{"id":26629,"date":"2010-11-24T08:10:53","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T06:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=26629"},"modified":"2014-01-05T22:38:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T20:38:29","slug":"turkish-writers-boycott-istanbul-literary-event-over-naipaul-invitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/11\/24\/turkish-writers-boycott-istanbul-literary-event-over-naipaul-invitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish writers boycott Istanbul literary event over Naipaul invitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/p>\n

Sir Vidiadhar Suraiprasad Naipaul. AP photo<\/p>\n

\"\"Well-known Indian-British writer Sir Vidiadhar Suraiprasad Naipaul\u2019s invitation to speak at an Istanbul literary event has prompted controversy due to the author\u2019s critical statements about Islam.<\/p>\n

A number of Turkish writers invited to the European Writers Parliament have announced they will boycott the event in protest of Naipaul\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe invitation [to Naipaul] should be canceled and the reason should be explained to him,\u201d said writer Rasim \u00d6zden\u00f6ren. Leftist writer Cezmi Ers\u00f6z said Naipaul\u2019s invitation to the event was an insult to Muslims.<\/p>\n

Daily Zaman writer Hilmi Yavuz was the first to withdraw his name, followed by Cihan Akta\u015f of daily Milli Gazete and Be\u015fir Ayvazo\u011flu of Yeni \u015eafak.<\/p>\n

\u201cIslam has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples,\u201d Naipaul, a Nobel laureate, said in 2001. \u201cTo be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, \u2018My ancestral culture does not exist, it does not matter.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding to the controversy, Ahmet Kot, the literary director of the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency made an announcement and said Naipaul was invited not as the event\u2019s guest of honor but to deliver its opening speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was expecting to get positive reactions for bringing together people with different views,\u201d Kot said. \u201cI still think that we are right and some writers will support us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The literary event will run from Thursday until Saturday.<\/p>\n

A similar controversy occurred during this year\u2019s Golden Orange Film Festival in Antalya, when\u00a0world-famous Bosnia-Serbian director Emir Kusturica, who had been invited to participate in the festival as a jury member, withdrew from the event following protests in Turkey.\u00a0The protesters\u00a0claimed some of\u00a0the director\u2019s\u00a0earlier comments supported war criminals during the Bosnian War in 1995.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News Sir Vidiadhar Suraiprasad Naipaul. AP photo Well-known Indian-British writer Sir Vidiadhar Suraiprasad Naipaul\u2019s invitation to speak at an Istanbul literary event has prompted controversy due to the author\u2019s critical statements about Islam. A number of Turkish writers invited to the European Writers Parliament have announced they will boycott the event […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":26631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[4517],"class_list":["post-26629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-naipaul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}