‘Kafka is among us’: Turkey’s Transnational and Interlingual Literatures

This article focuses on the reception of Kafka in Turkey in conjunction with the status and treatment of ethnic and religious minorities. Investigating the reception and appropriation of Kafka in Turkey reveals the ongoing effort to secure freedom of speech in a country that is marked by a long history of Turkification and Islamisation. The strong tradition of Kafka reception in Turkey sensitises readers to the kinds of literary allusions and rhetorical flourishes that are associated with the Prague author. Characters such as Herr K. and Gregor Samsa, labyrinthine narratives and the motif of estrangement left a lasting imprint on literary texts that openly challenge or circumvent censorship. This article argues that Kafka became a seminal figure for writers in Turkey, writers whose investment was not necessarily in Kafka’s Jewishness but in specific narrative techniques that allowed them to develop their own literature of resistance. This article analyses four novels in this regard - Ferit Edgü’s Hakkâri’de bir Mevsim (1977), Erhan Bener’s Böcek (1982), Bilge Karasu’s Gece (1985), and Orhan Pamuk’s Kar (2004).