Today's Zaman
Jun 11, 2008

This year's Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's biggest publishing industry gathering, in which Turkey will be featured as the guest of honor, is only a few months away.

While a national executive committee that oversees preparations for the fair is working on the projects it has deemed compatible with the slogan, "Turkey with All Its Colors," the Culture and Tourism Ministry is shooting a film that will chronicle the entire history of Turkish literature.
Journalist and television program producer Ayşe Böhürler and her team are behind the "Turkish Literature from Orkhon Inscriptions to the Nobel Prize" documentary, which will recount a history of Turkish literature through the assessments of famous Turkish writers and poets. The English-German bilingual documentary will be aired on German television stations and will be screened at the Turkish pavilion throughout the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The documentary project was shaped in Böhürler's mind last year. While visiting the pavilions of other countries during last year's fair, she realized the lack of visual materials at the Turkish pavilion. "I'm looking at the whole thing from the visual perspective, as I'm a TV producer. Three-hundred-thousand people visit this fair and they will be introduced to Turkish literature. A project that would introduce our literature in a film format with all the aspects of our literature and not by focusing on individual writers was needed," she said.

‘Orhan Pamuk didn’t give us an appointment’

Böhürler said that she benefited from many references while forming the list of the poets and writers to be included in the documentary and that she chose the figures with an objective approach. "Considering Turkish literature to be a river, we tried to include all the names that have been important stops on the way and that have brought a change that helped Turkish literature cover a greater distance," she noted. She held interviews with many living masters, such as Hilmi Yavuz, Elif Şafak, Vedat Türkali, Doğan Hızlan, Rasim Özdenören, Bejan Matur and Ahmet Altan. Yet she maintains that they still have gaps to fill. Complaining that they couldn't make an appointment with Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, she stressed: "This is a great setback for us. There are certain indispensable names that must be included in this documentary, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, Ahmet Oktay, İlhan Berk, Gülten Akın and Ülkü Tamer. We are planning on holding another shooting session. President Abdullah Gül will also make an appearance, giving his views."

The documentary opens with the first written source of the Turkish language, the Orkhon inscriptions; drops by the era of "Kutadgu Bilig" by Yusuf Has Hacip -- an 11th century Uyghur scribe from the city of Balasaghun, the capital of the Karakhanid Empire; and continues its journey with the Ottoman divan poetry. The documentary dwells more heavily on the republican era and modern Turkish literature, while emphasizing how distinctive the Turkish language is. It also touches on Turkish literature's Eastern-Western synthesis.

Böhürler noted that mostly foreigners would view the documentary and that they therefore they had to present it in a way that would not be boring for the majority of the audience, adding that they aimed to create an orderly work on Turkish literature.

Documentary shooting sessions were held in a number of historical sites in İstanbul, such as the Sepetçiler Palace and the Malta Mansion, to further publicity for these sites. The only thing that upset her, she says, is that they were unable to shoot in Anatolia.

‘There are many things we sought but couldn’t get’

There is something Böhürler underscores very emphatically: "Our function here is to establish equilibrium and be objective; and only to reflect our literature [as it is.] I did not want even the 'p' of politics to get involved in this documentary in any fashion. We focused only on literature, not on political discrepancies. We neither favored nor neglected anybody. The high-quality literature of a single country; the good literature of a single country has been recounted."

The screenplay was written by Selahattin Yusuf and is currently being reviewed by many writers. What type of music will be used in the soundtrack has yet to be decided, although it will probably mostly comprise symphonic music. Böhürler said that they were making use of advanced technology, adding: "There are many things we sought and couldn't get, that made us say, 'We wish we could have…' We couldn't realize many things we aspired to, partly because of limited budgetary possibilities and partly due to the circumstances. We might receive criticisms, but we are doing this only for [the] publicity [of our literature]," she said.

The documentary might turn out a different experience for foreigners, but even before the editing is finished, it has clearly moved its producer: "Most of our writers are lonely; void of support and try to do everything on their own. It's a difficult thing to be a writer in Turkey. Intellectual labor still doesn't receive the level of respect it deserves in Turkey."