plagiat merupakan tindakan tidak terpuji the … · demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan...

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THE IRONY OF TURKISH MODERN IDENTITY:OSCILLATION OF THE EAST AND THE WEST

IN PAMUK’S MY NAME IS REDAND THE WHITE CASTLE

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfilment of the Requirementsfor the Degree of Magister Humaniora

in English Language Studies

by

Catharina Brameswari

126332057

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIESSANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA2015

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJIPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

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A THESIS

The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and theWest in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle

by

Catharina Brameswari126332057

Approved by

Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D.Thesis Advisor 4 May 2015


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A THESIS

The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and theWest in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle

by

Catharina BrameswariStudent Number: 126332057

was defended in front of the Thesis Committeeand Declared Acceptable

Thesis Committee

Chairperson : Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D.

Secretary : Paulus Sarwoto, Ph.D.

Member : Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., STD.

Member : Dr. F.X. Siswadi, M.A.

Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015The Graduate School DirectorSanata Dharma University

Prof. Dr. Augustinus Supratiknya


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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This is to certify that all the ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise

stated, are the ideas, sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full

consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else’s idea,

phrase, or sentence without a proper reference.

Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015



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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI

KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswi Universitas Sanata Dharma,

Nama : Catharina Brameswari

Nomor Mahasiswa : 126332057

Demi perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan

Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:

The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity: Oscillation of the East and the West

in Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and The White Castle

beserta perangkat yang diperlukan. Dengan demikian saya memberikan hak

kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan

dalam media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data,

mendistribusikannya secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau

media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta izin dari saya

maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya

sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Yogyakarta, 9 June 2015



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all I would like to express my greatest gratitude by dedicating this

thesis to those who have supported me in finishing this thesis and I dedicate it to

the Almighty God, Lord Jesus Christ, for His wonderful love and guidance so that

I could finish this thesis.

I give my sincere gratitude to Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Ph.D. my

thesis advisor who had spent his precious time, and dedicated his energy in

guiding me to finish this thesis. His inputs, patience, guidance, and correction

throughout the processes of writing this thesis are the biggest contributions, which

have helped me to finish it. I would also like to thank all the lecturers in the

English Language Studies (ELS) Department, especially F.X. Mukarto, Ph.D., Dr.

Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. (Hons), Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A., the late Prof. Dr.

Bakdi Soemanto, S.U., Patrisius Mutiara Andalas, S.J., STD., and Dr. F.X.

Siswadi, M.A. for their professional support throughout my study.

Then, I would like to express my particular thanks to mbak Maria

Adelheid Lelyana, the secretariat staff, for her care and help during my study and

also Siwi for being my partner in KBI secretariat. Additionally, I also want to say

thank you to my friends in Literature class batch 2012, Mbak Hari, Mbak Elis,

Seto, Sita, Gisa, Maxi, Pak Arif, and Andrew for their support and

encouragement.

I would also like to express my deep gratefulness to my parents, Yustinus

Sukarmin and Yosefa Yana Prahawati, my uncle Al. Sudarman, as well as my


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sister and my brother for their love and support during my study in English

Language Studies. A special thank is for F.X. Hening Pamungkas Jagaddhita for

his great love, patience, and attention. He is my place to share joys and sorrows. I

would like to say thank you for encouraging me doing my thesis and helping me

to solve my problems. His support when I am down really help me to struggle

through the hardest and bitter moment I had during the processes of writing this

thesis.

Last but not least, I would like to give my respect for those whom I cannot

mention individually, but surely this thesis could not be done without their

support and help.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ......................................................................................................... iAPPROVAL PAGE .............................................................................................. iiACCEPTANCE PAGE........................................................................................ iiiSTATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ................................................................... ivACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................. viTABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... viiiABSTRACT............................................................................................................xABSTRAK ............................................................................................................ xi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION...........................................................................11. Background of the Study ..............................................................................12. Research Questions .......................................................................................83. Scope of the Study ........................................................................................84. Research Methodology ...............................................................................105. Benefits and Significance ...........................................................................116. The Chapter Outline....................................................................................12

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................141. Review of Related Studies. .........................................................................152. Review of Theoretical Concept...................................................................20

2.1 Context of the Novels...........................................................................202.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting VS Italian Renaissance

Painting......................................................................................202.1.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting .........................................212.1.1.2. Italian Renaissance Painting.........................................24

2.1.2. The Ottoman Sultan in the 16th and 17th Century......................262.2. Discourse on Issues of Postcolonialism and Orientalism....................28

2.2.1. The Discourse on Postcolonialism ...........................................292.2.1.1. Colonialism .................................................................292.2.1.2. Postcolonialism ...........................................................31

2.2.2. The Discourse on Orientalism ..................................................363. Theoretical Framework ...............................................................................40

CHAPTER III THE IRONY OF THE OSCILLATION .................................421. Cosmopolitanism ........................................................................................43

1.1 Islamic Cosmopolitanism....................................................................44


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1.2. Cosmopolitanism in İstanbul...............................................................451.3. Cosmopolitanism in Pamuk’s Works ..................................................491.4. Turkification........................................................................................55

2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Art andTechnology.................................................................................................582.1. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Science and

Technology..........................................................................................632.1.1. The Enchantment of Western Science and Technology............642.1.2. The Adoption of Western Science and Technology..................67

2.2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of the ItalianRenaissance Painting...........................................................................752.2.1. The Enchantment of the Italian Renaissance Painting ..............762.2.2. The Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance Painting ............81

3. Maintenance and Preservation of Eastern Aspects .....................................864. Personal Search for Identity as Individual ..................................................955. Theoretical Observation............................................................................105

CHAPTER IV PAMUK’S SOLUTION TO THE OSCILLATION .............1101. Impartiality................................................................................................1112. Self-Questioning .......................................................................................1233. Hybridity ...................................................................................................1384. Theoretical Observation............................................................................153

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ..........................................................................1581. Achievement and Significance..................................................................1582. Relevance ..................................................................................................166

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................171

APPENDIX .........................................................................................................177The Summary of Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvre .......................................................178

My Name is Red ..........................................................................................178The White Castle.........................................................................................179


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ABSTRACT

Catharina Brameswari (2015). The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity:Oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is Red and TheWhite Castle. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies, Graduate Study, SanataDharma University.

This research uses Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle,in order to reveal the tension between the East and the West that is mostly presentin Pamuk’s works as well as to uncover how modernity, which is represented byWestern art, culture, science, and technology, challenges Turkey’s tradition,culture, art, and identity. Since the Ottoman Empire, modernity that is representedby the West has become a threat as well as seduction. Moreover, I employed themethod of library research in dismantling Pamuk’s selected works that highlightthe endless oscillation by presenting the internal struggle experienced by thecharacters whether to leave the old Ottoman tradition or to embrace the modernWestern tradition.

This thesis deals with two issues namely the oscillation of the East and theWest and the complex desire to imitate others in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Redand The White Castle as well as the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offerto the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West. In dealing withthose two issues, this study employs Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism andHomi Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism. These two discourses are used toillustrate the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire to imitatethe Others as well as to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk’s selectedoeuvre. Since the two novels are rich of Turkey’s historical aspects, therefore, theadditional information on Turkey’s history, art, painting, and its socio-conditionin the 16th and 17th century are presented.

This study shows that Turkey, which is depicted by Pamuk in My Name isRed and The White Castle, experiences the oscillation between being enchanted tothe West and being drawn to its tradition. Cosmopolitanism, as the result of theencounter between the East and the West, has led to an attraction and later theappropriation of the Italian Renaissance art and European technology and science.However, there are an individual and groups that keep and preserve the Ottomanart and tradition. Additionally, this predicament of the oscillation also leads to theidentity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters. Dealing with theillustrated problems, this study finds that in his two novels, Pamuk does not giveany clear solutions to the predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West.Through the characters, Pamuk wants to emphasize his position for not takingsides, his critique to the representatives of the East and the West, and hisbackground as a writer in presenting hybridity in his works.

Finally, the future researcher can explore more on women struggle andposition in the Islamic world as well as the identity formation as an interestingtopic using Sufism for identity formation is the key point in its teaching.

Keywords: oscillation, cosmopolitanism, modernization, hüzün


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ABSTRAK

Catharina Brameswari (2015). The Irony of Turkish Modern Identity:Oscillation of the East and the West in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red andThe White Castle. Yogyakarta: Magister Kajian Bahasa Inggris, ProgramPascasarjana, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Penelitian ini menggunakan novel Orhan pamuk yang berjudul My Nameis Red dan The White Castle, yang bertujuan untuk menyingkap ketegangan antaraTimur dan Barat yang sering ditampilkan dalam karya-karya Pamuk serta untukmengungkapkan bagaimana modernitas yang diwakili oleh seni, kebudayaan, ilmupengetahuan, dan tekhnologi menantang tradisi, budaya, seni, dan identitas Turki.Sebab sejak Kekaisaran Ottoman, modernitas yang terwakili oleh Barat telahmenjadi sebuah ancaman dan daya tarik. Selain itu, saya menggunakan metodekajian pustaka dalam menyibak karya-karya Pamuk yang menyoroti tarik-uluryang tiada habisnya dengan menampilkan perjuangan yang dialami oleh karakter-karakter di dalamnya yang antara mau meninggalkan tradisi kuno Ottoman ataumau memeluk tradisi Barat yang moderen.

Tesis ini membahas dua isu yaitu tarik-ulur antara Timur dan Barat dankeinginan yang kompleks untuk meniru lian yang ditampilkan oleh Orhan Pamukdalam kedua novelnya My Name is Red dan The White Castle serta solusi yangditawarkan oleh kedua novel tersebut terhadap tarik ulur antara Timur dan Baratyang kompleks. Untuk menguraikan kedua isu tersebut, studi ini diterangi olehwacana Orientalisme milik Edward Said dan wacana Poskolonialisme milik HomiBhabha sekaligus untuk memberikan gambaran pada tarik-ulur antara Timur danBarat serta keinginan yang kompleks untuk meniru lian. Di samping itu, wacanaSaid dan Bhabha juga diaplikasikan untuk menerangi solusi yang ditawarkan olehnovel-novel Pamuk. Karena kedua novel tersebut sangat kaya akan aspek sejarahTurki, maka dari itu informasi seputar sejarah, seni, dan lukisan, serta kondisisosial-ekonomi Turki pada abad ke 16 dan 17 juga disajikan.

Studi ini memperlihatkan bahwa Turki, yang digambarkan oleh Pamukdalam My Name is Red dan The White Castle, mengalami tarik-ulur antaramemeluk kebudayaan Barat atau tetap mempertahankan tradisinya.Kosmopolitanisme, yang merupakan hasil dari bertemunya kebudayaan Timurdan Barat, telah mengantarkan pada ketertarikan dan peniruan terhadap seniRenaisans Italia and teknologi Eropa. Akan tetapi, masih ada individu dankelompok-kelompok yang menjaga dan mempertahankan seni dan tradisiOttoman. Selain itu, tarik-ulur yang kompleks ini juga mengantarkan pada krisisidentitas yang dialami oleh karakter-karakter dalam novel Pamuk. Berkaitandengan permasalahan yang diceritakan dalam novel, tesis ini menemukan bahwapada kedua novelnya, Pamuk tidak memberikan solusi yang jelas padapermasalahan tarik-ulur antara Timur dan Barat yang kompleks. Melalui karakter-karakter yang ia tampilkan, Pamuk ingin menekankan posisinya yang netraldengan tidak memilih salah satu pihak, kritiknya terhadap wakil-wakil dari Timurdan Barat, serta latar belakangnya sebagai seorang penulis dalam menyajikanhibriditas pada karya-karyanya.


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Akhir kata, peneliti di masa yang akan datang dapat mengeksplorasi topikseperti perjuangan dan posisi perempuan di dalam dunia Islam serta prosespencarian identitas masyarakat Turki dengan menggunakan Sufisme karenapembentukan identitas merupakan kunci dari ajarannya.

Kata kunci: tarik-ulur, kosmopolitanisme, modernisasi, hüzün


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

To God belongs the East and the West.—KORAN, “THE COW”1

Everyone is sometimes a Westerner and sometimes an Easterner—infact a constant combination of the two.

—Orhan Pamuk2

1. Background of the Study

Geographically, Turkey—officially the Republic of Turkey—is a very

special country. It lies mostly in western Asia and on the east trace of south-

eastern Europe. This unique location has made Turkey have various cultures—a

blend of Eastern culture and Western culture and traditions—the “Westernisation”

of the Ottoman Empire by Mustafa Kemal3. With the determined leadership of

Kemal Atatürk, the elite that founded the Turkish Republic pursued a more radical

modernization.4 Richard Eder, in “My Name is Red” explains that the

“Westernisation” had destroyed 600-year Islamic Ottoman Empire tradition and

become a secular country, which was the valuable price as the consequence of

Turkey’s membership in the European Union. He transformed the religion-based

former Ottoman Empire into a modern nation with a separation of state an

1 Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (Benim Adim Karmizi) translated by E. M. Göknar, (London:Faber & Faber, 2001) vii.

2 Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours: Writing on Life, Art, Books, and Cities translated by MaureenFreely (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2008).

3 Douglas A. Howard, The History of Turkey (London: Greenwood Press, 2001) 1; MustafaKemal Pasha is the first President of the Republic of Turkey and one of the most important worldfigures of the twentieth century.

4 Soli Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, The Wilson Quarterly 31, 1 (Winter, 2007): 20.


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religion, such as the restriction of veils in the parliament and school and alteration

alphabet from Arabic in the Turkish language into Latin5. Pamuk’s Other Colours

(2008) tells that none of the Turks can read the Arabic script now for Turkey has

adopted Latin alphabet in order to be more European.6

Since the Ottoman Empire, Turkey always moves closer to the West.

Mehmet II, the Sultan who conquered Constantinople, invited many artists from

Florence and Venice in the 15th century to create medals and paintings.7 Gentile

Bellini, the most famous artist in Venice during his lifetime (1429-1507), for

instance, was invited to İstanbul to create the Portrait of Mehmet II8. He was

Jacopo Bellini’s elder son who was also sent by the Venetian senate as a cultural

ambassador for eighteen months as the result of the peace treaty between the

Ottomans and Venetians in 1479. Bellini’s oil portrait of Mehmet has been

regarded as not only as the icon of the Ottoman sultan9 but this European image of

the great Ottoman leader might also serve as an appropriate focus for modern

Turkey’s desire to retrieve some of its European roots and influences in its “new

turn toward Europe”.10

Mehmet’s eyes were certainly on the West for he spent much time

studying the position of Italy and learning the situation of the West. His troops did

arrive in Italy but not until 1480 when Ottoman forces landed at Otranto, only to

5 Richard Eder, “My Name is Red”, New York Times September 2, 2001, May 20, 2013<http://NYTimes.com.htm>.

6 Pamuk, Other Colours, 192.7 Feride Çiçekoglu, “A Pedagogy of Two Ways of Seeing: A Confrontation of ‘Word and Image’

in My Name is Red”, Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, 3 (Autumn, 2003): 4.8 Lisa Jardine & Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West

(London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2000) 8.9 Pamuk, Other Colours, 313-314.10 New York Times December 25, 1999, cited in Lisa Jardine & Jerry Brotton’s, Global

Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West, (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2000) 32.


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evacuate on the following year due to the death of the Sultan.11 In 1438, the

Ottoman Sultan Murad II’s forces also moved up through Hungary and

Transylvania.12 The other moving westward is the transfer of Sultan’s palace,

from Topkapi13 palace to the palace of Dolmabahçe14 around the mid of

nineteenth century, which was considered at that time more suited to the modern

age.15

If the Ottoman Sultans tried to come closer to the West and Kemal Ataturk

destroyed all Eastern and Islamic traditions and transforms them to the Western

traditions, Orhan Pamuk combines those two traditions, the East and the West, to

produce a hybrid in his works. As a novelist—who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in

Literature for his highly appreciated work My Name is Red (2001)—Pamuk,

firstly, wants to delineate the endless oscillation between the East and the West in

his works; especially in My Name is Red and The White Castle16. These two

novels depict the internal struggle within the Italian Renaissance painting and the

traditional miniature style as well as the modern technology and scientific

invention from Europe and the prediction and interpretation of dreams and stars.

11 Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Ottoman İstanbul, First Edition (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2010) 9.

12 Jardine & Brotton, Global Interests, 26.13 Topkapi Palace was constructed under the reign of Sultan Mehmed II. It was primarily

residence of the Ottoman Sultans for about 400 years. From here, the sultans were to run theaffairs of state until the mid-nineteenth century, when they transferred to the palace ofDolmabahçe. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28.

14 Under Mahmud II’s successor, Dolmabahçe Palace became the residence of the sultan.Topkapi Palace was abandoned totally and the multi-storey European-style places continued to bebuilt on both shores of the Bosphorus—Çirağan and Yildis on the European side and Beylerbeyion the opposite, Asian side. The most important interior feature of these palaces was their giganticstaircase imitating the European style. Moreover, the nineteenth-century palace built in Europeanstyle was also embellished with European-style gardens. Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28, 245,310.

15 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 28.16 These books will be cited as, respectively, MNR and TWC in the text for all subsequent

references.


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Afridi and Byuze say that Pamuk’s stories focus on the question of

searching for the identity of the Turks and the encounter between the East and the

West, which are not the contemporary issues since the Ottoman Empire is

“dramatized” in the new symbol of the clash and mix of cultures in his works. In

addition, they usually circle around the construing of East and West as a

conflicting yet reconciling aspect in his works.17 Secondly, as a writer, Pamuk

does not choose one of the sides explicitly neither judge nor criticize.18 He gives

space and appreciates the process of an individual who is looking for his identity

without any claims from the others, which can distract him from his identity

formation process.

According to Iyer, in his article “A View of the Bosphorus”, Pamuk’s

refusal to settle into one position has made him the target of both secularists and

religious conservatives19 for the religious conservatives and Turkish politicians

demand that Turkey should have only one soul that it should belong to either the

East or the West or to be nationalistic.20 To quote Pamuk’s own words:

“It is not a big problem for Turkey to have two different cultures and spirits andthey should not worry about it because it is not a bad thing. Just let this processbecome natural for if you worry too much about one part of you, which can killthe other part, you will be left with a single spirit.”21

Moreover, slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead

Ottoman culture is not the solution.22 His denial to choose one position has

17 Mehnaz M. Afridi and David M. Byuze, Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 5.

18 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3.19 Pico Iyer, “A View of the Bosphorus”, New York Times September 30, 2007, November 6,

2013 <http://www.nytimes.com>.20 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.21 Ibid.22 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.


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delivered books, which are a mixture of Eastern and Western methods, styles,

habits, and histories. He confesses that he can wander between the two worlds and

in both he is at home.23

Turkey’s desire and longing to Westernize and the dilemma of the

Ottoman Turks who are searching for their identity in the influence of Western

values have been captured by Orhan Pamuk into his works through the history of

the miniature painting in the Ottoman miniature guild, which is filled by conflict,

jealousy, and murder among the painters (MNR) and also through the character of

Hoja, which is presented by the scientific inventions and technology (TWC). In

general, Pamuk sees the tension arising out of a clash between the traditional—

represented by the East—and the modern—represented by the West—as a

powerful force in his works.24 This condition is supported by Edward Said who

argues that Western political and intellectual domination over the East has defined

the nature of the Orient potentially as weak and of the Occident as strong.25 There

is a revisit of the Orientalism, which comes in a different style and form. The

West, that is the deepest image of the other, is actually colonialized by the

Ottoman. However, the self-inflicted that is felt by Turkey in the end of the

Empire has led to self-orientalism because it tries to erase the grand Ottoman

tradition and abruptly change it with Western culture. In Pamuk’s, it is in the way

the traditional miniature painting can be replaced by the Italian Renaissance

painting and in the way the traditional can be replaced by modern technology.

However, it is not an exaggeration if I say that the question on the oscillation

23 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.24 Orhan Pamuk, “Turkey’s Divided Character”, New Perspectives Quarterly 17, 2 (2000): 20.25 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 66-84.


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between the East and the West that is knitted in the historical context is the main

hinge of Pamuk’s works. Moreover, he confirms this in the opening page of My

Name is Red, a quotation from Koran, “To God belongs the East and the West”

(The Cow, 115) (MNR, 2).

Pamuk’s oeuvre always demonstrates the binary opposition within them,

between the Self and the Other. In My Name is Red, Pamuk uncovers the history

of the Ottoman miniature painter, which is also filled with conflicts, jealousy, and

murder among the miniaturist.26 The concern is mainly on the debate around

traditions of painting as two different cultures, which comes in contact with each

other27 where the traditional miniature painting is contested by the Italian

Renaissance painting style that flourishes during the Ottoman period. According

to Farred, Pamuk’s novel can only be understood trough the act of comparison of

its Otherness28, for instance, “the Venetian master and the master illustrators and

calligraphers of Tabriz, Mashhad, and Aleppo” (MNR, 25); “the Persian artists, a

direct comparison within the world of the East, had made more extraordinary

illustrations, more masterpieces, than we Ottomans” (MNR, 346); or worse, how

the painting that is produced by the Venetian masters has broken into Ottoman

miniature painting when “the Jesuit priests of Portugal long ago introduced

European painting and methods there. They are everywhere now”. (MNR, 433)

26 Grant Farred, “To Dig a Well with a Needle”: Orhan Pamuk’s Poem of ComparativeGlobalization, The Global South 1, 2 (Fall, 2007): 87.

27 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3.28 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 87.


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My Name is Red is a murder story whose murderer is one of the finest

miniaturists who is deeply influenced by the Venetian style29 and works on the

illustration of the secret book. The story is set in the late 16th century in İstanbul,

Turkey, during the reign of Sultan Murat III (1574-1595). To celebrate a thousand

anniversary of Islam, Sultan Murat III—who is mostly interested in miniatures

and books30—commissions a secret book that will show to the world Islam’s

military strength and pride as well as the power and wealth of his own dynasty.

(MNR, 121) Enishte Effendi, Sultan’s ambassador to Venice who is in charge of

finishing this book, is secretly instructed to make the illustrations, which adopt the

Italian Renaissance style to impress the Western and to prolong the age of His

rule.31

In The White Castle, Pamuk complicates the Self-Other or the binary

opposition and grasp the conflict between Self and Other. Here, Pamuk delineates

how the Other is thus always present, frequently as a threat and seduction, within

the historical confines of the Self. Both Hoja and the Venetian slave share an

uncanny resemblance to each other32 because Hoja is not only the Venetian’s

master but also his pupil for Hoja also asks his slave to teach him everything he

had learnt in his country (TWC, 32). Hoja always dreams to live in the West. From

the very beginning, Hoja does not like the activities of the pashas and Sultan for

they depend on the astrology and the illogical interpretation of the dreams and

stars. He also dislikes them for they have little interest in science.

29 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3.30 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 6.31 David Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature Goes İstanbul, or, Lessons for Multicultural

Germanist in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, Macalester International 15 (n.d.): 234.32 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88.


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Complexities in Hoja’s life and his exhaustion on the Sultan and his

“traditionality”, “forced” him to adore the identity of his Venetian slave whose

life is more interesting in Italy where people do not depend on the prediction and

interpretation of the dreams and stars. In the end, master Hoja changes his identity

with his Venetian slave—who is more knowledgeable in the science and has

physical similarities—after his “war machine” does not give victory to the Sultan.

He wants to correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever

faraway land occurred to him at that moment. (TWC, 121)

2. Research Questions

Based on the background information above, this study is focused on the

issues concerning with the discourse of the clash between the East and the West

and the identity crisis and the problems of the study can be formulated as follows:

1. How is the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to

imitate the Other depicted in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White

Castle and how do the theories of Said and Bhabha help this discourse?

2. What are the solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of

the oscillation of the East and the West?

3. Scope of the Study

The oscillation to embrace Western tradition or to preserve the old Islamic

tradition has been experienced by Turkey since the Ottoman Empire. The

encounters of the East and the West, the seduction of Western culture, as well as


9

the desire to become and imitate the Other have led Turkey to this high tension.

Turkey also experiences the up and down emotion of the anxiety to embrace the

forced modernity as well as the feeling of hüzün because of the loss of the

Ottoman past’s glory. Due to this predicament, this research uses Orhan Pamuk’s

My Name is Red and The White Castle in order to reveal the negotiation and the

complexity of the oscillation between the East and the West, the seduction of the

European art and technology that lead to the complex desire to imitate the Other

and identity crisis faced by the characters, and its solution offered in these two

tales. It is a critical reading using Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s

discourse on Postcolonialism, which focuses on in-betweenness, self-orientalism,

mimicry, ambivalence, and hybridity. These points are very important since MNR

and TWC complicate Turkey’s desire to imitate the Other and how it manages to

overcome the anxiety by combining the Self and the Other. These two discourses

are used to expose the oscillation of the East and the West and the complex desire

to imitate the Other. In addition, Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses are also applied

to illuminate the solutions offered by Pamuk’s selected oeuvre. Since the two

selected novels are rich of and related to Turkey’s historical aspects, therefore,

other aspects such as Turkey’s socio-culture condition in the 16th and 17th century

will be linked to Turkey’s present events—especially where the two stories take

place, İstanbul—in unity with the discussion in the novel, which negotiates the

East-West arts and traditions.


10

4. Research Methodology

In this study I mainly employ the method of library research. There are

two kinds of sources that are used; they are primary and secondary sources. The

method applied in conducting the study is qualitative approach, while the primary

sources are novels written by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist, entitled My Name

is Red (2001) and The White Castle (1998).

To support the primary data, the secondary data are taken from books,

Pamuk’s non-fictions: İstanbul: Memories of the City (2006) and Other Colours

(2008), journals, articles, criticisms, interview, book review, and videos

discussing and analysing Orhan Pamuk and his literary works. The data, then, are

analysed to discover the connection between the socio-culture and historical

condition and the events portrayed in both novels.

The research is conducted in several steps. The first step of this study is to

find the topic to be discussed. The second step is to select the literary works that is

going to be analysed. The third step is the technical reading of the novels as the

fundamental step before turning to further analysis. After formulating the

problems related to the topic, finding the secondary sources and the appropriate

approach are employed in the analysis. The next step is to answer the formulated

problems. Here, I attempt to apply the theories on Orientalism and

Postcolonialism, reviews, and criticism from the secondary sources to analyse the

primary sources. At last, I conclude the important points of the analysis as the

result of the analysis and give some suggestions to the future researchers who

want to analyse My Name is Red and The White Castle.


11

5. Benefits and Significance

This study is conducted with the aim to reveal how the agenda of Turkish

modern identity—which is represented by the Italian Renaissance art and

European technology—challenges the Turks’ life, tradition, culture, art, and

identity, how the oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire

to imitate the Other, and the solutions that Pamuk offers to the predicament

through his works. My Name is Red and The White Castle have all aspects, which

can sharpen the readers’ awareness on the seduction of modernity that can disrupt

their culture and traditions and also lead to identity crisis—or even lose it.

Through these two stories, the readers can learn that the Turks have orientalised

themselves—in other words: Orientalised by the oriental—by feeling inferior to

the art they make and to the knowledge and science they master, for they believe

that West can bring them to modernity.

For the Indonesian readers, this study can help them to enrich their

understanding and insight to the different form of Orientalism that is presented in

the two tales studied. Additionally, it is also hoped to raise their awareness

regarding to the identity crisis that is as a result of the East-West encounter and

the radical ideology that can endanger unity of Indonesia. In addition, the readers

need to respect the multiculturalism and colonialism around them. It is for the

reason that Indonesia also faces the same problem as Turkey on purification

performed by the extremists that want to simplify the complexity of Indonesia’s

multiculturalism. Moreover, another hope is that this study will improve the

readers’ knowledge on the uniqueness and variety of the Mediterranean literature


12

oeuvre, especially on Turkey’s fiction, which is still less studied by the Indonesian

academic, especially the students of Sanata Dharma University. However,

learning other people’s culture and tradition is not a sin. Actually, it is useful to

help the Indonesian readers and academics to be acquainted with their culture and

tradition more as Pamuk also mentions that we can only know our identity by

imitating the Other.33

This study is also conducted with the hope to raise the reader’s awareness

regarding the identity degradation as a result of the encounter between the East

and the West tradition. I hope that the Indonesian readers can filter the Western

traditions and choose which one is suitable to their custom, belief, and culture so

that they can still maintain and hold their tradition and identity as Indonesian. It is

for the reason that nowadays I still find many young generations who are reluctant

to deal with the Indonesian culture and traditions, which have high value, and

proud to have, use, or consume Western or American products and perform their

traditions. My vision is that the young generations can still embrace modernity

without leaving their tradition and identity as Indonesian.

6. Chapter Outline

The first chapter in this study is introduction, which presents the

background of the study, research questions, scope of the study, research

methodology, and benefits and significance. The second chapter is literature

review, which covers the précis of the previous related studies on the same literary

33 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271.


13

works and review of theories used in this study. Furthermore, short review on the

art, cultural, and historical condition of Ottoman Empire and the summary on a

selection of Orhan Pamuk’s fictions are also presented in this section. The last

part is the theoretical framework of the study.

The answers of the first and second research questions are discussed in

chapter three and four. Chapter three discusses the complexity of the oscillation

between the East and the West and the enchantment and appropriation of the

Italian Renaissance style and European technology by the Ottoman miniature

painter and Hoja. In chapter four, the solutions that Pamuk’s stories offer to the

predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being

drawn to Turkey’s own tradition are provided.

The conclusion of this study is drawn in chapter five where Indonesia’s

search for identity in this postcolonial world is also provided to show the

correlation and relevance of this study with the condition in Indonesia and also

challenges that are faced by the Indonesian. Moreover, suggestions for future

researcher are discussed in the last chapter.


14

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

The chapter is divided into three sections namely review of related studies,

review of theoretical concept, and theoretical framework. The first sub chapter

shows literature review of related studies on the works of Orhan Pamuk that are

investigated by six researchers.

The second sub chapter illustrates review of theoretical concept that is

divided into two main segments. They are context of the novels and discourse on

issues of Orientalism and Postcolonialism. The first main segment has three

sections. The first segment is the summary of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red

and The White Castle. Next segment discusses Turkish traditional miniature

painting and the Italian Renaissance painting. In addition, since Pamuk’s selected

stories focus on the Ottoman history in the 16th to 17th century therefore the third

section will present brief information on the reign Sultans. The second main

section discusses Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s

Postcolonialism that are used to illuminate this thesis in dealing with the East-

West entanglement.

The third sub chapter outlines theoretical framework, which discusses how

each theory functions in answering the problem formulations stated in the

previous chapter.


15

1. Review of Related Studies

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, tries to

reintroduce the Ottoman past to his readers through his tales. As he tells his tales,

the past becomes (more like) a creative puzzle in the pages of My Name is Red

(2001) and The White Castle (1998).34 His works invite scholarly discussions

especially on the dialogue, tension and negotiation between the East and the West,

the high tension between the enchanting Western technology and art and the

Ottoman traditions, as well as the identity formation process toward the so-called

a new ideal identity.

The first research to mention is by Feride Çiçekoglu,35 titled “A Pedagogy

of Two Ways of Seeing: A Confrontation of ‘Word and Image’ in My Name is

red”36, which claims that My Name is Red is a chronicle of the confrontation of

two ways of seeing and the story of how the quest for representationalism defeats

the miniature tradition, although such defeat is, by no means, a one-dimensional

praise of the impact of Venice and its quest for naturalism on Islamic art. In

addition, this article attempts to pick up clues in My Name is Red for tracing two

different ways of seeing East-West framework in the late 16th century, not as a

binary opposition but as a dialectical trope of word and image.37 In other words,

34 Pinar Batur, “Author in the Classroom: An Interview with Orhan Pamuk”, Middle East StudiesAssociation Bulletin 41, 1 (June, 2007): 9.

35 An Associate Professor and Director of the Master Program in Visual Communication Design,İstanbul Bilgi University, İstanbul.

36 This article is developed from Çiçekoglu’s earlier version written in Turkish (Çiçekoglu 2001)when she was an artist-in-residence in Rotterdam (January-May 2002) under a grant from theDutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, the Municipality of Rotterdam and RotterdamArt Foundation. Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1-20.

37 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 3.


16

Çiçekoglu wants to see the East-West relations apart from the different way of

seeing between those two poles.

Çiçekoglu’s another research on the same novel is “Difference, Visual

Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”38, which employs visual

narration technique and point of view. It focuses on the difference between the

Eastern and the Western ways of visual narration. This essay discusses issues of

portraiture and character, movement and time, and story and space with reference

to the narrative structure in fiction film. It aims to contribute to the discussion on

point of view in visual narration, narrative structure of film as a continuation, and

interaction of different traditions in East and West.

A research written by David Martyn entitled “Turkish-German Literature

goes İstanbul, or, Lessons for Multicultural Germanists in Orhan Pamuk’s My

Name is Red” (n.d.)39 firstly explains “Germanophonie” or literature written in

German by non-German, transcultural authors, especially Turkish immigrants

who live in Germany and publish literature. He observes Pamuk’s My Name is

Red, as a contemporary Turkish literature, which can help in recognizing the

individual value of the writings of Germanophone authors. This engagement

concerns the notion of individuality that is used to point out what is missing in the

existing research on Germanophone authors. Martyn states that Pamuk’s work can

be read as an eloquent commentary on the double binds that modernity imposes

on individuals. He also notes that his research is an indication of what is designed

38 Feride Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration, and ‘Point of View’ in My Name is Red”.Journal of Aesthetic Education 37, 4 (2003): 124-137.

39 Martyn, “Turkish-German”, 231-240.


17

to overcome the dualist mode of thought that sees everything before the backdrop

of an East-West dichotomy.

Abdur Rahman Shahin’s article “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience

at Turkish Identity in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”40 discusses a searching

for a stable identity for Hoja, the main character in The White Castle, who finally

changes his identity with the Italian slave. Shahin, in his writing, wants to explore

the reasons of Hoja’s intolerance to his Turkish identity and critic to the legacy of

the Ottoman Empire that finally compelled him to change it.

Another research by Dilek Kantar, entitled “The Stylistic Dialogue of East

and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle”41, which borrows Mikhail

Bakhtin’s dialogic heteroglossia, illustrates how another speech is infused into the

speech of the main characters in Pamuk’s novel. Bakhtin says that in dialogic

heteroglossia, language lies between oneself and the other and the word used is

half someone else’s. However, it can be one’s own when he appropriates the word

and adapting it into his own speech.42 Here, Kantar also analyses “stylistic

hybrids” that speculate Western and Eastern conceptions of self in The White

Castle’s dialogue interaction. According to Baktin, a “stylistic hybrid” is an

utterance that belongs to a single speaker, but actually contains mixed within it

two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages”, two semantic

40 Abdur Rahman Shahin, “Why am I what I am: Hoja’s Impatience at Turkish Identity in OrhanPamuk’s The White Castle”, Language in India (August, 2012): 323-334.

41 Dilek Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue of East and West in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle” ajournal compilation in the Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C. Freeman.(New York: Rodopi B. V., 2007) 125-134.

42 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”. Quoted from Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”,126.


18

and axiological belief systems.43 In The White Castle, this hybrid construction can

be found in the relationship between Hoja and his slave, which makes them more

and more alike until they lose their own voice, as they more immersed in the

other’s lifestyle, and finally fuse on the story.44 Stylistic hybrids also let Pamuk

challenge the boundary between the Eastern and the Western patterns of thinking

personified by the main characters in his novel, Hoja and his Italian slave.

Grant Farred’s “To Dig a Well with a Needle: Orhan Pamuk’s Poem of

Comparative Globalization” (2007)45 tries to deconstruct the concept of

comparative globalization in Pamuk’s oeuvre, which are impossible to understand

except as an instance of globalized comparison, using Derrida and Heidegger’s.

Farred states that Pamuk’s works address themselves persistently to criticizing the

traces of globalization that was the Ottoman Empire and the globalization that

seems always just on the horizon. Moreover, they also demonstrate the

comparison between Self and Other and can only be understood through the act of

comparison of its Otherness. The comparison, then, is not only between Self and

Other but also, more essentially, at the very core of the Self.

A research on Orhan Pamuk’s oeuvre is also discussed by an Indonesian

scholar even though it is only a few. Albertus Bagus Laksana’s article entitled

“İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera” (2013)46 explores the concept of hüzün in

Pamuk’s İstanbul: Memories and the City and My Name is Red as a deep spiritual

loss towards past’s glory and a fear to face the future. Here, Laksana states that

43 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”, 126.44 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 127.45 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 81-99.46 Albertus Bagus Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli yang Mendera”, BASIS 62 (2013): 28-35.


19

the entire İstanbul resident as well as the characters in My Name is Red cannot

free the complexity of hüzün from their spiritual and cultural experience.

However, he also offers a solution to overcome the complexity of hüzün by

combining and living in the two traditions—the East and the West tradition.

From the previous studies above, I remark that these studies generally

focus on the different way of seeing, that is represented by the Eastern and

Western style of painting; the issue on the unstable and mixed identity; the binary

opposition between Self and Other; and also the feeling of hüzün that is caused by

the forced modernity and the loss of the past’s glory. Departing from the previous

studies above, I propose a study that concerns with the oscillation of the East and

the West and the complex desire to imitate the Other. Since my study focuses on

the predicament of the oscillation, the information on the previous studies, which

deals with the confrontation of the two ways of seeing, the unstable identity, and

the binary opposition between Self and Other are very useful to reveal the

complex desire of Pamuk’s characters to imitate the Other. Moreover, the research

by Laksana offers alternative solutions on the predicament and tension between

the East and West by combining and living in those two traditions. Apart from the

journals above, my thesis employs Said’s and Bhabha’s discourses on Orientalism

and Postcolonialism, which focus on self-orientalism, hybridity, in-betweenness,

mimicry, and ambivalence.


20

2. Review of Theoretical Concept

This section is divided into two main sections namely context of the novels

and discourse on issues of Orientalism and Postcolonialism. The information on

Turkish miniature painting and Italian Renaissance painting and the reign of the

Ottoman sultans in the 16th and 17th century is presented in the first section. They

are presented to give a depth information and understanding to the readers as well

as give an illustration of the overall story. In addition, they are presented in order

to illuminate the two tales that are interrelated to Turkey’s history, its traditional

miniature painting, and the influence of Italian Renaissance painting. Moreover,

to analyse Orhan Pamuk’s selected novels, this study employs Edward Said’s

discourse on Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism

that are presented in the second section. Those theories are used to uncover the

predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West and unearth the

solutions Pamuk’s stories offer to overcome the problems.

2.1. Context of the Novels

2.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting V. Italian Renaissance Painting

In the previous part, I have explained that My Name is Red focuses on the

two painting traditions; the tradition of miniature painting during the Ottoman

period in the late 16th century İstanbul and also the tradition of the Italian

Renaissance painting. What is unique in My Name is Red is the confrontation of

the two different traditions of painting. There is a clash when the miniaturist using

Venetian style to make the illustration of the commissioned book, for both Italian

Renaissance style—which is also known as Frankish style—and Turkish


21

miniature painting have different way in seeing their objects. However, Sultan

Murat III who wants to get a support from the Western to prolong his position

tries to protect the secret book, which is the threat for the Ottoman traditional

miniature art because it contains Western paintings in it.

Due to the novel’s focus as well as the problems on the imitation and

adoption of the Western painting style, I provide further information concerning

the two conflicting painting traditions, which have different way of seeing the

objects, the Italian Renaissance Art and Turkish traditional miniature painting.

Additionally, the information on their histories and functions is also presented

since My Name is Red mostly discusses these two painting methods and their

different ways in seeing their objects.

2.1.1.1. Turkish Miniature Painting

Kuiper (2010), in Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture, states that a

closely parallel development of the impact of the Islamic religion on the visual

arts is the celebrated question of a Muslim iconoclasm. However, the Koran is not

totally against the representation of living things. It is equally true that from about

the middle of the 8th century, a prohibition against life-like imagery had been

formally stated and thenceforth it would be a standard feature of Islamic thought.

The justification for the prohibition tended to be that any representation of a living

thing was an act of competition with God, for He alone can create something that

is alive.47 The representation of the living things, moreover, is “like growing

47 Kathleen Kuiper, Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture (New York: Britannica EducationalPublishing, 2010) 131.


22

arrogant before God, like considering oneself of utmost importance, like situating

oneself at the centre of the world.” (MNR, 119-120)

Despite the fact that Islam prohibited figuration, miniature paintings were

allowed because they were universal, a decoration of the text and subordinate to

it. The Ottoman miniature painters did not mainly aim to depict the human beings

and other living or non-living beings realistically.48 “Painting is the act of seeking

out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.” (MNR, 88)

Çiçekoglu adds that miniature painting becomes an extension of the text, rather

than an independent art. In the tradition of miniature painting, images are not seen

as things in themselves but they are treated as illustrations of the text or

“footnotes” even when the image seems to dominate the written word on the page.

It serves the purposes of the words for a better understanding of the meaning and

for a description of a narration.49

In Islamic miniatures, the goal is perfection, not expression of the artist’s

individuality.50 Enishte Effendi also supports that miniature painting is used to

beautify the manuscript we read and it depicts the most vital scenes in the story.

Moreover, the image is the story blossoming in colour, which accompanying

story. (MNR, 27) Pamuk also mentions that,

painting in Islamic culture was permissible only to decorate the insides of thebooks and…never were these paintings meant to hang on walls, and they neverdid!51

It is in line with Olive’s statement that “the illustrations of the Persian masters and

48 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 131.49 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1.50 Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature”, 235.51 Pamuk, Other Colours, 318.


23

even the masterpieces of the greatest masters of Herat are ultimately seen as an

extension of border ornamentation” (MNR, 424).

Dimand in “Islamic Miniature Painting and Book Illumination” says that

Turkish miniature painting was derived from Persian art52, which is under

influenced by Chinese painting that is brought by the Mongolian ruler.53 He

explains that a brilliant period of Persian Painting was inaugurated in Herat under

Sultan Husain Mirza (1468-1506), who was the patron of the celebrated painter

Bihzad, or who is called Master Bihzad54 in My Name is Red. Bihzad reveals

himself as a keen observer of nature and he also enriched the palette of Persian

painter by creating effective new colour combination.55 During the second half of

the 15th century, Bihzad’s interest in observing his environment resulted in the

introduction of more realistic poses and the introduction of numerous details of

daily life. Iranian individualism is especially apparent in painting, in which

Chinese and other foreign styles were consistently adapted to express intensely

Iranian subject, thereby creating a uniquely Persian style.56

Compared to the Persian painting, the Mughal style of painting, which was

flourished under the Emperor Akbar from Hindustan (1556-1605), combine

Persian, Hindu, and European elements in its style. As a result of contact with the

European art, which was greatly admired by Akbar, Mughal painters introduced

52 Maurice S. Dimand, “Islamic Miniature Painting and Book Illumination”, The MetropolitanMuseum of Art Bulletin 28, 10 (October, 1933): 171.

53 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 168.54 Master Bihzad was the most prominent Persian miniaturist who lived in the 15th century. He

was a painter who developed miniature painting style, which was used in Ottoman Turkey. Heratwas the centre of painting in the Islamic world and home to the great Master Bihzad. (MNR, 445)In addition, he had also painted the most magnificent pictures and the most incrediblemasterpieces. (MNR, 304)

55 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 170.56 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 199.


24

atmospheric effects and even perspective into their paintings. It is also mentioned

in My Name is Red that the Persian painters or calligraphers are encouraged to

sign their names (MNR, 432-433), which are written in the margin in red ink.57

Turkish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries followed Persian prototypes

in the main, but the figures were dressed in Turkish costumes and certain vivid

colours peculiar to Turkey were used with very decorative effect.58 Kerametli

adds that “Turkish miniatures colours were strikingly brilliant…and the most used

colours were bright red, scarlet, green, and different shades of blue”.59 However,

the Ottoman miniature painting does not compare in quality with Persian painting,

which originally influenced the Turkish school. Yet, Ottoman miniatures do have

a character of their own, either in the almost folk-art effect of religious images or

in the precise depictions of such daily events as military expeditions or great

festivals.60 It is against such worlds of arts that Pamuk’s works are set.

2.1.1.2. Italian Renaissance Painting

The word Renaissance comes from the word “rinascita”. It represents the

revival of a spirit that has been all but destroyed during the Dark Ages, the

beginnings of which decline were already evident under the first Christian

Emperor Constantine and are confirmed when “barbarian” or “gothic” tribes

invaded and brutalized an over-ripe classical civilization.61 Philip M. Soergel, in

57 M.S. Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, The Metropolitan Museum of ArtBulletin 30, 12 (1935): 249-250.

58 Dimand, “Islamic Miniature”, 171.59 Can Kerametli, “Turkish Miniatures in the 16th Century”, The Turkish Journal of Collectable

Art 4 (1985).60 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 208.61 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic

Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975) 54.


25

Arts and Humanities through the Eras: Renaissance Europe (1300-1600), states

that in its influence to the arts and sciences, Renaissance praises creativity as a

sign of humankind’s creation in God’s likeness for man is the depiction of God.

Moreover, human creativity was also celebrated as divine attributes62 and the

large goal of these explorations was to identify ways in which the human soul

might achieve mystical union with God, to commune with God.63

John Hale adds that Renaissance is popularly associated with the visual

arts, science, medicine, ancient languages or astronomy. It first appeared in the

writings of neither an intellectual nor humanist but of an art-promoting painter

and architect who compiled a book of the lives of his fellow post-medieval artist,

Giorgio Vasari.64 Gilbert, in The Renaissance and The Reformation, supports the

statement above that in the Renaissance era art and science are closely related.

Both the artist and the scientist strove for the mastery of the physical world, and

the art of painting profited by two fields of study that may be called scientific:

anatomy, which made possible a more accurate representation of the human body,

and mathematical perspective. Due to the close relation between art and science,

some men are both artists and scientists, notably Leonardo da Vinci.65

Pamuk narrates in My Name is Red that “the image of the Italian

Renaissance painting was of an individual” (MNR, 28). Eder also adds that the

world-view underlying European Renaissance Painting was also different from

62 Philip M. Soergel, Arts and Humanities through the Eras: Renaissance Europe (1300-1600)(Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005) 235-236.

63 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, xv.64 John Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: the Growth of Interest in its History and Art,

Fourth Edition (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005) x.65 William Gilbert, The Renaissance and The Reformation (Kansas: Privately Publish, 1997)


26

that of tradition Ottoman miniature painting. The Italian Renaissance portraits are

of specific people, and even trees and dogs are particulars. The Italian

Renaissance painters mainly aim to depict human beings and other living or non-

living beings realistically.66 In this painting method, every people are depicted

realistically in their portraits because they are seen as “different from all others, a

unique, special, and particular human being” (MNR, 187).

Soergel emphasizes that image in Renaissance painting takes a special

importance. Religious images served as a vital textbook that instructed in the

teachings and history of Christianity and the church, conveyed political and

religious agenda, as well as tools of propaganda.67 The other religious images,

such as portraiture, were also commissioned to commemorate a family member

who was already dead. Portrait paintings were intended to preserve a positive

memory and an inner strength and gentleness of the subject after death. This

painting was also said as a vehicle that expressed something about the subject’s

own individual nature.68

2.1.2. The Ottoman Sultan in the 16th and 17th Century

Since Pamuk’s selected novels also focus on the Ottoman history and this

thesis also deals with the historical aspects of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and

17th century therefore I present the information on the reign Sultans that can give

the readers deeper understanding on my thesis. The information on the reign

66 Eder, “My Name is Red”.67 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 364.68 Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 375.


27

Sultans in My Name is Red and The White Castle is substantial because the two

Sultans, Murad III and Ahmed I, have important roles in encouraging the

miniature painters as well as Hoja to imitate and adopt Western art, science, and

technology.

Murad III (1574–1595), the reign Sultan in My Name is Red who is based

on the real historical figure, was Sultan Selim II’s successor.69 After his father

dead, Murad III, as Selim’s eldest son, carried on one family tradition with

ferocity—killing all five of his brothers on the day of his accession. Murat was the

last of the sultans to have had some field experience before taking the throne,

having served as a provincial administrator under both his grandfather Süleyman

and his own father. But his unusually spirited passion for women resulted in the

presence of 40 concubines in his court who in all produced some 130 sons in

addition to uncounted female children.70

He was the Ottoman sultan who most interested in miniatures and books

and he had the Book of Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories

produced in İstanbul. The most prominent Ottoman miniaturists, including Osman

the Miniaturist (Master Osman) and his disciples, contributed to them. Moreover,

the Persian miniaturist Velijan (Olive), who is commissioned to work for the

Ottoman court, came in 1583 to İstanbul.71 In My Name is Red, Murad orders the

Head Illuminator Master Osman to work on the Book of Festivities and Uncle

Effendi to work on the secret book. The Story of Black and the Ottoman palace

69 Pamuk, My Name is Red, 446.70 Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume 1: Empire of

the Gazis: the Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808, First Edition (Cambridge:Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1976) 179.

71 Pamuk, My Name is Red, 447.


28

painters was begun in 1591, a year before the thousandth anniversary (calculated

in lunar years) of the Hegira. Black, “a character whose thoughts, constitution,

and temperament are close to Pamuk’s,”72 returns to İstanbul from the east,

beginning the events recounted in the novel.

Sultan Ahmed I (1603-1617) was Murat III’s grandson—mentioned in

the last part of My Name is Red as the Ottoman ruler who destroyed the large

clock with statuary sent to the sultan as a present by Queen Elizabeth I. He was

Mehmed III’s eldest surviving son who was still 13 years old in his succession.

Ahmed abandoned the old tradition of killing his brother and sent his brother,

Mustafa, to live at the Old Palace at Bayezit along with their grandmother.73 The

reign of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I was during whose rule the events of The White

Castle take place. It is for the reason that the Sultan here is called “the young

sultan” and “the child” by the narrator (TWC, 39)—for he was still very young, 13

years old, when he became the sultan—and because the narrator also mentions

that the sultan in this story is Ahmed the First, Murad the Third’s grandson.

(TWC, 43)

2.2 Discourse on Issues of Postcolonialism and Orientalism

Orientalism is closely related to Postcolonialism since the analysis of the

of the binary opposition and the relationship between the Self and the Other, the

East and the West are at the heart of Postcolonialism. Due to the problems

mentioned above, Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s discourses on

72 Pamuk, Other Colours, 268.73 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 186.


29

Postcolonialism will be used to enlighten this thesis in dealing with predicament

of the oscillation of the East and the West as well as in finding Pamuk’s solutions

to the predicament of the oscillation in My Name is Red and The White Castle.

2.2.1. The Discourse on Postcolonialism

Here, I used postcolonial theory to deconstruct the complex and

ambiguous desire to imitate the Other, which is mainly on the Turkish characters

in My Name is Red and The White Castle. In order to dismantle the complex and

ambiguous desire to imitate the Other, Homi K Bhabha’s discourse on

postcolonialism will be employed in this research, which also focuses on

hybridity, in-betweenness, mimicry, and ambivalence.

2.2.1.1. Colonialism

Although this study uses the discourse on Postcolonial theory from Homi

Bhabha as the main reference, it will start with concept of colonialism. It is for the

reason that Turkey is one of the countries in Europe, which has never been

colonialized by other nations or by Western powers. As a non-postcolonial

country, Turkey experiences a self-colonization as the result of brutal

Westernization, which was “part of the ongoing project, associated with an elite

movement, to rapidly “civilize” society borrowed from the Soviet example and

Europe.”74 In addition, Europe is used by the elite as the main reference to

“civilize” Turkey through imitating their values of modernity.

Ania Loomba defines colonialism as conquest, domination, and control of

other people’s land and goods. It is the expansion of various European powers

74 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35.


30

into Asia, Africa, or Americas from the 16th century onwards.75 While Ashis

Nandy, in The Intimate Enemy (1983), which adapts Foucault’s analysis of power,

says that modern colonialism is a new way of colonialism in which the colonizer

or the powerful changes its way in colonizing the Orient or the powerless.76

Nandy builds an interesting distinction between two chronologically distinct types

or genres of colonialism. The first focused on the physical conquest of territories,

whereas the second was more insidious in its commitment to the conquest and

occupation of minds, selves, and cultures. The second was established by

rationalists, modernists, and liberals who argued that imperialism can bring

civilization to the uncivilized world.77 Furthermore, Nandy writes:

This colonialism colonises minds in addition to bodies and it releases forceswithin colonised societies to alter their cultural priorities once and for all. In theprocess, it helps to generalise the concept of the modern West from ageographical and temporal entity to a psychological category. The West is moreeverywhere, within the West and outside, in structures and in minds (Nandy,1983, p. xi).78

Along with Nandy’s types of colonialism, Orhan Pamuk, in “The Paris Review

Interview” also mentions that even though Turkey was never a colony but the

suppression that Turks suffered was self-inflicted. In that suppression, there is a

sense of fragility but that self-imposed Westernization also brought isolation. As a

result, the Turks were strangely isolated from the Western world they rivalled.79

Their desire to Westernize their country had created their commitment and

ambition to the conquest of Turks own mind, selves, and culture. The Turks

75 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 7-8.76 Cited in Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, First Edition (Crows

Nest, Allen & Unwin: 1998) 15.77 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 15.78 See Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi,

Oxford University Press, 1983) xi.79 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370-371.


31

argued that facing the West is “really the messianic harbinger of civilization to the

uncivilized world”.80 In additional, to have Turkey civilized and modernized, they

erased their history and left the Ottoman tradition. They felt that Islam and the

Ottoman tradition were their biggest obstacles in order to be the West and

modern.

2.2.1.2. Postcolonialism

Leela Gandhi states that colonialism does not end with the end of colonial

occupation and its resistance begins with the onset of colonialism.81 Loomba adds

that after colonialism ends, postcolonialism appear as the contestation of colonial

domination and legacies of colonialism.82 In line with Pope’s statement that

postcolonialism believes that such identity is created as a result of colonialism,83

Turkey, now, is still experiencing identity ambivalence as the result of the radical

modernization that is forced by the elite colonizer (read: the Kemalists). Homi K.

Bhabha, just as Edward W. Said in Orientalism, also analyses the discourse on

colonialism. His keys concepts in the discourse on postcolonialism are hybridity

and the third space, in-betweenness, mimicry, and ambivalence.

In The Location of Culture, Bhabha says that the important feature of

colonial discourse is its dependence on the concept of “fixity” in the ideological

construction of otherness. Fixity is the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference

in the discourse of colonialism. It is the force of ambivalence that gives the

colonial stereotype its currency: ensures its repeatability in changing historical

80 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 15.81 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 17.82 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 16.83 Rob Pope, The English Studies Book: An Introduction to Language, Literature, and Culture,

Second Edition (London, Routledge: 2002) 141.


32

and discursive conjunctures; informs its strategies of individuation and

marginalization; produces that effect of probabilistic truth and predictability,

which for the stereotype, must always be in excess of what can be empirically

proved of logically construed.84 In colonial discourse, Bhabha highlights that

stereotype is important in defining the colonizer as superior and the colonized as

inferior. Said mentions in the previous section that the idea of stereotype is

important to Europe’s self-conception for dominating and maintaining power over

the Orient.85

Stereotype becomes very important for the West when the boundary or the

binary opposition between the East and the West is no longer clear. In other

words, stereotype, which is made by the West, must be maintained. In addition,

stereotype also encourages the East to emulate the West as what had been done by

Turkey by way of erasing its Islamic Ottoman tradition. As it is emphasized by

Özel that,

in 1923 Turkey pursued a radical modernization, with a staunchsecularism as its mainstay where religion would be subjugated to the stateand relegated strictly to the private sphere.86

In order to be part of the West, Turkey casts a petition to the European Union

(EU) to be one of its members but many European countries rebuff its

membership.87 Modernity, which Turkey tries to embrace by adopting Western

culture, has led to anxiety to the West because the attempt to emulate them can

threaten the firm division between the East and the West.

84 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 66.85 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism.86 Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 20.87 Pamuk, Other Colours, 214-217.


33

Bhabha criticises colonial discourse by proposing the concept of mimicry.

He explains that mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective

strategies of colonial power and knowledge.88 Lacan reminds us that the effect of

mimicry is camouflage.89 The imitation towards the colonizer does not mean that

the colonized imitates the colonizer identically. Bhabha adapts Weber’s

formulation that colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognisable Other,

as a subject of difference that is “almost the same, but not quite”. Bhabha adds

that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an “ambivalence” because

mimicry stays on the two different conditions. In order to be effective, mimicry

must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference. Bhabha says that

mimicry is a sign of a double articulation, which “appropriates” the Other as it

visualises power.90 Mimicry is a double articulation because it exists on both

sides; the colonizer and the colonized, or the Self and the Other.91

Bhabha writes that the desire to emerge as “authentic” through mimicry—

through a process of writing and repetition—is the final irony of partial

representation.92 Huddart, in Homi K. Bhabha, explains that this desire is not only

experienced by the colonized but clearly also by the colonizer. He also mentions

that colonial discourse at once demands both similarity and difference in the

figures of the colonized, but additionally colonial discourse’s ambivalence has the

strange effect of making the colonizer feel not quite colonizer, alienated from

88 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85.89 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120-121.90 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 86.91 Cherry Lou C. Sy, “Mimicry and Its Discontents: Examining Bhabha’s Multiculturalism as

Mimicry and Hybridity”, Student Pulse 3, 10 (2011): 1.92 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 88.


34

what they must believe is their true identity.93 Bhabha states that hybridity is the

effect of mimicry. Through imitating the colonizer, the colonized tries to rewrite

his identity in the liminal space by becoming hybrid.94 Huddart adds that identities

operate as palimpsests. He discusses that identities are overwritten on which

earlier writing is still visible underneath newer writing. They offer a suggestive

model of hybrid identity.95 This condition is now faced by Turkey that is still

writing their new identity above their Islamic Ottoman identity that is still visible

even though it had already erased through the Westernization project conducted

by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Hybridity has frequently been used in post-colonial discourse to mean

simply cross-cultural “exchange”. Moreover, Bhabha’s theory is also “a hybrid of

psychoanalysis, Marxism, Derridean philosophy, post-structuralism and

phenomenology and consequently what is produced is not a single identifiable

entity Postcolonial theory”.96 The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts

to stress the mutuality of cultures in the colonial and post-colonial process in

expressions of syncreticity, cultural synergy and transculturation.97 Hybridity—as

the dynamics of the colonial encounter—is suggested to overcome the failure of

the colonizer to create the stable and fixed identity.98 Moreover, Loomba adds that

for some Caribbean and Latin American activists, hybridity also used as an anti-

93 David Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 2006) 44.94 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120.95 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 107.96 Angela McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies (London: SAGE Publications, 2005) 100.97 Bill Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies (New York: Routledge, 2007) 109.98 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 92.


35

colonial strategy.99 As it is also suggested by Pamuk, Turkey’s predicament in

producing its modern identity can be overcome by combining the East and West

and create a new culture that is combination of both sides.

As stated by Bhabha, cultural identity always emerges in the contradictory

and ambivalent space, which makes the claim to a hierarchical “purity” of cultures

untenable.100 The sameness that is the result of mimicking the colonizer gives the

feeling of anxiety to the colonizer for this resemblance can endanger the

stereotype and break the strict division between the East and the West.101

Furthermore, the recognition of this ambivalent space of cultural identity may

help us to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in favour of the

recognition of an empowering capacities hybridity within which cultural

difference may operate.102

It is significant that the productive of this third space have a colonial or Post-Colonial attribution. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory mayopen the way to conceptualizing in international culture, based not on theexoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures but on the inscriptionand articulation of culture’s hybridity.103

It is in the “in-between” space that carries the burden and meaning of culture and

this is what makes the notion of hybridity so important.104

Bhabha argues that colonial culture is hybrid. Hybridity is the sign of the

productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name for

the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal, a resistant

99 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 146.100 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 37.101 McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 101.102 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 108.103 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 38.104 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 109.


36

against a dominant colonial power.105 Bhabha also states that hybridity is the

revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of

discriminatory identity effects. In addition,

colonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity between two differentcultures, which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism. Hybridityis a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses theeffects of the colonial disavowal, so that other “denied” knowledges enter uponthe dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority—its rules ofrecognition.106

Pamuk also presents hybridity in his My Name is Red in the sultan’s

commissioned book, an Islamic Ottoman illuminating book, which contains the

Venetian painting, Olive’s double identity as the representative of the Eastern and

Western side, and in The White Castle on the Italian slave’s hybrid speech and his

double identity.

2.2.2. The Discourse on Orientalism107

Edward Said in Orientalism (2003) explains that the discourse on

Orientalism is a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemological

distinction between “The Orient” and “The Occident”.108 Orientalism is a

discourse used by the Occident to dominate and control the Orient. It is a product

of Europe’s—mainly British and French—certain political forces and activity109

as well as domination and hegemony over the East. Fundamentally, Orientalism is

105 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 112.106 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 114.107 Edward Said’s discourse on Orientalism is principally a way of defining and “locating”

Europe’s others. But as a group of related disciplines, the discourse on Orientalism is aboutEurope itself and hinges on arguments that circulated around the issues of national distinctivenessand racial and linguistic origins. Quoted from Bill Ashcroft & Pal Ahluwalia, Edward Said(London: Routledge, 2001).

108 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003) 2.109 Said, Orientalism, 203.


37

a political doctrine, which promotes a binary opposition between the East and the

West. Said shows that this opposition is important to Europe’s self-conception: if

the Orient is weak, Europe is strong; if the Orient is inferior then the Occident is

superior; if the Orient is static, Europe can be seen as developing and marching

ahead.110 Besides, it is never far from Denys Hay’s idea of Europe, the idea of

European identity as a superior one over Oriental backwardness.111 However,

Said’s project is to show how this idea about the Orient is part of Western style

for dominating, restructuring, having authority, and maintaining power over the

Orient.112

The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power,

of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony113 and the Orient is

always stereotyped as the weak. Said stresses that,

the other feature of the Orient was that Europe was always in a position ofstrength. There is no way of putting this euphemistically…the essentialrelationship, on political, cultural, and even religious grounds was seen to be onebetween a strong and weak partner.114

Said describes the Orient as a system of representation framed by a whole set of

forces that brought them into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later,

Western empire.115 They are Europe’s cultural contestant and one of its deepest

and most recurring images of the Other. Said also argues that the Orient has

helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,

110 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Second Edition (Oxon: Routledge, Taylor &Francis Group, 2005) 45.

111 Said, Orientalism, 7.112 Said, Orientalism, 3.113 Said, Orientalism, 5.114 Said, Orientalism, 40.115 Said, Orientalism, 203.


38

and experience.116 The Orient is seen as a locale requiring Western attention,

reconstruction, even redemption. Moreover, the Orient existed as a place isolated

from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts, and commerce.117

Additionally, Pamuk also stresses that for Turkey and the Turks, Europe has

always figured as a dream, a vision of the future, a goal to achieve or danger, and

a future—an imagined future—but never a memory, just like the collapsed

Ottoman Empire.118 Therefore, as Turkey’s deepest image of the Other, Europe is

very important for Pamuk’s works for he always presents and complicates this

binary opposition in them, especially My Name is Red and The White Castle. For

that reason, I use the discourse on Orientalism to analyse the self-orientalism as

well as the binary opposition and the complex desire to imitate the Other that is

experience by Pamuk’s characters in his selected oeuvre.

Esin Akalin, in “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic

Discourse on the Orient” explains that Said’s Orientalism chooses to homogenise

the East and fails to recognise the element of power associated with the Ottoman

Empire. Akalin, in addition, stresses that she is not agree with Said’s discourse

that has generalized the East. Quoting from Kafadar, she states that Said

disregards the fact that the Ottoman, who has excelled in statecraft and

administration, financial policies, land system, and military power, are a “self-

consciously imperial state”.119 Akalin also finds that Said’s ahistorical and

116 Said, Orientalism, 1-2.117 Said, Orientalism, 206.118 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190.119 Esin Akalin, “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the

Orient”, a compilation journal in Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C.Freeman. (New York: Rodopi, B.V., 2007) 113.


39

ageographical approach to the Orient does not do justice to the historical realities

of the Ottoman Empire as a world power in the 16th-17th centuries.120 This can be

seen when Constantinople, which has reigned supreme for more than a thousand

years,121 was conquered by the reign Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, on May 29,

1453. At its heyday, the Ottoman Empire’s regions were stretched from Morocco

to Ukraine, from the borders of Iran to Hungary.122 Moreover, the Ottoman’s

presence in the Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts

of south-eastern Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically

and culturally.

Nevertheless, the overgeneralisation of the historical interactions of

systems and cultures make the Ottoman case particularly challenging.123 The case

of Turkey is very special. Here, it is not the West who orientalised Turkey but it is

Turkey that has orientalised itself. In fact, Western people even respect the Turks

for their glory and military power. Turkey was never a European colony and in

the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was even Europe’s great rival for

commercial hegemony in the economic space stretching from Venice to the Indian

Ocean.124 However, the loss of the Ottoman Empire had left a deep wound. When

the Ottoman Empire fell and the new Republic founded, Turkey experienced a

feeling of cultural inferiority because Turks wanted to Westernize but could not

120 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 112.121 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6.122 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 1.123 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 114.124 Cited by Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 122.


40

go far enough. Moreover, this westernization also brought isolation, which made

them isolated from the Western world they emulated.125

Orientalism is a political doctrine, which is used to control and dominate

the Orient by promoting the stereotype that the Orient is weaker than the

Occident. Even though, in reality, the Ottoman was strong and able to dominate

both East and West but there is still tension and longing within them to embrace

and imitate the West. As Said stresses the West has been imagine as the

“messiah” that can save and release Turkey from the backwardness and

retardation. Therefore, Said’s discourse on Orientalism will be used to reveal the

oscillation of the East and the West as well as the complex desire to imitate

Others.

3. Theoretical Framework

Since both novels depict the encounter between the Turks and the Italian,

in the case of their tradition, culture and art, I will employ Edward Said’s

discourse on Orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism to

answer the research questions. These theories are utilized in problematizing the

influence of the Italian Renaissance style and science as well as technology

toward Turkish miniature painting and traditional Turkish custom. Edward Said’s

Orientalism will be used to examine the Turks’ perception on seeing themselves

upon the Italian. In addition, it is also borrowed to complicate the binary

opposition between the East and the West and self and other that is always

125 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.


41

problematized in Pamuk’s oeuvre. Whereas, Bhabha’s Postcolonial theory is

employed to illuminate the solution that Pamuk’s stories offer to the predicament

of the oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own

tradition that Turkish society is undergoing using his hybridity, mimicry, and in-

betweenness. On the other hand, this theory helps to unfold the question on the

personal search for the true identity as the core of Pamuk’s novels. Also, the last

is finding the relevance of these two novels, My Name is Red and The White

Castle, with the condition in Indonesia that also faces the fundamentalists—that

might disrupt the unity as well as simplify and purify the multiculturalism—and

the lure of modernity that can reverse Indonesian people from its roots.


42

CHAPTER III

THE IRONY OF THE EAST-WEST OSCILLATION

Dealing with the first questions of the research, this chapter will outline

the complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is

red and The White Castle. I divided this chapter into five sub-chapters. In the first

sub-chapter, I will discuss cosmopolitanism signified in the novels to see

hybridity,126 which becomes the result of cosmopolitanism in İstanbul.

As the result of the encounter between the East and the West, there is an

attraction of Western culture and art as well as science and technology, which lead

to the adoption of Western tradition. For that reason, in the second sub-chapter, I

will review the enchantment and appropriation of the Italian Renaissance art by

Turkish miniature painters and European technology and science by Hoja that are

depicted in the novels studied.

Though Western aspects have enchanted the miniature painters and Hoja,

there are groups that still keep and preserve the Ottoman art and tradition. In view

of that, in the third sub-chapter, I will present the maintenance and preservation of

the Eastern aspects in both novels.

Furthermore, the Turks’ personal search for identity as individual will be

discussed in the fourth sub-chapter because the predicament of the oscillation

between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own tradition leads to

the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters and also the Ottoman

Sultans.

126 The analysis on hybridity will be explained further in the next chapter.


43

Lastly, to sum up those four sub-chapters, I will draw a golden thread in

the theoretical observation that is presented in the last sub-chapter. In this sub-

chapter, I will clarify how the discourses that I use to analyse Pamuk’s My Name

is Red and The White Castle have assisted to dismantle the complexity of the

oscillation of the East and the West.

1. Cosmopolitanism

The encounter between the Turks and the Westerns occurred from the very

early days of the Ottoman state. Jardine and Brotton, in Global Interests:

Renaissance Art between East and West, say that the encountered between the

East and the West and their cultural exchange had flourished in the 1460s and

1470s in spite of the high anxiety of the Eastern and Western Churches and the

political standoff between Western Europe and Mehmet II following the latter’s

conquest of Constantinople.127 It was commercial motivation—a mutually

profitable relationship, which both sides took care to develop—that was behind

the close Ottoman-Genoese relationship128 so that many Genoese lived and made

commercial transactions in Galata, Turkey. Additionally, the Genovese also

assisted the Ottoman to sail across the Strait and to cross from Europe to Asia, as

Mehmet’s father, Murat II had done in 1422 and 1444 when Constantinople was

still under the Byzantine Empire.129 Due to Turkey’s rich cosmopolitanism, in this

sub chapter, I present how this cosmopolitanism is affected by the Islamic

cosmopolitanism, the complex rendezvous of various cultures and civilizations in

127 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32.128 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 12.129 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 15.


44

İstanbul, how Pamuk presents İstanbul’s cosmopolitanism in his selected works,

and how this magnificent cosmopolitanism was erased by Kemal Ataturk through

his Westernization project in the end of the Ottoman Empire.

1.1. Islamic Cosmopolitanism

The encounter between the Turks and the Westerners that occurred from

the very early days of the Ottoman state is not the only Islamic contact with the

other civilizations, religions, and cultures. The encounter between Christian and

Muslim had already existed in the era of Buyids. Under the Buyids era in the tenth

century, the contact between Christian and Muslim was very close. Kraemer, in

Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, states that the Christians—“brought to the

area of Baghdad by immigrants from the great Christian centres of Edessa and

Nisibis”130—were given good positions in the government. “Christians were

highly represented among the secretarial class and many filled administrative

positions.”131 Christians were not only played a major role in the intellectual life

of Baghdad but they were also primarily responsible for imbuing the intellectual

atmosphere of our period with the ancient ideal of humanitas.132

They had a virtual monopoly on translations from Greek to Syriac into Arabic.…As members of a minority community, Syriac-speaking Christians injecting“foreign” ideas into the ideological stream of the dominant Muslim majority, inan apparent attempt to elude their own marginality.133

130 Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: the Cultural Revival during theBuyid Age, Second Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992) 76.

131 Kraemer, Humanism, 75.132 Kraemer, Humanism, 76-77.133 Ibid.


45

The Jewish community in Baghdad was quite large and important. “Jews

played a vital role in Baghdad as a bankers and court financiers.”134 In the

intellectual life of Baghdad, it was not only Christians that had important role but

Jews also had contribution even though in a small number. “Jews participated in

the intellectual life of Baghdad in the early of Buyid period though their

contribution was not significant. Jews tended to excel in astronomy and medicine.

The activity of the Jewish scholars as transmitters of learning took place in a later

period and in the West, where they had a major role in transmitting Arabic

philosophical and scientific texts to Christian Europe.”135 Due to the Islamic

contact with the other cultures, civilizations, and religions, as well as their close

relationship, I can draw a conclusion that those evidences show that the Christian

and the Jews also affect the Islamic philosophy and the Islamic thinking.

1.2. Cosmopolitanism in İstanbul

The encounter between Islam and the other cultures and religion was not

only flourished during the Buyids era but also it existed in the Ottoman Empire

era, especially in İstanbul. İstanbul—the city where the two tales, My Name is Red

and The White Castle136, take place and where Pamuk was born and living so

far—is a multicultural city, which has a very special location. Its geographical

position transforms it into a “border city”, since it constitutes a gate that connects

134 Kraemer, Humanism, 78.135 Kraemer, Humanism, 80.136 Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle (Beyaz Kale) translated by Victoria Holbrook, First Edition

(New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1998)


46

Europe to Asia.137 It has been a complex rendezvous from various cultures and

civilizations, they are Persian and Greek and Christian (Byzantine) and Muslim

(Ottoman).138 After it was conquered in May 29, 1453139, Mehmet II opened this

city for the Greek, the Armenian, and the Jews. Mehmet II has a very tolerant

attitude towards other religions and cultures. It could be seen when,

after conquering Constantinople, he encouraged Greek migration in the city andhe also opened the city to Armenians and Jews. The city had flourish as amulticultural society for hundreds of years and returned to its imperial mode oftolerance.140

Roel Meijer, in Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East,

adds that “during the Ottoman period, groups of different religious and ethnic

backgrounds intermingled and exchange ideas, lifestyles, and cultures. Moreover,

there were no certain boundaries, which had been drawn and the state did not yet

apply its power of standardisation or force its norms on its citizens.”141 Under the

reign of Mehmed II, the Persian, the Greek, the Christian, and the Ottoman lived

in peace and harmony and also respected the others’ cultures and religious

practices. Moreover, due to their encounter, contact, and close relationship, I

argue that the cultural exchange within them could not be avoided.

137 Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, “Orhan Pamuk and the Construction of Turkey’s NationalMemory in İstanbul: Memories of a City”, MATHESIS 19 (2010): 171.

138 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.139 Orhan Pamuk, İstanbul: Memories and the City translated by Maureen Freely (New York:

Vintage International, 2006) 172.140 Benton Jay Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated: The Cultures of Integration,

Concealment, and Evacuation in İstanbul”, Comparative Literature Studies 39, 4 East-West Issue(2002): 366.

141 Roel Meijer, Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East (Surrey: Curzon,1999) 1.


47

What is interesting in Pamuk’s description of İstanbul is the importance he

gives to hüzün, the Turkish word for melancholy.142 In the beginning, this word

means a feeling of deep spiritual loss, and then to the Sufi, hüzün is the spiritual

anguish we feel because we cannot be close enough to Allah; because we cannot

do enough for Him in this world.143 Pamuk also tries to present hüzün as a

spiritual attitude and point of view, which embrace and celebrate and is also

critical to the human life in this world144 just like when he uses it to criticize

Turkish modern identity that is forced by the elites. Hüzün stems from the same

“black passion” as melancholy. Pamuk, following Burton’s The Anatomy of

Melancholy, finds that “melancholy paved the way to a happy solitude because it

strengthened his imaginative powers”. Through this statement, Pamuk wants to

give a positive meaning to hüzün that the solitude is the heart, the very essence of

melancholy.145 Therefore, hüzün leads people to solitude where they can “find the

significance and the answer of their negative experiences”146 as well as relieve the

ache that finally saves their souls and also gives them depth.147

As a city that witnesses the encounter of the East and the West, İstanbul

becomes a multicultural city, which embraces complex issues on the feeling of

hüzün suffered by its residents. In his works, Pamuk tries to capture and paint this

hüzün by presenting the oscillation to imitate the Frankish method or to keep the

old painting style as well as conflicts around the Ottoman miniaturists. Pamuk

142 Martins, “Orhan Pamuk”, 174.143 Pamuk, İstanbul, 90.144 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.145 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92.146 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.147 Pamuk, İstanbul, 104.


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explains that hüzün is “the black mood shared by millions of people

together”148…like the hüzün of entire community, such as the palace miniaturists

in My Name is Red. It is of the miniaturists who feel the hüzün because the

Ottoman miniature painting has been replaced by the new Frankish painting style

and because they are afraid to face their future; the old Ottoman tradition that will

vanish and has no future and the miniaturists that will be even less appreciated.

Hüzün was not only felt by the palace miniaturists but also felt by Atik

Sinan. Atik Sinan, an architect who worked under the reign of Sultan Mehmet II,

tried to make Fatih mosque, which resembled and emulated Hagia Sophia.

Because of his Christian background and of the glorious past of the Byzantine

Emperor and as an architect who worked for Mehmed, Sinan released his hüzün

by combining Byzantine and Ottoman architecture by building Fatih külliye.149

However, Mehmed’s attempt to build the mosque that was the rivalry of the grand

Byzantine building was not success. Rabah Saoud explains that in this project,

“Sinan failed to make the dome of the mosque bigger and higher than the Hagia

Sophia, which disappointed the Fatih that he amputated the hand of the

architect”.150

From the explanation and information presented above, it can be

concluded that as the city of complex and ambiguous rendezvous of various

cultures and religions, İstanbul has become a cosmopolitan city, which allows and

148 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92.149 Fatih külliye is a building, made in the 15th century and consists of mosque and Islamic

school. The Byzantine tradition, especially as embodied in Hagia Sophia, became a major sourceof inspiration for Sinan; Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 200-206; Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.

150 Rabah Saoud, “Muslim Architecture under Ottoman Patronage (1326-1924)”, Foundation forScience Technology and Civilization (2004): 3.


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highly respects the practices of different religions and ethnics of its citizens.

Additionally, Pamuk uses hüzün to overcome the deep spiritual loss of the Islamic

Ottoman tradition. Hüzün leads people to the answer of their sadness and relieve

the ache that can save their souls. Pamuk suggests to combine the two cultures in

revealing the feeling of melancholy rather than living in one of those cultures or

only slavishly imitating Western culture therefore a new hybrid culture can be

invented.151

1.3. Cosmopolitanism in Pamuk’s Works

In my observation, Pamuk captures cosmopolitanism that has been

mentioned in the two previous parts in his works. This cosmopolitanism can be

found in the two selected novels and it is mostly seen in My Name is Red. One of

the cosmopolitanisms is the architecture of the house in İstanbul in the 16th

century, as it is stated by Black who has just come back from his exile for twelve

years in Persia as a letters carrier and tax collector and a secretary in the service of

pashas (MNR, 7):

Some of the neighbourhoods and streets I’d frequented in my youth haddisappeared in ashes and smoke, replaced by burnt ruins where stray dogscongregated and where mad transients frightened the local children. Inother areas razed by fire, large affluent houses had been built, and I wasastonished by their extravagance, by windows of the most expensiveVenetian stained glass, and by lavish two-story residences with baywindows suspended above high walls. (MNR, 9)

Meliz Ergin supports the statement above by mentioning that Turkey is a unique

site for promoting cosmopolitan, which accommodates an array of languages,

151 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370.


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cultures, and histories. Pamuk, moreover, presents this mosaic by displaying the

historical buildings and architecture in the cities of Turkey to highlight the

richness of cultures that have inhabited these spaces over centuries,152 especially

İstanbul where the two selected novels take place.

The large affluent houses, which have been built in the 16th century

İstanbul using European architecture, is similar to the demolitions and urban

modernization in İstanbul in the 1950s. Many buildings were rapidly torn down

and replaced by the newer, higher, developer-built multi-unit apartments. Sıbel

Bozdoğan, in The Cambridge History of Turkey mentions that the speculative

apartment boom of the next few decades became the notorious symbol of the

sterility, banality, and repetitiveness of modern architecture and urbanism, turning

major Turkish cities into “concrete jungle”.153 Moreover, I see that the alteration

of the architecture, mentioned in My Name is Red, becomes a symbol of

cosmopolitanism and forced modernization as well as an attempt of purification,

which is embraced by the Turks.

The other old buildings are the hippodrome and the ancient church that are

visited by Hoja, his Italian slave, and the sovereign to see His animal collections.

Hippodrome is a building that was used for horse races during the Byzantine era.

In this place, the child sultan shows Hoja his animals and asks him to make

predictions on their future babies or health.

152 Melız Ergın, “East-West Entanglements: Pamuk, Özdamar, Derrida”, Dissertation,(Vancouver: The University of British Columbia, 2009) 223.

153 Sıbel Bozdoğan, The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World edited byReşat Kasaba, Volume 4 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 450.


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They’d gone by carriage to the hippodrome, to the lion-house. The lions,the leopards, and the panthers the sultan showed Hoja one by one werechained to the columns of an ancient church. (TWC, 43)

I argue that these old buildings symbolize the harmonious relation between

various cultures, religions, and ethnics in İstanbul for this city has been a

“complex rendezvous from various cultures and civilizations, such as Persian,

Greek, Christian (Byzantine), and Muslim (Ottoman).”154 Additionally, these

buildings is a metaphors, which Pamuk displays as “an affirmation of the survival

of the traces left by Turks, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, and several other ethnic and

religious communities…under the Ottoman Empire.155

The other example of cosmopolitanism is Venetian gold coins, which

overflow İstanbul. The gold coins show how the commercial relationship and the

trade between the Ottoman and Venetian have already closely intertwined. On the

other hand, a rumour on the flooding of the counterfeit coins in the markets and

bazaars is similar to the numerous foreign people who live in İstanbul and cause

moral degradation.

The pickle seller who passionately informed me about the cleric fromErzurum said that the counterfeit coins—the new ducats, the face florinsstamped with lions and the Ottoman coins with their ever-ending silvercontent—that flooded the markets and bazaars, just like the Circassians,Abkhazians, Mingarians, Bosnians, Georgians, and Armenians who filledthe streets, were dragging us toward an absolute degradation from which itwould be difficult to escape. (MNR, 10)

However, the overflow of Venetian gold coins also shows how inflation hit the

city, which makes the Ottoman coins no longer have any value in İstanbul, and the

decline of the Ottoman Empire, which causes social and economic problems. In

154 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.155 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 224.


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addition, moral degradation that is mentioned above shows how modernity does

not always bring good influence to society that embraces it. It is also in the same

vein with the social condition in modern-day İstanbul that can be seen in the

Social History of Ottoman İstanbul, that “Beyoğlu was the quintessential symbol

of moral decline and...a sin city, which brought ruination to the good Muslim and

stripped him of his health, wealth, and faith”156.

The encounter of the East and the West also happened in the area of

Mediterranean Sea. Mediterranean was an important place for the Ottoman. It was

an important string of routes, straits, and passageways.157 The Ottomans looked at

the Mediterranean as a military region, a place to wage war. Actually, the

Ottomans experience the problem of otherness in cosmopolitanism, which grows

their antagonism to conquer, capture, or even resemble the West. The Other (the

West) always appears as something that is more enchanting and the Ottoman’s

rich cosmopolitanism has driven the desire to conquer and dominate the West.

Mediterranean becomes very important for the Ottoman because it is a way to

conquer Europe. So, it is not by a coincidence as Pamuk emphasizes that it figures

as such for the 17th century-Turks and Italian who comes face-to-face to fight and

take captives in The White Castle.158 In this novel, the encounter between the East

and the West can be seen in the opening story when “the Turkish fleets attack the

Italian ship, which was sailing from Venice to Naples” (TWC, 13).

The Ottomans take the ship and capture the crew ship (the Italians) as

slaves. In line with Said’s binary opposition, Europe is always stereotyped as

156 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 325-326.157 Pamuk, Other Colours, 194.158 Pamuk, Other Colours, 195.


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civilized while the Ottoman is seen as barbarian, a threat, and Europe’s contestant.

The West saw the Ottoman’s conquest of the Constantinople as “the most

despicable, barbarous, and ignorant enemies of civilization”159. Moreover, the

Ottoman ships that take captive the Italian ship can be seen as one of barbarian act

that threatened Europe. Kantar mentions that The White Castle seems like a

conflict among Christians and Muslims in the opening story.160 It can be seen

when the Muslim slaves, after being set loose from their chains, set about taking

vengeance on the Italian sailors who have wiped them (TWC, 15) and the other

Christians are put to the oars (TWC, 16). The Italian slave, on the other hand, is

characterised as a would-be martyr who refuses to convert to Islam even though

he is forced and threatened by the Pasha. However, the religious difference

between the master and the slave does not seem to be a crucial issue in the

novel.161

In The White Castle, the cosmopolitanism—the contact, encounter, and

cultural exchange between the Turks and the Italians—can be seen from the

Italians who have lived in İstanbul for many years, during Sultan Ahmed I’s

period. In addition, most of them have converted to Islam, too. One of them is a

Genoese captain who meets the young Italian slave when he is captured by the

Turkish fleet (TWC, 15). The Italian slave has managed to meet the other Italians,

who are known by their new names as Mustafa Reis and Osman Efendi, during

the 11 years he has been living in İstanbul (TWC, 71).

159 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6.160 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 128.161 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 128.


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European quarter of Galata is also mentioned in The White Castle. It is the

place where the young Italian slave meets a young monk who tells him about

Heybeli Island. Many Europeans had lived in Galata and the Genoese had been

here before the Ottoman conquered Constantinople. Dubin, Gawthrop, and

Richardson say that the occupation of Galata by the Genoese began when they

supported Byzantine emperor in the Crusaders. Moreover, during the early

centuries of Ottoman rule, many Spanish Jews, Moorish traders, Greeks, and

Armenians settled in Galata, which became established as the city’s European

quarter. Under his reign, Mehmet II allowed the Genoese to retain their

commercial and religious establishments. They subsequently built one of the

city’s most famous landmarks here, the Galata Tower.162 In modern İstanbul,

Beyoğlu, the foreign quarter of Pera and Galata in İstanbul, is a symbol of

Europeanisation where technological and intellectual innovation, fast-changing

fashion, as well as moral depravity can be found. Additionally, it became the

place where the Ottoman elite found an opportunity to prove themselves as

“civilized” in the eyes of the Europeans who labelled them “barbarians”.163

Pamuk captures İstanbul’s cosmopolitanism in his two works by

presenting the architecture of the buildings that are adopting European

architecture, the commercial relationship and trade between the Ottoman and the

Venetian, as well as the European that live in Galata, as seen in My Name is Red

and The White Castle.

162 Marc Dubin, John Gawthrop, and Terry Richardson, The Rough Guide to Turkey (London:Rough Guides, Ltd., 2003) 160.

163 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 309, 326.


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1.4. Turkification

“I wish for one thing; I want to hear church bells, the call of a muezzin,and the sounds of a synagogue simultaneously in İstanbul,

like the noises that I heard when I was a boy.”164

In the previous section, I illustrate how İstanbul grows as a multicultural

city of different religious and ethnic background that flourishes during the

Ottoman Empire. In this session, I illustrate how this cosmopolitanism and

İstanbul cosmopolitanism start to fade away. However, the quotation above

verifies that in the past, the various religions and cosmopolitanism that exist in

İstanbul, now, has just remained as a dream. There is no church bells, the call of a

muezzin, and the sounds of a synagogue that simultaneously been heard in

İstanbul. Komins also shows that,

led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey abandoned its multicultural past for adecidedly Turkish future. He even replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latinalphabet. …He also revolutionized Turkish dress, abolishing the emblematicOttoman fez, and officially discouraging Muslim women’s veils.165

Cosmopolitan İstanbul of different ethnicities and religious affiliations and many

languages has changed dramatically and a new cosmopolitanism that of financial

services and multinational corporations, advertisers and artists, oil men and real

estate agents, is rapidly filling the gap.166

Komins—in “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated: The Cultures of Integration,

Concealment, and Evacuation in İstanbul”—adds that the religious tolerance and

164 That is a remark from a senior official with UNIDO (The United Nations IndustrialDevelopment Office) who works in Ankara and lives in İstanbul. Komins, “CosmopolitanismDepopulated”, 381.

165 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367.166 Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 25; Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 361.


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ethnic eclecticism, which flourished under the reign of Mehmet II, were not long

prevail.167

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, European colonial intervention,national wars of independence, and population exchanges, physical andideological borders began to demark the region ethnically. With the rise ofTurkish nationalism in the republican era, the population of İstanbul began tochange. Many Anatolian Turks migrated to the city, while the non-Turkishpopulations began to depart.168

Moreover, many Italian merchants family who have lived in Pera since the 16th

century also left the modern İstanbul. As late as the 1980s, when only minimalnumbers of minority residents remained, the revitalization of İstanbul itself,revolved around notions of Turkish purity.169

Pamuk also adds in his memoir, İstanbul: Memories and the City, that

cosmopolitan İstanbul had disappeared when he reached his adulthood. This city

used to be like the “tower of Babel” where Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Italian,

French, and English could be heard in the streets of İstanbul in1852 when Gautier

was there. However, after Ataturk’s Westernization revolution took place this

cosmopolitan İstanbul disappeared.

After the founding of the Republic and the violent rise of Turkification, after thestate imposed sanctions on minorities—measures that some might describe as thefinal stage of the city’s “conquest” and others as ethnic cleansing—most of theselanguages disappeared. I witnessed this cultural cleansing as a child, forwhenever anyone spoke Greek or Armenian too loudly in the street, someonewould cry out, “Citizens, please speak Turkish!”—echoing what signseverywhere were saying.170

Pamuk’s story above illustrates how “it was the end of the grand polyglot

multicultural İstanbul of the imperial age; the city stagnated, emptied itself out,

and became a monotonous monolingual town in black and white”.171 İstanbul,

167 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 366.168 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 361.169 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367-368.170 Pamuk, İstanbul, 239.171 Pamuk, İstanbul, 238.


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now, remains as a black and white city, which rejects its multicolour through the

nationalization project.

Purity, which is now the issue that is faced by Turkey, is the irony of

Turkish modernization. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s172 Westernization project is an

irony for he wanted to modernize Turkey but he did not want to keep its

cosmopolitanism. “The consequences of İstanbul’s forced Turkification, as

Komins said, are the Greek and the Italian that left modern İstanbul because they

were not wholly accepted in the new world of Turkish nationalism”.173

Additionally, this brutal nationalization project, which was conducted around

1915 during the First World War,174 had caused many people to die. Pamuk, in an

interview published in a Swiss newspaper, claims that

a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds had been killed in Turkey; …alarge number of Ottoman Armenians were deported, allegedly for siding againstthe Ottoman Empire during the First World War and many of them wereslaughtered along the way.175

Turkey was never a European colony however this purification project showed

how Turkey experienced a self-colonization by “colonialized” its own people, by

killing its minorities that was aimed to rapidly “civilize” itself. However, the other

argues that between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand Armenians

were killed during the deportations from various causes, such as disease,

starvation as well as killing.176 Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

in front of the Armenians who lost their families in the deportation describes this

172 Atatürk means “Father of the Turks”. Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367.173 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 367-368.174 ---------, “Belasungkawa untuk Penduduk Armenia”, TEMPO 28 April 2014-4 Mei 2014: 147.175 Pamuk, Other Colours, 237-238.176 Andrew Mango, “Religion and Culture in Turkey”, Middle Eastern Studies 42, 6 (2006): 999.


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incident as a form of mutual pain between the Armenians and the Turks.

However, he rejects that one and a half million Armenians were genocide in the

incident.177 Along with Erdogan’s statement, Turkey’s spokesmen continue to

maintain that the slaughter does not count as genocide because it was not

systematic, and that in the course of the war Armenians killed many Muslims

too.178

Turkey is now still experiencing the problem of purity—which is the irony

of its Westernization—for this Turkification project refuses to maintain Turkish

cosmopolitanism by expelling the Greeks, Italians, and the Kurds from the

country. The West is Turkey’s model that is used to find its true identity as well as

being a modern country. Moreover, Turkey also wants to be part of Europe by

“knocking on” Europe’s door but ironically it is still rejected by the European

Union.

2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Art and Technology

Europe was the fountain of civilization.—Orhan Pamuk179

The encounter between the East and the West since the Ottoman Empire as

well as Cosmopolitanism had resulted in the enchantment of Western culture and

tradition because the West has become a standard of being modern by the Turkish.

As it is mentioned by Said, Europe is always seen as superior, powerful, and

177 ---------, “Belasungkawa untuk Penduduk Armenia”, 147; Wisnu Dewabrata, “Konflik PalingMematikan”, Kompas, 6 July 2014, 5.

178 Pamuk, Other Colours, 238.179 Pamuk, Other Colours, 216.


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articulate180 and guided by Ataturk, the Turks, who mostly live on the periphery

of Europe, believe that Europe to be the source of all truth.181 I argue that the

alterations made by Kemal Ataturk indicated that Westernization was believed as

a way to free Turkey from backwardness. For Pamuk and for many people who

live on the edge of Europe, “Europe was the fountain of civilization”182 and an

imagined future—but never a memory like the old Ottoman tradition. It has

always figured as a dream, a vision of what is to come; an apparition at times

desired and at times feared; a goal to achieve or a danger; a vision of the future

and also as a threat and seduction.183

However, since the Ottoman Empire, there had been longing and desire to

be the West, which descends them. The Empire has the complex and ambiguous

desire to imitate the West, for instance, the lust to be painted in the manner of

Frankish masters like Sultan Mehmet II and Murat III, the hunger to take Western

important areas, such as Constantinople, and the desire to apply the Western art

and technology. The economic power and strategic area that were controlled by

the West, in this case was the Byzantine Empire, had increased Sultan Mehmet

II’s ambition to conquer the West by capturing Constantinople. The always

westward-moving Ottoman Turks reached the Balkan shores of the Mediterranean

in the 14th century. They were well aware that the Mediterranean could be used

for further conquest after defeated İstanbul and entered the Black Sea and it was

also an important string of routes and passageways from Asia to Europe and the

180 Said, Orientalism, 7, 57.181 Jeffrey Meyers, “Turkish Delight”, The Antioch Review 66, 2 (2008): 393.182 Pamuk, Other Colours, 216.183 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190.


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other way around.184 Controlling the waterway was not only Ottoman’s

commercial purpose but also military strategy of cutting the Byzantine’s maritime

stronghold.185

The complex desire to mimic the West and the oscillation between East

and West are generally presented by Orhan Pamuk in his works. Pamuk says that

Western ways of seeing and painting and its science and technology are more

attractive in the eyes of Turkish miniature painters and Hoja. The miniaturists

challenge the Islamic prohibition against portraiture186, while Hoja tries to alter

traditional performances in the society by practicing science and technology,

which he adores. My Name is Red and The White Castle mirror Turkey’s recent

history as well as the internal struggle and search for a new identity. In addition,

those novels also show how Western culture is seen under Eastern eyes. The

searching for identity leads Turkey into self-inflicted ordeal because they try to

erase the old-grand Ottoman Empire history. However, this self-imposed

Westernization also brings isolation. The Turks are isolated from the Western

world they try to emulate.187

I read Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle as two stories,

which complicate the binary opposition between East-West, traditional-modern,

Turkish miniature painting-Italian Renaissance painting, master-slave, and also

science-stars and dreams interpretation. The identity of the characters in his

oeuvre also split into two; one belongs to the East and the other belongs to the

184 Pamuk, Other Colours, 194.185 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 12.186 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270.187 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370-371.


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West. Through the split identity he presented, Pamuk wants to problematize the

love-hate relationship between the East and the West. Along with Ülker

Gökberk’s argument that,

Pamuk’s oeuvre is dedicated to themes such as Turkey’s stance between East andWest; its Ottoman past and Western-oriented present; conflicts arising from oldand new definitions of the artist, of faith and non-religious lifestyle. Even thoughthese themes seem to imply binary oppositions, Pamuk complicates dualitiesthrough various strategies, most notably the doubling of his fictional charactersand their switching of identities.188

In his fictions, Pamuk likes to complicate and problematize the Self-Other or

binary opposition. Similarly, Farred mentions that Pamuk also delineates how the

Other is thus always present, frequently as a threat189 and seduction. As seen from

the doubling characters in The White Castle that Hoja and his Venetian slave share

the resemblance to each other and Hoja’s slave even says that both of them are

one person (TWC, 82). Moreover, because of their hyper similarity, Hoja and his

slave also feel the uncanny that later they come to a decision to exchange their

identities in the end of the story.

Even though the young Italian man is a slave, he still feels that he is

superior and treating Hoja as an inferior, even if only in secret.

Since I was accustomed to treating him as an inferior, even if only insecret, I thought they would consists of a few petty, insignificant sins.…After Hoja had thoroughly humiliated himself I would make him acceptmy superiority, or at least my independence, and then derisively demandmy freedom. (TWC, 70)

The slave’s identity is split into two. The Italian slave (the West) also feels that he

is responsible to guide and teach his Master (the East) for the Orient is always

188 Ülker Gökberk, “Beyond Secularism: Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and the Contestation of ‘TurkishIdentity’ in the Borderland”, Konturen 1 (2008): 6.

189 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88.


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stereotyped as the weak, so that it needs the assistance from the West. As has been

said by Said, “the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of

power and domination and Europe is always in a position of strength”.190

This binary opposition is in line with Said’s Orientalism, that the Orient is

Europe’s cultural contestant and one of its deepest and most recurring images of

the Other. The East is not only as a seduction for Europe but it has also helped to

define the West as its contrasting image and idea.

The Orient is…the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, thesource of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of itsdeepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Other has helpedto define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,experience.191

This opposition is crucial to European self-conception, for instance, the qualities

such as lazy, irrational, or uncivilized are related to the Orient and automatically

the Occident has the qualities such as active, rational, and civilized.192 As in My

Name is Red, Pamuk tries to demonstrate the comparison between the old painting

tradition and the new painting tradition, that is represented by the Ottoman-

Persian painting and the Italian Renaissance painting; the comparison between the

past and the future, for Europe has always figured as a vision of the future but

never a memory like the collapsed Ottoman Empire193 and the old Miniature

painting.

190 Said, Orientalism, 5, 40.191 Said, Orientalism, 1-2.192 Said, Orientalism, 7.193 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190.


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2.1. The Enchantment and Appropriation of Western Science and

Technology

The result of the encounter between the East and the West is an attraction

to Western science and technology, which lead to the adoption of those Western

innovations by Turkish. Being modern is always related to the use and the

adoption of Western science and technology. Nowadays, Turkey’s adoption of

Western technology has led them to become one of countries that have the ability

to create sophisticated defence system. Looking back to the 15th century, Mehmed

II also had deep interest in Western tradition. Henri Stierlin mentions that

Mehmed always sought the latest developments in sciences and he also took an

interest in artillery and he entrusted the production of his cannons to German

metalsmiths.194

The enchantment of Western science and technology as well as Turkish

deep interest and obsession with Western knowledge can be seen in the character

of Hoja in The White Castle, who is charmed by European science and

technology. Hoja’s greatest desire is to learn the wisdom of the West.195 He

always dreams to live in the West.

I sensed he wanted this post for himself, wanted to escape from the idiotshere and live among them. …He let slip only once or twice that he wantedto establish relations with “their” men of science; …he wanted tocorrespond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever farawayland occurred to him at the moment. Who were the very best among them,where did they live, how could one correspond with them, could I learnthese things from the ambassadors? (TWC, 121)

194 Henri Stierlin, Turkey: from the Selçuks to the Ottomans, (Köln: Taschen, 2002) 100.195 Paul Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”, The New Republic 9 September 1991: 36-39, 28

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From the very beginning, Hoja does not like the activities of the pashas, Sultan,

and Turkish society for they depend on the astrology and the illogical

interpretation of the dreams and stars. He also dislikes them for they have little

interest in science and technology. Besides, he feels depressed because the

children are scared when they see his science instruments.

When he returned in the evening he was depressed but not so much as tokeep silent: “I thought the children would understand as the sultan did, butI was wrong,” he said. They had only been frightened. When Hoja askedquestions after his lecture, one of the children replied that Hell was on theother side of the sky and began to cry. (TWC, 42)

From the quotation above, it can be seen that the rejection of Western technology

by the children, who represent the young Ottoman generation, shows the binary

opposition of the Eastern backwardness and Western modernity, for Europe’s

superiority always presented by the using of sophisticated and modern

technology. In addition, Hoja’s reaction towards the illogical-traditional activities

of the Turkish society has similarity in the Europeans’ criticism that “largely

regarded the Ottomans as uncivilized and trammelled by a religion that was

inimical to progress”196.

2.1.1. The Enchantment of Western Science and Technology

Complexity in Hoja’s life and his frustration with the Sultan and his

“traditionality”, “forced” him to adore the identity of his Venetian slave whose

life is more interesting in Italy where people do not depend on the prediction and

interpretation of the dreams and stars. Hoja’s slave is a young Italian man who is

seized in a fleet from Venice to Naples and demanded by Hoja from the pasha as a

196 Boyar and Fleet, Ottoman History, 327.


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present (TWC, 31) to teach him “everything” his slave had learnt in Italy (TWC,

32). The relationship between Hoja and his slave is also very unique. Hoja and his

Italian slave have an incredible resemblance. As they sit down face to face, the

Italian slave even feels like look himself in a mirror.

The resemblance between myself and the man who entered the room wasincredible! It was me there…for that first instant this was what I thought.…As our eyes met, we greeted one another. But he did not seem surprised.Then I decided he didn’t resemble me all that much, he had a beard; and Iseemed to have forgotten what my own face looked like. As he sat downfacing me, I realized that it had been a year since I last looked in a mirror.(TWC, 22)

Even though having an incredible resemblance, Hoja and his look-alike slave are

competing all the time. Pamuk explains that the relationship between Hoja and his

slave, who is his alter ego, is based on his relationship with his brother, Shevket,

who is only eighteen months older than him. He adds that, impersonation is The

White Castle’s theme that is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when coping

with Western culture.

After writing The White Castle, I realized that this jealousy—the anxiety aboutbeing influenced by someone else—resembles Turkey’s position when it lookswest. You know, aspiring to become Westernized and then being accused of notbeing authentic enough. Trying to grab the spirit of Europe and then feelingguilty about the imitative drive. The ups and downs of this mood are reminiscentof the relationship between competitive brothers.197

The relationship between Hoja (East) and his Italian slave (West), who have hyper

similarity, is along with Said’s discourse on Orientalism that “the Orient is not

only adjacent to Europe but also Europe’s cultural contestant. In addition, the



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Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea,

personality, experience”.198

Akalin (2007) argues that Said fails to recognise the element of power

associated with the Ottoman Empire. This is especially seen when the Ottoman

Empire begins a modern history by making dramatic events such as the conquest

of Constantinople (now İstanbul) in 1453, the first siege of Vienna in 1529, and

Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Besides, the presence of the Empire in the

Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts of south-eastern

Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically and culturally.199

Ironically, Turkey still feels inferior and needs to be guided by the West.

In The White Castle, as has been explained above, both Hoja and the

Venetian slave share an uncanny resemblance to each other200 because Hoja is not

only the Venetian’s master but also his pupil, for Hoja also asks his slave to teach

him everything his look-alike slave had learnt in his country.

Later he said I would teach him everything; that’s why he’d asked thepasha to give me to him, and only after I had done this would he make mea freedman. …“Everything” meant all that I’d learned in primary andsecondary school; …everything that was taught in my country. (TWC, 32)

Hoja really wants to learn what the Western thinks, the “others” who had taught

his Italian slave science. (TWC, 54) Despite the fact that Hoja had learnt

astronomy and science but he still needs the Italian slave to teach him everything

the slave had learnt, such as astronomy, medicine, and engineering. On the other

198 Said, Orientalism, 1-2.199 Esin Akalin, “The Ottoman Phenomenon and Edward Said’s Monolithic Discourse on the

Orient”, a journal compilation in the Challenging the Boundaries edited by Işil Baş and Donald C.Freeman. (New York: Rodopi, B.V., 2007) 112-113.

200 Farred, “To Dig a Well”, 88.


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side, the Italian slave (the West) also feels that it is his responsibility to guide and

teach Hoja (the East). The slave also feels that apparently Hoja’s knowledge is no

greater than his knowledge (TWC, 23) and when he teaches Hoja, he feels like a

solicitous elder who agrees to review his previous lessons so as to help his lazy

little brother to catch up. (TWC, 33) It is caused by the stereotype that the Orient

is isolated from the mainstream of European progress in sciences.201

The Italian slave also wants to imitate and be like Hoja. He too wants to

say and do the thing Hoja says and does. The young slave envies Hoja because he

can take action when the slave cannot.

He was right, I too wanted to say and do the things he said and did, Ienvied him because he could take action when I could not, because hecould play upon the fear in the plague and the mirror. (TWC, 83)

As it is explained by Said that “the Orient has helped to define the West as its

contrasting image and idea”202, Hoja also has helped to define his Italian slave as

superior and master in science and he as inferior for he asks his slave to teach him

everything he had learnt in his country (TWC, 32) even though he also has

knowledge on science.

2.1.2. The Adoption of Western Science and Technology

The enchantments of Western science and technology, Hoja’s obsession

with Western knowledge, as well as his frustration with the Sultan and

“traditionality” around him have led to the appropriation of that innovation.

However, in this part, the appropriation of the West is not limited to the adoption

of the sophisticated technology but also includes the imitation of both Eastern and

201 Said, Orientalism, 206.202 Said, Orientalism, 1-2.


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Western culture and tradition, both by Hoja and his look-alike young slave. Hoja’s

“grand plan” is the example of the adoption of Western sophisticated technology

in The White Castle. Furthermore, the imitation of Eastern and Western culture

and tradition can be seen on the young Italian slave who learns his master’s trait,

language, and mind, and vice versa.

As has been mentioned, the adoption of Western technology has existed

since the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Mehmed II. His interest in Western

science and technology can be seen when he always wanted to know the latest

update in the sciences and also invited many Western scholars, scientists, and

technicians. Additionally, he also entrusted the production of his cannons to

German metalsmiths.203 Turkey’s interest toward Western science and technology

is presented by Orhan Pamuk in his first Ottoman novel, The White Castle, and

presented through Hoja and his young Italian slave as well as the child sultan.

Sultan Ahmed I, the reigning monarch in The White Castle, is also enchanted by

Western science and technology. His interest grows after Hoja becomes the Head

of the Imperial Astrologer and interprets his dreams every day. Furthermore, he

also asks Hoja to make the war machine that is believed can ruin the Ottoman’s

enemy.

Hoja’s interest to Western science and technology is illustrated when he

adopts his slave’s knowledge. Berman says that Hoja gorges himself with the

several branches of Western knowledge on science and engineering, on the

information that might lead to military advantages for the Ottoman Empire, and

203 Stierlin, Turkey, 100.


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even on the deeper psychology of the West.204 When the plague strikes İstanbul,

he implements Western knowledge on plague from his slave that is known from

“the scenes in Hippocrates, Thucydides, and Boccacio, to decrease the spread of

the disease that is contagious” (TWC, 72).

I explained how we could protect ourselves from death that we must nottouch those who had caught the plague, that the corpses must be buried inlimed pits, that people must reduce their contact with one another as muchas possible, and that Hoja must not go to that crowded school. (TWC, 73)

The Italian slave explanation above is the example of Western knowledge, which

can be used to overcome the plague that is adopted from the Greek philosophers.

To stop the plague, Hoja need his slave’s knowledge so that he decides to take his

slave who escapes from the plague to Heybeli Island. Hoja, then, tries to

implement that knowledge to reduce the spread of the disease, which strikes

İstanbul.205

However, science and rationality are hardly accepted by the society at that

time. People do not worry and fear the plague even though many people have

dead of it because “disease is God’s will and if a man is fated to die he will die”

(TWC, 72). Besides, the act “to make war on the plague was to oppose God”

(TWC, 92) for “the plague was God’s will and no one should interfere with it”

(TWC, 97). Hoja and his slave, then, create a tale to tell to the sovereign, which is

more acceptable by the sovereign and a crowd of fools around him.

204 Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”.205 The outbreak mentioned in Pamuk’s The White Castle also truly happened in İstanbul in the

early seventeenth century. In a city the size of İstanbul, where people were crowded together inclose proximity with little or no sanitation, plague was inevitably both frequent and severe. Manydied in such outbreak and the death rate was high so that bodies were left unburied for there wasno one to dig the graves. Most shops were closed because people were called to bury the dead.Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 75.


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Things had gone well. The story we invented had affected the sultandeeply. His mind accepted the idea that the plague was like a devil tryingto deceive him by taking on human form. …When Hoja was asked whenand how the plague would end, he…replied that the devil came to men inthe form of a man and to animals in the form of a mouse. The sultanordered that five hundred cats be brought from a far away city untouchedby plague, and that Hoja be given as many men as he wanted. (TWC, 92)

The story concocted by Hoja, finally, affects the sovereign deeply. “He decided

not to allow strangers into the palace” (TWC, 92) and also orders Hoja to be

responsible to handle this problem. However, Hoja and his slave’s effort to end

the plague are seen as a way to resemble and to compete with God so that the

Ottomans oppose to it. The different way how the Ottomans—who choose to be

idle—and the Westerners—who use their science and knowledge—faces and

stops the plague shows the binary opposition between the East and the West. The

East traditional view outlines the efforts to end the plague as an act to compete

with God. On the contrary, the West has its advance knowledge and technology to

stop the disease. Hoja’s action to prevent the plague by adopting Western science

shows that the East believes in Western “superiority” in science to stop the

disease even though it is hardly accepted by the society.

However, the Ottoman societies who are not initially worried about the

outbreak become frightened by Hoja’s story. The story causes social chaos

because the Sultan commands His people to limit their activities especially in the

crowded market and Coffee houses. Moreover, the Ottomans also believe that the

Judgement Day has come.

…if business stopped life also stopped, news of a plague wandering in theform of a man would terrify those who heard it, they would believe theDay of Judgement has come and would grab the bit between their teeth; noone wanted to be imprisoned in a neighbourhood where the plague devil


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roamed, they would raise a rebellion. “And they are right,” said Hoja.(TWC, 93)

Besides, the Sultan’s permit system has slowed the trade activity in the Grand

Bazaar. “Janissaries guarded the entrances to the market-place, the avenue, the

boat landings” (TWC, 94). This condition also raises the tension between the Aga

of the Janissaries and the small tradesmen who make a rebellion. This conflict,

later, will lead to the revolt led by the Grand Vizier Koprulu.

As the second week came to end…a group among the despairingtradesmen had clashed with the janissaries guarding the roads and thatanother group of janissaries discontented with the preventive measures hadjoined forces with a couple of idiot imams preaching in the mosques, somevagrants eager for loot, and other idlers who said the plague was God’swill and no one should interfere with it. (TWC, 97)

This ragging conflict is between the janissaries206, who represent the sultan, and

the small tradesmen as well as the preachers who oppose the eradication of the

plague using Western knowledge since it is the act to compete with God’s will.

After Hoja is able to reduce the risk of the plague, “the former Imperial

Astrologer Sitki Efendi…was driven from the palace into exile” (TWC, 99). Hoja,

then, becomes the Imperial Astrologer and “took control of the government”

(TWC, 104). He also tries to dupe the young Sultan into adopting Western science

and making the war machine by presenting a book, which is written by the Italian

slave.

We wanted the sultan to be interested in our science…and…we evenexploited his nightmares towards this end. …Hoja would explain that onthe throne he would remain forever young, but only making weapons

206 Janissaries were major players in political upheaval, bringing down sultans, beheading grandveziers, and hanging officials of state. Janissary also has unruly behaviour. ...They are the elitefighting force of the empire, the massed infantry that was the powerhouse of the mighty Ottomanmilitary machine, which propelled it forward in a seemingly endless wave of conquest. Boyar andFleet, Social History, 90-100.


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superior to those of our ever-vigilant enemies could be safe from theirtreachery. (TWC, 104)

The result of Hoja’s stories and interpretation of the sovereign’s dream as well as

the book prepared by his slave is that the Sultan finally asks Hoja to make the

“grand plan”. Hoja fills the book with the visions of defeat and failure that have

been dreamed up, all the wars that ending in defeat. “Only a month after Hoja had

submitted this book, the Sultan ordered us to start work on the incredible

weapon…that will ruin our enemies”. (TWC, 110-111)

The young sultan commissions the war machine because he wants to

defeat the West before the West defeats them as well as to reach the glory of the

Empire after all the wars that ending in defeat. It is Western technology, which is

believed by Sultan Ahmed to help him win the war and to cope with few military

failures he had suffered. However, this project is an irony because the sultan tries

to conquer and emulate the West by imitating their science and modern

technology on artillery that are brought and taught by the Italian slave.

The appropriation of the West is not limited to the adoption of the

sophisticated technology but also includes the imitation of Western culture and

tradition. Hoja tries and learns to be the West by asking his Italian slave to sit

opposite to him at a bare table and write down their stories and lives together

(TWC, 62). It begins when Hoja asks a question: “Why am I what I am?” to his

Italian slave. Hoja asks this question because he hears a voice in a strange tone,

which is singing in his ear, “I am what I am, I am what I am!” (TWC, 58) He,

then, demands his slave to demonstrate his courage, which he lacks and write

down who he really is. (TWC, 60)


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Hoja also learns Western culture and tradition by eating his food at a table

like an infidel instead of sitting down cross-legged. (TWC, 77) However, it is not

only Hoja who wants to learn the wisdom of the West but his Italian slave also

wants to learn, master, and imitate his trait, language, and mind. In the beginning

of the story, the Italian slave tries to protect himself from the Turks who capture

him by claiming that he is a doctor. It is similar to Bhabha’s discourse on

postcolonialism that the young Italian, the inferior, is not only idle because he also

has power to resist the domination of his captors.

The captain…asked what my profession was. …I declared right away thatI had knowledge of astronomy and nocturnal navigation, but this made noimpression. I then claimed I was a doctor. (TWC, 15) Fortunately…I wassaved from the oar and even managed to salvage a few of my books.

Then, I…quickly established relations with the Turks. After I’d treated afew Turks…everyone believed I was a doctor. (TWC, 16)

Here, in Sadik Pasha’s prison, the Italian slave practices his new profession and

treats the guards as well as the other slaves. Moreover, by becoming a fake doctor,

the Italian slave gets a privilege from the guards he cured.

Hundreds of captives rotted away inside the tiny, damp cells…and Iactually cured some of them. I wrote prescriptions for guards with achingbacks and legs. So here, they treated me differently from the rest, and gaveme a better cell that caught the sunlight. (TWC, 17)

Learning Turkish language and culture is the other strategy to survive and

a kind of self-defence upon the domination of the Turks that is conducted by the

Italian slave. As an unordinary slave, he also gets a chance to look after the other

people outside the prison and with the money he got, he can pay for Turkish

lesson.


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I was not just looking after the slaves in the prison, but others as well. Ihad to give a large part of the fees I earned for doctoring to the guards whosmuggled me outside. With the money I was able to hide from them, I paidfor lessons in Turkish. My teacher was an elderly fellow who looked afterthe pasha’s petty affair. …I also gave him money to bring me food. (TWC,17)

This is in line with with the concept of mimicry207, which is offered by Homi

Bhabha that mimicry becomes one of the most effective strategies of resistance

and colonial power by imitating the oppressor’s language to remain under

protection and also to clarify his own domination. In addition, the quotation above

is in line with Lacan’s theory that mimicry is like camouflage, which is a way to

survive.208 Learning Turkish is a camouflage for the Italian slave for it helps him

to communicate with the pasha that later give him to Hoja.

This concept is also used to describe the processes of imitating and

borrowing various cultural elements from the oppressor, too. The process of

mimicry takes place in the third space where the colonized becomes hybrid.

However, this condition also creates ambivalence because it supports two

different cultures.209 This condition is also experienced by Hoja and his slave who

try to overcome it by writing a memoir together.

Thus in space of two months I learned more about his life than I’d beenable to learn in eleven years. ...I encourage him, perhaps because I alreadysensed then that I would later adopt his manner and his life-story as myown. There was something in his language and his turn of mind that Iloved and wanted to master. A person should love the life he has chosenenough to call it his own in the end; and I do. (TWC, 63)

By writing the “Why am I what I am?” story, both the Italian slave and Hoja

become hybrid. More than being hybrid, they are “resembled one another” (TWC,

207 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85, 87.208 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90.209 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90.


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82). The trace and the differences between Hoja and his slave are not clear now

for “I had seen someone I must be; and now I thought he too must be someone

like me. The two of us were one person” (TWC, 82)

2.2. The Enchantment and Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance

Painting

For Turkey, Western enchantment is not only on its modern and

sophisticated science and technology but also on its painting, which shows the

individuality of its object. In the previous sub-chapter, I presented how Hoja is

enchanted by Western science and technology, which is more logical and do not

depend on the prediction and interpretation of dreams and stars and how he adores

the identity of his Venetian slave. In this section, I will show how Turkish

miniature painting and its miniaturists are contested by the Italian Renaissance

painting. The image of Frankish painting, which is depicted realistically, is in

contrast to the Turkish miniature painting. Perspective is very important in this

painting and the object is created based on the view of the painters. On the

contrary, in Islamic miniature, the object is painted based on Allah’s view and its

importance before God.

Pamuk’s My Name is Red can be read as the negotiation of the East and

the West that is presented in the two traditions of painting, Italian Renaissance

painting and Turkish Miniature painting.210 The different concept and the different

way in seeing the object in the two traditions are things that make the problem

210 Orhan Pamuk, “Turkey’s Divided Character”, New Perspectives Quarterly 17, 2 (2000): 20.


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occur. The world-view underlying European Renaissance Painting is also different

from that of tradition Ottoman miniature painting. The Ottoman painting objects

is depicted not realistically and the miniaturists are not allowed to leave their

signatures in the painting. By contrast, Italian Renaissance painting emphasizes

individual perspective and people depicted in this manner are treated as unique

and individual. Moreover, the painters in this manner can leave their signature in

their works as a sign of their authenticity. However, those differences in seeing

the world by the Frankish masters are things that tempted the miniature painters to

adopt this painting style.

2.2.1. The Enchantment of the Italian Renaissance Painting

The most striking difference between Turkish miniature painting and

Renaissance painting is in the depiction of faces. In Ottoman art, inherited from

the Persian tradition under Mongolian-Chinese influence, all faces appear to be

the same211 because the image in this painting tradition is not depicted

realistically. (MNR, 67) In this model, a person is not treated as an individual but

seen according to the way God see him, “Allah’s vision of the earthly realm”

(MNR, 88). In line with this argument, Laksana emphasizes that in miniature

painting, the miniaturists do not depict human being as an individual but they

paint him according to God’s vision. So, the image of this painting is not realist

but otherworldly, for it is portrayed to make human being remember the

transcendence.212 Moreover, Butterfly also has the same idea that miniature

211 Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”, 127.212 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.


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painting is a depiction of what God sees and the miniaturists are depicting the

world through God’s eye.

Butterfly said, “The illuminator draws not what he sees, but what Allahsees.”“Yes,” I said, “however, exalted Allah certainly sees everything we see.”“Of course, Allah sees what we see, but He doesn’t perceive it the way wedo,” said Butterfly as if chastising me.I wanted to say, “It falls to us to believe in Allah and to depict only whatHe reveals to us, not what He conceals,” but I held my peace. (MNR, 400)

For the reason that the image is not realist, each individual in this painting manner

has the same body size and face, as if each is an imitation of one another (MNR,

80), which shows that human have the same position before God.

Additionally, the miniaturists never sign their works as the Frankish

masters do (MNR, 67). This is along with what Butterfly says in his conclusion of

the three stories he tells to Black.

Painting in the manner of the old masters is depicted without any signatureor variation. (MNR, 72)“Style’ is imperfection,” I said, a perfect picture needs no signature, andthus “signature” and “style” are but means of being brazenly and stupidlyself-congratulatory about flawed work. (MNR, 73)

From the quotation above, it can be concluded that miniature painters are not

allowed to leave their signatures in their works because this painting style is the

technique and style of the old masters, which they have imitated and if any trait

found that distinguishes one artist’s work from that of another is seen as flaw.213

On the other hand, the aim of the Italian Renaissance painting is to depict

human being realistically. The painting is something in its own right and the

image is of an individual. The Venetian masters had discovered painting

213 Martyn, “Turkish-German Literature”, 235.


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techniques with which they could distinguish any one man from another...just by

the distinctive shape of his face. This was the essence of “portraiture”. (MNR, 28-

29) The concept of “portraiture” is explained more by a narration from a tree that

is depicted in the manner of Frankish style.

This new kind of painting style has made “these Frank painters depict thefaces of kings, priests, noblemen, and even women in such manner thatafter gazing upon the portrait, we will be able to identify that person on thestreet. …This new style demands such talent that if we depicted one of thetrees in the forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come hereand...correctly select that tree from among the others”. (MNR, 56-57)

However, this painting manner is not only depicting human being realistically but

also other living or non-living being realistically214 such as animals and trees in

the forest that is explained by the non-human narrators above.

The art of portraiture, which is the critical theme in Pamuk’s My Name is

Red, is introduced as a result of the visit of an Ottoman ambassador to Venice,

Enishte Effendi, who is seduced by the Frankish style. On the day, Enishte once

again travel to Venice as the Sultan’s ambassador, a painting hanging on a palazzo

wall amazes him. (MNR, 28)

“I never forgot the painting that bewildered me so. I left the palazzo,returned to the house where I was staying as a guest and pondered thepicture the entire night. I, too, wanted to be portrayed in this manner. But,no, that wasn’t appropriate, it was Our Sultan who ought to be thusportrayed! Our Sultan ought to be rendered along with everything Heowed, with the things that represented and constituted His realm. I settledon the notion that a manuscript could be illustrated according to this idea.”(MNR, 28)

Black’s uncle is intoxicated by the “Italian painting’s variety, colours, the

pleasantness—even severity—of the soft light that seems to fall on it and the

214 Eder, “My Name is Red”.


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meaning emanating from the object’s eyes” (MNR, 118). The picture, which

depicts the characteristics of its object, also seduces him to be portrayed in that

manner.

Moreover, figures and portraits of the Venetian painting, which are

individual and of specific people, are in line with Enishte’s explanation that “on

the thousands of framed faces that are depicted, each one is different from the

next. They are distinctive and have unique human faces” (MNR, 118). He adds

that in Venetian painting,

eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face…but must be like our owneyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well. Lips can nolonger be a crack in the middle of faces flat as paper, but must be nodes anexpression, fully expressing our joys, sorrows, and spirits with theirslightest contradiction or relaxation. Our noses can no longer be a kind ofwall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments witha form unique to each of us. (MNR, 151)

The depiction of an individual in the Italian Renaissance painting, who has unique

traits and distinctive faces, shows that God created every people as “unique,

special, and particular human being” (MNR, 187). Therefore, the individuality that

is captured in the Venetian painting has enchanted Enishte and led him to create

his hybrid book made in half-Venetian, half-Persian.

The Ottoman Sultans, Sultan Mehmet II and Sultan Murat III, are also

enchanted by the Italian Renaissance style, which can help them to show their

dynasty’s strength, power, and riches. In Venice, this painting manner, for rich

and influential men, is a memento of their lives and a sign of their riches, power

and influence—so they might always be there, standing before us, announcing

their existence, individuality, and distinction. (MNR, 118) For both Sultans, this


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painting style is used as a way to proclaim their existence as the centre of the

world. However, it was an irony that even though Mehmet had conquered

Constantinople, he still had the desire to imitate the West by having his own

portrait in the Italian Renaissance style,215 by inviting Gentile Bellini. This irony

is similar to Sultan Murad III who imitates Western style of painting in the secret

book to impress the West. Mehmed II, to show his dynasty’s strength and power,

also invited Western artists, Costanzo da Ferrara, to make him a portrait medal,

which shows that the Sultan is riding a horse. The image of this medal later

became a standard, immediately recognizable representation of Eastern power.216

It is the horse that symbolises power217 because the more realistic the horse is

depicted, the more convincingly captured in the moment of surging strength,

mastered by the horseman, the more certain we are that our response is natural and

inevitable.218

Zeytin or Velijan, or who is known as Olive, is the only miniaturist who is

based on a real historical figure. He was an important Persian-Ottoman painter,

trained by the Persian artist Siyavush,219 “the famous illustrator specializing in

faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop” (MNR, 279). Black states that he is

the other character who is enchanted by the Frankish style and who “has the most

enthusiasm for and the most ease with the style of the Frankish masters admired

by Enishte Effendi”. (MNR, 279) In fact, it is not only Olive who is dazzled by the

Frankish painting but many miniaturists are also enchanted by this painting style.

215 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 8.216 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 42.217 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 172.218 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 175.219 Pamuk, Other Colours, 267.


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The charm of the Italian Renaissance painting, which offers individuality, fame,

and style cannot be denied by the Ottoman Sultans as well as the palace

miniaturists that it later leads to imitation of the imitation of the painting style.

2.2.2. The Appropriation of the Italian Renaissance Painting

Until the present, Turkey is still negotiating its membership in the

European Union and the development of its art can be one of the considerations of

the EU’s acceptance of Turkey’s candidacy. Picasso’s exhibition in Sakip Sabanci

Museum, which is the first major exhibition devoted to a Western artist, shows

how Turkey has taken a big step to embrace Western Europe. Picasso’s grandson,

Bernard Ruiz-Picasso even said that “the people here in Turkey really want and

need to see modern art”.220 Introducing Turks to Modern Western art, for Picasso

is the symbol of the contemporary modernism project. I argue that Bernard Ruiz-

Picasso’s statement above shows how the West sees that the East needs to be

civilized trough this first time ever exhibition. Additionally, the painting

exhibition proved that Turkey is part of the West and a part of that modernism.221

The enchantment of the Italian painting style and the desire to be accepted

by the West has encouraged Sultan Murad to “order the artists to surreptitiously

learn Western artistic techniques and rather than to continue the miniature

painting.”222 Through the appropriation of the Venetian painting in the secret

book, Pamuk tries to demonstrate the binary opposition between the Islamic

miniature and the Italian Renaissance painting. In line with Said’s Orientalism,

220 Bozdoğan, The Cambridge History of Turkey, 467.221 Sarah Rainsford, “Turks Relish First Picasso Show”, BBC News 24 November 2005, 14

February 2015 <news.bbc.co.UK/2/hi/entertainment/4466024.stm>222 Summarized from a conversation between Orhan Pamuk and Elizabeth Farnsworth in PBS

NewsHour titled “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds” on November 20, 2002.


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this appropriation reflects that the Italian painting is superior to the Ottoman

miniature painting for this new painting method is believed to show the Ottoman

Empire strength as well as to impress the West. Furthermore, I argue that the

radical modernization conducted by the founder of Turkish Republic, Kemal

Ataturk, that wanted desperately to make Turkey more modern and Western is

similar to the “Westernization” led by Sultan Murad that wanted his artists to

learn to paint portrait, which is prohibited under Islam. Sultan Murad III, who is

both directly brought from history by Orhan Pamuk and the reign Sultan in My

Name is Red, commissions a secret book for the celebration of Hegira, which uses

the Italian Renaissance style in depicting Islam’s military strength and the power

of his reign. The Sultan, who is persuaded by Enishte Effendi, also invites a

young Venetian painter, Sebastiano, to make his self-portrait.

“Years ago, your Enishte duped Our Sultan into having a Venetianpainter—his name was Sebastiano—make a portrait of His Excellency inthe Frankish style as if He were an infidel king”. (MNR, 361)

As a result of Enishte’s influence on Sultan Murad’s growing interest in

Frankish style of painting, Master Osman is forced by His Excellency to copy His

portrait, which had been commissioned from a Venetian. (MNR, 102)

Not satisfied with that, in a disgraceful afford to my dignity, he had thisshameful work given to me as a model to be copied; and out of dire fear ofOur Sultan, I dishonourably copied that picture, which was made usinginfidel methods. (MNR, 362)

The copy of Sultan Murad’s portrait by Master Osman is the example of the

appropriation of Frankish painting. After forcing Master Osman to copy His

portrait, Murad III also makes the other adoption and imitation of the Italian

Renaissance painting by asking Uncle Effendi to make the secret book.


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Additionally, the best Ottoman miniaturists are also forced to change their

painting tradition into the modern one that is using the Frankish style. This forced

appropriation is a self-colonialism conducted by the Sultan towards the Master

miniaturist as well as the palace miniaturists.

His Excellency Our Sultan orders Enishte Effendi to start working on thesecret book that is prepared as a present for the Venetian Doge. Besides,this book will also be a symbol of the vanquishing power of the IslamicCaliph Our Exalted Sultan, in the thousand years of Hegira. (MNR, 121)

The secret book, which “the Sultan wanted to have it completed in time” (MNR,

35), is an irony of the Sultan’s modernism project. The painting style, that is

believed as the symbol of infidelity, is not only prepared as a present for the

Venetian Doge but also as the thousandth-year anniversary of the Hegira.

Moreover, the Sultan also uses the West’s painting tradition to emulate their

“power and superiority”.

In this commissioned book, Enishte wants the things he depicted to

represent Our Sultan’s entire world, just as the paintings of the Venetian masters.

However, this secret book will be a little bit different from “the painting of the

Venetian master, which is only accompanied by things that is significant in his

life” (MNR, 28). Enishte Effendi insists that the book he is working on will not

only shows Our Sultan’s wealth alone, but His spiritual and moral strength along

with His hidden sorrows (MNR, 248):

But unlike the Venetians, my work would not merely depict materialobjects, but naturally the inner riches, the joys, and fears of the realm overwhich Our Sultan rules. If I ended up including the picture of a gold coin,it was to belittle money; I included Death and Satan because we fear them.…I wanted the immortality of a tree, the weariness of a horse, and thevulgarity of a dog to represent His Excellency Our Sultan and His worldlyrealm. (MNR, 27)


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In the last painting, it should be Sultan Murad’s painting and the depiction

of His realm along with everything He has; His wealth, His power, as well as the

strength of His dynasty. To the same degree, it is as what Enishte explains that:

“…it was our Sultan who ought to be thus portrayed! Our Sultan ought tobe rendered along with everything He owned, with the things thatrepresented and constituted His realm.” (MNR, 28)

Conversely, after Olive kills Enishte and steals the last painting, he covers up the

portrait of the Sultan with his self-portrait. In the Coffee house, he struggles to

draw his portrait with the help of a mirror. In fact, “the face on the page did not

resemble his face in the mirror.” (MNR, 307)

This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fairresemblance of myself, revealed to me what we’ve known all alongwithout admitting it: The proficiency of the Franks will take centuries toattain. (MNR, 431)

Master Osman, the other character brought from history, is a master

miniaturist who preserves the old painting style. He, once again, stresses that

Enishte Effendi is the one who is responsible for the imitation of Frankish

painting by many miniaturists in the workshop. Moreover, he’s to blame for their

enthusiastic imitation of European masters with the justification that “it is the will

of our Sultan” (MNR, 362). However, Black tells that, nowadays, many

miniaturists, that is not only in Tabriz but also in Mashhad and Aleppo, have

abandoned working images, which are part of a book and begin making odd

single-leaf pictures—curiosities that will please European travellers—even

obscene drawings. (MNR, 25) One of those miniaturists is Stork. He mentions

that, now, he is preparing obscene paintings for his Frankish patron as well as

pasha.


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Black was examining my paints…and the collage album that I’d made fora Frankish traveller, scenes of fucking and other indecent pages I’dsecretly dashed off for a pasha. (MNR, 82)

Obscene drawing here is related to the drawing that is depicted realistically and

using the miniaturist’s perfection. The miniaturist who paints using his individual

perspective has shown how the “God’s perspective” painting is replaced by the

obscene drawing as well as single-leaf pictures.

In a parable on “style and signature”, Butterfly tells Black about a

miniaturist who depicts a young Khan’s wife, a Tatar woman, with his individual

touches. His ambition to style and perfection as well as the Khan’s adulation

causes a terrible accident. The young Khan is very jealous to the Tatar woman

because in the painting she is depicted with the miniaturist’s “obscenity gaze”.

…this adulation caused the miniaturist to stray from good sense; incited bythe Devil, he dismissed the fact that he was beholden to the old masters forthe perfection of his pictures, and haughtily assumed that a touch of hisown genius would make his work even more appealing. …In the paintings,the Khan…felt that his former bliss had been disrupted in numerous ways,and he grew increasingly jealous of his Tatar beauty who was depictedwith the individual touch of the painter. (MNR, 70)

Lekesizalin, in “Art, Desire, and Death in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, also

mentions that the miniaturist’s ambition to the perfect painting and gaze

“comprise obscenity and transgression, which leads to the tragic consequences of

his ambition with style and subjectivity”223. The jealous Khan takes another

woman from the harem, which causes the death of the Tatar woman who hangs

herself silently. Realizing that the miniaturist’s ambition with style and perfection

223 Ferma Lekesizalin, “Art, Desire, and Death in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, EnglishStudies in Africa 52, 9 (2009): 98.


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that is behind this incident not with his Tatar woman, he immediately blinded the

master artist. (MNR, 70)

Enishte Effendi and Sultan Murad III see the Italian Renaissance painting

as a painting technique, which is greater, modern, and interesting than the Islamic

Ottoman painting tradition. Sultan Murad, himself, even asks his miniaturists to

study this painting technique as well as commissions a secret book, which adopts

the Italian painting style. This commissioned book shows that the East imitates

and adopts Western painting style in order to modernize itself and also to show its

power and superiority to the West. Along with Said’s discourse on Orientalism,

this constructed opposition demonstrates the difference between the Islamic

Ottoman painting that is characterized as the old painting tradition and the

Frankish painting that is signified as the new and modern painting tradition. At

last, through the imitation of this painting style, the East has indicated Europe’s

identity as superior.

3. Maintenance and Preservation of Eastern Aspects

where there is power there is resistance—Michel Foucault224

After the Frankish painting “invades” the Ottoman painting, the old

painting tradition is being replaced by the new painting style. The miniaturists

also challenge the Islamic prohibition, which prohibits the figuration of the living

224 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (Histoire de la Sexualité) translated by RobertHurley, Volume 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1978).


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and non-living being, by adapting and imitating the Western ways of seeing and

painting in their works. Frankish painting, as explained in the previous part, is not

only as a seduction but also as a threat for the Islamic miniature painting. In fact,

the beauty of the Italian Renaissance painting enchants not all the miniature

painters. This threat, in addition, has prompted Master Osman to take action to

preserve this painting tradition. It is along with the quotation above that Master

Osman, the head of the illuminators, struggles to maintain and preserve the old

painting tradition and resist the power and “invasion” of the modern painting

style. Moreover, the Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum and his followers also try

to protect and maintain the path of their prophet by giving punishment those who

turn from the path of Exalted Muhammad.

Orhan Pamuk, in his essay, mentions that “My Name is Red is about the

fear of being forgotten, the fear of art being lost, about the sorrow and tragedy of

this loss, this erasure”.225 I argue that Master Osman, as the protector of the old

tradition feels “the fear, the sorrow, and the pain of the lost tradition”,226 of the

Ottoman miniature painting. When Master Osman and Black are searching for the

murderer in the Inner Treasury of Topkapi Palace by scanning the illustration of a

horse on the “old illuminated manuscript, Master Osman sinks his face with

sorrow into the wondrous artwork because nobody could paint this way anymore”

(MNR, 328). Enishte Effendi also emphasizes the loss of the old tradition that “in

the end, our method will die out. No one will care about our books, and our

225 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269-270.226 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270.


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paintings. …Moreover, indifference, time, and disaster will destroy our art.”

(MNR, 187)

As the head of the illuminators, Master Osman has a “duty to protect his

master illustrators from their enemies, since nowadays, the value is placed not on

the painting but on the money one can earn from it, not on the old masters but on

imitators of the Franks”. (MNR, 360) This value changed as the miniaturists begin

to paint in imitation of the Frankish and Venetian masters, as in the book Our

Sultan had commissioned from Enishte, the domain of meaning ends and the

domain of form begins. (MNR, 343) As the protector of the old tradition, Master

Osman will also do anything in order to defend the Ottoman miniature painting

and its guild from the Frankish influence, just as what Black says that:

to preserve the old style and the regimen of the miniaturists’ workshop, torid himself from Enishte’s book, and to become again the Sultan’s onlyfavourite, he would gladly surrender any one of his master miniaturists,and Black as well, to the tortures of the Commander of the Imperial Guard.(MNR, 362)

My Name is Red can be read as a story about sight and blindness.227 In

Turkish miniature painting tradition, there is a concept on blindness and memory

that painting is from memory the artists had as “the act of seeking Allah’s

memories and seeing the world as he sees the world” (MNR, 88).

Through our colours, paints, art, and love, we remember that Allah hadcommanded us to “See”! To know is to remember that you’ve seen. To seeis to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering theblackness. …Artists without memory neither remember Allah nor hisblackness. (MNR, 84)

227 Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”, 130.


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Blindness is the crowning reward bestowed by Allah upon the illuminator who

has devoted an entire life to His glories. It is because illustrating is the

miniaturist’s search for Allah’s vision of the earthly realm. Besides, a blind

miniaturist sees the world as Allah sees it through the darkness of memory and

blindness. (MNR, 88) The old masters of Shiraz and Herat add that a true

miniaturist will depict Allah’s envision in his works and will go blind after

working over than fifty-year period. However, in the process, he will paint from

memory he has. (MNR, 22)

Master Osman, the representative of Eastern tradition, chooses to blind

himself using the needle that Master Bihzad had used to blind himself in the

Treasury. (MNR, 348)

I looked at the needle for a long time. I tried to imagine how Bihzadcould’ve done it. I’d heard that one doesn’t go blind immediately. …I satdown again and gazed at my own eyes. How beautifully the flame of thecandle danced in my pupils—which had witnessed my hand paint for sixtyyears. …Without hesitation…I bravely, calmly and firmly pressed theneedle into the pupil of my right eye. … I pushed the needle into my eye tothe depth of a quarter the length of a finger, then removed it. …Smiling, Idid the same to my other eye. (MNR, 349)

Master Osman, the head of the Ottoman miniaturist, uses blindness as a “tactic” to

resist Renaissance painting’s supremacy, which dominates Turkish miniature

painting and its imperial painters. Osman’s decision to honourably blind himself

is a rejection to the adoption and imitation of Renaissance painting style, “so that

nobody would force him to paint in another way”, (MNR, 420) even Sultan

himself. His self-blinded—which is also mimicry toward Master Bihzad—is

conducted “after Master Osman understood that Our Sultan wanted to have His


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own portrait made in the style of the European masters and that all the

miniaturists…had betrayed him”. (MNR, 420)

Nakkas228 Osman’s self-blinded is an adoption from Bhabha’s mimicry yet

his mimicry is rather different to Bhabha’s. Bhabha’s concept on mimicry is seen

as an effective strategy of resistance by making imitation of the oppressor to make

a confrontation and also to assert his own dominance.229 Mimicry is also used to

illustrate the processes of imitation or to borrow the various cultural elements.230

However, Osman imitates Bihzad—the great master of Herat who maintains the

old painting tradition—by blinding himself. By imitating Master Bihzad in

blinding himself, Master Osman has showed his resistance toward the domination

of Western painting style and especially toward the Sultan’s control. Similar to

Lacan’s concept on mimicry, I indicate that Master Osman’s mimicry is a

camouflage and a way to survive from the colonizer, who is the Sultan himself.

Bhabha proposes the concept of mimicry as evidence that the oppressed (Master

Osman) will not only keep silent because they also have power to fight for the

domination of the oppressor.

Blindness is also the symbol of honour for the great master of miniaturists.

When they are forced to change their technique, “talent, colours, and methods”

(MNR, 351) and “adopt the styles of victors and imitate their miniaturists, they

preserve their honour by using a needle to heroically bring on the blindness”

(MNR, 352). Moreover, the great master Jemalettin, “like all genuine virtuosos,

had in any case been awaiting blindness as though it were Allah’s blessing. …He

228 Nakkas means miniaturist in Turkish. Çiçekoglu, “Difference, Visual Narration”. 131.229 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 85.230 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90.


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also maintained that the memory of a miniaturist was located in…the intellect and

the heart.” (MNR, 309)

Elegant Effendi, who is bound to Eastern tradition, dies because he tries to

stop the domination of the Western style. In the opening chapter, the dead

miniaturist, who speaks in the bottom of the well, hears from the Erzurum

preacher that the book he is working on contains blasphemy.

My death conceals an appalling conspiracy against our religion, ourtraditions, and the way we see the world. Open your eyes, discover whythe enemies of the life in which you believe, of the life you’re living, andof Islam, have destroyed me. Learn why one day they might do the same toyou. One by one, everything predicted by the great preacher Nusret Hojaof Erzurum, to whom I’ve tearfully listened, is coming to pass. (MNR, 5)

The contradiction on the different way of seeing in the Islamic miniature tradition

and the Italian Renaissance, which is mainly illustrated in My Name is Red, has

triggered the chain of murders conducted by Velijan, one of the finest miniaturists

in the guild.

Velijan does not only desire but also eschew the Italian painting. Black

also emphasizes that “it was Olive who showed the most enthusiasm for and the

most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters admired by his late Enishte.”

(MNR, 279) As Master Osman’s miniaturist, Olive also tries to preserve the

Muslim painting by murdering Elegant Effendi and Enishte Effendi. As Olive

mentions that,

“This deed,”…”I committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but forthe salvation of the entire workshop.” (MNR, 426)“…I thereupon confessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendiand tossed him into a well.” (MNR, 427)


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Olive’s confession above shows that he kills both Elegant and Enishte because he

wants to save the miniaturists and also the workshop itself.

The imitation of the Italian painting is not the only problem face by the

Ottoman at that time. The existence of coffee house and the other social problems

in İstanbul has driven the Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum and his followers to

protect and maintain the path of their prophet. The henchmen of Preacher Nusret

Hoja, that represent the religious conservative in present-day Turkey, “they intend

to clean up all the dens of wine, prostitution, and coffee in İstanbul and punish

severely those who veered from the path of Exalted Muhammad. …They railed

against the enemies of religion, men who collaborated with the Devil, pagans,

unbelievers, and illustrators” (MNR, 379). Moreover, a dog, one of the non-human

narrators in My Name is Red, tells that a cleric called Husret Hoja also tries to ban

the drinking of coffee in İstanbul.

Coffee becomes very popular in İstanbul when it was first brought in the

mid of the 16th century.231 Peçevi, quoted by Boyar and Fleet, states that it was

Hakem from Aleppo and Şems from Damascus who first built a coffee shop. He

emphasizes that “coffee house became so famous that apart from government

officials, even important people began to come and even imams, muezzins, blue-

robed religious figures, and ordinary people became addicted to the coffee

house.”232 This great popularity of coffee worries the religious leader because

“coffee took up so much people’s time that people found they had no time left to

231 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190.232 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190.


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pray”233 and “nobody went anymore to the mosque.”234 It is along with Esther’s

statement that coffee “dulls the intellect and causes men to lose their faith” (MNR,

379).

The boneheaded cleric indicates that “the drinking of coffee is an absolute

sin…and nothing but the Devil’s ruse” (MNR, 13). Coffee houses, moreover, the

place where people meeting, chattering, gossiping, and much more alarmingly for

the government, complaining,235 ought to be banned because it is a place of evil.

Husret Hoja tells to his believers that “Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of

coffee because it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia, and sterility” (MNR,

13). He also states that coffee houses are the Devil places. They are “places where

pleasure-seekers and wealthy gadabouts sit knee to knee, involving themselves in

all sorts of vulgar behavior” (MNR, 13). The other cleric from Erzurum adds that

“scoundrels and rebels were also gathering in coffee house and proselytizing until

dawn” (MNR, 10). Still from Peçevi, that it is not only the religious leader who is

committed to clean coffee in İstanbul but Sultan Murad III also starts to give

warnings about the problems of coffee. However, nobody performs Sultan’s

command to go to the coffee house.236

Coffee house is a space where the storyteller and painters speak freely to

the problems facing their art and their society at a time of cultural transition. This

is the place where the Persian miniaturists who are suddenly introduced to ideas

from European Renaissance are starting to question principles of Islamic cultural

233 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 198. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190.234 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190.235 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 194.236 Peçevi, Tarihi I, 196. Quoted from Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 190.


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production.237 In the coffee house, the storyteller also performs the single-leaf

paintings that exist in the secret book. The activities that are indicated dangerous

and threatened the Islamic teaching have infuriated the Preacher Nusret Hoja. The

Erzurumis, they raid the coffee house and give severe punishment by slaying the

miniaturists as well as the storyteller. Butterfly sees how the mob mercilessly

beaten the coffee house-goers as they try to leave and find the body of the master

storyteller (MNR, 385).

The imitation of the Italian Renaissance painting, by the Islamic palace

illuminators, has driven Master Osman to blind himself. Moreover, the existence

of coffee has driven the Preacher Nusret Hoja and his follower to punish the

miniaturists and the storyteller by raiding the coffee house. In this same vein, the

imitation of Western technology by Hoja also gets refusal from the Ottoman

society, the army, and the Grand Vizier. Many people curse Hoja’s grand plan and

accuse it as the carrier of the bad luck. People call it as:

”freak, insect, satan, turtle archer, walking tower, iron heap, red rooster,kettle on wheels, giant, cyclops, monster, swine, gypsy, blue-eyed weirdie,which took to the road very slowly with a bizarre uproar of frighteningscreeches and groans, striking all who saw it with exactly the terror thatHoja intended.” (TWC, 126)

The army also does not accept the weapon. They do not want to march into battle

alongside this heap of wrought iron and do not expect anything useful from this

gigantic kettle. Worse, they believe it is an ill omen and it could just as easily

bring a curse as a victory. (TWC, 129) It is not only the army that does not like the

237 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 511.


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existence of the war machine but so does the pashas, who wanted to be rid of Hoja

and his slave.

When Hoja started up his patter…and spoke of the indispensability of theweapon, the pashas listening to him in the sovereign’s tent were even morefirmly convinced that we were charlatans and our weapon would bring badluck. (TWC, 138)

He spent the evening arguing with the pashas…who said the weapon was sapping

the strength of the army as well as bringing bad luck. (TWC, 139)

4. Personal Search for Identity as Individual

We only acquire our own identity by imitating the Other—Orhan Pamuk238

Identity is always contested and influenced by other culture, tradition, art,

or even technology. Identity is fluid, it is never fixed, and it always changes.

Loomba also emphasises that, “colonial identities are unstable, agonised, and in

constant flux. This undercuts both colonialist and nationalist claims to a unified

self, and also warns us against interpreting cultural difference in absolute or

reductive term”.239 Furthermore, Turkey, now, is still searching for its identity,

whether being totally East, being totally West, or being nationalist or secular.

Huddart states that identities operate as palimpsests. He discusses that identities

are overwritten on which earlier writing is still visible underneath newer writing.

They offer a suggestive model of hybrid identity.240 Turkey is now still writing

238 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271.239 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 149.240 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 107.


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their new identity above their Islamic Ottoman identity that is still visible even

though it had already erased by the Westernization project.

Turkey has three transitional periods exemplify the process of its identity

formation process: the capitulation of the Byzantine city to Sultan Mehmed II, the

collapse of the empire and subsequent Turkification of the city, and the nostalgia

for the city’s multicultural past.241 İstanbul is a model of palimpsest city full of the

grandeur as well as harmonious multiple cultures, ethnic, and religion of the

Ottoman Empire, which erased by Ataturk’s Westernization project. The changes

of the old İstanbul buildings, which are demolished and replaced by the new

modern apartment buildings, show how the new Turkish identity is overwritten on

which the old Ottoman identity is still visible under the newer one since there are

still old Ottoman buildings and ruins that remain. Mehmed II, Atik Sinan, and

Murad III are examples of Turkey’s figures who experienced a predicament of the

oscillation identity. In My Name is Red and The White Castle, I discover that the

identity crisis is still gnawing on the miniature painters, Enishte Effendi, as well

as Hoja and his Venetian slave.

Mehmed II is still searching for his identity. Even though the Fatih wanted

to control the West, he was also very interested to the art and science from the

West by inviting many Western artists and scientists. After capturing

Constantinople, he tried to erase the glory of the Byzantine Empire, which had

reigned supreme for more than a thousand years,242 by constructing The Fatih

Camii or the mosque of the Conqueror. Nevertheless, his effort to erase the past

241 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 365.242 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 6.


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grandeur of the Byzantine Empire with the mosque of Conqueror showed an irony

that the architecture of the mosque was clearly influenced by the Hagia Sophia,

the masterpiece of Christian Byzantium.

As has been mentioned in the introduction, Mehmet II, the conqueror of

Constantinople, is known to have invited many artists from Florence and Venice

on the 15th century to produce medals243 and paintings.244 One is Costanzo da

Ferrara, who makes a portrait medal of Mehmet the Conquerer,245 the other is

Gentile Bellini who creates the Portrait of Mehmet II.246 Even though he had

conquered the Constantinople, there is still longing to be the West by way of

inviting an Italian painter to paint him in the manner of the Italian Renaissance

style. This European image of the great Ottoman leader might serve as an

appropriate focus for modern Turkey’s desire to retrieve some of its European

roots and influences in its “new turn toward Europe”.247

Stierlin, in Turkey: From the Selçuks to the Ottomans, says that Mehmed’s

interest to Christianity as well as Western culture and tradition was caused by his

background as the son of a Christian mother. Mehmed II also surrounded himself

with scholars, artists, and technicians from Greece, Italy, and Central Europe. The

young sultan, who was still twenty-four years old when he captured Byzantium,

always wanted to know and understand the latest developments in the arts and

243 As the Christian West and Muslim East struggled for control for Constantinople, portraitmedals of the contending figures competed with each other for ownership of the most resonatingsymbols of imperial ruler, accompanied by a scene based around a horse. The more “realistic” thehorse, the more convincingly captured in the moment of surging strength, mastered by thehorseman. See Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 171-175.

244 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 4.245 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32.246 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 8.247 New York Times December 25, 1999, cited in Jardine & Brotton, Global Interests, 32.


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sciences. Moreover, he was also the first Muslim to take an interest in artillery and

he entrusted the production of his cannons to German metalsmiths.248

Even though Mehmed II had an interest in Western culture, he also tried to

challenge the masterpieces of the Byzantine Empire, which was received by

İstanbul and the Ottomans after capturing Constantinople, by constructing The

Fatih Camii (Mosque of the Conqueror). The mosque was built on the site of the

ruined Byzantine church of the Holy Apostles in order to substitute the grand of

Christian Byzantium buildings.249 The Sultan wants to write the Ottoman’s new

identity over the ruined Byzantine buildings that are still visible under the newer

building. The Fatih chose a Christian architect, Christodoulos, or better known

under his Turkish name of Atik Sinan (Sinan the Elder).250 The Ottoman’s daily

contact with the Byzantine masterpieces and the architect’s background who was

a Christian converted to Islam, had strongly influenced the architecture of the

mosque.251 Additionally, Sinan’s design is the evidence that Hagia Sophia

(Western heritage) has given big influence to the mosque.

The contested identity and the oscillation in Turkey’s identity formation

processes become Pamuk’s key colours in “painting” his stories. Pamuk also

blends the capitulation of the Byzantine city, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,

and the nostalgia of İstanbul’s multicultural past with the issue on Turkey’s

contested identity to presents the oscillation between Self and Other in his two

selected works. He delineates how the Other is always present as a threat and

248 Stierlin, Turkey, 100.249 Stierlin, Turkey, 101.250 Stierlin, Turkey, 100.251 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”; Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 200-206; Stierlin, Turkey, 100.


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seduction, within the historical confines of the Self. However, the fundamental

issue in his tales is on the matter of identity.252 Along with the quotation in this

opening section, Pamuk mentions in İstanbul that we can only find our identity by

imitating the Other.253 He narrates that when he was still wanted to become a

painter, Utrillo—a French painter whose specialization is in cityscape—had

affected his style of painting and that he had tried to paint the cityscapes and the

local landscapes like him. In addition, Pamuk also explains that,

the almost-but-not-quite-shameful truth was that I could paint only when Ithought I was someone else. I’d imitated a style. I’d imitated an artist with hisown unique vision and way of painting. And not without profit, I too now had“my” own style and identity.254

This is the way Pamuk and the Islamic miniature painters find their true identity

by using or imitating Utrillo and Frankish style of painting. In the same vein with

Pamuk and the Islamic painters, Hoja also applies Western science and

technology to stop the plague and to conquer the West in order to write his new

identity above his Islamic Ottoman identity.

In My Name is Red, for example, Pamuk tries to show how the miniaturists

embrace and imitate the Italian Renaissance style as well as the sultan who wants

to be painted in the manner of the Frankish masters. By contrast, the miniaturists

are also afraid of the loss of the old painting style that is contested by the Frankish

painting. Uncle Effendi states that the love all sultans and rulers feel for paintings,

illustrations, and fine books can be divided into three points:

at first, rulers want paintings for the sake of respect, to influence howothers see them. …During the second phase, they commission books to

252 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88-89.253 Pamuk, İstanbul, 271.254 Pamuk, İstanbul, 270-271.


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satisfy their own taste. Because they’ve learned sincerely to enjoypaintings, they amass prestige while at the same time amassing books,which after their deaths, ensure the persistence of their renown in thisworld. …Later, they will come to the conclusion that painting is anobstacle to securing a place in the Otherworld, naturally something they alldesire. (MNR, 175)

The quotation above shows how the Italian painting not only works as a seduction

but also as a threat and obstacle for the sultan and even for the miniaturists to

enter the gates of Heaven…”for Our Prophet warns that on Judgement Day, Allah

will punish…the painters and those who make idols” (MNR, 175).

Shekure, Enishte’s daughter, is also still searching for her true identity

since she experiences the oscillation between her contempt of the Frankish

painting her father admires at and her longing to be painted in a manner of that

painting style. Shekure is both “fed up with those illustrations he was having the

miniaturists make in imitation of the Frankish masters, and sick of his

recollections of Venice” (MNR, 152). In the end of the story, she expresses her

desire to have her own portrait in the manner of the Italian Renaissance style.

My whole life, I’ve secretly very much wanted two paintings made, whichI’ve never mentioned to anybody: my own portrait. …How happy I’d betoday, in my old age—which I live out through the comfort of mychildren—if I had a youthful portrayal of myself”. (MNR, 443)

What is experienced by Shekure above is an example of ambiguous desire to

become Others. Her searching of identity is illustrated in her longing to have her

self-portrait. Moreover, as it is quoted in the beginning of this session, that we can

only know our true identity by becoming the “Other”.


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In The White Castle, Pamuk complicates the Self-Other binary255 between

Hoja and his Italian slave, which has no end. The writing of “Why am I what I

am” is a way of learning and becoming the Others in order to know their true

identity. Through the process of writing the memoir, both Hoja and his Italian

slave share their memories in the past in order to that later they will adopt the

Other’s manner and life-stories as their own. (TWC, 63) The writing of memoir

and the sharing with one another or the sharing of memories entails a certain

blurring of identities. Their conversation, scientific enterprises, and lives together

become a sort of mutual demolition, tearing down what makes each one

distinct.256 The memoir has similarity with the European novel. Both of them are

ways of thinking, understanding, and imagining and also a way of imagining

oneself as someone else. For Pamuk, European novel has helped him to

understand Europe’s borders, histories, national distinctions in constant flux, a

new culture, and a new civilization.257

The memoir, moreover, has help both Hoja and his Italian slave to

understand the other’s history, culture, and identity as well as imagine themselves

to be someone else. Here, I argue that both Hoja and his Italian slave share the

same problem on the personal search for identity. They want to be someone

else—to be like the other—but sometimes they want it with jealousy. It can be

seen when the Italian slave wants to imitate Hoja but also envies him because his

master can “play upon the fear in the plague and the mirror” (TWC, 83).

255 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88.256 Berman, “La Maison Du Silence”.257 Pamuk, Other Colours, 233.


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Hoja says that he is the Italian slave and the slave is him. The young slave

also feels that Hoja is he, his very self. (TWC, 98) As has been mentioned before,

I can draw a conclusion that The White Castle is a mirror of Pamuk’s relationship

with his older brother. Having a brother who is only eighteen months older has

inspired him to write this novel. The jealousy Pamuk felt toward his brother is

reflected in the novel when Hoja feels jealousy toward his slave and the slave is

jealous of his master. Pamuk assumes that Europe for the East (read: Turkey) is

like a very competitive brother. Europe is also Turkey’s alter ego and the Italian

slave is Hoja’s alter ego, the representation of authority. This is what exactly

happened to Pamuk by having his older brother as his alter ego. Both Pamuk and

Shevket, his brother, as well as the master and his Italian slave are competing all

the time. They always worry about how much the other’s strength or success

might influence them. Pamuk stresses that this jealousy—the anxiety about being

influenced by someone else—reflects Turkey’s position when it looks West.258

In terms of the exchange of identity and double identities, The White

Castle presents the switch of identity between Hoja and his slave in the end of the

story. The switch of identity is begun when Hoja and his slave exchange their

clothes. Moreover, Hoja also cuts his beard while his slave let his to grow, which

makes their resemblance in the mirror even more shocking. (TWC, 84)

“Come, let us look in the mirror together.” I looked, and under the rawlight of the lamp saw once more how much we resembled one another. …At that time I had someone I must be; and now I though he too must besomeone like me. The two of us were one person! (TWC, 82)



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Additionally, it can be seen when Hoja and his Italian slave change their identity

after their war machine fails to break the white castle.

We exchanged clothes without haste and without speaking. I gave him myring and the medallion I’d managed to keep from him all these years. …Heput it around his neck…then he left the tent and was gone. I watched himslowly disappear in the silent fog. (TWC, 145)

The erasure of the old identity is similar to the Islamic Ottoman identity that was

replaced by Ataturk’s project to Westernized Turkey after the Empire collapsed in

the First World War. This condition is similar to Hoja’s, whose weapon fails in

the battle. After the war machine does not succeed to break the white castle, Hoja

leaves his identity as a Turk and write his new identity by turning to be his slave

and running away to his slave’s country. The exchange of identity, which is

symbolized using the exchange of clothes between Hoja and his slave, shows how

Turkey abandoned and lost its old identity that was forced and conducted abruptly

by the elite Westernists. The failure of the mass destructive weapon is similar to

the fell of the Empire that was, then, followed by the founding of a new Republic.

Turkey, which has an ambition to conduct Westernization, couldn’t go far enough

and its effort to be the European Union is still rejected. Until now, Turkey is still

knocking on Europe’s door, asking to come in, full of high hopes and goodintentions but also feeling rather anxious and fearing rejection. ...Watchingthe negotiation with the European Union, seeing that for all our efforts tobe Western, they still don’t want us.259

Through the exchange of identity between Hoja and his slave, Pamuk is bitterly

critical of Attaturk’s Westernization project, which abruptly erased the Islamic

259 Pamuk, Other Colours, 215 & 370.


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Ottoman tradition and simplified Turkey’s cosmopolitanism as well as identity

that are complex and multidimensional.

According to Almond in “Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete

Minarets”, the Orient was a source not of knowledge but self-knowledge for the

Westerner, a means by which he could construct a “true” identity for himself

through an immersion in the exotic.260 The Italian slave moves deeper and deeper

into Hoja’s life and embraces his master’s identity. Therefore, the Italian slave’s

identity as a Westerner is obscure and almost unseen as he starts to admire his

master and imitate his master’s personality.

Did we understand “defeat” to mean that the empire would lose all of itsterritories one by one? We’d lay out our maps on the table and mournfullydetermine first which territories, then which mountains or rivers would belost. Or did defeat mean that people would change and alter their beliefswithout noticing it? We imagined how everyone in İstanbul might risefrom their warm beds one morning as changed people; they wouldn’tknow how to wear their clothes, wouldn’t be able to remember whatminarets were for. Or perhaps defeat meant to accept the superiority ofothers and try to emulate them. (TWC, 109)

The Italian slave shares his sorrow along with Hoja for the lost of the Ottoman

territories even though he is a Westerner. Moreover, “he even does not seem to

rejoice in the fact that there might arise possibility for the West of defeating Islam

altogether with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.”261 The slave even feels that

Western culture is a pretentious nonsense after listens to the latest orchestra that is

brought from Venice by the ambassador.

260 Ian Almond, “Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete Minarets: The Futility of Narratives inOrhan Pamuk’s The Black Book”, New Literary History 34, 1 (2003): 84.

261 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 131.


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The search for identity is not only experienced by an individual but also

Turkey’s people, as one community, one İstanbul citizen, and one nation also

experience and live in the identity formation process. Ataturk’s forced

modernization and all the attempts to Europeanized Turkey or to divide Turkey

have brought the grief to the entire city. Through the Gezi protesters and the spirit

of unity that they bring, show that Turkey’s people come together in the third

space to deconstruct the authoritarian of their leader that systematically uses

violence against ethnic and religious minorities262 and forces Turkey to have only

one single identity. Hüzün, which is suggested as “a communal feeling, an

atmosphere, and a culture”263, is felt and shared by the protesters that come from

different identities. The hüzün they feel for their city has broken down the wall

that separate the narrow identity that is build by Turkey’s elites for Muslim and

Christians, men and women, secularists and conservatives have raised their voices

to challenge the power of the “new colonizer”.

5. Theoretical Observation

In this section, I summarize the complexity of the oscillation of the East

and the West in Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle that is presented

in the previous discussion. In both stories, Pamuk delineates how the West is

always presented not only as a threat but also as a seduction within the East. In

Said discourse on Orientalism, the Orient is Europe’s cultural contestant and one

262 Efe Levent, “Western Commentators still Getting Turkey’s Gezi Park Protests Wrong”,Global Voice 19 November 2014 <http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/11/19/western-commentators-still-getting-the-gezi-park-protests-wrong/>.

263 Pamuk, İstanbul, 101


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of the deepest images of the Other. Orientalism also promotes a binary opposition

between the East and the West. Europe is always seen as superior and powerful

while the East is inferior and weak. In his oeuvre, Pamuk portrays different

Orientalism for in Turkey’s case it is Europe that becomes Turkey’s cultural

contestant and deepest image of the Other even though historically it had never

been colonialized by any Western countries. This is along with Pamuk who “likes

Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism, but since Turkey was never a colony, the

romanticizing of Turkey was never a problem for the Turks”.264

Europe is very important for Turkey in its construction of identity.

Referring to Said’s theory, I argue that the development and formation of

Turkey’s identity “require the existence of another different and competing alter

ego”,265 which is Europe itself. After the Empire collapsed and the Ottoman root

was revoked, Turkey experienced a cultural inferiority and split identity because it

wanted to merge with the Other but could not go far enough because it was

threatened and obstructed by the Other. The feeling of having inferior culture and

complex desire to imitate Other is depicted by Pamuk through the Sultan who

commands the palace miniaturist to slavishly appropriate the Italian Renaissance

painting style and Hoja, a master of an Italian slave, who feels inferior towards his

slave’s knowledge as a westerner. Olive’s split identity, as the best palace

miniaturist who overly bound to the East and West painting tradition reflects

Turkey’s identity that is also split and in ambivalence, whether to embrace

264 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.265 Said, Orientalism, 332.


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Western culture or to leave the Islamic roots that is said as the obstacle of its

progress.

The East-West oscillation cannot be separated from the cosmopolitanism,

which is the result of the encounter between the East and the West. This

cosmopolitanism, later, leads to mimicry and ambiguity and also hybridity—that

is discussed deeper in chapter four. The result of this encounter is an attraction of

Western science and technology, which leads to the adoption of those Western

innovations. Mimicry can be one of the most effective strategies to fight against

the colonizer and as a way to survive from the oppressor. In addition, mimicry can

also cause ambivalence because it exists on both the Self and the Other. However,

the appropriation of Western painting and technology existed since the Ottoman

Empire under Sultan Mehmed II. He invited an Italian painter, Bellini, to make his

self-portrait as well as invited many Western scholars, scientists, and technicians.

In Pamuk’s My Name is Red, Murad III also invites a Western painter and forces

the palace miniaturists to imitate the Italian Renaissance painting. In The White

Castle, after Hoja dupes him, Sultan Ahmed I commands Hoja and his slave to

create a military cannon that can destroy Ottoman’s enemy as well as bring the

glory of the Empire back.

The enchantment of Venetian painting style and European technology that

is followed by the appropriation of Western art and science has raised a

confrontation from the Eastern group. The head of the miniaturists and the

Preacher Nusret Hoja (MNR) as well as the former imperial astrologer (TWC) take

action to preserve and maintain the Eastern tradition from the “invasion” of the


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Western tradition. Ataturk’s radical modernization, which applies the principle of

secularism, has revoked Turkish society from their Islamic Ottoman roots. The

abrupt changes conducted by the elites Westernists have created confusion in

Turkish society as well as produced identity crisis. The process of writing

Turkey’s new identity has led to ambivalence for Turkey stays on the two

different conditions, on the Self and the Other. Turkey, now, is still trying to

search for its true identity that is written above the Islamic Ottoman culture that

tries to be removed through Ataturk’s project.

Bhabha’s writing is hybrid. It is a combination of Michel Foucault,

Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and other concepts. If Foucault is “limited to his

attention to European discourses”266, or Said’s Orientalism discourse is “too

homogenise the East and fails to recognise the Ottoman Empire as a world power

in the 16th-17th centuries”267, and Fanon mostly expresses his anger felt on racism

he experienced, Pamuk proposes the liminal space to negotiate the everlasting

predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West. He offers the third

space as a bridge that connects the two poles and chooses to combine the East and

the West as an alternative solution of this predicament as well as a way to mediate

Turkey’s split identity. The liminal space he suggested is an appreciation and a

place he gave to an individual—and also the Turks—who are still looking for the

identity without any claim and distraction from other parties or groups. Bhabha

also states that a new identity is written in the third space, a space where the East

and West meet.

266 McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 105.267 Akalin, “Ottoman Phenomenon”, 112.


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Additionally, Pamuk suggests his readers to enjoy and celebrate the

process of the oscillation and also proposes hybrid identity rather than embracing

only one single identity. Those are the strategy of resistance and the ways to

overcome dichotomy, which is the problem of modernity that undermines within

Turkey. Turkey’s identity formation process is like completing puzzle, which

parts can be filled and which identity can be written only by referring or mirroring

to the Other. The third space that is suggested by Pamuk can be used as a room to

mirror the Other that can be employed to reflect Turkey’s new identity.


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CHAPTER IV

PAMUK’S SOLUTIONS

TO THE PREDICAMENT OF THE OSCILLATION

Turkey should not worry about having two spirits, belonging to two differentcultures, having two souls.

—Orhan Pamuk268

Slavishly imitating the Westor slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution.

—Orhan Pamuk269

Due to the problems and implications of the enchantment and

appropriation of the Italian renaissance art and European technology, here I

attempt to present some solutions, which Pamuk’s selected tales offer to the

predicament of the oscillation.

This part of the analysis firstly deals with Pamuk’s impartiality, which

outlines and deeply analyses his neutral position for not taking sides and his

choices to be a bridge that connects the two different sides, the East and the West.

Secondly, Pamuk’s critique, which is raised to the representatives of both sides in

My Name is Red and The White Castle, will be presented as a reflection of his

critic towards the Westernists (the secularists) and anti-Westernists (the

conservatives) sides that insist Turkey should have only a single spirit. Pamuk’s

background as a writer also influences his solution to the complex oscillation.

Therefore, in the last session, I will review Pamuk’s alternative solution that is

268 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.269 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.


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offered to resolve the East-West tension by presenting hybrid artwork,

manuscript, and characters in his works. As he suggests to his readers in the

quotations above that Turkey should not worry to embrace the two different souls.

This chapter focuses on Pamuk’s solution to the predicament of the

oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own

tradition that Turkish society is undergoing, as it is presented in My Name is Red

and The White Castle. In addition, the summary of Pamuk’s solutions to the

predicament of the oscillation, which are discussed in the three sub-chapters, will

be presented in the theoretical observation. In this sub-chapter, I will clarify how

Said’s discourse on Orientalism and Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism that

are used to study Pamuk’s works have supported to uncover Pamuk’s solution to

the dichotomy of the oscillation of the Self and Other.

1. Impartiality

I want to be a bridge that doesn’t belong to any continent,doesn’t belong to any civilization.

—Orhan Pamuk270

As a novelist, Pamuk does not choose nor judge one of the sides explicitly.

As it is stated in the quotation above, Pamuk wants to be a bridge that does not

belong to any sides as well as connects both sides and mediates the predicament

of the oscillation. He appreciates the process of an individual who is looking for

his identity without any claims, which can distract him from his identity formation

270 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”.


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process. At the same time, Pamuk refuses to settle into one position271 and also

insists that “it is not a big problem for Turkey to have two different cultures and

spirits”272 for he claims that “slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating

the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution.”273 Through his works, Pamuk

criticises the modernists who want to simplify and purify the complex

cosmopolitanism by erasing all Turkey’s Ottoman tradition and banishing

otherness. As a consequence of his refusal and critique to both sides in his

writings and novels274, Pamuk becomes the target of both secularists and religious

conservatives275 who claim “Turkey should have only one consistent soul”.276

Moreover, his statement regarding the modernization project that “thirty thousand

Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me

dares to talk about it” has set off a relentless campaign against Pamuk in the

Turkish nationalist press.277 In addition, after using the word “genocide” to

describe the massacre278, Pamuk was brought to prison for three years for publicly

denigrated Turkish identity and provoking public outcry in Turkey.279

My Name is Red and The White Castle are books, which are constructed

from a mixture of Eastern and Western methods, styles, habits, and histories.280 In

these two novels, Pamuk does not give any clear solution to the problem faced by

271 Iyer, “A View of the Bosporus”.272 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.273 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.274 Pamuk’s critique towards the Westernist, the secularists, the nationalists, as well as the

conservatives will be explained more in the next session, “Self-Questioning”.275 Iyer, “A View of the Bosporus”.276 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.277 Pamuk, Other Colours, 237, 356.278 Barish Ali and Carilone Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees and Murderous Viewpoints in Orhan

Pamuk’s My Name is Red”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 54, 4 (2012): 523.279 Pamuk, Other Colours, 356; Özel, “Turkey Faces West”, 18.280 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.


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the characters in dealing with the oscillation between the two traditions in both

novels. In his conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth, Pamuk even mentions that,

I don’t have a solution for these things, but ironically, my novels perhaps…areaddressing the issue that we have all these general questions of identity,belonging to a civilization, the fact that some people tell you that civilizationsdon’t come together, or there are likes of me through literature have addressedthese issues and to tell the reader that actually what matters are not civilizationsbut human lives.281

Instead of giving any clear solutions to the oscillation in his oeuvre, Pamuk

presents irony, tragedy, or even death that are experienced by the representatives

of both traditions in their lives. In the last chapter of his novel, Pamuk illustrates

how Enishte’s book remains unfinished and incomplete.

From where Hasan scattered the completed pages on the ground, they weretransferred to the Treasury; there, an efficient and fastidious librarian hadthem bound together with other unrelated illustrations belonging to theworkshop, and thus they were separated into several bound albums. (MNR,443)

Through MNR, Pamuk wants to show that he predicament between the two

different painting styles is never clearly resolved for it is “difficult to harmonize

these different techniques and worldviews”.282 The painting itself, both the

illumination painting and Venetian painting, is abandoned and the illuminators

paint neither like Easterners nor Westerners. The miniaturists...gradually accept

the situation with humble grief and resignation. (MNR, 442-443)

In addition, the miniaturists who are overly bound whether to the Eastern

or Western style of painting experiences irony, tragedy, and death in their life.

The murderer in MNR has two victims, Elegant Effendi, who first opens the story

as a corpse, and Enishte Effendi, the man in charge of the Sultan’s secret book.

281 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”.282 Pamuk, Other Colours, 316.


114

Erdağ Göknar, the translator of My Name is Red, explains in “My Name is Re(a)d”

that Olive, the murderer in MNR, both desires and eschews style. He kills Elegant

Effendi, a gilder who is also the follower of the great preacher Nusret Hoja of

Erzurum, for being overly bound to Eastern tradition and because Elegant claims

Olives’ aesthetic as blasphemous.283 The murderer is also afraid if the group of

Islamic fundamentalist hears that the miniaturists paint pictures, which are

forbidden by their faith (MNR, 424), nothing will remain of them or the book-arts

workshop (MNR, 23).

Similarly, the representative of Eastern tradition, Master Osman, the head

of the Ottoman miniaturist, blinds himself using the needle that Master Bihzad

had used to blind himself (MNR, 348), which is as an act to fight for the Italian

painting style.

I looked at the needle for a long time. I tried to imagine how Bihzadcould’ve done it. I’d heard that one doesn’t go blind immediately. …I satdown again and gazed at my own eyes. How beautifully the flame of thecandle danced in my pupils—which had witnessed my hand paint for sixtyyears. …Without hesitation…I bravely, calmly and firmly pressed theneedle into the pupil of my right eye. … I pushed the needle into my eye tothe depth of a quarter the length of a finger, then removed it. …Smiling, Idid the same to my other eye. (MNR, 349)

As has been explained in Chapter III, Bhabha’s mimicry is one of the most

effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge. However, Pamuk presents

Bhabha’s mimicry in a different way by portraying Master Osman who

appropriates Master Bihzad in his self-blinding in order to fight against the

“invasion” and domination of Western painting. Additionally, he decides to blind

283 Erdağ Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d: Authoring Translation, Translating Authority”,Translation Review 68 (2004): 54.


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himself because of his disappointment towards his miniaturists who leave the old

tradition and imitate the Frankish style and the Sultan who forces him to duplicate

the Sultan’s self-portrait. Two years after blinding himself, Master Osman died

and Stork replaces his position as the Head Illuminator. (MNR, 443)

In addition, Olive murders Enishte Effendi for Enishte being too slavish to

Western innovation. Enishte’s visit to Venice has made him enchanted by the

Venetian painting and it drives him to influence the sovereign to be painted in this

manner by Sebastiano.

“He felt a slavish awe toward the pictures of the Frankish masters he’dseen during his travels, and he’d fallen completely for the artistry that heregaled us about for days on end.”“Your Enishte was murdered because he was afraid,” I said. “Just like you,he’s begun to claim that illustration, which he was doing himself, wasn’tcontrary to the religion or the sacred book.” (MNR, 424)

His motivation for killing Enishte Effendi is a combination of self-doubt and the

revelation that the aesthetic past will not persist in any meaningful way, but will

be lost to history due to a host of political and social forces–one style gradually

replacing another.284 This is in line with Enishte’s statement on the day Olive kills

him that the paintings made by the miniaturists will be easily forgotten and

replaced by the new method of painting.

“One day, everyone will paint as the Frankish masters do. When“painting” is mentioned, the world will think of their work!” (MNR, 186)

“...In the end, our methods will die out, the colours will fade. No one willcare about our books and our paintings. …Indifference, time, and disasterwill destroy our art. …Mice will nibble these pages away; …a thousandvarieties of insect will gnaw our manuscripts out of existence. Bindingswill fall apart and pages will drop out. …Not only our own art, but everysingle work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be

284 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 54.


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destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect (MNR, 187): …yours and therest, all of it will vanish...” (MNR, 188)

The quotation above emphasize that the loss of the Islamic painting “was simply

because Western ways of seeing and painting were more attractive.”285 In the

future, “the Eastern world will lose”286 for every painter will paint in Western

style and leave the illumination painting. However, they cannot avoid this because

the Western ruling elite wants to modernize Turkey by replacing the 250-year-

Persian painting. As I have explained in Chapter III, Enishte Effendi and Sultan

Murad III insist that the Frankish style must be applied immediately because it is a

symbol of modernism. Additionally, in the future, this modernization is also

supported by Turkey’s first president who mentions that “a nation devoid of art

and artists cannot have a full existence”.287

Olive, the murderer, also experiences a tragedy and death in his life. He is

blinded by his colleagues and murdered by Hasan. When the murderer, Velijan

Effendi (Olive), is on his way to the Galleon Harbour, trying to flee to India, he is

attacked by Hasan, who accuses him as one of Black’s men who raided his house

at night to abduct Shekure. (MNR, 435) “Hasan, encountering Olive, had drawn

his red sword and cut off Olive’s head in a single stroke.” (MNR, 439)

...In one smooth motion, without losing speed, the sword cut first throughmy hand and then clears through my neck, looping off my head.I knew I’d been beheaded and…blood spraying from the neck like afountain....My neck ached and all is still.This is what they call death. (MNR, 436)

285 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270.286 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 131.287 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Founder of the Republic of Turkey.


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Olive murder’s series shows the binary opposition between the East and the West.

I argue that Olive’s head represents the West because Western painting stresses on

the perspective and a realist depiction on the object. While Olive’s separate body

represents the East and Islamic illumination painting since in this painting

method, painting is from memory the artists had, that they remember Allah.

(MNR, 84) Göknar, additionally, mentions that the action when Olive is beheaded

illustrates “the separation of body and mind, of tenor and vehicle, of content and

form, even of East and West”.288 In the end of his life, Olive still describes the

scene that he sees from the ground level. In this moment of observation, he

realizes seeing has become a variety of memory. (MNR, 436) In Venetian

painting, seeing (read: perspective) is very important because an object is depicted

realistically. While in Persian painting, “a miniaturist’s “eyes” are at the tip of his

pen and acting before he can think; his hand is acting of his own accord”289.

Furthermore, Pamuk’s impartiality can be seen more in, My Name is Red

which contains the leitmotif of a failed or “missing” book or manuscript whether

failed or incomplete manuscript and in the White Castle, which discusses the

translated or rewritten book.290 In My Name is Red, Olive, as the miniaturist who

represents Western tradition, will do anything to bring the Ottoman art to

modernity. Sultan’s commissioned book, moreover, cannot be finished for Olive

murders Elegant Effendi, the gilder. He kills Elegant because he is afraid that

Elegant can put the book in danger by spreading rumours to the followers of

Nusret Huja that this book contains blasphemy. Besides, he also steals the

288 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55.289 Pamuk, İstanbul, 150.290 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37.


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unfinished book from Enishte Effendi after hitting Enishte’s head using a bronze

Mongol inkpot in order to keep the sustainability of the Islamic painting tradition

that is contested by the realist style of painting.

I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the cabinet,rifling through my papers and searching intently for the last picture. Whenhe came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my paint set and kick thechests, boxes, inkpots, and folding worktable.Then…I sensed that my murderer had exited the room. He’d probablyfound the last painting. (MNR, 191)

After finding the last painting, Olive tries to complete the manuscript by

presenting his self-portrait. However, in the end, he fails to make his own portrait

no matter how hard he tries. “Imitating the Frankish masters, as Olive explains,

needs certain expertise and the proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to

attain. Besides, if the miniaturists still attempt to attain a style and European

character, they will still fail.” (MNR, 431)

In the centre of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve been, was my ownportrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was somewhat unsatisfiedwith it because after labouring in vain for days, looking into a mirror anderasing and reworking, I was unable to achieve a good resemblance.(MNR, 429)

As one of the best Islamic miniaturists who wants to preserve the old painting

tradition, Olive’s failure in imitating the Italian Renaissance style can be one of

his ways to fight against the domination of this painting style. His self-portrait,

which does not has a good resemblance to the Frankish painting, is in the same

vein with Bhabha’s “almost the same but not quite” that the colonized tries to

resist the colonizer by imitating their culture but not totally and precisely, which

aims to mock them for later the finished book will be presented to the Venetian

Dodge.


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This is also similar to the “Caliban paradigm”—an anti-colonial project

through inappropriate appropriation that challenges the cultural and linguistic

stability of the colonizer291—that the colonized learns how to curse in the master’s

tongue.292 On the contrary, Olive’s appropriation of the realist painting also shows

that he is also overly bound to Western tradition even though he fails to depict it

at last. Pamuk also mentions that Olive is an illuminator who feels himself caught

between the two worlds. He loves and despises the West in equal measure, a man

who cannot quite see himself as a Westerner but is dazzled by the brilliance of

Western civilization.293

Pamuk’s description on how Olive feels inauthentic, when he imitates the

Western style of painting in his self-portrait in the secret book, mirrors Turkey’s

condition. Pamuk also mentions that the miniaturists’ problem is similar to the

Turks who were vexed by the contradiction they felt between these two

injunctions—to be Western and yet, at the same time, to be authentic.294 In

addition, Olive warns his dear miniaturist friends that if they yield to the Frankish

painting they might resemble themselves but they will not be themselves. On the

other hand, if the painters of the old tradition are still faithful to old masters they

will lose their place as a palace miniaturist.

If Master Osman truly goes blind, or passes away, and we paint the waywe feel like painting, embracing our faults and individuality under theinfluence of the Franks so we might possess a style, we might resemble

291 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 147-148. The term, “Caliban Paradigm”, is taken fromShakespeare’s The Tempest, which character named Caliban, the dispossessed (ab)originalinhabitant of the island, who mentions the benefit of studying the colonial language is that heknows how to curse.

292 Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, 148.293 Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours, 230.294 Pamuk, İstanbul, 112.


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ourselves, but we won’t be ourselves. No, even if we were to agree to paintlike the old masters, reasoning that only in this way could we be ourselves,Our Sultan, who’s turned His back even on Master Osman, will find othersto replace us. No one will look at us anymore, we shall only incur pity.(MNR, 420)

From Olive’s statement above, Pamuk, once again, wants to remind us that

“slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture

is not the solution”295. Pamuk also asks his readers to live in both cultures and to

produce a new culture from the combination of those cultures.296 However, the

radical and abrupt modernization that are forced by the elites can cause the

ambivalence of identity for an individual lives between two identities that

alienated them to their identity.

In The White Castle, both Hoja and his Italian slave also experience a

tragedy because their grand plan on the war machine fails to break down the

Poles’ Doppio Castle. Hoja’s effort to conquer the West using his war machine

that is made using the imitation of Western technology has a disappointing result.

The other countries also come to help the Poles from the Ottoman’s attack.

After the sun had set and we learned not only that Huseyn Pasha the Blondhad failed, but that Austrians, Hungarians, and Kazaks had joined thePoles at the siege of Doppio, we finally saw the castle itself. ...I knew nowthat our soldiers would never be able to reach the white towers of thecastle. I knew only too well that when we joined the siege in the morningour weapon would founder in the swamp leaving the men inside andaround it to die. (TWC, 143)

Both Hoja and the Italian slave know that in the end their war machine will not be

able to defeat the castle. However, the Ottoman’s modernization movement in

science and technology that are “imported” from the West is an irony. The East

295 Pamuk, Other Colours, 370.296 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370.


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fails to emulate as well as conquer the West by appropriating their sophisticated

technology. Modernity, that is believed can free people from illogical

interpretation of dreams and stars, has bring melancholy to Hoja. He has to go to

Venice and leave his identity as an Easterner after his war machine that is built to

emulate the West failed.

At the same time, due to their failure in the battlefield, the Italian slave

cannot return to his country. He has to stay in İstanbul and replace Hoja’s position

while Hoja goes to Venice and replaces his place in order to escape from the

wrath of the Sultan.

...He was rushing about like someone about to leave on a journey. Till thebreak of day I talked with him about what I’d left behind in my country.(TWC, 144)

We exchange clothes without haste and without speaking. ...Then he leftthe tent and was gone. I watched him slowly disappear in the silent fog. Itwas getting light. (TWC, 145)

The Italian slave also feels separated from his very self, Hoja, when he is not by

his side. He wants to be Hoja’s side because he feels that he is Hoja and he cannot

be separated from his true identity. He highlights it by saying that,

“I should be by his side, I was Hoja’s very self! I had become separatedfrom my real self and was seeing myself from the outside, just as in thenightmares I often had. I only wanted...to rejoin him as soon as I could.”(TWC, 98)

Moreover, it not only the separation of the Self and the Other that can bring

melancholy but their deepest longing to be someone else can also present hüzün.

“To search within to think so long and hard about our own selves, would only

make us unhappy. ...For this reason heroes could never tolerate being themselves,

for this reason they always wanted to be someone else.” (TWC, 154-155) The


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separation of Hoja and his Italian slave is a new start, a way to overcome hüzün

that they feel concerning to the painful memories of the failure of their grand plan.

Through his two novels, Pamuk wants to show that modernity is not the

best solution to overcome the tension of the oscillation between the East and the

West. Essentially, modernity does not always bring happiness nor peaceful and

Turkey’s nationalization shows how it goes. Goenawan Mohamad, he also

mentions that modernity truly offers the freedom but it also brings melancholy297

just like the forced modernization conducted by Turkey’s Western elites that leads

to a self-colonialism and leaves hüzün. In order to create a modern era, the elites

tend to force the people to forget and erase their different norms, traditions, and

religions. In addition, the construction of a secular Republic, which separates the

state from religion, is a way to release Turkey from its long forgotten Ottoman

tradition and backwardness.

However, not only criticising those two sides through his opposed

characters—Master Osman and Enishte Effendi (MNR) as well as Hoja and his

Italian slave (TWC)—Pamuk also shows how happy the Turks will be if they have

those “two spirits, belong to two different cultures, and having two souls.”298 In

this same vein, he notes in Other Colours that:

I’m pleased that the Westernization process took place. I’m just criticizing thelimited way in which the ruling elite had conceived of Westernization. ...They didnot strive to create an İstanbul culture that would be an organic combination ofEast and West; they just put Western and Eastern together. …They had to inventa strong local culture, which would be a combination—not an imitation—of theEastern past and the Western present.299

297 Goenawan Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6 (Jakarta: Pusat Data dan Analisa Tempo, 2006) 134.298 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.299 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370.


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I argue that what Pamuk tries to present in his works is that he wants to “bridge”

the East and the West like the Bosphorus Bridge, which connects the Eastern and

the Western side of İstanbul without taking any sides. This statement is in

accordance with Pamuk’s conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth in PBS

NewsHour, where he declares that,

I want to be a bridge in the sense that a bridge doesn’t belong to any continent,doesn’t belong to any civilization, and a bridge has the unique opportunity to seeboth civilizations and be outside of it. That’s a good, wonderful privilege.300

Pamuk considers the bridge, which spans the Bosphorous and unites the European

and Asian sides of İstanbul, a metaphor for himself because it belongs nowhere,

but has a foot on two continents.301 Erdağ Göknar in “Orhan Pamuk and the

‘Ottoman’ Theme”, supports the statement above by saying that “Pamuk himself,

he tries to juxtapose, synthesize, or transcend both”,302 the East and the West

through his oeuvre. By becoming “the Bosphorous Bridge”, Pamuk shows his

impartiality both the East and the West.

2. Self-Questioning

Pamuk’s role, which has already been mentioned in the previous part, is

not only as the agent that connects and mediates the East and the West but also as

the critic of the representatives of both sides. The East-West encounter has led to

the enchantment and seduction of Western tradition. The longing and desire for

Others also opens the way to the oscillation between embracing the modernity of

300 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”.301 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”.302 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 38.


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the West or preserving the Islamic Ottoman tradition. Therefore, the tension and

conflict between the two political sides cannot be avoided.

In this sub chapter, I display Pamuk’s criticism on Turkish politicians’

monistic view that Turkey should have one consistent soul, only belong to the

East or to the West or be nationalistic,303 which he “paints” in My Name is Red

and The White Castle. Through the colours from his pallet to create his “art

works”, which are in a form of words and sentences, I indicate that Pamuk wants

to criticise the East and the West, the Ottoman and Western tradition, the

conservatives and the secularists. Even though he is a secularist, Pamuk is critical

of the way Turkey has dealt with East-West differences over the past 80 years. In

my view, through MNR and TWC, Pamuk raises his criticism to the elites that

were dazzled by the superiority of the West so that they embarked on a program

of Westernizing reforms.304 The founder of the Turkish Republic also wanted

desperately to make Turkey more modern and Western while Pamuk believes that

Ataturk moved too harshly against religion, leaving many people confused and

lost305 and also present the feeling of hüzün.

Furthermore, in his novels, I can see that Pamuk raises his criticism to both

“Westernist and anti-Westernist nationalisms sides, which respectively construct

myths of origin to contrast East and West”.306 He mentions that,

in Turkey, both conservatives—or political Islamist—and secularist were upset.The secularists were upset because I wrote that the cost of being a secular radicalin Turkey is that you forget that you also have to be a democrat. …They alsodidn’t like that I portrayed Islamist as human beings. The political Islamists were

303 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369.304 Pamuk, Other Colours, 230.305 PBS NewsHour, “Orhan Pamuk: Bridging Two Worlds”.306 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 9.


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upset because I wrote about an Islamist who had enjoyed sex before marriage.…Islamists are always suspicious of me because I don’t come from their culture,and because I have the language, attitude, and even gestures of a moreWesternized and privileged person.307

As a consequence of his critique to the Westernists and anti-Westernists sides,

Pamuk becomes the target of both the secularists and the conservatives.

Moreover, his works also disturb his relationship with his family. İstanbul has

destroyed his relationship with his mother and he hardly ever sees his brother.

Pamuk’s relationship with the Turkish public, because of his recent comment and

critics to the conservatives and the secularists, is also difficult.308 Additionally,

“Pamuk was also persecuted by his respected states”309 because of his statement

“in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Der Tages-Anzelger”310.

Through the characters in My Name is Red such as Olive, the miniaturists,

Enishte Effendi, Sultan Murad III, Master Osman, and Nusret Hoja as well as in

the The White Castle such as Hoja, the Italian slave, and Sultan Ahmed I, Pamuk

wants to deliver his criticism to both the representatives of the East and the West.

Pamuk criticises those who insist that Turkey should have only a single spirit

through their identity formation processes. In modern Turkey identity, the

cosmopolitanism is erased and replaced by the new national identity. The irony of

modernization program was indicated by the erasure of cosmopolitanism that was

indicated by millions of Greek, Armenians, and Kurds that died when they were

departed and exchanged from Turkey.

307 Pamuk, Other Colours, 373-374.308 Pamuk, Other Colours, 378.309 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 523.310 Pamuk, Other Colours, 356.


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Gökberk emphasizes that the erasure of Turkey’s cosmopolitanism makes

people feel “a collective melancholy (hüzün) over the city’s bygone Ottoman

past…and over no meaningful values that have been replaced the old cultural

tradition. Here everybody also seems to be affected by the abrupt erasure of the

past.”311 Under Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s rich cosmopolitanism was erased and

replaced by the new national identity. The elite’s movement, to rapidly “civilize”

the society,312 is shown by millions of Greek, Armenians, and Kurds who were

departed and exchanged. Göknar also mentions that through his works, Pamuk

wants to criticise “Ottoman history and the elite’s modernization project, which

rejects multi-ethnicity, multi-lingualism, multi-culturalism, and

cosmopolitanism”.313 Both the Young Turks and the elites were enchanted by

Western superiority so that they started the Westernization project. Pamuk also

mentions that Kemal’s Westernizing reforms were based on the belief that

Turkey’s weakness and poverty stem from its traditions, its old culture, and its

various religion practices.314 For those reasons, he constructed a secular republic,

votes for women, new political parties, and the Roman alphabet to replace the

Ottoman sultanate, the harem, the fez, the veil, the Arabic alphabet, the Dervish

orders, and the caliphate.315 While, Sultan Murad III, he makes a cultural

transformation by abruptly replacing the Ottoman miniature painting with the

Venetian style of painting. Similarly, Sultan Ahmed I, Murad III’s grandson, also

imitates Western science and technology to create gigantic cannon that will be

311 Gökberk, “Beyond Secularism”, 8.312 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35.313 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55.314 Pamuk, Other Colours, 230.315 Karl E. Meyer, “Ghost along the Bosphorus”, World Policy Journal 24, 3 (Fall, 2007): 114.


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used to defeat the West and leaving the astrology as well as the illogical

interpretation of the dreams and stars.

The elite national’s project to abruptly “Westernize” and to self-

colonialized the country316 can be seen from the “conquest fever”, a provocation

by the Turkish state to rampage the city, plundering the property of the Greeks,

the Christians, and the minorities317. Under Murad III, there was a requirement to

wear certain garment and colours to mark the different religious group. As a Jew,

Esther was also forced to wear the pink dress (MNR, 68), and “in garments of

poorer quality cloth”318. Moreover, the Jewish people also suffered from the

oppression that caused on “the execution of the Jews in Amasya, on the eve

Passover” (MNR, 147). Their neighbourhood not only looked even more deserted

and pitiful in the morning cold (MNR, 142) but they were also mocked for their

Jewishness (MNR, 262). This is such an irony that after the Republic established,

more minorities have left İstanbul while after Mehmed II took Constantinople in

1453, he encouraged and invited the Greek, the Armenians, the Kurds, and the

Christians to move to the city and even respected them.

Ali and Hagood stress that Pamuk’s text, which shows many perspectives,

is aimed to deconstruct the centralizing project, whether the issues on certain

ideology that is embodied by the Sultan (and the artists’ guilds within his court)

and by the religious fundamentalists who want to destroy the figurative art.319

Pamuk complicates the oscillation of the Eastern and Western painting in My

316 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55.317 Pamuk, İstanbul, 173.318 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 177.319 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 507.


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Name is Red to illustrate the binary opposition between self and other. The

Persian painting represents the only way of seeing from Allah’s perspective,

“seeing the world from above” (MNR, 272), which is “from the top of the

minaret” (MNR, 78). On the contrary, Frankish painting describes the world “as

the eyes sees it” (MNR, 186) and from the various viewpoints. Therefore, this

represents the individual style of Pamuk’s work that has many narrators.

Through Olive, Pamuk wants to criticize the miniaturists who are overly

bound to Eastern and Western style. Olive’s identity is split into two as a master

miniaturist and also as a murderer. His voice is a metaphor, which shows the

binary opposition between the East and the West as well the complex oscillation

between Self and Other.

Now I am completely divided, just like those figures whose head andhands are drawn and painted by one master while their bodies and clothesare depicted by another. When a God-fearing man like myselfunexpectedly becomes a murderer, it takes time to adjust. I’ve adopted asecond voice, one befitting a murderer, so that I might still carry on asthough my old life continued. (MNR, 108)

This double identity is reflected in the murderer’s speech when he adopts a second

voice as an unidentified murderer and when he speaks under his workshop name

as a palace miniaturist. Enishte emphasizes that Olive is “the most talented,

divinely inspired artist with the most enchanted touch and eye for detail that

Enishte has ever seen in all his sixty years” (MNR, 184). However, it is such an

irony that Olive experiences ambivalence because as the most gifted Islamic

painting who has the finest work he is also drawn to Frankish style that promises

fame, money, and style. On the other hand, he is also sad that the domination of

Venetian painting can harm the existence of the Islamic Ottoman painting.


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Olive, as stated, kills Enishte Effendi because he is “the one who duped

him into drawing images removed from their stories”320. In addition, Olive’s

reason for killing Elegant Effendi, one of Nusret Hoja’s followers, is that because

he is afraid of being accused as a blasphemer by being involved in the making of

the Sultan’s commissioned book. This is chiefly seen when Olive, as a murderer,

narrates that Elegant Effendi,

had slandered those of us who’d worked on that book Our Sultan hadsecretly commissioned. If I hadn’t silenced him, he would’ve denouncedus unbelievers. …If someone succeeded in announcing that theminiaturists were committing blasphemy, these followers ofErzurumi…wouldn’t just be satisfied with doing away with masterminiaturists, they’d destroy the entire workshop and Our Sultan would behelpless to do anything but watch without a peep. (MNR, 134-135)

As mentioned above, Olive is a miniaturist “who is most bound to the old

tradition, who knows most intimately the legends and styles of Herat and whose

master-apprentice genealogy stretches back to Samarkand” (MNR, 360). Even

though Olive is afraid of being accused as a blasphemer, he also imitates the

Frankish style. He kills Elegant as his devotion to the old miniature tradition as

well as to save the miniaturists and the entire workshop from the Hoja of the

Erzurum and his followers.

Imitating the Frankish style is an act of competing with God and it is

contrary to the Islamic teaching that every human is the same in front of God.

Moreover, they imitate the Venetian painting without mastering the technique.

Olive not only criticizes the miniaturists but also Sultan Murad who orders

Enishte Effendi to make the secret book, which is believed as a door that can lead

320 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55.


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the Ottoman to receive recognition from the West. From his critique, Olive wants

to show that the lack of the proficiency of the miniaturists in making the portrait

will only make them fail and the other possibility is that they will only be

restrained by the Erzurumis. The attack of the Coffee house by the Erzurumis

shows that they want to punish the illustrators because they have made pictures

with the perspectival methods of the Franks that are portrayed in the Sultan’s

commissioned book.

The Erzurumis, incited by Elegant’s murderer, and perhaps becauseElegant Effendi had described Enishte’s book to them, held Enishteresponsible for the murderer and killed him; and, they must’ve raided theCoffee house to complete their revenge. (MNR, 399)

As I have already mentioned above, the great preacher Nusret Hoja intends to

punish those who veered from the path of Exalted Muhammad, especially the

miniaturists. For the Erzurumis, the illustrators, who emulate the Frankish style,

are justified that they have made an act of competition with God by creating

illustration of the living things and also portraiture, for He alone can create

something that is alive.321

In My Name is Red, Pamuk also wants to criticize the miniaturist,

especially those who are overly bound to the Eastern painting tradition. For

instance, in a story told by a picture of horse, it clarifies that all illustrations made

by miniaturists from memory are also an act of competing with Allah because

they are trying to depict the world the way Allah sees.

All miniaturists illustrate all horses from memory in the same way, eventhough we’ve each been uniquely created by Allah. …They are attempting

321 Kathleen Kuiper, Islamic: Art, Literature, and Culture (New York: Britannica EducationalPublishing, 2010) 131.


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to depict the world that God perceives not the world that they see. Doesn’tthat amount to challenging God’s unity, that is—Allah forbid—isn’t itsaying that I could do the work of God? Artists who are discontent withwhat they see with their own eyes, artists who claim that the best horse iswhat blind miniaturists draw from memory, aren’t they all committing thesin of competing with Allah? (MNR, 238)

From the quotation above, it can be seen that the illustrators who make paintings

from their memory and from the top of the minaret also make a competition with

God because they have tried to emulate the way Allah sees the world. The way the

miniaturists depict the world from an elevated Godlike position, like Ibn Shakir

did three hundred fifty years ago from a high minaret is the evidence.

Sultan Murad III uses the Italian painting as a movement to rapidly

modernize the Empire. He asks Enishte to prepare the secret book in order to

strengthen the position of the Ottoman Empire that is in a regression. The

sovereign believes that the Islamic painting tradition will not bring the Ottoman to

the glory. In addition, the Islamic painting is considered to be the barrier for the

Empire. By depicting Sultan Murad III who encourages the miniaturists to imitate

the Frankish painting, Pamuk wants to illustrate the loss of the old painting

tradition. Ataturk’s Westernization project, which had erased 600-year Islamic

Ottoman Empire tradition, is similar to Murad III who has forced the miniaturists

to leave the old painting tradition and adopt the Frankish painting. Ironically, the

secret book that is made for the aim to get the acceptance from the West is left

unfinished in the Sultan’s treasury room.

If Nusret Hoja, a great preacher and a representative of the East in My

Name is Red, wants the empire belong only to the East, it is different from Hoja

(TWC) who claims that the empire should belong to the West. Hoja, who


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represents the Westernist side in the present time of Turkey, is tired of pashas and

Sultan’s dependence on the illogical interpretation of the dreams and stars. He

wants to modernize and Westernize the Islamic Empire by enforcing the young

sultan using his stories to adopt Western science and technology. In the end, Hoja

is able to dupe the child Sultan to make a war machine, which will be used to

destroy the enemies.

As has been explained above, the “modern” was part of the elite’s ongoing

project of progress to rapidly “civilize” society that borrowed from both the

Soviet example and Europe.322 Particularly, Pamuk wants to question and

challenge this project through his fictions, My Name is Red and The White Castle

and using the Ottoman past, he tries to take a critical look at the present.323 This is

especially seen in the character of Enishte Effendi. By presenting this character,

Pamuk illustrates how the Kemalists or the modernists or the secularist want to

modernize and “civilize” Turkey by slavishly adopting and imitating Western

tradition and culture and leaving the old Ottoman tradition. Moreover, it is clear

that Enishte Effendi, who is overly bound to the Italian painting, wants that all

miniaturists adopt and use this style “with the justification that ‘it is the will of

Our Sultan’ and ‘betray’ the entire artistic tradition.” (MNR, 362)

Pamuk shows in his works that the theme of impersonation in My Name is

Red and The White Castle is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when faced

with Western culture. He adds that the anxiety about being influenced by someone

else resembles Turkey’s position when it looks West. Pamuk also criticises

322 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 35.323 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37.


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Turkey, especially the modernists, who aspire to become Westernized but then

being accused of not being authentic enough.324 This can be seen when Olive fails

to make his self-portrait by imitating Western style of painting. No matter how

hard he tries, he cannot make a painting as fine as the Frankish masters do.

When I could see my face in the mirror from where I sat, I attempted todraw my portrait in charcoal. I drew for a long time, patiently. Much later,when I saw that once again the face on the page didn’t resemble my face inthe mirror, I was filled with such misery that tears welled in my eyes.

Later still, I cursed the European painters and Enishte both, erased whatI’d done and began looking into the mirror anew to begin another drawing.(MNR, 307)

The quotation above shows that Olive is experiencing the ambivalence of

mimicry. He fails to imitate the Western style of painting in portraying himself

because the result is not the same as the Italian Renaissance painting. Bhabha

highlights that the condition of “almost the same, but not quite” can be used by

the colonized as a weapon to mock the colonizer.325 However, here, I have

different opinion. In this case, the imitation conducted by Olive and the other

miniaturists will only lead to mockery from the West towards the East that tries to

resemble and even emulate them. This is because they do not have the ability to

create paintings, which are as fine as the Frankish style.

In addition, Olive is also experiencing a cultural inferiority because he

tries to be the West by imitating the way they paint but he fails and what he can

do is only blaming the Frankish master and Enishte toward his failure.

I feel like the Devil…because my portrait has been made in this fashion.But now, the isolation terrifies me. Imitating the Frankish masters without

324 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368.325 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 86.


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having attained their expertise makes a miniaturist even more of a slave.Now, I’m desperate to escape this trap. (MNR, 430)

Olive’s feeling of cultural inferiority is similar to Turkey’s when the Empire

collapsed and the country tried to find its new national identity. Olive realises that

his desire to imitate the Frankish style can only lead to the problems of

authenticity. He emphasized that the imitation to the Frankish painting is a big

irony. In addition, the Venetian masters will only scorn the secret book, which is

believed to bring the Empire back into the past glory. It is for the reason that the

miniaturists do not have the proficiency of the Franks so that the secret book that

is going to be presented to the Venetian Doge will only make the Venetians

masters look down to the Ottomans. As Olive emphasizes to his fellows

miniaturists that after,

“Enishte Effendi’s book been completed and sent to them, the Venetianmasters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would’ve reached theVenetian Doge—that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans havegiven up being Ottoman and would no longer fear us.” (MNR, 431)

The imitation is an irony because this series of Occidental style of paintings by the

palace miniaturists is placed in an Oriental stylebook of calligraphies and be

gifted to the Venetian Doge.326 Without the proficiency, as Esra Almas has

pointed out in “Reading My Name is Red: Unveiling a Masterpiece”, innovation

becomes mere imitation and individuality will therefore be reduced to nothing but

a signature.327 Moreover, by imitating the Western style without having the

proficiency will only make a miniaturist even more of a slave. (MNR, 176) This

326 Üner Daglier, “Orhan Pamuk on the Turkish Modernization Project: Is It a Farewell to theWest?”, Humanitas 25, 1-2 (2012): 155.

327 Esra Almas, “Reading My Name is Red: Unveiling a Masterpiece”, The International Journalof the Humanities 5, 7 (2007): 157.


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imitation has brought anxiety and left cultural inferiority to Olive even though he

is a brilliant miniaturist for he cannot appropriate the Frankish style precisely.

Master miniaturists’ slavish imitation of the Frankish painting is criticized by

Pamuk for this imitation will only revoked Turkey from its Islamic Ottoman root.

Pamuk reflects Turkey condition in master miniaturists’ attempt to appropriate the

West. He also wants the whole country to embrace, combine, and live in the two

traditions and invent another new tradition rather than only has one single

identity.

The miniaturists are experiencing ambiguity from the cultural step, which

they take by imitating the Frankish painting. This is the way Self (the East) finds a

new identity by using the West to define them through the secret book they are

preparing. In My Name is Red, this is also experienced by the Ottoman Empire

that actually wants to be acknowledged and accepted by the West by adopting the

Other’s cultural symbol.

“Precisely, what Our Sultan stated He wanted: A book that depicted thethousandth year of Muslim calendar, which would strike terror into theheart of the Venetian Doge by showing the military strength and pride ofIslam, together with the power and wealth of the Exalted House of Osman.…Furthermore, since the illustrations were made in the Frankish styleusing Frankish methods, they would arouse the awe of the Venetian Dogeand his desire for friendship. (MNR, 247)

What is ironic here is that the modernists or the Westernist want to modernize the

Empire by forcing the miniaturists to leave the old painting tradition and adopt

Frankish painting. The miniaturists are slavishly imitating Western painting style

without having the proficiency of the Franks to get the acceptance from the West.


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Bhabha emphasizes that mimicry for the colonized, is important because it is an

attempt that is made to get the acceptance from the colonizer.328

This also happens to the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century that is

described in The White Castle that the Westernist and the Sultan want to revive

the Empire from crisis. Hoja, a new imperial astrologer, has an obsession to bring

the glory of the Empire back and defeat Europe by using a war machine whose

technology is borrowed from the West. Unfortunately, the artillery that is made by

Hoja and his Italian slave fails to break the White Castle.

Moreover, Pamuk also illustrates the ironic characterization of the young

Western slave who should be a slave from an Eastern master that wants him

teaches all Western science, knowledge, and lifestyle he knows from his country.

The Eastern master also wants to prove that his slave is not superior to him in any

aspect by acting like “a clever boy who tries to prove that the this his big brother

knows are really not all that much” (TWC, 33).

According to him, the gap between his knowledge and mine was nogreater than the number of volumes he’d had brought from my cell andlined up on a shelf and the books whose content I remembered. With hisphenomenal diligence and quickness of mind, in six months he’d acquireda basic grasp of Italian which he’d improve upon later, read all of mybooks, and by the time he’d made me repeat to him everything Iremembered, there was no longer any way in which I was superior to him.(TWC, 33)

From the quotation above, the master underestimates his slave’s ability and

knowledge in science as well as to show that he is superior than his slave. He also

says that the gap of his knowledge and his slave’s knowledge is just as much as

328 Bhabha, The Location of Culture.


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the books his slave has. However, the Italian slave ironically portrays his master

as a lazy little brother who wants to catch up the lesson.

The irony of Turkish modern identity formation process in The White

Castle is the mirror of Ataturk Westernization project that transformed the

traditional Ottoman into a civilize nation. Turkey’s failure in the First World War

had raised a suspicion on the Greek and the Christians that they had been spy for

Western Allies. This also experienced by the Italian slave who is accused by the

Ottoman as the Western spy when the war machine fails to break the Doppio

Castle.

It was then that the rumours increased about how our siege engine...wouldbring misfortune, even a curse upon us. ...As always it was not Hoja butme, the infidel, whom they blamed. (TWC, 138)

Since the rumours that I was accursed and a spy, no longer went to thesovereign’s tent. That night when he went to interpret the events of theday, Hoja managed to tell tales of victory and good fortune that the sultanseemed to believe. (TWC, 140)

The Italian slave is blamed by the sovereign for the failure at the siege of Doppio

that leads to the exchange of the identity between Hoja and his slave. Through

The White Castle, Pamuk wants to show how dangerous the forced Westernization

and the longing to be totally the East or the West because it can kill each other.

Ahmed I’s abrupt project, on the revolution of the Ottoman astrology and the

interpretation of dreams and stars that is duped by Hoja as his Imperial astrologer

to defeat the White Castle, has left hüzün within Hoja and his slave. In the end,

the slave cannot go back to Venice while Hoja must escape from his country.

Mohamad supports this by mentioning that even though modernization promises


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liberation, it causes melancholy.329 The gigantic kettle that is built by Hoja has left

the Ottoman soldiers in fear and death.

“The nearly one hundred men...broke formation and scattered during theweapon’s first assault. Some of them were crushed to bits by the weaponitself, some of them, after a few ineffective shot, were hit...when they leftwithout cover. Most of them fled in fear of bad luck, and we were unableto regroup to prepare a fresh assault.” (TWC, 141)

As a novelist and as a man, Pamuk criticises “the ruthless, murderous

Turkey’s non-Western ruling elites of the postcolonial era”330 that share the

intolerance towards the minorities groups in his works. Western Postmodernism

that is imitated by Turkey’s elites is an irony. Western movement that upholds

humanism and gives value to human lives is even bloody and full of violent in its

practice. Moreover, he is also sceptical of Turkey’s state-led modernization

project and bitterly critical of the elite Westernists for seeking to abandon

Turkey’s traditional values and identity.331

3. Hybridity

My world is a mixture of the local—the national—and the West.—Orhan Pamuk332

I only want to amuse myself frontside and backside,to be Eastern and Western both.

—Orhan Pamuk (MNR, 382)

Bhabha discusses that mimicry leads to hybridity. Through imitating the

Other, the Self tries to rewrite his identity in the liminal space by becoming

329 Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6, 134.330 Pamuk, Other Colours, 240.331 Daglier, “Orhan Pamuk on the Turkish Modernization Project”, 147-148.332 Pamuk, Other Colours, 410.


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hybrid.333 This is also experienced by Turkey, which tries to rewrite its new

identity by way of abruptly adopting Western culture and erasing its Islamic

Ottoman culture. However, by mentioning the quotation above that his world is a

mixture of the East and the West, Pamuk wants to offer hybridity as an alternative

solution to resolve the tension of these two poles. In this section, I try to present

Pamuk’s background as a writer in presenting hybridity in My Name is Red and

The White Castle, which influences his solution to the predicament of the

oscillation between being enchanted to the West and being drawn to its own

tradition that Turkish society is undergoing.

Although Ataturk’s Westernization seemed to eliminate cosmopolitanism

in Turkey, there are still remnants left and remained and even be a hybrid. The

concept of hybridity shows that the culture of a nation is not purely the result of

the absolute national culture itself but rather the result of the interaction between

nations, groups, or ethnics.334 In the case of Turkey, the interaction and contact

between the Ottoman and the West as well as the West migration to İstanbul had

flourished since the 15th century335 and it had created new cultures, which were

the result of the cultural assimilation between Eastern and Western culture. As it

is explained in the previous chapter, Mehmet II even let and encouraged the

Greek, the Armenian, and the Jews to live in İstanbul after the Fall of

Constantinople in 1453. The city, moreover, had flourished as a multicultural

society for hundreds of years and became the city of tolerance.336 It is a very

333 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 120.334 See Bhabha, The Location of Culture.335 Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 32.336 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 366.


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special city because it is a door that connects Europe to Asia.337 As the result of

the old cosmopolitanism, İstanbul has become the city of hybrid, “cross-cultural

exchange,”338 which is the mixture of Western culture and Eastern tradition.

Furthermore, the grand mosques and buildings in Turkey are mostly the

result of the dialogue between the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire

culture. Hagia Sophia, the legacy of the late Byzantine Empire, is the most

obvious example of hybrid in İstanbul. At the Byzantine Empire era, this building

was a grand Orthodox church, which was also as the centre of the Greek Orthodox

religion. After Mehmet took Constantinople, which was as the centre of the

Eastern Roman Empire,339 the basilica’s function had changed into a mosque and

its name also transformed into Ayasofya. Aşikpaşazade, quoted by Boyar and

Fleet, explains that Mehmed the Fatih, on the first Friday after the conquest, held

the prayer in Ayasofya,340 an Orthodox church that was used as a mosque.341

After the Ottoman conquest, Hagia Sophia, the Orthodox Basilica, became

a mosque, remaining in this state until the early days of the Turkish Republic342

when it was converted into museum by the first Turkey’s president, Mustafa

Kemal Ataturk. Moreover, Turkey also has some mosques, whose architecture is a

337 Martins, “Orhan Pamuk”, 171.338 Ashcroft, et.al, Post-Colonial Studies, 109.339 Laksana, “İstanbul: Melankoli”.340 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 11.341 The Christian mural paintings that exist in Hagia Sophia’s walls and ceiling were covered and

plastered. Besides, the removal of ceremonial furniture, the insertion of mihrab, the addition ofIslamic calligraphies, and four minarets were the evidence showed the conversion from church tomosque. William Emerson and Robert L. Van Nice, “Hagia Sophia and the First Minaret Erectedafter the Conquest of Constantinople”, American Journal of Archaeology 54, 1 (1950): 28.

342 Komins, “Cosmopolitanism Depopulated”, 363.


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borrowing from Hagia Sophia. Those mosques are the Şehzade343 and the

Süleymaniye, which built under the reigned of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent

by Sinan the Great, and “the Blue Mosque, which built under Sultan Ahmed I”344.

Sinan’s design of the Şehzade and the Süleymaniye is a product of the dialogue

between Ottoman tradition and the Byzantine paradigm of Hagia Sophia.345 This

is the way used by Sinan to overcome the hüzün and the tension of the East and

the West. Stierlin stresses that, “the Süleymaniye design’s owes much to Hagia

Sophia. The spaces created are like those of Hagia Sophia and the two buildings

are of similar dimensions”.346 Süleyman was intensely aware of this hybrid

architecture. Indeed, Süleyman conceived that the Süleymaniye was a parallel to

Hagia Sophia.347 If Stierlin says that this building is a parallel to Hagia Sophia, I

argue that Süleymaniye is a rivalry to the building, which is the monument of the

Byzantine Empire. Süleyman the Magnificent tries to write a new story above the

Byzantine’s, which is still visible underneath the newer writing.

It is not only the city of İstanbul and the mosques that are hybrid but a

number of Ottoman sultans are also hybrid. They were Murat I, the son of Orhan

Gazi, and his son, Bayezit I, both of them had Christian Greek mothers.348

Moreover, Selim II and Murat III were also had Christian mothers. Selim II was

343 Şehzade is the first sultanic mosque, which is as the symbol of Süleyman’s absolute power.Ernst Egli states that this mosque was estimately built in 1543. Moreover, Sinan’s the Şehzade wasalso influenced by Atik Sinan’s design for the Fatih Camii. See Stierlin, Turkey, 120.

344 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 190.345 Stierlin, Turkey, 122.346 Stierlin, Turkey, 126-127.347 Stierlin, Turkey, 131.348 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 24.


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the son of Süleyman I and Sultana Roxelana349, while Murat III was the son of

Selim II and Safiye Sultan,350 who was originally a Venetian.351 However, the

weddings of the Ottoman sultans with the Western women were done to bridge

the in-betweenness between the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire (the

West) in order to firm diplomatic and family ties.352 In addition, Shaw adds that

along with the marriage alliances,

the Ottomans inevitably inherited Byzantine…fiefs, taxes, ceremonials, officials,and administrators. …Court ceremonial and central administrative practices wereaffected by Byzantine patterns. …The vassal Christian princes of the Balkansalso sent contingents to the Ottoman army as well as advisers who helped developOttoman provincial and central administrative institutions. Since conversion wasnot yet a prerequisite for entering Ottoman service, many Christians served thesultans as officers, soldiers, and administrators.353

The Ottoman Sultans’ mix marriages, I argue, were not only ways to firm

diplomatic and family ties, as it has been mentioned above. The marriage

“coalition” is also an attempt to “control and conquer” the West through marrying

the Christians princess.

This hybrid background also influences the way the Ottoman Sultans see

the West, for instance Mehmed II, Murad III, and Ahmed I. Borrowing from Said,

I indicate that Europe is the Ottoman Sultans’ cultural contestant and one of their

deepest and most recurring images of the Other. The Sultans not only made an

effort to conquer Europe’s territories but they also seduced by Europe’s art,

349 Roxelana, also known as Hürrem Sultan, was a woman of Russian origin captured in Galiciaby the Crimean Tatars. She was one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history andSüleyman’s favourite wife. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 90. Stierlin, Turkey, 120.

350 Safiye Sultan was not only controlling the affairs in the capital but in politics, as the leader ofa major party, she also represented the pro-Venetian members of the Ottoman court. Shaw, Historyof the Ottoman Empire, 179, 184.

351 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 177.352 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 21.353 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 23-24.


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culture, science, and technology. As the Orient’s intimate Other, Europe has

seduced Turkey with its glimmering modern art, culture, science, and technology.

Pamuk also mentions that for Turkey, Europe has always seen as a dream, a vision

of the future, a goal to achieve or danger, and a future.354 “Sultan Murad III is the

Ottoman Sultan most interested in miniatures and books and he had the Book of

Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories produced in İstanbul”

(MNR, 447). Nevertheless, Sultan Murad III wants to emulate Europe using the

secret book, which is completed by Uncle Effendi and his palace miniaturists

using the Frankish style. In addition, Sultan Ahmed I, who experiences few

military failures, wants to conquer Europe using an incredible weapon that is

developed using Western science by Hoja and his look-alike Italian slave.

Orhan Pamuk himself is “hybrid”. He is a Turk who comes from a secular

bourgeoisie, Westernized İstanbul family in Turkey. For the bourgeoisie, religion

and God is only for those in pain, to offer comfort for those who are so poor, to

care for the beggars, and to aid pure-hearted innocents in times of trouble.

Similarly, in Attaturk’s view, to move away from religion is to be modern and

Western since Islamic traditions and practices are impeding Turkish national

progress.355 Personally, Pamuk does not believe in God as much as he might have

wished for he is a Westernist. He expresses his secret love of God in trembling

confusion and painful solitude. However, when he was grown up, the pain he felt

354 Pamuk, Other Colours, 190.355 Pamuk, İstanbul, 176-182.


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was not in being able far from God but from everyone around him, from the

collective spirit of the city.356

Pamuk’s identity is also split into two. Part of him longs like a radical

Westernizer who wants the city to become entirely European but another part

yearns to belong to İstanbul he has grown lo love, by instinct, by habit, and by

memory.357 This is similar to Black, one of the main characters in MNR, who

longs for the Western painting and loves for the Eastern tradition. His searching

for his love, Shekure, and his journey for twelve years in Persia shows the process

on finding his true self. On the other hand, another part of him still longing for his

beloved has caused a deep sorrow for he does not have her portrait. As Black said

after meeting Orhan, Shekure’s youngest son,

Had I taken Shekure’s portrait with me, rendered in the style of theVenetian masters, I wouldn’t have felt such loss during my long travelswhen I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I’d leftsomewhere behind me. For if a lover’s face survives emblazoned on yourheart, the world is still your home. (MNR, 35)

After twelve years in his exile, when he returns to the city at the age of thirty-six,

Black is painfully aware that he starts to forget his beloved’s face. (MNR, 7) The

quotation above stresses that Black also wants to appropriate the Frankish

painting because this painting method is important to remind him of his lover’s

beautiful face and keep the flame of his love towards Shekure. Black believes that

it is okay for the palace miniaturists to embrace Western style of painting as well

as preserving the Islamic illumination tradition for it is necessary to value

people’s uniqueness. His openness to the Italian Renaissance painting is shown by

356 Pamuk, İstanbul, 185-187.357 Pamuk, İstanbul, 323.


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his decision to come back to his hometown and helps his uncle, Enishte Effendi,

to finish Sultan’s commissioned book and also find the murderer of Elegant

Effendi, the gilder.

Along with Pamuk’s “hybrid” life, I argue that his oeuvre is also “hybrid”

because it is a reflection of his personal life. Pamuk also mentions that the tension

between the past and present in his split identity is reconciled by combining his

love for modern art and Western literature with the culture of the city in which he

lives.358 In The White Castle, he even inserts his childhood memories to illustrate

the tension between the East and the West and reflects his relationship with his

brother, Şevket, which is full of jealousy and competition in the characters of

Hoja and his young Italian slave. As Pamuk mentions in his essay that,

Like my Italian hero, I once had a new outfit that my brother got to wear becausehis was torn to pieces. …On cold winter morning, if our mother bought ussomething to eat, she would say the same thing as the Master’s mother: “Let’s eatthese before anyone sees us.”359

Pamuk’s experience that is mentioned above can also be found in The White

Castle, when he narrates Hoja’s life in Edirne when was twelve years old. After

visiting his grandfather in the hospital, “his mother would buy them halva and

whisper, ‘Let’s eat it before anyone sees us’.” (TWC, 80) Moreover, Pamuk also

tells his childhood memories through the Italian slave that recount an episode

from his life in Venice when he was a child. The fireworks display in İstanbul that

he prepared reminds him of his first experience watching a fireworks display in

Venice. He was unhappy at that time because “it was not him who was wearing

358 Pamuk, İstanbul, 111.359 Pamuk, Other Colours, 251.


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his new red suit, but his big brother who’d torn his own clothes in a quarrel the

previous day”. (TWC, 27)

Göknar mentions that My Name is Red exhibits Pamuk’s autobiographical

self-reflexivity.360 In MNR, Pamuk copies the character of her mother, his brother,

and he himself into the story. There are some similarities that we can find within

the characters in this novel. Enishte’s daughter, Shekure, she has the same name

and personality as Pamuk’s mother.

There is some of my mother in Shekure. The way she scolds Şevket in the novel,the way she watches over the brothers are copied from life. This is a strongdominant woman who knows what she is doing. But there the similarity ends.361

In My Name is Red, the characters named Orhan and Şevket also have some

similarities to Pamuk’s and his older brother’s. He emphasises this in Other

Colours that,

as in My Name is Red, our father lived far away from us. My mother, my brother,and I lived together. As in the book, we brothers fought. As in the book we wouldtalk of our father’s return. Our mother would give us a hard time when we did. AsMy Name is Red, she would shout at us when she was angry. But there thesimilarity ends.362

Orhan and Şevket’s father is a soldier who “failed to return with the rest of the

army from warring against the Safavids” (MNR, 49). Those boys will always talk

about their father’s return for their still believe that their “father will return from

the war” (MNR, 100). Moreover, when the two boys are quarrelling and when

Shekure is angry, she will slap them. (MNR, 153, 155, 227)

Orhan Pamuk tries to mediate and to create the liminal space, to bridge the

in-betweenness, as well as to conciliate the oscillation between the East and the

360 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 36.361 Pamuk, Other Colours, 268.362 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269.


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West by combining and mixing those two traditions, methods, styles, habits, and

histories, which he delivers in his tales.363 In My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk

narrates that miniature painting itself is a hybrid. It is a mix of various painting

methods and techniques from Arabic illustration and Mongol-Chinese painting. In

addition, the Ottoman miniaturists also take their inspiration from Persian

painting,364 which flourished in the Herat school of Bihzad and continued during

the reign of Shah Tahmasp.365

“Nothing is pure,” said Enishte Effendi. “In the realm of book arts…twostyles never brought together have come together to create something newand wondrous. We owe Bihzad and the splendour of Persian painting tothe meeting of an Arabic illustrating sensibility and Mongol-Chinesepainting. Shah Tahmasp’s best paintings marry Persian style with Turkmensubtleties.” (MNR, 176)

From the quotation above, Enishte wants to emphasize that even the miniature

painting is not pure; this painting style is hybrid. Kuiper explains further that

stylistically, Persian painting is related to Chinese painting whose influence

introduced by the Mongols during the Il-Khanid period.366 Moreover, I indicate

that after the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman miniature painting had

been influenced by the Western style of painting. Can Kerametli also mentions

that Ottoman miniature painting style is the result of “the meeting of the Eastern

and Western painting school”.367 The secret book is Pamuk’s alternative solution

to the endless oscillation whether to embrace Western painting or to preserve the

Islamic illumination. It contains the “two styles never brought together have come

363 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.364 Pamuk, İstanbul: Memories, 44.365 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 10.366 Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 196.367 Kerametli, “Turkish Miniatures in the 16th Century”.


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together to create something new and wondrous”. (MNR, 176)

Due to the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and a Venetian painter who

was called by Mehmed II, I argue that the miniature painting technique of that

period could be the result of the Eastern painting technique that meets the Western

style of painting. In the same vein with Dimand that “as a result of contact with

European art, which was greatly admired by Akbar, Mughal painters introduced

atmospheric effects and even perspective into their paintings”.368 Therefore, it

cannot be denied that before Mongols ruled Persia, Persian painting’s style was

similar to the Italian Renaissance painting. In the Mughal School under the

Emperor of Akbar, the Emperor “encourages all his artists to sign their work”

(MNR, 432-433) in addition “a Persian calligrapher was added his name written in

the margin in red ink.369

Olive’s great ability as a miniaturist is also hybrid. As one of the

workshop’s most brilliant creator, he can wonderfully combine the Persian,

Mongol, and Chinese painting styles. Master Osman emphasizes this that “Herat

painting and İstanbul ornamentation happily merged in Olive” (MNR, 279). With

his background as a miniaturist who is trained by Persian painting master and his

longing to embrace the Western style of painting, Olive tries to overcome his

hüzün by combining those two painting traditions. In fact, he still fails in making

his self-portrait in order to realize his ambition to create an authentic identity even

though he has made an attempt for many times.

368 Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, 249.369 Dimand, “Persian and Indian Miniature Paintings”, 250.


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Moreover, I argue that the secret book itself is also hybrid. It contains

paintings that are a mixture of the Turkish miniature and the Italian Renaissance

painting. The book contains Sultan’s portrait that is painted in the Venetian style

and the depiction of Death, which is inspired by familiar scenes found in many

Book of Kings370 volumes, is painted in a combination of the two painting styles.

(MNR, 122-123)

Among the pictures that depicted the funeral of the late Sultan Suleymanwas one I’d made with bold but sad colours, combining a compositionalsensibility inspired by the Franks with my own attempt at shading—whichI’d added later. …I reminded him that Death was unique, just like theportraits of infidels I had seen hanging in Venetian palazzo; all of themdesperately yearned to be rendered distinctly. (MNR, 123)

The last painting made by Olive is also the evidence that the secret book is a

combination of the Ottoman miniature and the Venetian painting. Master Osman

also mentions that the book the Sultan has commissioned is a mix of the Western

way of seeing and the Eastern way of seeing. It can be seen when he examines the

pages on “the painting prepared for Enishte Effendi’s book” (MNR, 272) that are

given to the Head Treasurer.

The desire to depict a tree simply such, as a Venetian masters did, washere combined with the Persian way of seeing the world from above, andthe result was a miserable painting that was neither Venetian nor Persian.…Attempting to combine two separate styles, my miniaturists…hadcreated a work devoid of any skill whatsoever. (MNR, 272)

However, the hybrid painting style, which is resulted from the imitation of the

Frankish painting, can also create ambivalence towards the miniaturists because it

370 Book of Kings or that is also known as Shah-nameh, consists of Persian painting that isinfluenced by Chinese painting. Its main importance lies in its being the earliest known illustrativework to depict in a strikingly dramatic fashion the meaning of the Iranian epic. Its battle scenes, itsdescriptions of fights with monsters, its enthronement scenes are all powerful representations ofthe colorful and often cruel legend of Iranian kingship. Kuiper, Islamic: Art, 196-197.


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stays in and two painting styles that are totally different and contradict. This

condition also mirrors the Ottoman Empire as well as Turkey that “struggle to

negotiate between competing Eastern and Western Ideology”371 and the

predicament of the oscillation between being drawn to Western tradition or to

preserve Eastern tradition.

From the explanation above, I find that the Sultan’s secret book, which

contains the hybrid style of painting, is similar to Pamuk’s alternative solution

towards Turkey’s predicament of the oscillation between the East and the West.

Pamuk suggests that Turkey should embrace the two different cultures, live with

the two souls, and create a new tradition that is a hybrid of the Eastern Ottoman

tradition and the Western modernity. In My Name is Red, by presenting the secret

book, Pamuk tries to mediate the complex problem of the oscillation by

harmonizing the two contradict ways of seeing. Additionally, two artists who

combine the two different worldviews of painting also solve the predicament of

the oscillation. Sinan Beg—an Ottoman artist from Topkapi Palace whose work

was inspired by Bellini’s portrait—as well as Şeker Ahmet Pasha drew from both

Eastern and Western traditions that the results of their works were neither a

Venetian Renaissance portrait nor a classic Persian-Ottoman miniature.372

The East-West conflict and the hybrid construction of those two different

poles in The White Castle can be seen more on Hoja and his Italian slave’s speech

and narration.

371 Ali and Hagood, “Heteroglossic Sprees”, 506.372 Pamuk, Other Colours, 316.


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With his phenomenal diligence and quickness of mind, in six months he’dacquired a basic grasp of Italian which he’d improve upon later, read all ofmy books, and by the time he’d made me repeat to him everything Iremembered, there was no longer any way in which I was superior to him.(TWC, 33)

Kantar mentions that the sentence above has a hybrid construction for it describes

“the slave’s ironic characterization of the master, and the master’s scornful

attitude towards the slave”.373 The memoir that is written by Hoja and his young

Italian slave is also hybrid. In additional, the writing of memoir “Why am I what I

am” has caused blurring identities between Hoja and his slave. The slave also

emphasises by saying that,

More important, I felt as if his sufferings and defeats were my own. ...Theperson I once had been had left me and was gone, and the I that was nowdozing in a corner jealousy desired him, as if in him I could recover theenthusiasm I had lost. (TWC, 107)

Their close relationship, their scientific project—a firework display, a model of a

universe, a clock, and the giant weapon—their lives together, and their exchange

of identities—which show the Self’s desire for the Other—have erased the binary

opposition between Hoja and the Italian slave. Now, Hoja is like his Italian slave

(83). Their resemblance is even more horrible (TWC, 84) and the two of them

were actually one person (TWC, 82).

After Hoja goes to Venice and the Italian slave takes his place as the

“imperial astrologer, get married, and have four children” (TWC, 147), it seems

that Hoja himself that speak through the slave.

For the sake of my readers in that terrible world to come, I did all I couldto make both myself and Him, whom I could not separate from myself,come alive in the story. (TWC, 55)

373 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 129.


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The way the Italian slave tells his story to the visitor who comes to his house

shows that “the Westerner is no longer talking through an Easterner’s point of

view, but we have the voice of Hoja himself talking through his slave.”374 In other

words, the Italian slave, now, becomes hybrid by appropriating and living in

Hoja’s character. Pamuk himself mentioning that in the last chapter of The White

Castle, he is not able to differentiate whether it is Hoja or the Italian slave who

narrates the story by stating that “I am still not sure if it was the Italian slave or

the Ottoman master who wrote the manuscript of The White Castle.”375

Bhabha underlines that, essentially, hybridity shows that the culture is the

result of the interaction between nations, groups, or ethnics of a nation or between

nations. In MNR, the meeting of the two different painting traditions, the Islamic

miniature and the Italian Renaissance painting, has led to the East’s admiration

towards the West. The enchantment of Western tradition has created the in-

betweenness and the oscillation that are experienced by the miniaturists between

preserving the Islamic miniature painting and imitating the Venetian masters. This

tension also leads the miniaturists to mix those two styles as the solution that they

take in the third space. However, hybridity can lead to ambivalence because it

lives and embraces two things that are contradicted. Additionally, by extolling

Western superiority, the East has made a myth that Europe is superior to the East.

374 Kantar, “The Stylistic Dialogue”, 133.375 Pamuk, Other Colours, 250.


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4. Theoretical Observation

This chapter illustrates Pamuk’s solutions to the problem on the

predicament of the oscillation of the East and the West that are offered by his two

selected works through the enchantment and appropriation of Frankish painting

and Western science and technology. Through his oeuvre, Pamuk wants to

mediate and break down the binary opposition of the East and the West, of Self

and Other, of master and slave, and of miniature and portrait that is always

problematized. Said, in Orientalism, mentions that the binary opposition that

separates the East and the West is a political doctrine for dominating, having

authority, and maintaining power over the Orient.376 The Kemalists and the ruling

elites take advantage of this binary to self-orientalised it country and promote the

stereotype that Turkey is weaker and inferior than the West and launch their

Westernization agenda. As Turkey’s “deepest and most recurring images of the

Other”, 377 the West has been imagined and believed as the only solution that can

save and develop the country from the destruction. When the Empire collapsed,

the elites assume that Turkey “requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even

redemption for it has been isolated from European progress in the sciences, arts,

and commerce.378

In this chapter, I stress that hybridity is Pamuk’s alternative solution to the

predicament of Turkey’s oscillation in its modern identity formation. He uses

hybridity through presenting hüzün, the very essence of melancholy,379 as a way

376 Said, Orientalism, 3.377 Said, Orientalism, 1-2.378 Said, Orientalism, 6.379 Pamuk, İstanbul, 92.


154

to overcome the deep spiritual loss of the Islamic Ottoman tradition and of the

erasure of the Islamic miniature painting. Hüzün also leads Turkish people to the

answer of their sadness and relieve the ache that can save their souls. Pamuk even

suggests to combine the two cultures in revealing the feeling of melancholy rather

than living in one of those cultures or only slavishly imitating Western culture

therefore a new hybrid culture can be invented.380

Through his position that is not taking sides, his critique to the

representatives of the secularists and the conservatives, as well as his hybrid

background as a writer, Pamuk wants to emphasize that embracing two spirits

(culture) is not a big sin. In addition, he also criticises the Westernists who want

to simplify the complex cosmopolitanism in Turkey by conducting modernization

project that force the Turks to slavishly imitating the West and leave the old

Ottoman tradition. This modernization project, moreover, has left a deep scar and

confusion in Turkish society who becomes the victim of this movement. Bruno

Latour emphasizes the argument above by saying that modernization “destroys the

near-totality of cultures and native by force and bloodshed”381. However, the

Ottoman illuminators cannot avoid this because sooner or later the old Ottoman

tradition will be lost for it is simply that Western culture is more attractive than

the Islamic Ottoman culture.

In this chapter, Bhabha’s discourse on Postcolonialism illuminates

Pamuk’s solutions towards the East-West dichotomy in his two selected novels.

380 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370.381 Bruno Latour, We have never been Modern translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1993) 130.


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Pamuk, as I have mentioned in chapter III, offers the third space and chooses to

mix the East and the West traditions as his alternative solution of the predicament

of the oscillation in My Name is Red and The White Castle. In this third space, the

East negotiates the binary opposition of the cultural differences. As Bhabha says

that the third space is a place where the exchange of identity and mimicry that

results hybrid takes place. Pamuk proposes the liminal space to negotiate the

everlasting predicament of the binary between the East and the West. He offers

the third space and chooses to combine the East and the West as an alternative

solution of this predicament.

For Pamuk, this liminal space is an individual’s private place in his

identity formation processes that should not be disturbed by certain groups or

sides. Pamuk not only proposes the liminal space to his readers as a place where

the East and the West meet, moreover, he also symbolizes his works as the

Bosphorous Bridge, which connects the Eastern and Western side of İstanbul.

Instead of giving clear solutions to the dichotomy and the oscillation of the East

and the West in his selected works, Pamuk displays a tragedy that is experienced

by both of the representatives. Pamuk clearly depicted the characters that overly

bound to the East and to the West experience tragedy and death in their life. He

wants to show how dangerous it will be to be totally East or West for it will only

left Turkey with a single spirit, which is worse than having the sickness.382

He also criticizes the Westernists and anti-Westernists that demand Turkey

to be totally East or totally West. Essentially, the binary opposition between the



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East and the West is created by the elites that self-orientalised their people by

constructing a myth that West is superior and the East is inferior. The Turks self-

orientalism that leads to the abrupt civilization project by the elite Westernists

also left a deep wound to the loss of the grand Ottoman Empire. In addition, the

binary opposition, self-orientalism, and the complex desire to imitate the Other in

Said’s discourse on the Orientalism that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters in

his selected works can be solved by living in and mixing the two different cultures

to produce hybrid culture. In The White Castle, Pamuk presents Turkey’s split

identity through Hoja and his Italian slave whose identities are constantly blurred

and their characters also blend as one in the end of the novel. Moreover, Pamuk

also presents the Sultan’s commissioned Orient book, which contains Western

style of painting, as a room to mediate the predicament of the Orient and Occident

different way of seeing.

Additionally, Bhabha also emphasize that the East-West tension can be

resolved by providing the liminal space as a way to mediate, combine, and mix

the two contrast “colours”. By imitating the Other, the East tries to rewrite the

new identity above the earlier identity and resulted hybrid culture.383 However,

Bhabha also warns that sometimes hybridity and hybrid culture can drive people

to a new crisis and ambivalence because people live in two different traditions.

Moreover, Bhabha’s idea on hybridity has important consequences for minority or

Eastern cultures have a possibility to be ignored, assimilated, and erased.384 While

Pamuk, he has different argument from Bhabha, by stressing that hybridity, which

383 Bhabha, Location of Culture, 120.384 Huddart, Homi K. Bhabha, 99.


157

is resulted in the liminal space is not that dangerous however it enriches the Turks

and Pamuk’s characters identity in his oeuvre. Pamuk also mentions that what is

more dangerous is that becoming totally East or totally West because it can

destroy and kill each other. Therefore, Pamuk proposes to embrace Western

modernity without leaving the Islamic Ottoman roots.

Here, Pamuk and Bhabha have the same agenda in challenging the ideas of

being modern, which is always interrelated to the adoption of Western cultures

and traditions that also brings melancholy. Pamuk challenges Turkey’s

modernization that is inspired by French Revolution and raises the spirit of

nationalism and purification, which agenda is the erasure of multiculturalism.385

This abrupt Westernization is a self-colonialism of identity by Turkey’s Western

elites that desires the uniformity and rejects multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity,

multi-lingualism, and cosmopolitanism386 that leads to the authoritarian and

dictatorship. Pamuk’s selected works are reflection of his own hybrid life. His

hybrid background, as a man who comes from a secular family but highly

appreciates the Ottoman tradition, also influences him to reconcile the two

different cultures and traditions that are beautifully captured in his selected

stories.

385 Mohamad, Catatan Pinggir 6, 148-150.386 Göknar, “My Name is Re(a)d”, 55.


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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

1. Achievement and Significance

This thesis is conducted to uncover the East-West dichotomy that is mostly

presented in Pamuk’s works as well as to reveal how modernity that is represented

by Western art, culture, science, and technology challenges Turkey’s tradition,

culture, art, and identity. This dichotomy results from the fact that modernity—

that is represented by the West—has become a threat as well as seduction since

the Ottoman Empire. Turkey’s desire to Westernize itself and its dilemma of

whether to preserve their old Ottoman tradition or to totally embrace modernity

have been stunningly captured by Orhan Pamuk in his two novels, My Name is

Red and The White Castle. These two novels mainly concern with the oscillation

around the two traditions, between the miniature painting and the Italian

Renaissance painting (MNR) and also astrology and the illogical interpretation of

dreams and stars as well as science and technology (TWC).

Pamuk highlights the endless oscillation in his two selected works by

presenting the internal struggle experienced by the characters whether to leave the

old Ottoman tradition or to embrace the modern Western tradition. As a writer,

Pamuk does not choose nor judge one of the sides explicitly but highly

appreciates the process of an individual to find his identity without any claims that

can distract him from his identity formation process. His denial to choose one of

the sides has delivered books, which are mix the Eastern and Western method,

styles, habits, and histories; a combination of two opposing traditions that produce


159

a hybrid in his works.387 The Nobel Prize winner wants to illustrate the processes

on searching for identity of the Turk, which is not the contemporary issue since

the Ottoman Empire in his works.388

In revealing Pamuk’s stories, which mostly deal with the issues concerning

with the negotiation and the complexity of the oscillation between the East and

the West and the identity crisis, I propose two questions. First, how is the

oscillation of the East and the West and Turkey’s complex desire to imitate the

Other depicted in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White Castle and how

do the theories of Said and Bhabha help this discourse? Second, what are the

solutions that Pamuk’s selected stories offer to the predicament of the oscillation

of the East and the West?

There are two theories that I have used to answer the formulated questions

namely, the discourse on the Orientalism by Edward Said and the discourse on

Postcolonialism by Homi K. Bhabha. Those two discourses are used to dismantle

the oscillation of the East and the West as well as the Self’s complex desire to

imitate Other. However, this is not an ordinary Orientalism and Postcolonialism

for Turkey’s condition is different to India that was colonialized by the United

Kingdom. Actually, it was the Ottoman that defeated some parts of European

region and how the East imagines the Other (the West) as its rival or cultural

contestant is more tended to Occidentalism. Additionally, I also use other

information related to Pamuk’s selected tales such as history, art, and socio-

387 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.388 Afridi & Byuze, Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk, 5.


160

culture that is linked to the actual events in Turkey in unity with the discussion in

the novel.

This thesis has shown that Pamuk, in his two selected oeuvre, outlines the

complexity of the oscillation of the East and the West by presenting Turkey’s

cosmopolitanism, the enchantment and appropriation of Western art and science,

the maintenance of Eastern aspects, and furthermore, the Turks’ personal search

for identity as individual. The old buildings “left by Turks, Armenians, Kurds,

Jews, and several other ethnic and religious communities”389 as well as other

hybrid constructions show cosmopolitanism and harmonious relation between

various cultures, religions, and ethnics in İstanbul. The encounter of the Ottoman

Empire and the West has created a desire to appropriate Western art, culture, and

technology that are seductive. However, Pamuk also shows that the Other (the

West) is not only present as a seduction towards the Turks but also as a threat to

their tradition. This threat, in addition, has encouraged Master Osman, Nusret

Hoja and his follower, as well as Olive to take action to preserve their traditions.

Furthermore, the predicament of the oscillation between being enchanted to the

West and being drawn to its own tradition that Turkish society is undergoing has

led to the identity crisis that is experienced by Pamuk’s characters and also the

Ottoman Sultans.

This thesis has proven that as a novelist, Pamuk clearly shows his

impartiality neither to the East nor to the West. Otherwise, he chooses to be a

bridge that connects the East and the West just like the Bosphorus Bridge that

389 Ergın, “East-West Entanglements”, 224.


161

bonds the Asian and European sides of İstanbul. In his oeuvre, Pamuk does not

give any clear solution to the problem faced by the characters in dealing with the

complexity of the oscillation between the two traditions. However, he presents a

tragedy, death, and irony that are experienced by the representations of the two

traditions, which can give an illustration to the readers who are still in their

identity formation process.

Pamuk wants to criticise the Eastern and Western side, the Ottoman and

Western tradition, as well as the conservatives and secularists through his

masterpieces. He expects that Turkey should not have only one soul that of the

East or the West. In his collected essays, Other Colours, he stresses that Turkey

should invent a strong local culture that is a combination of the Eastern and

Western traditions.390 Additionally, through his novels, which are the mixing of

the two traditions, styles, and histories, Pamuk also tries to create the liminal

space and to mediate the predicament of the oscillation between the East and the

West as well as to bridge the in-betweenness. The Sultan’s commissioned book is

Pamuk’s alternative solution that he offers towards Turkey’s predicament of the

oscillation. Pamuk tries to mediate the complex oscillation as well as release

hüzün felt by the ottoman miniaturists by harmonizing the two contradict ways of

seeing in the hybrid book.

Through Pamuk’s works, the readers are invited to appreciate, respect, and

maintain the diversity of cultures, traditions, and religions around them that,

nowadays, it seems difficult to be realized. My Name is Red and The White Castle

390 Pamuk, Other Colours, 369-370.


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have all aspects, which can sharpen the readers’ awareness on the enchantment of

modernity that challenge the multiculturalism or even disrupt their culture and

traditions as well as lead to the identity crisis. The declaration of the Islamic State

(ISIS) and the various fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, that has created terror

and also tries to change the ideology of Pancasila, are some examples that can

endanger those diversities.

The condition in the Middle East cannot be separated from the effect on

the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. After the First World War, victorious

Allies occupied İstanbul and the British took control. Under the Treaty of Sѐvres

in 1920, the Allies carved up the Middle East between them, assigning a small,

rump state to the Turks in the north-west Anatolia, with İstanbul under Allied

control and the Straits turned into a consortium-controlled waterway.391

Moreover, Dewabrata also mentions that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire had

triggered the uprising of the Arab countries, which were under the imperium. It

also caused the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Moreover, British and French also play an important role in altering the map of

power in Middle East.392 The changes on the map of power in Middle East have

raised new problems that are faced by the ex-Ottoman Empire region such as

Syria and Persia, now Iran.

Trias Kuncahyono mentions that on Sunday, June 29, 2014, ISIS (The

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) declared a new Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and

Syria. Its region stretches from the eastern edge of Aleppo, Syria to Diyala

391 Boyar and Fleet, Social History, 5.392 Dewabrata, “Konflik Paling Mematikan”, 5.


163

province in the border of Iraq and Iran. This declaration also realises the dream of

the Islamic fundamentalist group who yearns for the raise of the Islamic Caliphate

state.393 ISIS’s actions to maintain the Sharia or Islamic laws reminds me with the

extremist group in My Name is Red, Nusret Hoja and his followers, that also try to

maintain and protect the path of Exalted Muhammad. Both Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

and Nusret Hoja have an agenda to erase the cosmopolitanism, which adorn the

face of Mosul and İstanbul city. Just like İstanbul, Mosul, once home to diverse

faiths but after Mosul was taken by ISIS many have fled and leaving perhaps only

200 in the city.394

ISIS not only warns women in Mosul to wear full-face veil, as an act to

prevent them from falling into vulgarity,395 and issues an ultimatum to Christian

population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy, or face death396 but also

blows up Jonah’s tomb,397 another place of worship, and also Ka’bah because

these places are claimed as places for apostasy.398 Similarly, Nusret Hoja’s

followers also raid the Coffee house, attack the miniaturists, and kill the

storyteller.

393 Trias Kuncahyono, “NIIS dan Masa Depan Negara Bangsa”, Kompas, 6 Juli 2014, 5.394 ---------, “Convert, Pay Tax, or Die, Islamic State Warns Christians”, 18 July 2014, 31 July

2014 <http//:www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/isis-Islamic-state-issue-ultimatum-to-iraq-christians>.

395 Reuters in Baghdad, “Iraq: Isis Warns Women to Wear Full Veil or Face Punishment”, 25July 2014, 31 July 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/iraq-islamic-state-full-veil-warns-wear-women-punishment>.

396 ---------, “Convert, Pay Tax, or Die”.397 Jonah’s tomb is a burial place, which functions as a worship site for the Abrahamic religions,

Christian, Islam, and Jew.398 Associated Press in Baghdad, “ISIS Militants Blow up Jonah’s Tomb”, 24 July 2014, 31 July

2014 <http//:www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/24/isis-militants-blow-up-jonah-tomb>;Azyumardi Azra, “ISIS, ‘Khalifah’, dan Indonesia”, Kompas, 5 August 2014, 6.


164

Indonesia also experiences the problem on purification from certain groups

that want to simplify Indonesia’s multiculturalism and diversity that are complex.

On the pretext for defending Islam and solidarity among Muslims, many

Indonesian have declared to join ISIS. ISIS, which is claimed as “the world’s

most dangerous jihadist group,”399 is not only dangerous for both Middle Eastern

countries but also for Indonesia. ISIS despises both the Shia and the Sunni—who

are opposed to their ideology. Moreover, its ideology, which is contrary to the

ideology of Pancasila, can threaten the unitary of Indonesia, and pluralism. Along

with the explanation above, Kuncahyono, in “Radikalisme: Sebuah Petaka”,

highlights that ISIS is nothing but a threat for Indonesia, the state of Pancasila,

which highly respects pluralism, promotes the values of tolerance, and maintains

the human values.400

However, things above are contrary to the condition of the Ottoman

Caliphate that had been survived for more than 500 years. In the past, both the

Ottoman Empire and Majapahit—the greatest kingdom in Indonesia—had once

reached their heyday. However, religious tolerance as well as ethnic and culture

diversity had flourished under the Ottoman and Majapahit. Moreover, as I have

explained in Chapter III that since the Buyids era the relationship between

Muslim, Christian, and Jew were very close and this cosmopolitanism was also

well maintained.401

399 ---------, “Profile: Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)”, 16 June 2014, 31 July 2014<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24179084>.

400 Trias Kuncahyono, “Radikalisme: Sebuah Petaka”, Kompas, 5 August 2014, 9.401 See Islamic Cosmopolitanism on Chapter III.


165

Pamuk, once again, reminds the readers that through his works they are

invited to maintain the diversity of cultures, traditions, and religions around them.

Moreover, he also asks them to give more attention to the problem on the identity

crisis that is not only experienced by the East but also by the West. Western

identity concept is now shifting and changing. Western that is said to give

humanity and human rights in their highest place, in reality, they also torture,

persecute their minorities, and abuse human rights.402 In addition, Western’s

modernity, moreover, which was adopted by Turkey that was dazzled by the

superiority of the West by applying secularism in its system, now seems unsteady.

As their deepest image and rival, the West also dazzled to imitate and become the

East by becoming one of ISIS militant. Nowadays, many young Westerners from

Australia, the United States, as well as Germany become the member of the

Islamic State and fight in Syria. This shows that Western also experience an

ambivalence and identity crisis. Therefore, identity searching is a mystery and it

will not end as long as people live. As Bhabha also highlights that identity

formation processes are the result of the cultural engagement and it will always be

negotiated.403

In the field of literature, this study functions as a path that can lead the

other Indonesian writers and researchers to explore other aspects in Pamuk’s

works, as well as those who want to compare Pamuk’s and Indonesian authors’.

This thesis also hopes to bring new and different insights and perspectives in

analysing and studying Pamuk’s literary works. Moreover, in the field of

402 Pamuk, Other Colours, 215-216.403 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2.


166

education, the understanding of Pamuk’s project in mediating the East and the

West can be a relevant base to teach Indonesian students. Since my background is

from English Education and as an English teacher, My Name is Red and The

White Castle can be used as teaching material for I believe that Pamuk’s works

can increase and develop students’ tolerance towards various religions, cultures,

traditions, and tribes in Indonesia. Since Indonesia has a project on building

national character and this thesis also focus on the East-West oscillation that

related to the identity formation, I argue that understanding the concept on

hybridity and Turkey’s problem related to the identity crisis, MNR and TWC can

give insight and lesson to the Indonesian students to keep holding on their identity

but still embrace and filter Western culture.

2. Relevance

As I have explained in chapter I, Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The White

Castle are used in this study with the hope to raise the Indonesian reader’s

awareness regarding to the identity degradation as a result of the encounter

between the East and the West tradition or any radical ideology that can endanger

the unity of our nation. In this post-modern era, the extremists from the radical

groups that want to change the ideology of our country increasingly pressure

Indonesia’s multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Those groups are Jamaah

Islamiyah that is said as a jihad terror group that is led by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir,

Islamic State of Indonesia (NII), and ISIS. What is most widely reported today is

an Indonesian ISIS militant who challenges Indonesian Armed Forces Chief


167

General Moeldoko, National Police Chief General Sutarman, Banser, as well as

Densus 88 to fight ISIS in Syria.404 The Islamic State plans to invade and bring

Indonesia back to the right track, which is back to the Islamic Caliphate.

In relation to the topic of this thesis—which focuses on the ambivalence to

emulate Western tradition—I claim that through My Name is Red and The White

Castle, Pamuk asks his readers to respect the multiculturalism and

cosmopolitanism around them. In addition, he also invites the readers to

deconstruct the post-modern movement, which is purification performed by the

fundamentalists as well as the nationalists who want to simplify the complexity of

the multiculturalism in Turkey. Moreover, this movement is also happened in

Indonesia done by certain religious radical group that intends to transform

Indonesia into an Islamic country. As a nation with various cultures, traditions,

arts, and religions, Indonesia now facing a problem on the purification performed

by the extremist and the fundamentalist group. Both Turkey and Indonesia have a

similarity related to the massacre happened in the past on the violence that was

committed by the State. In migration during the First World War, millions of

Kurdish and Armenians were killed in the nationalization project conducted by

Ataturk. While in 1965, chaos broke out in Indonesia and the Indonesia’s

Communist party was blamed. It was the biggest massacre and ethnic cleansing

happened in Indonesia’s history. Under the leadership of Soeharto, hundreds of

thousands of people who were indicated had any relation with the Communist

404 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j17dKYzwEQ


168

Party (PKI) were kidnapped, killed, and exiled in Buru Island, especially those

who were Chinese.

After colonialism in Indonesia ended, it also experienced a self-

colonization, which was conducted by the military elite under the command of

General Soeharto as their brutal project to wipe communism out in Indonesia. As

the group that was indicated responsible to the big chaos in 1965, the new leader

who took over the power create a new colonialism and forced labour to their own

people that was more vicious than the Dutch and Japanese colonizers. Those

issues are closely related to Pamuk’s theme in My name is Red and The White

Castle that are discussed in this thesis. Pamuk’s works, which are approached by

the discourse on the Orientalism and Postcolonialism are beneficial for the

Indonesian readers for those works can show them how to understand their

identity as person and as part of a nation. Both Pamuk and Bhabha have similar

idea on the concept on hybridity that everything is hybrid, people are all hybrid,

whether it is from our name or language. In his selected works, Pamuk reminds us

that “nothing is pure” (MNR, 176) in this world that is in the same vein with what

Bhabha emphasizes that hybridity, principally, shows that the culture of a nation

is the result of the interaction between nations, groups, or ethnics of a nation.405

Colonialism in Indonesia have given birth to the great writer such as

Pramoedya Ananta Toer—a writer who is well known for his Buru Quartet—as

well as a great leader like our first President, Soekarno, who called for national

unity to fight against the colonizer. Through the character of Minke in his

405 See Bhabha, Location of Culture.


169

tetralogy, Pram encourages the Indonesian people to develop their nationalism to

fight against the Dutch colonizer. Pram, as what Pramoedya usually called, always

interrogates the problems on hybridity, nationalism, as well as national identity in

his works. Pram’s works, which always take side to the Indonesian people, makes

him considered leftist and oppose to the New Order so that he had to imprison

until the end of Soeharto regime. However, story telling and writing were his

powerful escape and power that gave him strength to get through his difficult time

in Buru Island. Both Pamuk and Pram’s works discuss and deconstruct the issue

on the identity formation as well as a criticism to the ruling leader of their

countries. Through his brilliant works, Pamuk wants to deliver a message to his

readers that being a schizophrenic406 by embracing two identities is acceptable.

Moreover, embracing Western tradition without leaving our national identity and

local culture is not a big sin. He also invites the readers not to leave and forget the

past but keep remind it and keep it as well as use it as a lesson so that they can

realize a better nation. In addition, he uses the Ottoman history to look at and

criticise the future.407

Yet, I realise that this study still needs further corrections and

improvements. Therefore, I have suggestions about the aspects that can be

explored more in Pamuk’s works, such as investigating women’s role, struggle,

and position in the Islamic world in the characters of Shekure, Enishte Effendi

406 In Turkey’s case, having two spirits, embracing the East and West together, belonging to twodifferent cultures, and having two souls should be celebrated. Pamuk tries to give positive meaningto “schizophrenia”. He stresses that insisting to have one spirit is more dangerous than the“schizophrenia” itself and Turkey should celebrate for having this “sickness”. Pamuk, OtherColours, 369.

407 Göknar, “Ottoman Theme”, 37.


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daughter, as well as Esther, a Jew “İstanbul’s premier peddler of fine cloth”

(MNR, 37). In Islamic cultures, women have limited space and access in their

society and their position is also lower than men. However, Shekure and Esther

have important roles in MNR in helping Black to reveal the murderer’s of the

palace miniaturists. In addition, the identity formation can also be an interesting

topic to discuss further using Sufism. This theory can also be used to analyse the

identity formation in those two novels for in Sufism perspective identity

formation is the key point in its teaching. Moreover, symbolism in Sufism of the

deep longing to be close to the transcendence can be a framework in Turkey’s

identity formation process that multilayered.


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APPENDIX


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The Summary of Orhan Pamuk’s Oeuvre

Göknar concludes that Pamuk’s works contain a representation of unstable

identity within Ottoman or Turkish historical context. Pamuk’s oeuvre, My Name

is Red and The White Castle, focus on the area of Ottoman history in a European

context.408 In his novels, Pamuk always complicates the binary opposition and the

oscillation between self and other. Pamuk’s third novel, The White Castle,

complicates the oscillation between master and slave while his masterpiece, My

Name is Red, emerges the relation between miniature and portrait. Additionally,

Pamuk also delineates how the Other, in My Name is Red and The White Castle, is

thus always present, not only as a threat but also as a seduction.

My Name is Red

My Name is Red is set in the late of 16th century in İstanbul, Turkey, under

the reign of Sultan Murat III (1574-1595). Each chapter of the novel has a

different narrator and some of them are unique characters, such as dog, gold coin,

tree, death, or Satan. Its focus is not only the tradition of miniature painting during

the Ottoman period in the late 16th century in İstanbul, but also the tradition of the

Italian Renaissance painting. It tells of two murders; one of Elegant Effendi, one

of the finest Ottoman miniaturists, and the other of Enishte Effendi, a master

miniaturist and Sultan’s ambassador who is commissioned by Sultan Himself to

produce a secret book by his four finest artists. Black, who newly returns to

İstanbul from Persia, is recalled by his uncle, Enishte Effendi, to help him finished

408 Erdağ Göknar, “Orhan Pamuk and the ‘Ottoman’ Theme”, World Literature Today 80, 6(2006): 34.


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the secret book’s illustration and to solve the case of the miniaturist’s murder.

Black’s uncle is in charge of the creation of the secret book for the Sultan in the

style of Venetian painters. The book, which is secretly instructed to adopt the

Italian Renaissance, is used to impress the Western to prolong Sultan’s dynasty as

well as to celebrate a thousand anniversary of Islam.

In the tradition of miniature painting, images are not seen as things in

themselves but they are treated as the extension of the text rather than an

independent art.409 The miniaturists challenge the Islamic prohibition against

representation of the realistic objects410 by choosing to change their style because

Western way of seeing and painting is more attractive.411 The central issue of this

novel is not only on the East-West questions. It is the arduous work of the

miniaturist; the artist’s suffering and his complete dedication to his work.412 My

Name is Red is about the fear of being forgotten, the fear of art being lost.413 In

the end, the conflict between the method of the Islamic painting and the Frankish

Masters that pave the way for quarrels among artists and endless predicaments is

never resolved. Nowadays, painting is abandoned and artists paint neither like

Easterners nor Westerners. (MNR, 442-443)

The White Castle

The White Castle is a work of historical and philosophical fiction and

narrated from the first-person point of view. The story sets in the 17th century—

409 Çiçekoglu, “Pedagogy”, 1.410 Pamuk, Other Colours, 270.411 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.412 Pamuk, Other Colours, 264.413 Pamuk, Other Colours, 269.


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under the reign of Sultan Ahmed I—on a voyage from Venice to Naples when a

misfortune twenty-two-year-old Italian scholar is taken prisoner by Turkish

pirates. He is brought to İstanbul and then imprisoned. Later, he becomes the

slave of Hoja who has amazing similarities with him. Both Hoja and the Venetian

slave share an uncanny resemblance to each other414. Hoja is not only the

Venetian master but also his pupil for he also asks his slave to teach him

everything he had learnt in his country (TWC, 32). He is a character who wants to

learn everything about the West, especially its science and technology. He learns

science and technology from his young slave because he tries to lure the Turkish

Sultan who has little interest in science.

Despite the fact that Hoja had learnt astronomy and science, he still needs

the Italian slave to teach him everything the slave had learnt, such as astronomy,

medicine, and engineering. Hoja’s relationship with his Italian slave allows him to

live in Venice after his war machine lost in the battle for he really wants to

correspond with men of science in Venice, Flanders, whatever land occurred to

him at that moment. (TWC, 121) Pamuk adds that, impersonation is The White

Castle’s theme that is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when cope with

Western culture.415 This can be seen on Hoja’s jealousy toward his Italian slave

who has an interesting life in Venice.

414 Farred, “Dig a Well”, 88.415 Pamuk, Other Colours, 368.


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