Throughout their careers, the Sertels’s publications were repeatedly censored and, at times, shut down. During WWII, the censorship intensified as the government cracked down on opposition voices. Sertel found herself not just censored, but banned.
Period 6: Turkey in the War Year
I Lose My Right to Write for the Third Time
When I was a child, my mother told me a story: A little girl was walking down the street when she found five kuruş. She wanted to buy something with the money but her stepmother was a tyrant, and the girl was afraid of making her angry. If I buy walnuts, she thought, the shells will dirty the house. If I buy a pear, the leftover stem will dirty the house. And if I buy a pomegranate, the seeds will dirty the house. And so, she ended up buying nothing at all.
I felt like that little girl. If I wrote against fascism, I’d stir up a hornet’s nest. If I criticized the government’s foreign policy, Tan would get shut down. If I defended the rights of workers and peasants, I would be branded a communist. Finally, I resolved to write a series of articles against imperialism.
I wrote about the difference between justified wars and imperialist wars. I described the colonized peoples’ struggle against oppression. I recounted how the imperialists had conquered the lucrative markets of Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century, and how they had colonized these regions. The First World War had been waged over possession of colonies, I pointed out. And now, the Second World War was being waged for the same reason, with British, French and American capitalists on one side and German and Japanese capitalists on the other. I argued that Britain and the USA refrained from opening up a second front against Germany because they hoped to weaken Germany and Japan, their commercial enemies, and the Soviet Union, their ideological enemy, by playing them off against each other.
I felt like that little girl. If I wrote against fascism, I’d stir up a hornet’s nest. If I criticized the government’s foreign policy, Tan would get shut down. If I defended the rights of workers and peasants, I would be branded a communist. Finally, I resolved to write a series of articles against imperialism.
I wrote about the difference between justified wars and imperialist wars. I described the colonized peoples’ struggle against oppression. I recounted how the imperialists had conquered the lucrative markets of Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century, and how they had colonized these regions. The First World War had been waged over possession of colonies, I pointed out. And now, the Second World War was being waged for the same reason, with British, French and American capitalists on one side and German and Japanese capitalists on the other. I argued that Britain and the USA refrained from opening up a second front against Germany because they hoped to weaken Germany and Japan, their commercial enemies, and the Soviet Union, their ideological enemy, by playing them off against each other.
Shortly after the articles were published, we received another letter from the Press Directorate. I was banned from writing for a year.
I felt like a train that was derailed at full speed. I had so much to say. I had so many social, economic and political causes to defend. But I couldn’t write about any of them anymore. I bought a large notebook. On the first page, I wrote the following line from Nazım Hikmet’s poem ‘Jokond ile Si-Ya-U’ [La Joconde and Si-Ya-U]:
I felt like a train that was derailed at full speed. I had so much to say. I had so many social, economic and political causes to defend. But I couldn’t write about any of them anymore. I bought a large notebook. On the first page, I wrote the following line from Nazım Hikmet’s poem ‘Jokond ile Si-Ya-U’ [La Joconde and Si-Ya-U]:
I have decided, from now on, to keep a diary.
On the same page, I also wrote, ‘I have declared my independence. I am no longer afraid of any oppression. I will follow current affairs and write my thoughts down in this notebook.’
And so I did. Every day, I analysed the tortuous statements of politicians in the newspapers and wrote down my own thoughts on the issues, just as I’d done in my ‘Görüşler’ column in Tan. I filled up three notebooks this way. In 1945, after the Tan publishing house was destroyed by fascist mobs, the police conducted a search of our house. Along with many other documents, they took away my notebooks. And they never gave them back.
And so I did. Every day, I analysed the tortuous statements of politicians in the newspapers and wrote down my own thoughts on the issues, just as I’d done in my ‘Görüşler’ column in Tan. I filled up three notebooks this way. In 1945, after the Tan publishing house was destroyed by fascist mobs, the police conducted a search of our house. Along with many other documents, they took away my notebooks. And they never gave them back.