Panorama of committed life paths in Turkey

by time news

AThe Kangal is described as steadfast and courageous, as very intelligent, as self-confident. This Anatolian herding dog can defend herds and properties from attackers and intruders on its own if need be, even taking on bears and wolves in the process. The writer Anna Yeliz Schentke named her debut novel after this probably strongest of all dogs, her heroine Dilek, who accompanies the book on the run from Turkey and in her early days in Frankfurt before she disappears again, has the name on the net given to Kangal1210.

“I’m in Germany because otherwise I’d be in prison,” says Dilek, when she finally has the courage to confide in her cousin, who has been living in Germany for a long time. The query confirms Dilek’s concern that Ayla is at least clueless, if not downright dangerous: “What did you do?” In Istanbul, Dilek was part of the editorial staff of the university newspaper, which in the years before the 2016 coup attempt had interviewed six of the thirty professors who later had been arrested. She publishes messages online that go viral and have caught the attention of the police.

There is material about Dilek, but no files, her friend Tekin learns from Sinem, a lawyer who had been friends with Dilek’s deceased mother since childhood. Tekin stayed in Istanbul. What he has left is not much: to ask Baran what he knows and what he told the police. To speak to Sinem. Staring at the bright spot above the kitchen table, above which hung the photo that Dilek took with him on their escape – and again and again at the screen of his mobile phone: “The number you’ve called is temporarily not available. Lüfen daha sonra tekrar deneyin.”

Anna Yeliz Schentke:


Anna Yeliz Schentke: “Kangal”. Roman. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2022. 208 S., geb., 21, – €.
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Image: S. Fischer

The author, born in Frankfurt in 1990, tells the story of Dilek’s escape from three perspectives. And there’s more: With the descriptions of Dilek, Tekin and Ayla, who usually start with a new episode, but sometimes also continue directly where the other character left off, she develops a spectrum of different perspectives on a country stretched to the breaking point, on Turkey Life in Istanbul and in Germany between liberal values ​​and tradition, between rebellion and arrangement with expectations. The feat that Anna Yeliz Schentke manages in the calm and haunting tone of her narrator: as little as her characters understand each other – whoever reads what they have to say can understand them all, despite their contradictions.

When Hilal comes by, Tekin tells her that Dilek must have “gone crazy and flew to Germany”. Sina probably triggered something in her when she talked about Baran’s recent arrest. Hilal gets angry: “Tekin, don’t make that mistake,” she tells him, “that’s exactly what you want. That we hold each other responsible. For getting us locked up, for people disappearing. If Dilek leaves, then she has a reason for it.” Hilal studies art in Istanbul and lives with Soraya – to the outside world it is supposed to look like a flat share, but the two young women are actually a couple. When a man in a bar becomes suspicious, Hilal is beaten and loses an eye. Later, Soraya ends up in prison. “We found a total of six contacts on your cell phone who are proven to be terrorists,” she was told during the interrogation. She should name names.

Led by coincidences

More than 2,000 kilometers away, Melek is annoyed by people who act “as if you would be jailed over there if you said something”. It was she who picked Ayla up and took her into her shared apartment when Ayla’s fiancé hit her and she decided that she couldn’t stay in the shared apartment any longer. But Melek also says: “The people here who call themselves Turks are more conservative than the state itself.” That could be aimed at Ayla’s father, who only told his daughter about the protests in Turkey that it had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with them. The people there had all forgotten how close they were to Allah.

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