Turkish Delight

k À INTERNATIONAL CC^ RIMEC^MySTeRY INTERNATIONAL J.MADISON DAVIS Turkish Delight: The Ottoman Mysteries of Jenny White mysteries are a majorsubgenre ofcrime writing today, andaficionados agree thatJenny Whiteis one ofthebestat theform. Immigrating at age sevento theUnited States from Germany, White livedin NewRochelle, NewYork, attending Lehman College inthe Bronx. In2006 Norton published herfirst novel, The Sultan's Seal,setinIstanbul in 1886 during thewaning daysoftheOttomanEmpire . Booklist nameditoneof thetenbestfirst novelsoftheyear, oneofthetoptenhistorical novels oftheyear, anditwas a finalist for theCrime Writers Association's Ellis Peters Historical Crimeaward.She followedthisexciting debutwith TheAbyssinian Proof in 2008and The Winter Thief in2010,whensheconsented tothis interview. J.Madison Davis: Why Turkey?As a German American, how did you first becomeinterested in Turkish society andculture? Jenny White: While incollege inNew York, I dida year'sstudy abroadin Kiel, Germany. I spokethelanguage, butthis wasthefirst time I hadbeen on myown awayfrom myfamily insouthern Germany. Kielis inthe farnorth, andI found theGermans in thedormto be rather standoffish - perhaps becauseofmybarbaric Bavarian accent. I wasbefriended by someTurkswholivedin thesame dorm, thefirst Turks I hadevermet. I becameinterested in Turkey and followed up on a tipabouta good graduate program atHacettepe University inAnkara, thecapital. I was interested instudying cross-cultural social psychology, and it seemed likea goodidea (don'tforget I was in mytwenties!) tojustgetup and go to Turkeyto study.I finished collegeand thenwentto Ankara. I don'tthink I evenknewwhata Muslimwas, or thattherewas a quasi-civil wargoingoninTurkey. I foundall thatout by stumblingoverit ,beingnearly runover by an armored personnel carrier. I >o ce > < X ICQ ë o X ÛL January-February2011 19 ICrime &Mystery was wandering alonga boulevard, carrying mylaundry, amida crowd of people whowere chanting. Astranger pulledmeoutofthewayatthelast moment. Asa naiveAmerican, I had ofcourse assumed the vehicles would stop.Anyway, I had lotsofadventures andadopted thecountry, made friends, learned the language. Andthe rest ishistory. Orrather fiction. JMD: Whatledyoutobeginwriting crimefiction set in thatparticular time period? JW: Nostalgia is partofmymotivation for setting the series inthe1880s, before the violent upheavals that tore the country apart.Theybegan as little as tenyears later withthefirst Armenian massacres in Istanbul in response toArmenian revolutionaries blowing up theOttoman ImperialBank .(I beginTheWinter Thief byblowing up thatverybank,but under slightly different circumstances .)Inthe1880s theOttoman Empire was a trulymultiethnic, multidenominational empire.Jews,Armenians ,GreekOrthodox Christians, MuslimTurks, Arabs, peopleofall faiths fromtheBalkans, European 'Tranks/' andmanyothers mingled inthestreets andinhouseholds. It was a periodof profound socialandpolitical change. Educated andwealthy urbanités wereacquiringEuropean customs andtechnology .Somewereinterested inEuropeanpolitical models, likeaparliament. DespiteEuropeansupportforthe independence movements that were breaking the empireapart,many young Ottomans admired European political values,science, and ideas aboutsociety. SomeOttoman leaders also felttheycould onlyfight European attacks byemulating their enemy.And theenemywas closingin .TheRussians hadtaken over partof theempire'seastern provinces ;Britain was arming theArabs in thesouthand encouraging them tobreakaway.Thesamething was going onintheBalkan andEuropean provinces. Whena province became independent, there wouldinevitably bebloodbaths andtraumatized refugeesstreaming into Istanbul. In the1880syoucouldsee the shape of thefuture, but it hadn't taken ona concrete form yet. People weretrying outnewroles. Mymain character, KamilPasha,likehisfellowOttomans , is worried aboutthe consequences ofchange, thedecline ofthefamily, losingthemoralfiber of society. He fearsthechaosand bloodletting that the weakening ofstatepowerwouldbringabout. He's continually confronted with evidencethatthedarkness in people 'shearts is barely keptatbayby thelaw,andthatterrible things are massing onthehorizon. JMD: Arethere anyparticular writersthat influenced your approach or servedas modelsorinspiration for your novels? JW:The historicalmysteriesof Donna Leon, RobertVan Gulik, Laura Joh Rowland, and Boris Akunin.The puzzle mysteries of Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I also enjoy historical novels: SarahDunant, Gail Tsukiyama, Diana Gabaldon.For inspiration inwriting: SarahWaters, JohnLe Carré,CormacMcCarthy. Poetry. There aremany others. I'ma voracious reader. I tryto createan entire, fully imagined world ineachofthe books, which isa bitdifferent from theclassicmystery series, which hasa more limited, thoughequallysatisfying palettethatis reproduced in each book.Myaimis tocapture anyone wholovesa goodread. JMD: Asananthropologist, youhave closely studied contemporary Turkish culture. How would you characterize thestateofTurkish culture today? Is ittorn between Westand East? JW: I find thedifferentiation between Westand Easttobe misleading in the case of Turkey. Many people in theWestwouldassumethatthe peoplewithan Islamic background would be anti-West, anti-EU, antiglobalization , but in Turkey that's notthecase. The AKP,theIslamrooted party that isinpower(elected by a landslidein fairelections), is 10 WorldLiterature Today pro-EUand is workingon meetingthecriteria for membership. The AKP believesEU membership will makeiteasierto institute religious rights - individualrightsthat,for instance, would make it impossible to ban wearinga headscarf to university, as is presently thecase undertheKemalist-dominated system .The EU membership process alsoreduces thepowerofthearmy. Parts of the seculariststate bureaucracy and the armyhave been in positionsof power since thefounding of therepublic, and have severaltimesbrought down electedgovernments theythought werestraying toofar from theideals of Turkey's founding figure, MustafaKemalAtat ürk. The Kemalists believethatallowingtheintroductionof religion and ethnicity (like Kurdishidentity) openlyintoTurkey 'spublicsphere willundermine thecountry's unity and causeitto splitapart.The AKP is undercuttingtheirauthority . Overthepast fewmonths, more than fifty officers, someofthem high-ranking generals, havebeenarrested, accusedofplottinga coup againsttheAKP. Tensionsarevery highright now. TheAKPanditssupporters are alsopro-globalization. Themembers of the new pious Muslimclasses thathaverisentopolitical andeconomicprominence sincethe1980s have set up hugebusinesseswith globalreach.TheAKP government is busymaking economic tieswith manydisparate nations in orderto secure Turkey's economic andpolitical security. TheAKP believesthat Turks aretheinheritors oftheOttomanEmpire , sowhyshouldthere be a problem with boundaries? TheKemalists arestillfocused on 1923 - when the Europeans undermined theOttoman Empire and theyremainsuspiciousofthe intentions oftheWest, despite sharinga secular, westernized lifestyle. Some Kemalists are anti-globalization because theythinkWestern ideas like freedom of speechwill comein and,as a result, theywill nolonger be abletocontrol divisive forces andthings willfallapart. The courts havetried tocontrol theInternet ;YouTubehasbeenbannedfor a coupleofyears. I'm notletting theAKP completelyoffthe hook either.They areextremely conservative. They've passed laws thatgivepeopleindividualrights , butthey don'tenforce them. For instance, there are improvements ofwomen's rights on thebooks,but only26 percent of womenwork,and thereare very fewwomen inpolitics. Conservative attitudes towardwomen,however, are widespreadamongsecularists as well. I wouldagreethat this isa kind ofnormalization, sincemostofTurkeyis veryconservative andpious. Those culturaland social characteristics are now being expressed inpolitics, and a piouslifestyle has January-February2011 111 Crime &MysteRY comeoutofthevillageandbecome a symbol ofupwardmobility, with chicveiledfashion runway shows. Thepresident's andprime minister's wives are veiled.Thereis a vital economy - lots of entrepreneurial activity by pious and secularpeople .Thisis certainly a result ofthe process Atatiirk began.Without the structure ofthestate hesetupanda democratic government, noneofthis wouldhavebeenpossible, especially insucha relatively peaceful manner. ButI'mnotsuresucha conservative Turkey iswhatAtatiirk envisioned. JMD: Soyou're saying European and Americansocietiesmisunderstand contemporary Turkish culture and identity? JW:Europeanstendto think Turkey is an agricultural backwater. Americans who knowlittleabout Islam lump all Muslimcountries together andassumethat Turkey is likeSaudiArabia, then aresurprised whenthey gotoTurkey todiscover a vibrant, friendly, and relatively open,globalized society. In thenineteenth century, Turkeywas called "the sick man of Europe" - not of theMiddleEast! It used to be a powerful empire thatruledNorthAfrica, theMiddle East,and southern Europefor sixhundred years,endingonlyin 1923whena republic was declared in what remainedof the empire after WorldWarI. So Turkey hasa very distinct, self-confident senseof itself. Itwas nevercolonized; itwas thecolonizer. Theempire decided to westernize; thatwasn'tsomething imposedbyWestern colonialpowers .Sothewholedynamic regarding attitudes towardwhatwe think of as westernization is different. Turks thinkof it as beingTurkishand debate itonthose terms, rather than rejecting secularism orWestern lifestylesbecausetheywereimposed 12 WorldLiterature Today on them,as manyArab societies havedone. JMD:Do you findyou sometimes havetocompromise your ownextensiveknowledge ofTurkey inorder to "geton"with yourstories, either by simplifying complex issuesoravoidingissuesthat yoususpect might be misunderstood byyour readers? JW: I try tobeashistorically accurate as possible. I dida hugeamount of research on every detailofTheSultan 'sSeal,downtothetypeofcobblesonthestreets andtheoldstreet names.A historian friendchecks thehistorical background forany bigbloopers. I do try tosimplify the politics, without beinginaccurate. Somemistakes getthrough, but are caughtby readers.Sometimes I can fixthemforthepaperback. I had been incarcerating people in SultanAhmetprison, but recently discovered thatithadn'tbeenbuilt untilafter theturnofthecentury. SoI lookedinto prisons, onlytofind that thewholeconcept oftheprison hadn'tcome to theempireyetin the1880s.Theythrewpeopleinto towers orexiledthem. I didmanage tofinda former military campthat was used as a prison, though, and was greatly feared. So now I lock peopleup in Bekir Aghaprison. It takesa lotoftimetobe thatthorough ,anditdoesmeanthat ittakes longer towrite a book.Thatsortof obsessiveness aboutdetail andaccuracy isprobably a spillover from my academicwork.Luckily, I cannow restsomewhat on myresearch laurels .AtleastI don'thavetolookup cobbles orprisons anymore. JMD: Whatisthestate ofcrime writinginTurkey ? JW: Thereare Turkish crimewriters ,at leastone ofwhom,Mehmet Somer, has recently beentranslated into English. TheTurkish police force doesn'thave a detective position, although there areprivate detective agencies,and sleuthscome in all shapesand sizes.Somer'ssleuthis a compassionate, slinky transvestite. Thegenres aren't as specific inTurkey .Myfirst twonovelshavebeen translated intoTurkish (as havemy scholarly books),butI don'tknow how well they're doing.Once the booksleavethewriter's hands, they become commodities wandering the world marketplace, neverwriting home. JMD:Do you thinkyou'll continue yourseries?Do yousee a long string offuture novelsstretching out before you? JW: I setup TheWinter Thief toleave the readerhungering formore(I hope).I'malsothinking aboutwritinga contemporary thriller. Butat themoment, I'm writing a nonfictionbook about nationalism and IslaminTurkey. Ifonly I didn't need tosleep.. . . October 2010 Editorial note:Jenny White's website(www. jennywhite.net) offers more information about herwritings. She also writes an informative and interesting blog about contemporary Turkey atwww.kamilpasha.com. J. Madison Davis is the authorof eight mystery novels,includingTheMurder of FrauSchütz,an Edgarnominee,and Law andOrder: Dead Line, whichwas an e-book best-seller. He has also publishedseven nonfiction booksanddozensofshort stories and articles.His columnon international crime writinghas been appearing in WLTsince 2004. In 2008 he was elected president oftheInternational Association of Crime Writers

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