Turkey Hates Writers

Is the USA next?

If you want to imagine a class of people who have zero effect on society and politics, I would put poets at the top, followed by novelists. These are artforms that had profound effects on society in their heydays, but let’s be honest, in the modern world, not enough people read them for them to have a broad effect on society. Some novels have in the recent past had a big affect on the world: Atlas Shrugged (whose effect has been 100% baleful), Catch-22, and I can’t really think of others. Perhaps my readers will chime in.

And I’m speaking primarily about the U.S.A. Perhaps in other countries, novelists have more power. The government of Turkey seems to think so. Why else would they threaten one of their two Nobel Prize winners, the great author Orhan Pamuk. He is apparently being investigated for the crime of “insulting Turkishness.” I don’t know how serious being “investigated” in Turkey is—I don’t know if it is pack-a-suitcase-and-flee-the-country-in-the-middle-of-the-night serious, or it it is mostly an insulting irritant. It is apparently not the first time Pamuk has been investigated for this “crime.” And he’s not in jail yet.

Perhaps Turkey is reluctant to send its Nobel-prize-winning novelist to jail—it would be an international embarrassment. Most of the writers imprisoned in Turkey have no such platform on which to stand. They get investigated and tossed into the clink. Most of those jailed appear to be journalists, but novelists are sometimes rounded up. Maybe the most famous imprisoned author was Ahmet Altan. I say “was” because he was released earlier in 2021. He wrote a prison memoir (obviously not published in Turkey) called I Will Never See the World Again. The title, fortunately, turned out to be too pessimistic (although he was serving a life sentence). He was released after the European Court of Human Rights demanded it. I’m assuming that the Turkish regime is released Altan to curry favor with the EU. His book, which I read expecting to be terrified by, portrayed prison life as boring and miserable, but not the horror show we expect of Turkish prisons. He has, in interviews, reminded people, “I went to prison, I came out, and I can go back again.” After all, Erdogan is still president. Political prisoners who are released get rearrested in Turkey all the time.

Thank God it’s Turkey, and not here! Right? Well, considering the increasing calls on school districts by the right to remove books from their shelves, authors have many reasons to be nervous. Here in Texas, a thug named Matt Krause (State representative from district 93, Republican) sent a letter to five school districts asking them to identify any books that deal with sexuality, STDs, AIDS, and “material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” He included a 16-page list of books he wanted to ban. This gimbus is running for Texas State Attorney General in the next election cycle. Matt Krause hates freedom.

But it’s not just Texas—this sort of fucking nonsense is happening all over the United States. So authors, watch your backs, but remember was Altan says: “Don't be afraid. Why are you afraid? It's nothing to be afraid of. I went in, I slept, I got out. I went in again, I slept, and I got out. I will go in again, I will sleep, and I will get out.”

[Please consider supporting my writing by becoming a patron.]