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Imagination, as an analytical angle, deserves our attention as a political and social force that informs and connects masses, crosses borders, and manifests new socialities. The podcast series will host influential scholars, intellectuals, and artists who study and shape the imagination of Turkey on a global scale from various critical directions. The topics in the following months will include discussions on democracy in Turkey, the politics of religious differences at the border, and the limits of ethnographic research methods. 'Imagining Turkey' is co-hosted by the project PI Dr. Sertaç Sehlikoglu (UCL), M. Zișan Köker (LUC), and Hazal Aydın (BU). This series is sponsored by the European Research Council, and hosted in collaboration with the UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity and the Middle East Centre.
E11 Imagining Turkey with Maureen Freely
Sertaç: [00:00:00] Welcome to the eleventh episode of Imagining Turkey. Your hosts today are myself, Sertaç Sehlikoglu from the University College London, and Meryem Zişan Köker from Loyola University Chicago. On this episode of Imagining Turkey, we are very excited to welcome Maureen Freely. Maureen Freely is a novelist, journalist, and translator whose work has long engaged with Turkey, literature, and freedom of expression.
Sertaç: She is the author of several novels, including Sailing through Byzantium and Another Life of the Party, and is widely known for translating the work of Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk into English. Having spent part of her life in Istanbul, her writing reflects a deep, lived engagement with the city and with Turkey more broadly.
Sertaç: Alo- alongside her writing and translation, she has worked as a journalist, focusing on [00:01:00] literature, social justice, and human rights, and has held leadership roles at English PEN, advocating for writers worldwide. She teaches at the University of Warwick as a professor. Maureen Freely, welcome. Thank you so much for being with us.
Maureen: It's lovely to be with you.
Sertaç: Thank you. Um, so you have played many different roles in opening Turkey to an Anglophone world as an author, journalist, and translator. Um, and through your work, you've brought wide spectrum of Turkish literature to English-speaking readers, including, uh, as mentioned, authors like Orhan Pamuk, but also Sabahattin Ali, Tanpınar, among many others.
Sertaç: And meeting you and hosting you in the series is such a privilege, also because you have been such an inspiration to me personally for such a long time. So I'd like to use this conversation as an opportunity to address a craving question I've been having [00:02:00] for, I think, over a decade. Um, what does novel have that ethnography doesn't, helping people understand another?
Sertaç: And I needed to ask this as an anthropologist, see?
Maureen: I should begin by saying, um, that, uh, my late husband was a politically economist and that, you know, with a degree in sociology, obviously. And so whenever I'd say to him, you know, ask a question that was, was sort of feeding into my fiction, you know, "Why are people doing this?"
Maureen: Or, "Why does this country do that?" Or whatever, he would say, "Oh, there was a very interesting study about that in 1963. I'll find it for you." So I would say that, uh, as a novelist, I would be nothing without social research, nothing without history, nothing without ethnography. I'm really lucky to be based in a university, uh, in a writing program that is kind to [00:03:00] us and opens up doors so I can, um, uh, be- have very wonderful conversations with my colleagues who are, uh, serious scholars, as you, as you say.
Maureen: Uh, a- and as some of them who have gone from, uh, the, um, from the, you know, the traditional disciplines into writing would say, I would say the same thing. It's, you go into fiction to explore the questions beyond those that your discipline will allow you to ask or frame, let alone answer. So it's all about the imagination.
Maureen: And, and the imagination, uh, for me, is where I live. But I do see it, particularly with regard to, um, Turkey, I see it as I am standing on the edge of a cliff, uh, and, uh, standing on ground I know or think I know, although in Turkey there's always something, [00:04:00] um, on the ground beneath our feet that is something you don't know because of the- The point exactly
Sertaç: the
Maureen: holes in history and the erased histories. But, uh, my imagination was, is what makes me want to know more. And, uh, it has been, uh, first and foremost through translation that I have learned more.
Sertaç: Mm-hmm. Interesting and the and do you feel when do you read ethnographies yourself?
Maureen: Uh, I, I do in sort of a magpie fashion.
Maureen: In that way, I'm a little bit like my father, who, you know, was trained as a physics, but fell-- physicist, but then fell in love with Istanbul and then just read everything he could find, everything he could find. And, um, and so that was the atmosphere I grew up in. And yeah, so I read, uh, I s- over the past twenty years, I've, um, been reading an awful lot about the, the last years of the Ottoman Empire, the [00:05:00] first, uh, the occupation years, which they didn't even tell us about when I was a child in Istanbul.
Maureen: Uh, not us. Uh, and, and the, the, the years of the, of the early republic, and I've been really interested to, um, read different versions of those histories, because if you read the, um, uh, the Turkish version, it's one thing. If you read the, the, you know, the Greek version, it's another. If you read, uh, the Armenian version, it's another one, and they, and they all ignore each other.
Maureen: Mm-hmm. Um, so, um, what that has done for me in the novels I've been writing that take place during that, that, uh, that period is to look at the gaps and, and imagine what could be in the gaps. Mm-hmm. Uh, I have read so much, uh, in recent years, um, in whatever discipline it turns up in, um, on the, the occupation, uh, years of, uh, [00:06:00] Istanbul, and that starts out of anger because I'm thinking that how dare my, you know, my Robert College friends leave that out of it when Robert College was actually right at the center of the, of, of the story.
Maureen: And, uh, so, um, at the moment I'm, I'm reading, um, Kemal Tahir, who wrote a whole, uh, uh, trilogy about the, the city during the occupation years from a t-totally different perspective than the ones-
Sertaç: Mm ...
Maureen: um, that I read by, uh, European, uh, memoirs or scholars.
Sertaç: Mm-hmm. But you're right. Yeah, the kind of... There are so many good work that is blurring the boundaries between novel- Yeah
Sertaç: and ethnography. I think I can see- Yeah ... your, your point. Yeah. And that's, I mean- I- Yes, sorry.
Maureen: I would say, um, for me as a novelist, um, uh, having been well-trained by the political economists , it's very important for me to, um, hold onto the word fiction. I am just imagining it. Um, and, um, [00:07:00] yes, I'm building on what I, I know, but it is fiction.
Maureen: What I am offering is, it's a- Mm ... um, a what if, uh, what might, uh, how might people feel in these situations. In the novel that I've recently finished but not published yet, that takes place during the War of Independence, um, with a lot of missionaries and relief workers running all over A- Anatolia not knowing what the, what, what, what they're walking into, the interesting question for me was, what is going on at the same time?
Maureen: You know, in, in, uh, 1920, in, in October 1920, where are the wars going on? 'Cause there are several. Um, where are different, um, um, you know, d-different groups, um, uh, situated? Uh, why is it that the, uh, quite large network of, um- Uh, Christian, American, French, British, but mostly American, uh, schools and hospitals that [00:08:00] were, um, uh, working, you know, operative at that time.
Maureen: Why was there no communication between them and the, and, and the Turkish orphanages? Uh, they were all sometime- they were sometimes in the same cities, but it's, y- you, you know, you can't get an account, um, that puts them into the same picture. So it's a great opportunity to imagine what it might have been like and why they weren't talking to each other.
Maureen: Mm. Does that make sense?
Sertaç: Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah.
Meryem Zişan: And at this point, I want to ask my own burning question, if that's okay. Yeah. Um, I think it's, um, connected to your answer as well. Um, like, over many years, um, you have translated and engaged numerous authors and their versions of Istanbul and Turkey, and you wrote your own versions of Istanbul and Turkey.
Meryem Zişan: Um, but when you navigate such diverse voices, how does your shared memory of growing up in [00:09:00] Istanbul act as a kind of compass? Like, do you feel that each, um, each of these authors represents a different, um, fragment of an imagined Istanbul, and one that you also in some way belong to?
Maureen: Yeah, I'd say first of all that translation for me has been an education.
Maureen: It's how I learn. It's how I learn. And it's also when I'm inside a translation, not after, not afterwards, but inside. I am no longer a foreigner. I'm no longer having to negotiate my, my given identity. And I'm welcome in places like Orhan Paşa's sitting room where I would not be welcome in person. Yeah. So, so there's, there's that.
Maureen: I should say a little bit about [00:10:00] how I grew up and how I came to know Turkish. I mean, I was eight years old when we moved to Istanbul, and my father made very good friends with the, the very interesting people downtown who were very kind to him. So we, you know, we were in and out of all these houses.
Maureen: People some of them I went on to translate, but I didn't know I would at the time. They were just people at parties who were nice to children. Yeah. I was learning French at school. We would go to Greece in the summer, so I learned Greek next from my, my playmates, you know, the girls who were playing around the platia.
Maureen: And it was hard for me to learn Turkish because nobody would teach it to me. And at Robert College, you know, what is now Boğaziçi, my friend and I would go into the canteen where the students were so lovely to us. They would buy us chocolate umbrellas. They would buy us peynir tost. They would sit us down and, and speak to [00:11:00] us a lot, but in English, because they were studying in English, and then they would talk to each other in Turkish, and I would try to understand what they were saying, and I couldn't.
Maureen: You know, although I thought I was good at languages from the other languages I had learned quite easily. I could never figure out where a word began and a word ended. And of course, I know that I know by now, but I just couldn't. And, and so it was this learning the, the, the subtext of language, first of all, the way that a child would.
Maureen: I could tell when people were telling the truth. I could tell when they were being polite. I could tell when they were upset. Everything from the tone of voice. And, and then the surface meanings came back. That is one of the things that, that That stays with me the whole time I'm translating, you know, the sound of the language.
Maureen: Uh, whenever I talk about translation, I'll [00:12:00] be touching my, uh, my ear. How it sounds, how it makes me feel. Yeah? And, um, that is a help when we come to the difficult, uh, questions of taking a non-Western language into a Western language. Yeah? The other thing that became much more, um, of a issue for me when I became a teenager and actually started, um, um, having more of a chance to learn Turkish because I was at, by then, at the American College for Girls in Arnavutköy, the, the, the, the, the site of the, the current Robert College.
Maureen: And, um, we weren't allowed to speak Turkish, uh, on campus. Therefore, whenever the teacher left the room, everybody would go into Turkish. So I got to hear a lot of Turkish, and then if the teacher came back, they could pretend to be talking to me in English. So I was kind of their safety. Um, and then I had a, um, a Turk- That's very
Sertaç: cheeky.
Maureen: I, I, I had a Turkish boyfriend, uh, [00:13:00] in due course, and I wanted to know what he and his friends were saying to each other about me and about other, um, about women in general, and that meant that I stayed quiet long after I didn't need to be quiet, and, and it was, uh, it was eavesdropping, which was something I had done as a child anyway, growing up around a, a lot of adults.
Maureen: Yeah? Uh, what we, um, all had in common, uh, my classmates and I, and even my boyfriend and his friends, was feeling left out of Western culture, l- feeling left out of world culture. It was a very, very, uh, closed, um, place at that time. Um, the, the artists and writers that were my, uh, m- my father's friends were passionately involved with, um, with everything that was going on in the arts, um, um, and, and going, uh, to Europe and, um, you know, when they got the visa and the duties, uh, and, [00:14:00] and watching things and, and really, um, really engage.
Maureen: And nobody was interested in them. Nobody was interest... Uh, uh, it was a one-way conversation, and I felt that way about, you know, just teenage culture. I felt that we got the songs that somebody else had decided on, and, um, and I just felt really insulted, uh, along with, uh, probably more insulted than, uh, than my Turkish friends who probably, um, hadn't known, um, that it could be otherwise at that time.
Maureen: Ev- everything changes. So, um, y- when time goes on, uh, I really w- really Uh, wanted to be in a place, um, that made the cultural decisions, um, which is one of the reasons why I ended up in, in London. And, um, even though I'm American, it was just one of those places, this cultural center, and it's closer, closer to Turkey.
Maureen: And so I always had an idea in the back of my head that one day I would, um, do something, um, to, um, to bring [00:15:00] down that, uh, that one-way mirror. And I suppose the first way I had an opportunity to do it was, uh, with, with journalism, because there are lots of people who can be called upon to write about things Turkish, um, in the most sophisticated, uh, way possible.
Maureen: But thirty years ago There were, there, there was, you know, um, in the, in the country, um, of the blind, there was only one eyed me, um, so, uh, a lot of the time, so they came to me a, a lot. And that was, uh, quite a frustrating position to be in because of the ignorance of the questions, um, that I would be asked to answer.
Maureen: Um, but it was a starting, uh, point. And then there's one other thing that comes into translation really, um, uh, uh, powerfully, uh, Zishan, which I should mention is my last years in, in, uh, uh, Lise, which is, I still think of it as [00:16:00] Lise, not high school. Uh, my, my last years in Lise were, um, 1968, 1969. And so there was, um, uh, almost everybody I was in school with was from, uh, one elite or another.
Maureen: Uh, but that didn't mean that, uh, they didn't, uh, have in their numbers some very, very brainy, very political girls who decided that I was a cultural imperialist, uh, poisoning the minds of Turkish youth. Uh, I think it was quite hard, um, to be, um, an elite, uh, leftist woman at that, at, at that time. Uh, and, um, and, and when people feel insecure like that, they go after the, the closest target, and I don't think that I was very good at, at dealing with it at, at the time.
Maureen: But, um, they, um, they, they really did bully me about [00:17:00] it, and I got very, very angry. And then, of course, a year after, less than a year after I left, there was the 1971 coup, and, um, many of those people ended up in prison. And I did not know what that meant until I was working at Amnesty International in London, um, after graduating from, from college, uh, from the American-- from, from Harvard.
Maureen: So I was working as a very bad secretary, uh, at Amnesty International, but they, um, um, they asked me to translate whatever, um, uh, they needed, uh, translating, so I was doing that. And, uh, the person on the, um, one of the people on the international executive, the board, was Mümtaz Soysal, and he came to dinner with another friend, and he brought two books by his wife, who had just died.
Maureen: Uh, Safiye Soysal.
Sertaç: Mm-hmm.
Maureen: And one of those books was her [00:18:00] memoir of a year she spent in political prison, in which some of those old classmates of mine, mine also were. Um, and it was the first time that I found out what, what had been going on. Um, but also that, uh, I found, uh, I, I found a friend in Safiye Soysal because she, she was so much older than most of the people in, in, you know, the students.
Maureen: She was in her late 30s by then. And so she gave me a route to understanding and, and, um, and also an idea of what to do, um, what to do about all that. And so I translated, in 1978, I translated Yıldırım Bölük'e Kadınlar Koşuyor, and it will be coming out-
Sertaç: Yeah ...
Maureen: later this year. This year.
Sertaç: Oh, okay. Fantastic.
Maureen: Yeah, it took that long to find a publisher.
Sertaç: Mm-hmm.
Maureen: But it's always been, uh, Archipelago, a wonderful publisher in, [00:19:00] in New York. Um, uh, but it's, it, it, it helped me... Um, well, as I said, a translation is an education, but everything that has gone into translating that book and also Şafak, her other book that I've been able to translate it, and also Yudum Ek, her third no- uh, her first novel, which I also will be coming out next year.
Maureen: Um, it's, um, uh, sitting in, um, those special spaces that these authors have made for us and looking at the world from, from inside those books. Yeah.
Sertaç: Mm-hmm.
Maureen: I think that's maybe a really long, too long quest- uh, answer to your question, Zeeshan.
Sertaç: That's a beautiful answer.
Meryem Zişan: It's a beautiful answer. Thank you.
Sertaç: Um, thank you very much.
Sertaç: I actually, let's, uh, I would be very interested in kind of, I think there are two streams, translation and imagination here. Um, and, and that direction is, is exactly what, where I was hoping this conversation would go. [00:20:00] Um, I'd like to ask this question in a very abstract level, and we can kind of open this up as we go along.
Sertaç: What does translation add?
Maureen: Well, first of all, translation can take away a lot. Uh, so whenever I'm translating dialogue, especially if it's good dialogue, I can hear it, I love it, and I just feel it, um, melting away in English because English can't carry it. Um, uh, a-another thing that, um, that, that Turkish is, well, so good at, you know, with onomatopoeia.
Maureen: You know, if it's... You know, a word will sound like the thing it's referring to, and then there are many ways of playing on that, you know. Um, um, and, uh, a lot of meaning is conveyed, uh, through the, uh, through the actual sounds o-of the words, and that, that is another thing that gets, uh, gets lost. Uh, one thing that, uh, I've been grappling [00:21:00] with, I'm co-translating, uh, um, another novel by Sabahattin, Sabahattin Ali at the moment.
Maureen: We did, uh, Alex Dahl and I did Madonna in a Fur Coat t- 10 years ago. It... Last year it sold more than Pride and Prejudice in the UK.
Sertaç: I s- I read the news. Let me read the news.
Maureen: Crazy. Uh, so on the back of that, they've commissioned, uh, another. And this one, uh, it's a love, a very interesting, uh, love affair, um, between, um, two kind of rootless, um, artistic-minded, um, young people.
Maureen: Uh, and as in all of the other books I've ever, uh, translated from Turkish into English, it somatizes emotion Um, because, um, uh, in Turkish you don't have to be embarrassed about emotion. Uh, you don't have to be indirect. You can just say it's here. It's here, and it's going through my body in this way, or it's going, you know, it's...
Maureen: Y- y- you can just, um, describe it, and this is [00:22:00] really difficult, next to impossible in English. And so the conversations I've been having with Alex is, you know, first of all, you know, first and foremost, the surface meaning is something that we must, uh, stay as close as possible to. But when I'm translating a novel, I, I want to be most true to the emotions.
Maureen: Uh, and if I just say, um, that, um, uh, that, that, that the, um, just the storm going on in the head then went down to my heart and then went into my arm or whatever, um, the mo- you know, the emotion is not gonna be translated into English. So those are hard choices, and they're controversial choices. But translation, um, is always, uh, uh, going to be controversial.
Maureen: Uh, um, fortunately, because my father was actually quite strict with us at home, I'm used to being always wrong. So I just, you know, uh, I am wrong, but I've tried my [00:23:00] best, is, uh, about all I can, uh, do as a translator. And the only other thing I can say is that, um, uh, translation is ephemeral. Uh, it's, the text is always there to be translated, uh, again.
Maureen: Um, uh, what can translation add? It can, um-
Maureen: It's not a question of adding, it's a question of how can I best convey what I feel in the Turkish, you know, underneath the surface. Because I trained, uh, as a novelist, that's, that's my practice as a novelist. Um, without thinking, when I started, uh, translating, I didn't think about these things. I just did these things.
Maureen: Uh, whatever I did, I did kind of instinctively. Um, I wanted, when I embarked on, uh, um, Orhan's, uh, novels, I wanted to make sure the English, [00:24:00] um, sounded, uh, beautiful in a way that at the time... This is so different now, but at the time when, uh, very, it was very hard to get a divies or get out of the country, there was a kind of a particular kind of English that was being spoken at, um, Robert College and other anglophone spaces.
Maureen: Mm-hmm. And, um, it was, it was staying so close to the Turkish that it was, um, sounding clumsy in English, you know, 'cause the verbal nouns, uh, you know, which, uh, are the, one of the central beauties of Turkish, um, don't sound so good as verbal nouns in English, for example. Yeah. So the, the, it was the question of how, you know, how to, um, write something that put, uh, put me into the trance that I was in when, um, when I read Kar, for example.
Maureen: Snow. Yeah. And, um, it's been pointed out to me many times that when people, [00:25:00] when Turks read Kar, they don't go into the same k- trance that I go into. But I'm just being true to the trance that I, I go into. I go, I go very deeply into that novel and others, but you can come back at me. You can come back at me.
Maureen: It's
Sertaç: very... No, no, it's very interesting you should say that, 'cause I want to share a personal experience of mine. I'm an anthropologist of Turkey, and one of the things we anthropologists are told when we are doing, like, PhD, et cetera, we are trying to kind of cultivate our, our writing style, is to read more novels.
Sertaç: Ah. And, and I had realized early on that my... I have a very specific and strong, um, author voice in Turkish, which I didn't have- Ah ... in, in English. Okay. So I decided that it would be very smart, like strategic, if I were to reread the novels that had shaped my style through reading in my early teenage or teenage years.
Maureen: In Turkish? [00:26:00]
Sertaç: Uh, that I had read in Turkish, if I re- reread them, the, the English translations.
Maureen: Oh, okay. Okay, okay. Okay.
Sertaç: And, and it did kind of... I was doing this, like, a systematic- Yeah ... very rigorous, like, work to, to cultivate my, my style, and it did help a lot and of... And you can see how significant you were to that process, obviously.
Maureen: Yeah,
Sertaç: yeah. Um, but it also gave me this very different feel about the same books- When I was reading them in Turkish versus when I was reading them- Yeah,
Maureen: yeah ...
Sertaç: in English.
Maureen: Yeah.
Sertaç: Um, and part of this question is actually coming from there because it's actually when you're envisioning your, your readership in a particular way, you become a different author than your- Yeah
Sertaç: readership changes.
Maureen: Yeah, yeah. So that's so interesting, and I think, uh, it's, it, it should be the source of, uh, um, other kind of research, uh, [00:27:00] you know, in, uh, in literature and, um, and social s- social research together. You can put that to- uh, together. Um, yeah, in the literature department that I used to belong to, um, they, um, um...
Maureen: The, the premise of everything my colleagues did was that, um, every text has multiple readings. W- and, you know, it's not the text, it's how you, it's how you read it. Uh, I fe- I felt that my colleagues were a bit naive when it came to, um, uh, particularly translated literature 'cause they didn't really think about the many processes that were involved in getting a book to land on their desks.
Maureen: Yeah? And it wasn't something as simple as, as reception or whatever. It's very, very difficult. Um, it has been very, very difficult to open, uh, doors more widely for, for Turkish literature, but it's happening now. It's taken a long time, but it's very good to see that, yeah. So to, to, um, to think about, uh- [00:28:00] Voices and the, um, the, the fact that the, a text in one language can, uh, give birth to other voices in other languages, which then, um, are, are received emotionally differently and then feed into, um, other practices, in- including possibly the language from which the text came.
Maureen: Uh, I love that idea. I do find that, um, poets are more open-minded and interesting when talking about translation because they know that, um, when they're writing in English, that what you see on the page in English is just, just the, the, the very top level of what you might find underneath. And so when they translate, when poets translate other poets, um, they, uh, they do wonderful things with that.
Maureen: That's true. But it does destabilize the idea of a, a text as [00:29:00] the, uh, the authority, uh-
Meryem Zişan: Thank you ...
Maureen: as it is. It is an authority.
Meryem Zişan: Yeah.
Maureen: Yeah. Yeah.
Meryem Zişan: I have another question that I thought- Sure ... that would be, um, helpful for us to imagine Turkey with you, like all together. Um, Turkey has lived through so many plot twists, and I would like to ask, um, if you were the editor and writer of its ne- next chapter, what would you insist on keeping there
Sertaç: or- An excellent question.
Maureen: Thank you. Well, I'm al- you know, what I'm so often seeing, because I'm writing for an Anglophone audience, uh, um, especially, um, and this is the most fraught when I'm writing, uh, journalism is the, the, the awful, awful assumptions, um, the, the stupid assumptions, uh, that people bring to it and how, how I have to spend most of my attribute, you know, uh, words that I've been [00:30:00] allowed, you know, a thousand, two thousands, finding some way to open those things up.
Maureen: The most, uh, egregious example of that is, uh, examples of that are, because there are many examples, is writing about anything that has to do with, uh, human rights. Uh, I'm, uh, um, as aware as you are of how much work there is inside Turkey has always been in, in, in the society of writers, in the society of, of, uh, in all walks of life to st- to, um, to fight for, um, uh, greater freedom of expression, for truth, for, um, you know, for historical, um, uh, responsibility, and so on.
Maureen: And, and people who are doing this work have put their lives at risk in order to do this and their livelihoods. And every time I, um, write about these issues, uh, and, and about the [00:31:00] actual, um, uh, activists who are doing the work, they, um, the copy- the subeditors cut it out Um because they don't see it. They don't see it.
Maureen: So I um, uh I'm um, a lot, well, I wouldn't say I'm optimistic. I do think, um, that there is this extraordinary, uh, intellectual diaspora now, uh, of which you are a part, and, uh, and it has been a collectively an extraordinary contribution to, um, uh, you know, uh, Turkish, uh, thinking and, and culture. And so I would like that to be, um, I would like to, that to be encouraged in, in whatever way I can.
Maureen: I certainly, the, um, the, uh, women, um, I've been able to translate recently, not just Sevgi Soysal, but Tezer Özlü, and als- also the very eccentric, uh, flamboyant [00:32:00] Suat Derviş. Uh, I wouldn't have found my way to, um, those writers if it hadn't been the community of feminist scholars, uh, working in and out of Turkey, going back and forth, and, and bringing these voices, uh, bring- bringing them, them back.
Maureen: So I think I know, uh, culture, um, it's not soft power. It's much more important than that. Um, uh, culture and education, uh, the more we can do, the, the better. Um, if, if a lot of it has to happen outside, uh, Turkey's borders, it doesn't mean that it stays outside T- uh, uh, Turkey's borders. Uh, and I s- I know that, um, this problem that I've had all along, which is about, um, the, um, the willful ignorance of people, um, uh, looking at Turkey from the outside-
Sertaç: Mm-hmm
Maureen: um, that is how it's, um, that's going to fall away. Um, [00:33:00] uh, it's because of, um, the work that, uh, we are all doing in this invisible network together. And, and so I'm, um, I have optimism in spite of everything. One last thing I, I do have optimism about is I, I, yeah, obviously in touch with all my old classmates in America who are absolutely, uh, um, terrified, appalled by what is happening in America at the moment, yeah.
Maureen: And they don't know what to do. And I keep on saying-
Sertaç: They're caught off guard.
Maureen: What?
Sertaç: They're caught off guard.
Maureen: Yeah. But I, I'd say you really need to talk to my friends in Turkey because, um, uh, just talk about writers. Don't talk about any- writers from the very beginning of the Republic, you know, have been, you know, figuring out how, not just how to survive, but how to prevail and how to keep the words, um, you know, keep thinking, [00:34:00] uh, you know, yeah.
Maureen: And, and, and, and also such beautiful stories. So that's, uh, my little hope. My little hope, my little, uh, contribution. Yeah.
Sertaç: Thank you.
Meryem Zişan: I think that was a beautiful and perfect closing remark for this episode. Um, thank you so much for being with us today and guiding us as we try to imagine Turkey. It was truly a pleasure to have with you with us today, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Sertaç: I certainly
Maureen: did.
Sertaç: And for us, you are such a significant figure in the overall idea of imagining Turkey, so we are very delighted to have hosted you in this series.
Maureen: Well, I do hope that, um, this, these conversations will continue. So I hope that next time we meet it will not be t- uh, two-dimensionally.
Maureen: Hope so. But congratulations for opening these conversations.
Sertaç: Thank
Maureen: you.
Sertaç: Great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank [00:35:00] you very
much.