The Turkish writer and thinker Ece Temelkuran: ‘We're going through a political crisis, but also a moral crisis’

In 2016, journalist, poet and novelist Ece Temelkuran was forced into exile from her native Turkey. A failed military coup against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government led to a crackdown on journalists and writers critical of his regime, and repeated death and rape threats left Temelkuran fearing for her life. She’s written in English since then, cast as a literary Cassandra by her prescient non-fiction book How to Lose A Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism, which she followed in 2021 with Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World. 

“I didn’t expect to be proven right quite so soon,” she says of How to Lose a Country. Gesturing with a slender cigarette, its smoke tangling with her characteristic curls, she’s speaking from her current base in Berlin. She’s lived in numerous other cities in the decade since leaving her homeland and that 10-year odyssey forms the basis of a new book, her most personal yet. Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century is structured as a series of confiding, stirring letters addressed to the reader. Collectively, they conjure a roadmap for unity in uncertain times, rooted in her lived experience of being “unhomed”. That word “unhomed” is pivotal, borrowed from the 19th century but made searingly relevant as a descriptor of the many ways in which it’s possible to feel like a stranger – including in your own country. “Ambitious and dazzling,” says Brian Eno of the new book; “in serious danger of becoming the new Hannah Arendt,” according to Yanis Varoufakis.

You started writing in English a decade ago. How does it feel today? 

In the beginning, it was like crossing the English Channel blindfolded while trying to learn how to swim. It was a survival act and it was mostly about ideas and politics. When you're surviving, you put your heart in the freezer. You numb yourself and you think that feelings make you vulnerable. It's only much later that you accept emotions and vulnerabilities as powerful. This book is my homecoming as a literary writer. I can finally feel the words. Also, I can finally hear the poetry of English, and once you cross that threshold, you have a home in the language. 

Is there a word that you particularly treasure? 

If you asked me this a few years ago, I would have said resilience, because there's no Turkish word for that. But we put too much meaning in the power of that word. We have this understanding that we must be self-sufficient and solve our own problems because neoliberalism has adopted the morality of fascism. We're living in a system where we are told that humans are self-centred bastards and can only survive by selling each other out. People think that we're going through a political crisis but we're also going through a moral crisis and to show that we are selfless, that we sacrifice ourselves for each other, is the moral resistance that we all need. It’s one of the reasons I wrote Nation of Strangers. 

The intimacy of the epistolary form makes it the perfect vehicle. Is there a letter you've received that you particularly treasure? 

I still cherish my great-grandmother's letter to me when she was about to die. Also, here’s a funny story: when I was four or five, I remember pretending to write, and the first thing I pretended to write were letters to my uncle. So I think letters were very much in my head before I’d even learned how to read or write. Everybody's shouting right now and when everybody's shouting, you pay more attention to the whisper. Letters gave me the chance to whisper to strangers. 

Women are the world’s traditional homebuilders. Is there a particular role for us in these unhomed times? 

Women are eternally unhomed in this world and there is a global war on women right now. Iran or Afghanistan might be the frontline, but it's everywhere, and that's why more and more women are forming solidarity networks. If nothing else, we all have a girls’ WhatsApp group. We know how to survive with dignity by taking care of each other, by being kind and supporting each other. People tend to think that these words are naive, but they’re the very words you depend on when surviving – care, kindness, compassion, friendship. Men invented this awkward gesture of handshaking so that they can trust each other. We invented hugging to survive this life while remembering that we are humans, bodily and emotionally. The future will be female. 

What human value has experience taught you is most vital when times get tough? 

Everybody thinks it's hope but actually, it's our urge to create beauty – moral beauty, political beauty, aesthetic beauty. If we create that beauty, we do something very important: we refresh each other's faith in humanity. This is how we resist. Strangers is not a manifesto: it says let’s sit in this uncertainty that we are enveloped by, let's feel at home with ourselves and each other. And to do that, of course, we have to remember the underlying truth that we are beautiful beings, because so much in life forces us to forget that. 

Is there one thing that we each could do to help generate the right kind of change in the world? 

I think we should stop more. We’re always rushing, pretending we have something more important to do than make human connections. We should make more time for people – five minutes with the homeless guy, five more minutes with the refugee, five more minutes with your neighbour. Let's just stop for five minutes and see what happens. 

You do seem incredibly relaxed. What’s your secret – do you meditate? 

No, but I am trying to teach myself to be compassionate towards myself, and part of that is to take long walks and look at the trees. Trees are interesting things – they're the same everywhere. I've been living as a stranger for the last 10 years in different countries, and that sameness makes me feel like I am at home. 

Is there a book or work of art that brings you calm and focus? 

For every book I write, I choose a woman whose music I listen to. For How to Lose A Country it was Maria Callas and for Nation of Strangers it was Jacqueline Du Pré.

Before you were forced to leave Turkey, you lost your job as a journalist. Have you been following the mass layoffs at the Washington Post? 

What’s happened there happened to my newspaper in Turkey, so I know the pain that those journalists are going through. At this point, the worst mistake is to think that they're going to survive on their own. They need to say we are the Washington Post; we were unhomed and we are building our micro-nation elsewhere … Then they have a chance. 

What do you make of events in Minnesota these past few weeks? 

Minnesota, I think, is the perfect representation of a nation of strangers. People are feeling unhomed in their own country because the government literally attacks them but they're holding on to each other even when their hands are full. That is the only way we will feel at home in coming years, if such crises multiply. We are witnessing a preview of ourselves in the future – there's a lot of violence and mercilessness there coming from the government, but also limitless compassion, kindness, and selflessness. 

You’ve been based in Berlin for a couple of years now. Does it feel at all like home? 

There is no going back to the old notion of home. You have to rebuild home with something that is indestructible, and human connections and words are the only materials we are left with. So for me, when my friends are in the city, Berlin is home. When they are gone for some reason – at Christmas, for instance – there is no Berlin any more. 

Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century is published by Canongate, £18.99