this not sig­nal the first neces­si­ty of trans­lat­ing such an article?

Anoth­er imper­a­tive  rests on these two wom­en’s approach who, in speak­ing of Turkey, of its destruc­tions and deaths in Bakur in 2015/16, of its ongo­ing purges and impris­on­ments, lead to a transna­tion­al and human­ist reflec­tion on the rav­ages of nation­al­isme, and how the traces of these crimes serve to oblit­er­ate per­spec­tives for the future.  A reflec­tion that serves as the very rea­son for Kedis­tan’s exis­tence.

In Zehra Doğan’s works on exhi­bi­tion as well as in the books and arti­cles now writ­ten by Aslı Erdoğan, we are cer­tain­ly giv­en to see and to read the dark side of the world. One, in her ful­ly accept­ed soli­tude, the oth­er by call­ing on col­lec­tive strug­gle, both appeal­ing to the need for a wake-up call. And both are women…



Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the book “Dah haus aus Stein” by Pen­guin in Ger­many, Zülküf Kurt intro­duces the inter­view he con­duct­ed with Aslı Erdoğan in Frank­furt by insist­ing on the writer’s transna­tion­al noto­ri­ety fol­low­ing the cam­paign launched on her behalf.

Aslı Erdoğan. First Turk­ish lan­guage lit­er­ary woman, placed on tri­al and threat­ened with life impris­on­ment; the author was arrest­ed for hav­ing been one of the rotat­ing mem­bers of Özgür Gün­dem’s Board of Direc­tors, and incar­cer­at­ed for 136 days. An author whose books have been trans­lat­ed into 19 lan­guages and her texts into 30…To men­tion only “Le silence même n’est plus à toi” has been pub­lished in 12 lan­guages, from French to Ruman­ian. And in French, Cather­ine Deneuve lent her voice to its record­ed ver­sion.

In this reportage pub­lished in Turk­ish on Yeni Özgür Poli­ti­ka, Aslı talks of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Turkey, of Turkey, Sur, the his­tor­i­cal neigh­bor­hood of Diyarbakır and of her writing…

 — You were arrest­ed and incar­cer­at­ed for 136 days.  Were you stunned by the demand for a life sentence?

Who was not stunned? I have nev­er been an active fig­ure in pol­i­tics. I have nev­er belonged to any Par­ty what­so­ev­er. I don’t even par­tic­i­pate in asso­cia­tive activ­i­ties. I have lived alone, I write alone, I fought alone. Of course, there were sol­i­dar­i­ties, com­mon strug­gles with oth­ers but any­one who has read 3 arti­cles by Aslı Erdoğan eas­i­ly under­stands that this woman can­not have any links with any orga­ni­za­tion what­so­ev­er. (The word) orga­ni­za­tion is used in Turkey as if it described some­thing ille­gal, yet to orga­nize means to do things togeth­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I do not have that kind of per­son­al­i­ty.  I believe soli­tude is a process of reclu­sion. “Orga­ni­za­tion­al” writ­ing is not a type of work that can last for a long time. The only pol­i­tics I ever did was in my articles.

I start­ed my chron­i­cles inn 1998. In the con­di­tions pre­vail­ing in Turkey, no inquiries had been opened con­cern­ing my arti­cles. I will say this is a small mir­a­cle. I real­ly have a pen that avoids polit­i­cal jar­gon of the slo­gan type. No pros­e­cu­tor was able to find any­thing he could tie to any exist­ing arti­cle in the penal code. This is why, despite nev­er hav­ing been brought to judg­ment,   find­ing myself before the courts with a pos­si­ble incom­press­ible life sen­tence under arti­cle 302, describes the sti­t­u­a­tion in Turkey rather than my per­son­al sit­u­a­tion. This was the first time that a news­pa­per (Özgür Gün­dem) was accused in Turkey under arti­cle 302, which is to say as “attempt­ing to the State’s integri­ty”. More­over, the rotat­ing mem­ber­ships in the  Board of Direc­tors car­ried no legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for the news­pa­per’s content.

When I was arrest­ed, I was an author, trans­lat­ed in more than 10 lan­guages, I had already received 6 prizes (the num­ber is now dou­bled). Among those prizes are lit­er­ary ones such as Sait Faik. My first prize was in 1990. I’ve now com­plet­ed my 29th year in lit­er­a­ture. You know noth­ing about this woman and yet you accuse her of some­thing like being a leader of the PKK!!… even the crows would laugh at this. In the police report, fol­low­ing all their sur­veil­lance, they wrote “Asli Erdo­gan is sus­pect­ed of being a mem­ber of the PKK because there are sus­pi­cions she sup­port­ed the Aca­d­e­mics for Peace.”  There’s no need to sus­pect my sup­port for the aca­d­e­mics, I sup­port­ed them open­ly. I made speech­es rep­re­sent­ing authors for peace. The file is so emp­ty that even the police was dis­mayed. There is noth­ing in com­mon with or bear­ing any rela­tion­ship with the PKK, nothing…

What did they find after all this dig­ging? “Ah, she is one of the advi­sors for Özgür Gün­dem. Good, we’ve found some­thing! In that case Aslı Erdoğan directs Özgür Gün­dem. There­fore Aslı Erdoğan is a leader of the PKK. She is even one of its found­ing mem­bers.” And they opened the tri­al on that basis.The advi­sors had no influ­ence on the news­pa­per, nei­ther at the prac­ti­cal nor at the legal lev­els. When the PKK was found­ed, I was ten years old. I am not Kurdish…all right, that has no impor­tance but I do not speak Kur­dish. I mean, if I was a leader, I would at least have learned the Kur­dish lan­guage in all this time, no? … espe­cial­ly if I was the founder. Would I have led the orga­ni­za­tion via trans­la­tors? It was a tra­gi-comedic tri­al.  When we stood in front of the judge I said “the PKK will open a tri­al demand­ing indem­ni­ties for hav­ing tar­nished their reputation”.

Necmiye Alpay, myself, Bilge Con­te­pe, three women of a cer­tain age wear­ing tai­lored suits, we present our defence. It is com­i­cal. We were the orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­ers? For the love of God, we are the only ones left to do this? We’re speak­ing about the old­est gueril­la orga­ni­za­tion in the world. Necmiye Alpay, myself and Bilge Con­te­pe are its leaders…What can you say to that? Espe­cial­ly since I’ve had trou­ble lead­ing my own self for many years already…By nat­ur­al incli­na­tion, I have nev­er been part of any orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture with a chain of com­mand, I would be inca­pable of it. Every­one would walk over me and get ahead. Giv­ing orders, pow­er, dis­gusts me. I can’t even man­age to use a com­put­er because I hate giv­ing orders. How to answer such a the­sis say­ing that I led such a big organization…was this a com­pli­ment or what? I don’t know. In brief, this arrest was beyond under­stand­ing, and I think it was a first in its kind. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it did not end there.

- Incompressible perpetuity, the emblem of our times

I believe incom­poress­ible per­pe­tu­ity is the emblem of our times, just as con­cen­tra­tion camps were the emblem of the Nazis – and con­cen­tra­tion camps were not a Nazi inven­tion. To my knowl­edge, in the past year, 758 peo­ple linked to the attempt­ed coup (on July 15 2016) were sen­tenced to incom­press­ible per­pe­tu­ity. The fig­ures keep chang­ing. Among those per­sons are 17 civil­ians. If you add to those the ones who were sen­tenced in PKK-KCK tri­als, the fig­ure will be around 1 500. The 758 only rep­re­sent those sen­tenced regard­ing July 15. I don’t have the exact fig­ures. But thou­sands of per­sons have been sen­tenced to this penal­ty, and accord­ing to my esti­mates, scores of peo­ple are still await­ing judgment.

Last week, Osman Kavala and the staff of Anadolu Kültür joined these peo­ple. They are now request­ing incom­press­ible per­pe­tu­ity for any­one they con­sid­er “guilty”. They open the tri­als and the worst part is that despite the fact they do not have the slight­est amount of proof, they con­demn. It is like in the days of Stal­in. We were the first, with Necmiye Alpay and imme­di­ate­ly after, there was Ahmet Altan.

- Was your arrest a mes­sage say­ing “do not show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Kurds?” What was your read­ing of it? 

 Like every­one else, I search for a ratio­nal expla­na­tion and lose my mind on the way. I’ve much stud­ied the Nazi peri­od. I can con­sid­er myself a spe­cial­ist on con­cen­tra­tion camps. Per­haps fas­cism began with the loss of ratio­nal­i­ty. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion why 6 mil­lion human beings were sent to the gas cham­bers. And I think that in Turkey, at this stage, ratio­nal expla­na­tions are insuf­fi­cient. Because the per­son you are fac­ing is not act­ing in a ratio­nal man­ner. Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Kurds is the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, they con­duct pol­i­tics that way. Before march­ing against the Kurds, with the “destruc­tion plan”, they will break the out­side cir­cles first. But is Aslı Erdoğan the first per­son to arrest? What force would I rep­re­sent in the sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Kurds? There are per­haps a thou­sand peo­ple to arrest before me. Or again, is Ahmet Altan the first name in the strug­gle against Fetul­lah Gülen?  Is he the stan­dard bear­er for the move­ment? He is no such thing. Osmal Kavala is accused of wan­ti­nt to over­turn the con­sti­tu­tion­al order…of course, these are sym­bol­ic names but they are not the key fig­ures. Even if this strug­gle was a rea­son­able one, for me, all this would still be griev­ous errors.

If I were lead­ing a “plan of destruc­tion” against the Kurds, I would not have begun with Aslı Erdoğan. Con­se­quent­ly, the tri­als against the Gülen move­ment are more ratio­nal, for exam­ple. They intro­duced their inform­ers every­where, in every struc­ture, includ­ing left-lean­ing news­pa­pers. They observed. They pre­pared proof, whether false or not, they con­sti­tut­ed a net­work. They find ways to inte­grate peo­ple in this net­work, notably on inter­net, leav­ing them no way out. Spy pro­grams were found even on my com­put­er. This means tens of thou­sands of peo­ple were under sur­veil­lance. Where­as now they arrest hapharzard­ly, blind­ly. In oth­er words, fas­cism is pre­ciely that. Arbir­trari­ness… Aslı Erdoğan does­n’t know her lim­its. We are angry against Ahmet Altan. We were nev­er so hot about Osman Kavala!

If these names have one thing in com­mon, one can point to their ques­tions con­cern­ing the Kur­dish ques­tion, the Armen­ian ques­tion or cer­tains tabus for White Turks. Of course, there is an atti­tude of the type “who evokes the Kur­dish ques­tion, we destroy.” The mes­sage is aimed most­ly at White Turks. I don’t con­sid­er myself a White Turk, but in the eyes of many, that is what I am. “Stay out of the cir­cuit. We’ll take care of them. Who do you think you are, trai­tors to your Homeland!”

Jail sen­tences of 7 years, even 10 years are request­ed even for those who only par­tic­i­pat­ed in “sol­i­dar­i­ty watch­es”. I even heard some of my read­ers ask, “Aslı, we love you very much, but what are you doing at Özgür Gün­dem?” This is what isn’t digest­ed, what is per­ceived as a crime. No one read what I wrote in Özgür Gün­dem. The sole fact that I wrote there seri­ous­ly dis­turbed a num­ber of peo­ple in var­i­ous cir­cles. And per­haps what hap­pened to me was a pun­ish­ment for that.

- There 4 arti­cles on Cizre, Sur, Nusay­bin that con­sti­tut­ed the charges at your tri­al. “This is your father”, “The jour­nal of fas­cism: today”, “Read­ings of the sto­ry of a Mad­man”, “The most cru­el of months”…

The jour­nal of fas­cism” is a lit­er­ary text. Only its title is provoca­tive and polit­i­cal. The rest is a monolog. It can occur anwhere in the world and it is time­less. Of course, what is being described is Sur, Cizre, a burn­ing town, an out­side world destroyed.  (In her file appears the fol­low­ing: “the author describes here the [mil­i­tary] oper­a­tion in Nusay­bin”. In fact, the text was pub­lished in May and the oper­a­tion in Nusay­bin occurred in June!) There is noth­ing in that arti­cle. An inte­ri­or monolog. This text is about the inner destruc­tion of a per­son, pro­voked by fas­cism or by a regime apply­ing heavy vio­lence. Of course, I lived this destruc­tion by observ­ing Cizre and Sur. But “This is your father”, is com­plete­ly about Cizre and Sur. I only wrote these two arti­cles where I treat­ed these top­ics directly.

 — These texts must have dis­turbed them. What knowl­edge do they want to hide? 

 Yes, I believe some were dis­turbed by these arti­cles.  Per­haps because they were trans­lat­ed into oth­er lan­guages before my impris­on­ment. For these two texts, I used a tech­nique I had used pre­vi­ous­ly for Soma. It con­sists in a tech­nique of “tran­scrip­tion” used by the Aus­tri­an poet Heim­rad Bäck­er. In the first 18 years of his ife, he was a mem­ber of the “Hit­ler­ian Youths” but he changed after see­ing Mau­thausen. And from that moment on, he devot­ed the rest of his life to a sin­gle task: find­ing a lan­guage in which to talk about the con­cen­tra­tion camps, the geno­cide, the Holo­caust. When he died, I think he owned the largest of all per­son­al archives on the Holo­caust. He donat­ed it to the Aus­tri­an State. I read his book “Tran­scrip­tion”, some five years ago, I think. The first time I read it, it did not speak to me. It struck me on the sec­ond read­ing. And he says that the great­est suf­fer­ings can­not be expressed in a lit­er­ary idiom. For that, you must build anoth­er lan­guage, anoth­er lit­er­a­ture. I can recite for you one of his poems that must struck me.

And right away, they were thrown in the above-quot­ed hole

and right away, they were thrown in the quot­ed hole

anoth­er hole was opened up.

 I attempt­ed this tech­nique, years ago, for an arti­cle on tor­ture, but did­n’t suc­ceed. Because I had added many things from myself. Then, in writ­ing the arti­cles on Soma, I erased myself com­plet­ly, and tried again. I received very pow­er­ful respons­es from read­ers. Lat­er, I tried again for the arti­cle on Cizre. It looks easy, but it isn’t. The prob­lem resides in find­ing the right words among thou­sands of sen­tences, the few words that will car­ry the vic­tim’s voice.

Foren­sic reports, police affi­davits, have an extreme­ly dry, hyp­not­ic lan­guage, hard to read, bor­ing. But you can use this lan­guage in such a way that hyp­no­tized read­ers under­stand you are talk­ing about real peo­ple. Not a sin­gle word in the text belongs to me. Every­thing was tak­en from news­pa­per arti­cles, reportage, foren­sic reports. Clear­ly, it con­sists of a text col­lage. But behind this col­lage there is a seri­ous lit­er­ary effort. Writ­ing such a text requires months. I will choose a max­i­mum of one hun­dred sen­tences, but I wish to nar­rate a massacre…

Of course they con­duct a pol­i­cy of occul­ta­tion on Cizre and Sur. Under such cir­cum­stances, they per­ceive my writ­ing on Cizre and Sur as a provo­ca­tion. Because they are strong­ly guilty. Or must we say they dis­play a typ­i­cal­ly macho atti­tude, or feu­dal, how must I express myself with­out using a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry word? It is an atti­tude such that when you say “you are guilty”, they do not answer “yes, I ask you to for­giveme.” And this coun­try has always been like that. Regard­ing the Armen­ian ques­tion, not a sin­gle one of them has said “did it real­ly hap­pen, let’s have a look.” “What! Trai­tor to the Hom­land! Judas! The Arme­ni­ans did such and such!” etc…That men­tal­i­ty has nev­er changed.

Many things were writ­ten and said about the fact Cizre was a turn­ing point. How do you inter­pret Cizre?

 It was a time when I fell into deep despair think­ing that things would nev­er been the same as before in Turkey. I’m always care­ful when I use the term “fas­cism”. By putting it in brack­ets, I show that I I’m using it in a lit­er­ary sense. I can no longer find anoth­er word. A very great crime against human­i­ty was com­mit­ted in Cizre.b Human beings were burned alived in the cellars.

Robos­ki is also very impor­tant in the His­to­ry of recent years. But Cizre is some­thing else. As if it was not enough that the town col­lapsed on its res­i­dents, peo­ple who could have been arrest­ed alive were not. They were burned in cel­lars in which they were trapped. Peo­ple car­ry­ing white flags were gunned down. And civil­ians, chil­dren, women, no dis­tinc­tions were made. This went beyond war, this is a pol­i­cy of massacre.

Once cer­tain moral thresh­olds are trans­gressed in a coun­try, every­thing becomes pos­si­ble. In Turkey, moral thresh­olds were over­stepped, one after the oth­er. For exam­ple, we were a soci­ety that showed respect for funer­als. You saw what hap­pened to Aysel Tugluk’s moth­er. Irre­spect for the dead, the burn­ing of live civil­ians, dis­patch­ing into death in the heav­i­est fash­ion, leav­ing the corpses in the streets… All this shows that cer­tain moral thresh­olds have ben trespassed.

- Is a turn­ing back possible?

 It’s very dif­fi­cult. They have no desire to turn back or to sub­mit to an account­ing. Per­haps in 20, 30 years… The traces on peo­ple are not like traces of pow­der, you can’t get rid of them in the wash. The res­i­dents of Cizre, of Sur, the Kurds, even the sol­diers bear the traces, and so do we. What I wished to ques­tion in “The jour­nal of fas­cism” was pre­cise­ly this trace left on the wit­ness­es, rather than describ­ing a dilem­na between vic­tim and assas­sin. To tell the truth, I want­ed to make it into a book, but I did­n’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty, I was jailed. What psy­cho­log­i­cal destruc­tion are we sub­ject­ed to, we who are the wit­ness­es of all that. What do we lose? I want­ed to search pre­cise­ly for that. But I did­n’t have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to do so.

- When we looks at what has hap­pened since 2015, where is Turkey going, in your opin­ion? Do you think there is any hope?

 There is an oblig­a­tion to give hope­ful respons­es to this type of ques­tion, but if truth be told, I am not known as a very opti­mistic per­son. Per­haps I am fear­ful. Because hope is a ques­tion of courage. I’ve had too many dis­ap­point­ments in my life. But a human is a being who man­ages to hope. The more con­di­tions wors­en, the more our tal­ent for hope devel­ops. But if we look at the sit­u­a­tion objec­tive­ly, ien­de­pen­dant­ly of my feel­ings, I don’t see any pos­i­tive signs. The scales show we’re on a bad track.

Soci­ety is totaly silenced. Accord­ing to my esti­mates, in two years, one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand per­sons were arrest­ed. They are build­ing new jails and increas­ing the capac­i­ty to five hun­dred thou­sand. They will then imprison those who are present­ly being sent to tri­al on bail. In all the Euro­pean coun­tries tak­en glob­al­ly, 168 jour­nal­ists are in jail and 162 of them are in Turkey. These are seri­ous fig­ures. And the true fig­ures are prob­a­bly high­er. I can draw the fol­low­ing com­par­i­son: when the Sec­ond World War began, forty thou­sand peo­ple were in con­cen­tra­tion camps.

Turkey is liv­ing through a par­tic­u­lar­ly hard peri­od.  And that is hid­den by the game of democ­ra­cy, the par­lia­ment and elec­tions. As long as this par­o­dy is main­tained, I don’t see a way out. Elec­tions, local elec­tions would be the solu­tion? Some [coun­tries] orga­nize Olympic Games, we orga­nize elec­tions! Writ­ers, polit­i­cal fig­ures, defendors of rights, lawyers, jour­nal­ists are either inside or “out­side”. One third of the HDP in whom I had placed much hope is in jail. How long can they hold on? How will they be able to recu­per­ate after all those blows? The hunger strike ini­ti­at­ed [Novem­ber 8 2018] 124 days ago by Ley­la Güven, all alone [in jail] has been tak­en up  since by hun­dreds of per­sons in jail. Among them, my cell­mate friends also.

But my only hope is the fact that this silence will be bro­ken before there are more deaths and that soci­ety will shake itself, come out of the freez­er in which it is locked, and wake up.


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