Intellectuals rule Turkey's self-image at fair (News Feature)

Frankfurt - Whenever a nation takes a snapshot of its own literature to present at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the choice of which writers to concentrate on says a lot about how far it has come. Turkey, special guest this year at the annual book-publishing event, has taken an historical approach, putting on an exhibition focused on the giants of 20th-century Istanbul intellectual life. They are shown giant-size in 1-metre-high black and white photographs on a maze of tall walls, each with a paragraph of text in English about their poetry, novels, essays or other writing. Eight great writers, of whom only two including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk are still alive, are portrayed as 'gateways' to literary themes such as 'nation building,' 'between East and West' and the 1930s enthusiasm for peasant wisdom. To a visitor curious about today's Turkey, where a faith-based party is in power, one accent seems to be missing from this self- image: Islam. Exhibition designer Sadik Karamustafa denied in an interview there had been any conflict between a secular and an Islamic view in creating the exhibition, entitled Palimpsest Reclaimed. 'They are represented,' he said, referring to observant Muslims. 'Hundreds of publishers are represented at the fair.' Ekrem Isin, the exhibition curator, said each of the 'gateway' authors illustrated a set of social or cultural issues they had raised. Among the more unusual features in the maze of author portraits is a set of six images upside down. According to the legend on photos, the six turned the sentence structure of Turkish upside down in their verse. A palimpsest is a piece of paper which has been erased and re-used. The exhibition stresses the layers of culture, some almost forgotten, from the medieval period up to today, that underlie Turkey's 'contemporary reality,' Isin said. An exhibition of valuable old books in glass cases marks 500 years of multilingual publishing by Turkish printers in cities including Saloniki, now part of Greece. Among the languages of the books are Kurdish and Hebrew. 'It's the odyssey of publishing in our geography,' said designer Karamustafa. The exhibition space, on the top floor of a fairground pavilion, also contains two other displays: a photographic show about the fabled town of Ephesos and a browsable collection of contemporary books in many languages about Turkey. Every year a new nation is chosen as special guest at the Book Fair, where most publishers put in long days of negotiating and selling and usually have little free time for cultural events. The cultural diplomacy opportunity is highly sought after, since it guarantees a short but intense bout of attention from the German media and the German reading public. Karamustafa said English had been chosen for the explanations at the exhibition because 'it is the official language of this book fair,' adding, 'We were asked to do this by the fair authorities.' More than 200 shows and performances outside the fairgrounds in the city of Frankfurt, including a show of work by Turkish cartoonists since the 1950s, had explanations in German, he said. Some of the rough-and-tumble tensions of today's Turkey, where outspoken authors have been punished in the past for insulting Turkey, are likely to be brought out this week by contemporary authors at the fair. Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel for Literature, is the most widely known of about 350 authors and translators visiting the fair at the organizers' expense to meet publishers, sign books and attend panel discussions. Other established leading writers in attendance include Murathan Mungan and Celil Oker, while Turkey is also hoping to win wider international exposure for younger figures such as Asli Erdogan, Elif Safak and Sebnem, Isiguzel, publicists said.