"Threads on the Crescent": A Mural of Contemporary Turkish Society May 11, 2023 – Posted in: Books, Uncategorized – Tags: , , , ,

Thanasis Minas reads Evangelos Aretai's new novel.

Reading Evangelos Aretai's new book "Threads in the Half Moon", you can't help but reflect that the Gezi Park riot in Taksim, which is part of the sequence of events of the Arab Spring (2011) that affected the wider region, may have stifled the May 1, 2013 (an orgy of brutal police violence, which resulted in 8 deaths, at least 8,000 injuries and countless civilian arrests), but it shook Turkey and beyond. There was born an unprecedented popular wave of indignation and questioning against the authoritarianism and corruption of the Islamic conservative AKP government, which demanded demands for liberalization (political, not neoliberal economic) and modernization of Turkish society, respect for human rights, minorities and of sexual freedom.

It was a spontaneous popular eruption, which was not guided; neither the secular, sometimes modernizing, but equally conservative with the Islamists, the Kemalists, nor the Turkish left, which has been weakened after decades of persecution (sometimes by the coup d'états), could shoulder this role of Ecevit and Evren, sometimes by the Kemalites, finally by Erdogan's Islamists). Possibly the only truly progressive political force in Turkey is the Kurdish HDP party, which, however, has also suffered suffocating persecutions from the so-called "deep state", a result of the long-term dominance and influence of the military in the political life of the country, with all their offshoots (Grey Wolves, etc.).

Who is Evangelos Aretaios?

This is briefly the context, the historical-political framework in Evangelos Aretai's novel. But first a few words about the author: O Evangelos Aretaios he is a specialist in matters concerning Turkey, a scientific associate of ELIAMEP and a researcher at the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Nicosia, a journalist at the REAL group in Greece and ASTRA in Cyprus. He has studied law in France and Islamic studies in Belgium. He is the author of two books on sociological changes in Turkey, two novels and two collections of short stories. He lived in Turkey between 1999 and 2007 and then regularly traveled to the country as a correspondent, until August 25, 2022 when he was deported by the Turkish authorities for reasons of "public order". Among his works is the study - in collaboration with Giorgos Angeletopoulos Turkey: The Great Modernization Train (Papadopoulos, 2019), a careful look at the history and sociology of Turkey and also of Muslim societies, where authoritarianism, nationalism and religious authoritarianism coexist and are contrasted with an individuality that challenges the traditional, dominant model of behaviors, habits and social stratification.

"The Road to Damascus"

With the collection of short stories The Road to Damascus (Oxy, 2021), a title possibly inspired by the event of the "enlightenment" of Saul/Paul on his way to the Syrian capital, Areteos revealed his wide knowledge and experiences regarding the societies of the Near East. Avoiding the mistakes inherent in "orientalism" (Edward Said), approaching his subjects with an open mind, seeking "the truths of others", the author deals with the lives of seven diverse characters, who have either illegitimated, committed crimes or fallen into tragedies mistakes, of people, but who, despite this, seek atonement, brotherhood and love.

"Threads on the Crescent"

With the Threads on the crescent moon Evangelos Aretaios attempts to compose a mural of Turkish society in the era after the Gezi Rebellion. Its central heroine, a flamboyant sociology professor, wakes up after the events and claims her own share in the political and sexual revolution. Obviously, she is faced with a deep-rooted conservatism and is forced to go through complications. She is a woman and indeed a homosexual in a male-dominated, chauvinistic society (although in Turkey Islamic law is not applied with the extremes of Saudi Arabia), she is progressive and politically liberal in a strict political framework that has been delineated, from different starting points but equally authoritarian, by on the one hand the Kemals and on the other the Islamists. She narrates herself:

"Since 2015 I had started teaching as a visitor at the University of Milan, sociology. And I have been teaching regularly at Bosphorus University since 2010. My PhD and my first books, which I built my career on at the beginning, were on the sociology of Islam and specifically on Islamic fashion in Turkey and how from its evolution, the great dynamics of changes and mutations in society are recorded, mainly in Islamic women and in the way they live and manage their individuality and identity as women. But after 2013 and the Gezi protests, I started to work and write about the sociology of authoritarian regimes».  

Not only Turkey is included in the latter. The field of concern is broad and goes back to the Panopticon (type of prison-state) and its social engineering Jeremy Bentham (1785), which also occupied him Michel Foucault, to the modern, far-right (or, more correctly, pro-Nazi?) Orban regime in Hungary. This last preoccupation will eventually turn the powers that be against her and force her to self-exile around Lake Como in Italy. But as the famous Italian historian notes Enzo Traverso, "exile (or self-exile) sometimes gives the observer the necessary detachment and clarity". In this light, we follow in the pages of the book the events that marked Turkey in the last ten years, from Gezi to the recent deadly earthquakes, as the political and social dynamics emerge in view of the upcoming elections.

The narration is first-person. Internal monologue alternates with epistolary – the letters exchanged between the heroine and her lover. The political blends with the human, the rational with the emotional, and events are not recounted or evaluated, but experienced by the characters – after all, this is a novel, not an essay or treatise.

"The scent of Gulistan suddenly comes to my mind, as if I could actually smell it. I have been seeing her since December and it is the beginning of February. Over a month. And now I don't know if I will see her again. I cannot go to Turkey again, certainly not until the elections, and then everything will depend on who wins them. I may never be able to go again».

But a political novel. The leading critic of modernism Michael Bakhtin notes that "a literary work is political in exile when it is polyphonic and highlights otherness». In Evangelos Aretai's novel, the different voices of today's Turkey are heard loudly.

Note

To avoid misunderstandings, the signatory, despite his reservations about the Kemalites, aligns himself with the forces fighting the Islamists. Obviously not for religious reasons (whether/where everyone believes is a personal matter, all religions and cultures are respected) nor because "this is in Greece's interest". However, as Marx also writes, when the bourgeois-democratic stake is raised in an authoritarian society, the working class will have to form, with its forces distinct, the bourgeois bloc. Until the next phase... 

(The text of Thanasis Mina was published in Avopolis.gr)

"Threads on the Crescent". Get the book here.

See the rest of Evangelos Aretai's books here.