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THE IRONY OF TURKISH MODERN IDENTITY: OSCILLATION OF THE EAST AND THE WEST IN PAMUK’S MY NAME IS RED AND THE WHITE CASTLE
A THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Magister Humaniora in English Language Studies
by Catharina Brameswari 126332057
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2015
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A THESIS
The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle
by
Catharina Brameswari 126332057
Approved by
Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D. Thesis Advisor 4 May 2015
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A THESIS
The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle
by
Catharina Brameswari Student Number: 126332057
was defended in front of the Thesis Committee and Declared Acceptable
Thesis Committee
Chairperson : Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D.
Secretary : Paulus Sarwoto, Ph.D.
Member : Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., STD.
Member : Dr. F.X. Siswadi, M.A.
Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015 The Graduate School Director Sanata Dharma University
Prof. Dr. Augustinus Supratiknya
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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that all the ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else’s idea, phrase, or sentence without a proper reference.
Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015
Catharina Brameswari
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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswi Universitas Sanata Dharma,
Nama : Catharina Brameswari
Nomor Mahasiswa : 126332057
Demi perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan
Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West
in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle beserta perangkat yang diperlukan. Dengan demikian saya memberikan hak kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikannya secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta izin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015
Catharina Brameswari
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all I would like to express my greatest gratitude by dedicating this thesis to those who have supported me in finishing this thesis and I dedicate it to the Almighty God, Lord Jesus Christ, for His wonderful love and guidance so that
I could finish this thesis.
I give my sincere gratitude to Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D. my thesis advisor who had spent his precious time, and dedicated his energy in guiding me to finish this thesis. His inputs, patience, guidance, and correction throughout the processes of writing this thesis are the biggest contributions, which have helped me to finish it. I would also like to thank all the lecturers in the
English Language Studies (ELS) Department, especially F.X. Mukarto, Ph.D., Dr.
Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. (Hons), Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A., the late Prof. Dr.
Bakdi Soemanto, S.U., Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., STD., and Dr. F.X.
Siswadi, M.A. for their professional support throughout my study.
Then, I would like to express my particular thanks to mbak Maria
Adelheid Lelyana, the secretariat staff, for her care and help during my study and also Siwi for being my partner in KBI secretariat. Additionally, I also want to say thank you to my friends in Literature class batch 2012, Mbak Hari, Mbak Elis,
Seto, Sita, Gisa, Maxi, Pak Arif, and Andrew for their support and encouragement.
I would also like to express my deep gratefulness to my parents, Yustinus
Sukarmin and Yosefa Yana Prahawati, my uncle Al. Sudarman, as well as my
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sister and my brother for their love and support during my study in English
Language Studies. A special thank is for F.X. Hening Pamungkas Jagaddhita for his great love, patience, and attention. He is my place to share joys and sorrows. I would like to say thank you for encouraging me doing my thesis and helping me to solve my problems. His support when I am down really help me to struggle through the hardest and bitter moment I had during the processes of writing this thesis.
Last but not least, I would like to give my respect for those whom I cannot mention individually, but surely this thesis could not be done without their support and help.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ...... i APPROVAL PAGE ...... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE...... iii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ...... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS...... viii ABSTRACT...... x ABSTRAK ...... xi
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION...... 1 1. Background of the Study ...... 1 2. Research Questions...... 8 3. Scope of the Study ...... 8 4. Research Methodology ...... 10 5. Benefits and Significance ...... 11 6. The Chapter Outline...... 12
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW...... 14 1. Review of Related Studies...... 15 2. Review of Theoretical Concept...... 20 2.1 Context of the Novels...... 20 2.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting VS Italian Renaissance Painting...... 20 2.1.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting ...... 21 2.1.1.2. Italian Renaissance Painting...... 24 2.1.2. The Ottoman Sultan in the 16th and 17th Century...... 26 2.2. Discourse on Issues of Postcolonialism and Orientalism...... 28 2.2.1. The Discourse on Postcolonialism ...... 29 2.2.1.1. Colonialism ...... 29 2.2.1.2. Postcolonialism ...... 31 2.2.2. The Discourse on Orientalism ...... 36 3. Theoretical Framework...... 40
CHAPTER III THE IRONY OF THE OSCILLATION ...... 42 1. Cosmopolitanism ...... 43 1.1 Islamic Cosmopolitanism...... 44 viii PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
1.2. Cosmopolitanism in İstanbul...... 45 1.3. Cosmopolitanism in Pamuk’s Works...... 49 1.4. Turkification...... 55 2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Art and Technology...... 58 2.1. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Science and Technology...... 63 2.1.1. The Enchantment of Western Science and Technology...... 64 2.1.2. The Adoption of Western Science and Technology...... 67 2.2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance Painting...... 75 2.2.1. The Enchantment of the Italian Renaissance Painting...... 76 2.2.2. The Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance Painting ...... 81 3. Maintenance and Preservation of Eastern Aspects ...... 86 4. Personal Search for Identity as Individual ...... 95 5. Theoretical Observation...... 105
CHAPTER IV PAMUK’S SOLUTION TO THE OSCILLATION ...... 110 1. Impartiality...... 111 2. Self-Questioning ...... 123 3. Hybridity...... 138 4. Theoretical Observation...... 153
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ...... 158 1. Achievement and Significance...... 158 2. Relevance...... 166
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 171
APPENDIX ...... 177 The Summary of Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvre ...... 178 My Name is Red...... 178 The White Castle...... 179
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ABSTRACT
Catharina Brameswari (2015). The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies, Graduate Study, Sanata Dharma University.
This research uses Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle, in order to reveal the tension between the East and the West that is mostly present in Pamuk’s works as well as to uncover how modernity, which is represented by Western art, culture, science, and technology, challenges Turkey’s tradition, culture, art, and identity. Since the Ottoman Empire, modernity that is represented by the West has become a threat as well as seduction. Moreover, I employed the method of library research in dismantling Pamuk’s selected works that highlight the endless oscillation by presenting the internal struggle experienced by the characters whether to leave the old Ottoman tradition or to embrace the modern Western tradition. This thesis deals with two issues namely the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate others in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle as well as the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West. In dealing with those two issues, this study employs Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Homi Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism. These two discourses are used to illustrate the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Others as well as to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk’s selected oeuvre. Since the two novels are rich of Turkey’s historical aspects, therefore, the additional information on Turkey’s history, art, painting, and its socio-condition in the 16th and 17th century are presented. This study shows that Turkey, which is depicted by Pamuk in My Name is Red and The White Castle, experiences the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its tradition. Cosmopolitanism, as the result of the encounter between the East and the West, has led to an attraction and later the appropriation of the Italian Renaissance art and European technology and science. However, there are an individual and groups that keep and preserve the Ottoman art and tradition. Additionally, this predicament of the oscillation also leads to the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters. Dealing with the illustrated problems, this study finds that in his two novels, Pamuk does not give any clear solutions to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West. Through the characters, Pamuk wants to emphasize his position for not taking sides, his critique to the representatives of the East and the West, and his background as a writer in presenting hybridity in his works. Finally, the future researcher can explore more on women struggle and position in the Islamic world as well as the identity formation as an interesting topic using Sufism for identity formation is the key point in its teaching.
Keywords: oscillation, cosmopolitanism, modernization, hüzün
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ABSTRAK
Catharina Brameswari (2015). The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle. Yogyakarta: Magister Kajian Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Penelitian ini menggunakan novel Orhan pamuk yang berjudul My Name is Red dan The White Castle, yang bertujuan untuk menyingkap ketegangan antara Timur dan Barat yang sering ditampilkan dalam karya-karya Pamuk serta untuk mengungkapkan bagaimana modernitas yang diwakili oleh seni, kebudayaan, ilmu pengetahuan, dan tekhnologi menantang tradisi, budaya, seni, dan identitas Turki. Sebab sejak Kekaisaran Ottoman, modernitas yang terwakili oleh Barat telah menjadi sebuah ancaman dan daya tarik. Selain itu, saya menggunakan metode kajian pustaka dalam menyibak karya-karya Pamuk yang menyoroti tarik-ulur yang tiada habisnya dengan menampilkan perjuangan yang dialami oleh karakter- karakter di dalamnya yang antara mau meninggalkan tradisi kuno Ottoman atau mau memeluk tradisi Barat yang moderen. Tesis ini membahas dua isu yaitu tarik-ulur antara Timur dan Barat dan keinginan yang kompleks untuk meniru lian yang ditampilkan oleh Orhan Pamuk dalam kedua novelnya My Name is Red dan The White Castle serta solusi yang ditawarkan oleh kedua novel tersebut terhadap tarik ulur antara Timur dan Barat yang kompleks. Untuk menguraikan kedua isu tersebut, studi ini diterangi oleh wacana Orientalisme milik Edward Said dan wacana Poskolonialisme milik Homi Bhabha sekaligus untuk memberikan gambaran pada tarik-ulur antara Timur dan Barat serta keinginan yang kompleks untuk meniru lian. Di samping itu, wacana Said dan Bhabha juga diaplikasikan untuk menerangi solusi yang ditawarkan oleh novel-novel Pamuk. Karena kedua novel tersebut sangat kaya akan aspek sejarah Turki, maka dari itu informasi seputar sejarah, seni, dan lukisan, serta kondisi sosial-ekonomi Turki pada abad ke 16 dan 17 juga disajikan. Studi ini memperlihatkan bahwa Turki, yang digambarkan oleh Pamuk dalam My Name is Red dan The White Castle, mengalami tarik-ulur antara memeluk kebudayaan Barat atau tetap mempertahankan tradisinya. Kosmopolitanisme, yang merupakan hasil dari bertemunya kebudayaan Timur dan Barat, telah mengantarkan pada ketertarikan dan peniruan terhadap seni Renaisans Italia and teknologi Eropa. Akan tetapi, masih ada individu dan kelompok-kelompok yang menjaga dan mempertahankan seni dan tradisi Ottoman. Selain itu, tarik-ulur yang kompleks ini juga mengantarkan pada krisis identitas yang dialami oleh karakter-karakter dalam novel Pamuk. Berkaitan dengan permasalahan yang diceritakan dalam novel, tesis ini menemukan bahwa pada kedua novelnya, Pamuk tidak memberikan solusi yang jelas pada permasalahan tarik-ulur antara Timur dan Barat yang kompleks. Melalui karakter- karakter yang ia tampilkan, Pamuk ingin menekankan posisinya yang netral dengan tidak memilih salah satu pihak, kritiknya terhadap wakil-wakil dari Timur dan Barat, serta latar belakangnya sebagai seorang penulis dalam menyajikan hibriditas pada karya-karyanya.
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Akhir kata, peneliti di masa yang akan datang dapat mengeksplorasi topik seperti perjuangan dan posisi perempuan di dalam dunia Islam serta proses pencarian identitas masyarakat Turki dengan menggunakan Sufisme karena pembentukan identitas merupakan kunci dari ajarannya.
Kata kunci: tarik-ulur, kosmopolitanisme, modernisasi, hüzün
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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
To God belongs the East and the West. —KORAN, “THE COW”1
Everyone is sometimes a Westerner and sometimes an Easterner—in fact a constant combination of the two. —Orhan Pamuk2
1. Background of the Study
Geographically, Turkey—officially the Republic of Turkey—is a very special country. It lies mostly in western Asia and on the east trace of south- eastern Europe. This unique location has made Turkey have various cultures—a blend of Eastern culture and Western culture and traditions—the “Westernisation” of the Ottoman Empire by Mustafa Kemal3. With the determined leadership of
Kemal Atatürk, the elite that founded the Turkish Republic pursued a more radical modernization.4 Richard Eder, in “My Name is Red” explains that the
“Westernisation” had destroyed 600-year Islamic Ottoman Empire tradition and become a secular country, which was the valuable price as the consequence of
Turkey’s membership in the European Union. He transformed the religion-based former Ottoman Empire into a modern nation with a separation of state an
1 Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (Benim Adim Karmizi) translated by E. M. Göknar, (London: Faber & Faber, 2001) vii. 2 Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours: Writing on Life, Art, Books, and Cities translated by Maureen Freely (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2008). 3 Douglas A. Howard, The History of Turkey (London: Greenwood Press, 2001) 1; Mustafa Kemal Pasha is the first President of the Republic of Turkey and one of the most important world figures of the twentieth century. 4 Soli Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, The Wilson Quarterly 31, 1 (Winter, 2007): 20.
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2 religion, such as the restriction of veils in the parliament and school and alteration alphabet from Arabic in the Turkish language into Latin5. Pamuk’s Other Colours
(2008) tells that none of the Turks can read the Arabic script now for Turkey has adopted Latin alphabet in order to be more European.6
Since the Ottoman Empire, Turkey always moves closer to the West.
Mehmet II, the Sultan who conquered Constantinople, invited many artists from
Florence and Venice in the 15th century to create medals and paintings.7 Gentile
Bellini, the most famous artist in Venice during his lifetime (1429-1507), for instance, was invited to İstanbul to create the Portrait of Mehmet II8. He was
Jacopo Bellini’s elder son who was also sent by the Venetian senate as a cultural ambassador for eighteen months as the result of the peace treaty between the
Ottomans and Venetians in 1479. Bellini’s oil portrait of Mehmet has been regarded as not only as the icon of the Ottoman sultan9 but this European image of the great Ottoman leader might also serve as an appropriate focus for modern
Turkey’s desire to retrieve some of its European roots and influences in its “new turn toward Europe”.10
Mehmet’s eyes were certainly on the West for he spent much time studying the position of Italy and learning the situation of the West. His troops did arrive in Italy but not until 1480 when Ottoman forces landed at Otranto, only to
5 Richard Eder, “My Name is Red”, New York Times September 2, 2001, May 20, 2013
3 evacuate on the following year due to the death of the Sultan.11 In 1438, the
Ottoman Sultan Murad II’s forces also moved up through Hungary and
Transylvania.12 The other moving westward is the transfer of Sultan’s palace, from Topkapi13 palace to the palace of Dolmabahçe14 around the mid of nineteenth century, which was considered at that time more suited to the modern age.15
If the Ottoman Sultans tried to come closer to the West and Kemal Ataturk destroyed all Eastern and Islamic traditions and transforms them to the Western traditions, Orhan Pamuk combines those two traditions, the East and the West, to produce a hybrid in his works. As a novelist—who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in
Literature for his highly appreciated work My Name is Red (2001)—Pamuk, firstly, wants to delineate the endless oscillation between the East and the West in his works; especially in My Name is Red and The White Castle16. These two novels depict the internal struggle within the Italian Renaissance painting and the traditional miniature style as well as the modern technology and scientific invention from Europe and the prediction and interpretation of dreams and stars.
11 Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Ottoman İstanbul, First Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 9. 12 Jardine & Brotton, Global Interests, 26. 13 Topkapi Palace was constructed under the reign of Sultan Mehmed II. It was primarily residence of the Ottoman Sultans for about 400 years. From here, the sultans were to run the affairs of state until the mid-nineteenth century, when they transferred to the palace of Dolmabahçe. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28. 14 Under Mahmud II’s successor, Dolmabahçe Palace became the residence of the sultan. Topkapi Palace was abandoned totally and the multi-storey European-style places continued to be built on both shores of the Bosphorus—Çirağan and Yildis on the European side and Beylerbeyi on the opposite, Asian side. The most important interior feature of these palaces was their gigantic staircase imitating the European style. Moreover, the nineteenth-century palace built in European style was also embellished with European-style gardens. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28, 245, 310. 15 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28. 16 These books will be cited as, respectively, MNR and TWC in the text for all subsequent references. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Afridi and Byuze say that Pamuk’s stories focus on the question of searching for the identity of the Turks and the encounter between the East and the
West, which are not the contemporary issues since the Ottoman Empire is
“dramatized” in the new symbol of the clash and mix of cultures in his works. In addition, they usually circle around the construing of East and West as a conflicting yet reconciling aspect in his works.17 Secondly, as a writer, Pamuk does not choose one of the sides explicitly neither judge nor criticize.18 He gives space and appreciates the process of an individual who is looking for his identity without any claims from the others, which can distract him from his identity formation process.
According to Iyer, in his article “A View of the Bosphorus”, Pamuk’s refusal to settle into one position has made him the target of both secularists and religious conservatives19 for the religious conservatives and Turkish politicians demand that Turkey should have only one soul that it should belong to either the
East or the West or to be nationalistic.20 To quote Pamuk’s own words:
“It is not a big problem for Turkey to have two different cultures and spirits and they should not worry about it because it is not a bad thing. Just let this process become natural for if you worry too much about one part of you, which can kill the other part, you will be left with a single spirit.”21
Moreover, slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead
Ottoman culture is not the solution.22 His denial to choose one position has
17 Mehnaz M. Afridi and David M. Byuze, Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 5. 18 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3. 19 Pico Iyer, “A View of the Bosphorus”, New York Times September 30, 2007, November 6, 2013
5 delivered books, which are a mixture of Eastern and Western methods, styles, habits, and histories. He confesses that he can wander between the two worlds and in both he is at home.23
Turkey’s desire and longing to Westernize and the dilemma of the
Ottoman Turks who are searching for their identity in the influence of Western values have been captured by Orhan Pamuk into his works through the history of the miniature painting in the Ottoman miniature guild, which is filled by conflict, jealousy, and murder among the painters (MNR) and also through the character of
Hoja, which is presented by the scientific inventions and technology (TWC). In general, Pamuk sees the tension arising out of a clash between the traditional— represented by the East—and the modern—represented by the West—as a powerful force in his works.24 This condition is supported by Edward Said who argues that Western political and intellectual domination over the East has defined the nature of the Orient potentially as weak and of the Occident as strong.25 There is a revisit of the Orientalism, which comes in a different style and form. The
West, that is the deepest image of the other, is actually colonialized by the
Ottoman. However, the self-inflicted that is felt by Turkey in the end of the
Empire has led to self-orientalism because it tries to erase the grand Ottoman tradition and abruptly change it with Western culture. In Pamuk’s, it is in the way the traditional miniature painting can be replaced by the Italian Renaissance painting and in the way the traditional can be replaced by modern technology.
However, it is not an exaggeration if I say that the question on the oscillation
23 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. 24 Orhan Pamuk, “Turkey’s Divided Character”, New Perspectives Quarterly 17, 2 (2000): 20. 25 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 66-84. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
6 between the East and the West that is knitted in the historical context is the main hinge of Pamuk’s works. Moreover, he confirms this in the opening page of My
Name is Red, a quotation from Koran, “To God belongs the East and the West”
(The Cow, 115) (MNR, 2).
Pamuk’s oeuvre always demonstrates the binary opposition within them, between the Self and the Other. In My Name is Red, Pamuk uncovers the history of the Ottoman miniature painter, which is also filled with conflicts, jealousy, and murder among the miniaturist.26 The concern is mainly on the debate around traditions of painting as two different cultures, which comes in contact with each other27 where the traditional miniature painting is contested by the Italian
Renaissance painting style that flourishes during the Ottoman period. According to Farred, Pamuk’s novel can only be understood trough the act of comparison of its Otherness28, for instance, “the Venetian master and the master illustrators and calligraphers of Tabriz, Mashhad, and Aleppo” (MNR, 25); “the Persian artists, a direct comparison within the world of the East, had made more extraordinary illustrations, more masterpieces, than we Ottomans” (MNR, 346); or worse, how the painting that is produced by the Venetian masters has broken into Ottoman miniature painting when “the Jesuit priests of Portugal long ago introduced
European painting and methods there. They are everywhere now”. (MNR, 433)
26 Grant Farred, “To Dig a Well with a Needle”: Orhan Pamuk’s Poem of Comparative Globalization, The Global South 1, 2 (Fall, 2007): 87. 27 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3. 28 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 87. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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My Name is Red is a murder story whose murderer is one of the finest miniaturists who is deeply influenced by the Venetian style29 and works on the illustration of the secret book. The story is set in the late 16th century in İstanbul,
Turkey, during the reign of Sultan Murat III (1574-1595). To celebrate a thousand anniversary of Islam, Sultan Murat III—who is mostly interested in miniatures and books30—commissions a secret book that will show to the world Islam’s military strength and pride as well as the power and wealth of his own dynasty.
(MNR, 121) Enishte Effendi, Sultan’s ambassador to Venice who is in charge of finishing this book, is secretly instructed to make the illustrations, which adopt the
Italian Renaissance style to impress the Western and to prolong the age of His rule.31
In The White Castle, Pamuk complicates the Self-Other or the binary opposition and grasp the conflict between Self and Other. Here, Pamuk delineates how the Other is thus always present, frequently as a threat and seduction, within the historical confines of the Self. Both Hoja and the Venetian slave share an uncanny resemblance to each other32 because Hoja is not only the Venetian’s master but also his pupil for Hoja also asks his slave to teach him everything he had learnt in his country (TWC, 32). Hoja always dreams to live in the West. From the very beginning, Hoja does not like the activities of the pashas and Sultan for they depend on the astrology and the illogical interpretation of the dreams and stars. He also dislikes them for they have little interest in science.
29 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3. 30 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 6. 31 David Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature Goes İstanbul, or, Lessons for Multicultural Germanist in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, Macalester International 15 (n.d.): 234. 32 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Complexities in Hoja’s life and his exhaustion on the Sultan and his
“traditionality”, “forced” him to adore the identity of his Venetian slave whose life is more interesting in Italy where people do not depend on the prediction and interpretation of the dreams and stars. In the end, master Hoja changes his identity with his Venetian slave—who is more knowledgeable in the science and has physical similarities—after his “war machine” does not give victory to the Sultan.
He wants to correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever faraway land occurred to him at that moment. (TWC, 121)
2. Research Questions
Based on the background information above, this study is focused on the issues concerning with the discourse of the clash between the East and the West and the identity crisis and the problems of the study can be formulated as follows:
1. How is the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to
imitate the Other depicted in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White
Castle and how do the theories of Said and Bhabha help this discourse?
2. What are the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of
the oscillation of the East and the West?
3. Scope of the Study
The oscillation to embrace Western tradition or to preserve the old Islamic tradition has been experienced by Turkey since the Ottoman Empire. The encounters of the East and the West, the seduction of Western culture, as well as PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
9 the desire to become and imitate the Other have led Turkey to this high tension.
Turkey also experiences the up and down emotion of the anxiety to embrace the forced modernity as well as the feeling of hüzün because of the loss of the
Ottoman past’s glory. Due to this predicament, this research uses Orhan Pamuk’s
My Name is Red and The White Castle in order to reveal the negotiation and the complexity of the oscillation between the East and the West, the seduction of the
European art and technology that lead to the complex desire to imitate the Other and identity crisis faced by the characters, and its solution offered in these two tales. It is a critical reading using Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism, which focuses on in-betweenness, self-orientalism, mimicry, ambivalence, and hybridity. These points are very important since MNR and TWC complicate Turkey’s desire to imitate the Other and how it manages to overcome the anxiety by combining the Self and the Other. These two discourses are used to expose the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Other. In addition, Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses are also applied to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk’s selected oeuvre. Since the two selected novels are rich of and related to Turkey’s historical aspects, therefore, other aspects such as Turkey’s socio-culture condition in the 16th and 17th century will be linked to Turkey’s present events—especially where the two stories take place, İstanbul—in unity with the discussion in the novel, which negotiates the
East-West arts and traditions. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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4. Research Methodology
In this study I mainly employ the method of library research. There are two kinds of sources that are used; they are primary and secondary sources. The method applied in conducting the study is qualitative approach, while the primary sources are novels written by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist, entitled My Name is Red (2001) and The White Castle (1998).
To support the primary data, the secondary data are taken from books,
Pamuk’s non-fictions: İstanbul: Memories of the City (2006) and Other Colours
(2008), journals, articles, criticisms, interview, book review, and videos discussing and analysing Orhan Pamuk and his literary works. The data, then, are analysed to discover the connection between the socio-culture and historical condition and the events portrayed in both novels.
The research is conducted in several steps. The first step of this study is to find the topic to be discussed. The second step is to select the literary works that is going to be analysed. The third step is the technical reading of the novels as the fundamental step before turning to further analysis. After formulating the problems related to the topic, finding the secondary sources and the appropriate approach are employed in the analysis. The next step is to answer the formulated problems. Here, I attempt to apply the theories on Orientalism and
Postcolonialism, reviews, and criticism from the secondary sources to analyse the primary sources. At last, I conclude the important points of the analysis as the result of the analysis and give some suggestions to the future researchers who want to analyse My Name is Red and The White Castle. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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5. Benefits and Significance
This study is conducted with the aim to reveal how the agenda of Turkish modern identity—which is represented by the Italian Renaissance art and
European technology—challenges the Turks’ life, tradition, culture, art, and identity, how the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to imitate the Other, and the solutions that Pamuk offers to the predicament through his works. My Name is Red and The White Castle have all aspects, which can sharpen the readers’ awareness on the seduction of modernity that can disrupt their culture and traditions and also lead to identity crisis—or even lose it.
Through these two stories, the readers can learn that the Turks have orientalised themselves—in other words: Orientalised by the oriental—by feeling inferior to the art they make and to the knowledge and science they master, for they believe that West can bring them to modernity.
For the Indonesian readers, this study can help them to enrich their understanding and insight to the different form of Orientalism that is presented in the two tales studied. Additionally, it is also hoped to raise their awareness regarding to the identity crisis that is as a result of the East-West encounter and the radical ideology that can endanger unity of Indonesia. In addition, the readers need to respect the multiculturalism and colonialism around them. It is for the reason that Indonesia also faces the same problem as Turkey on purification performed by the extremists that want to simplify the complexity of Indonesia’s multiculturalism. Moreover, another hope is that this study will improve the readers’ knowledge on the uniqueness and variety of the Mediterranean literature PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
12 oeuvre, especially on Turkey’s fiction, which is still less studied by the Indonesian academic, especially the students of Sanata Dharma University. However, learning other people’s culture and tradition is not a sin. Actually, it is useful to help the Indonesian readers and academics to be acquainted with their culture and tradition more as Pamuk also mentions that we can only know our identity by imitating the Other.33
This study is also conducted with the hope to raise the reader’s awareness regarding the identity degradation as a result of the encounter between the East and the West tradition. I hope that the Indonesian readers can filter the Western traditions and choose which one is suitable to their custom, belief, and culture so that they can still maintain and hold their tradition and identity as Indonesian. It is for the reason that nowadays I still find many young generations who are reluctant to deal with the Indonesian culture and traditions, which have high value, and proud to have, use, or consume Western or American products and perform their traditions. My vision is that the young generations can still embrace modernity without leaving their tradition and identity as Indonesian.
6. Chapter Outline
The first chapter in this study is introduction, which presents the background of the study, research questions, scope of the study, research methodology, and benefits and significance. The second chapter is literature review, which covers the précis of the previous related studies on the same literary
33 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
13 works and review of theories used in this study. Furthermore, short review on the art, cultural, and historical condition of Ottoman Empire and the summary on a selection of Orhan Pamuk’s fictions are also presented in this section. The last part is the theoretical framework of the study.
The answers of the first and second research questions are discussed in chapter three and four. Chapter three discusses the complexity of the oscillation between the East and the West and the enchantment and appropriation of the
Italian Renaissance style and European technology by the Ottoman miniature painter and Hoja. In chapter four, the solutions that Pamuk’s stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to Turkey’s own tradition are provided.
The conclusion of this study is drawn in chapter five where Indonesia’s search for identity in this postcolonial world is also provided to show the correlation and relevance of this study with the condition in Indonesia and also challenges that are faced by the Indonesian. Moreover, suggestions for future researcher are discussed in the last chapter. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
The chapter is divided into three sections namely review of related studies, review of theoretical concept, and theoretical framework. The first sub chapter shows literature review of related studies on the works of Orhan Pamuk that are investigated by six researchers.
The second sub chapter illustrates review of theoretical concept that is divided into two main segments. They are context of the novels and discourse on issues of Orientalism and Postcolonialism. The first main segment has three sections. The first segment is the summary of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle. Next segment discusses Turkish traditional miniature painting and the Italian Renaissance painting. In addition, since Pamuk’s selected stories focus on the Ottoman history in the 16th to 17th century therefore the third section will present brief information on the reign Sultans. The second main section discusses Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s
Postcolonialism that are used to illuminate this thesis in dealing with the East-
West entanglement.
The third sub chapter outlines theoretical framework, which discusses how each theory functions in answering the problem formulations stated in the previous chapter.
14 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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1. Review of Related Studies
Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, tries to reintroduce the Ottoman past to his readers through his tales. As he tells his tales, the past becomes (more like) a creative puzzle in the pages of My Name is Red
(2001) and The White Castle (1998).34 His works invite scholarly discussions especially on the dialogue, tension and negotiation between the East and the West, the high tension between the enchanting Western technology and art and the
Ottoman traditions, as well as the identity formation process toward the so-called a new ideal identity.
The first research to mention is by Feride Çiçekoglu,35 titled “A Pedagogy of Two Ways of Seeing: A Confrontation of ‘Word and Image’ in My Name is red”36, which claims that My Name is Red is a chronicle of the confrontation of two ways of seeing and the story of how the quest for representationalism defeats the miniature tradition, although such defeat is, by no means, a one-dimensional praise of the impact of Venice and its quest for naturalism on Islamic art. In addition, this article attempts to pick up clues in My Name is Red for tracing two different ways of seeing East-West framework in the late 16th century, not as a binary opposition but as a dialectical trope of word and image.37 In other words,
34 Pinar Batur, “Author in the Classroom: An Interview with Orhan Pamuk”, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 41, 1 (June, 2007): 9. 35 An Associate Professor and Director of the Master Program in Visual Communication Design, İstanbul Bilgi University, İstanbul. 36 This article is developed from Çiçekoglu’s earlier version written in Turkish (Çiçekoglu 2001) when she was an artist-in-residence in Rotterdam (January-May 2002) under a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, the Municipality of Rotterdam and Rotterdam Art Foundation. Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1-20. 37 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
16
Çiçekoglu wants to see the East-West relations apart from the different way of seeing between those two poles.
Çiçekoglu’s another research on the same novel is “Difference, Visual
Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”38, which employs visual narration technique and point of view. It focuses on the difference between the
Eastern and the Western ways of visual narration. This essay discusses issues of portraiture and character, movement and time, and story and space with reference to the narrative structure in fiction film. It aims to contribute to the discussion on point of view in visual narration, narrative structure of film as a continuation, and interaction of different traditions in East and West.
A research written by David Martyn entitled “Turkish-German Literature goes İstanbul, or, Lessons for Multicultural Germanists in Orhan Pamuk’s My
Name is Red” (n.d.)39 firstly explains “Germanophonie” or literature written in
German by non-German, transcultural authors, especially Turkish immigrants who live in Germany and publish literature. He observes Pamuk’s My Name is
Red, as a contemporary Turkish literature, which can help in recognizing the individual value of the writings of Germanophone authors. This engagement concerns the notion of individuality that is used to point out what is missing in the existing research on Germanophone authors. Martyn states that Pamuk’s work can be read as an eloquent commentary on the double binds that modernity imposes on individuals. He also notes that his research is an indication of what is designed
38 Feride Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”. Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, 4 (2003): 124-137. 39 Martyn, “Turkish-German”, 231-240. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
17 to overcome the dualist mode of thought that sees everything before the backdrop of an East-West dichotomy.
Abdur Rahman Shahin’s article “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience at Turkish Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”40 discusses a searching for a stable identity for Hoja, the main character in The White Castle, who finally changes his identity with the Italian slave. Shahin, in his writing, wants to explore the reasons of Hoja’s intolerance to his Turkish identity and critic to the legacy of the Ottoman Empire that finally compelled him to change it.
Another research by Dilek Kantar, entitled “The Stylistic Dialogue of East and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”41, which borrows Mikhail
Bakhtin’s dialogic heteroglossia, illustrates how another speech is infused into the speech of the main characters in Pamuk’s novel. Bakhtin says that in dialogic heteroglossia, language lies between oneself and the other and the word used is half someone else’s. However, it can be one’s own when he appropriates the word and adapting it into his own speech.42 Here, Kantar also analyses “stylistic hybrids” that speculate Western and Eastern conceptions of self in The White
Castle’s dialogue interaction. According to Baktin, a “stylistic hybrid” is an utterance that belongs to a single speaker, but actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages”, two semantic
40 Abdur Rahman Shahin, “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience at Turkish Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”, Language in India (August, 2012): 323-334. 41 Dilek Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue of East and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle” a journal compilation in the Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C. Freeman. (New York: Rodopi B. V., 2007) 125-134. 42 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”. Quoted from Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 126. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
18 and axiological belief systems.43 In The White Castle, this hybrid construction can be found in the relationship between Hoja and his slave, which makes them more and more alike until they lose their own voice, as they more immersed in the other’s lifestyle, and finally fuse on the story.44 Stylistic hybrids also let Pamuk challenge the boundary between the Eastern and the Western patterns of thinking personified by the main characters in his novel, Hoja and his Italian slave.
Grant Farred’s “To Dig a Well with a Needle: Orhan Pamuk’s Poem of
Comparative Globalization” (2007)45 tries to deconstruct the concept of comparative globalization in Pamuk’s oeuvre, which are impossible to understand except as an instance of globalized comparison, using Derrida and Heidegger’s.
Farred states that Pamuk’s works address themselves persistently to criticizing the traces of globalization that was the Ottoman Empire and the globalization that seems always just on the horizon. Moreover, they also demonstrate the comparison between Self and Other and can only be understood through the act of comparison of its Otherness. The comparison, then, is not only between Self and
Other but also, more essentially, at the very core of the Self.
A research on Orhan Pamuk’s oeuvre is also discussed by an Indonesian scholar even though it is only a few. Albertus Bagus Laksana’s article entitled
“İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera” (2013)46 explores the concept of hüzün in
Pamuk’s İstanbul: Memories and the City and My Name is Red as a deep spiritual loss towards past’s glory and a fear to face the future. Here, Laksana states that
43 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”, 126. 44 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 127. 45 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 81-99. 46 Albertus Bagus Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera”, BASIS 62 (2013): 28-35. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
19 the entire İstanbul resident as well as the characters in My Name is Red cannot free the complexity of hüzün from their spiritual and cultural experience.
However, he also offers a solution to overcome the complexity of hüzün by combining and living in the two traditions—the East and the West tradition.
From the previous studies above, I remark that these studies generally focus on the different way of seeing, that is represented by the Eastern and
Western style of painting; the issue on the unstable and mixed identity; the binary opposition between Self and Other; and also the feeling of hüzün that is caused by the forced modernity and the loss of the past’s glory. Departing from the previous studies above, I propose a study that concerns with the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitate the Other. Since my study focuses on the predicament of the oscillation, the information on the previous studies, which deals with the confrontation of the two ways of seeing, the unstable identity, and the binary opposition between Self and Other are very useful to reveal the complex desire of Pamuk’s characters to imitate the Other. Moreover, the research by Laksana offers alternative solutions on the predicament and tension between the East and West by combining and living in those two traditions. Apart from the journals above, my thesis employs Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses on Orientalism and Postcolonialism, which focus on self-orientalism, hybridity, in-betweenness, mimicry, and ambivalence. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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2. Review of Theoretical Concept
This section is divided into two main sections namely context of the novels and discourse on issues of Orientalism and Postcolonialism. The information on
Turkish miniature painting and Italian Renaissance painting and the reign of the
Ottoman sultans in the 16th and 17th century is presented in the first section. They are presented to give a depth information and understanding to the readers as well as give an illustration of the overall story. In addition, they are presented in order to illuminate the two tales that are interrelated to Turkey’s history, its traditional miniature painting, and the influence of Italian Renaissance painting. Moreover, to analyse Orhan Pamuk’s selected novels, this study employs Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism that are presented in the second section. Those theories are used to uncover the predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West and unearth the solutions Pamuk’s stories offer to overcome the problems.
2.1. Context of the Novels
2.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting V. Italian Renaissance Painting
In the previous part, I have explained that My Name is Red focuses on the two painting traditions; the tradition of miniature painting during the Ottoman period in the late 16th century İstanbul and also the tradition of the Italian
Renaissance painting. What is unique in My Name is Red is the confrontation of the two different traditions of painting. There is a clash when the miniaturist using
Venetian style to make the illustration of the commissioned book, for both Italian
Renaissance style—which is also known as Frankish style—and Turkish PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
21 miniature painting have different way in seeing their objects. However, Sultan
Murat III who wants to get a support from the Western to prolong his position tries to protect the secret book, which is the threat for the Ottoman traditional miniature art because it contains Western paintings in it.
Due to the novel’s focus as well as the problems on the imitation and adoption of the Western painting style, I provide further information concerning the two conflicting painting traditions, which have different way of seeing the objects, the Italian Renaissance Art and Turkish traditional miniature painting.
Additionally, the information on their histories and functions is also presented since My Name is Red mostly discusses these two painting methods and their different ways in seeing their objects.
2.1.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting
Kuiper (2010), in Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture, states that a closely parallel development of the impact of the Islamic religion on the visual arts is the celebrated question of a Muslim iconoclasm. However, the Koran is not totally against the representation of living things. It is equally true that from about the middle of the 8th century, a prohibition against life-like imagery had been formally stated and thenceforth it would be a standard feature of Islamic thought.
The justification for the prohibition tended to be that any representation of a living thing was an act of competition with God, for He alone can create something that is alive.47 The representation of the living things, moreover, is “like growing
47 Kathleen Kuiper, Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture (New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010) 131. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
22 arrogant before God, like considering oneself of utmost importance, like situating oneself at the centre of the world.” (MNR, 119-120)
Despite the fact that Islam prohibited figuration, miniature paintings were allowed because they were universal, a decoration of the text and subordinate to it. The Ottoman miniature painters did not mainly aim to depict the human beings and other living or non-living beings realistically.48 “Painting is the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.” (MNR, 88)
Çiçekoglu adds that miniature painting becomes an extension of the text, rather than an independent art. In the tradition of miniature painting, images are not seen as things in themselves but they are treated as illustrations of the text or
“footnotes” even when the image seems to dominate the written word on the page.
It serves the purposes of the words for a better understanding of the meaning and for a description of a narration.49
In Islamic miniatures, the goal is perfection, not expression of the artist’s individuality.50 Enishte Effendi also supports that miniature painting is used to beautify the manuscript we read and it depicts the most vital scenes in the story.
Moreover, the image is the story blossoming in colour, which accompanying story. (MNR, 27) Pamuk also mentions that,
painting in Islamic culture was permissible only to decorate the insides of the books and…never were these paintings meant to hang on walls, and they never did!51
It is in line with Olive’s statement that “the illustrations of the Persian masters and
48 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 131. 49 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1. 50 Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature”, 235. 51 Pamuk, Other Colours, 318. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
23 even the masterpieces of the greatest masters of Herat are ultimately seen as an extension of border ornamentation” (MNR, 424).
Dimand in “Islamic Miniature Painting and Book Illumination” says that
Turkish miniature painting was derived from Persian art52, which is under influenced by Chinese painting that is brought by the Mongolian ruler.53 He explains that a brilliant period of Persian Painting was inaugurated in Herat under
Sultan Husain Mirza (1468-1506), who was the patron of the celebrated painter
Bihzad, or who is called Master Bihzad54 in My Name is Red. Bihzad reveals himself as a keen observer of nature and he also enriched the palette of Persian painter by creating effective new colour combination.55 During the second half of the 15th century, Bihzad’s interest in observing his environment resulted in the introduction of more realistic poses and the introduction of numerous details of daily life. Iranian individualism is especially apparent in painting, in which
Chinese and other foreign styles were consistently adapted to express intensely
Iranian subject, thereby creating a uniquely Persian style.56
Compared to the Persian painting, the Mughal style of painting, which was flourished under the Emperor Akbar from Hindustan (1556-1605), combine
Persian, Hindu, and European elements in its style. As a result of contact with the
European art, which was greatly admired by Akbar, Mughal painters introduced
52 Maurice S. Dimand, “Islamic Miniature Painting and Book Illumination”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 28, 10 (October, 1933): 171. 53 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 168. 54 Master Bihzad was the most prominent Persian miniaturist who lived in the 15th century. He was a painter who developed miniature painting style, which was used in Ottoman Turkey. Herat was the centre of painting in the Islamic world and home to the great Master Bihzad. (MNR, 445) In addition, he had also painted the most magnificent pictures and the most incredible masterpieces. (MNR, 304) 55 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 170. 56 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 199. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
24 atmospheric effects and even perspective into their paintings. It is also mentioned in My Name is Red that the Persian painters or calligraphers are encouraged to sign their names (MNR, 432-433), which are written in the margin in red ink.57
Turkish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries followed Persian prototypes in the main, but the figures were dressed in Turkish costumes and certain vivid colours peculiar to Turkey were used with very decorative effect.58 Kerametli adds that “Turkish miniatures colours were strikingly brilliant…and the most used colours were bright red, scarlet, green, and different shades of blue”.59 However, the Ottoman miniature painting does not compare in quality with Persian painting, which originally influenced the Turkish school. Yet, Ottoman miniatures do have a character of their own, either in the almost folk-art effect of religious images or in the precise depictions of such daily events as military expeditions or great festivals.60 It is against such worlds of arts that Pamuk’s works are set.
2.1.1.2. Italian Renaissance Painting
The word Renaissance comes from the word “rinascita”. It represents the revival of a spirit that has been all but destroyed during the Dark Ages, the beginnings of which decline were already evident under the first Christian
Emperor Constantine and are confirmed when “barbarian” or “gothic” tribes invaded and brutalized an over-ripe classical civilization.61 Philip M. Soergel, in
57 M.S. Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 30, 12 (1935): 249-250. 58 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 171. 59 Can Kerametli, “Turkish Miniatures in the 16th Century”, The Turkish Journal of Collectable Art 4 (1985). 60 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 208. 61 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975) 54. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Arts and Humanities through the Eras: Renaissance Europe (1300-1600), states that in its influence to the arts and sciences, Renaissance praises creativity as a sign of humankind’s creation in God’s likeness for man is the depiction of God.
Moreover, human creativity was also celebrated as divine attributes62 and the large goal of these explorations was to identify ways in which the human soul might achieve mystical union with God, to commune with God.63
John Hale adds that Renaissance is popularly associated with the visual arts, science, medicine, ancient languages or astronomy. It first appeared in the writings of neither an intellectual nor humanist but of an art-promoting painter and architect who compiled a book of the lives of his fellow post-medieval artist,
Giorgio Vasari.64 Gilbert, in The Renaissance and The Reformation, supports the statement above that in the Renaissance era art and science are closely related.
Both the artist and the scientist strove for the mastery of the physical world, and the art of painting profited by two fields of study that may be called scientific: anatomy, which made possible a more accurate representation of the human body, and mathematical perspective. Due to the close relation between art and science, some men are both artists and scientists, notably Leonardo da Vinci.65
Pamuk narrates in My Name is Red that “the image of the Italian
Renaissance painting was of an individual” (MNR, 28). Eder also adds that the world-view underlying European Renaissance Painting was also different from
62 Philip M. Soergel, Arts and Humanities through the Eras: Renaissance Europe (1300-1600) (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005) 235-236. 63 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, xv. 64 John Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: the Growth of Interest in its History and Art, Fourth Edition (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005) x. 65 William Gilbert, The Renaissance and The Reformation (Kansas: Privately Publish, 1997) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
26 that of tradition Ottoman miniature painting. The Italian Renaissance portraits are of specific people, and even trees and dogs are particulars. The Italian
Renaissance painters mainly aim to depict human beings and other living or non- living beings realistically.66 In this painting method, every people are depicted realistically in their portraits because they are seen as “different from all others, a unique, special, and particular human being” (MNR, 187).
Soergel emphasizes that image in Renaissance painting takes a special importance. Religious images served as a vital textbook that instructed in the teachings and history of Christianity and the church, conveyed political and religious agenda, as well as tools of propaganda.67 The other religious images, such as portraiture, were also commissioned to commemorate a family member who was already dead. Portrait paintings were intended to preserve a positive memory and an inner strength and gentleness of the subject after death. This painting was also said as a vehicle that expressed something about the subject’s own individual nature.68
2.1.2. The Ottoman Sultan in the 16th and 17th Century
Since Pamuk’s selected novels also focus on the Ottoman history and this thesis also deals with the historical aspects of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and
17th century therefore I present the information on the reign Sultans that can give the readers deeper understanding on my thesis. The information on the reign
66 Eder, “My Name is Red”. 67 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 364. 68 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 375. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Sultans in My Name is Red and The White Castle is substantial because the two
Sultans, Murad III and Ahmed I, have important roles in encouraging the miniature painters as well as Hoja to imitate and adopt Western art, science, and technology.
Murad III (1574–1595), the reign Sultan in My Name is Red who is based on the real historical figure, was Sultan Selim II’s successor.69 After his father dead, Murad III, as Selim’s eldest son, carried on one family tradition with ferocity—killing all five of his brothers on the day of his accession. Murat was the last of the sultans to have had some field experience before taking the throne, having served as a provincial administrator under both his grandfather Süleyman and his own father. But his unusually spirited passion for women resulted in the presence of 40 concubines in his court who in all produced some 130 sons in addition to uncounted female children.70
He was the Ottoman sultan who most interested in miniatures and books and he had the Book of Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories produced in İstanbul. The most prominent Ottoman miniaturists, including Osman the Miniaturist (Master Osman) and his disciples, contributed to them. Moreover, the Persian miniaturist Velijan (Olive), who is commissioned to work for the
Ottoman court, came in 1583 to İstanbul.71 In My Name is Red, Murad orders the
Head Illuminator Master Osman to work on the Book of Festivities and Uncle
Effendi to work on the secret book. The Story of Black and the Ottoman palace
69 Pamuk, My Name is Red, 446. 70 Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis: the Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808, First Edition (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1976) 179. 71 Pamuk, My Name is Red, 447. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
28 painters was begun in 1591, a year before the thousandth anniversary (calculated in lunar years) of the Hegira. Black, “a character whose thoughts, constitution, and temperament are close to Pamuk’s,”72 returns to İstanbul from the east, beginning the events recounted in the novel.
Sultan Ahmed I (1603-1617) was Murat III’s grandson—mentioned in the last part of My Name is Red as the Ottoman ruler who destroyed the large clock with statuary sent to the sultan as a present by Queen Elizabeth I. He was
Mehmed III’s eldest surviving son who was still 13 years old in his succession.
Ahmed abandoned the old tradition of killing his brother and sent his brother,
Mustafa, to live at the Old Palace at Bayezit along with their grandmother.73 The reign of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I was during whose rule the events of The White
Castle take place. It is for the reason that the Sultan here is called “the young sultan” and “the child” by the narrator (TWC, 39)—for he was still very young, 13 years old, when he became the sultan—and because the narrator also mentions that the sultan in this story is Ahmed the First, Murad the Third’s grandson.
(TWC, 43)
2.2 Discourse on Issues of Postcolonialism and Orientalism
Orientalism is closely related to Postcolonialism since the analysis of the of the binary opposition and the relationship between the Self and the Other, the
East and the West are at the heart of Postcolonialism. Due to the problems mentioned above, Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s discourses on
72 Pamuk, Other Colours, 268. 73 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 186. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
29
Postcolonialism will be used to enlighten this thesis in dealing with predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West as well as in finding Pamuk’s solutions to the predicament of the oscillation in My Name is Red and The White Castle.
2.2.1. The Discourse on Postcolonialism
Here, I used postcolonial theory to deconstruct the complex and ambiguous desire to imitate the Other, which is mainly on the Turkish characters in My Name is Red and The White Castle. In order to dismantle the complex and ambiguous desire to imitate the Other, Homi K Bhabha’s discourse on postcolonialism will be employed in this research, which also focuses on hybridity, in-betweenness, mimicry, and ambivalence.
2.2.1.1. Colonialism
Although this study uses the discourse on Postcolonial theory from Homi
Bhabha as the main reference, it will start with concept of colonialism. It is for the reason that Turkey is one of the countries in Europe, which has never been colonialized by other nations or by Western powers. As a non-postcolonial country, Turkey experiences a self-colonization as the result of brutal
Westernization, which was “part of the ongoing project, associated with an elite movement, to rapidly “civilize” society borrowed from the Soviet example and
Europe.”74 In addition, Europe is used by the elite as the main reference to
“civilize” Turkey through imitating their values of modernity.
Ania Loomba defines colonialism as conquest, domination, and control of other people’s land and goods. It is the expansion of various European powers
74 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
30 into Asia, Africa, or Americas from the 16th century onwards.75 While Ashis
Nandy, in The Intimate Enemy (1983), which adapts Foucault’s analysis of power, says that modern colonialism is a new way of colonialism in which the colonizer or the powerful changes its way in colonizing the Orient or the powerless.76
Nandy builds an interesting distinction between two chronologically distinct types or genres of colonialism. The first focused on the physical conquest of territories, whereas the second was more insidious in its commitment to the conquest and occupation of minds, selves, and cultures. The second was established by rationalists, modernists, and liberals who argued that imperialism can bring civilization to the uncivilized world.77 Furthermore, Nandy writes:
This colonialism colonises minds in addition to bodies and it releases forces within colonised societies to alter their cultural priorities once and for all. In the process, it helps to generalise the concept of the modern West from a geographical and temporal entity to a psychological category. The West is more everywhere, within the West and outside, in structures and in minds (Nandy, 1983, p. xi).78
Along with Nandy’s types of colonialism, Orhan Pamuk, in “The Paris Review
Interview” also mentions that even though Turkey was never a colony but the suppression that Turks suffered was self-inflicted. In that suppression, there is a sense of fragility but that self-imposed Westernization also brought isolation. As a result, the Turks were strangely isolated from the Western world they rivalled.79
Their desire to Westernize their country had created their commitment and ambition to the conquest of Turks own mind, selves, and culture. The Turks
75 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 7-8. 76 Cited in Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, First Edition (Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin: 1998) 15. 77 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 15. 78 See Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1983) xi. 79 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370-371. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
31 argued that facing the West is “really the messianic harbinger of civilization to the uncivilized world”.80 In additional, to have Turkey civilized and modernized, they erased their history and left the Ottoman tradition. They felt that Islam and the
Ottoman tradition were their biggest obstacles in order to be the West and modern.
2.2.1.2. Postcolonialism
Leela Gandhi states that colonialism does not end with the end of colonial occupation and its resistance begins with the onset of colonialism.81 Loomba adds that after colonialism ends, postcolonialism appear as the contestation of colonial domination and legacies of colonialism.82 In line with Pope’s statement that postcolonialism believes that such identity is created as a result of colonialism,83
Turkey, now, is still experiencing identity ambivalence as the result of the radical modernization that is forced by the elite colonizer (read: the Kemalists). Homi K.
Bhabha, just as Edward W. Said in Orientalism, also analyses the discourse on colonialism. His keys concepts in the discourse on postcolonialism are hybridity and the third space, in-betweenness, mimicry, and ambivalence.
In The Location of Culture, Bhabha says that the important feature of colonial discourse is its dependence on the concept of “fixity” in the ideological construction of otherness. Fixity is the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference in the discourse of colonialism. It is the force of ambivalence that gives the colonial stereotype its currency: ensures its repeatability in changing historical
80 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 15. 81 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 17. 82 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 16. 83 Rob Pope, The English Studies Book: An Introduction to Language, Literature, and Culture, Second Edition (London, Routledge: 2002) 141. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
32 and discursive conjunctures; informs its strategies of individuation and marginalization; produces that effect of probabilistic truth and predictability, which for the stereotype, must always be in excess of what can be empirically proved of logically construed.84 In colonial discourse, Bhabha highlights that stereotype is important in defining the colonizer as superior and the colonized as inferior. Said mentions in the previous section that the idea of stereotype is important to Europe’s self-conception for dominating and maintaining power over the Orient.85
Stereotype becomes very important for the West when the boundary or the binary opposition between the East and the West is no longer clear. In other words, stereotype, which is made by the West, must be maintained. In addition, stereotype also encourages the East to emulate the West as what had been done by
Turkey by way of erasing its Islamic Ottoman tradition. As it is emphasized by
Özel that,
in 1923 Turkey pursued a radical modernization, with a staunch secularism as its mainstay where religion would be subjugated to the state and relegated strictly to the private sphere.86
In order to be part of the West, Turkey casts a petition to the European Union
(EU) to be one of its members but many European countries rebuff its membership.87 Modernity, which Turkey tries to embrace by adopting Western culture, has led to anxiety to the West because the attempt to emulate them can threaten the firm division between the East and the West.
84 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 66. 85 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism. 86 Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 20. 87 Pamuk, Other Colours, 214-217. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Bhabha criticises colonial discourse by proposing the concept of mimicry.
He explains that mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge.88 Lacan reminds us that the effect of mimicry is camouflage.89 The imitation towards the colonizer does not mean that the colonized imitates the colonizer identically. Bhabha adapts Weber’s formulation that colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognisable Other, as a subject of difference that is “almost the same, but not quite”. Bhabha adds that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an “ambivalence” because mimicry stays on the two different conditions. In order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference. Bhabha says that mimicry is a sign of a double articulation, which “appropriates” the Other as it visualises power.90 Mimicry is a double articulation because it exists on both sides; the colonizer and the colonized, or the Self and the Other.91
Bhabha writes that the desire to emerge as “authentic” through mimicry— through a process of writing and repetition—is the final irony of partial representation.92 Huddart, in Homi K. Bhabha, explains that this desire is not only experienced by the colonized but clearly also by the colonizer. He also mentions that colonial discourse at once demands both similarity and difference in the figures of the colonized, but additionally colonial discourse’s ambivalence has the strange effect of making the colonizer feel not quite colonizer, alienated from
88 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85. 89 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120-121. 90 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 86. 91 Cherry Lou C. Sy, “Mimicry and Its Discontents: Examining Bhabha’s Multiculturalism as Mimicry and Hybridity”, Student Pulse 3, 10 (2011): 1. 92 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 88. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
34 what they must believe is their true identity.93 Bhabha states that hybridity is the effect of mimicry. Through imitating the colonizer, the colonized tries to rewrite his identity in the liminal space by becoming hybrid.94 Huddart adds that identities operate as palimpsests. He discusses that identities are overwritten on which earlier writing is still visible underneath newer writing. They offer a suggestive model of hybrid identity.95 This condition is now faced by Turkey that is still writing their new identity above their Islamic Ottoman identity that is still visible even though it had already erased through the Westernization project conducted by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Hybridity has frequently been used in post-colonial discourse to mean simply cross-cultural “exchange”. Moreover, Bhabha’s theory is also “a hybrid of psychoanalysis, Marxism, Derridean philosophy, post-structuralism and phenomenology and consequently what is produced is not a single identifiable entity Postcolonial theory”.96 The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts to stress the mutuality of cultures in the colonial and post-colonial process in expressions of syncreticity, cultural synergy and transculturation.97 Hybridity—as the dynamics of the colonial encounter—is suggested to overcome the failure of the colonizer to create the stable and fixed identity.98 Moreover, Loomba adds that for some Caribbean and Latin American activists, hybridity also used as an anti-
93 David Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 2006) 44. 94 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120. 95 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 107. 96 Angela McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies (London: SAGE Publications, 2005) 100. 97 Bill Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies (New York: Routledge, 2007) 109. 98 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 92. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
35 colonial strategy.99 As it is also suggested by Pamuk, Turkey’s predicament in producing its modern identity can be overcome by combining the East and West and create a new culture that is combination of both sides.
As stated by Bhabha, cultural identity always emerges in the contradictory and ambivalent space, which makes the claim to a hierarchical “purity” of cultures untenable.100 The sameness that is the result of mimicking the colonizer gives the feeling of anxiety to the colonizer for this resemblance can endanger the stereotype and break the strict division between the East and the West.101
Furthermore, the recognition of this ambivalent space of cultural identity may help us to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in favour of the recognition of an empowering capacities hybridity within which cultural difference may operate.102
It is significant that the productive of this third space have a colonial or Post- Colonial attribution. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory may open the way to conceptualizing in international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.103
It is in the “in-between” space that carries the burden and meaning of culture and this is what makes the notion of hybridity so important.104
Bhabha argues that colonial culture is hybrid. Hybridity is the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal, a resistant
99 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 146. 100 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 37. 101 McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 101. 102 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 108. 103 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 38. 104 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 109. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
36 against a dominant colonial power.105 Bhabha also states that hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. In addition,
colonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity between two different cultures, which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism. Hybridity is a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses the effects of the colonial disavowal, so that other “denied” knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority—its rules of recognition.106
Pamuk also presents hybridity in his My Name is Red in the sultan’s commissioned book, an Islamic Ottoman illuminating book, which contains the
Venetian painting, Olive’s double identity as the representative of the Eastern and
Western side, and in The White Castle on the Italian slave’s hybrid speech and his double identity.
2.2.2. The Discourse on Orientalism107
Edward Said in Orientalism (2003) explains that the discourse on
Orientalism is a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemological distinction between “The Orient” and “The Occident”.108 Orientalism is a discourse used by the Occident to dominate and control the Orient. It is a product of Europe’s—mainly British and French—certain political forces and activity109 as well as domination and hegemony over the East. Fundamentally, Orientalism is
105 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 112. 106 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 114. 107 Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism is principally a way of defining and “locating” Europe’s others. But as a group of related disciplines, the discourse on Orientalism is about Europe itself and hinges on arguments that circulated around the issues of national distinctiveness and racial and linguistic origins. Quoted from Bill Ashcroft & Pal Ahluwalia, Edward Said (London: Routledge, 2001). 108 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003) 2. 109 Said, Orientalism, 203. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
37 a political doctrine, which promotes a binary opposition between the East and the
West. Said shows that this opposition is important to Europe’s self-conception: if the Orient is weak, Europe is strong; if the Orient is inferior then the Occident is superior; if the Orient is static, Europe can be seen as developing and marching ahead.110 Besides, it is never far from Denys Hay’s idea of Europe, the idea of
European identity as a superior one over Oriental backwardness.111 However,
Said’s project is to show how this idea about the Orient is part of Western style for dominating, restructuring, having authority, and maintaining power over the
Orient.112
The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony113 and the Orient is always stereotyped as the weak. Said stresses that,
the other feature of the Orient was that Europe was always in a position of strength. There is no way of putting this euphemistically…the essential relationship, on political, cultural, and even religious grounds was seen to be one between a strong and weak partner.114
Said describes the Orient as a system of representation framed by a whole set of forces that brought them into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later,
Western empire.115 They are Europe’s cultural contestant and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. Said also argues that the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
110 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Second Edition (Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005) 45. 111 Said, Orientalism, 7. 112 Said, Orientalism, 3. 113 Said, Orientalism, 5. 114 Said, Orientalism, 40. 115 Said, Orientalism, 203. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
38 and experience.116 The Orient is seen as a locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption. Moreover, the Orient existed as a place isolated from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts, and commerce.117
Additionally, Pamuk also stresses that for Turkey and the Turks, Europe has always figured as a dream, a vision of the future, a goal to achieve or danger, and a future—an imagined future—but never a memory, just like the collapsed
Ottoman Empire.118 Therefore, as Turkey’s deepest image of the Other, Europe is very important for Pamuk’s works for he always presents and complicates this binary opposition in them, especially My Name is Red and The White Castle. For that reason, I use the discourse on Orientalism to analyse the self-orientalism as well as the binary opposition and the complex desire to imitate the Other that is experience by Pamuk’s characters in his selected oeuvre.
Esin Akalin, in “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic
Discourse on the Orient” explains that Said’s Orientalism chooses to homogenise the East and fails to recognise the element of power associated with the Ottoman
Empire. Akalin, in addition, stresses that she is not agree with Said’s discourse that has generalized the East. Quoting from Kafadar, she states that Said disregards the fact that the Ottoman, who has excelled in statecraft and administration, financial policies, land system, and military power, are a “self- consciously imperial state”.119 Akalin also finds that Said’s ahistorical and
116 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. 117 Said, Orientalism, 206. 118 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190. 119 Esin Akalin, “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the Orient”, a compilation journal in Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C. Freeman. (New York: Rodopi, B.V., 2007) 113. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
39 ageographical approach to the Orient does not do justice to the historical realities of the Ottoman Empire as a world power in the 16th-17th centuries.120 This can be seen when Constantinople, which has reigned supreme for more than a thousand years,121 was conquered by the reign Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, on May 29,
1453. At its heyday, the Ottoman Empire’s regions were stretched from Morocco to Ukraine, from the borders of Iran to Hungary.122 Moreover, the Ottoman’s presence in the Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts of south-eastern Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically and culturally.
Nevertheless, the overgeneralisation of the historical interactions of systems and cultures make the Ottoman case particularly challenging.123 The case of Turkey is very special. Here, it is not the West who orientalised Turkey but it is
Turkey that has orientalised itself. In fact, Western people even respect the Turks for their glory and military power. Turkey was never a European colony and in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was even Europe’s great rival for commercial hegemony in the economic space stretching from Venice to the Indian
Ocean.124 However, the loss of the Ottoman Empire had left a deep wound. When the Ottoman Empire fell and the new Republic founded, Turkey experienced a feeling of cultural inferiority because Turks wanted to Westernize but could not
120 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 112. 121 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6. 122 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 1. 123 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 114. 124 Cited by Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 122. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
40 go far enough. Moreover, this westernization also brought isolation, which made them isolated from the Western world they emulated.125
Orientalism is a political doctrine, which is used to control and dominate the Orient by promoting the stereotype that the Orient is weaker than the
Occident. Even though, in reality, the Ottoman was strong and able to dominate both East and West but there is still tension and longing within them to embrace and imitate the West. As Said stresses the West has been imagine as the
“messiah” that can save and release Turkey from the backwardness and retardation. Therefore, Said’s discourse on Orientalism will be used to reveal the oscillation of the East and the West as well as the complex desire to imitate
Others.
3. Theoretical Framework
Since both novels depict the encounter between the Turks and the Italian, in the case of their tradition, culture and art, I will employ Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism to answer the research questions. These theories are utilized in problematizing the influence of the Italian Renaissance style and science as well as technology toward Turkish miniature painting and traditional Turkish custom. Edward Said’s
Orientalism will be used to examine the Turks’ perception on seeing themselves upon the Italian. In addition, it is also borrowed to complicate the binary opposition between the East and the West and self and other that is always
125 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
41 problematized in Pamuk’s oeuvre. Whereas, Bhabha’s Postcolonial theory is employed to illuminate the solution that Pamuk’s stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own tradition that Turkish society is undergoing using his hybridity, mimicry, and in- betweenness. On the other hand, this theory helps to unfold the question on the personal search for the true identity as the core of Pamuk’s novels. Also, the last is finding the relevance of these two novels, My Name is Red and The White
Castle, with the condition in Indonesia that also faces the fundamentalists—that might disrupt the unity as well as simplify and purify the multiculturalism—and the lure of modernity that can reverse Indonesian people from its roots. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER III THE IRONY OF THE EAST-WEST OSCILLATION
Dealing with the first questions of the research, this chapter will outline the complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is red and The White Castle. I divided this chapter into five sub-chapters. In the first sub-chapter, I will discuss cosmopolitanism signified in the novels to see hybridity,126 which becomes the result of cosmopolitanism in İstanbul.
As the result of the encounter between the East and the West, there is an attraction of Western culture and art as well as science and technology, which lead to the adoption of Western tradition. For that reason, in the second sub-chapter, I will review the enchantment and appropriation of the Italian Renaissance art by
Turkish miniature painters and European technology and science by Hoja that are depicted in the novels studied.
Though Western aspects have enchanted the miniature painters and Hoja, there are groups that still keep and preserve the Ottoman art and tradition. In view of that, in the third sub-chapter, I will present the maintenance and preservation of the Eastern aspects in both novels.
Furthermore, the Turks’ personal search for identity as individual will be discussed in the fourth sub-chapter because the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own tradition leads to the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters and also the Ottoman
Sultans.
126 The analysis on hybridity will be explained further in the next chapter.
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Lastly, to sum up those four sub-chapters, I will draw a golden thread in the theoretical observation that is presented in the last sub-chapter. In this sub- chapter, I will clarify how the discourses that I use to analyse Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle have assisted to dismantle the complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West.
1. Cosmopolitanism
The encounter between the Turks and the Westerns occurred from the very early days of the Ottoman state. Jardine and Brotton, in Global Interests:
Renaissance Art between East and West, say that the encountered between the
East and the West and their cultural exchange had flourished in the 1460s and
1470s in spite of the high anxiety of the Eastern and Western Churches and the political standoff between Western Europe and Mehmet II following the latter’s conquest of Constantinople.127 It was commercial motivation—a mutually profitable relationship, which both sides took care to develop—that was behind the close Ottoman-Genoese relationship128 so that many Genoese lived and made commercial transactions in Galata, Turkey. Additionally, the Genovese also assisted the Ottoman to sail across the Strait and to cross from Europe to Asia, as
Mehmet’s father, Murat II had done in 1422 and 1444 when Constantinople was still under the Byzantine Empire.129 Due to Turkey’s rich cosmopolitanism, in this sub chapter, I present how this cosmopolitanism is affected by the Islamic cosmopolitanism, the complex rendezvous of various cultures and civilizations in
127 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32. 128 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 12. 129 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 15. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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İstanbul, how Pamuk presents İstanbul’s cosmopolitanism in his selected works, and how this magnificent cosmopolitanism was erased by Kemal Ataturk through his Westernization project in the end of the Ottoman Empire.
1.1. Islamic Cosmopolitanism
The encounter between the Turks and the Westerners that occurred from the very early days of the Ottoman state is not the only Islamic contact with the other civilizations, religions, and cultures. The encounter between Christian and
Muslim had already existed in the era of Buyids. Under the Buyids era in the tenth century, the contact between Christian and Muslim was very close. Kraemer, in
Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, states that the Christians—“brought to the area of Baghdad by immigrants from the great Christian centres of Edessa and
Nisibis”130—were given good positions in the government. “Christians were highly represented among the secretarial class and many filled administrative positions.”131 Christians were not only played a major role in the intellectual life of Baghdad but they were also primarily responsible for imbuing the intellectual atmosphere of our period with the ancient ideal of humanitas.132
They had a virtual monopoly on translations from Greek to Syriac into Arabic. …As members of a minority community, Syriac-speaking Christians injecting “foreign” ideas into the ideological stream of the dominant Muslim majority, in an apparent attempt to elude their own marginality.133
130 Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: the Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age, Second Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992) 76. 131 Kraemer, Humanism, 75. 132 Kraemer, Humanism, 76-77. 133 Ibid. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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The Jewish community in Baghdad was quite large and important. “Jews played a vital role in Baghdad as a bankers and court financiers.”134 In the intellectual life of Baghdad, it was not only Christians that had important role but
Jews also had contribution even though in a small number. “Jews participated in the intellectual life of Baghdad in the early of Buyid period though their contribution was not significant. Jews tended to excel in astronomy and medicine.
The activity of the Jewish scholars as transmitters of learning took place in a later period and in the West, where they had a major role in transmitting Arabic philosophical and scientific texts to Christian Europe.”135 Due to the Islamic contact with the other cultures, civilizations, and religions, as well as their close relationship, I can draw a conclusion that those evidences show that the Christian and the Jews also affect the Islamic philosophy and the Islamic thinking.
1.2. Cosmopolitanism in İstanbul
The encounter between Islam and the other cultures and religion was not only flourished during the Buyids era but also it existed in the Ottoman Empire era, especially in İstanbul. İstanbul—the city where the two tales, My Name is Red and The White Castle136, take place and where Pamuk was born and living so far—is a multicultural city, which has a very special location. Its geographical position transforms it into a “border city”, since it constitutes a gate that connects
134 Kraemer, Humanism, 78. 135 Kraemer, Humanism, 80. 136 Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle (Beyaz Kale) translated by Victoria Holbrook, First Edition (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1998) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Europe to Asia.137 It has been a complex rendezvous from various cultures and civilizations, they are Persian and Greek and Christian (Byzantine) and Muslim
(Ottoman).138 After it was conquered in May 29, 1453139, Mehmet II opened this city for the Greek, the Armenian, and the Jews. Mehmet II has a very tolerant attitude towards other religions and cultures. It could be seen when,
after conquering Constantinople, he encouraged Greek migration in the city and he also opened the city to Armenians and Jews. The city had flourish as a multicultural society for hundreds of years and returned to its imperial mode of tolerance.140
Roel Meijer, in Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East, adds that “during the Ottoman period, groups of different religious and ethnic backgrounds intermingled and exchange ideas, lifestyles, and cultures. Moreover, there were no certain boundaries, which had been drawn and the state did not yet apply its power of standardisation or force its norms on its citizens.”141 Under the reign of Mehmed II, the Persian, the Greek, the Christian, and the Ottoman lived in peace and harmony and also respected the others’ cultures and religious practices. Moreover, due to their encounter, contact, and close relationship, I argue that the cultural exchange within them could not be avoided.
137 Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, “Orhan Pamuk and the Construction of Turkey’s National Memory in İstanbul: Memories of a City”, MATHESIS 19 (2010): 171. 138 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 139 Orhan Pamuk, İstanbul: Memories and the City translated by Maureen Freely (New York: Vintage International, 2006) 172. 140 Benton Jay Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated: The Cultures of Integration, Concealment, and Evacuation in İstanbul”, Comparative Literature Studies 39, 4 East-West Issue (2002): 366. 141 Roel Meijer, Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East (Surrey: Curzon, 1999) 1. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
47
What is interesting in Pamuk’s description of İstanbul is the importance he gives to hüzün, the Turkish word for melancholy.142 In the beginning, this word means a feeling of deep spiritual loss, and then to the Sufi, hüzün is the spiritual anguish we feel because we cannot be close enough to Allah; because we cannot do enough for Him in this world.143 Pamuk also tries to present hüzün as a spiritual attitude and point of view, which embrace and celebrate and is also critical to the human life in this world144 just like when he uses it to criticize
Turkish modern identity that is forced by the elites. Hüzün stems from the same
“black passion” as melancholy. Pamuk, following Burton’s The Anatomy of
Melancholy, finds that “melancholy paved the way to a happy solitude because it strengthened his imaginative powers”. Through this statement, Pamuk wants to give a positive meaning to hüzün that the solitude is the heart, the very essence of melancholy.145 Therefore, hüzün leads people to solitude where they can “find the significance and the answer of their negative experiences”146 as well as relieve the ache that finally saves their souls and also gives them depth.147
As a city that witnesses the encounter of the East and the West, İstanbul becomes a multicultural city, which embraces complex issues on the feeling of hüzün suffered by its residents. In his works, Pamuk tries to capture and paint this hüzün by presenting the oscillation to imitate the Frankish method or to keep the old painting style as well as conflicts around the Ottoman miniaturists. Pamuk
142 Martins, “Orhan Pamuk”, 174. 143 Pamuk, İstanbul, 90. 144 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 145 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92. 146 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 147 Pamuk, İstanbul, 104. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
48 explains that hüzün is “the black mood shared by millions of people together”148…like the hüzün of entire community, such as the palace miniaturists in My Name is Red. It is of the miniaturists who feel the hüzün because the
Ottoman miniature painting has been replaced by the new Frankish painting style and because they are afraid to face their future; the old Ottoman tradition that will vanish and has no future and the miniaturists that will be even less appreciated.
Hüzün was not only felt by the palace miniaturists but also felt by Atik
Sinan. Atik Sinan, an architect who worked under the reign of Sultan Mehmet II, tried to make Fatih mosque, which resembled and emulated Hagia Sophia.
Because of his Christian background and of the glorious past of the Byzantine
Emperor and as an architect who worked for Mehmed, Sinan released his hüzün by combining Byzantine and Ottoman architecture by building Fatih külliye.149
However, Mehmed’s attempt to build the mosque that was the rivalry of the grand
Byzantine building was not success. Rabah Saoud explains that in this project,
“Sinan failed to make the dome of the mosque bigger and higher than the Hagia
Sophia, which disappointed the Fatih that he amputated the hand of the architect”.150
From the explanation and information presented above, it can be concluded that as the city of complex and ambiguous rendezvous of various cultures and religions, İstanbul has become a cosmopolitan city, which allows and
148 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92. 149 Fatih külliye is a building, made in the 15th century and consists of mosque and Islamic school. The Byzantine tradition, especially as embodied in Hagia Sophia, became a major source of inspiration for Sinan; Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 200-206; Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 150 Rabah Saoud, “Muslim Architecture under Ottoman Patronage (1326-1924)”, Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization (2004): 3. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
49 highly respects the practices of different religions and ethnics of its citizens.
Additionally, Pamuk uses hüzün to overcome the deep spiritual loss of the Islamic
Ottoman tradition. Hüzün leads people to the answer of their sadness and relieve the ache that can save their souls. Pamuk suggests to combine the two cultures in revealing the feeling of melancholy rather than living in one of those cultures or only slavishly imitating Western culture therefore a new hybrid culture can be invented.151
1.3. Cosmopolitanism in Pamuk’s Works
In my observation, Pamuk captures cosmopolitanism that has been mentioned in the two previous parts in his works. This cosmopolitanism can be found in the two selected novels and it is mostly seen in My Name is Red. One of the cosmopolitanisms is the architecture of the house in İstanbul in the 16th century, as it is stated by Black who has just come back from his exile for twelve years in Persia as a letters carrier and tax collector and a secretary in the service of pashas (MNR, 7):
Some of the neighbourhoods and streets I’d frequented in my youth had disappeared in ashes and smoke, replaced by burnt ruins where stray dogs congregated and where mad transients frightened the local children. In other areas razed by fire, large affluent houses had been built, and I was astonished by their extravagance, by windows of the most expensive Venetian stained glass, and by lavish two-story residences with bay windows suspended above high walls. (MNR, 9)
Meliz Ergin supports the statement above by mentioning that Turkey is a unique site for promoting cosmopolitan, which accommodates an array of languages,
151 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
50 cultures, and histories. Pamuk, moreover, presents this mosaic by displaying the historical buildings and architecture in the cities of Turkey to highlight the richness of cultures that have inhabited these spaces over centuries,152 especially
İstanbul where the two selected novels take place.
The large affluent houses, which have been built in the 16th century
İstanbul using European architecture, is similar to the demolitions and urban modernization in İstanbul in the 1950s. Many buildings were rapidly torn down and replaced by the newer, higher, developer-built multi-unit apartments. Sıbel
Bozdoğan, in The Cambridge History of Turkey mentions that the speculative apartment boom of the next few decades became the notorious symbol of the sterility, banality, and repetitiveness of modern architecture and urbanism, turning major Turkish cities into “concrete jungle”.153 Moreover, I see that the alteration of the architecture, mentioned in My Name is Red, becomes a symbol of cosmopolitanism and forced modernization as well as an attempt of purification, which is embraced by the Turks.
The other old buildings are the hippodrome and the ancient church that are visited by Hoja, his Italian slave, and the sovereign to see His animal collections.
Hippodrome is a building that was used for horse races during the Byzantine era.
In this place, the child sultan shows Hoja his animals and asks him to make predictions on their future babies or health.
152 Melız Ergın, “East-West Entanglements: Pamuk, Özdamar, Derrida”, Dissertation, (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia, 2009) 223. 153 Sıbel Bozdoğan, The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World edited by Reşat Kasaba, Volume 4 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 450. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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They’d gone by carriage to the hippodrome, to the lion-house. The lions, the leopards, and the panthers the sultan showed Hoja one by one were chained to the columns of an ancient church. (TWC, 43)
I argue that these old buildings symbolize the harmonious relation between various cultures, religions, and ethnics in İstanbul for this city has been a
“complex rendezvous from various cultures and civilizations, such as Persian,
Greek, Christian (Byzantine), and Muslim (Ottoman).”154 Additionally, these buildings is a metaphors, which Pamuk displays as “an affirmation of the survival of the traces left by Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, and several other ethnic and religious communities…under the Ottoman Empire.155
The other example of cosmopolitanism is Venetian gold coins, which overflow İstanbul. The gold coins show how the commercial relationship and the trade between the Ottoman and Venetian have already closely intertwined. On the other hand, a rumour on the flooding of the counterfeit coins in the markets and bazaars is similar to the numerous foreign people who live in İstanbul and cause moral degradation.
The pickle seller who passionately informed me about the cleric from Erzurum said that the counterfeit coins—the new ducats, the face florins stamped with lions and the Ottoman coins with their ever-ending silver content—that flooded the markets and bazaars, just like the Circassians, Abkhazians, Mingarians, Bosnians, Georgians, and Armenians who filled the streets, were dragging us toward an absolute degradation from which it would be difficult to escape. (MNR, 10)
However, the overflow of Venetian gold coins also shows how inflation hit the city, which makes the Ottoman coins no longer have any value in İstanbul, and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which causes social and economic problems. In
154 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 155 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 224. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
52 addition, moral degradation that is mentioned above shows how modernity does not always bring good influence to society that embraces it. It is also in the same vein with the social condition in modern-day İstanbul that can be seen in the
Social History of Ottoman İstanbul, that “Beyoğlu was the quintessential symbol of moral decline and...a sin city, which brought ruination to the good Muslim and stripped him of his health, wealth, and faith”156.
The encounter of the East and the West also happened in the area of
Mediterranean Sea. Mediterranean was an important place for the Ottoman. It was an important string of routes, straits, and passageways.157 The Ottomans looked at the Mediterranean as a military region, a place to wage war. Actually, the
Ottomans experience the problem of otherness in cosmopolitanism, which grows their antagonism to conquer, capture, or even resemble the West. The Other (the
West) always appears as something that is more enchanting and the Ottoman’s rich cosmopolitanism has driven the desire to conquer and dominate the West.
Mediterranean becomes very important for the Ottoman because it is a way to conquer Europe. So, it is not by a coincidence as Pamuk emphasizes that it figures as such for the 17th century-Turks and Italian who comes face-to-face to fight and take captives in The White Castle.158 In this novel, the encounter between the East and the West can be seen in the opening story when “the Turkish fleets attack the
Italian ship, which was sailing from Venice to Naples” (TWC, 13).
The Ottomans take the ship and capture the crew ship (the Italians) as slaves. In line with Said’s binary opposition, Europe is always stereotyped as
156 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 325-326. 157 Pamuk, Other Colours, 194. 158 Pamuk, Other Colours, 195. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
53 civilized while the Ottoman is seen as barbarian, a threat, and Europe’s contestant.
The West saw the Ottoman’s conquest of the Constantinople as “the most despicable, barbarous, and ignorant enemies of civilization”159. Moreover, the
Ottoman ships that take captive the Italian ship can be seen as one of barbarian act that threatened Europe. Kantar mentions that The White Castle seems like a conflict among Christians and Muslims in the opening story.160 It can be seen when the Muslim slaves, after being set loose from their chains, set about taking vengeance on the Italian sailors who have wiped them (TWC, 15) and the other
Christians are put to the oars (TWC, 16). The Italian slave, on the other hand, is characterised as a would-be martyr who refuses to convert to Islam even though he is forced and threatened by the Pasha. However, the religious difference between the master and the slave does not seem to be a crucial issue in the novel.161
In The White Castle, the cosmopolitanism—the contact, encounter, and cultural exchange between the Turks and the Italians—can be seen from the
Italians who have lived in İstanbul for many years, during Sultan Ahmed I’s period. In addition, most of them have converted to Islam, too. One of them is a
Genoese captain who meets the young Italian slave when he is captured by the
Turkish fleet (TWC, 15). The Italian slave has managed to meet the other Italians, who are known by their new names as Mustafa Reis and Osman Efendi, during the 11 years he has been living in İstanbul (TWC, 71).
159 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6. 160 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 128. 161 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 128. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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European quarter of Galata is also mentioned in The White Castle. It is the place where the young Italian slave meets a young monk who tells him about
Heybeli Island. Many Europeans had lived in Galata and the Genoese had been here before the Ottoman conquered Constantinople. Dubin, Gawthrop, and
Richardson say that the occupation of Galata by the Genoese began when they supported Byzantine emperor in the Crusaders. Moreover, during the early centuries of Ottoman rule, many Spanish Jews, Moorish traders, Greeks, and
Armenians settled in Galata, which became established as the city’s European quarter. Under his reign, Mehmet II allowed the Genoese to retain their commercial and religious establishments. They subsequently built one of the city’s most famous landmarks here, the Galata Tower.162 In modern İstanbul,
Beyoğlu, the foreign quarter of Pera and Galata in İstanbul, is a symbol of
Europeanisation where technological and intellectual innovation, fast-changing fashion, as well as moral depravity can be found. Additionally, it became the place where the Ottoman elite found an opportunity to prove themselves as
“civilized” in the eyes of the Europeans who labelled them “barbarians”.163
Pamuk captures İstanbul’s cosmopolitanism in his two works by presenting the architecture of the buildings that are adopting European architecture, the commercial relationship and trade between the Ottoman and the
Venetian, as well as the European that live in Galata, as seen in My Name is Red and The White Castle.
162 Marc Dubin, John Gawthrop, and Terry Richardson, The Rough Guide to Turkey (London: Rough Guides, Ltd., 2003) 160. 163 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 309, 326. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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1.4. Turkification
“I wish for one thing; I want to hear church bells, the call of a muezzin, and the sounds of a synagogue simultaneously in İstanbul, like the noises that I heard when I was a boy.”164
In the previous section, I illustrate how İstanbul grows as a multicultural city of different religious and ethnic background that flourishes during the
Ottoman Empire. In this session, I illustrate how this cosmopolitanism and
İstanbul cosmopolitanism start to fade away. However, the quotation above verifies that in the past, the various religions and cosmopolitanism that exist in
İstanbul, now, has just remained as a dream. There is no church bells, the call of a muezzin, and the sounds of a synagogue that simultaneously been heard in
İstanbul. Komins also shows that,
led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey abandoned its multicultural past for a decidedly Turkish future. He even replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet. …He also revolutionized Turkish dress, abolishing the emblematic Ottoman fez, and officially discouraging Muslim women’s veils.165
Cosmopolitan İstanbul of different ethnicities and religious affiliations and many languages has changed dramatically and a new cosmopolitanism that of financial services and multinational corporations, advertisers and artists, oil men and real estate agents, is rapidly filling the gap.166
Komins—in “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated: The Cultures of Integration,
Concealment, and Evacuation in İstanbul”—adds that the religious tolerance and
164 That is a remark from a senior official with UNIDO (The United Nations Industrial Development Office) who works in Ankara and lives in İstanbul. Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 381. 165 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367. 166 Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 25; Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 361. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
56 ethnic eclecticism, which flourished under the reign of Mehmet II, were not long prevail.167
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, European colonial intervention, national wars of independence, and population exchanges, physical and ideological borders began to demark the region ethnically. With the rise of Turkish nationalism in the republican era, the population of İstanbul began to change. Many Anatolian Turks migrated to the city, while the non-Turkish populations began to depart.168
Moreover, many Italian merchants family who have lived in Pera since the 16th century also left the modern İstanbul. As late as the 1980s, when only minimal numbers of minority residents remained, the revitalization of İstanbul itself, revolved around notions of Turkish purity.169
Pamuk also adds in his memoir, İstanbul: Memories and the City, that cosmopolitan İstanbul had disappeared when he reached his adulthood. This city used to be like the “tower of Babel” where Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Italian,
French, and English could be heard in the streets of İstanbul in1852 when Gautier was there. However, after Ataturk’s Westernization revolution took place this cosmopolitan İstanbul disappeared.
After the founding of the Republic and the violent rise of Turkification, after the state imposed sanctions on minorities—measures that some might describe as the final stage of the city’s “conquest” and others as ethnic cleansing—most of these languages disappeared. I witnessed this cultural cleansing as a child, for whenever anyone spoke Greek or Armenian too loudly in the street, someone would cry out, “Citizens, please speak Turkish!”—echoing what signs everywhere were saying.170
Pamuk’s story above illustrates how “it was the end of the grand polyglot multicultural İstanbul of the imperial age; the city stagnated, emptied itself out, and became a monotonous monolingual town in black and white”.171 İstanbul,
167 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 366. 168 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 361. 169 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367-368. 170 Pamuk, İstanbul, 239. 171 Pamuk, İstanbul, 238. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
57 now, remains as a black and white city, which rejects its multicolour through the nationalization project.
Purity, which is now the issue that is faced by Turkey, is the irony of
Turkish modernization. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s172 Westernization project is an irony for he wanted to modernize Turkey but he did not want to keep its cosmopolitanism. “The consequences of İstanbul’s forced Turkification, as
Komins said, are the Greek and the Italian that left modern İstanbul because they were not wholly accepted in the new world of Turkish nationalism”.173
Additionally, this brutal nationalization project, which was conducted around
1915 during the First World War,174 had caused many people to die. Pamuk, in an interview published in a Swiss newspaper, claims that
a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds had been killed in Turkey; …a large number of Ottoman Armenians were deported, allegedly for siding against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and many of them were slaughtered along the way.175
Turkey was never a European colony however this purification project showed how Turkey experienced a self-colonization by “colonialized” its own people, by killing its minorities that was aimed to rapidly “civilize” itself. However, the other argues that between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand Armenians were killed during the deportations from various causes, such as disease, starvation as well as killing.176 Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in front of the Armenians who lost their families in the deportation describes this
172 Atatürk means “Father of the Turks”. Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367. 173 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367-368. 174 ------, “Belasungkawa untuk Penduduk Armenia”, TEMPO 28 April 2014-4 Mei 2014: 147. 175 Pamuk, Other Colours, 237-238. 176 Andrew Mango, “Religion and Culture in Turkey”, Middle Eastern Studies 42, 6 (2006): 999. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
58 incident as a form of mutual pain between the Armenians and the Turks.
However, he rejects that one and a half million Armenians were genocide in the incident.177 Along with Erdogan’s statement, Turkey’s spokesmen continue to maintain that the slaughter does not count as genocide because it was not systematic, and that in the course of the war Armenians killed many Muslims too.178
Turkey is now still experiencing the problem of purity—which is the irony of its Westernization—for this Turkification project refuses to maintain Turkish cosmopolitanism by expelling the Greeks, Italians, and the Kurds from the country. The West is Turkey’s model that is used to find its true identity as well as being a modern country. Moreover, Turkey also wants to be part of Europe by
“knocking on” Europe’s door but ironically it is still rejected by the European
Union.
2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Art and Technology
Europe was the fountain of civilization. —Orhan Pamuk179
The encounter between the East and the West since the Ottoman Empire as well as Cosmopolitanism had resulted in the enchantment of Western culture and tradition because the West has become a standard of being modern by the Turkish.
As it is mentioned by Said, Europe is always seen as superior, powerful, and
177 ------, “Belasungkawa untuk Penduduk Armenia”, 147; Wisnu Dewabrata, “Konflik Paling Mematikan”, Kompas, 6 July 2014, 5. 178 Pamuk, Other Colours, 238. 179 Pamuk, Other Colours, 216. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
59 articulate180 and guided by Ataturk, the Turks, who mostly live on the periphery of Europe, believe that Europe to be the source of all truth.181 I argue that the alterations made by Kemal Ataturk indicated that Westernization was believed as a way to free Turkey from backwardness. For Pamuk and for many people who live on the edge of Europe, “Europe was the fountain of civilization”182 and an imagined future—but never a memory like the old Ottoman tradition. It has always figured as a dream, a vision of what is to come; an apparition at times desired and at times feared; a goal to achieve or a danger; a vision of the future and also as a threat and seduction.183
However, since the Ottoman Empire, there had been longing and desire to be the West, which descends them. The Empire has the complex and ambiguous desire to imitate the West, for instance, the lust to be painted in the manner of
Frankish masters like Sultan Mehmet II and Murat III, the hunger to take Western important areas, such as Constantinople, and the desire to apply the Western art and technology. The economic power and strategic area that were controlled by the West, in this case was the Byzantine Empire, had increased Sultan Mehmet
II’s ambition to conquer the West by capturing Constantinople. The always westward-moving Ottoman Turks reached the Balkan shores of the Mediterranean in the 14th century. They were well aware that the Mediterranean could be used for further conquest after defeated İstanbul and entered the Black Sea and it was also an important string of routes and passageways from Asia to Europe and the
180 Said, Orientalism, 7, 57. 181 Jeffrey Meyers, “Turkish Delight”, The Antioch Review 66, 2 (2008): 393. 182 Pamuk, Other Colours, 216. 183 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
60 other way around.184 Controlling the waterway was not only Ottoman’s commercial purpose but also military strategy of cutting the Byzantine’s maritime stronghold.185
The complex desire to mimic the West and the oscillation between East and West are generally presented by Orhan Pamuk in his works. Pamuk says that
Western ways of seeing and painting and its science and technology are more attractive in the eyes of Turkish miniature painters and Hoja. The miniaturists challenge the Islamic prohibition against portraiture186, while Hoja tries to alter traditional performances in the society by practicing science and technology, which he adores. My Name is Red and The White Castle mirror Turkey’s recent history as well as the internal struggle and search for a new identity. In addition, those novels also show how Western culture is seen under Eastern eyes. The searching for identity leads Turkey into self-inflicted ordeal because they try to erase the old-grand Ottoman Empire history. However, this self-imposed
Westernization also brings isolation. The Turks are isolated from the Western world they try to emulate.187
I read Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle as two stories, which complicate the binary opposition between East-West, traditional-modern,
Turkish miniature painting-Italian Renaissance painting, master-slave, and also science-stars and dreams interpretation. The identity of the characters in his oeuvre also split into two; one belongs to the East and the other belongs to the
184 Pamuk, Other Colours, 194. 185 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 12. 186 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270. 187 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370-371. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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West. Through the split identity he presented, Pamuk wants to problematize the love-hate relationship between the East and the West. Along with Ülker
Gökberk’s argument that,
Pamuk’s oeuvre is dedicated to themes such as Turkey’s stance between East and West; its Ottoman past and Western-oriented present; conflicts arising from old and new definitions of the artist, of faith and non-religious lifestyle. Even though these themes seem to imply binary oppositions, Pamuk complicates dualities through various strategies, most notably the doubling of his fictional characters and their switching of identities.188
In his fictions, Pamuk likes to complicate and problematize the Self-Other or binary opposition. Similarly, Farred mentions that Pamuk also delineates how the
Other is thus always present, frequently as a threat189 and seduction. As seen from the doubling characters in The White Castle that Hoja and his Venetian slave share the resemblance to each other and Hoja’s slave even says that both of them are one person (TWC, 82). Moreover, because of their hyper similarity, Hoja and his slave also feel the uncanny that later they come to a decision to exchange their identities in the end of the story.
Even though the young Italian man is a slave, he still feels that he is superior and treating Hoja as an inferior, even if only in secret.
Since I was accustomed to treating him as an inferior, even if only in secret, I thought they would consists of a few petty, insignificant sins. …After Hoja had thoroughly humiliated himself I would make him accept my superiority, or at least my independence, and then derisively demand my freedom. (TWC, 70)
The slave’s identity is split into two. The Italian slave (the West) also feels that he is responsible to guide and teach his Master (the East) for the Orient is always
188 Ülker Gökberk, “Beyond Secularism: Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and the Contestation of ‘Turkish Identity’ in the Borderland”, Konturen 1 (2008): 6. 189 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
62 stereotyped as the weak, so that it needs the assistance from the West. As has been said by Said, “the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power and domination and Europe is always in a position of strength”.190
This binary opposition is in line with Said’s Orientalism, that the Orient is
Europe’s cultural contestant and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. The East is not only as a seduction for Europe but it has also helped to define the West as its contrasting image and idea.
The Orient is…the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Other has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.191
This opposition is crucial to European self-conception, for instance, the qualities such as lazy, irrational, or uncivilized are related to the Orient and automatically the Occident has the qualities such as active, rational, and civilized.192 As in My
Name is Red, Pamuk tries to demonstrate the comparison between the old painting tradition and the new painting tradition, that is represented by the Ottoman-
Persian painting and the Italian Renaissance painting; the comparison between the past and the future, for Europe has always figured as a vision of the future but never a memory like the collapsed Ottoman Empire193 and the old Miniature painting.
190 Said, Orientalism, 5, 40. 191 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. 192 Said, Orientalism, 7. 193 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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2.1. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Science and
Technology
The result of the encounter between the East and the West is an attraction to Western science and technology, which lead to the adoption of those Western innovations by Turkish. Being modern is always related to the use and the adoption of Western science and technology. Nowadays, Turkey’s adoption of
Western technology has led them to become one of countries that have the ability to create sophisticated defence system. Looking back to the 15th century, Mehmed
II also had deep interest in Western tradition. Henri Stierlin mentions that
Mehmed always sought the latest developments in sciences and he also took an interest in artillery and he entrusted the production of his cannons to German metalsmiths.194
The enchantment of Western science and technology as well as Turkish deep interest and obsession with Western knowledge can be seen in the character of Hoja in The White Castle, who is charmed by European science and technology. Hoja’s greatest desire is to learn the wisdom of the West.195 He always dreams to live in the West.
I sensed he wanted this post for himself, wanted to escape from the idiots here and live among them. …He let slip only once or twice that he wanted to establish relations with “their” men of science; …he wanted to correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever faraway land occurred to him at the moment. Who were the very best among them, where did they live, how could one correspond with them, could I learn these things from the ambassadors? (TWC, 121)
194 Henri Stierlin, Turkey: from the Selçuks to the Ottomans, (Köln: Taschen, 2002) 100. 195 Paul Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”, The New Republic 9 September 1991: 36-39, 28 January 2014 < http://www.orhanpamuk.net/popup.aspx?id=59&lng=eng> PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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From the very beginning, Hoja does not like the activities of the pashas, Sultan, and Turkish society for they depend on the astrology and the illogical interpretation of the dreams and stars. He also dislikes them for they have little interest in science and technology. Besides, he feels depressed because the children are scared when they see his science instruments.
When he returned in the evening he was depressed but not so much as to keep silent: “I thought the children would understand as the sultan did, but I was wrong,” he said. They had only been frightened. When Hoja asked questions after his lecture, one of the children replied that Hell was on the other side of the sky and began to cry. (TWC, 42)
From the quotation above, it can be seen that the rejection of Western technology by the children, who represent the young Ottoman generation, shows the binary opposition of the Eastern backwardness and Western modernity, for Europe’s superiority always presented by the using of sophisticated and modern technology. In addition, Hoja’s reaction towards the illogical-traditional activities of the Turkish society has similarity in the Europeans’ criticism that “largely regarded the Ottomans as uncivilized and trammelled by a religion that was inimical to progress”196.
2.1.1. The Enchantment of Western Science and Technology
Complexity in Hoja’s life and his frustration with the Sultan and his
“traditionality”, “forced” him to adore the identity of his Venetian slave whose life is more interesting in Italy where people do not depend on the prediction and interpretation of the dreams and stars. Hoja’s slave is a young Italian man who is seized in a fleet from Venice to Naples and demanded by Hoja from the pasha as a
196 Boyar and Fleet, Ottoman History, 327. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
65 present (TWC, 31) to teach him “everything” his slave had learnt in Italy (TWC,
32). The relationship between Hoja and his slave is also very unique. Hoja and his
Italian slave have an incredible resemblance. As they sit down face to face, the
Italian slave even feels like look himself in a mirror.
The resemblance between myself and the man who entered the room was incredible! It was me there…for that first instant this was what I thought. …As our eyes met, we greeted one another. But he did not seem surprised. Then I decided he didn’t resemble me all that much, he had a beard; and I seemed to have forgotten what my own face looked like. As he sat down facing me, I realized that it had been a year since I last looked in a mirror. (TWC, 22)
Even though having an incredible resemblance, Hoja and his look-alike slave are competing all the time. Pamuk explains that the relationship between Hoja and his slave, who is his alter ego, is based on his relationship with his brother, Shevket, who is only eighteen months older than him. He adds that, impersonation is The
White Castle’s theme that is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when coping with Western culture.
After writing The White Castle, I realized that this jealousy—the anxiety about being influenced by someone else—resembles Turkey’s position when it looks west. You know, aspiring to become Westernized and then being accused of not being authentic enough. Trying to grab the spirit of Europe and then feeling guilty about the imitative drive. The ups and downs of this mood are reminiscent of the relationship between competitive brothers.197
The relationship between Hoja (East) and his Italian slave (West), who have hyper similarity, is along with Said’s discourse on Orientalism that “the Orient is not only adjacent to Europe but also Europe’s cultural contestant. In addition, the
197 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience”.198
Akalin (2007) argues that Said fails to recognise the element of power associated with the Ottoman Empire. This is especially seen when the Ottoman
Empire begins a modern history by making dramatic events such as the conquest of Constantinople (now İstanbul) in 1453, the first siege of Vienna in 1529, and
Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Besides, the presence of the Empire in the
Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts of south-eastern
Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically and culturally.199
Ironically, Turkey still feels inferior and needs to be guided by the West.
In The White Castle, as has been explained above, both Hoja and the
Venetian slave share an uncanny resemblance to each other200 because Hoja is not only the Venetian’s master but also his pupil, for Hoja also asks his slave to teach him everything his look-alike slave had learnt in his country.
Later he said I would teach him everything; that’s why he’d asked the pasha to give me to him, and only after I had done this would he make me a freedman. …“Everything” meant all that I’d learned in primary and secondary school; …everything that was taught in my country. (TWC, 32)
Hoja really wants to learn what the Western thinks, the “others” who had taught his Italian slave science. (TWC, 54) Despite the fact that Hoja had learnt astronomy and science but he still needs the Italian slave to teach him everything the slave had learnt, such as astronomy, medicine, and engineering. On the other
198 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. 199 Esin Akalin, “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the Orient”, a journal compilation in the Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C. Freeman. (New York: Rodopi, B.V., 2007) 112-113. 200 Farred, “To Dig a Well”, 88. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
67 side, the Italian slave (the West) also feels that it is his responsibility to guide and teach Hoja (the East). The slave also feels that apparently Hoja’s knowledge is no greater than his knowledge (TWC, 23) and when he teaches Hoja, he feels like a solicitous elder who agrees to review his previous lessons so as to help his lazy little brother to catch up. (TWC, 33) It is caused by the stereotype that the Orient is isolated from the mainstream of European progress in sciences.201
The Italian slave also wants to imitate and be like Hoja. He too wants to say and do the thing Hoja says and does. The young slave envies Hoja because he can take action when the slave cannot.
He was right, I too wanted to say and do the things he said and did, I envied him because he could take action when I could not, because he could play upon the fear in the plague and the mirror. (TWC, 83)
As it is explained by Said that “the Orient has helped to define the West as its contrasting image and idea”202, Hoja also has helped to define his Italian slave as superior and master in science and he as inferior for he asks his slave to teach him everything he had learnt in his country (TWC, 32) even though he also has knowledge on science.
2.1.2. The Adoption of Western Science and Technology
The enchantments of Western science and technology, Hoja’s obsession with Western knowledge, as well as his frustration with the Sultan and
“traditionality” around him have led to the appropriation of that innovation.
However, in this part, the appropriation of the West is not limited to the adoption of the sophisticated technology but also includes the imitation of both Eastern and
201 Said, Orientalism, 206. 202 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Western culture and tradition, both by Hoja and his look-alike young slave. Hoja’s
“grand plan” is the example of the adoption of Western sophisticated technology in The White Castle. Furthermore, the imitation of Eastern and Western culture and tradition can be seen on the young Italian slave who learns his master’s trait, language, and mind, and vice versa.
As has been mentioned, the adoption of Western technology has existed since the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Mehmed II. His interest in Western science and technology can be seen when he always wanted to know the latest update in the sciences and also invited many Western scholars, scientists, and technicians. Additionally, he also entrusted the production of his cannons to
German metalsmiths.203 Turkey’s interest toward Western science and technology is presented by Orhan Pamuk in his first Ottoman novel, The White Castle, and presented through Hoja and his young Italian slave as well as the child sultan.
Sultan Ahmed I, the reigning monarch in The White Castle, is also enchanted by
Western science and technology. His interest grows after Hoja becomes the Head of the Imperial Astrologer and interprets his dreams every day. Furthermore, he also asks Hoja to make the war machine that is believed can ruin the Ottoman’s enemy.
Hoja’s interest to Western science and technology is illustrated when he adopts his slave’s knowledge. Berman says that Hoja gorges himself with the several branches of Western knowledge on science and engineering, on the information that might lead to military advantages for the Ottoman Empire, and
203 Stierlin, Turkey, 100. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
69 even on the deeper psychology of the West.204 When the plague strikes İstanbul, he implements Western knowledge on plague from his slave that is known from
“the scenes in Hippocrates, Thucydides, and Boccacio, to decrease the spread of the disease that is contagious” (TWC, 72).
I explained how we could protect ourselves from death that we must not touch those who had caught the plague, that the corpses must be buried in limed pits, that people must reduce their contact with one another as much as possible, and that Hoja must not go to that crowded school. (TWC, 73)
The Italian slave explanation above is the example of Western knowledge, which can be used to overcome the plague that is adopted from the Greek philosophers.
To stop the plague, Hoja need his slave’s knowledge so that he decides to take his slave who escapes from the plague to Heybeli Island. Hoja, then, tries to implement that knowledge to reduce the spread of the disease, which strikes
İstanbul.205
However, science and rationality are hardly accepted by the society at that time. People do not worry and fear the plague even though many people have dead of it because “disease is God’s will and if a man is fated to die he will die”
(TWC, 72). Besides, the act “to make war on the plague was to oppose God”
(TWC, 92) for “the plague was God’s will and no one should interfere with it”
(TWC, 97). Hoja and his slave, then, create a tale to tell to the sovereign, which is more acceptable by the sovereign and a crowd of fools around him.
204 Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”. 205 The outbreak mentioned in Pamuk’s The White Castle also truly happened in İstanbul in the early seventeenth century. In a city the size of İstanbul, where people were crowded together in close proximity with little or no sanitation, plague was inevitably both frequent and severe. Many died in such outbreak and the death rate was high so that bodies were left unburied for there was no one to dig the graves. Most shops were closed because people were called to bury the dead. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 75. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Things had gone well. The story we invented had affected the sultan deeply. His mind accepted the idea that the plague was like a devil trying to deceive him by taking on human form. …When Hoja was asked when and how the plague would end, he…replied that the devil came to men in the form of a man and to animals in the form of a mouse. The sultan ordered that five hundred cats be brought from a far away city untouched by plague, and that Hoja be given as many men as he wanted. (TWC, 92)
The story concocted by Hoja, finally, affects the sovereign deeply. “He decided not to allow strangers into the palace” (TWC, 92) and also orders Hoja to be responsible to handle this problem. However, Hoja and his slave’s effort to end the plague are seen as a way to resemble and to compete with God so that the
Ottomans oppose to it. The different way how the Ottomans—who choose to be idle—and the Westerners—who use their science and knowledge—faces and stops the plague shows the binary opposition between the East and the West. The
East traditional view outlines the efforts to end the plague as an act to compete with God. On the contrary, the West has its advance knowledge and technology to stop the disease. Hoja’s action to prevent the plague by adopting Western science shows that the East believes in Western “superiority” in science to stop the disease even though it is hardly accepted by the society.
However, the Ottoman societies who are not initially worried about the outbreak become frightened by Hoja’s story. The story causes social chaos because the Sultan commands His people to limit their activities especially in the crowded market and Coffee houses. Moreover, the Ottomans also believe that the
Judgement Day has come.
…if business stopped life also stopped, news of a plague wandering in the form of a man would terrify those who heard it, they would believe the Day of Judgement has come and would grab the bit between their teeth; no one wanted to be imprisoned in a neighbourhood where the plague devil PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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roamed, they would raise a rebellion. “And they are right,” said Hoja. (TWC, 93)
Besides, the Sultan’s permit system has slowed the trade activity in the Grand
Bazaar. “Janissaries guarded the entrances to the market-place, the avenue, the boat landings” (TWC, 94). This condition also raises the tension between the Aga of the Janissaries and the small tradesmen who make a rebellion. This conflict, later, will lead to the revolt led by the Grand Vizier Koprulu.
As the second week came to end…a group among the despairing tradesmen had clashed with the janissaries guarding the roads and that another group of janissaries discontented with the preventive measures had joined forces with a couple of idiot imams preaching in the mosques, some vagrants eager for loot, and other idlers who said the plague was God’s will and no one should interfere with it. (TWC, 97)
This ragging conflict is between the janissaries206, who represent the sultan, and the small tradesmen as well as the preachers who oppose the eradication of the plague using Western knowledge since it is the act to compete with God’s will.
After Hoja is able to reduce the risk of the plague, “the former Imperial
Astrologer Sitki Efendi…was driven from the palace into exile” (TWC, 99). Hoja, then, becomes the Imperial Astrologer and “took control of the government”
(TWC, 104). He also tries to dupe the young Sultan into adopting Western science and making the war machine by presenting a book, which is written by the Italian slave.
We wanted the sultan to be interested in our science…and…we even exploited his nightmares towards this end. …Hoja would explain that on the throne he would remain forever young, but only making weapons
206 Janissaries were major players in political upheaval, bringing down sultans, beheading grand veziers, and hanging officials of state. Janissary also has unruly behaviour. ...They are the elite fighting force of the empire, the massed infantry that was the powerhouse of the mighty Ottoman military machine, which propelled it forward in a seemingly endless wave of conquest. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 90-100. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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superior to those of our ever-vigilant enemies could be safe from their treachery. (TWC, 104)
The result of Hoja’s stories and interpretation of the sovereign’s dream as well as the book prepared by his slave is that the Sultan finally asks Hoja to make the
“grand plan”. Hoja fills the book with the visions of defeat and failure that have been dreamed up, all the wars that ending in defeat. “Only a month after Hoja had submitted this book, the Sultan ordered us to start work on the incredible weapon…that will ruin our enemies”. (TWC, 110-111)
The young sultan commissions the war machine because he wants to defeat the West before the West defeats them as well as to reach the glory of the
Empire after all the wars that ending in defeat. It is Western technology, which is believed by Sultan Ahmed to help him win the war and to cope with few military failures he had suffered. However, this project is an irony because the sultan tries to conquer and emulate the West by imitating their science and modern technology on artillery that are brought and taught by the Italian slave.
The appropriation of the West is not limited to the adoption of the sophisticated technology but also includes the imitation of Western culture and tradition. Hoja tries and learns to be the West by asking his Italian slave to sit opposite to him at a bare table and write down their stories and lives together
(TWC, 62). It begins when Hoja asks a question: “Why am I what I am?” to his
Italian slave. Hoja asks this question because he hears a voice in a strange tone, which is singing in his ear, “I am what I am, I am what I am!” (TWC, 58) He, then, demands his slave to demonstrate his courage, which he lacks and write down who he really is. (TWC, 60) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Hoja also learns Western culture and tradition by eating his food at a table like an infidel instead of sitting down cross-legged. (TWC, 77) However, it is not only Hoja who wants to learn the wisdom of the West but his Italian slave also wants to learn, master, and imitate his trait, language, and mind. In the beginning of the story, the Italian slave tries to protect himself from the Turks who capture him by claiming that he is a doctor. It is similar to Bhabha’s discourse on postcolonialism that the young Italian, the inferior, is not only idle because he also has power to resist the domination of his captors.
The captain…asked what my profession was. …I declared right away that I had knowledge of astronomy and nocturnal navigation, but this made no impression. I then claimed I was a doctor. (TWC, 15) Fortunately…I was saved from the oar and even managed to salvage a few of my books.
Then, I…quickly established relations with the Turks. After I’d treated a few Turks…everyone believed I was a doctor. (TWC, 16)
Here, in Sadik Pasha’s prison, the Italian slave practices his new profession and treats the guards as well as the other slaves. Moreover, by becoming a fake doctor,
the Italian slave gets a privilege from the guards he cured.
Hundreds of captives rotted away inside the tiny, damp cells…and I actually cured some of them. I wrote prescriptions for guards with aching backs and legs. So here, they treated me differently from the rest, and gave me a better cell that caught the sunlight. (TWC, 17)
Learning Turkish language and culture is the other strategy to survive and a kind of self-defence upon the domination of the Turks that is conducted by the
Italian slave. As an unordinary slave, he also gets a chance to look after the other people outside the prison and with the money he got, he can pay for Turkish lesson. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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I was not just looking after the slaves in the prison, but others as well. I had to give a large part of the fees I earned for doctoring to the guards who smuggled me outside. With the money I was able to hide from them, I paid for lessons in Turkish. My teacher was an elderly fellow who looked after the pasha’s petty affair. …I also gave him money to bring me food. (TWC, 17)
This is in line with with the concept of mimicry207, which is offered by Homi
Bhabha that mimicry becomes one of the most effective strategies of resistance and colonial power by imitating the oppressor’s language to remain under protection and also to clarify his own domination. In addition, the quotation above is in line with Lacan’s theory that mimicry is like camouflage, which is a way to survive.208 Learning Turkish is a camouflage for the Italian slave for it helps him to communicate with the pasha that later give him to Hoja.
This concept is also used to describe the processes of imitating and borrowing various cultural elements from the oppressor, too. The process of mimicry takes place in the third space where the colonized becomes hybrid.
However, this condition also creates ambivalence because it supports two different cultures.209 This condition is also experienced by Hoja and his slave who try to overcome it by writing a memoir together.
Thus in space of two months I learned more about his life than I’d been able to learn in eleven years. ...I encourage him, perhaps because I already sensed then that I would later adopt his manner and his life-story as my own. There was something in his language and his turn of mind that I loved and wanted to master. A person should love the life he has chosen enough to call it his own in the end; and I do. (TWC, 63)
By writing the “Why am I what I am?” story, both the Italian slave and Hoja become hybrid. More than being hybrid, they are “resembled one another” (TWC,
207 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85, 87. 208 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90. 209 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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82). The trace and the differences between Hoja and his slave are not clear now for “I had seen someone I must be; and now I thought he too must be someone like me. The two of us were one person” (TWC, 82)
2.2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance
Painting
For Turkey, Western enchantment is not only on its modern and sophisticated science and technology but also on its painting, which shows the individuality of its object. In the previous sub-chapter, I presented how Hoja is enchanted by Western science and technology, which is more logical and do not depend on the prediction and interpretation of dreams and stars and how he adores the identity of his Venetian slave. In this section, I will show how Turkish miniature painting and its miniaturists are contested by the Italian Renaissance painting. The image of Frankish painting, which is depicted realistically, is in contrast to the Turkish miniature painting. Perspective is very important in this painting and the object is created based on the view of the painters. On the contrary, in Islamic miniature, the object is painted based on Allah’s view and its importance before God.
Pamuk’s My Name is Red can be read as the negotiation of the East and the West that is presented in the two traditions of painting, Italian Renaissance painting and Turkish Miniature painting.210 The different concept and the different way in seeing the object in the two traditions are things that make the problem
210 Orhan Pamuk, “Turkey’s Divided Character”, New Perspectives Quarterly 17, 2 (2000): 20. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
76 occur. The world-view underlying European Renaissance Painting is also different from that of tradition Ottoman miniature painting. The Ottoman painting objects is depicted not realistically and the miniaturists are not allowed to leave their signatures in the painting. By contrast, Italian Renaissance painting emphasizes individual perspective and people depicted in this manner are treated as unique and individual. Moreover, the painters in this manner can leave their signature in their works as a sign of their authenticity. However, those differences in seeing the world by the Frankish masters are things that tempted the miniature painters to adopt this painting style.
2.2.1. The Enchantment of the Italian Renaissance Painting
The most striking difference between Turkish miniature painting and
Renaissance painting is in the depiction of faces. In Ottoman art, inherited from the Persian tradition under Mongolian-Chinese influence, all faces appear to be the same211 because the image in this painting tradition is not depicted realistically. (MNR, 67) In this model, a person is not treated as an individual but seen according to the way God see him, “Allah’s vision of the earthly realm”
(MNR, 88). In line with this argument, Laksana emphasizes that in miniature painting, the miniaturists do not depict human being as an individual but they paint him according to God’s vision. So, the image of this painting is not realist but otherworldly, for it is portrayed to make human being remember the transcendence.212 Moreover, Butterfly also has the same idea that miniature
211 Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”, 127. 212 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
77 painting is a depiction of what God sees and the miniaturists are depicting the world through God’s eye.
Butterfly said, “The illuminator draws not what he sees, but what Allah sees.” “Yes,” I said, “however, exalted Allah certainly sees everything we see.” “Of course, Allah sees what we see, but He doesn’t perceive it the way we do,” said Butterfly as if chastising me. I wanted to say, “It falls to us to believe in Allah and to depict only what He reveals to us, not what He conceals,” but I held my peace. (MNR, 400)
For the reason that the image is not realist, each individual in this painting manner has the same body size and face, as if each is an imitation of one another (MNR,
80), which shows that human have the same position before God.
Additionally, the miniaturists never sign their works as the Frankish masters do (MNR, 67). This is along with what Butterfly says in his conclusion of the three stories he tells to Black.
Painting in the manner of the old masters is depicted without any signature or variation. (MNR, 72) “Style’ is imperfection,” I said, a perfect picture needs no signature, and thus “signature” and “style” are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work. (MNR, 73)
From the quotation above, it can be concluded that miniature painters are not allowed to leave their signatures in their works because this painting style is the technique and style of the old masters, which they have imitated and if any trait found that distinguishes one artist’s work from that of another is seen as flaw.213
On the other hand, the aim of the Italian Renaissance painting is to depict human being realistically. The painting is something in its own right and the image is of an individual. The Venetian masters had discovered painting
213 Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature”, 235. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
78 techniques with which they could distinguish any one man from another...just by the distinctive shape of his face. This was the essence of “portraiture”. (MNR, 28-
29) The concept of “portraiture” is explained more by a narration from a tree that is depicted in the manner of Frankish style.
This new kind of painting style has made “these Frank painters depict the faces of kings, priests, noblemen, and even women in such manner that after gazing upon the portrait, we will be able to identify that person on the street. …This new style demands such talent that if we depicted one of the trees in the forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come here and...correctly select that tree from among the others”. (MNR, 56-57)
However, this painting manner is not only depicting human being realistically but also other living or non-living being realistically214 such as animals and trees in the forest that is explained by the non-human narrators above.
The art of portraiture, which is the critical theme in Pamuk’s My Name is
Red, is introduced as a result of the visit of an Ottoman ambassador to Venice,
Enishte Effendi, who is seduced by the Frankish style. On the day, Enishte once again travel to Venice as the Sultan’s ambassador, a painting hanging on a palazzo wall amazes him. (MNR, 28)
“I never forgot the painting that bewildered me so. I left the palazzo, returned to the house where I was staying as a guest and pondered the picture the entire night. I, too, wanted to be portrayed in this manner. But, no, that wasn’t appropriate, it was Our Sultan who ought to be thus portrayed! Our Sultan ought to be rendered along with everything He owed, with the things that represented and constituted His realm. I settled on the notion that a manuscript could be illustrated according to this idea.” (MNR, 28)
Black’s uncle is intoxicated by the “Italian painting’s variety, colours, the pleasantness—even severity—of the soft light that seems to fall on it and the
214 Eder, “My Name is Red”. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
79 meaning emanating from the object’s eyes” (MNR, 118). The picture, which depicts the characteristics of its object, also seduces him to be portrayed in that manner.
Moreover, figures and portraits of the Venetian painting, which are individual and of specific people, are in line with Enishte’s explanation that “on the thousands of framed faces that are depicted, each one is different from the next. They are distinctive and have unique human faces” (MNR, 118). He adds that in Venetian painting,
eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face…but must be like our own eyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well. Lips can no longer be a crack in the middle of faces flat as paper, but must be nodes an expression, fully expressing our joys, sorrows, and spirits with their slightest contradiction or relaxation. Our noses can no longer be a kind of wall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments with a form unique to each of us. (MNR, 151)
The depiction of an individual in the Italian Renaissance painting, who has unique traits and distinctive faces, shows that God created every people as “unique, special, and particular human being” (MNR, 187). Therefore, the individuality that is captured in the Venetian painting has enchanted Enishte and led him to create his hybrid book made in half-Venetian, half-Persian.
The Ottoman Sultans, Sultan Mehmet II and Sultan Murat III, are also enchanted by the Italian Renaissance style, which can help them to show their dynasty’s strength, power, and riches. In Venice, this painting manner, for rich and influential men, is a memento of their lives and a sign of their riches, power and influence—so they might always be there, standing before us, announcing their existence, individuality, and distinction. (MNR, 118) For both Sultans, this PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
80 painting style is used as a way to proclaim their existence as the centre of the world. However, it was an irony that even though Mehmet had conquered
Constantinople, he still had the desire to imitate the West by having his own portrait in the Italian Renaissance style,215 by inviting Gentile Bellini. This irony is similar to Sultan Murad III who imitates Western style of painting in the secret book to impress the West. Mehmed II, to show his dynasty’s strength and power, also invited Western artists, Costanzo da Ferrara, to make him a portrait medal, which shows that the Sultan is riding a horse. The image of this medal later became a standard, immediately recognizable representation of Eastern power.216
It is the horse that symbolises power217 because the more realistic the horse is depicted, the more convincingly captured in the moment of surging strength, mastered by the horseman, the more certain we are that our response is natural and inevitable.218
Zeytin or Velijan, or who is known as Olive, is the only miniaturist who is based on a real historical figure. He was an important Persian-Ottoman painter, trained by the Persian artist Siyavush,219 “the famous illustrator specializing in faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop” (MNR, 279). Black states that he is the other character who is enchanted by the Frankish style and who “has the most enthusiasm for and the most ease with the style of the Frankish masters admired by Enishte Effendi”. (MNR, 279) In fact, it is not only Olive who is dazzled by the
Frankish painting but many miniaturists are also enchanted by this painting style.
215 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 8. 216 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 42. 217 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 172. 218 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 175. 219 Pamuk, Other Colours, 267. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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The charm of the Italian Renaissance painting, which offers individuality, fame, and style cannot be denied by the Ottoman Sultans as well as the palace miniaturists that it later leads to imitation of the imitation of the painting style.
2.2.2. The Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance Painting
Until the present, Turkey is still negotiating its membership in the
European Union and the development of its art can be one of the considerations of the EU’s acceptance of Turkey’s candidacy. Picasso’s exhibition in Sakip Sabanci
Museum, which is the first major exhibition devoted to a Western artist, shows how Turkey has taken a big step to embrace Western Europe. Picasso’s grandson,
Bernard Ruiz-Picasso even said that “the people here in Turkey really want and need to see modern art”.220 Introducing Turks to Modern Western art, for Picasso is the symbol of the contemporary modernism project. I argue that Bernard Ruiz-
Picasso’s statement above shows how the West sees that the East needs to be civilized trough this first time ever exhibition. Additionally, the painting exhibition proved that Turkey is part of the West and a part of that modernism.221
The enchantment of the Italian painting style and the desire to be accepted by the West has encouraged Sultan Murad to “order the artists to surreptitiously learn Western artistic techniques and rather than to continue the miniature painting.”222 Through the appropriation of the Venetian painting in the secret book, Pamuk tries to demonstrate the binary opposition between the Islamic miniature and the Italian Renaissance painting. In line with Said’s Orientalism,
220 Bozdoğan, The Cambridge History of Turkey, 467. 221 Sarah Rainsford, “Turks Relish First Picasso Show”, BBC News 24 November 2005, 14 February 2015
82 this appropriation reflects that the Italian painting is superior to the Ottoman miniature painting for this new painting method is believed to show the Ottoman
Empire strength as well as to impress the West. Furthermore, I argue that the radical modernization conducted by the founder of Turkish Republic, Kemal
Ataturk, that wanted desperately to make Turkey more modern and Western is similar to the “Westernization” led by Sultan Murad that wanted his artists to learn to paint portrait, which is prohibited under Islam. Sultan Murad III, who is both directly brought from history by Orhan Pamuk and the reign Sultan in My
Name is Red, commissions a secret book for the celebration of Hegira, which uses the Italian Renaissance style in depicting Islam’s military strength and the power of his reign. The Sultan, who is persuaded by Enishte Effendi, also invites a young Venetian painter, Sebastiano, to make his self-portrait.
“Years ago, your Enishte duped Our Sultan into having a Venetian painter—his name was Sebastiano—make a portrait of His Excellency in the Frankish style as if He were an infidel king”. (MNR, 361)
As a result of Enishte’s influence on Sultan Murad’s growing interest in
Frankish style of painting, Master Osman is forced by His Excellency to copy His portrait, which had been commissioned from a Venetian. (MNR, 102)
Not satisfied with that, in a disgraceful afford to my dignity, he had this shameful work given to me as a model to be copied; and out of dire fear of Our Sultan, I dishonourably copied that picture, which was made using infidel methods. (MNR, 362)
The copy of Sultan Murad’s portrait by Master Osman is the example of the appropriation of Frankish painting. After forcing Master Osman to copy His portrait, Murad III also makes the other adoption and imitation of the Italian
Renaissance painting by asking Uncle Effendi to make the secret book. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Additionally, the best Ottoman miniaturists are also forced to change their painting tradition into the modern one that is using the Frankish style. This forced appropriation is a self-colonialism conducted by the Sultan towards the Master miniaturist as well as the palace miniaturists.
His Excellency Our Sultan orders Enishte Effendi to start working on the secret book that is prepared as a present for the Venetian Doge. Besides, this book will also be a symbol of the vanquishing power of the Islamic Caliph Our Exalted Sultan, in the thousand years of Hegira. (MNR, 121)
The secret book, which “the Sultan wanted to have it completed in time” (MNR,
35), is an irony of the Sultan’s modernism project. The painting style, that is believed as the symbol of infidelity, is not only prepared as a present for the
Venetian Doge but also as the thousandth-year anniversary of the Hegira.
Moreover, the Sultan also uses the West’s painting tradition to emulate their
“power and superiority”.
In this commissioned book, Enishte wants the things he depicted to represent Our Sultan’s entire world, just as the paintings of the Venetian masters.
However, this secret book will be a little bit different from “the painting of the
Venetian master, which is only accompanied by things that is significant in his life” (MNR, 28). Enishte Effendi insists that the book he is working on will not only shows Our Sultan’s wealth alone, but His spiritual and moral strength along with His hidden sorrows (MNR, 248):
But unlike the Venetians, my work would not merely depict material objects, but naturally the inner riches, the joys, and fears of the realm over which Our Sultan rules. If I ended up including the picture of a gold coin, it was to belittle money; I included Death and Satan because we fear them. …I wanted the immortality of a tree, the weariness of a horse, and the vulgarity of a dog to represent His Excellency Our Sultan and His worldly realm. (MNR, 27) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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In the last painting, it should be Sultan Murad’s painting and the depiction of His realm along with everything He has; His wealth, His power, as well as the strength of His dynasty. To the same degree, it is as what Enishte explains that:
“…it was our Sultan who ought to be thus portrayed! Our Sultan ought to be rendered along with everything He owned, with the things that represented and constituted His realm.” (MNR, 28)
Conversely, after Olive kills Enishte and steals the last painting, he covers up the portrait of the Sultan with his self-portrait. In the Coffee house, he struggles to draw his portrait with the help of a mirror. In fact, “the face on the page did not resemble his face in the mirror.” (MNR, 307)
This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fair resemblance of myself, revealed to me what we’ve known all along without admitting it: The proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to attain. (MNR, 431)
Master Osman, the other character brought from history, is a master miniaturist who preserves the old painting style. He, once again, stresses that
Enishte Effendi is the one who is responsible for the imitation of Frankish painting by many miniaturists in the workshop. Moreover, he’s to blame for their enthusiastic imitation of European masters with the justification that “it is the will of our Sultan” (MNR, 362). However, Black tells that, nowadays, many miniaturists, that is not only in Tabriz but also in Mashhad and Aleppo, have abandoned working images, which are part of a book and begin making odd single-leaf pictures—curiosities that will please European travellers—even obscene drawings. (MNR, 25) One of those miniaturists is Stork. He mentions that, now, he is preparing obscene paintings for his Frankish patron as well as pasha. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Black was examining my paints…and the collage album that I’d made for a Frankish traveller, scenes of fucking and other indecent pages I’d secretly dashed off for a pasha. (MNR, 82)
Obscene drawing here is related to the drawing that is depicted realistically and using the miniaturist’s perfection. The miniaturist who paints using his individual perspective has shown how the “God’s perspective” painting is replaced by the obscene drawing as well as single-leaf pictures.
In a parable on “style and signature”, Butterfly tells Black about a miniaturist who depicts a young Khan’s wife, a Tatar woman, with his individual touches. His ambition to style and perfection as well as the Khan’s adulation causes a terrible accident. The young Khan is very jealous to the Tatar woman because in the painting she is depicted with the miniaturist’s “obscenity gaze”.
…this adulation caused the miniaturist to stray from good sense; incited by the Devil, he dismissed the fact that he was beholden to the old masters for the perfection of his pictures, and haughtily assumed that a touch of his own genius would make his work even more appealing. …In the paintings, the Khan…felt that his former bliss had been disrupted in numerous ways, and he grew increasingly jealous of his Tatar beauty who was depicted with the individual touch of the painter. (MNR, 70)
Lekesizalin, in “Art, Desire, and Death in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, also mentions that the miniaturist’s ambition to the perfect painting and gaze
“comprise obscenity and transgression, which leads to the tragic consequences of his ambition with style and subjectivity”223. The jealous Khan takes another woman from the harem, which causes the death of the Tatar woman who hangs herself silently. Realizing that the miniaturist’s ambition with style and perfection
223 Ferma Lekesizalin, “Art, Desire, and Death in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, English Studies in Africa 52, 9 (2009): 98. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
86 that is behind this incident not with his Tatar woman, he immediately blinded the master artist. (MNR, 70)
Enishte Effendi and Sultan Murad III see the Italian Renaissance painting as a painting technique, which is greater, modern, and interesting than the Islamic
Ottoman painting tradition. Sultan Murad, himself, even asks his miniaturists to study this painting technique as well as commissions a secret book, which adopts the Italian painting style. This commissioned book shows that the East imitates and adopts Western painting style in order to modernize itself and also to show its power and superiority to the West. Along with Said’s discourse on Orientalism, this constructed opposition demonstrates the difference between the Islamic
Ottoman painting that is characterized as the old painting tradition and the
Frankish painting that is signified as the new and modern painting tradition. At last, through the imitation of this painting style, the East has indicated Europe’s identity as superior.
3. Maintenance and Preservation of Eastern Aspects
where there is power there is resistance —Michel Foucault224
After the Frankish painting “invades” the Ottoman painting, the old painting tradition is being replaced by the new painting style. The miniaturists also challenge the Islamic prohibition, which prohibits the figuration of the living
224 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (Histoire de la Sexualité) translated by Robert Hurley, Volume 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1978). PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
87 and non-living being, by adapting and imitating the Western ways of seeing and painting in their works. Frankish painting, as explained in the previous part, is not only as a seduction but also as a threat for the Islamic miniature painting. In fact, the beauty of the Italian Renaissance painting enchants not all the miniature painters. This threat, in addition, has prompted Master Osman to take action to preserve this painting tradition. It is along with the quotation above that Master
Osman, the head of the illuminators, struggles to maintain and preserve the old painting tradition and resist the power and “invasion” of the modern painting style. Moreover, the Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum and his followers also try to protect and maintain the path of their prophet by giving punishment those who turn from the path of Exalted Muhammad.
Orhan Pamuk, in his essay, mentions that “My Name is Red is about the fear of being forgotten, the fear of art being lost, about the sorrow and tragedy of this loss, this erasure”.225 I argue that Master Osman, as the protector of the old tradition feels “the fear, the sorrow, and the pain of the lost tradition”,226 of the
Ottoman miniature painting. When Master Osman and Black are searching for the murderer in the Inner Treasury of Topkapi Palace by scanning the illustration of a horse on the “old illuminated manuscript, Master Osman sinks his face with sorrow into the wondrous artwork because nobody could paint this way anymore”
(MNR, 328). Enishte Effendi also emphasizes the loss of the old tradition that “in the end, our method will die out. No one will care about our books, and our
225 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269-270. 226 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
88 paintings. …Moreover, indifference, time, and disaster will destroy our art.”
(MNR, 187)
As the head of the illuminators, Master Osman has a “duty to protect his master illustrators from their enemies, since nowadays, the value is placed not on the painting but on the money one can earn from it, not on the old masters but on imitators of the Franks”. (MNR, 360) This value changed as the miniaturists begin to paint in imitation of the Frankish and Venetian masters, as in the book Our
Sultan had commissioned from Enishte, the domain of meaning ends and the domain of form begins. (MNR, 343) As the protector of the old tradition, Master
Osman will also do anything in order to defend the Ottoman miniature painting and its guild from the Frankish influence, just as what Black says that:
to preserve the old style and the regimen of the miniaturists’ workshop, to rid himself from Enishte’s book, and to become again the Sultan’s only favourite, he would gladly surrender any one of his master miniaturists, and Black as well, to the tortures of the Commander of the Imperial Guard. (MNR, 362)
My Name is Red can be read as a story about sight and blindness.227 In
Turkish miniature painting tradition, there is a concept on blindness and memory that painting is from memory the artists had as “the act of seeking Allah’s memories and seeing the world as he sees the world” (MNR, 88).
Through our colours, paints, art, and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to “See”! To know is to remember that you’ve seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness. …Artists without memory neither remember Allah nor his blackness. (MNR, 84)
227 Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”, 130. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Blindness is the crowning reward bestowed by Allah upon the illuminator who has devoted an entire life to His glories. It is because illustrating is the miniaturist’s search for Allah’s vision of the earthly realm. Besides, a blind miniaturist sees the world as Allah sees it through the darkness of memory and blindness. (MNR, 88) The old masters of Shiraz and Herat add that a true miniaturist will depict Allah’s envision in his works and will go blind after working over than fifty-year period. However, in the process, he will paint from memory he has. (MNR, 22)
Master Osman, the representative of Eastern tradition, chooses to blind himself using the needle that Master Bihzad had used to blind himself in the
Treasury. (MNR, 348)
I looked at the needle for a long time. I tried to imagine how Bihzad could’ve done it. I’d heard that one doesn’t go blind immediately. …I sat down again and gazed at my own eyes. How beautifully the flame of the candle danced in my pupils—which had witnessed my hand paint for sixty years. …Without hesitation…I bravely, calmly and firmly pressed the needle into the pupil of my right eye. … I pushed the needle into my eye to the depth of a quarter the length of a finger, then removed it. …Smiling, I did the same to my other eye. (MNR, 349)
Master Osman, the head of the Ottoman miniaturist, uses blindness as a “tactic” to resist Renaissance painting’s supremacy, which dominates Turkish miniature painting and its imperial painters. Osman’s decision to honourably blind himself is a rejection to the adoption and imitation of Renaissance painting style, “so that nobody would force him to paint in another way”, (MNR, 420) even Sultan himself. His self-blinded—which is also mimicry toward Master Bihzad—is conducted “after Master Osman understood that Our Sultan wanted to have His PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
90 own portrait made in the style of the European masters and that all the miniaturists…had betrayed him”. (MNR, 420)
Nakkas228 Osman’s self-blinded is an adoption from Bhabha’s mimicry yet his mimicry is rather different to Bhabha’s. Bhabha’s concept on mimicry is seen as an effective strategy of resistance by making imitation of the oppressor to make a confrontation and also to assert his own dominance.229 Mimicry is also used to illustrate the processes of imitation or to borrow the various cultural elements.230
However, Osman imitates Bihzad—the great master of Herat who maintains the old painting tradition—by blinding himself. By imitating Master Bihzad in blinding himself, Master Osman has showed his resistance toward the domination of Western painting style and especially toward the Sultan’s control. Similar to
Lacan’s concept on mimicry, I indicate that Master Osman’s mimicry is a camouflage and a way to survive from the colonizer, who is the Sultan himself.
Bhabha proposes the concept of mimicry as evidence that the oppressed (Master
Osman) will not only keep silent because they also have power to fight for the domination of the oppressor.
Blindness is also the symbol of honour for the great master of miniaturists.
When they are forced to change their technique, “talent, colours, and methods”
(MNR, 351) and “adopt the styles of victors and imitate their miniaturists, they preserve their honour by using a needle to heroically bring on the blindness”
(MNR, 352). Moreover, the great master Jemalettin, “like all genuine virtuosos, had in any case been awaiting blindness as though it were Allah’s blessing. …He
228 Nakkas means miniaturist in Turkish. Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”. 131. 229 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85. 230 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
91 also maintained that the memory of a miniaturist was located in…the intellect and the heart.” (MNR, 309)
Elegant Effendi, who is bound to Eastern tradition, dies because he tries to stop the domination of the Western style. In the opening chapter, the dead miniaturist, who speaks in the bottom of the well, hears from the Erzurum preacher that the book he is working on contains blasphemy.
My death conceals an appalling conspiracy against our religion, our traditions, and the way we see the world. Open your eyes, discover why the enemies of the life in which you believe, of the life you’re living, and of Islam, have destroyed me. Learn why one day they might do the same to you. One by one, everything predicted by the great preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum, to whom I’ve tearfully listened, is coming to pass. (MNR, 5)
The contradiction on the different way of seeing in the Islamic miniature tradition and the Italian Renaissance, which is mainly illustrated in My Name is Red, has triggered the chain of murders conducted by Velijan, one of the finest miniaturists in the guild.
Velijan does not only desire but also eschew the Italian painting. Black also emphasizes that “it was Olive who showed the most enthusiasm for and the most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters admired by his late Enishte.”
(MNR, 279) As Master Osman’s miniaturist, Olive also tries to preserve the
Muslim painting by murdering Elegant Effendi and Enishte Effendi. As Olive mentions that,
“This deed,”…”I committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the entire workshop.” (MNR, 426) “…I thereupon confessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendi and tossed him into a well.” (MNR, 427) PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Olive’s confession above shows that he kills both Elegant and Enishte because he wants to save the miniaturists and also the workshop itself.
The imitation of the Italian painting is not the only problem face by the
Ottoman at that time. The existence of coffee house and the other social problems in İstanbul has driven the Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum and his followers to protect and maintain the path of their prophet. The henchmen of Preacher Nusret
Hoja, that represent the religious conservative in present-day Turkey, “they intend to clean up all the dens of wine, prostitution, and coffee in İstanbul and punish severely those who veered from the path of Exalted Muhammad. …They railed against the enemies of religion, men who collaborated with the Devil, pagans, unbelievers, and illustrators” (MNR, 379). Moreover, a dog, one of the non-human narrators in My Name is Red, tells that a cleric called Husret Hoja also tries to ban the drinking of coffee in İstanbul.
Coffee becomes very popular in İstanbul when it was first brought in the mid of the 16th century.231 Peçevi, quoted by Boyar and Fleet, states that it was
Hakem from Aleppo and Şems from Damascus who first built a coffee shop. He emphasizes that “coffee house became so famous that apart from government officials, even important people began to come and even imams, muezzins, blue- robed religious figures, and ordinary people became addicted to the coffee house.”232 This great popularity of coffee worries the religious leader because
“coffee took up so much people’s time that people found they had no time left to
231 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190. 232 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
93 pray”233 and “nobody went anymore to the mosque.”234 It is along with Esther’s statement that coffee “dulls the intellect and causes men to lose their faith” (MNR,
379).
The boneheaded cleric indicates that “the drinking of coffee is an absolute sin…and nothing but the Devil’s ruse” (MNR, 13). Coffee houses, moreover, the place where people meeting, chattering, gossiping, and much more alarmingly for the government, complaining,235 ought to be banned because it is a place of evil.
Husret Hoja tells to his believers that “Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of coffee because it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia, and sterility” (MNR,
13). He also states that coffee houses are the Devil places. They are “places where pleasure-seekers and wealthy gadabouts sit knee to knee, involving themselves in all sorts of vulgar behavior” (MNR, 13). The other cleric from Erzurum adds that
“scoundrels and rebels were also gathering in coffee house and proselytizing until dawn” (MNR, 10). Still from Peçevi, that it is not only the religious leader who is committed to clean coffee in İstanbul but Sultan Murad III also starts to give warnings about the problems of coffee. However, nobody performs Sultan’s command to go to the coffee house.236
Coffee house is a space where the storyteller and painters speak freely to the problems facing their art and their society at a time of cultural transition. This is the place where the Persian miniaturists who are suddenly introduced to ideas from European Renaissance are starting to question principles of Islamic cultural
233 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 198. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190. 234 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190. 235 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 194. 236 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
94 production.237 In the coffee house, the storyteller also performs the single-leaf paintings that exist in the secret book. The activities that are indicated dangerous and threatened the Islamic teaching have infuriated the Preacher Nusret Hoja. The
Erzurumis, they raid the coffee house and give severe punishment by slaying the miniaturists as well as the storyteller. Butterfly sees how the mob mercilessly beaten the coffee house-goers as they try to leave and find the body of the master storyteller (MNR, 385).
The imitation of the Italian Renaissance painting, by the Islamic palace illuminators, has driven Master Osman to blind himself. Moreover, the existence of coffee has driven the Preacher Nusret Hoja and his follower to punish the miniaturists and the storyteller by raiding the coffee house. In this same vein, the imitation of Western technology by Hoja also gets refusal from the Ottoman society, the army, and the Grand Vizier. Many people curse Hoja’s grand plan and accuse it as the carrier of the bad luck. People call it as:
”freak, insect, satan, turtle archer, walking tower, iron heap, red rooster, kettle on wheels, giant, cyclops, monster, swine, gypsy, blue-eyed weirdie, which took to the road very slowly with a bizarre uproar of frightening screeches and groans, striking all who saw it with exactly the terror that Hoja intended.” (TWC, 126)
The army also does not accept the weapon. They do not want to march into battle alongside this heap of wrought iron and do not expect anything useful from this gigantic kettle. Worse, they believe it is an ill omen and it could just as easily bring a curse as a victory. (TWC, 129) It is not only the army that does not like the
237 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 511. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
95 existence of the war machine but so does the pashas, who wanted to be rid of Hoja and his slave.
When Hoja started up his patter…and spoke of the indispensability of the weapon, the pashas listening to him in the sovereign’s tent were even more firmly convinced that we were charlatans and our weapon would bring bad luck. (TWC, 138)
He spent the evening arguing with the pashas…who said the weapon was sapping the strength of the army as well as bringing bad luck. (TWC, 139)
4. Personal Search for Identity as Individual
We only acquire our own identity by imitating the Other —Orhan Pamuk238
Identity is always contested and influenced by other culture, tradition, art, or even technology. Identity is fluid, it is never fixed, and it always changes.
Loomba also emphasises that, “colonial identities are unstable, agonised, and in constant flux. This undercuts both colonialist and nationalist claims to a unified self, and also warns us against interpreting cultural difference in absolute or reductive term”.239 Furthermore, Turkey, now, is still searching for its identity, whether being totally East, being totally West, or being nationalist or secular.
Huddart states that identities operate as palimpsests. He discusses that identities are overwritten on which earlier writing is still visible underneath newer writing.
They offer a suggestive model of hybrid identity.240 Turkey is now still writing
238 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271. 239 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 149. 240 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 107. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
96 their new identity above their Islamic Ottoman identity that is still visible even though it had already erased by the Westernization project.
Turkey has three transitional periods exemplify the process of its identity formation process: the capitulation of the Byzantine city to Sultan Mehmed II, the collapse of the empire and subsequent Turkification of the city, and the nostalgia for the city’s multicultural past.241 İstanbul is a model of palimpsest city full of the grandeur as well as harmonious multiple cultures, ethnic, and religion of the
Ottoman Empire, which erased by Ataturk’s Westernization project. The changes of the old İstanbul buildings, which are demolished and replaced by the new modern apartment buildings, show how the new Turkish identity is overwritten on which the old Ottoman identity is still visible under the newer one since there are still old Ottoman buildings and ruins that remain. Mehmed II, Atik Sinan, and
Murad III are examples of Turkey’s figures who experienced a predicament of the oscillation identity. In My Name is Red and The White Castle, I discover that the identity crisis is still gnawing on the miniature painters, Enishte Effendi, as well as Hoja and his Venetian slave.
Mehmed II is still searching for his identity. Even though the Fatih wanted to control the West, he was also very interested to the art and science from the
West by inviting many Western artists and scientists. After capturing
Constantinople, he tried to erase the glory of the Byzantine Empire, which had reigned supreme for more than a thousand years,242 by constructing The Fatih
Camii or the mosque of the Conqueror. Nevertheless, his effort to erase the past
241 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 365. 242 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
97 grandeur of the Byzantine Empire with the mosque of Conqueror showed an irony that the architecture of the mosque was clearly influenced by the Hagia Sophia, the masterpiece of Christian Byzantium.
As has been mentioned in the introduction, Mehmet II, the conqueror of
Constantinople, is known to have invited many artists from Florence and Venice on the 15th century to produce medals243 and paintings.244 One is Costanzo da
Ferrara, who makes a portrait medal of Mehmet the Conquerer,245 the other is
Gentile Bellini who creates the Portrait of Mehmet II.246 Even though he had conquered the Constantinople, there is still longing to be the West by way of inviting an Italian painter to paint him in the manner of the Italian Renaissance style. This European image of the great Ottoman leader might serve as an appropriate focus for modern Turkey’s desire to retrieve some of its European roots and influences in its “new turn toward Europe”.247
Stierlin, in Turkey: From the Selçuks to the Ottomans, says that Mehmed’s interest to Christianity as well as Western culture and tradition was caused by his background as the son of a Christian mother. Mehmed II also surrounded himself with scholars, artists, and technicians from Greece, Italy, and Central Europe. The young sultan, who was still twenty-four years old when he captured Byzantium, always wanted to know and understand the latest developments in the arts and
243 As the Christian West and Muslim East struggled for control for Constantinople, portrait medals of the contending figures competed with each other for ownership of the most resonating symbols of imperial ruler, accompanied by a scene based around a horse. The more “realistic” the horse, the more convincingly captured in the moment of surging strength, mastered by the horseman. See Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 171-175. 244 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 4. 245 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32. 246 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 8. 247 New York Times December 25, 1999, cited in Jardine & Brotton, Global Interests, 32. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
98 sciences. Moreover, he was also the first Muslim to take an interest in artillery and he entrusted the production of his cannons to German metalsmiths.248
Even though Mehmed II had an interest in Western culture, he also tried to challenge the masterpieces of the Byzantine Empire, which was received by
İstanbul and the Ottomans after capturing Constantinople, by constructing The
Fatih Camii (Mosque of the Conqueror). The mosque was built on the site of the ruined Byzantine church of the Holy Apostles in order to substitute the grand of
Christian Byzantium buildings.249 The Sultan wants to write the Ottoman’s new identity over the ruined Byzantine buildings that are still visible under the newer building. The Fatih chose a Christian architect, Christodoulos, or better known under his Turkish name of Atik Sinan (Sinan the Elder).250 The Ottoman’s daily contact with the Byzantine masterpieces and the architect’s background who was a Christian converted to Islam, had strongly influenced the architecture of the mosque.251 Additionally, Sinan’s design is the evidence that Hagia Sophia
(Western heritage) has given big influence to the mosque.
The contested identity and the oscillation in Turkey’s identity formation processes become Pamuk’s key colours in “painting” his stories. Pamuk also blends the capitulation of the Byzantine city, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the nostalgia of İstanbul’s multicultural past with the issue on Turkey’s contested identity to presents the oscillation between Self and Other in his two selected works. He delineates how the Other is always present as a threat and
248 Stierlin, Turkey, 100. 249 Stierlin, Turkey, 101. 250 Stierlin, Turkey, 100. 251 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”; Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 200-206; Stierlin, Turkey, 100. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
99 seduction, within the historical confines of the Self. However, the fundamental issue in his tales is on the matter of identity.252 Along with the quotation in this opening section, Pamuk mentions in İstanbul that we can only find our identity by imitating the Other.253 He narrates that when he was still wanted to become a painter, Utrillo—a French painter whose specialization is in cityscape—had affected his style of painting and that he had tried to paint the cityscapes and the local landscapes like him. In addition, Pamuk also explains that,
the almost-but-not-quite-shameful truth was that I could paint only when I thought I was someone else. I’d imitated a style. I’d imitated an artist with his own unique vision and way of painting. And not without profit, I too now had “my” own style and identity.254
This is the way Pamuk and the Islamic miniature painters find their true identity by using or imitating Utrillo and Frankish style of painting. In the same vein with
Pamuk and the Islamic painters, Hoja also applies Western science and technology to stop the plague and to conquer the West in order to write his new identity above his Islamic Ottoman identity.
In My Name is Red, for example, Pamuk tries to show how the miniaturists embrace and imitate the Italian Renaissance style as well as the sultan who wants to be painted in the manner of the Frankish masters. By contrast, the miniaturists are also afraid of the loss of the old painting style that is contested by the Frankish painting. Uncle Effendi states that the love all sultans and rulers feel for paintings, illustrations, and fine books can be divided into three points:
at first, rulers want paintings for the sake of respect, to influence how others see them. …During the second phase, they commission books to
252 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88-89. 253 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271. 254 Pamuk, İstanbul, 270-271. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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satisfy their own taste. Because they’ve learned sincerely to enjoy paintings, they amass prestige while at the same time amassing books, which after their deaths, ensure the persistence of their renown in this world. …Later, they will come to the conclusion that painting is an obstacle to securing a place in the Otherworld, naturally something they all desire. (MNR, 175)
The quotation above shows how the Italian painting not only works as a seduction but also as a threat and obstacle for the sultan and even for the miniaturists to enter the gates of Heaven…”for Our Prophet warns that on Judgement Day, Allah will punish…the painters and those who make idols” (MNR, 175).
Shekure, Enishte’s daughter, is also still searching for her true identity since she experiences the oscillation between her contempt of the Frankish painting her father admires at and her longing to be painted in a manner of that painting style. Shekure is both “fed up with those illustrations he was having the miniaturists make in imitation of the Frankish masters, and sick of his recollections of Venice” (MNR, 152). In the end of the story, she expresses her desire to have her own portrait in the manner of the Italian Renaissance style.
My whole life, I’ve secretly very much wanted two paintings made, which I’ve never mentioned to anybody: my own portrait. …How happy I’d be today, in my old age—which I live out through the comfort of my children—if I had a youthful portrayal of myself”. (MNR, 443)
What is experienced by Shekure above is an example of ambiguous desire to become Others. Her searching of identity is illustrated in her longing to have her self-portrait. Moreover, as it is quoted in the beginning of this session, that we can only know our true identity by becoming the “Other”. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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In The White Castle, Pamuk complicates the Self-Other binary255 between
Hoja and his Italian slave, which has no end. The writing of “Why am I what I am” is a way of learning and becoming the Others in order to know their true identity. Through the process of writing the memoir, both Hoja and his Italian slave share their memories in the past in order to that later they will adopt the
Other’s manner and life-stories as their own. (TWC, 63) The writing of memoir and the sharing with one another or the sharing of memories entails a certain blurring of identities. Their conversation, scientific enterprises, and lives together become a sort of mutual demolition, tearing down what makes each one distinct.256 The memoir has similarity with the European novel. Both of them are ways of thinking, understanding, and imagining and also a way of imagining oneself as someone else. For Pamuk, European novel has helped him to understand Europe’s borders, histories, national distinctions in constant flux, a new culture, and a new civilization.257
The memoir, moreover, has help both Hoja and his Italian slave to understand the other’s history, culture, and identity as well as imagine themselves to be someone else. Here, I argue that both Hoja and his Italian slave share the same problem on the personal search for identity. They want to be someone else—to be like the other—but sometimes they want it with jealousy. It can be seen when the Italian slave wants to imitate Hoja but also envies him because his master can “play upon the fear in the plague and the mirror” (TWC, 83).
255 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88. 256 Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”. 257 Pamuk, Other Colours, 233. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Hoja says that he is the Italian slave and the slave is him. The young slave also feels that Hoja is he, his very self. (TWC, 98) As has been mentioned before,
I can draw a conclusion that The White Castle is a mirror of Pamuk’s relationship with his older brother. Having a brother who is only eighteen months older has inspired him to write this novel. The jealousy Pamuk felt toward his brother is reflected in the novel when Hoja feels jealousy toward his slave and the slave is jealous of his master. Pamuk assumes that Europe for the East (read: Turkey) is like a very competitive brother. Europe is also Turkey’s alter ego and the Italian slave is Hoja’s alter ego, the representation of authority. This is what exactly happened to Pamuk by having his older brother as his alter ego. Both Pamuk and
Shevket, his brother, as well as the master and his Italian slave are competing all the time. They always worry about how much the other’s strength or success might influence them. Pamuk stresses that this jealousy—the anxiety about being influenced by someone else—reflects Turkey’s position when it looks West.258
In terms of the exchange of identity and double identities, The White
Castle presents the switch of identity between Hoja and his slave in the end of the story. The switch of identity is begun when Hoja and his slave exchange their clothes. Moreover, Hoja also cuts his beard while his slave let his to grow, which makes their resemblance in the mirror even more shocking. (TWC, 84)
“Come, let us look in the mirror together.” I looked, and under the raw light of the lamp saw once more how much we resembled one another. … At that time I had someone I must be; and now I though he too must be someone like me. The two of us were one person! (TWC, 82)
258 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Additionally, it can be seen when Hoja and his Italian slave change their identity after their war machine fails to break the white castle.
We exchanged clothes without haste and without speaking. I gave him my ring and the medallion I’d managed to keep from him all these years. …He put it around his neck…then he left the tent and was gone. I watched him slowly disappear in the silent fog. (TWC, 145)
The erasure of the old identity is similar to the Islamic Ottoman identity that was replaced by Ataturk’s project to Westernized Turkey after the Empire collapsed in the First World War. This condition is similar to Hoja’s, whose weapon fails in the battle. After the war machine does not succeed to break the white castle, Hoja leaves his identity as a Turk and write his new identity by turning to be his slave and running away to his slave’s country. The exchange of identity, which is symbolized using the exchange of clothes between Hoja and his slave, shows how
Turkey abandoned and lost its old identity that was forced and conducted abruptly by the elite Westernists. The failure of the mass destructive weapon is similar to the fell of the Empire that was, then, followed by the founding of a new Republic.
Turkey, which has an ambition to conduct Westernization, couldn’t go far enough and its effort to be the European Union is still rejected. Until now, Turkey is still
knocking on Europe’s door, asking to come in, full of high hopes and good intentions but also feeling rather anxious and fearing rejection. ...Watching the negotiation with the European Union, seeing that for all our efforts to be Western, they still don’t want us.259
Through the exchange of identity between Hoja and his slave, Pamuk is bitterly critical of Attaturk’s Westernization project, which abruptly erased the Islamic
259 Pamuk, Other Colours, 215 & 370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Ottoman tradition and simplified Turkey’s cosmopolitanism as well as identity that are complex and multidimensional.
According to Almond in “Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete
Minarets”, the Orient was a source not of knowledge but self-knowledge for the
Westerner, a means by which he could construct a “true” identity for himself through an immersion in the exotic.260 The Italian slave moves deeper and deeper into Hoja’s life and embraces his master’s identity. Therefore, the Italian slave’s identity as a Westerner is obscure and almost unseen as he starts to admire his master and imitate his master’s personality.
Did we understand “defeat” to mean that the empire would lose all of its territories one by one? We’d lay out our maps on the table and mournfully determine first which territories, then which mountains or rivers would be lost. Or did defeat mean that people would change and alter their beliefs without noticing it? We imagined how everyone in İstanbul might rise from their warm beds one morning as changed people; they wouldn’t know how to wear their clothes, wouldn’t be able to remember what minarets were for. Or perhaps defeat meant to accept the superiority of others and try to emulate them. (TWC, 109)
The Italian slave shares his sorrow along with Hoja for the lost of the Ottoman territories even though he is a Westerner. Moreover, “he even does not seem to rejoice in the fact that there might arise possibility for the West of defeating Islam altogether with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.”261 The slave even feels that
Western culture is a pretentious nonsense after listens to the latest orchestra that is brought from Venice by the ambassador.
260 Ian Almond, “Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete Minarets: The Futility of Narratives in Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book”, New Literary History 34, 1 (2003): 84. 261 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 131. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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The search for identity is not only experienced by an individual but also
Turkey’s people, as one community, one İstanbul citizen, and one nation also experience and live in the identity formation process. Ataturk’s forced modernization and all the attempts to Europeanized Turkey or to divide Turkey have brought the grief to the entire city. Through the Gezi protesters and the spirit of unity that they bring, show that Turkey’s people come together in the third space to deconstruct the authoritarian of their leader that systematically uses violence against ethnic and religious minorities262 and forces Turkey to have only one single identity. Hüzün, which is suggested as “a communal feeling, an atmosphere, and a culture”263, is felt and shared by the protesters that come from different identities. The hüzün they feel for their city has broken down the wall that separate the narrow identity that is build by Turkey’s elites for Muslim and
Christians, men and women, secularists and conservatives have raised their voices to challenge the power of the “new colonizer”.
5. Theoretical Observation
In this section, I summarize the complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle that is presented in the previous discussion. In both stories, Pamuk delineates how the West is always presented not only as a threat but also as a seduction within the East. In
Said discourse on Orientalism, the Orient is Europe’s cultural contestant and one
262 Efe Levent, “Western Commentators still Getting Turkey’s Gezi Park Protests Wrong”, Global Voice 19 November 2014
106 of the deepest images of the Other. Orientalism also promotes a binary opposition between the East and the West. Europe is always seen as superior and powerful while the East is inferior and weak. In his oeuvre, Pamuk portrays different
Orientalism for in Turkey’s case it is Europe that becomes Turkey’s cultural contestant and deepest image of the Other even though historically it had never been colonialized by any Western countries. This is along with Pamuk who “likes
Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism, but since Turkey was never a colony, the romanticizing of Turkey was never a problem for the Turks”.264
Europe is very important for Turkey in its construction of identity.
Referring to Said’s theory, I argue that the development and formation of
Turkey’s identity “require the existence of another different and competing alter ego”,265 which is Europe itself. After the Empire collapsed and the Ottoman root was revoked, Turkey experienced a cultural inferiority and split identity because it wanted to merge with the Other but could not go far enough because it was threatened and obstructed by the Other. The feeling of having inferior culture and complex desire to imitate Other is depicted by Pamuk through the Sultan who commands the palace miniaturist to slavishly appropriate the Italian Renaissance painting style and Hoja, a master of an Italian slave, who feels inferior towards his slave’s knowledge as a westerner. Olive’s split identity, as the best palace miniaturist who overly bound to the East and West painting tradition reflects
Turkey’s identity that is also split and in ambivalence, whether to embrace
264 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370. 265 Said, Orientalism, 332. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Western culture or to leave the Islamic roots that is said as the obstacle of its progress.
The East-West oscillation cannot be separated from the cosmopolitanism, which is the result of the encounter between the East and the West. This cosmopolitanism, later, leads to mimicry and ambiguity and also hybridity—that is discussed deeper in chapter four. The result of this encounter is an attraction of
Western science and technology, which leads to the adoption of those Western innovations. Mimicry can be one of the most effective strategies to fight against the colonizer and as a way to survive from the oppressor. In addition, mimicry can also cause ambivalence because it exists on both the Self and the Other. However, the appropriation of Western painting and technology existed since the Ottoman
Empire under Sultan Mehmed II. He invited an Italian painter, Bellini, to make his self-portrait as well as invited many Western scholars, scientists, and technicians.
In Pamuk’s My Name is Red, Murad III also invites a Western painter and forces the palace miniaturists to imitate the Italian Renaissance painting. In The White
Castle, after Hoja dupes him, Sultan Ahmed I commands Hoja and his slave to create a military cannon that can destroy Ottoman’s enemy as well as bring the glory of the Empire back.
The enchantment of Venetian painting style and European technology that is followed by the appropriation of Western art and science has raised a confrontation from the Eastern group. The head of the miniaturists and the
Preacher Nusret Hoja (MNR) as well as the former imperial astrologer (TWC) take action to preserve and maintain the Eastern tradition from the “invasion” of the PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Western tradition. Ataturk’s radical modernization, which applies the principle of secularism, has revoked Turkish society from their Islamic Ottoman roots. The abrupt changes conducted by the elites Westernists have created confusion in
Turkish society as well as produced identity crisis. The process of writing
Turkey’s new identity has led to ambivalence for Turkey stays on the two different conditions, on the Self and the Other. Turkey, now, is still trying to search for its true identity that is written above the Islamic Ottoman culture that tries to be removed through Ataturk’s project.
Bhabha’s writing is hybrid. It is a combination of Michel Foucault,
Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and other concepts. If Foucault is “limited to his attention to European discourses”266, or Said’s Orientalism discourse is “too homogenise the East and fails to recognise the Ottoman Empire as a world power in the 16th-17th centuries”267, and Fanon mostly expresses his anger felt on racism he experienced, Pamuk proposes the liminal space to negotiate the everlasting predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West. He offers the third space as a bridge that connects the two poles and chooses to combine the East and the West as an alternative solution of this predicament as well as a way to mediate
Turkey’s split identity. The liminal space he suggested is an appreciation and a place he gave to an individual—and also the Turks—who are still looking for the identity without any claim and distraction from other parties or groups. Bhabha also states that a new identity is written in the third space, a space where the East and West meet.
266 McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 105. 267 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 112. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Additionally, Pamuk suggests his readers to enjoy and celebrate the process of the oscillation and also proposes hybrid identity rather than embracing only one single identity. Those are the strategy of resistance and the ways to overcome dichotomy, which is the problem of modernity that undermines within
Turkey. Turkey’s identity formation process is like completing puzzle, which parts can be filled and which identity can be written only by referring or mirroring to the Other. The third space that is suggested by Pamuk can be used as a room to mirror the Other that can be employed to reflect Turkey’s new identity. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER IV PAMUK’S SOLUTIONS TO THE PREDICAMENT OF THE OSCILLATION
Turkey should not worry about having two spirits, belonging to two different cultures, having two souls. —Orhan Pamuk268
Slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution. —Orhan Pamuk269
Due to the problems and implications of the enchantment and appropriation of the Italian renaissance art and European technology, here I attempt to present some solutions, which Pamuk’s selected tales offer to the predicament of the oscillation.
This part of the analysis firstly deals with Pamuk’s impartiality, which outlines and deeply analyses his neutral position for not taking sides and his choices to be a bridge that connects the two different sides, the East and the West.
Secondly, Pamuk’s critique, which is raised to the representatives of both sides in
My Name is Red and The White Castle, will be presented as a reflection of his critic towards the Westernists (the secularists) and anti-Westernists (the conservatives) sides that insist Turkey should have only a single spirit. Pamuk’s background as a writer also influences his solution to the complex oscillation.
Therefore, in the last session, I will review Pamuk’s alternative solution that is
268 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 269 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.
110 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
111 offered to resolve the East-West tension by presenting hybrid artwork, manuscript, and characters in his works. As he suggests to his readers in the quotations above that Turkey should not worry to embrace the two different souls.
This chapter focuses on Pamuk’s solution to the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own tradition that Turkish society is undergoing, as it is presented in My Name is Red and The White Castle. In addition, the summary of Pamuk’s solutions to the predicament of the oscillation, which are discussed in the three sub-chapters, will be presented in the theoretical observation. In this sub-chapter, I will clarify how
Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism that are used to study Pamuk’s works have supported to uncover Pamuk’s solution to the dichotomy of the oscillation of the Self and Other.
1. Impartiality
I want to be a bridge that doesn’t belong to any continent, doesn’t belong to any civilization. —Orhan Pamuk270
As a novelist, Pamuk does not choose nor judge one of the sides explicitly.
As it is stated in the quotation above, Pamuk wants to be a bridge that does not belong to any sides as well as connects both sides and mediates the predicament of the oscillation. He appreciates the process of an individual who is looking for his identity without any claims, which can distract him from his identity formation
270 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
112 process. At the same time, Pamuk refuses to settle into one position271 and also insists that “it is not a big problem for Turkey to have two different cultures and spirits”272 for he claims that “slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution.”273 Through his works, Pamuk criticises the modernists who want to simplify and purify the complex cosmopolitanism by erasing all Turkey’s Ottoman tradition and banishing otherness. As a consequence of his refusal and critique to both sides in his writings and novels274, Pamuk becomes the target of both secularists and religious conservatives275 who claim “Turkey should have only one consistent soul”.276
Moreover, his statement regarding the modernization project that “thirty thousand
Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it” has set off a relentless campaign against Pamuk in the
Turkish nationalist press.277 In addition, after using the word “genocide” to describe the massacre278, Pamuk was brought to prison for three years for publicly denigrated Turkish identity and provoking public outcry in Turkey.279
My Name is Red and The White Castle are books, which are constructed from a mixture of Eastern and Western methods, styles, habits, and histories.280 In these two novels, Pamuk does not give any clear solution to the problem faced by
271 Iyer, “A View of the Bosporus”. 272 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 273 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370. 274 Pamuk’s critique towards the Westernist, the secularists, the nationalists, as well as the conservatives will be explained more in the next session, “Self-Questioning”. 275 Iyer, “A View of the Bosporus”. 276 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 277 Pamuk, Other Colours, 237, 356. 278 Barish Ali and Carilone Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees and Murderous Viewpoints in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 54, 4 (2012): 523. 279 Pamuk, Other Colours, 356; Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 18. 280 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
113 the characters in dealing with the oscillation between the two traditions in both novels. In his conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth, Pamuk even mentions that,
I don’t have a solution for these things, but ironically, my novels perhaps…are addressing the issue that we have all these general questions of identity, belonging to a civilization, the fact that some people tell you that civilizations don’t come together, or there are likes of me through literature have addressed these issues and to tell the reader that actually what matters are not civilizations but human lives.281
Instead of giving any clear solutions to the oscillation in his oeuvre, Pamuk presents irony, tragedy, or even death that are experienced by the representatives of both traditions in their lives. In the last chapter of his novel, Pamuk illustrates how Enishte’s book remains unfinished and incomplete.
From where Hasan scattered the completed pages on the ground, they were transferred to the Treasury; there, an efficient and fastidious librarian had them bound together with other unrelated illustrations belonging to the workshop, and thus they were separated into several bound albums. (MNR, 443)
Through MNR, Pamuk wants to show that he predicament between the two different painting styles is never clearly resolved for it is “difficult to harmonize these different techniques and worldviews”.282 The painting itself, both the illumination painting and Venetian painting, is abandoned and the illuminators paint neither like Easterners nor Westerners. The miniaturists...gradually accept the situation with humble grief and resignation. (MNR, 442-443)
In addition, the miniaturists who are overly bound whether to the Eastern or Western style of painting experiences irony, tragedy, and death in their life.
The murderer in MNR has two victims, Elegant Effendi, who first opens the story as a corpse, and Enishte Effendi, the man in charge of the Sultan’s secret book.
281 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”. 282 Pamuk, Other Colours, 316. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Erdağ Göknar, the translator of My Name is Red, explains in “My Name is Re(a)d” that Olive, the murderer in MNR, both desires and eschews style. He kills Elegant
Effendi, a gilder who is also the follower of the great preacher Nusret Hoja of
Erzurum, for being overly bound to Eastern tradition and because Elegant claims
Olives’ aesthetic as blasphemous.283 The murderer is also afraid if the group of
Islamic fundamentalist hears that the miniaturists paint pictures, which are forbidden by their faith (MNR, 424), nothing will remain of them or the book-arts workshop (MNR, 23).
Similarly, the representative of Eastern tradition, Master Osman, the head of the Ottoman miniaturist, blinds himself using the needle that Master Bihzad had used to blind himself (MNR, 348), which is as an act to fight for the Italian painting style.
I looked at the needle for a long time. I tried to imagine how Bihzad could’ve done it. I’d heard that one doesn’t go blind immediately. …I sat down again and gazed at my own eyes. How beautifully the flame of the candle danced in my pupils—which had witnessed my hand paint for sixty years. …Without hesitation…I bravely, calmly and firmly pressed the needle into the pupil of my right eye. … I pushed the needle into my eye to the depth of a quarter the length of a finger, then removed it. …Smiling, I did the same to my other eye. (MNR, 349)
As has been explained in Chapter III, Bhabha’s mimicry is one of the most effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge. However, Pamuk presents
Bhabha’s mimicry in a different way by portraying Master Osman who appropriates Master Bihzad in his self-blinding in order to fight against the
“invasion” and domination of Western painting. Additionally, he decides to blind
283 Erdağ Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d: Authoring Translation, Translating Authority”, Translation Review 68 (2004): 54. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
115 himself because of his disappointment towards his miniaturists who leave the old tradition and imitate the Frankish style and the Sultan who forces him to duplicate the Sultan’s self-portrait. Two years after blinding himself, Master Osman died and Stork replaces his position as the Head Illuminator. (MNR, 443)
In addition, Olive murders Enishte Effendi for Enishte being too slavish to
Western innovation. Enishte’s visit to Venice has made him enchanted by the
Venetian painting and it drives him to influence the sovereign to be painted in this manner by Sebastiano.
“He felt a slavish awe toward the pictures of the Frankish masters he’d seen during his travels, and he’d fallen completely for the artistry that he regaled us about for days on end.” “Your Enishte was murdered because he was afraid,” I said. “Just like you, he’s begun to claim that illustration, which he was doing himself, wasn’t contrary to the religion or the sacred book.” (MNR, 424)
His motivation for killing Enishte Effendi is a combination of self-doubt and the revelation that the aesthetic past will not persist in any meaningful way, but will be lost to history due to a host of political and social forces–one style gradually replacing another.284 This is in line with Enishte’s statement on the day Olive kills him that the paintings made by the miniaturists will be easily forgotten and replaced by the new method of painting.
“One day, everyone will paint as the Frankish masters do. When “painting” is mentioned, the world will think of their work!” (MNR, 186)
“...In the end, our methods will die out, the colours will fade. No one will care about our books and our paintings. …Indifference, time, and disaster will destroy our art. …Mice will nibble these pages away; …a thousand varieties of insect will gnaw our manuscripts out of existence. Bindings will fall apart and pages will drop out. …Not only our own art, but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be
284 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 54. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect (MNR, 187): …yours and the rest, all of it will vanish...” (MNR, 188)
The quotation above emphasize that the loss of the Islamic painting “was simply because Western ways of seeing and painting were more attractive.”285 In the future, “the Eastern world will lose”286 for every painter will paint in Western style and leave the illumination painting. However, they cannot avoid this because the Western ruling elite wants to modernize Turkey by replacing the 250-year-
Persian painting. As I have explained in Chapter III, Enishte Effendi and Sultan
Murad III insist that the Frankish style must be applied immediately because it is a symbol of modernism. Additionally, in the future, this modernization is also supported by Turkey’s first president who mentions that “a nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence”.287
Olive, the murderer, also experiences a tragedy and death in his life. He is blinded by his colleagues and murdered by Hasan. When the murderer, Velijan
Effendi (Olive), is on his way to the Galleon Harbour, trying to flee to India, he is attacked by Hasan, who accuses him as one of Black’s men who raided his house at night to abduct Shekure. (MNR, 435) “Hasan, encountering Olive, had drawn his red sword and cut off Olive’s head in a single stroke.” (MNR, 439)
...In one smooth motion, without losing speed, the sword cut first through my hand and then clears through my neck, looping off my head. I knew I’d been beheaded and…blood spraying from the neck like a fountain. ...My neck ached and all is still. This is what they call death. (MNR, 436)
285 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270. 286 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 131. 287 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Founder of the Republic of Turkey. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Olive murder’s series shows the binary opposition between the East and the West.
I argue that Olive’s head represents the West because Western painting stresses on the perspective and a realist depiction on the object. While Olive’s separate body represents the East and Islamic illumination painting since in this painting method, painting is from memory the artists had, that they remember Allah.
(MNR, 84) Göknar, additionally, mentions that the action when Olive is beheaded illustrates “the separation of body and mind, of tenor and vehicle, of content and form, even of East and West”.288 In the end of his life, Olive still describes the scene that he sees from the ground level. In this moment of observation, he realizes seeing has become a variety of memory. (MNR, 436) In Venetian painting, seeing (read: perspective) is very important because an object is depicted realistically. While in Persian painting, “a miniaturist’s “eyes” are at the tip of his pen and acting before he can think; his hand is acting of his own accord”289.
Furthermore, Pamuk’s impartiality can be seen more in, My Name is Red which contains the leitmotif of a failed or “missing” book or manuscript whether failed or incomplete manuscript and in the White Castle, which discusses the translated or rewritten book.290 In My Name is Red, Olive, as the miniaturist who represents Western tradition, will do anything to bring the Ottoman art to modernity. Sultan’s commissioned book, moreover, cannot be finished for Olive murders Elegant Effendi, the gilder. He kills Elegant because he is afraid that
Elegant can put the book in danger by spreading rumours to the followers of
Nusret Huja that this book contains blasphemy. Besides, he also steals the
288 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55. 289 Pamuk, İstanbul, 150. 290 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
118 unfinished book from Enishte Effendi after hitting Enishte’s head using a bronze
Mongol inkpot in order to keep the sustainability of the Islamic painting tradition that is contested by the realist style of painting.
I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the cabinet, rifling through my papers and searching intently for the last picture. When he came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my paint set and kick the chests, boxes, inkpots, and folding worktable. Then…I sensed that my murderer had exited the room. He’d probably found the last painting. (MNR, 191)
After finding the last painting, Olive tries to complete the manuscript by presenting his self-portrait. However, in the end, he fails to make his own portrait no matter how hard he tries. “Imitating the Frankish masters, as Olive explains, needs certain expertise and the proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to attain. Besides, if the miniaturists still attempt to attain a style and European character, they will still fail.” (MNR, 431)
In the centre of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve been, was my own portrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was somewhat unsatisfied with it because after labouring in vain for days, looking into a mirror and erasing and reworking, I was unable to achieve a good resemblance. (MNR, 429)
As one of the best Islamic miniaturists who wants to preserve the old painting tradition, Olive’s failure in imitating the Italian Renaissance style can be one of his ways to fight against the domination of this painting style. His self-portrait, which does not has a good resemblance to the Frankish painting, is in the same vein with Bhabha’s “almost the same but not quite” that the colonized tries to resist the colonizer by imitating their culture but not totally and precisely, which aims to mock them for later the finished book will be presented to the Venetian
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This is also similar to the “Caliban paradigm”—an anti-colonial project through inappropriate appropriation that challenges the cultural and linguistic stability of the colonizer291—that the colonized learns how to curse in the master’s tongue.292 On the contrary, Olive’s appropriation of the realist painting also shows that he is also overly bound to Western tradition even though he fails to depict it at last. Pamuk also mentions that Olive is an illuminator who feels himself caught between the two worlds. He loves and despises the West in equal measure, a man who cannot quite see himself as a Westerner but is dazzled by the brilliance of
Western civilization.293
Pamuk’s description on how Olive feels inauthentic, when he imitates the
Western style of painting in his self-portrait in the secret book, mirrors Turkey’s condition. Pamuk also mentions that the miniaturists’ problem is similar to the
Turks who were vexed by the contradiction they felt between these two injunctions—to be Western and yet, at the same time, to be authentic.294 In addition, Olive warns his dear miniaturist friends that if they yield to the Frankish painting they might resemble themselves but they will not be themselves. On the other hand, if the painters of the old tradition are still faithful to old masters they will lose their place as a palace miniaturist.
If Master Osman truly goes blind, or passes away, and we paint the way we feel like painting, embracing our faults and individuality under the influence of the Franks so we might possess a style, we might resemble
291 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 147-148. The term, “Caliban Paradigm”, is taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which character named Caliban, the dispossessed (ab)original inhabitant of the island, who mentions the benefit of studying the colonial language is that he knows how to curse. 292 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 148. 293 Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours, 230. 294 Pamuk, İstanbul, 112. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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ourselves, but we won’t be ourselves. No, even if we were to agree to paint like the old masters, reasoning that only in this way could we be ourselves, Our Sultan, who’s turned His back even on Master Osman, will find others to replace us. No one will look at us anymore, we shall only incur pity. (MNR, 420)
From Olive’s statement above, Pamuk, once again, wants to remind us that
“slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution”295. Pamuk also asks his readers to live in both cultures and to produce a new culture from the combination of those cultures.296 However, the radical and abrupt modernization that are forced by the elites can cause the ambivalence of identity for an individual lives between two identities that alienated them to their identity.
In The White Castle, both Hoja and his Italian slave also experience a tragedy because their grand plan on the war machine fails to break down the
Poles’ Doppio Castle. Hoja’s effort to conquer the West using his war machine that is made using the imitation of Western technology has a disappointing result.
The other countries also come to help the Poles from the Ottoman’s attack.
After the sun had set and we learned not only that Huseyn Pasha the Blond had failed, but that Austrians, Hungarians, and Kazaks had joined the Poles at the siege of Doppio, we finally saw the castle itself. ...I knew now that our soldiers would never be able to reach the white towers of the castle. I knew only too well that when we joined the siege in the morning our weapon would founder in the swamp leaving the men inside and around it to die. (TWC, 143)
Both Hoja and the Italian slave know that in the end their war machine will not be able to defeat the castle. However, the Ottoman’s modernization movement in science and technology that are “imported” from the West is an irony. The East
295 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370. 296 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
121 fails to emulate as well as conquer the West by appropriating their sophisticated technology. Modernity, that is believed can free people from illogical interpretation of dreams and stars, has bring melancholy to Hoja. He has to go to
Venice and leave his identity as an Easterner after his war machine that is built to emulate the West failed.
At the same time, due to their failure in the battlefield, the Italian slave cannot return to his country. He has to stay in İstanbul and replace Hoja’s position while Hoja goes to Venice and replaces his place in order to escape from the wrath of the Sultan.
...He was rushing about like someone about to leave on a journey. Till the break of day I talked with him about what I’d left behind in my country. (TWC, 144)
We exchange clothes without haste and without speaking. ...Then he left the tent and was gone. I watched him slowly disappear in the silent fog. It was getting light. (TWC, 145)
The Italian slave also feels separated from his very self, Hoja, when he is not by his side. He wants to be Hoja’s side because he feels that he is Hoja and he cannot be separated from his true identity. He highlights it by saying that,
“I should be by his side, I was Hoja’s very self! I had become separated from my real self and was seeing myself from the outside, just as in the nightmares I often had. I only wanted...to rejoin him as soon as I could.” (TWC, 98)
Moreover, it not only the separation of the Self and the Other that can bring melancholy but their deepest longing to be someone else can also present hüzün.
“To search within to think so long and hard about our own selves, would only make us unhappy. ...For this reason heroes could never tolerate being themselves, for this reason they always wanted to be someone else.” (TWC, 154-155) The PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
122 separation of Hoja and his Italian slave is a new start, a way to overcome hüzün that they feel concerning to the painful memories of the failure of their grand plan.
Through his two novels, Pamuk wants to show that modernity is not the best solution to overcome the tension of the oscillation between the East and the
West. Essentially, modernity does not always bring happiness nor peaceful and
Turkey’s nationalization shows how it goes. Goenawan Mohamad, he also mentions that modernity truly offers the freedom but it also brings melancholy297 just like the forced modernization conducted by Turkey’s Western elites that leads to a self-colonialism and leaves hüzün. In order to create a modern era, the elites tend to force the people to forget and erase their different norms, traditions, and religions. In addition, the construction of a secular Republic, which separates the state from religion, is a way to release Turkey from its long forgotten Ottoman tradition and backwardness.
However, not only criticising those two sides through his opposed characters—Master Osman and Enishte Effendi (MNR) as well as Hoja and his
Italian slave (TWC)—Pamuk also shows how happy the Turks will be if they have those “two spirits, belong to two different cultures, and having two souls.”298 In this same vein, he notes in Other Colours that:
I’m pleased that the Westernization process took place. I’m just criticizing the limited way in which the ruling elite had conceived of Westernization. ...They did not strive to create an İstanbul culture that would be an organic combination of East and West; they just put Western and Eastern together. …They had to invent a strong local culture, which would be a combination—not an imitation—of the Eastern past and the Western present.299
297 Goenawan Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6 (Jakarta: Pusat Data dan Analisa Tempo, 2006) 134. 298 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 299 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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I argue that what Pamuk tries to present in his works is that he wants to “bridge” the East and the West like the Bosphorus Bridge, which connects the Eastern and the Western side of İstanbul without taking any sides. This statement is in accordance with Pamuk’s conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth in PBS
NewsHour, where he declares that,
I want to be a bridge in the sense that a bridge doesn’t belong to any continent, doesn’t belong to any civilization, and a bridge has the unique opportunity to see both civilizations and be outside of it. That’s a good, wonderful privilege.300
Pamuk considers the bridge, which spans the Bosphorous and unites the European and Asian sides of İstanbul, a metaphor for himself because it belongs nowhere, but has a foot on two continents.301 Erdağ Göknar in “Orhan Pamuk and the
‘Ottoman’ Theme”, supports the statement above by saying that “Pamuk himself, he tries to juxtapose, synthesize, or transcend both”,302 the East and the West through his oeuvre. By becoming “the Bosphorous Bridge”, Pamuk shows his impartiality both the East and the West.
2. Self-Questioning
Pamuk’s role, which has already been mentioned in the previous part, is not only as the agent that connects and mediates the East and the West but also as the critic of the representatives of both sides. The East-West encounter has led to the enchantment and seduction of Western tradition. The longing and desire for
Others also opens the way to the oscillation between embracing the modernity of
300 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”. 301 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”. 302 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 38. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
124 the West or preserving the Islamic Ottoman tradition. Therefore, the tension and conflict between the two political sides cannot be avoided.
In this sub chapter, I display Pamuk’s criticism on Turkish politicians’ monistic view that Turkey should have one consistent soul, only belong to the
East or to the West or be nationalistic,303 which he “paints” in My Name is Red and The White Castle. Through the colours from his pallet to create his “art works”, which are in a form of words and sentences, I indicate that Pamuk wants to criticise the East and the West, the Ottoman and Western tradition, the conservatives and the secularists. Even though he is a secularist, Pamuk is critical of the way Turkey has dealt with East-West differences over the past 80 years. In my view, through MNR and TWC, Pamuk raises his criticism to the elites that were dazzled by the superiority of the West so that they embarked on a program of Westernizing reforms.304 The founder of the Turkish Republic also wanted desperately to make Turkey more modern and Western while Pamuk believes that
Ataturk moved too harshly against religion, leaving many people confused and lost305 and also present the feeling of hüzün.
Furthermore, in his novels, I can see that Pamuk raises his criticism to both
“Westernist and anti-Westernist nationalisms sides, which respectively construct myths of origin to contrast East and West”.306 He mentions that,
in Turkey, both conservatives—or political Islamist—and secularist were upset. The secularists were upset because I wrote that the cost of being a secular radical in Turkey is that you forget that you also have to be a democrat. …They also didn’t like that I portrayed Islamist as human beings. The political Islamists were
303 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 304 Pamuk, Other Colours, 230. 305 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”. 306 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 9. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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upset because I wrote about an Islamist who had enjoyed sex before marriage. …Islamists are always suspicious of me because I don’t come from their culture, and because I have the language, attitude, and even gestures of a more Westernized and privileged person.307
As a consequence of his critique to the Westernists and anti-Westernists sides,
Pamuk becomes the target of both the secularists and the conservatives.
Moreover, his works also disturb his relationship with his family. İstanbul has destroyed his relationship with his mother and he hardly ever sees his brother.
Pamuk’s relationship with the Turkish public, because of his recent comment and critics to the conservatives and the secularists, is also difficult.308 Additionally,
“Pamuk was also persecuted by his respected states”309 because of his statement
“in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Der Tages-Anzelger”310.
Through the characters in My Name is Red such as Olive, the miniaturists,
Enishte Effendi, Sultan Murad III, Master Osman, and Nusret Hoja as well as in the The White Castle such as Hoja, the Italian slave, and Sultan Ahmed I, Pamuk wants to deliver his criticism to both the representatives of the East and the West.
Pamuk criticises those who insist that Turkey should have only a single spirit through their identity formation processes. In modern Turkey identity, the cosmopolitanism is erased and replaced by the new national identity. The irony of modernization program was indicated by the erasure of cosmopolitanism that was indicated by millions of Greek, Armenians, and Kurds that died when they were departed and exchanged from Turkey.
307 Pamuk, Other Colours, 373-374. 308 Pamuk, Other Colours, 378. 309 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 523. 310 Pamuk, Other Colours, 356. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Gökberk emphasizes that the erasure of Turkey’s cosmopolitanism makes people feel “a collective melancholy (hüzün) over the city’s bygone Ottoman past…and over no meaningful values that have been replaced the old cultural tradition. Here everybody also seems to be affected by the abrupt erasure of the past.”311 Under Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s rich cosmopolitanism was erased and replaced by the new national identity. The elite’s movement, to rapidly “civilize” the society,312 is shown by millions of Greek, Armenians, and Kurds who were departed and exchanged. Göknar also mentions that through his works, Pamuk wants to criticise “Ottoman history and the elite’s modernization project, which rejects multi-ethnicity, multi-lingualism, multi-culturalism, and cosmopolitanism”.313 Both the Young Turks and the elites were enchanted by
Western superiority so that they started the Westernization project. Pamuk also mentions that Kemal’s Westernizing reforms were based on the belief that
Turkey’s weakness and poverty stem from its traditions, its old culture, and its various religion practices.314 For those reasons, he constructed a secular republic, votes for women, new political parties, and the Roman alphabet to replace the
Ottoman sultanate, the harem, the fez, the veil, the Arabic alphabet, the Dervish orders, and the caliphate.315 While, Sultan Murad III, he makes a cultural transformation by abruptly replacing the Ottoman miniature painting with the
Venetian style of painting. Similarly, Sultan Ahmed I, Murad III’s grandson, also imitates Western science and technology to create gigantic cannon that will be
311 Gökberk, “Beyond Secularism”, 8. 312 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35. 313 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55. 314 Pamuk, Other Colours, 230. 315 Karl E. Meyer, “Ghost along the Bosphorus”, World Policy Journal 24, 3 (Fall, 2007): 114. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
127 used to defeat the West and leaving the astrology as well as the illogical interpretation of the dreams and stars.
The elite national’s project to abruptly “Westernize” and to self- colonialized the country316 can be seen from the “conquest fever”, a provocation by the Turkish state to rampage the city, plundering the property of the Greeks, the Christians, and the minorities317. Under Murad III, there was a requirement to wear certain garment and colours to mark the different religious group. As a Jew,
Esther was also forced to wear the pink dress (MNR, 68), and “in garments of poorer quality cloth”318. Moreover, the Jewish people also suffered from the oppression that caused on “the execution of the Jews in Amasya, on the eve
Passover” (MNR, 147). Their neighbourhood not only looked even more deserted and pitiful in the morning cold (MNR, 142) but they were also mocked for their
Jewishness (MNR, 262). This is such an irony that after the Republic established, more minorities have left İstanbul while after Mehmed II took Constantinople in
1453, he encouraged and invited the Greek, the Armenians, the Kurds, and the
Christians to move to the city and even respected them.
Ali and Hagood stress that Pamuk’s text, which shows many perspectives, is aimed to deconstruct the centralizing project, whether the issues on certain ideology that is embodied by the Sultan (and the artists’ guilds within his court) and by the religious fundamentalists who want to destroy the figurative art.319
Pamuk complicates the oscillation of the Eastern and Western painting in My
316 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55. 317 Pamuk, İstanbul, 173. 318 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 177. 319 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 507. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Name is Red to illustrate the binary opposition between self and other. The
Persian painting represents the only way of seeing from Allah’s perspective,
“seeing the world from above” (MNR, 272), which is “from the top of the minaret” (MNR, 78). On the contrary, Frankish painting describes the world “as the eyes sees it” (MNR, 186) and from the various viewpoints. Therefore, this represents the individual style of Pamuk’s work that has many narrators.
Through Olive, Pamuk wants to criticize the miniaturists who are overly bound to Eastern and Western style. Olive’s identity is split into two as a master miniaturist and also as a murderer. His voice is a metaphor, which shows the binary opposition between the East and the West as well the complex oscillation between Self and Other.
Now I am completely divided, just like those figures whose head and hands are drawn and painted by one master while their bodies and clothes are depicted by another. When a God-fearing man like myself unexpectedly becomes a murderer, it takes time to adjust. I’ve adopted a second voice, one befitting a murderer, so that I might still carry on as though my old life continued. (MNR, 108)
This double identity is reflected in the murderer’s speech when he adopts a second voice as an unidentified murderer and when he speaks under his workshop name as a palace miniaturist. Enishte emphasizes that Olive is “the most talented, divinely inspired artist with the most enchanted touch and eye for detail that
Enishte has ever seen in all his sixty years” (MNR, 184). However, it is such an irony that Olive experiences ambivalence because as the most gifted Islamic painting who has the finest work he is also drawn to Frankish style that promises fame, money, and style. On the other hand, he is also sad that the domination of
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Olive, as stated, kills Enishte Effendi because he is “the one who duped him into drawing images removed from their stories”320. In addition, Olive’s reason for killing Elegant Effendi, one of Nusret Hoja’s followers, is that because he is afraid of being accused as a blasphemer by being involved in the making of the Sultan’s commissioned book. This is chiefly seen when Olive, as a murderer, narrates that Elegant Effendi,
had slandered those of us who’d worked on that book Our Sultan had secretly commissioned. If I hadn’t silenced him, he would’ve denounced us unbelievers. …If someone succeeded in announcing that the miniaturists were committing blasphemy, these followers of Erzurumi…wouldn’t just be satisfied with doing away with master miniaturists, they’d destroy the entire workshop and Our Sultan would be helpless to do anything but watch without a peep. (MNR, 134-135)
As mentioned above, Olive is a miniaturist “who is most bound to the old tradition, who knows most intimately the legends and styles of Herat and whose master-apprentice genealogy stretches back to Samarkand” (MNR, 360). Even though Olive is afraid of being accused as a blasphemer, he also imitates the
Frankish style. He kills Elegant as his devotion to the old miniature tradition as well as to save the miniaturists and the entire workshop from the Hoja of the
Erzurum and his followers.
Imitating the Frankish style is an act of competing with God and it is contrary to the Islamic teaching that every human is the same in front of God.
Moreover, they imitate the Venetian painting without mastering the technique.
Olive not only criticizes the miniaturists but also Sultan Murad who orders
Enishte Effendi to make the secret book, which is believed as a door that can lead
320 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
130 the Ottoman to receive recognition from the West. From his critique, Olive wants to show that the lack of the proficiency of the miniaturists in making the portrait will only make them fail and the other possibility is that they will only be restrained by the Erzurumis. The attack of the Coffee house by the Erzurumis shows that they want to punish the illustrators because they have made pictures with the perspectival methods of the Franks that are portrayed in the Sultan’s commissioned book.
The Erzurumis, incited by Elegant’s murderer, and perhaps because Elegant Effendi had described Enishte’s book to them, held Enishte responsible for the murderer and killed him; and, they must’ve raided the Coffee house to complete their revenge. (MNR, 399)
As I have already mentioned above, the great preacher Nusret Hoja intends to punish those who veered from the path of Exalted Muhammad, especially the miniaturists. For the Erzurumis, the illustrators, who emulate the Frankish style, are justified that they have made an act of competition with God by creating illustration of the living things and also portraiture, for He alone can create something that is alive.321
In My Name is Red, Pamuk also wants to criticize the miniaturist, especially those who are overly bound to the Eastern painting tradition. For instance, in a story told by a picture of horse, it clarifies that all illustrations made by miniaturists from memory are also an act of competing with Allah because they are trying to depict the world the way Allah sees.
All miniaturists illustrate all horses from memory in the same way, even though we’ve each been uniquely created by Allah. …They are attempting
321 Kathleen Kuiper, Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture (New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010) 131. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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to depict the world that God perceives not the world that they see. Doesn’t that amount to challenging God’s unity, that is—Allah forbid—isn’t it saying that I could do the work of God? Artists who are discontent with what they see with their own eyes, artists who claim that the best horse is what blind miniaturists draw from memory, aren’t they all committing the sin of competing with Allah? (MNR, 238)
From the quotation above, it can be seen that the illustrators who make paintings from their memory and from the top of the minaret also make a competition with
God because they have tried to emulate the way Allah sees the world. The way the miniaturists depict the world from an elevated Godlike position, like Ibn Shakir did three hundred fifty years ago from a high minaret is the evidence.
Sultan Murad III uses the Italian painting as a movement to rapidly modernize the Empire. He asks Enishte to prepare the secret book in order to strengthen the position of the Ottoman Empire that is in a regression. The sovereign believes that the Islamic painting tradition will not bring the Ottoman to the glory. In addition, the Islamic painting is considered to be the barrier for the
Empire. By depicting Sultan Murad III who encourages the miniaturists to imitate the Frankish painting, Pamuk wants to illustrate the loss of the old painting tradition. Ataturk’s Westernization project, which had erased 600-year Islamic
Ottoman Empire tradition, is similar to Murad III who has forced the miniaturists to leave the old painting tradition and adopt the Frankish painting. Ironically, the secret book that is made for the aim to get the acceptance from the West is left unfinished in the Sultan’s treasury room.
If Nusret Hoja, a great preacher and a representative of the East in My
Name is Red, wants the empire belong only to the East, it is different from Hoja
(TWC) who claims that the empire should belong to the West. Hoja, who PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
132 represents the Westernist side in the present time of Turkey, is tired of pashas and
Sultan’s dependence on the illogical interpretation of the dreams and stars. He wants to modernize and Westernize the Islamic Empire by enforcing the young sultan using his stories to adopt Western science and technology. In the end, Hoja is able to dupe the child Sultan to make a war machine, which will be used to destroy the enemies.
As has been explained above, the “modern” was part of the elite’s ongoing project of progress to rapidly “civilize” society that borrowed from both the
Soviet example and Europe.322 Particularly, Pamuk wants to question and challenge this project through his fictions, My Name is Red and The White Castle and using the Ottoman past, he tries to take a critical look at the present.323 This is especially seen in the character of Enishte Effendi. By presenting this character,
Pamuk illustrates how the Kemalists or the modernists or the secularist want to modernize and “civilize” Turkey by slavishly adopting and imitating Western tradition and culture and leaving the old Ottoman tradition. Moreover, it is clear that Enishte Effendi, who is overly bound to the Italian painting, wants that all miniaturists adopt and use this style “with the justification that ‘it is the will of
Our Sultan’ and ‘betray’ the entire artistic tradition.” (MNR, 362)
Pamuk shows in his works that the theme of impersonation in My Name is
Red and The White Castle is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when faced with Western culture. He adds that the anxiety about being influenced by someone else resembles Turkey’s position when it looks West. Pamuk also criticises
322 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35. 323 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Turkey, especially the modernists, who aspire to become Westernized but then being accused of not being authentic enough.324 This can be seen when Olive fails to make his self-portrait by imitating Western style of painting. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot make a painting as fine as the Frankish masters do.
When I could see my face in the mirror from where I sat, I attempted to draw my portrait in charcoal. I drew for a long time, patiently. Much later, when I saw that once again the face on the page didn’t resemble my face in the mirror, I was filled with such misery that tears welled in my eyes.
Later still, I cursed the European painters and Enishte both, erased what I’d done and began looking into the mirror anew to begin another drawing. (MNR, 307)
The quotation above shows that Olive is experiencing the ambivalence of mimicry. He fails to imitate the Western style of painting in portraying himself because the result is not the same as the Italian Renaissance painting. Bhabha highlights that the condition of “almost the same, but not quite” can be used by the colonized as a weapon to mock the colonizer.325 However, here, I have different opinion. In this case, the imitation conducted by Olive and the other miniaturists will only lead to mockery from the West towards the East that tries to resemble and even emulate them. This is because they do not have the ability to create paintings, which are as fine as the Frankish style.
In addition, Olive is also experiencing a cultural inferiority because he tries to be the West by imitating the way they paint but he fails and what he can do is only blaming the Frankish master and Enishte toward his failure.
I feel like the Devil…because my portrait has been made in this fashion. But now, the isolation terrifies me. Imitating the Frankish masters without
324 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368. 325 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 86. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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having attained their expertise makes a miniaturist even more of a slave. Now, I’m desperate to escape this trap. (MNR, 430)
Olive’s feeling of cultural inferiority is similar to Turkey’s when the Empire collapsed and the country tried to find its new national identity. Olive realises that his desire to imitate the Frankish style can only lead to the problems of authenticity. He emphasized that the imitation to the Frankish painting is a big irony. In addition, the Venetian masters will only scorn the secret book, which is believed to bring the Empire back into the past glory. It is for the reason that the miniaturists do not have the proficiency of the Franks so that the secret book that is going to be presented to the Venetian Doge will only make the Venetians masters look down to the Ottomans. As Olive emphasizes to his fellows miniaturists that after,
“Enishte Effendi’s book been completed and sent to them, the Venetian masters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would’ve reached the Venetian Doge—that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans have given up being Ottoman and would no longer fear us.” (MNR, 431)
The imitation is an irony because this series of Occidental style of paintings by the palace miniaturists is placed in an Oriental stylebook of calligraphies and be gifted to the Venetian Doge.326 Without the proficiency, as Esra Almas has pointed out in “Reading My Name is Red: Unveiling a Masterpiece”, innovation becomes mere imitation and individuality will therefore be reduced to nothing but a signature.327 Moreover, by imitating the Western style without having the proficiency will only make a miniaturist even more of a slave. (MNR, 176) This
326 Üner Daglier, “Orhan Pamuk on the Turkish Modernization Project: Is It a Farewell to the West?”, Humanitas 25, 1-2 (2012): 155. 327 Esra Almas, “Reading My Name is Red: Unveiling a Masterpiece”, The International Journal of the Humanities 5, 7 (2007): 157. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
135 imitation has brought anxiety and left cultural inferiority to Olive even though he is a brilliant miniaturist for he cannot appropriate the Frankish style precisely.
Master miniaturists’ slavish imitation of the Frankish painting is criticized by
Pamuk for this imitation will only revoked Turkey from its Islamic Ottoman root.
Pamuk reflects Turkey condition in master miniaturists’ attempt to appropriate the
West. He also wants the whole country to embrace, combine, and live in the two traditions and invent another new tradition rather than only has one single identity.
The miniaturists are experiencing ambiguity from the cultural step, which they take by imitating the Frankish painting. This is the way Self (the East) finds a new identity by using the West to define them through the secret book they are preparing. In My Name is Red, this is also experienced by the Ottoman Empire that actually wants to be acknowledged and accepted by the West by adopting the
Other’s cultural symbol.
“Precisely, what Our Sultan stated He wanted: A book that depicted the thousandth year of Muslim calendar, which would strike terror into the heart of the Venetian Doge by showing the military strength and pride of Islam, together with the power and wealth of the Exalted House of Osman. …Furthermore, since the illustrations were made in the Frankish style using Frankish methods, they would arouse the awe of the Venetian Doge and his desire for friendship. (MNR, 247)
What is ironic here is that the modernists or the Westernist want to modernize the
Empire by forcing the miniaturists to leave the old painting tradition and adopt
Frankish painting. The miniaturists are slavishly imitating Western painting style without having the proficiency of the Franks to get the acceptance from the West. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Bhabha emphasizes that mimicry for the colonized, is important because it is an attempt that is made to get the acceptance from the colonizer.328
This also happens to the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century that is described in The White Castle that the Westernist and the Sultan want to revive the Empire from crisis. Hoja, a new imperial astrologer, has an obsession to bring the glory of the Empire back and defeat Europe by using a war machine whose technology is borrowed from the West. Unfortunately, the artillery that is made by
Hoja and his Italian slave fails to break the White Castle.
Moreover, Pamuk also illustrates the ironic characterization of the young
Western slave who should be a slave from an Eastern master that wants him teaches all Western science, knowledge, and lifestyle he knows from his country.
The Eastern master also wants to prove that his slave is not superior to him in any aspect by acting like “a clever boy who tries to prove that the this his big brother knows are really not all that much” (TWC, 33).
According to him, the gap between his knowledge and mine was no greater than the number of volumes he’d had brought from my cell and lined up on a shelf and the books whose content I remembered. With his phenomenal diligence and quickness of mind, in six months he’d acquired a basic grasp of Italian which he’d improve upon later, read all of my books, and by the time he’d made me repeat to him everything I remembered, there was no longer any way in which I was superior to him. (TWC, 33)
From the quotation above, the master underestimates his slave’s ability and knowledge in science as well as to show that he is superior than his slave. He also says that the gap of his knowledge and his slave’s knowledge is just as much as
328 Bhabha, The Location of Culture. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
137 the books his slave has. However, the Italian slave ironically portrays his master as a lazy little brother who wants to catch up the lesson.
The irony of Turkish modern identity formation process in The White
Castle is the mirror of Ataturk Westernization project that transformed the traditional Ottoman into a civilize nation. Turkey’s failure in the First World War had raised a suspicion on the Greek and the Christians that they had been spy for
Western Allies. This also experienced by the Italian slave who is accused by the
Ottoman as the Western spy when the war machine fails to break the Doppio
Castle.
It was then that the rumours increased about how our siege engine...would bring misfortune, even a curse upon us. ...As always it was not Hoja but me, the infidel, whom they blamed. (TWC, 138)
Since the rumours that I was accursed and a spy, no longer went to the sovereign’s tent. That night when he went to interpret the events of the day, Hoja managed to tell tales of victory and good fortune that the sultan seemed to believe. (TWC, 140)
The Italian slave is blamed by the sovereign for the failure at the siege of Doppio that leads to the exchange of the identity between Hoja and his slave. Through
The White Castle, Pamuk wants to show how dangerous the forced Westernization and the longing to be totally the East or the West because it can kill each other.
Ahmed I’s abrupt project, on the revolution of the Ottoman astrology and the interpretation of dreams and stars that is duped by Hoja as his Imperial astrologer to defeat the White Castle, has left hüzün within Hoja and his slave. In the end, the slave cannot go back to Venice while Hoja must escape from his country.
Mohamad supports this by mentioning that even though modernization promises PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
138 liberation, it causes melancholy.329 The gigantic kettle that is built by Hoja has left the Ottoman soldiers in fear and death.
“The nearly one hundred men...broke formation and scattered during the weapon’s first assault. Some of them were crushed to bits by the weapon itself, some of them, after a few ineffective shot, were hit...when they left without cover. Most of them fled in fear of bad luck, and we were unable to regroup to prepare a fresh assault.” (TWC, 141)
As a novelist and as a man, Pamuk criticises “the ruthless, murderous
Turkey’s non-Western ruling elites of the postcolonial era”330 that share the intolerance towards the minorities groups in his works. Western Postmodernism that is imitated by Turkey’s elites is an irony. Western movement that upholds humanism and gives value to human lives is even bloody and full of violent in its practice. Moreover, he is also sceptical of Turkey’s state-led modernization project and bitterly critical of the elite Westernists for seeking to abandon
Turkey’s traditional values and identity.331
3. Hybridity
My world is a mixture of the local—the national—and the West. —Orhan Pamuk332
I only want to amuse myself frontside and backside, to be Eastern and Western both. —Orhan Pamuk (MNR, 382)
Bhabha discusses that mimicry leads to hybridity. Through imitating the
Other, the Self tries to rewrite his identity in the liminal space by becoming
329 Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6, 134. 330 Pamuk, Other Colours, 240. 331 Daglier, “Orhan Pamuk on the Turkish Modernization Project”, 147-148. 332 Pamuk, Other Colours, 410. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
139 hybrid.333 This is also experienced by Turkey, which tries to rewrite its new identity by way of abruptly adopting Western culture and erasing its Islamic
Ottoman culture. However, by mentioning the quotation above that his world is a mixture of the East and the West, Pamuk wants to offer hybridity as an alternative solution to resolve the tension of these two poles. In this section, I try to present
Pamuk’s background as a writer in presenting hybridity in My Name is Red and
The White Castle, which influences his solution to the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own tradition that Turkish society is undergoing.
Although Ataturk’s Westernization seemed to eliminate cosmopolitanism in Turkey, there are still remnants left and remained and even be a hybrid. The concept of hybridity shows that the culture of a nation is not purely the result of the absolute national culture itself but rather the result of the interaction between nations, groups, or ethnics.334 In the case of Turkey, the interaction and contact between the Ottoman and the West as well as the West migration to İstanbul had flourished since the 15th century335 and it had created new cultures, which were the result of the cultural assimilation between Eastern and Western culture. As it is explained in the previous chapter, Mehmet II even let and encouraged the
Greek, the Armenian, and the Jews to live in İstanbul after the Fall of
Constantinople in 1453. The city, moreover, had flourished as a multicultural society for hundreds of years and became the city of tolerance.336 It is a very
333 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 120. 334 See Bhabha, The Location of Culture. 335 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32. 336 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 366. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
140 special city because it is a door that connects Europe to Asia.337 As the result of the old cosmopolitanism, İstanbul has become the city of hybrid, “cross-cultural exchange,”338 which is the mixture of Western culture and Eastern tradition.
Furthermore, the grand mosques and buildings in Turkey are mostly the result of the dialogue between the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire culture. Hagia Sophia, the legacy of the late Byzantine Empire, is the most obvious example of hybrid in İstanbul. At the Byzantine Empire era, this building was a grand Orthodox church, which was also as the centre of the Greek Orthodox religion. After Mehmet took Constantinople, which was as the centre of the
Eastern Roman Empire,339 the basilica’s function had changed into a mosque and its name also transformed into Ayasofya. Aşikpaşazade, quoted by Boyar and
Fleet, explains that Mehmed the Fatih, on the first Friday after the conquest, held the prayer in Ayasofya,340 an Orthodox church that was used as a mosque.341
After the Ottoman conquest, Hagia Sophia, the Orthodox Basilica, became a mosque, remaining in this state until the early days of the Turkish Republic342 when it was converted into museum by the first Turkey’s president, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk. Moreover, Turkey also has some mosques, whose architecture is a
337 Martins, “Orhan Pamuk”, 171. 338 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 109. 339 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”. 340 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 11. 341 The Christian mural paintings that exist in Hagia Sophia’s walls and ceiling were covered and plastered. Besides, the removal of ceremonial furniture, the insertion of mihrab, the addition of Islamic calligraphies, and four minarets were the evidence showed the conversion from church to mosque. William Emerson and Robert L. Van Nice, “Hagia Sophia and the First Minaret Erected after the Conquest of Constantinople”, American Journal of Archaeology 54, 1 (1950): 28. 342 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 363. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
141 borrowing from Hagia Sophia. Those mosques are the Şehzade343 and the
Süleymaniye, which built under the reigned of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent by Sinan the Great, and “the Blue Mosque, which built under Sultan Ahmed I”344.
Sinan’s design of the Şehzade and the Süleymaniye is a product of the dialogue between Ottoman tradition and the Byzantine paradigm of Hagia Sophia.345 This is the way used by Sinan to overcome the hüzün and the tension of the East and the West. Stierlin stresses that, “the Süleymaniye design’s owes much to Hagia
Sophia. The spaces created are like those of Hagia Sophia and the two buildings are of similar dimensions”.346 Süleyman was intensely aware of this hybrid architecture. Indeed, Süleyman conceived that the Süleymaniye was a parallel to
Hagia Sophia.347 If Stierlin says that this building is a parallel to Hagia Sophia, I argue that Süleymaniye is a rivalry to the building, which is the monument of the
Byzantine Empire. Süleyman the Magnificent tries to write a new story above the
Byzantine’s, which is still visible underneath the newer writing.
It is not only the city of İstanbul and the mosques that are hybrid but a number of Ottoman sultans are also hybrid. They were Murat I, the son of Orhan
Gazi, and his son, Bayezit I, both of them had Christian Greek mothers.348
Moreover, Selim II and Murat III were also had Christian mothers. Selim II was
343 Şehzade is the first sultanic mosque, which is as the symbol of Süleyman’s absolute power. Ernst Egli states that this mosque was estimately built in 1543. Moreover, Sinan’s the Şehzade was also influenced by Atik Sinan’s design for the Fatih Camii. See Stierlin, Turkey, 120. 344 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 190. 345 Stierlin, Turkey, 122. 346 Stierlin, Turkey, 126-127. 347 Stierlin, Turkey, 131. 348 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 24. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
142 the son of Süleyman I and Sultana Roxelana349, while Murat III was the son of
Selim II and Safiye Sultan,350 who was originally a Venetian.351 However, the weddings of the Ottoman sultans with the Western women were done to bridge the in-betweenness between the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire (the
West) in order to firm diplomatic and family ties.352 In addition, Shaw adds that along with the marriage alliances,
the Ottomans inevitably inherited Byzantine…fiefs, taxes, ceremonials, officials, and administrators. …Court ceremonial and central administrative practices were affected by Byzantine patterns. …The vassal Christian princes of the Balkans also sent contingents to the Ottoman army as well as advisers who helped develop Ottoman provincial and central administrative institutions. Since conversion was not yet a prerequisite for entering Ottoman service, many Christians served the sultans as officers, soldiers, and administrators.353
The Ottoman Sultans’ mix marriages, I argue, were not only ways to firm diplomatic and family ties, as it has been mentioned above. The marriage
“coalition” is also an attempt to “control and conquer” the West through marrying the Christians princess.
This hybrid background also influences the way the Ottoman Sultans see the West, for instance Mehmed II, Murad III, and Ahmed I. Borrowing from Said,
I indicate that Europe is the Ottoman Sultans’ cultural contestant and one of their deepest and most recurring images of the Other. The Sultans not only made an effort to conquer Europe’s territories but they also seduced by Europe’s art,
349 Roxelana, also known as Hürrem Sultan, was a woman of Russian origin captured in Galicia by the Crimean Tatars. She was one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history and Süleyman’s favourite wife. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 90. Stierlin, Turkey, 120. 350 Safiye Sultan was not only controlling the affairs in the capital but in politics, as the leader of a major party, she also represented the pro-Venetian members of the Ottoman court. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 179, 184. 351 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 177. 352 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 21. 353 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 23-24. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
143 culture, science, and technology. As the Orient’s intimate Other, Europe has seduced Turkey with its glimmering modern art, culture, science, and technology.
Pamuk also mentions that for Turkey, Europe has always seen as a dream, a vision of the future, a goal to achieve or danger, and a future.354 “Sultan Murad III is the
Ottoman Sultan most interested in miniatures and books and he had the Book of
Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories produced in İstanbul”
(MNR, 447). Nevertheless, Sultan Murad III wants to emulate Europe using the secret book, which is completed by Uncle Effendi and his palace miniaturists using the Frankish style. In addition, Sultan Ahmed I, who experiences few military failures, wants to conquer Europe using an incredible weapon that is developed using Western science by Hoja and his look-alike Italian slave.
Orhan Pamuk himself is “hybrid”. He is a Turk who comes from a secular bourgeoisie, Westernized İstanbul family in Turkey. For the bourgeoisie, religion and God is only for those in pain, to offer comfort for those who are so poor, to care for the beggars, and to aid pure-hearted innocents in times of trouble.
Similarly, in Attaturk’s view, to move away from religion is to be modern and
Western since Islamic traditions and practices are impeding Turkish national progress.355 Personally, Pamuk does not believe in God as much as he might have wished for he is a Westernist. He expresses his secret love of God in trembling confusion and painful solitude. However, when he was grown up, the pain he felt
354 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190. 355 Pamuk, İstanbul, 176-182. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
144 was not in being able far from God but from everyone around him, from the collective spirit of the city.356
Pamuk’s identity is also split into two. Part of him longs like a radical
Westernizer who wants the city to become entirely European but another part yearns to belong to İstanbul he has grown lo love, by instinct, by habit, and by memory.357 This is similar to Black, one of the main characters in MNR, who longs for the Western painting and loves for the Eastern tradition. His searching for his love, Shekure, and his journey for twelve years in Persia shows the process on finding his true self. On the other hand, another part of him still longing for his beloved has caused a deep sorrow for he does not have her portrait. As Black said after meeting Orhan, Shekure’s youngest son,
Had I taken Shekure’s portrait with me, rendered in the style of the Venetian masters, I wouldn’t have felt such loss during my long travels when I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I’d left somewhere behind me. For if a lover’s face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home. (MNR, 35)
After twelve years in his exile, when he returns to the city at the age of thirty-six,
Black is painfully aware that he starts to forget his beloved’s face. (MNR, 7) The quotation above stresses that Black also wants to appropriate the Frankish painting because this painting method is important to remind him of his lover’s beautiful face and keep the flame of his love towards Shekure. Black believes that it is okay for the palace miniaturists to embrace Western style of painting as well as preserving the Islamic illumination tradition for it is necessary to value people’s uniqueness. His openness to the Italian Renaissance painting is shown by
356 Pamuk, İstanbul, 185-187. 357 Pamuk, İstanbul, 323. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
145 his decision to come back to his hometown and helps his uncle, Enishte Effendi, to finish Sultan’s commissioned book and also find the murderer of Elegant
Effendi, the gilder.
Along with Pamuk’s “hybrid” life, I argue that his oeuvre is also “hybrid” because it is a reflection of his personal life. Pamuk also mentions that the tension between the past and present in his split identity is reconciled by combining his love for modern art and Western literature with the culture of the city in which he lives.358 In The White Castle, he even inserts his childhood memories to illustrate the tension between the East and the West and reflects his relationship with his brother, Şevket, which is full of jealousy and competition in the characters of
Hoja and his young Italian slave. As Pamuk mentions in his essay that,
Like my Italian hero, I once had a new outfit that my brother got to wear because his was torn to pieces. …On cold winter morning, if our mother bought us something to eat, she would say the same thing as the Master’s mother: “Let’s eat these before anyone sees us.”359
Pamuk’s experience that is mentioned above can also be found in The White
Castle, when he narrates Hoja’s life in Edirne when was twelve years old. After visiting his grandfather in the hospital, “his mother would buy them halva and whisper, ‘Let’s eat it before anyone sees us’.” (TWC, 80) Moreover, Pamuk also tells his childhood memories through the Italian slave that recount an episode from his life in Venice when he was a child. The fireworks display in İstanbul that he prepared reminds him of his first experience watching a fireworks display in
Venice. He was unhappy at that time because “it was not him who was wearing
358 Pamuk, İstanbul, 111. 359 Pamuk, Other Colours, 251. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
146 his new red suit, but his big brother who’d torn his own clothes in a quarrel the previous day”. (TWC, 27)
Göknar mentions that My Name is Red exhibits Pamuk’s autobiographical self-reflexivity.360 In MNR, Pamuk copies the character of her mother, his brother, and he himself into the story. There are some similarities that we can find within the characters in this novel. Enishte’s daughter, Shekure, she has the same name and personality as Pamuk’s mother.
There is some of my mother in Shekure. The way she scolds Şevket in the novel, the way she watches over the brothers are copied from life. This is a strong dominant woman who knows what she is doing. But there the similarity ends.361
In My Name is Red, the characters named Orhan and Şevket also have some similarities to Pamuk’s and his older brother’s. He emphasises this in Other
Colours that,
as in My Name is Red, our father lived far away from us. My mother, my brother, and I lived together. As in the book, we brothers fought. As in the book we would talk of our father’s return. Our mother would give us a hard time when we did. As My Name is Red, she would shout at us when she was angry. But there the similarity ends.362
Orhan and Şevket’s father is a soldier who “failed to return with the rest of the army from warring against the Safavids” (MNR, 49). Those boys will always talk about their father’s return for their still believe that their “father will return from the war” (MNR, 100). Moreover, when the two boys are quarrelling and when
Shekure is angry, she will slap them. (MNR, 153, 155, 227)
Orhan Pamuk tries to mediate and to create the liminal space, to bridge the in-betweenness, as well as to conciliate the oscillation between the East and the
360 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 36. 361 Pamuk, Other Colours, 268. 362 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
147
West by combining and mixing those two traditions, methods, styles, habits, and histories, which he delivers in his tales.363 In My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk narrates that miniature painting itself is a hybrid. It is a mix of various painting methods and techniques from Arabic illustration and Mongol-Chinese painting. In addition, the Ottoman miniaturists also take their inspiration from Persian painting,364 which flourished in the Herat school of Bihzad and continued during the reign of Shah Tahmasp.365
“Nothing is pure,” said Enishte Effendi. “In the realm of book arts…two styles never brought together have come together to create something new and wondrous. We owe Bihzad and the splendour of Persian painting to the meeting of an Arabic illustrating sensibility and Mongol-Chinese painting. Shah Tahmasp’s best paintings marry Persian style with Turkmen subtleties.” (MNR, 176)
From the quotation above, Enishte wants to emphasize that even the miniature painting is not pure; this painting style is hybrid. Kuiper explains further that stylistically, Persian painting is related to Chinese painting whose influence introduced by the Mongols during the Il-Khanid period.366 Moreover, I indicate that after the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman miniature painting had been influenced by the Western style of painting. Can Kerametli also mentions that Ottoman miniature painting style is the result of “the meeting of the Eastern and Western painting school”.367 The secret book is Pamuk’s alternative solution to the endless oscillation whether to embrace Western painting or to preserve the
Islamic illumination. It contains the “two styles never brought together have come
363 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. 364 Pamuk, İstanbul: Memories, 44. 365 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 10. 366 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 196. 367 Kerametli, “Turkish Miniatures in the 16th Century”. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
148 together to create something new and wondrous”. (MNR, 176)
Due to the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and a Venetian painter who was called by Mehmed II, I argue that the miniature painting technique of that period could be the result of the Eastern painting technique that meets the Western style of painting. In the same vein with Dimand that “as a result of contact with
European art, which was greatly admired by Akbar, Mughal painters introduced atmospheric effects and even perspective into their paintings”.368 Therefore, it cannot be denied that before Mongols ruled Persia, Persian painting’s style was similar to the Italian Renaissance painting. In the Mughal School under the
Emperor of Akbar, the Emperor “encourages all his artists to sign their work”
(MNR, 432-433) in addition “a Persian calligrapher was added his name written in the margin in red ink.369
Olive’s great ability as a miniaturist is also hybrid. As one of the workshop’s most brilliant creator, he can wonderfully combine the Persian,
Mongol, and Chinese painting styles. Master Osman emphasizes this that “Herat painting and İstanbul ornamentation happily merged in Olive” (MNR, 279). With his background as a miniaturist who is trained by Persian painting master and his longing to embrace the Western style of painting, Olive tries to overcome his hüzün by combining those two painting traditions. In fact, he still fails in making his self-portrait in order to realize his ambition to create an authentic identity even though he has made an attempt for many times.
368 Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, 249. 369 Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, 250. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
149
Moreover, I argue that the secret book itself is also hybrid. It contains paintings that are a mixture of the Turkish miniature and the Italian Renaissance painting. The book contains Sultan’s portrait that is painted in the Venetian style and the depiction of Death, which is inspired by familiar scenes found in many
Book of Kings370 volumes, is painted in a combination of the two painting styles.
(MNR, 122-123)
Among the pictures that depicted the funeral of the late Sultan Suleyman was one I’d made with bold but sad colours, combining a compositional sensibility inspired by the Franks with my own attempt at shading—which I’d added later. …I reminded him that Death was unique, just like the portraits of infidels I had seen hanging in Venetian palazzo; all of them desperately yearned to be rendered distinctly. (MNR, 123)
The last painting made by Olive is also the evidence that the secret book is a combination of the Ottoman miniature and the Venetian painting. Master Osman also mentions that the book the Sultan has commissioned is a mix of the Western way of seeing and the Eastern way of seeing. It can be seen when he examines the pages on “the painting prepared for Enishte Effendi’s book” (MNR, 272) that are given to the Head Treasurer.
The desire to depict a tree simply such, as a Venetian masters did, was here combined with the Persian way of seeing the world from above, and the result was a miserable painting that was neither Venetian nor Persian. …Attempting to combine two separate styles, my miniaturists…had created a work devoid of any skill whatsoever. (MNR, 272)
However, the hybrid painting style, which is resulted from the imitation of the
Frankish painting, can also create ambivalence towards the miniaturists because it
370 Book of Kings or that is also known as Shah-nameh, consists of Persian painting that is influenced by Chinese painting. Its main importance lies in its being the earliest known illustrative work to depict in a strikingly dramatic fashion the meaning of the Iranian epic. Its battle scenes, its descriptions of fights with monsters, its enthronement scenes are all powerful representations of the colorful and often cruel legend of Iranian kingship. Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 196-197. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
150 stays in and two painting styles that are totally different and contradict. This condition also mirrors the Ottoman Empire as well as Turkey that “struggle to negotiate between competing Eastern and Western Ideology”371 and the predicament of the oscillation between being drawn to Western tradition or to preserve Eastern tradition.
From the explanation above, I find that the Sultan’s secret book, which contains the hybrid style of painting, is similar to Pamuk’s alternative solution towards Turkey’s predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West.
Pamuk suggests that Turkey should embrace the two different cultures, live with the two souls, and create a new tradition that is a hybrid of the Eastern Ottoman tradition and the Western modernity. In My Name is Red, by presenting the secret book, Pamuk tries to mediate the complex problem of the oscillation by harmonizing the two contradict ways of seeing. Additionally, two artists who combine the two different worldviews of painting also solve the predicament of the oscillation. Sinan Beg—an Ottoman artist from Topkapi Palace whose work was inspired by Bellini’s portrait—as well as Şeker Ahmet Pasha drew from both
Eastern and Western traditions that the results of their works were neither a
Venetian Renaissance portrait nor a classic Persian-Ottoman miniature.372
The East-West conflict and the hybrid construction of those two different poles in The White Castle can be seen more on Hoja and his Italian slave’s speech and narration.
371 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 506. 372 Pamuk, Other Colours, 316. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
151
With his phenomenal diligence and quickness of mind, in six months he’d acquired a basic grasp of Italian which he’d improve upon later, read all of my books, and by the time he’d made me repeat to him everything I remembered, there was no longer any way in which I was superior to him. (TWC, 33)
Kantar mentions that the sentence above has a hybrid construction for it describes
“the slave’s ironic characterization of the master, and the master’s scornful attitude towards the slave”.373 The memoir that is written by Hoja and his young
Italian slave is also hybrid. In additional, the writing of memoir “Why am I what I am” has caused blurring identities between Hoja and his slave. The slave also emphasises by saying that,
More important, I felt as if his sufferings and defeats were my own. ...The person I once had been had left me and was gone, and the I that was now dozing in a corner jealousy desired him, as if in him I could recover the enthusiasm I had lost. (TWC, 107)
Their close relationship, their scientific project—a firework display, a model of a universe, a clock, and the giant weapon—their lives together, and their exchange of identities—which show the Self’s desire for the Other—have erased the binary opposition between Hoja and the Italian slave. Now, Hoja is like his Italian slave
(83). Their resemblance is even more horrible (TWC, 84) and the two of them were actually one person (TWC, 82).
After Hoja goes to Venice and the Italian slave takes his place as the
“imperial astrologer, get married, and have four children” (TWC, 147), it seems that Hoja himself that speak through the slave.
For the sake of my readers in that terrible world to come, I did all I could to make both myself and Him, whom I could not separate from myself, come alive in the story. (TWC, 55)
373 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 129. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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The way the Italian slave tells his story to the visitor who comes to his house shows that “the Westerner is no longer talking through an Easterner’s point of view, but we have the voice of Hoja himself talking through his slave.”374 In other words, the Italian slave, now, becomes hybrid by appropriating and living in
Hoja’s character. Pamuk himself mentioning that in the last chapter of The White
Castle, he is not able to differentiate whether it is Hoja or the Italian slave who narrates the story by stating that “I am still not sure if it was the Italian slave or the Ottoman master who wrote the manuscript of The White Castle.”375
Bhabha underlines that, essentially, hybridity shows that the culture is the result of the interaction between nations, groups, or ethnics of a nation or between nations. In MNR, the meeting of the two different painting traditions, the Islamic miniature and the Italian Renaissance painting, has led to the East’s admiration towards the West. The enchantment of Western tradition has created the in- betweenness and the oscillation that are experienced by the miniaturists between preserving the Islamic miniature painting and imitating the Venetian masters. This tension also leads the miniaturists to mix those two styles as the solution that they take in the third space. However, hybridity can lead to ambivalence because it lives and embraces two things that are contradicted. Additionally, by extolling
Western superiority, the East has made a myth that Europe is superior to the East.
374 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 133. 375 Pamuk, Other Colours, 250. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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4. Theoretical Observation
This chapter illustrates Pamuk’s solutions to the problem on the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West that are offered by his two selected works through the enchantment and appropriation of Frankish painting and Western science and technology. Through his oeuvre, Pamuk wants to mediate and break down the binary opposition of the East and the West, of Self and Other, of master and slave, and of miniature and portrait that is always problematized. Said, in Orientalism, mentions that the binary opposition that separates the East and the West is a political doctrine for dominating, having authority, and maintaining power over the Orient.376 The Kemalists and the ruling elites take advantage of this binary to self-orientalised it country and promote the stereotype that Turkey is weaker and inferior than the West and launch their
Westernization agenda. As Turkey’s “deepest and most recurring images of the
Other”, 377 the West has been imagined and believed as the only solution that can save and develop the country from the destruction. When the Empire collapsed, the elites assume that Turkey “requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption for it has been isolated from European progress in the sciences, arts, and commerce.378
In this chapter, I stress that hybridity is Pamuk’s alternative solution to the predicament of Turkey’s oscillation in its modern identity formation. He uses hybridity through presenting hüzün, the very essence of melancholy,379 as a way
376 Said, Orientalism, 3. 377 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. 378 Said, Orientalism, 6. 379 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
154 to overcome the deep spiritual loss of the Islamic Ottoman tradition and of the erasure of the Islamic miniature painting. Hüzün also leads Turkish people to the answer of their sadness and relieve the ache that can save their souls. Pamuk even suggests to combine the two cultures in revealing the feeling of melancholy rather than living in one of those cultures or only slavishly imitating Western culture therefore a new hybrid culture can be invented.380
Through his position that is not taking sides, his critique to the representatives of the secularists and the conservatives, as well as his hybrid background as a writer, Pamuk wants to emphasize that embracing two spirits
(culture) is not a big sin. In addition, he also criticises the Westernists who want to simplify the complex cosmopolitanism in Turkey by conducting modernization project that force the Turks to slavishly imitating the West and leave the old
Ottoman tradition. This modernization project, moreover, has left a deep scar and confusion in Turkish society who becomes the victim of this movement. Bruno
Latour emphasizes the argument above by saying that modernization “destroys the near-totality of cultures and native by force and bloodshed”381. However, the
Ottoman illuminators cannot avoid this because sooner or later the old Ottoman tradition will be lost for it is simply that Western culture is more attractive than the Islamic Ottoman culture.
In this chapter, Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism illuminates
Pamuk’s solutions towards the East-West dichotomy in his two selected novels.
380 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370. 381 Bruno Latour, We have never been Modern translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 130. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Pamuk, as I have mentioned in chapter III, offers the third space and chooses to mix the East and the West traditions as his alternative solution of the predicament of the oscillation in My Name is Red and The White Castle. In this third space, the
East negotiates the binary opposition of the cultural differences. As Bhabha says that the third space is a place where the exchange of identity and mimicry that results hybrid takes place. Pamuk proposes the liminal space to negotiate the everlasting predicament of the binary between the East and the West. He offers the third space and chooses to combine the East and the West as an alternative solution of this predicament.
For Pamuk, this liminal space is an individual’s private place in his identity formation processes that should not be disturbed by certain groups or sides. Pamuk not only proposes the liminal space to his readers as a place where the East and the West meet, moreover, he also symbolizes his works as the
Bosphorous Bridge, which connects the Eastern and Western side of İstanbul.
Instead of giving clear solutions to the dichotomy and the oscillation of the East and the West in his selected works, Pamuk displays a tragedy that is experienced by both of the representatives. Pamuk clearly depicted the characters that overly bound to the East and to the West experience tragedy and death in their life. He wants to show how dangerous it will be to be totally East or West for it will only left Turkey with a single spirit, which is worse than having the sickness.382
He also criticizes the Westernists and anti-Westernists that demand Turkey to be totally East or totally West. Essentially, the binary opposition between the
382 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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East and the West is created by the elites that self-orientalised their people by constructing a myth that West is superior and the East is inferior. The Turks self- orientalism that leads to the abrupt civilization project by the elite Westernists also left a deep wound to the loss of the grand Ottoman Empire. In addition, the binary opposition, self-orientalism, and the complex desire to imitate the Other in
Said’s discourse on the Orientalism that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters in his selected works can be solved by living in and mixing the two different cultures to produce hybrid culture. In The White Castle, Pamuk presents Turkey’s split identity through Hoja and his Italian slave whose identities are constantly blurred and their characters also blend as one in the end of the novel. Moreover, Pamuk also presents the Sultan’s commissioned Orient book, which contains Western style of painting, as a room to mediate the predicament of the Orient and Occident different way of seeing.
Additionally, Bhabha also emphasize that the East-West tension can be resolved by providing the liminal space as a way to mediate, combine, and mix the two contrast “colours”. By imitating the Other, the East tries to rewrite the new identity above the earlier identity and resulted hybrid culture.383 However,
Bhabha also warns that sometimes hybridity and hybrid culture can drive people to a new crisis and ambivalence because people live in two different traditions.
Moreover, Bhabha’s idea on hybridity has important consequences for minority or
Eastern cultures have a possibility to be ignored, assimilated, and erased.384 While
Pamuk, he has different argument from Bhabha, by stressing that hybridity, which
383 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120. 384 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 99. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
157 is resulted in the liminal space is not that dangerous however it enriches the Turks and Pamuk’s characters identity in his oeuvre. Pamuk also mentions that what is more dangerous is that becoming totally East or totally West because it can destroy and kill each other. Therefore, Pamuk proposes to embrace Western modernity without leaving the Islamic Ottoman roots.
Here, Pamuk and Bhabha have the same agenda in challenging the ideas of being modern, which is always interrelated to the adoption of Western cultures and traditions that also brings melancholy. Pamuk challenges Turkey’s modernization that is inspired by French Revolution and raises the spirit of nationalism and purification, which agenda is the erasure of multiculturalism.385
This abrupt Westernization is a self-colonialism of identity by Turkey’s Western elites that desires the uniformity and rejects multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity, multi-lingualism, and cosmopolitanism386 that leads to the authoritarian and dictatorship. Pamuk’s selected works are reflection of his own hybrid life. His hybrid background, as a man who comes from a secular family but highly appreciates the Ottoman tradition, also influences him to reconcile the two different cultures and traditions that are beautifully captured in his selected stories.
385 Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6, 148-150. 386 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION
1. Achievement and Significance
This thesis is conducted to uncover the East-West dichotomy that is mostly presented in Pamuk’s works as well as to reveal how modernity that is represented by Western art, culture, science, and technology challenges Turkey’s tradition, culture, art, and identity. This dichotomy results from the fact that modernity— that is represented by the West—has become a threat as well as seduction since the Ottoman Empire. Turkey’s desire to Westernize itself and its dilemma of whether to preserve their old Ottoman tradition or to totally embrace modernity have been stunningly captured by Orhan Pamuk in his two novels, My Name is
Red and The White Castle. These two novels mainly concern with the oscillation around the two traditions, between the miniature painting and the Italian
Renaissance painting (MNR) and also astrology and the illogical interpretation of dreams and stars as well as science and technology (TWC).
Pamuk highlights the endless oscillation in his two selected works by presenting the internal struggle experienced by the characters whether to leave the old Ottoman tradition or to embrace the modern Western tradition. As a writer,
Pamuk does not choose nor judge one of the sides explicitly but highly appreciates the process of an individual to find his identity without any claims that can distract him from his identity formation process. His denial to choose one of the sides has delivered books, which are mix the Eastern and Western method, styles, habits, and histories; a combination of two opposing traditions that produce
158 PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
159 a hybrid in his works.387 The Nobel Prize winner wants to illustrate the processes on searching for identity of the Turk, which is not the contemporary issue since the Ottoman Empire in his works.388
In revealing Pamuk’s stories, which mostly deal with the issues concerning with the negotiation and the complexity of the oscillation between the East and the West and the identity crisis, I propose two questions. First, how is the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to imitate the
Other depicted in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle and how do the theories of Said and Bhabha help this discourse? Second, what are the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West?
There are two theories that I have used to answer the formulated questions namely, the discourse on the Orientalism by Edward Said and the discourse on
Postcolonialism by Homi K. Bhabha. Those two discourses are used to dismantle the oscillation of the East and the West as well as the Self’s complex desire to imitate Other. However, this is not an ordinary Orientalism and Postcolonialism for Turkey’s condition is different to India that was colonialized by the United
Kingdom. Actually, it was the Ottoman that defeated some parts of European region and how the East imagines the Other (the West) as its rival or cultural contestant is more tended to Occidentalism. Additionally, I also use other information related to Pamuk’s selected tales such as history, art, and socio-
387 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. 388 Afridi & Byuze, Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk, 5. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
160 culture that is linked to the actual events in Turkey in unity with the discussion in the novel.
This thesis has shown that Pamuk, in his two selected oeuvre, outlines the complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West by presenting Turkey’s cosmopolitanism, the enchantment and appropriation of Western art and science, the maintenance of Eastern aspects, and furthermore, the Turks’ personal search for identity as individual. The old buildings “left by Turks, Armenians, Kurds,
Jews, and several other ethnic and religious communities”389 as well as other hybrid constructions show cosmopolitanism and harmonious relation between various cultures, religions, and ethnics in İstanbul. The encounter of the Ottoman
Empire and the West has created a desire to appropriate Western art, culture, and technology that are seductive. However, Pamuk also shows that the Other (the
West) is not only present as a seduction towards the Turks but also as a threat to their tradition. This threat, in addition, has encouraged Master Osman, Nusret
Hoja and his follower, as well as Olive to take action to preserve their traditions.
Furthermore, the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the
West and being drawn to its own tradition that Turkish society is undergoing has led to the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters and also the
Ottoman Sultans.
This thesis has proven that as a novelist, Pamuk clearly shows his impartiality neither to the East nor to the West. Otherwise, he chooses to be a bridge that connects the East and the West just like the Bosphorus Bridge that
389 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 224. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
161 bonds the Asian and European sides of İstanbul. In his oeuvre, Pamuk does not give any clear solution to the problem faced by the characters in dealing with the complexity of the oscillation between the two traditions. However, he presents a tragedy, death, and irony that are experienced by the representations of the two traditions, which can give an illustration to the readers who are still in their identity formation process.
Pamuk wants to criticise the Eastern and Western side, the Ottoman and
Western tradition, as well as the conservatives and secularists through his masterpieces. He expects that Turkey should not have only one soul that of the
East or the West. In his collected essays, Other Colours, he stresses that Turkey should invent a strong local culture that is a combination of the Eastern and
Western traditions.390 Additionally, through his novels, which are the mixing of the two traditions, styles, and histories, Pamuk also tries to create the liminal space and to mediate the predicament of the oscillation between the East and the
West as well as to bridge the in-betweenness. The Sultan’s commissioned book is
Pamuk’s alternative solution that he offers towards Turkey’s predicament of the oscillation. Pamuk tries to mediate the complex oscillation as well as release hüzün felt by the ottoman miniaturists by harmonizing the two contradict ways of seeing in the hybrid book.
Through Pamuk’s works, the readers are invited to appreciate, respect, and maintain the diversity of cultures, traditions, and religions around them that, nowadays, it seems difficult to be realized. My Name is Red and The White Castle
390 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
162 have all aspects, which can sharpen the readers’ awareness on the enchantment of modernity that challenge the multiculturalism or even disrupt their culture and traditions as well as lead to the identity crisis. The declaration of the Islamic State
(ISIS) and the various fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, that has created terror and also tries to change the ideology of Pancasila, are some examples that can endanger those diversities.
The condition in the Middle East cannot be separated from the effect on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. After the First World War, victorious
Allies occupied İstanbul and the British took control. Under the Treaty of Sѐvres in 1920, the Allies carved up the Middle East between them, assigning a small, rump state to the Turks in the north-west Anatolia, with İstanbul under Allied control and the Straits turned into a consortium-controlled waterway.391
Moreover, Dewabrata also mentions that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire had triggered the uprising of the Arab countries, which were under the imperium. It also caused the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Moreover, British and French also play an important role in altering the map of power in Middle East.392 The changes on the map of power in Middle East have raised new problems that are faced by the ex-Ottoman Empire region such as
Syria and Persia, now Iran.
Trias Kuncahyono mentions that on Sunday, June 29, 2014, ISIS (The
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) declared a new Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and
Syria. Its region stretches from the eastern edge of Aleppo, Syria to Diyala
391 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 5. 392 Dewabrata, “Konflik Paling Mematikan”, 5. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
163 province in the border of Iraq and Iran. This declaration also realises the dream of the Islamic fundamentalist group who yearns for the raise of the Islamic Caliphate state.393 ISIS’s actions to maintain the Sharia or Islamic laws reminds me with the extremist group in My Name is Red, Nusret Hoja and his followers, that also try to maintain and protect the path of Exalted Muhammad. Both Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Nusret Hoja have an agenda to erase the cosmopolitanism, which adorn the face of Mosul and İstanbul city. Just like İstanbul, Mosul, once home to diverse faiths but after Mosul was taken by ISIS many have fled and leaving perhaps only
200 in the city.394
ISIS not only warns women in Mosul to wear full-face veil, as an act to prevent them from falling into vulgarity,395 and issues an ultimatum to Christian population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy, or face death396 but also blows up Jonah’s tomb,397 another place of worship, and also Ka’bah because these places are claimed as places for apostasy.398 Similarly, Nusret Hoja’s followers also raid the Coffee house, attack the miniaturists, and kill the storyteller.
393 Trias Kuncahyono, “NIIS dan Masa Depan Negara Bangsa”, Kompas, 6 Juli 2014, 5. 394 ------, “Convert, Pay Tax, or Die, Islamic State Warns Christians”, 18 July 2014, 31 July 2014
164
Indonesia also experiences the problem on purification from certain groups that want to simplify Indonesia’s multiculturalism and diversity that are complex.
On the pretext for defending Islam and solidarity among Muslims, many
Indonesian have declared to join ISIS. ISIS, which is claimed as “the world’s most dangerous jihadist group,”399 is not only dangerous for both Middle Eastern countries but also for Indonesia. ISIS despises both the Shia and the Sunni—who are opposed to their ideology. Moreover, its ideology, which is contrary to the ideology of Pancasila, can threaten the unitary of Indonesia, and pluralism. Along with the explanation above, Kuncahyono, in “Radikalisme: Sebuah Petaka”, highlights that ISIS is nothing but a threat for Indonesia, the state of Pancasila, which highly respects pluralism, promotes the values of tolerance, and maintains the human values.400
However, things above are contrary to the condition of the Ottoman
Caliphate that had been survived for more than 500 years. In the past, both the
Ottoman Empire and Majapahit—the greatest kingdom in Indonesia—had once reached their heyday. However, religious tolerance as well as ethnic and culture diversity had flourished under the Ottoman and Majapahit. Moreover, as I have explained in Chapter III that since the Buyids era the relationship between
Muslim, Christian, and Jew were very close and this cosmopolitanism was also well maintained.401
399 ------, “Profile: Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)”, 16 June 2014, 31 July 2014
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Pamuk, once again, reminds the readers that through his works they are invited to maintain the diversity of cultures, traditions, and religions around them.
Moreover, he also asks them to give more attention to the problem on the identity crisis that is not only experienced by the East but also by the West. Western identity concept is now shifting and changing. Western that is said to give humanity and human rights in their highest place, in reality, they also torture, persecute their minorities, and abuse human rights.402 In addition, Western’s modernity, moreover, which was adopted by Turkey that was dazzled by the superiority of the West by applying secularism in its system, now seems unsteady.
As their deepest image and rival, the West also dazzled to imitate and become the
East by becoming one of ISIS militant. Nowadays, many young Westerners from
Australia, the United States, as well as Germany become the member of the
Islamic State and fight in Syria. This shows that Western also experience an ambivalence and identity crisis. Therefore, identity searching is a mystery and it will not end as long as people live. As Bhabha also highlights that identity formation processes are the result of the cultural engagement and it will always be negotiated.403
In the field of literature, this study functions as a path that can lead the other Indonesian writers and researchers to explore other aspects in Pamuk’s works, as well as those who want to compare Pamuk’s and Indonesian authors’.
This thesis also hopes to bring new and different insights and perspectives in analysing and studying Pamuk’s literary works. Moreover, in the field of
402 Pamuk, Other Colours, 215-216. 403 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
166 education, the understanding of Pamuk’s project in mediating the East and the
West can be a relevant base to teach Indonesian students. Since my background is from English Education and as an English teacher, My Name is Red and The
White Castle can be used as teaching material for I believe that Pamuk’s works can increase and develop students’ tolerance towards various religions, cultures, traditions, and tribes in Indonesia. Since Indonesia has a project on building national character and this thesis also focus on the East-West oscillation that related to the identity formation, I argue that understanding the concept on hybridity and Turkey’s problem related to the identity crisis, MNR and TWC can give insight and lesson to the Indonesian students to keep holding on their identity but still embrace and filter Western culture.
2. Relevance
As I have explained in chapter I, Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White
Castle are used in this study with the hope to raise the Indonesian reader’s awareness regarding to the identity degradation as a result of the encounter between the East and the West tradition or any radical ideology that can endanger the unity of our nation. In this post-modern era, the extremists from the radical groups that want to change the ideology of our country increasingly pressure
Indonesia’s multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Those groups are Jamaah
Islamiyah that is said as a jihad terror group that is led by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir,
Islamic State of Indonesia (NII), and ISIS. What is most widely reported today is an Indonesian ISIS militant who challenges Indonesian Armed Forces Chief PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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General Moeldoko, National Police Chief General Sutarman, Banser, as well as
Densus 88 to fight ISIS in Syria.404 The Islamic State plans to invade and bring
Indonesia back to the right track, which is back to the Islamic Caliphate.
In relation to the topic of this thesis—which focuses on the ambivalence to emulate Western tradition—I claim that through My Name is Red and The White
Castle, Pamuk asks his readers to respect the multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism around them. In addition, he also invites the readers to deconstruct the post-modern movement, which is purification performed by the fundamentalists as well as the nationalists who want to simplify the complexity of the multiculturalism in Turkey. Moreover, this movement is also happened in
Indonesia done by certain religious radical group that intends to transform
Indonesia into an Islamic country. As a nation with various cultures, traditions, arts, and religions, Indonesia now facing a problem on the purification performed by the extremist and the fundamentalist group. Both Turkey and Indonesia have a similarity related to the massacre happened in the past on the violence that was committed by the State. In migration during the First World War, millions of
Kurdish and Armenians were killed in the nationalization project conducted by
Ataturk. While in 1965, chaos broke out in Indonesia and the Indonesia’s
Communist party was blamed. It was the biggest massacre and ethnic cleansing happened in Indonesia’s history. Under the leadership of Soeharto, hundreds of thousands of people who were indicated had any relation with the Communist
404 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j17dKYzwEQ PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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Party (PKI) were kidnapped, killed, and exiled in Buru Island, especially those who were Chinese.
After colonialism in Indonesia ended, it also experienced a self- colonization, which was conducted by the military elite under the command of
General Soeharto as their brutal project to wipe communism out in Indonesia. As the group that was indicated responsible to the big chaos in 1965, the new leader who took over the power create a new colonialism and forced labour to their own people that was more vicious than the Dutch and Japanese colonizers. Those issues are closely related to Pamuk’s theme in My name is Red and The White
Castle that are discussed in this thesis. Pamuk’s works, which are approached by the discourse on the Orientalism and Postcolonialism are beneficial for the
Indonesian readers for those works can show them how to understand their identity as person and as part of a nation. Both Pamuk and Bhabha have similar idea on the concept on hybridity that everything is hybrid, people are all hybrid, whether it is from our name or language. In his selected works, Pamuk reminds us that “nothing is pure” (MNR, 176) in this world that is in the same vein with what
Bhabha emphasizes that hybridity, principally, shows that the culture of a nation is the result of the interaction between nations, groups, or ethnics of a nation.405
Colonialism in Indonesia have given birth to the great writer such as
Pramoedya Ananta Toer—a writer who is well known for his Buru Quartet—as well as a great leader like our first President, Soekarno, who called for national unity to fight against the colonizer. Through the character of Minke in his
405 See Bhabha, Location of Culture. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
169 tetralogy, Pram encourages the Indonesian people to develop their nationalism to fight against the Dutch colonizer. Pram, as what Pramoedya usually called, always interrogates the problems on hybridity, nationalism, as well as national identity in his works. Pram’s works, which always take side to the Indonesian people, makes him considered leftist and oppose to the New Order so that he had to imprison until the end of Soeharto regime. However, story telling and writing were his powerful escape and power that gave him strength to get through his difficult time in Buru Island. Both Pamuk and Pram’s works discuss and deconstruct the issue on the identity formation as well as a criticism to the ruling leader of their countries. Through his brilliant works, Pamuk wants to deliver a message to his readers that being a schizophrenic406 by embracing two identities is acceptable.
Moreover, embracing Western tradition without leaving our national identity and local culture is not a big sin. He also invites the readers not to leave and forget the past but keep remind it and keep it as well as use it as a lesson so that they can realize a better nation. In addition, he uses the Ottoman history to look at and criticise the future.407
Yet, I realise that this study still needs further corrections and improvements. Therefore, I have suggestions about the aspects that can be explored more in Pamuk’s works, such as investigating women’s role, struggle, and position in the Islamic world in the characters of Shekure, Enishte Effendi
406 In Turkey’s case, having two spirits, embracing the East and West together, belonging to two different cultures, and having two souls should be celebrated. Pamuk tries to give positive meaning to “schizophrenia”. He stresses that insisting to have one spirit is more dangerous than the “schizophrenia” itself and Turkey should celebrate for having this “sickness”. Pamuk, Other Colours, 369. 407 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
170 daughter, as well as Esther, a Jew “İstanbul’s premier peddler of fine cloth”
(MNR, 37). In Islamic cultures, women have limited space and access in their society and their position is also lower than men. However, Shekure and Esther have important roles in MNR in helping Black to reveal the murderer’s of the palace miniaturists. In addition, the identity formation can also be an interesting topic to discuss further using Sufism. This theory can also be used to analyse the identity formation in those two novels for in Sufism perspective identity formation is the key point in its teaching. Moreover, symbolism in Sufism of the deep longing to be close to the transcendence can be a framework in Turkey’s identity formation process that multilayered. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
171
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APPENDIX PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
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The Summary of Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvre
Göknar concludes that Pamuk’s works contain a representation of unstable identity within Ottoman or Turkish historical context. Pamuk’s oeuvre, My Name is Red and The White Castle, focus on the area of Ottoman history in a European context.408 In his novels, Pamuk always complicates the binary opposition and the oscillation between self and other. Pamuk’s third novel, The White Castle, complicates the oscillation between master and slave while his masterpiece, My
Name is Red, emerges the relation between miniature and portrait. Additionally,
Pamuk also delineates how the Other, in My Name is Red and The White Castle, is thus always present, not only as a threat but also as a seduction.
My Name is Red
My Name is Red is set in the late of 16th century in İstanbul, Turkey, under the reign of Sultan Murat III (1574-1595). Each chapter of the novel has a different narrator and some of them are unique characters, such as dog, gold coin, tree, death, or Satan. Its focus is not only the tradition of miniature painting during the Ottoman period in the late 16th century in İstanbul, but also the tradition of the
Italian Renaissance painting. It tells of two murders; one of Elegant Effendi, one of the finest Ottoman miniaturists, and the other of Enishte Effendi, a master miniaturist and Sultan’s ambassador who is commissioned by Sultan Himself to produce a secret book by his four finest artists. Black, who newly returns to
İstanbul from Persia, is recalled by his uncle, Enishte Effendi, to help him finished
408 Erdağ Göknar, “Orhan Pamuk and the ‘Ottoman’ Theme”, World Literature Today 80, 6 (2006): 34. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
179 the secret book’s illustration and to solve the case of the miniaturist’s murder.
Black’s uncle is in charge of the creation of the secret book for the Sultan in the style of Venetian painters. The book, which is secretly instructed to adopt the
Italian Renaissance, is used to impress the Western to prolong Sultan’s dynasty as well as to celebrate a thousand anniversary of Islam.
In the tradition of miniature painting, images are not seen as things in themselves but they are treated as the extension of the text rather than an independent art.409 The miniaturists challenge the Islamic prohibition against representation of the realistic objects410 by choosing to change their style because
Western way of seeing and painting is more attractive.411 The central issue of this novel is not only on the East-West questions. It is the arduous work of the miniaturist; the artist’s suffering and his complete dedication to his work.412 My
Name is Red is about the fear of being forgotten, the fear of art being lost.413 In the end, the conflict between the method of the Islamic painting and the Frankish
Masters that pave the way for quarrels among artists and endless predicaments is never resolved. Nowadays, painting is abandoned and artists paint neither like
Easterners nor Westerners. (MNR, 442-443)
The White Castle
The White Castle is a work of historical and philosophical fiction and narrated from the first-person point of view. The story sets in the 17th century—
409 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1. 410 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270. 411 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. 412 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264. 413 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269. PLAGIATPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TIDAK TERPUJI TERPUJI
180 under the reign of Sultan Ahmed I—on a voyage from Venice to Naples when a misfortune twenty-two-year-old Italian scholar is taken prisoner by Turkish pirates. He is brought to İstanbul and then imprisoned. Later, he becomes the slave of Hoja who has amazing similarities with him. Both Hoja and the Venetian slave share an uncanny resemblance to each other414. Hoja is not only the
Venetian master but also his pupil for he also asks his slave to teach him everything he had learnt in his country (TWC, 32). He is a character who wants to learn everything about the West, especially its science and technology. He learns science and technology from his young slave because he tries to lure the Turkish
Sultan who has little interest in science.
Despite the fact that Hoja had learnt astronomy and science, he still needs the Italian slave to teach him everything the slave had learnt, such as astronomy, medicine, and engineering. Hoja’s relationship with his Italian slave allows him to live in Venice after his war machine lost in the battle for he really wants to correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever land occurred to him at that moment. (TWC, 121) Pamuk adds that, impersonation is The White
Castle’s theme that is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when cope with
Western culture.415 This can be seen on Hoja’s jealousy toward his Italian slave who has an interesting life in Venice.
414 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88. 415 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368.