Harold Pinter and Orhan Pamuk: Two Radical Voices of our Century

Harold Pinter and Orhan Pamuk: Two Radical Voices of our Century

YEREBAKAN, İbrahim

Key words: Harold Pinter, Orhan Pamuk, politics, human rights, Turkey, western societies ABSTRACT Introduction: It is interesting to note that Pinter’s association with Orhan Pamuk , Turkey’s only Nobel laureate, goes back to the mid 1980s when he went to Turkey with Arthur Miller in order to investigate the mistreatment and imprisonment of the Turkish writers, intellectuals, trade union and political leaders and allegations of human rights abuses during the military regime on behalf of International PEN. During that fact-finding mission, they were introduced to and guided around Istanbul by that young and unknown novelist called Orhan Pamuk. It is also by sheer coincidence that Harold Pinter received his Nobel Prize for literature in 2005 just the year before Orhan Pamuk won the same award in 2006. In case of these outspoken cultural figures, it was always the search for human dignity and human respect and freedom of the individual that brought them into relentless conflict with the authority. Both of them are friends of the oppressed and enemies of the totalitarian regimes, East and West. Both spoke out on behalf of the oppressed and vigorously criticised the policies of their respective political administrations. Objectives: This analysis is intended to demonstrate some certain parallels in the political stance and political activism of the above-mentioned writers and to find out important points of contact in their political discourses that give us most of the same concern. It is also part of the contention of this analysis to consider how these internationally acclaimed writers are seen from their respective countries , who we assume, are more honoured everywhere in the world than in their own societies.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1784