Ermeni Lobisinin gözdesi Elif Şafak'ın kocası; Fethullah Gülen'in prenslerinden Eyüp Can'ın yönetimine geçtiği Turkish Daily News'da(TDN) sözde Ermeni soykırımı iddiaları ile ilgili yazılar yazan konuk yazar Ferruh Demirmen'in yazılarına son verildi.
Türkiye'de entellektüel bir kabaldan sözeden ve sözde Ermeni soykırımı ile Türkiye'deki entellektüel kabal arasındaki ilişkiyi kuran Ferruh Demirmen'in yazıları, sözde demokratları hayli rahatsız etmiş anlaşılan.
Lobi demokratlarının maskesinin bir kere daha düşmesine vesilen olan Ferruh Demirmen'in, Orhan Pamuk'un Freud'a bolca malzeme sağlayabilecek karakter yapısına dair kaleme aldığı İngilizce yazıyı ve TDN'deki sansürü duyurduğu açıklamasını
aşağıda dikkatinize sunuyoruz.
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Dear Members of Turkish Forum;
As we all enter Year 2007, I wanted to share with you some thoughts of mine on Orhan Pamuk and pass on a piece of news on Turkish Daily News.
Reflections on Orhan Pamuk
I am sure you all recall the images of Orhan Pamuk beaming with joyful smile splashed on newspapers and TV screens nearly a month ago. Ever since the Swedish Academy announced in October that Orhan Pamuk had been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, I have been pondering over the psyche of this man, how he relates to Turks, what his award means for Turkey . Contrary to popular thought in the West, I have concluded, especially after reading his long acceptance speech at the Swedish Academy on December 7, that this man's world had little to do with reality, and that, literary commendations notwithstanding, his award will do more damage than good to Turkey 's image.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and not having to work for a living until the age of 30, Pamuk was the antithesis of Yaşar Kemal, his near-contemporary. The room where Pamuk immersed himself in to write his novels was a microcosm of his inner soul, desolate and insecure, removed from the humanity at large, its joys, miseries and thrills included. His room was his world, warped as it was, and his father was his alter-ego. Raised in a dysfunctional family devoid of warmth, his relationship to his father is a fertile ground for study by Freudian psychoanalysts.
I am willing to bet that for most of his life Pamuk never left Istanbul to know the rest of Turkey , to feel the pulse of people beyond Istanbul . Although he lived in one of the liveliest and most cosmopolitan cities of the world, Pamuk felt like he was living in “ta şra ” (province, mainly in a derogatory sense). For him, the real, exciting world was in the West, where the likes of Sartre, Montaigne and Dostoyevsky became his icons.
The famed Ad I vars, Guntekins and Nesins, that his people had produced, did not interest, excite or motivate Pamuk. Like many elitist intellectuals of our time, he was enthralled by the West, looking down on the society in which he was raised, and which had embraced him. His joy, his hopes, and his salvation, as it were, lay with the West, not with his people.
Then, how is it that this man, so removed from reality, in fact from his people at large, remarked, in an interview in Switzerland in February 2005, that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it?" What authority did this man, of little worlds filled with much pettiness, possess to make such overarching accusation? His comments were a pathetic attempt at self-promotion, and they marked sheer stupidity. There is no law that says Nobel laureates are immune to stupidity.
Even during his acceptance speech in Stockholm , Pamuk managed to interject denigrating remarks about Turkey : "... I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists. “ .... “... there was a life [meaning the West] richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul , all of Turkey , I was outside it.”
Whatever literary talents he may have, I am convinced that Pamuk's comments in Switzerland catapulted him to the point where he was judged to be deserving of Nobel Prize in literature. His prosecution (later dropped) under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code about a year ago boosted his reputation. An EU commissioner, a delegation of MPs from the European Parliament and other foreigners descended on Istanbul to “observe” his trial, and he became an instant international celebrity.
In the words of Alfred Nobel, the literature prize should be awarded for "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency". What was the “ideal” Pamuk was promoting in his novels? In his acceptance speech in Stockholm , Pamuk did not articulate a vision for humanity. His speech was all about a self-centered, flatulent artist in search of an identity. He talked about his feelings, his anxiety, his sense of inadequacy and emptiness, and his forlorn existence in a lonely room, year in and year out.
Perhaps the Swedish Academy nowadays interprets “idealistic tendency” as the ability to evoke political outrage in a society.
For all the limelight he attracted and the accolade he received – including the gold medal and the $1.4 million cash prize - reading Pamuk's acceptance speech I almost felt sorry for the man.
I am also certain that, if he had bad-mouthed Turks the way Pamuk did, and played the “genocide” card, Yaşar Kemal, a larger figure, would have received the Nobel literature prize years ago. For all his unorthodox political views, Kemal at least has intellectual integrity and knows the pulse of his people.
Pamuk still has to answer accusations – widely circulating in literary circles in Turkey – that he engaged in plagiarism in writing White Castle . I am not a literary critic, but reading the comparison between many sentences in White Castle and the novel by Critobal and Villanon (translated into Turkish under the title Pedro'nun Zorunlu Seyahat I ) I have noticed remarkable similarities. There is also the accusation that My Name is Red was in part plagiarized from Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings .
His Nobel Prize notwithstanding, the opprobrium Pamuk will face in Turkish public opinion for his infamous comments in Switzerland will be one of his lasting legacies. The efforts of some publicity-seeking journalists in Turkey to rehabilitate Pamuk, to make him look almost larger than life, will have little effect in the psyche and final judgment of Turkish people. Among Turks, Pamuk will carry the stigma of being a perverse opportunist. He will be cheered and pampered in the West, but rebuffed by his people. How he will make peace with his conscience, only he can tell.
However Turks feel about Pamuk, and however he makes peace with his conscience, however, the fact remains that Pamuk has caused incalculable damage of Turkey 's image abroad. Just look up any reference to Pamuk on the Internet these days, and you will find attribution to his remarks about Kurds and Armenians killed by Turks. Never mind that these remarks are grotesquely false. Coming from the mouth of a Nobel laureate, his accusations have the aura of believability for the uninformed reader. The Armenian lobby, in particular, is exploiting Pamuk to the fullest.
Incidentally, there was a hidden irony in Stockholm on December 7 when Pamuk received his award. Some historical material assembled by Dr. Mete Soyturk of Germany , including a copy of an original Ottoman archive and a copy of a 1917 article by a Swedish officer in a Swedish newspaper, debunks the myth of Armenian “genocide.” I wonder how Pamuk and the Swedish dignitaries would have felt during that occasion had they known about this documentary evidence.
Censorship at TDN
I also want to give you a piece of news: Last month I was booted out from TDN (Turkish Daily News) as a guest writer. The matter came to my attention when an article that I had submitted was summarily rejected for publication – with no explanation or apology. What I did not know was that several days earlier TDN's management had changed. A new editor-in-chief was named, and Eyup Can was brought in as "executive editor" at the top . Ey u p Can, also running the business newspaper Referans, happens to be the husband of Elif Şafak, the up-and-coming Turkish novelist adored by the Armenian lobby.
I am certain that the several stinging articles of mine on Armenian “genocide” that were published in TDN within the past year, but especially the latest one in which I referred to a certain “intellectual cabal” in Turkey, irritated Şafak and her husband. Although I refrained from identifying Şafak by name in that article, it was obvious that she was included in that cabal. I must have touched a sensitive nerve with Şafak and her husband . Now it was time for them to get even with me, to “settle the score” as it were. Vindictiveness comes cheap.
This censorship does not bother me much because I have been writing in TDN – since 2000 - only as a matter of hobby and only occasionally. But next time I read someone in TDN under the tutelage of Ey u p Can championing the freedom of press or freedom of expression, I will want to puke and cry “hypocrisy.” I thought we have enough of a problem on our hands fighting censorship in the Western media on the “genocide” issue. Ironically, we now have a similar problem with an English-language newspaper published in Turkey .
Eyup Can used to work for Zaman (closely associated with Fethullah Gulen ), where Şafak now writes. She also writes weekly columns at TDN. Like Referans, TDN is owned and published by the Do gan Med ia Group. A week ago Cengiz Candar joined the ranks of columnists at TDN.
In any case, Dashnak readers of TDN will be elated not seeing my name any longer. Recalling the hate e-mails I have received, I should perhaps view the new development as a relief.
Happy New Year.
Ferruh Demirmen
ferruh@demirmen.com
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