Nurdan Gürbilek is one of Turkey's most gifted critics. Born in Kütahya, Turkey, Gürbilek is a graduate of Bo?aziçi University, where she studied English Literature. In 2010, she won the prestigious Erdal Oz Prize for Literature. She is the author of many books, such as “Bad Boy Turk” (2001), “The Orient Lost” (2004) and “The Language of the Downtrodden” (2008). Her latest book of essays, “The New Cultural Climate in Turkey: Living in a Shop Window” (Zed Book, 2011), is a thoughtful look at the transformation of Turkey in recent decades. Gürbilek writes about the politics, history, literature and culture of Turkey with passion and honesty. She opens up the inner life of her country for us to see, feel and understand. Turkey is a complex country beyond simple explanations and clichés, and it deserves the kind of refined interpretation found in her exceptional book. Gürbilek talks about Turkey and her work with Saudi Gazette. What inspired you to become a writer? I was on the editorial board of a journal of politics, philosophy and literature after the 1980 military coup. The early versions of most of the essays in the “The New Cultural Climate in Turkey” were published there. It was a period of severe repression, but Turkey was being rapidly transformed into a consumer society at the same time, taking the place deemed fit for it within globalizing capitalism. It was in order to understand this great transformation that I started writing these essays. How is Turkey a land of contradictions? Turkey is devout and secular, “backwards” and modern, rich and poor, conservative and liberal all at the same time. It's the land of the world's biggest shopping malls and also of its poorest villages. Most importantly, Turkey is both a victim and an oppressor. It's the land of people who feel they are victims of the West, but also a land of those victimizing their own minorities. How would you define “Turkishness”? We have to be careful with such concepts since we might easily come up with essentialist-nationalist-orientalistic definitions. Turkishness should not be defined as an originary state of mind or some essential cultural reality alleged to identify Turkey's true natives, nor should it be defined as an oriental backwardness resisting modernity. Turkishness can only be defined within a historical-dailogical perpective, in its dialogue with the others – it's big “other”, the West, and also with the others within itself, the so called “minorities.” In these essays I defined it as a cultural double-bind which was shaped in relation to the modern-capitalist world: An admiration and a drift towards the Western model, and a fear of losing its self in that model, a perpetual summons to return to the self. A sense of inadequency and grandiosity, enthrallment and fear, victimhood and defiance standing side by side in the same space of political subjectivity. Do you think Turkey is a model for other Islamic nations? That's what Turkey's new regime and new ruling class say. They say that Turkey, being Muslim and modern, uniting a liberal economy and a conservative ideology, combining faith and finance will be a model for all Islamic nations. But there are plenty of reasons why we should be critical. Since what we actually have is a Turkey which hasn't settled up its Kurdish problem, which hasn't settled accounts with the “deep state”, which still doesn't have a dependable democracy and which has a regime still nourished by polarizations. Would admission to the European Union change the essential character of Turkey? Yes and no. Yes, since the drift and reaction towards Europe has been a central motive in Turkey from the very start; admission to the union will bring important changes at least in the sphere of political subjectivity. But, at the same time, no, since admission to the EU won't change the fact that Turkey is a conservative-capitalist country. We may only hope that such a union might also bring a “union of oppositions” – a solidarity between the oppressed, opponents and dissenters in Europe and Turkey.
