Leipzig Book Fair: “I want a different world”

A woman has to survive this! To be persecuted for 25 years by a political justice system in Turkey, to be driven into exile from their homeland, to remain there in waiting for 15 years now, not to be left in peace – and yet to remain cheerful, combative, brave. A radical, revolutionary woman is this Pinar Selek, “the shameless one,” as the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink once called her before he was murdered by excited nationalists in Turkey in 2007.

Pinar Selek, born in Istanbul in 1971, grew up very privileged, wealthy, educated – and politically left-wing. The mother: as a pharmacist, a benefactor; the father: political lawyer; the grandfather: a pioneer of the revolutionary left, co-founder of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP), deputy of the National Assembly. A family home full of love and books, an artistic, literary, intellectual milieu. Everything is prepared for a life of peace, freedom and prosperity.

The daughter enters the realm of dreams and visions through the writings of Karl Marx, Eugène Ionesco and Hannah Arendt. “I wanted to live a magical life, like in a fairy tale,” she remembers in an interview with Guillaume Gamblin. »All these influences mixed inside me: the street children, the refusal to take part in the barbarism; the awareness of the banality of evil, but also that political miracles are possible; interest in sociology; the desire to write and live a magical life.«

But Turkey is not a democratic country. When the military staged a coup in 1980, Pinar Selek was nine years old. Her father disappears into prison for four and a half years, the family lives in fear and terror. In 1992, Selek began studying sociology in Ankara and continued two years later in Istanbul. She researches the Kurdish question – that becomes her downfall. In July 1998 she was arrested and ended up in prison. Nothing unusual, she thinks at first, “it has become normal in my country to spend a while in prison.” She should reveal the names of her Kurdish interlocutors. She is interrogated, intimidated, harassed and tortured. “I was naked,” she says, “and that’s how the torture began.”

From these memories we learn in stark detail what human torturers are capable of. Suspended from the wall, “with my hands tied down behind my back. Everything crashed and shattered. My spine broke.” To this day, she is plagued by health problems, her back, her psyche, and post-traumatic fears.

The torturers give no peace. Because she doesn’t speak, because no one betrays her, they resort to slander. A month after her arrest, a false accusation was made that she had carried out an attack on the spice market in Istanbul. Since then she has been outlawed. For 25 years she has been subjected to the arbitrariness of a political justice system in her home country of Turkey. At the end of December 2000, she was released from prison on bail after two and a half years. Since then, one legal farce has followed the next. Every acquittal is overturned and new accusations are made. On April 7, 2009, Selek fled her homeland; she was 38 years old. Your exile begins. Today she lives in France, (still) largely safe from the stalking of Turkish secret services; she has been a French citizen since September 2017.

In March 2018, Pinar Selek wrote a public letter summarizing her fate. »If the Supreme Court does not confirm my fifth acquittal, then I will be sentenced to life imprisonment. It would be a conviction for a crime that never occurred, plus a sentence to pay a fine for the damage caused by an explosion at the Istanbul spice market. My nine books, which are still regularly republished in Turkey, and everything I published up to the age of 38 would be confiscated. More importantly, my family would be in danger.” She ends her letter with the words: “You stole my life. But I am life.”

She doesn’t give in. She continues to publish tirelessly: novels, fairy tales, poems, memories. Little of it is available in German so far: “To a man, pampered to a man, drilled to a man” (2010), her report on the destructive power of the military; the novel “Halved Hopes” (2011); the essay “Because they are Armenians” (2015, republished 2023).

She received her doctorate in political science in 2014 and works as a visiting professor. “Exile means moving forward with crutches, all the time,” she admits in the volume of the conversation. »These days I move better, I no longer need crutches, I have a walking stick. Nice is a city on the border and I feel good between the borders.” She doesn’t want to be pushed into the role of a victim; she is too clever, too far-sighted, too combative for that. She is concerned with social conditions – she wants to analyze and penetrate the dependencies and power structures and then develop strategies for overcoming them.

»When I’m in the city and look around, I get the impression that everyone is running as if they had been ordered to. Therein lies the compulsion of capitalism: it does not force people to step in step as in the dictatorial or military order, but it exists as an invisible order, an internalized discipline that imposes itself on the entire world. The education system and the university do not teach how to fight against the capitalist system, but rather they teach the race to emerge as the best individual from this terrible competition.

The publisher calls Pinar Selek a sociologist, writer, anti-militarist activist, feminist and anarchist. She herself says: “I am anti-militarist, anti-racist, anti-nationalist, ecological, anti-capitalist, anti-heterosexist… If I put all of this in front of my feminism, it becomes an endless sentence.” The biographically written volume of conversations is supplemented by quotes from her books and essays. A persecuted, a rebellious, a revolutionary life takes shape. The captivating report by Pinar Selek, first published in France in 2019, has now been translated into German. Unfortunately, printing errors abound. And the table of contents was unsuccessful, which is why the publisher had to subsequently send a proof list to the bookstore.

The next court hearing in Turkey is scheduled for the end of June. Then Pinar Selek is 52 years old. “What keeps me alive are my convictions, my love of freedom and my love of life,” she says confidently. And almost defiantly she adds: “At the same time, I don’t regret anything. I didn’t want another life for myself, I want a different world! This world is not normal. The will to realize freedom in this world exposes us to great suffering. Maybe it’s a sin, but if I had to do it again, I’d sin the same way again.”

Guillaume Gamblin (ed.): The outrageous one. Conversations with Pinar Selek. A.d. Francis v. Lou Marin. Grassroots Revolution Publishing House, 228 pages, br., €20.90.
Also new on the German book market is an essay by Pinar Selek: Because they are Armenians. A.d. Francis v. Dorothea Dieckmann. Orlando, 100 p., hardcover, €15.