New life,old conspiracies: Pamuk’s parodic representations of Turkish conspiratorial logic in The New Life

Abstract

Taking as its starting point the recent condemnation by certain pro-government sectors of the Turkish press of author Orhan Pamuk as being a member of an ‘international literature lobby’,¹ this article examines Pamuk’s exploration of conspiracy and counter-conspiracy as central facets of Turkish intellectual, social and literary life. The notion that shadowy ‘Western forces’ are trying to undermine an independent Turkish state is as embedded in Turkish cultural discourse as the idea that Islamists are trying to effect social change for a similar purpose. In The New Life, Pamuk exposed and parodied the logic of such conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, little knowing that within a decade he would become the focus of such arguments. This article examines that novel and unpicks the threads of conspiratorial logic that Pamuk demonstrates as being central to the Turkish identity, arguing that the ‘Janus Nation’ – a nation formed from the contradictions between East and West, secular and sacred, din and devlet – necessarily expresses itself in terms of the ‘other’.