How­ev­er, I can­not call my writ­ings ‘immi­grant lit­er­a­ture’. I have not migrat­ed from one place to anoth­er. How­ev­er, I know very well what immi­gra­tion is but we, as writ­ers, do not want to be stuck in the cat­e­go­ry of immi­grant lit­er­a­ture; our writ­ings are lit­er­ary works that colour the whole world of lit­er­a­ture; we fight against stereo­types and vic­tim­iza­tion and, of course, racism. So what should we do? We must not give up; we must believe in our­selves. Our work is pro­fes­sion­al after it is good — which I want to believe – and it will be per­ma­nent. By think­ing the oppo­site, a person’s con­fi­dence and endurance are eas­i­ly bro­ken, and we must not let any­one break our voices.

The gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers today who can speak Ger­man — as well as the descen­dants of the first migrant work­ers — expe­ri­enced iden­ti­ty and belong­ing prob­lems, how did, and does this reflect on migra­tion literature?

It would be com­plete­ly wrong to call us immi­grant writ­ers, because we are not immi­grants. No one can claim that. But yes, we are of an immi­grant back­ground, but we are deal­ing with dif­fer­ent sub­jects and in this sense, what we write also mat­ters. For exam­ple, are we writ­ing a children’s book, a detec­tive nov­el or poet­ry? If we process the sub­jects we live, and know, we will pro­duce good works. But the prob­lem is this: no one has the right to impose on us which sub­ject we will cov­er, but this is how the Ger­man lit­er­ary world feels. Let’s say the third gen­er­a­tion writes a gen­er­al poet­ry book; It is almost impos­si­ble to impose this on the Ger­man lit­er­ary world. How­ev­er, if a poet writes a poet­ry book specif­i­cal­ly about immi­gra­tion, it is not impos­si­ble that it will be accept­ed, pub­lished and maybe even award­ed. My bat­tle begins here: I don’t want to be accept­ed just because I’m deal­ing with immi­gra­tion, but we should be accept­ed as poets and writ­ers and have the free­dom to write about any sub­ject. And no one has the right to take that free­dom away from us.

NANATEA

We nev­er drank Nanatea together

and on the whole

we didn’t dance enough. 

We nev­er went cycling together

on the whole, I didn’t pinch 

your nose enough

to hear what you sound­ed like when you talked.

We didn’t kiss each oth­er enough

on the streets.

But when is kiss­ing ever enough

when you love each other?

I haven’t smoked since last year

I’ve been veg­e­tar­i­an for many years 

and don’t eat eggs. 

I have sur­vived a pan­dem­ic with­out you

cat­a­stroph­ic nat­ur­al disasters

and racist ter­ror attacks

I have sur­vived you with­out you

and nev­er­the­less have stayed sane.

In the sum­mer, I paint my nails merry-red

in autumn blue-black.

Many things stay the same with people

I still love to laugh loudly.

I over­flow with love

for every­thing that car­ries life inside it

that car­ries no life inside it.

And I want to sow love 

wher­ev­er I tread

wher­ev­er I’ll nev­er go.

I’d take the whole world in my arms

and always want to keep

life from harm.

Next to noth­ing of this succeeds. 

We nev­er drank Nanatea together

and I know

we’ll nev­er make it up now.

If we start from the fact that lit­er­a­ture feeds on the lan­guage it is pro­duced and lives with it, the fact that the lan­guage has changed into Ger­man in the lit­er­ary works of this gen­er­a­tion is an indi­ca­tion that they have adopt­ed Ger­many. Turk­ish, which remained only with­in the home, and Ger­man, which sur­round­ed them in social and dai­ly life, brought their cul­ture with them. The con­cept of ‘inter­cul­tur­al lit­er­a­ture’ emerged when this cul­ture that comes with the lan­guage is com­bined with the cul­ture with­in the home.

I think ‘inter­cul­tur­al lit­er­a­ture’ is a very good def­i­n­i­tion. Lit­er­a­ture is not fed only with the lan­guage in which it is pro­duced, lit­er­a­ture espe­cial­ly nour­ish­es the lan­guage in which it is pro­duced. This detail is impor­tant. The author makes a great con­tri­bu­tion to the lan­guage and cul­ture of the coun­try, to the lan­guage and cul­ture of that coun­try, and espe­cial­ly to the world of lit­er­a­ture. He con­tributes to all the lands he orig­i­nates from, and in whichev­er coun­try he per­forms his art. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for some rea­son, peo­ple still haven’t noticed this, so they don’t know the val­ue of any of these writ­ers; nei­ther in Turkey nor in Germany.

The lan­guage we use will of course be Ger­man, oth­er­wise it would be strange; a writer usu­al­ly writes to reach peo­ple. When we live in Ger­many and write in Turk­ish, it is almost impos­si­ble for us to reach read­ers. By the way, let me tell you: we are resent­ful against Turkey. We have great dif­fi­cul­ty in accept­ing our­selves both in Ger­many and in Turkey. Although it con­sti­tutes a great artis­tic gain for both coun­tries, this is ignored. Every cre­ative per­son wants to be sup­port­ed. Sup­port strength­ens it, nour­ish­es it, caus­es it to kill the road; we set out alone and fight our war alone. No one says ‘walk’ behind us, but there are too many obsta­cles ahead.

POSSIBLY WELL AND TRULY

Per­haps home is a line of Kurt Cobain 

a verse of Attilâ Ilhan 

a thou­sand-year old long­ing, grey­ing hair 

the smell of rain on fields 

the view from a win­dow, black-and-white 

a rut­ted path with leaves on an autumn day 

or Uncle Cemil in his wool­ly hat laughing. 

Per­haps home is that shoot­ing star

from Lloret de Mar

this very mil­lisec­ond or the Repub­lic of Adygea 

is Offen­bach city library 

Ernst Buch­holz inside 

or the house key handed 

to the exile. 

Per­haps home is a dead­ly seri­ous matter 

with a wal­rus moustache 

a stretch of pier run barefoot 

the fragili­ty of the poppy 

of our childhood 

a Cal­lithrix jac­chus, a com­mon marmoset 

or Hel­lo-Kit­ty-bal­loon

even hides itself in candyfloss.

Per­haps home is a nomad with tukumbut 

rests here and there 

or a Mick­ey Mouse shirt and shoelaces 

at the Baltic 

hair woven into a plait 

is a shat­tered glass on which you step 

that unex­pect­ed ache in the chest.

Per­haps home is falling into your own bed 

after a night out, still wear­ing jeans and trainers 

and hold­ing it there, hold­ing it there. 

Is a cou­ple danc­ing, for­get­ting them­selves in the tango 

the sight of two white-brown horses 

some­times Frank­furt Air­port Hall B 

or sim­ply Fouzia’s voice. 

Per­haps home is the square root of eight 

or a thing with a trunk and cin­na­mon on top 

is a chameleon blend­ing in. 

Per­haps though it’s Mrs. Green 

from the ground floor, mither­ing about everyone 

per­haps. 

Your work The Rose and the Nightin­gale is a cen­tral motif of mil­len­ni­al Ara­bic, Per­sian and Turk­ish poet­ry. While the rose is a sym­bol for the beloved there, the nightin­gale express­es his long­ing; your poems are mod­ern and inde­pen­dent love poems that trace things in life and love. With new and sur­pris­ing metaphors, they sing about love, but also about its fail­ure and loss, in a musi­cal tone whose rhyth­mic units con­vey what is being said, cre­at­ing a very unique, spe­cial sound. How did the release of Rose and Nightin­gale come about? Where does your work stand in your lit­er­ary adventure?

This beau­ti­ful metaphor, which has been used in Ara­bic, Per­sian and Ottoman/Turkish poet­ry and song lyrics dat­ing back to the 11^th/12^th cen­tu­ry, is rel­a­tive­ly unknown in Ger­man lit­er­a­ture. I gave this name to my first book of love poems to adapt and intro­duce the metaphor to Ger­man lit­er­a­ture.  And the name of the long poem at the end of the book is Rose and Nightin­gale, which gave my poet­ry book its name. Poets such as Goethe and Heine used this metaphor in sev­er­al of their poems at the time, but it nev­er made a place in Ger­man lit­er­a­ture. That’s why there is a text at the back of the book that was writ­ten just for this book at my request. There, the his­tor­i­cal sto­ry and mean­ing of Rose and Nightin­gale is explained with exam­ples of poet­ry. The suc­cess­ful nov­el­ist and philol­o­gist Murat Tun­cel wrote it for me, and I trans­lat­ed it into Ger­man. I am very hap­py that he gave this valu­able arti­cle to the read­ers, and to me. I was amazed that no book under that name had been pub­lished in Ger­many until 2014. I think it’s the per­fect name for a book that’s all about love poems.

While you are expe­ri­enc­ing the pains of indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion in your poems, we can observe the knot­ty nar­ra­tive of good and evil, life and death, with the exis­ten­tial ques­tions you deal with. Is this style of yours also an atti­tude you show towards life?

Yes, we can say that. I usu­al­ly write from my own win­dow any­way. In only a very few of my poems do I put myself in the shoes of anoth­er per­son and wrote based on their experiences.

In your poet­ry, you point to the human dev­as­ta­tion that focus­es on human tragedies fuelled by social real­ism. What do you see in the fusion of lone­li­ness and birth?

Man is alone when he is born and when he dies. He is born with some char­ac­ter­is­tics that he can­not change at birth; eth­nic­i­ty, ori­gin, gen­der etc. All of these affect how peo­ple will live in the future; and how much he will feel the feel­ing of lone­li­ness is relat­ed to these fac­tors. Being in the minor­i­ty, not being under­stood, being exposed to racism etc., push­es peo­ple to lone­li­ness. By trans­form­ing the orig­i­nal motifs of our cul­ture in our texts, we con­front the bro­ken voice of avoid­ance with the word of courage, our trou­bles that sur­round the dark­ness of gloom like a shud­der, with their past and wrongs.

The deep sad­ness in your poems, death and life, pain, geo­gra­phies, social heal­ing in terms of the heal­ing pow­er of art has led to look at the world. Con­sid­er­ing the polit­i­cal atmos­phere, did you feel com­pelled to do this, or did the feel­ings flow­ing through you?

Thank you, you described it very well. I write all my poems the way I feel. In some cas­es, there is a request for poet­ry on cer­tain top­ics. This usu­al­ly hap­pens for a cer­tain issue of lit­er­ary mag­a­zines or a radio show. Recent­ly, I wrote a poem for Deutsch­land­funk, the sub­ject of which was request­ed to be up-to-date. And then it is up to us to par­tic­i­pate or not. I only par­tic­i­pate in top­ics and projects that appeal to me. No one should write out of a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty. And any­way, that arti­cle would be nei­ther good nor convincing.

LOVE IN LOCKDOWN

1.

You’re in Vienna 

and I’m in Offenbach

and we can’t fly to be with one another

or take the train

even the 15-hour dri­ve on the Megabus

the only oth­er possibility 

is no longer possible.

Or that I 

hap­pi­ly wave at you at Frank­furt cen­tral station 

or that you 

hold me long­ing­ly at the air­port in Vienna. 

The bor­ders are closed

to all lovers, my love

our hold­ing each oth­er forbidden

and we can’t find our way to one another. 

Which would be a great pity of course

if we hadn’t already

sep­a­rat­ed.

How for­tu­nate. 

2. 

You’re in Düsseldorf

and I’m in Offenbach

and we can’t vis­it one another

by car or train

even the tri­al by Megabus

the longest of all possibilities 

is no longer a possibility.

Or that I 

run into your arms at the cor­ner of the old school

or that you

await me eager­ly at the train sta­tion in Düsseldorf.

The bor­ders are closed

to love, my love

our hold­ing each oth­er forbidden

and I can’t find my way to you. 

Not because the world these days

has been struck by a pandemic 

or the two metre rule.

But sim­ply because 

with or with­out pan­dem­ic or lockdown

you don’t want me anymore.

How unfor­tu­nate. 

In your poems, you deal with tox­ic social prej­u­dices; the free­doms you can fight for, the sub­jects you are angry about. How should we read the spir­it of your text?

Every­one reads based on their own expe­ri­ences, and we all inter­pret the same words dif­fer­ent­ly, on dif­fer­ent days and in dif­fer­ent years. This is the mag­ic of poet­ry. You read a book and place it in your library, and that book is untouched, ready to be dis­cov­ered, as if it were to be read for the first time – but poems, they change and renew where they stand.

What do you think poet­ry would over­come in the face of the destruc­tion in man? What pains would it relieve?

Usu­al­ly all, some­times none. If I can relieve anyone’s pain with my writ­ing, it is a great thing. What could be bet­ter than that?

What was it that encour­aged you to write from day one?

I was born as a poet. The rea­son why I came to this world and my qual­i­fi­ca­tion is to write poet­ry. To write, but to write for peo­ple, to give them some­thing — for exam­ple, a smile, a feel­ing that I am not alone. I have a reason.

In 2016 you were award­ed the Else-Lasker-Schüler poet­ry prize and the Alfred Müller Felsen­burg award for civic courage. How did you feel?

They told me on the phone that I had received the Else-Lasker-Schüler poet­ry award, and the next time, they asked me whether I would accept it or not. I was very hap­py with both awards, and since they were the first awards I received, they have a spe­cial place for me; they are both very valu­able prizes and wings in their own right.

What respon­si­bil­i­ty did you feel when you reflect­ed on the Ger­man poet Michael Starcke’s state­ment about you; “She will be remem­bered with the great­est poets of our century”?

 I was very hap­py and emo­tion­al. That sen­tence is part of the lit­er­ary review he wrote, and when I read that review, my eyes filled with tears. But I did­n’t feel any respon­si­bil­i­ty; that’s the truth. This might be the great­est sen­tence one can say about a poet, but when peo­ple say good or bad things about us, we don’t have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for it. Star­cke said; “Whether I say this sen­tence or not, it will be like this any­way.” He said the great­est words about me first. May you rest in the light.

You are a mem­ber of the Ger­man PEN Cen­tre, the Ger­man Writ­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion and the Ger­man Trans­la­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion. You trans­lat­ed the poets Gün­ter Grass, Wern­er Söll­ner, Else Lasker-Schüler. How would you describe the reflec­tion of your diver­si­ty on your trans­la­tion as a poet and sto­ry writer?

Of course, I don’t do the Shi­ite trans­la­tions to diver­si­fy me, that would be sadis­tic. But over time, I real­ized that it broad­ens one’s hori­zons. Trans­lat­ing poet­ry is a very dif­fi­cult, real­ly dif­fi­cult job. I am main­ly trans­lat­ing from Turk­ish to Ger­man. I was very sur­prised when I learned that many valu­able poets such as Cemal Süreya or Turgut Uyar were not trans­lat­ed into Ger­man. It was as if some­one had to do this job, and it was up to me. Those pre­cious poets deserved to be trans­lat­ed. They are world poets. By trans­lat­ing them into Ger­man, intro­duc­ing them to the read­ers on stage with their pho­tographs, resumes and poems, I thanked them for all the beau­ti­ful poems they wrote. One should know how to give thanks for every good deed. It’s nev­er too late to say thank you. In addi­tion, those valu­able read­ers in Ger­many deserve to know Turk­ish poets, like schools all over the world. Turkey is rich in this regard.

SMOKE CURLS FROM A CIGARETTE 

Smoke curls from a cig­a­rette, the 

con­tours dis­ap­pear into the room 

your eye­lash between my fingers: 

will it be up or down? In us the 

after­taste of some­thing stares at us 

from the sofa, if you crouch down 

wolves won’t eat you, so the rumour 

your nose is splen­did, is real­ly something 

no rumour, feed the earth, or 

out­side the hous­es will collapse 

top­ple over, words swamp us 

on days of inspi­ra­tion we’re washed 

away, put the ket­tle on the hob, release 

the Turk­ish tea glass from its see 

through corset, draw nearer 

to assim­i­la­tion, to islamophobia 

unlearn your lan­guage. be. up. to. date. 

(Trans­lat­ed by Mar­tin Kratz)

Who are the poets who shape the pat­tern of your lit­er­ary adventure?

Rather than shap­ing it, I should state that I start­ed poet­ry with Turk­ish lit­er­a­ture. And the first poems I wrote were in Turk­ish. I lat­er changed my writ­ing lan­guage to Ger­man. Orhan Veli, Nâzım Hik­met, Atil­la İlh­an, Hasan Hüseyin, Ahmed Arif, Turgut Uyar, Melih Cevdet, Cemal Süreya etc. are very valu­able. By the way, I have a signed book by Cemal Süreya, hang­ing in a large frame in my study room in Ger­many. In 2014, I bought it from a sec­ond-hand book­store named Seya­hat Sahaf. After the book­keep­er was sure that the book would go to the right per­son, he sent it to me. He want­ed to know who want­ed the book, to whom it was going. Isn’t it beau­ti­ful? The book was so untouched that its pages were tied togeth­er at the ends and had not even been opened. There was even a con­ver­sa­tion about my love for Var­lık mag­a­zine when we chat­ted. As a gift, he sent two Var­lık mag­a­zines from 1955 with it.

Last­ly Safiye, writ­ing is writ­ten on time, not on paper. What are the ways you searched and found lit­er­a­ture writ­ten in time?

I have nev­er searched for it, there is no need for it. Regard­less of the branch of art, if your work is good, it will be per­ma­nent. Of course, it’s also about your tal­ent and the effort and per­se­ver­ance you put in. My writ­ings will out­live me, I feel it.

Thank you for your time chat­ting to me Safiye.

~