ABSTRACT
The example of Yaşar Kemal is a natural choice for exploring the literary figurations and strategies of resistance in the Turkish context because of his nationally and internationally canonical status as a voice of resistance. Like Nazım Hikmet before and perhaps Orhan Pamuk after him, Yaşar Kemal entered the canon of “world literature” as a dissident author—one who “speaks for” the nation in “speaking against” it. It is possible to see the tensions at work in such a role both in his life and in his literary career spanning fifty years and about as many novels in addition to poetry, drama, folkloric compilations, short stories, and journalistic reportage. His first arrest for political reasons dates back to the early 1940s when he was seventeen, but such events have remained an ongoing part of his life. As late as 1995, for instance, he was tried at the Istanbul Court of National Security for an article he had published in Der Spiegel, and received a suspended sentence of twenty months in prison. With his books translated into more than forty different languages, he has been the recipient of numerous prizes in addition to being considered for the Nobel Prize in literature several times. While greatly admired for being a custodian of the riches of the Turkish language, for his use of the legends and folk tales of Anatolia to create an “authentically Turkish” voice in modern literature and for being the “Turkish Homer” whose narrations of the fates and aspirations of his people achieved epic scale and grandeur, he has also often been accused of betraying that very Turkishness, of lending support to the (ever present) hostilities against Turkey, by condemning in international platforms the anti-democratic practices of the Turkish state, its violations of human rights and freedoms, its oppression of minorities.
