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Turkish Migrant Writers1 in Europe: Mehmed Uzun in Sweden and Aras Ören in West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Wiebke Sievers
Wiebke Sievers*
Affiliation:
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Postgasse 7/4/2, 1010 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: wiebke.sievers@oeaw.ac.at
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Abstract

The literatures that have emerged from post-war Turkish migration to Europe have become a topic of discussion since the 1980s. However, studies comparing the emergence of these literatures in different European contexts are rare. This article compares Sweden and West Germany, two contexts where migration from Turkey has a similar history, but where the resulting literatures differ massively due to different political and literary conditions. Multicultural, and in particular multilingual, public policies in Sweden have facilitated the emergence of a Kurdish diaspora literature; this then became a major impetus for the emergence of a Kurdish literature in Turkey when it was finally possible to write and publish in Kurdish there in the 1990s. The emergence of the New Left in West Germany, reflected in a re-awakened workers’ literature and new left-wing publishing houses in the German literary field, has provided publishing opportunities for Turkish migrant writers influenced by a socialist internationalist tradition in the 1970s. These works laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has since come to be regarded as having changed the understanding of what it means to be German.

Type
Turkey and Europe: Cultural Aspects
Information
European Review , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 440 - 450
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2016 

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References

References and Notes

1.I use the term ‘Turkish migrant writers’ to refer to writers who originate from Turkey, migrated to another country at some stage of their lives and became writers there. All writers discussed in this article refer to this origin in their writing. This does not imply that they refer to themselves as Turkish. In fact, some describe themselves as Kurdish, but regard overcoming the repression of Kurds in Turkey as a major incentive for their writing. They may also not refer to themselves as migrants, but migration is regarded as relevant for their careers as writers in two respects: first, the new context has allowed them to express ideas repressed in Turkey; second, the new context had a major impact on which of these ideas found recognition. It is the latter point that is in the focus of attention in this article as it has been neglected in research on migration and literature.Google Scholar
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7.This article is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field. Further details on the theoretical background can be found W. Sievers, B. Kaya and M. Kamm (2016), Wie ImmigrantInnen und deren Nachfahren zu SchriftstellerInnen wurden. Zur Transnationalisierung nationalisierter literarischer Felder in Europa. In: M. Hofmann and W. Schmitz (eds), Eine andere literarische Karte Europas. Das Mittelmeer, Deutschland und seine Nachbarn im Schreiben der Migranten (Dresden: Thelem), in print.Google Scholar
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