Not Quite What Pamuk Has in Mind

It would seem that headscarves and peace are not compatible in Snow.

What about in the real Turkey? Here's a piece from The Financial Times about the events of 29 October that left me feeling quite hopeful.

That Twilit Place Between East and West

image: Ankara greengrocer, 2005

When reading Istanbul, one must work through Pamuk's personal obsessions to get at some insights I find compelling about modern Turkey.

On page 169, he notes that Koçu, like the other melancholic writers Pamuk considered, failed to be Western and though he failed in that attempt, his "most beautiful and profound pages are the ones that remain between worlds and (again, like the others) the price he paid for his originality was loneliness."

Pamuk was a precocious but melancholy teenager and young man, and his prose indicates that his personal melancholy continues.

While this offers a key to his thinking and artistry, it also offers an insight into the nation's journey. I was most struck by Pamuk's assertion that Turkey has achieved nothing original, since the founding of the Republic, to rival the West (357).

Other than the still-evolving notion of "Turkishness," I'd say that I can find little to refute Pamuk's claim. Is this another reason he got into so much political trouble?