I remember quite clearly how I excitedly told my new stories to my audience waiting in full curiosity. Elephants and a kettle were the indispensable characters of my joyful stories. It is still a mystery for me how I was able to achieve to bring them together but I was accomplished enough to make my audience believe in my idea of elephants having a resemblance to a kettle.
I was young; I was young enough to hide myself in a fictional world escaping from this bothersome one when I was lost in it. Sometimes I myself would enter recklessly into the world of fiction and some other times I would just let the fiction flow into the real world. In a way I wove the reality with fiction, or vice versa.
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Years later I realized that it is just about why and how literature comes into being. It has a simple formula: “mix a bit of reality with limitless imagination and offer it in an appetizing way”. Now the world no longer seems such displeasing and you have already been the chef-cook in the kitchen!
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It seems to me that while we are strolling around the realms of western literature, unexpectedly coming across with a fictional Turkish character is also relevant to this formula; presenting the actuality in a more pleasing way by intermingling reality with imagination.Ottomans advancing through west and gaining power knock at the door of Europe in 14th century. By 16th century the situation is much more displeasing for Europeans as Turks own lands in Europe including Constantinople which is one of the capitals of western culture. For ages Turks are seen as the enemy of western culture and belief by westerners. In this sense it is not surprising to run into a Turk when we read works of western writers. They either portray a sneaky, treacherous Turk against trustable, faithful Westerner or they write about ‘fantastic’ victories won upon Turks. Instead of the works whose main character is a Turk, the ones which put him in a subplot attract my attention more.
Frankenstein, worldwide known novel of Mary Shelley, is one of the best examples of it. The book takes its share from romantic orientalism in 19th century. One of the interesting subplots of the novel is about a rich Turkish merchant who is arrested in Paris as a result of an unknown crime and a young French nobleman Felix who falls in love with his daughter when he tries to help him. While “the Turk” appears as if he approves the love between Felix and his daughter Safie, “in his heart he forms far other plans.” Even though he “loathes the idea that his daughter should be united to a Christian”, he has to rely on Felix to be freed from prison. At the end while Felix is exiled from his native country because of treason, “the Turk” who gains his liberty goes back to Constantinople with his daughter whom he promises to unite to Felix.
Shelley, through the whole story, calls the merchant “the Turk” without any need to give him a name and depicts him as a ‘cunning’, ‘hypocritical’ and ‘stealthy’ man.
The author also talks about the rebellious soul of Safie who disapproves assumed passive role of woman in Turkish society and at the end elopes to her western lover Felix.
We see a similar Turkish image in William Shakespeare’s Othello,too. The writer who is famous for his historical plays hosts Turks in his subplots as Mary Shelley does. However, this time we are in 16th century; in other words golden age of Ottoman empire. Whereas the tragic relationship between Othello and Desdemona is taken as the main plot, at the background it makes references to Turks setting off to take Cyprus. The news of Turkish fleets steering for Rhodes comes to Othello but it is nothing than a ‘trap’. Turks whose real target is Cyprus want to deceive the British by advancing through Rhodes. So, the image of Turk is the same; ‘a cunning deceiver’. A similar example appears in another scene: when his lieutenants begin fighting with each other, Othello scolds them by calling attention to the supposed ‘barbaric’ sides of Turks, “Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that/ Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?”
At the end Turks who are on the way to Cyprus are destroyed in a storm and cannot achieve their goal. Yet, the interesting point is that Cyprus had already been taken by Turks about thirty years before Shakespeare wrote Othello and the play tells just a fantastic, wishful destruction of Turks.
It is also possible that Shakespeare, by making use of reality and imagination formula of literature and intermingling the conquest of Cyprus with the battle of Lepanto may want to create a semi-historical subplot. Because the European victory of Lepanto which is celebrated rapturously by westerners takes place in the same year (1571) with conquest of Cyprus.
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On the basis of my association between my relation with elephants and the relation of western writers and Turks, the question waiting to be ansewred is “could the west be as naive as a child who tells the story of elephants which she has never seen in her life? Or was he more shrewd than her?”
As I get older, elephants have lost both their ‘fantasticality’ and their similarity with the kettle. Yet, it is an enigma what the image of Turks has turned into in the eyes of westerners, while it is still being questioned if we should be a member of Europian Union or not.
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