“Safe Spaces of the Like-Minded”: the Search for a Hybrid Post-Ottoman Identity in Elif Shafak's the Bastard of Istanbul

Commonwealth Essays and Studies 36.2 | 2014 Inside/Out “Safe Spaces of the Like-Minded”: The Search for a Hybrid Post-Ottoman Identity in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul Elena Furlanetto Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ces/5172 DOI: 10.4000/ces.5172 ISSN: 2534-6695 Publisher SEPC (Société d’études des pays du Commonwealth) Printed version Date of publication: 1 April 2014 Number of pages: 19-31 ISSN: 2270-0633 Electronic reference Elena Furlanetto, ““Safe Spaces of the Like-Minded”: The Search for a Hybrid Post-Ottoman Identity in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul”, Commonwealth Essays and Studies [Online], 36.2 | 2014, Online since 15 April 2021, connection on 19 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ces/5172 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ces.5172 Commonwealth Essays and Studies is licensed under a Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modiﬁcation 4.0 International. “Safe Spaces of the Like-Minded”: The Search for a Hybrid Post-Ottoman Identity in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul Through the representation of two cafés, Elif Shafak’s 2007 novel The Bastard of Istanbul explores the function and significance of the Ottoman empire in the ongoing search for Turkish identity in the globalized era. It is Shafak’s contention that the former imperial Other can no longer be denied admission into the democratic, modern Self of the Turkish nation. Not until the recent decades did scholars generally agree on including the history of the Ottoman Empire into the larger field of empire studies. Among the most significant and recent works that call for a comparative analysis of the Ottoman and the European imperial experiences, one encounters Alain Mikhail and Christine M. Philliou’s essay “The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn” (2012), stressing how the Ottoman Empire has recently “emerged as up for comparative grabs” (740), and Marc Aymes’ “Many A Standard at a Time. The Ottomans’ Leverage with Empire Issues” (2012) which explores the consequences and the advantages of studying the Ottoman Empire in a comparative perspective. On the same note, Dina Rizk Khoury and Dane Kennedy argued in favor of a joint analysis of the Ottoman Empire and the British Raj, as they both stand “within the same historical and analytical space” (11). If the Ottoman and European imperial ventures are commensurable from political and historical angles, an imperial turn in Ottoman studies is needed in the field of literature as well. There is evidence that modern Turkish literature can be approached through the methods of postcolonial studies, as the whole post-Ottoman literary experience resonates with aspects of the postcolonial debate. It is the view of this author that a postcolonial ap- proach to Turkish literature would be highly beneficial to both fields, as postcolonial criticism has hardly ever looked at how post-Ottoman writers address Turkey’s unique, Janus-faced colonial legacy: that of the Ottoman Empire and a contiguous “perceived” Western occupation. In his critical appraisal of Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters, Joe Cleary indicates that the book’s remarkably Eurocentric, Anglophile treatment of world literature fails to cover the Ottoman experience, along with other vast literary dominions such as the Soviet Union, South Asia, and China. Cleary proposes that Casanova’s analysis would also benefit immensely from addressing, besides the formation of new literary “empires,” the fragmentation of existing ones. Cleary wishes scholars would focus on the consequences of drastic literary decline of once-great cultural centers such as Is- tanbul (213). These two observations are crucial to pinpoint the rationale of my study: namely, to partially fill the gap exposed by Cleary and highlight the relevance of post- Ottoman literature in the world literature debate and in the postcolonial one. Mikhail and Philliou also encourage a discussion of Turkey’s postcolonial positionality: Is Turkey a “post-colonial state?” Why are legacies of the Ottoman past not conventionally examined in the framework of postcolonialism? Certainly one hopes that the robust discussion of comparative empires will connect more substantively to even larger discussions in the post imperial fray. (742). 20 In the light of Mikahil and Philliou’s considerations, an analysis of postcolonial literary strategies might represent the timely bridging of two conventionally unrelated fields. “Though it is a commonplace,” Erdağ Göknar argues, “to hear modern Turks boast that Turkey – meaning both the Ottoman state and the republic – was never colonized, history presents us with quite a different account” (38). In fact, from the nineteenth century on, Turkey has been grappling with the idea of what I would call a “perceived colonization”1 that severely affected the country’s political and cultural sovereignty first, and later its modes of self-representation. The colonial encounter with Europe, which I termed “perceived colonization” and which Göknar defines as a state of “semi-colonization” (38), has traversed three phases. The first phase covers the last decades of the Ottoman Empire from the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. A popular idea among historians of the Ottoman Empire is that the latter, in its conclu- sive decades, had adopted the narratives and mindset of European colonialism. Selim Diringil argues that “as the nineteenth century neared its end, the Ottomans adopted a colonial stance toward the peoples of the periphery of their empire. Colonialism came to be seen as the modern way of being” (313). Later on, he adds that “the Ottomans decided that they had to become like the [European] enemy, to borrow its tools” (341). Aymes, building on Deringil’s point, speaks of “imperial mimicry,” (12) a concept that exposes an alleged subjugation of the Ottomans to the example of the West. According to Aymes and Deringil, the Ottoman Empire went from being a multicultural reality allowing its minorities relative autonomy to promoting a mission civilisatrice based on Western models. “The Ottoman Empire,” Aymes ventures, “was not colonial in itself, it imitatively became so” by replicating Western imperial models (12). The second phase in the history of Turkey’s “perceived colonization” covers the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923), when Turkey struggled for national sovereignty against the Allies, perceived as invaders and occupiers. Göknar establishes a compelling link between semi-colonization in the first two phases and the last one: the Kemalist Republic and its aftermath. “As the late Ot- toman state fell into the position of being semi-colonized,” Göknar argues, “the legacy of this semi-colonization, or colonial encounter with Europe, informed the breadth, scope, and severity of the Kemalist cultural revolution that gave shape to the Republic of Turkey” (37-8). If, on the one hand, Kemalism liberated Turkey from foreign occupation, on the other hand it perpetuated Turkey’s perceived colonization by becoming its main agent. The massive Westernization process enacted by Kemalism in the attempt to inscribe Turkey into a Western narrative of progress and secularism was carried out at the expense of the country’s Ottoman and Islamic heritage. This forceful alienation of modern Turkey from its own cultural tradition deeply affected modern Turkish literature and led to the implementation of literary practices that critique and subvert the hegemonic narratives of Westernization that were perceived as alien, even though they had not been imposed by colonialism per se. International exponents of Turkish literature such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak view Kemalist reforms as responsible for alienating the Turkish population from their past. Kemalist Turkey is often depicted 1. Since Western imperialist ventures in Turkey never materialized into actual colonial enterprises it is hardly possible to refer to any phase of modern Turkish history as “colonial” in the strictly political sense of the term. Expressions such as “perceived colonialism” or “semi-colonialism” help define the nature of Turkey’s ambiguous encounter with the West and, more specifically, Europe. 21 “Safe Spaces of the Like-Minded” by contemporary writers in the act of aping behaviors and culture of what Pamuk has called, in The Black Book, “invisible masters,” exposing Turkey’s paradoxical adhesion to the ways of Western culture when the West was not present on the territory in the form of colonial occupier (63). Historian Jürgen Osterhammel clarifies that “not every domination by foreigners has been perceived by its subjects as illegitimate foreign domination” (qtd. in Aymes 8). If reversed, Osterhammel’s statement perfectly interprets the situation of Kemalist Turkey: what is perceived as illegitimate foreign domination need not be a domination by foreigners. It is my aim to prove, through the example of Turkish writer Elif Shafak, that Turkish literature writes back to a perceived foreign domination that is not a domination by foreigners, but rather is associated with processes of massive Westernization enhanced by local agents.2 In the light of recent considerations, I will demonstrate that writers from the post-Ottoman context share a common pool of literary strategies with writers from the Anglophone postcolonial world, and that the spectrum of postcolonial theory proves immensely useful to frame Turkish literature from the end of the Otto- man Empire until today. Moreover, the major role played by the Ottoman Empire in the formation of Turkish national identity makes a postcolonial frame ever more fruitful for Turkish studies. Once the due distinctions between the Anglophone and the Otto- man postcolonial universe have been made, it is possible to proceed with a postcolonial reading of Turkish literature. Even though “Turkey – meaning both the Ottoman state and the republic – was never colonized” (Göknar 38), but semi-colonized, the Turkish case can contribute immensely to enriching the field of postcolonial studies and enlar- ging its spectrum to literature from non-Anglophone regions.

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