Writer Aslı Erdoğan is being torn to pieces by the media fol­low­ing a biased trans­la­tion of an inter­view she gave to an Ital­ian news­pa­per that was then re-trans­lat­ed by the Bel­gian paper Le Soir. Here, she answers Zülküf Kurt, in Yeni Özgür Poli­ti­ka of accu­sa­tions such as: “She is sel­l­ign oug Turkey,” with “Turkey has no tak­ers”

Turkey has no takers

I am not a Kurd. I learned of the Kurds’ suf­fer­ings very late. In the nineties, I was not in Turkey and that increas­es my respon­si­bil­li­ty. It is because I am not Kur­dish, and because I am not Armen­ian that I feel an even greater respon­si­bil­i­ty rel­a­tive to what was done to them. It is a human responsibility.”


Türkçe | Français | English

When the Turk­ish State’s assaults against North­ern and East­ern Syr­ia began, pre-exist­ing nation­al­ist reflex­es increased. So much nation­al­ism was poured on that, from mil­i­tary salutes in sports sta­di­ums to artists queue­ing in order to sup­port the attacks, peo­ple from every social envi­ron­ment began to side with the war effort.

In order to insure that no dis­sent­ing voic­es would be heard inside the coun­try, orders were giv­en by the army, the police and the judi­cia­ry. To such an extent that the Pros­e­cu­tor’s office in Istan­bul signed a dec­la­ra­tion that will go down in his­to­ry as a doc­u­ment of shame: “Any per­son or group of per­sons crit­i­ciz­ing on social net­works the ‘Source of Peace’ oper­a­tion launched by the Turk­ish armed forces and thus dis­rupt­ing social peace, calm, domes­tic secu­ri­ty and uni­ty in Turkey, be it through writ­ings or images, is sub­ject to the appli­ca­tion of the law and pro­vi­sions in the Turk­ish Penal Code con­cern­ing the anti-ter­ror­ist law and the entire exist­ing legal dis­po­si­tions therewith.”

While the pros­e­cu­tor’s office was insur­ing that no dis­cor­dant voic­es would be heard, warn­ing oper­a­tions had already begun. Say­ing “No to war” was imme­di­ate­ly labelled as “sup­port for ter­ror­ism” and this process is still ongo­ing. Amidst all these oppres­sions, words sup­pos­ed­ly spo­ken by writer Aslı Erdoğan, whose tri­al car­ried the risk of prison in per­pe­tu­ity, broke out in the news.

What did­n’t we hear, after the press report­ed that Aslı Erdoğan was quot­ed as say­ing “We Turks are con­di­tioned to hate the Kurds as soon as we start school”. An entire range of accu­sa­tions and tar­get­ed denun­ci­a­tions sprang up. They ranged from left­ist news­pa­pers declar­ing this was “bull­shit”, to those declar­ing “she’s chasin after celebri­ty by slan­der­ing her coun­try”, to those who say “she’s defam­ing”, to those who claim “racism does­n’t exist in our coun­try”, all the way to head­lines announc­ing “Aslı Erdoğan, lover of ter­ror­ism”, “The West requests, Aslı provides”.

Despite the fact no such expres­sion as “We Turks are con­di­tioned to hate the Kurds as soon as we start school” appeared in the inter­view Aslı Erdoğan gave to the Ital­ian paper La Repub­bli­ca, the Bel­gian paper Le Soir who trans­lat­ed the inter­view into French wrote she had said this and that she had described the total­i­ty of polit­i­cal forces in Par­lia­ment (with the excep­tion of the HDP a demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion par­ty), includ­ing the repub­li­can left, as “ter­ror­ists”.

Even though Aslı Erdoğan declared she had not pro­vid­ed such an inter­view to Le Soir and had not used such expres­sions, the top­ic took up a large share of the news. With any word crit­i­cal of the war pro­hib­it­ed with utmost sever­i­ty, how could this woman writer dare pro­nounce such words?

As for the peo­ples, Kur­dish, Armen­ian, Cir­cass­ian and oth­ers inter­pret­ed the top­ic dif­fer­ent­ly. Every­one start­ed relat­ing the pro­hi­bi­tions they had lived in school as chil­dren, how they hid their iden­ti­ty, and to what they were sub­ject­ed. A kind of #metoo move­ment sud­den­ly explod­ed in the midst of war.

Did you say “We Turks are con­di­tioned to hate the Kurds as soon as we start school” ?

I did not pro­nounce such a sen­tence. I dis­like con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, but there is a strange sit­u­a­tion going on here. The orig­i­nal inter­view was pub­lished by La Repub­bli­ca in Ital­ian. The orig­i­nal was record­ed over the phone, in Eng­lish. This made explain­ing sev­er­al notions dif­fi­cult. Talk­ing to a jour­nal­ist for an inter­view over the phone about chau­vin­ism in Turkey is not easy. The inter­view was first trans­lat­ed into Ital­ian, then, eight days lat­er, the Bel­gian news­pa­per Le Soir pub­lished it with major changes to cer­tain sen­tences. I could not rec­og­nize “my sen­tences”. Then Sput­nik pub­lished it. In my entire 30 years as a writer, no Russ­ian media has ever done a reportage on me. Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion in Sput­nik, on the same day, media close to the gov­ern­ment start­ed cir­cu­lat­ing two sen­tences that are not mine, quot­ing Sput­nik and Le Soir as their sources. As I was hos­pi­tal­ized at the time, it took me two days to become aware of this. Per­haps they thought it would be dif­fi­cult to find the orig­i­nal in Ital­ian. But luck­i­ly we still have jour­nal­ists in Turkey. And before I had been informed, BBC Turkey had found the orig­i­nal and had trans­lat­ed it into Turk­ish. But that did not stop the attacks. To tell the truth, this is not the first time I am torn to pieces this way.

Did the news­pa­pers apologize?

T24 offered apolo­gies even before I heard about it. Le Soir pub­lished cor­rec­tions and apolo­gies and this was relayed on sev­er­al sites. I don’t think Yani Şafak and Akit will offer apolo­gies. In my opin­ion, they did not do this with a mind to apol­o­giz­ing. Le Soir pub­lished both apolo­gies and a cor­rect trans­la­tion of the inter­view, half an hour after my request. In Turkey, I’m allowed to sue the news­pa­pers who mis­rep­re­sent­ed my words and did not apol­o­gize. As there is no longer a legal sys­tem in Turkey, I can’t expect much from such a trial.

You are pur­port­ed to have used sen­tences in which you described par­lia­men­tar­i­ans as “ter­ror­ists”.

Frankly, that was the sen­tence that shocked me. No per­son with a sound mind would describe par­lia­men­tar­i­ans as “ter­ror­ists”. In fact, any­one read­ing that sen­tence was enti­tled to enter­tain doubts and sus­pect an error in trans­la­tion. For the past three, four years, our gov­ern­ment is busy declar­ing as a “ter­ror­ist” any­one who does not think as it does. They have even said “There are 6 mil­lion ter­ror­ists” [Note: the HDP’s 6 mil­lions vot­ers]. I was also labelled a ter­ror­ist! Obvi­ous­ly I would not use their jar­gon and I would not describe any­one as a “ter­ror­ist”. I’m very sur­prised that see­ing such a sen­tence any­one could have con­sid­ered this as authen­tic. They were ready to seize upon it. “Some­thing much hap­pen and we must destroy this woman”. And now, as if they were dis­ap­point­ed, “have we wast­ed all that hatred in vain?” They are left to face their own angers, vio­lences and obscenities.

When one looks at what was writ­ten about you, one finds sen­tences such as “This is as much bull­shit as what Trump says when he talks of Kurds and Turks being nat­ur­al ene­mies”, or oth­ers, espe­cial­ly by those who con­sid­ered them­selves left-lean­ing social­ists “Aslı Erdoğan talks that way in order to court the Kurds”, “She’s chas­ing after celebri­ty by slan­der­ing her coun­try”, and more… How did you receive all this?

If such a nation­al­is­tic vei­w­point is root­ed in left-lean­ing social­ists in Turkey, it’s a shame for socialism…We used to share notions such as uni­ver­sal­ism, sid­ing with the oppressed! I had no way of know­ing to what extent the Rev­o­lu­tion in Roja­va was dis­cussed, tak­en seri­ous­ly, sup­port­ed. Every­thing I learned about Roja­va, I heard in con­fer­ences tak­ing place in Poland, for exam­ple. I gain noth­ing from critiz­ing Turkey, as they seem to think. As for the alle­ga­tion that I would have prof­it­ed from the Kurds, you tell me. To this day, I am on tri­al for my life because of my writ­ings, have I earned one pen­ny from this? Per­son­al­ly, I attempt to defend human rights and this has caused me more prob­lems than I could have imag­ined. I was incar­cer­at­ed, I lost my health. I am under tri­al for my life, I live in exile, my books are chased out of libraries, how can any­one dare claim I prof­it from this? A bit of respect, a bit of con­science, if you please.

If truth be told, the pub­lish­ing world is much more con­ser­v­a­tive and sup­port­ive of the satu quo than one would imag­ine. Defend­ing human rights, the oppo­si­tion, crit­i­ciz­ing the sys­tem cuts the jour­ney short for many authors, espe­cial­ly for women…It has always stood in my way. Even when I recieved the Simone de Beau­voir prize and the Vaclav Hav­el, there was no sub­stan­tial news about it in main­stream media. Why can they not accept the fact that I am sin­cere­ly and con­scien­cious­ly against per­se­cuti­non? Why must they absolute­ly think I do this from oppor­tunism? For which oppor­tu­ni­ty or for which pow­er are they them­selves in oppo­si­tion? They con­sid­er them­selves con­vinced and ide­al­is­tic. How can they be so sure that I am not as ide­al­is­tic as they are? In pass­ing, I may tell myself “humans see oth­ers in their own image”.

Thou­sands of peo­ple, from Noam Chom­sky to Robert de Niro have strong­ly crit­i­cized Turkey’s assault against Syr­ia. The West has no need for my crit­i­cism. In any event, it was an ordi­nary inter­view no one would have seen or read had it not been for these absurd reac­tions and this destruc­tive cam­paign. “You sold out Turkey” is a com­ment that always shows up. In fact, Turkey has no tak­ers. Real­ly, there are no tak­ers left for Turkey. My answer to those who imag­ine that I’m high­ly cov­etous of the Nobel, such as Ahmet Hakan [Note: jour­nal­ist, recent­ly named Edi­tor in chief at the Turk­ish new­pa­per Hür­riyet]? I think they have nev­er read my books. I see myself as some­one who writes minor lit­er­a­ture. The City in Crim­son Cloak was trans­lat­ed in French in 2013 and the mag­a­zine Lire select­ed me as one of the fifty writ­ers who would leave their mark on pos­ter­i­ty. I was sur­prised to be includ­ed in the list. Then the rest fol­lowed. After I was incar­cer­at­ed, my books were trans­lat­ed into over 10 lan­guages, I was com­pared to authors such as Kaf­ka, Artaud, and I received a num­ber of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al prizes. The Stone Build­ing came close to being made into a film by an impor­tant direc­tor. I would be look­ing to gain from all this! Writ­ers such as myself are not award­ed the Nobel, nor do we seek to win the Nobel. When I was 25 years old, I worked for the Cern, in the field of Hig­gs physics. My team leader won the Nobel. I saw the facade and the back­drop to the Nobel. And the first les­son I learned from the physi­cists was “don’t take prizes too seri­ous­ly”. I’ve received over 20 prizes such as the Simone de Beau­voir, Vaclav Hav­el, Erich Maria Remar­que, Sait Faik, and I’ve been rat­ed as good for pos­ter­i­ty. A long time ago, I learned not to take prizes or con­dem­na­tions too seri­ous­ly. There are more impor­tant things to do in life.

More­over, it might be a good thing if I men­tion that I am seri­ous­ly ill. I would not have the strength to attend the next Nobel prize recep­tion. For health rea­sons, I could not attend the Vaclav Hav­el cer­e­mo­ny. A per­son who has nev­er met me but who takes a look at my writ­ing can see I walk anoth­er road entire­ly. I had said it before, I am not Kur­dish. I learned of the Kurds suf­fer­ings rel­a­tive­ly late. In the nineties, I was not in Turkey and that only increas­es my respon­sili­bity. It is because I am not Kur­dish, I am not Armen­ian that I feel an even greater respon­si­bil­i­ty rel­a­tive to what has been done to Kurds, to Arme­ni­ans. It is a human respon­si­bil­i­ty. There are mil­lions of peo­ple like me in the world. Human beings still exist who are sad­dened by the mas­sacre of nature, the assas­si­na­tion of humans, inequal­i­ties and per­se­cu­tions. We exist. Yes, I crit­i­cize Turkey in a seri­ous way and I express my con­vic­tions. I have fol­lowed the same line ever since I start­ed writ­ing in Radikal in 1998. Have I been fol­low­ing a secret strat­e­gy to win the Nobel, since 1998? I was fired from the media, my lit­er­a­ture was ignored, most of the prizes I’ve received were not men­tioned in Turkey, and in the end, I was jailed. I was sub­ject­ed to more than one bash­ing and still I would be singing “I will die, I will die for a Nobel”?! To my knowl­edge, the music for the song I will die, I will die for my Turkey belongs to a Kur­dish musi­cal group, Koma Qamis­lo.

Has the fact Ahmet Hakan has tar­get­ed you fol­low­ing Tahir Elçi’s assas­si­na­tion wor­ried you? Have you or your fam­i­ly received threats?

I am seri­ous­ly ill. Once you reach a cer­tain point in ill­ness, you are no longer in a con­di­tion to fear death threats. My moth­er is not afraid either. She is 75 years old and a strong par­ti­san of the CHP. This woman, who has not so much as crushed an ant in her entire life, receives mes­sages such as “give us that whore’s address so we can set­tle her account”. I don’t expect apolo­gies, I don’t want any. I wish all the best to those who have risen to their new respon­si­bilites in these times. But if it isn’t too much to ask from them, they could offer apolo­gies to my mother.

After [the pub­li­ca­tion of ] the words attrib­uted to you, there were com­ments such as “there is no racism in the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, there is no dis­crim­i­na­tion”. What do you think of these comments?

The sen­tence attrib­uted to me is not quite exact. Talk­ing in an inter­view on such com­pli­cat­ed top­ics is dif­fi­cult, in order to give their exact mean­ing to con­cepts such as “nation­al­ism, chau­vin­ism, dis­crim­i­na­tion”. I can­not say that “hatred for the Kurds is taught in our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem” because when I was in school, the word “Kurd” did­n’t even exist. The Kurds did not exist. This may be even more seri­ous than hatred. Of course no one told us to hate the Kurds, but no one talked to us about the Kurds or the Arme­ni­ans either. In my own fam­i­ly, there was a Kurd. This rel­a­tive was called Rıza the Kurd. I thought “the Kurd” was a nick­name and I thought it referred to men who walked around with their shirt unbut­toned in the mid­dle of win­ter. When I was a child, I was unaware of the exis­tence of a peo­ple called “Kurds” even though there was a Kurd in our fam­i­ly. Among my school friends, there were cer­tain­ly Kurds and Arme­ni­ans but none of them said so. This is pre­cise­ly where the prob­lem start­ed. Because it speaks of a dis­crim­i­na­tion that is buried even deep­er, a denial, a nega­tion. Anoth­er top­ic I would have liked to bring up with La Repub­bli­ca but could­n’t, due to time con­straints, was “Our Oath”. [The oblig­a­tion] has been lift­ed recent­ly. In school we had to recite “Our Oath” every morn­ing. We start­ed the day, stand­ing at atten­tion, and howl­ing “I am Turk­ish, hon­est and hard-work­ing. (…) May my exis­tence be devot­ed to Turk­ish exis­tence.” One can hard­ly main­tain that such an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is not chau­vin­is­tic. Coun­try, flag, Tur­kic­i­ty, mil­i­tarism… A sys­tem in which chil­dren are raised to be the sol­diers of this one or that one. While recit­ing the oath, one fifth of those who were forced to howl “I am Turk­ish” were Kur­dish chil­dren. These chil­dren are forced to receive an edu­ca­tion in Turk­ish and not in the lan­guage they have heard their moth­er speak, the lan­guage in which they dis­cov­ered the world. You take such a child, you tell him first of all “You will speak Turk­ish” then you force him to yell every morn­ing “I am Turk­ish, hon­est and hard-work­ing.” Quite obvi­ous­ly we did not hate the Kurds because they did not exist in any way for us. Every­thing changed when they began to say “we exist”. And those who claim they do not hate the Kurds have sent me thou­sands of mes­sages of hatred in the past few days. If you hate even me, how could you not hate the Kurds?


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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