22 November 2010, Monday \/ Hatice Ahsen Utku , \u0130stanbul\t\t0\t\t0\t\t1\t\t2<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with Turkey and came back very often,\u201d says Joachim Sartorius, German diplomat, poet and writer, as people come to have their books autographed by him.<\/p>\n
In \u201cDie Prinzeninseln\u201d (the Princes\u2019 Islands), which was met with great interest in Germany, he writes about his past experiences in the islands of \u0130stanbul in a poetic style.<\/p>\n
Born in F\u00fcrth in 1946, Sartorius had many opportunities to witness different cultures, mostly in the Mediterranean region, and now lives in Berlin. The personal journey of the German writer, who was in \u0130stanbul earlier this month as the guest of Goethe-Institut \u0130stanbul and Everest Publications, took him through Tunisia, New York, \u0130stanbul and Cyprus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stayed in Tunisia from the ages of 10 to 15, which are very important ages which influenced me a lot,\u201d says Sartorius, in an interview with Today\u2019s Zaman. \u201cI think it was the Mediterranean light, the Islamic architecture that I discovered as a young boy, the calligraphy and the landscape, totally different from Bavaria, where I was born. I collected many images that I use in my poetry during this period, so North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean have always been very important regions for me. I stayed in Cyprus for four years as a diplomat and of course in \u0130stanbul. … \u0130stanbul is not on the Mediterranean, but for me it\u2019s somehow a part of the region, which was called the Levant in the 19th century. I also frequently visited Egypt and wrote a long book about Alexandria. So, this is my region.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sartorius came to Turkey as a diplomat but he loved and adapted to the country so well that he continues to come to Turkey, especially \u0130stanbul and the islands. \u201cThe first time I was in Turkey, I was still a German diplomat and I worked in Ankara at the embassy, where my field of work was domestic policy and the Turkish press. I had a friend who said that I could stay in \u0130stanbul for a few months for the media and then I returned very frequently, staying for weeks, so I knew \u0130stanbul quite well. I was located in Ankara but I travelled a lot in Turkey. It was just the first three years that were linked to an official job, but I fell in love with Turkey and I continued to come back often just as a tourist.\u201d<\/p>\n
The never-changing face of the islands<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first time I went B\u00fcy\u00fckada in 1978, I was hooked and I felt the urge come back,\u201d says Sartorius, explaining how his addiction to the islands began. \u201cOn the one hand I like, of course, the landscape and nature but also the silence of the islands. It is so different from \u0130stanbul. \u0130stanbul is a big imperial city and the adalar are somehow influenced, but also totally different. I frequently came back to the islands on brief trips, and two years ago I decided to write a kind of poetic little traveler\u2019s book about the islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
What really influenced Sartorius about the islands is that time seems to stop there. \u201cOne of their attractive features is that, in fact, they have not changed much, due to the fact that there are no cars there. There is another way of life that has remained unchanged for many many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this respect, despite the fact that they are a part of \u0130stanbul, the islands constitute a total contradiction with \u0130stanbul. \u201cThere is a huge contradiction between \u0130stanbul and the islands, and that is part of what makes it fascinating. You can escape from \u0130stanbul and dream there. \u0130stanbul is exploding with energy and constantly has lots of things going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sartorius\u2019 sources were the books of the historians and the local people, which he felt was enough since he did not intend for it to be academic. \u201cI talked to the local people but I also read a lot books,\u201d says Sartorius. \u201cIn Germany there are a lot of historians dealing with Byzantine times and the Ottoman conquest. I also had some friends there, not when I wrote the book but Ferid Edg\u00fc had a house in B\u00fcy\u00fckada, and I also spent some time in a beautiful old Armenian house for a few weeks. There was also F\u0131st\u0131k Ahmet; he had a restaurant and I had some fantastic evening meals, feasts and lots of conversations there. I am a writer and I think a writer has great freedom. Maybe you say that there should be more historical facts, but as a writer I am free, I perceive this thing and I write it down. For me, it is a kind of poetic travelogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the change and energy of \u0130stanbul influence Sartorius as much as the non-change in the islands. \u201cOf all the cities I know, I think \u0130stanbul changes the most. It touches every part of life. You can see it in architecture; you can see it in art. You now have really fantastic museums, and for the perhaps last 20 years there has been a kind of consciousness about your Ottoman past, and many of the ruins and buildings have been repaired and renovated. It is also unbelievable that books about, for example, the parks or fountains of \u0130stanbul are coming out. On the other hand it is getting very modern in terms of, for example, visual arts. I think you have very top artists. I followed the arts here a little bit because I invited some Turkish writers and young artists to Berlin. Next year it will be the 60th anniversary of the first Turkish worker coming to Germany, and there will be a lot of exhibitions in Berlin dealing with this subject.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loss of cosmopolitanism<\/p>\n
One of the features that Sartorius highlights in his book is the multicultural aspect of the islands. \u201cThere have been many cities in this region where we have many great cosmopolitan areas, many religions, many different ethnic groups,\u201d says Sartorius. \u201cStarting with Alexandria, which was a big cosmopolitan city in the late 19th century, the waves of nationalism in Egypt and Turkey caused other people to go away for a variety of reasons. For me one part of h\u00fcz\u00fcn [sorrow] is the loss of cosmopolitanism. I don\u2019t know when it started on the islands, probably in the 1940s or 1950s, but I think there\u2019s now a kind of return. People are coming back to Burgazada and the islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTurkey is a very very big country in terms of size,\u201d says Sartorius about how Turkey still keeps the variety within its own boundaries. \u201cIt\u2019s not very surprising that you have many different regions. Of course the Mediterranean region is very different from the Van region. It\u2019s different in nature and vegetation, but it\u2019s also different in history: The Greeks and the Romans lived on the Lycian coast, but in Mardin is the history of Assyria. I like this variety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sartorius says that he tried to learn Turkish but since all his Turkish friends spoke English or German very well, he only had around 800 Turkish words in his vocabulary when he left Turkey in 1980. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of a stereotype to say that Turks have great hospitality, but I think it\u2019s true. I was always very so cordially and well received.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Sartorius is quite happy about the interest in his book, he has already started to work on a new one. \u201cThis book about the Princes\u2019 Islands was a really big success for me in Germany. By now more than 7,000 copies have been sold, while my poetry books never get more than 1,000. My best friends in Germany tell me to continue to write prose and forget about these strange poems,\u201d says Sartorius, laughing. \u201cMy project at the moment is to write perhaps a novel. … It would be my first time writing a novel, and the setting would probably be Cyprus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
22 November 2010, Monday \/ Hatice Ahsen Utku , \u0130stanbul 0 0 1 2 \u201cI fell in love with Turkey and came back very often,\u201d says Joachim Sartorius, German diplomat, poet and writer, as people come to have their books autographed by him. In \u201cDie Prinzeninseln\u201d (the Princes\u2019 Islands), which was met with great interest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":68119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4524,4523],"class_list":["post-26667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-die-prinzeninseln","tag-princes-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26667","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=26667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}