An Encounter with Orhan Pamuk

At one of the autumn literature talks that recently commenced at the Southbank Centre, I got the chance to listen to Orhan Pamuk live for the first time. He read a few excepts from his new book 'Other Colours' and then answered some questions from the audience and the editor-in-chief of the Guardian. After this lovely encounter, my respect for Pamuk grew considerably.

Even though he is a controversial and, I believe, an overly-politicized figure, not just in Turkey, but in the milieu of the western world, his ideas are modern, crisp, and surprisingly non-political. He just happens to say what he believes in and thus becomes a media-embroidered political figure ("because it sells"). At the end of the day, he's a fiction writer, who has been inspired by Proust, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Among his books, Snow is the only one that could be considered a modern political study of Turkey, which he has declared as his first and last political novel. All his other books are pure fiction dealing with the medieval Istanbul and Europe, which continue to inspire him.

His sense of Turkishness emits from being very proud with our history but not in an extremely nationalistic manner, that would hinder any contemporary understanding of our identity. He is OK with accepting the past and moving on, so as to get rid of the 'shame' that fuels the 'absolute pride,' as he put it. He compared Turkey's westernization with that of Japan and offered his ideas on how successful these drastic changes can be where they are brought from the top to the people in the span of a few years. I don't want people to misunderstand this: He never questioned Atatürk and his ideals, but commented on how the manner in which Turkey acquired these western values is contributing to the current political trends in Turkey.

Above all the qualities he demonstrated during the talk though, his sense of humor was the best. To a question coming from a student who's writing her doctorate on his books, he replied: "Why don't you send your blank doctorate pages and I'll fill them in for you."

Below are some of the questions that popped up in my head as I was packing for Paris that night:

- Do you think that Turkey is becoming the leader of modern Islam, and do you think that the western world wants Turkey to assume this leadership to fix their work in the Middle East?

- Did you appreciate Turkish culture and values more when you left Turkey to live abroad?

I applaud Pamuk once again.