DEATH IS A MASTER FROM

86 David Copperfield, Charles Dickens 87 The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde 88 The Octopus, Frank Norris 89 Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy 90 Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya 91 Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey 92 Middlemarch, George Eliot 93 The Waves, Virginia Woolf 94 The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner 95 Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru 96 The Waves, Virginia Woolf 97 Lord of the Flies, William Golding 98 The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch 99 Centennial, James Michener 100 State of Wonder, Ann Patchett 101 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 102 Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston 103 Frankenstein, Mary Shelley 104 The Prairie, James Fenimore Cooper 105 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel 106 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 107 Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon 108 Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh 109 The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather 110 The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri 111 A Sicilian Romance, Ann Radcliffe 112 Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence 113 Dracula, Bram Stoker 114 Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder 115 Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey 116 The Conquest, Oscar Micheaux 117 House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday 118 All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy 119 All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy 120 The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara 121 Big Sur, Jack Kerouac 122 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel 123 Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey 124 Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence 125 East of Eden, John Steinbeck 126 Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton 127 East of Eden, John Steinbeck 128 Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy 129 Hawaii, James Michener 130 Moby-Dick, Herman Melville 131 The Round House, Louise Erdrich 132 Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder 133 The Round House, Louise Erdrich 134 The Virginian, Owen Wister 135 Middlemarch, George Eliot 136 The Round House, Louise Erdrich 137 Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey 138 St. Irvyne, Percy Bysshe Shelley 139 A Sicilian Romance, Ann Radcliffe 140 The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne 141 The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford 142 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett 143 The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger 144 Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke 145 The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger 146 Moby-Dick, Herman Melville 147 And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie 148 Watership Down, Richard Adams 149 East of Eden, John Steinbeck 150 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke 151 Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence 152 The Prairie, James Fenimore Cooper 153 Molloy, Samuel Beckett 154 Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 155 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson 156 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 157 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel 158 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke 159 Plainsong, Kent Haruf 160 Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov 161 The Shipping News, Annie Proulx 162 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 163 The Prairie, James Fenimore Cooper 164 The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy 165 The Revolt of the Cockroach People, Oscar Zeta Acosta 166 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke 167 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 168 The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather 169 On the Road, Jack Kerouac 170 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 171 Ice, Anna Kavan 172 The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford 173 The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford 174 Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison 175 The Sea-Wolf, Jack London 176 Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya 177 The U.P. Trail, Zane Grey 178 The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather 179 My Ántonia, Willa Cather 180 Moby-Dick, Herman Melville 181 The White Peacock, D. H. Lawrence 182 Life of Pi, Yann Martel 183 Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery 184 Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker 185 The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich 186 The Octopus, Frank Norris 187 The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich 188 Bear, Marian Engel 189 The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles 190 Centennial, James Michener 191 Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey 192 The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich 193 The U.P. Trail, Zane Grey 194 The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich 195 White Noise, Don DeLillo 196 Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru 197 The Waves, Virginia Woolf 198 The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford 199 House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday 200 The Waves, Virginia Woolf 201 Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

IMAGE TK

Vincent Ramos, What if We Die, Can We Leave Then (Dave's Not Here), 2017, Mixed media on paper, 10 x 15 in Courtesy of the artist and Frieze Los Angeles, February 14–16, 2020 at Paramount Pictures Studios

DEATH IS A MASTER FROM TURKEY

GOLAN HAJI

tr . alana marie levinson - labrosse

& z ê dan xelef

The Signature of the First Master

In 1928, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk issued a statement instituting the adoption of Latin script in place of the Arabic used by the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. He made a significant and secular break with the past — though it was incomplete, of course, since Kemalism did not fundamentally separate from Islam. Atatürk signed the decree, after practicing his new signature several times, testing it on a prototype of ready-made stationery designed by Hagop Vahram Çerçiyan, an Armenian calligrapher. At that time, the Armenian Genocide had just ended, and the genocide’s architects believed it forgotten, along with the Kurds whom they had set up to take the fall. This signature is still one of the most common tattoos nationalist Turkish wolves display on their arms, necks, wrists, even foreheads, as an

emblem for the man who monopolized and continues to monopolize the title “Father of Turks,” with his piercing blue gaze.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, or the TBMM, voted unanimously to ratify the bill on the new alphabet. Meanwhile, the founder of the Turkish Republic and Turkish modernity paraded through Anatolia promoting the new culture and its easy acquisition. Blackboards were affixed to the walls of every bank, post office, and police station — even under bridges and on vehicles. Turkey became “a large classroom.” Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul became a primary school where servants, ministers, and officers immersed themselves in learning their new language, with Atatürk himself as their teacher.

Before the Flood of Operation “Peace Spring”

The neighbors inspire internecine enmity, antagonizing one another.

Last year, Erdoğan’s white doves carried olive branches as a prelude to the invasion of Afrin in Syria, before that city was surrounded by soldiers who, sympathizing with the bravery of that other Sunni lion (both Erdoğan and Saddam share the same nickname), stooped to retrieve Saddam’s scattered pictures.

Adapt Paul Celan’s line, change it to: Death is a master from Turkey his eyes are blue. Death is a master with blue eyes, who comes to teach the disobedient students a lesson they can never forget; he lands here or over there, a Turanian from Turkey or a Frenchman in Algeria, an Israeli in Palestine, or an Anglo-Saxon in America. He visits so he may teach his victims how to be thieves and murderers, preaching to any who have forgotten his sermons. The French Lesson

In the mid-19th century, the French general Aimable Pélissier suffocated hundreds of nomadic Algerians in the Dahra Range, trapping them in caves and filling the air with smoke. They died of inhalation; his punishment was a promotion. When Pélissier returned home, he wrote that the most feasible course of action for the French Empire was to withdraw and occupy only a few Algerian ports. Victor Hugo, a loyalist to the empire, who was dedicated to the complete colonization of Algeria, disagreed. With a hint of what I might call nostalgia, Hugo wrote an almost-eulogy for the guillotine: “What France lacks is a little barbarity. The Ottoman Turks who occupied Algeria before us knew better how to behead the barbarians.”

The Ottoman/German Lesson

After the French mastery of suffocation and starvation came the Armenian Genocide, another source of inspiration for the architects of the Nazi death camps. German perseverance never flags; their strict laws never slacken, not in this life or the next. Let’s remember what Swedenborg saw in his dream: German angels holding colossal volumes, never venturing an answer without a reference. Marcel Cohen, in his Light Years Away, describes how Jews purchased their own deaths, how they went deep into their pockets:

The victims paid their own way all the way to the concentration camps. The ticket price for traveling in the cattle cars was the same as a train ticket: four pfennigs

for each kilometer. Children under ten paid half price and children under four traveled for free. The price rose every six months. And there were special rates: for groups of more than 400 people, only two pfennigs per kilometer.

In the early days of the gas chambers, the engineers tested their prototype on psychopaths, madmen, and the disabled. But architecting death was not a modern, German innovation. During World War I, before the Germans, the Ottomans used similar methods. They suffocated Armenians in Anatolia’s caves, soldiers collapsing the entrances to prevent escape. After smoke inhalation killed their prisoners, the soldiers relieved them of their property: jewels, rings, even gold teeth.

Before the invasion of Poland, in the beginning of World War II, a debate raged among Nazi officers. Hitler listened to every objection, many of which concerned the international response Germany would incur as a powerful country launching an assault on its neighbor. “It will be a scandal,” one chancellor said, but Hitler assured them that it would just be empty noise and moreover, that it would fade quickly. In closing his argument, he asked, “Who remembers the Armenians?”

Let the reader imagine German streets named for Himmler and Eichmann, as they read this list of perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, decorated as heroes throughout Turkey:

Mustafa Reşid Pasha, the Butcher of Diyarbakır, a main street in Ankara.

Mehmed Kemâl, streets in Istanbul and Izmir, statues in Adana and Izmir.

Mehmed Talaat Pasha and Ismail Enver Pasha, Ministers of the Interior and War, respectively, throughout the Armenian Genocide. Many Turkish streets and schools still bear their names. In 1943, Talaat Pasha’s coffin traversed the country on a train manufactured and gifted to Turkey by the Third Reich. The second Turkish president, İsmet İnönü, presided over the funeral.

In 1996, the Republic reclaimed the ashes of Enver Pasha from Tajikistan. Former president Süleyman Demirel reburied him with his own two hands as part of a solemn state ceremony in Istanbul.

The Campaigns

A friend of mine in Damascus, a fellow physician, enjoyed reading volumes of old newspapers and magazines. He spent Friday mornings sprawled on the floor with scissors in one hand, clipping from the local and variety columns. When he was in a good mood, he categorized the clippings into envelopes according to date and subject. I contributed to one of these envelopes, which somehow survived my frequent travels from city to city. Its contents gathered reportage on Erdoğan’s commercial ventures, built to have civilized Islamic faces and avoid the stigma of the “brotherhood,” which coincided with the march of modernization and development led by Dr. Bashar al-Assad.

One Al Thawra article covered the outreach tours that Assad conducted in outlying Syrian provinces: “Ordinary citizens of Al-Hasakah slaughter a ram before Mr. President’s motorcade and lift the car aloft.” Another article published in Tishreen quotes Faisal Kalthoum, fu-

ture governor of Daraa, four years before the first demonstrations of 2011: “Local authorities will begin a campaign to eliminate stray dogs throughout the Daraa Governorate. Anyone who kills a stray dog will receive 300 lira. Stray dogs are detrimental to our economic and social life.”

The oldest clipping, from Al-Hayat, yellow as straw, its rust a metaphor for Erdoğan, the man and his mustache, reads: “Our mosques are our barracks, our domes are our helmets, our minarets are our bayonets, our believers a battalion — this is the holy order that guards our religion.”

These rhyming lines, combining the symbols of virility and war, are well known in Turkey. In 1997, when Erdoğan was Istanbul’s mayor, he recited this poem and was jailed for four months. He does not forget offenses but buries the painful memories deep in his heart and searches for the opportunity to return the hurt. After taking office, he again recited this verse at a conference of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. He is known for his love of poetry. He has recited eulogies to the Prophet Muhammad on several occasions, once weeping as he recited a poem on his nostalgia for the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Turkish politicians, those poetry fans, have had their own exploits. Poet Bülent Ecevit led the North Cyprus invasion of 1974, during which the Turkish military forced Kurdish conscripts to the front lines against the Greek Cypriots. Turks, throughout their history, have consistently dragged other nationalities and ethnicities into fighting one another while Atatürk’s officers watched and managed the massacres — their ultimate goal being to Turkify what could be Turkified. They founded their state on massacres and never abandoned the national commitment to them: the Greek massacres, in which Greek churches, shops, and schools burned (1955–1964); the murder and expulsion of the Cypriots (1974); the persecution of the Arabs and Alawites in occupied areas of Syria (1978–1993); the murder and suppression of the Kurds (1923–present). Approximately 12 million Alawites live in Turkey, a quarter of them Kurds, and approximately 15 million Kurds live in Turkey. I will pause here to point out that Abdullah Öcalan, portrayed as an Alawite Kurd, eliminated his political opponents and sold himself first to Assad and Khomeini, second to the United States and Israel. His party flag is yellow like the Star of David, like Hezbollah pennants. Turkish nationalists are always making fun of the stupid Kurds who sell their souls to Satan, their God.

Öcalan’s Richter Scale

An expression, “the situation in south Turkey,” has become a common metaphor for “the Kurdish cause.” In 2007, Erdoğan expanded on Atatürk’s old motto. On TV, in front of the coffins of Turkish soldiers who had been killed in southeastern Turkey, he said, “One flag, one nation, one language, one state.” A leader like him can’t walk away from this history of massacres emptyhanded.

Erdoğan won’t be able to forget the Kurdish women who joined the battle, politically and physically. Leyla Zana of the early 1990s is a glaring example. She spoke Kurmanji Kurdish in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and was confronted with one simple sentence in response: “Separatist, terrorist, arrest her.”

Vincent Ramos, Obliteration Poem (Architectural Horror Vacui), 2017, Mixed media on paper, 10 x 15 in Courtesy of the artist and Frieze Los Angeles, February 14–16, 2020 at Paramount Pictures Studios

Erdoğan, that Sunni lion, tried over and over to pass a fornication law that would sentence whoever breaks it to three years’ imprisonment.

Turkish law is partly inspired by Italian and Spanish fascism. The 1980 Turkish coup d’état targeted the Turkish left-wing, jailing and exiling its members, as well as criminalizing the Kurdish language, which had been culturally invisible since the creation of the Turkish state. State policy effaced some people completely. The political assassinations of writers, journalists, and activists continue. Since the commencement of PKK operations in 1984 until Öcalan’s detention in Nairobi — where he was blindfolded and handcuffed by the Mossad and CIA to be extradited to the Turkish authorities in 1999 —the Turkish armed forces burned more than 3,000 Kurdish villages, killed more than 50,000 people, and displaced millions of Kurds in the outskirts of major cities throughout Turkey.

The capture of Öcalan, or “Apo,” Uncle, was a victory for Turkish nationalists, the devotees to the “Father of the Turks.” The solutions to the conflict between the Kurds and the Turks ended with that victory, but the destruction did not. During the trial of Apo, he surprised his proponents by praising Atatürk and apologizing for the Turkish casualties and fatalities caused by the guerilla warfare tactics his fighters still rely on Kurdistan’s mountains. Like Yilmaz Güney, the imprisoned Kurdish director who directed his latest film, The Road (1982), from inside his cell in Turkey, Öcalan directs his party from inside the Imrali Prison, where he has now resided for 20 years. Sometimes, in his rage, he shakes the bars of his prison like Samson, and an earthquake hits Istanbul. A factor the seismologists ignore when preparing their analysis. A Retired Footballer

“When the feet take office instead of the head, start the doomsday clock.” This is an aphorism of Erdoğan’s, the loud-mouthed orator. It takes us back to his beginnings as a professional footballer, son of the working class, graduate of religious schools, before he was the rising star who would climb the political ladder within the Welfare Party and become the mayor of Istanbul at the age of 40.

During those years, he made a fortune as a businessman, guided in his trade by the Holy Prophet Muhammad — a tactic that was certainly not new to politicians like him. Righteousness is the virtue of the devout president. He starts his meetings and speeches with Al-Fātihah, his mercenaries recite Al-Fath before invading Kurdish cities and villages in northeastern Syria, and yet he has no mercy for Istanbul’s Saturday Mothers, the Kurdish women who gather in the middle of the city to demand information about their missing sons.

Erdoğan loves a big audience, the wider the better. He did once try to satisfy some Kurds, despite their ingratitude and impiety. In 2013, he brought Masoud Barzani, the former president of the Kurdistan region, and the Kurdish singers İbrahim Tatlıses and Şivan Perwer together to a stadium in Diyarbakir. He hoped this might help create an agreement or resolution to the conflict.

Erdoğan, the former athlete, a charismatic man of high stature despite his bowed legs, close to the people’s concerns, who’d rather use the language of the streets than the highbrow language of literary salons, a paragon of masculinity in his silence, irritable in both word and deed, with both friends and foes. He qualifies as one of the raptors swirling in the