22 November 2010, Monday / Hatice Ahsen Utku , İstanbul 0 0 1 2
“I fell in love with Turkey and came back very often,” says Joachim Sartorius, German diplomat, poet and writer, as people come to have their books autographed by him.
In “Die Prinzeninseln” (the Princes’ Islands), which was met with great interest in Germany, he writes about his past experiences in the islands of İstanbul in a poetic style.
Born in Fürth in 1946, Sartorius had many opportunities to witness different cultures, mostly in the Mediterranean region, and now lives in Berlin. The personal journey of the German writer, who was in İstanbul earlier this month as the guest of Goethe-Institut İstanbul and Everest Publications, took him through Tunisia, New York, İstanbul and Cyprus.
“I stayed in Tunisia from the ages of 10 to 15, which are very important ages which influenced me a lot,” says Sartorius, in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “I think it was the Mediterranean light, the Islamic architecture that I discovered as a young boy, the calligraphy and the landscape, totally different from Bavaria, where I was born. I collected many images that I use in my poetry during this period, so North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean have always been very important regions for me. I stayed in Cyprus for four years as a diplomat and of course in İstanbul. … İstanbul is not on the Mediterranean, but for me it’s somehow a part of the region, which was called the Levant in the 19th century. I also frequently visited Egypt and wrote a long book about Alexandria. So, this is my region.”
Sartorius came to Turkey as a diplomat but he loved and adapted to the country so well that he continues to come to Turkey, especially İstanbul and the islands. “The first time I was in Turkey, I was still a German diplomat and I worked in Ankara at the embassy, where my field of work was domestic policy and the Turkish press. I had a friend who said that I could stay in İstanbul for a few months for the media and then I returned very frequently, staying for weeks, so I knew İstanbul quite well. I was located in Ankara but I travelled a lot in Turkey. It was just the first three years that were linked to an official job, but I fell in love with Turkey and I continued to come back often just as a tourist.”
The never-changing face of the islands
“The first time I went Büyükada in 1978, I was hooked and I felt the urge come back,” says Sartorius, explaining how his addiction to the islands began. “On the one hand I like, of course, the landscape and nature but also the silence of the islands. It is so different from İstanbul. İstanbul is a big imperial city and the adalar are somehow influenced, but also totally different. I frequently came back to the islands on brief trips, and two years ago I decided to write a kind of poetic little traveler’s book about the islands.”
What really influenced Sartorius about the islands is that time seems to stop there. “One of their attractive features is that, in fact, they have not changed much, due to the fact that there are no cars there. There is another way of life that has remained unchanged for many many years.”
In this respect, despite the fact that they are a part of İstanbul, the islands constitute a total contradiction with İstanbul. “There is a huge contradiction between İstanbul and the islands, and that is part of what makes it fascinating. You can escape from İstanbul and dream there. İstanbul is exploding with energy and constantly has lots of things going on.”
Sartorius’ sources were the books of the historians and the local people, which he felt was enough since he did not intend for it to be academic. “I talked to the local people but I also read a lot books,” says Sartorius. “In Germany there are a lot of historians dealing with Byzantine times and the Ottoman conquest. I also had some friends there, not when I wrote the book but Ferid Edgü had a house in Büyükada, and I also spent some time in a beautiful old Armenian house for a few weeks. There was also Fıstık Ahmet; he had a restaurant and I had some fantastic evening meals, feasts and lots of conversations there. I am a writer and I think a writer has great freedom. Maybe you say that there should be more historical facts, but as a writer I am free, I perceive this thing and I write it down. For me, it is a kind of poetic travelogue.”
Nevertheless, the change and energy of İstanbul influence Sartorius as much as the non-change in the islands. “Of all the cities I know, I think İstanbul changes the most. It touches every part of life. You can see it in architecture; you can see it in art. You now have really fantastic museums, and for the perhaps last 20 years there has been a kind of consciousness about your Ottoman past, and many of the ruins and buildings have been repaired and renovated. It is also unbelievable that books about, for example, the parks or fountains of İstanbul are coming out. On the other hand it is getting very modern in terms of, for example, visual arts. I think you have very top artists. I followed the arts here a little bit because I invited some Turkish writers and young artists to Berlin. Next year it will be the 60th anniversary of the first Turkish worker coming to Germany, and there will be a lot of exhibitions in Berlin dealing with this subject.”
Loss of cosmopolitanism
One of the features that Sartorius highlights in his book is the multicultural aspect of the islands. “There have been many cities in this region where we have many great cosmopolitan areas, many religions, many different ethnic groups,” says Sartorius. “Starting with Alexandria, which was a big cosmopolitan city in the late 19th century, the waves of nationalism in Egypt and Turkey caused other people to go away for a variety of reasons. For me one part of hüzün [sorrow] is the loss of cosmopolitanism. I don’t know when it started on the islands, probably in the 1940s or 1950s, but I think there’s now a kind of return. People are coming back to Burgazada and the islands.”
“Turkey is a very very big country in terms of size,” says Sartorius about how Turkey still keeps the variety within its own boundaries. “It’s not very surprising that you have many different regions. Of course the Mediterranean region is very different from the Van region. It’s different in nature and vegetation, but it’s also different in history: The Greeks and the Romans lived on the Lycian coast, but in Mardin is the history of Assyria. I like this variety.”
Sartorius says that he tried to learn Turkish but since all his Turkish friends spoke English or German very well, he only had around 800 Turkish words in his vocabulary when he left Turkey in 1980. “It’s a kind of a stereotype to say that Turks have great hospitality, but I think it’s true. I was always very so cordially and well received.”
As Sartorius is quite happy about the interest in his book, he has already started to work on a new one. “This book about the Princes’ Islands was a really big success for me in Germany. By now more than 7,000 copies have been sold, while my poetry books never get more than 1,000. My best friends in Germany tell me to continue to write prose and forget about these strange poems,” says Sartorius, laughing. “My project at the moment is to write perhaps a novel. … It would be my first time writing a novel, and the setting would probably be Cyprus.”