Nation of Strangers by Ece Temelkuran – Review
By Barney Bardsley
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish writer, who rose to prominence in her own country, both as a print journalist and broadcaster, but then was censured for speaking out against the political oppression she witnessed around her, particularly amongst the Kurdish and Armenian peoples. When she was fired by Habertürk TV in 2011, for openly criticising the Turkish government, she left Turkey to live in Zagreb. Since then, she has lived a nomadic life in exile, in Zagreb, Paris, Oxford and Berlin. She has made it her life’s work to examine the realities of being an exile – to analyse what it means, in the broadest sense, to be “homeless” – and to serve as a voice of warning about the rise of right wing populism worldwide. She is adamant that fascism can “unhome” all of us eventually, whether we have left our own countries or not. Her words make sobering reading, for, as she writes, “When the new fascism is ushered into morality and politics… it leaves us without a country, without a home.”
For many years Temelkuran held herself together, continuing to write – even in a language not her own – and speak publicly and internationally about her experiences. But this kind of stoicism and bravery comes at a price. And the price was paid by her at a very deep level, in mind and body. Thus it was that in the summer of 2022, she found herself in a hospital bed in Hamburg, in a state of near total collapse. “The doctor says, ‘Your body is giving up. This is homesickness, meine Liebe. Now is the time to stop and take care of your heart.”
As a result of this crisis, Temelkuran began to consider the real meaning of home – talking to other exiles, and building material around the whole notion of ‘home’ for this, her latest book. In it, she wonders how strangers, whether refugees, exiles, or people alienated by the vicious politics in their own country, can support each other and become allies and friends? And how this can be, in itself, subversive and transformational. She notes the various grassroots communities springing up in resistance, all across Europe and beyond, and advises: “When you all become strangers in your own land, don’t be strangers to each other.”
“Message of hope”
The book is written in the form of letters to these nameless ‘strangers’, and it asks basic questions of survival, in these troubled times. “Who are you?” she wonders. “Why did you leave?” And “How will you survive?” What is most startling is the way that she deliberately avoids ‘othering’ those who are exiled, but includes all of us in her questions: all those, that is, who are troubled by the rise of the right, and who are feeling out of place, even in the very country in which they were born.
Ece Temelkuran is a ruthless Cassandra. She points a finger at the UK, warning how easily the language of dictatorship can slip into the mainstream of discourse. Are we sleepwalking into the arms of the fascists? She reckons we might be, and she knows, only too well, of which she speaks.
It is a bleak and salutory read, this book, but it carries a message of hope amidst the gloom. Everywhere she goes, in her self imposed exile, she finds kindness and solidarity amongst her fellows. It is a commonly held belief that the most generous in society, are those who have the least to give. Because they know what it is like, to have nothing. In the same way, refugees, asylum seekers and exiles, hold out their arms to each other, and in this way, resistance is born. “For when there is no safe place to hide away from the realities of the world, home will be made of humans who hold you, when their hands are already full.”
Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century by Ece Temelkuran is published by Canongate
