Uykularınızkacsın
By Luke Frostick
In December the Turkish literary world was rocked when numerous writers and social media users including Pelin Buzluk and Nazli Karabiyikoglu made detailed and credible allegations that the novelist Hasan Ali Toptaş had sexually harassed them. This was followed by other women coming forward to share their experiences with men up and down the industry. Using the hashtag uykularinizkacsin (hope you’ll lose your sleep), an event similar to the Me Too Movement, appears to be taking shape in Turkish literature.
I initially wasn’t going to write about this issue. The Bosphorus Review is not typically a platform for breaking news. However, even though we are a small part of the literary community with a limited reach, I have covered Toptaş in the past and in a world where breaking silence about abusers is extremely hard on the people who make the claims, not writing something in solidarity would be unacceptable.
The literary world is one that works on quite personal, informal relationships. It is also a world where powerful editors, publishers and agents or the support of a famous writer can make or break the careers of young writers. It is a system that encourages victims to keep quiet about their experiences to avoid being labelled “difficult” for the sake of their careers and passion for writing. In other words, in the same way as Hollywood, it is a way of doing business that can let abusers thrive and encourages the abused to stay silent.
This is what Toptaş is alleged to have done.
Toptaş responded with a rather weak apology that took no accountability, which he then retracted, claiming that all the accusations “were slander” and implied that the women accusing him were frauds, immoral and full of evil.
The great thing about the Me Too movement is that it taught me a lot of lessons about the way that power plays into abusive professional relationships, giving us a framework in which we can discuss these accusations. Although there are other people in the industry who have been credibly accused, I think it is worth focusing on Toptaş because in his interview he produces a full house of techniques to avoid responsibility and shows the direction many others will take as inevitable pushback forms against victims who are speaking up.
His first defence is that the women are lying about their experiences. Firstly, women who come forward about sexual misconduct and assault tend not to lie about it, false reporting of rape and sexual assault is rare. In fact, it is far more common for women to cover up sexual abuse than lie about it.
He refers to the women as “organised.” The implicit statement here is that the allegations are some sort of conspiracy against him, though he offered no explanation as to why there should be such a conspiracy. The obvious reason why details of harassment tend to come out as a wave and as part of an organised campaign is that breaking cover and going public is really hard. The first women to come out with the stories of their assaults had to deal with incredible hardship both within the context of the Me Too movement and frankly, every other case. Those brave people who come forward are usually accusing men in positions of power with supporters, money and lawyers, all of which will be turned to the task of destroying the accuser. The process of reporting abuse can cause major legal, emotional, career and financial repercussions for the victim, not to mention the harassment that they will inevitably face from fans of the accused. Therefore, it makes sense that a level of organisation should be taken when trying to publicise abuse cases.
An area of defence that Toptaş returns to a couple of times is to pick holes in the accuracy of specific stories. This is a stronger defence, but ultimately not watertight or one without precedence. Human memory is extremely fallible and details of traumatic events can be misremembered, while the substance of the accusation can be true. Abusers point to inaccuracies in accounts which can be quite large and use that to attempt to discredit the whole accusation. This is why litigation cases are usually built around a couple of the strongest cases. Moreover, this is why volume is important. It establishes a pattern of behaviour that becomes more and more difficult to deny and allows prosecutors, should it ever get to that stage, to chose the most legally watertight cases.
The last argument Toptaş tries to make is specifically focused on the claims made by Buzluk. He uses the fact that Buzluk dedicated a short story to him after the assault as evidence that the assault didn’t happen. This is a defence that is straight out of the Weinstein playlist. Why would Weinstein’s victims smile in a photograph with him? The answer is complex and multifaceted. At the simplest level, it is to do with power. Toptaş, within the Turkish literary community, had the power to make or break a writer’s career. Buzluk’s second book was published with the support of Toptaş and that is no small thing. Secondly, it takes time to process these things and to even admit to yourself that abuse was what you experienced. In fact, in an insidious twist to the story, both Buzluk and Karabiyikoglu expressed that the feeling of internalised guilt they built up also contributed to them keeping silent. Karabiyikoglu expresses it in heartbreaking terms, “We weren’t able to define and confess even to ourselves what Hasan Ali Toptaş did to us was harassment; when we did, we lost sleep for nights on end and blamed ourselves, because the “master” is an infallible being.”
Fortunately, the rest of the industry is being more responsive and responsible than Toptaş himself. He was dropped by Everest publishing house and had several awards retracted. Beyond that, it is unclear where this will go. From what Toptaş has said himself he clearly wants this to go to court, saying “The truth lies with the courts and before the law.”
I can see why he feels that the courts are an arena that will be favourable for him. Assault against prominent men take an extremely long time and are extremely difficult to litigate, and even when abusers are found guilty, their sentences get suspended such as in the case of Ahmet Kural. And all the while, the government continues to cast doubt on the Istanbul Convention.
What’s very important is that this is happening within a specific context—unfortunately, one in which violence against women and femicide is outrageously high, and where a lawyer is indicted for investigating sexual harassment within the police, a musician is taken off stage for supporting the Istanbul Convention and when women take to the streets to demand change they are broken up by the police.
If the patterns set out by the Me Too movement are followed in Turkey, there will be more of these cases coming and we can not rely on the state to provide justice. If we are to begin pushing back against this tide, we need to take women’s claims extremely seriously, offer support where we can and build back better, safer and with more transparency, so that at least within the publishing industry, women’s rights are respected.
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