This mesmerizing novel made me reflect on the
power of friendship and love. Adalet is a Muslim woman in love with Mark, a
Jewish man in New York. Mark wants to marry Adalet, but Adalet is apprehensive
about moving to New York. Yet they sustain a strong long-distance relationship. She lives in Istanbul, Turkey. Adalet is
Nuray’s best friend. Nuray also lives in Istanbul, where she works as a
journalist; she is the owner of a small Women’s magazine.
Who can anticipate that a small magazine can
get in trouble for criticizing the president of a country? The problem is that
when the president behaves like a tyrant, the simple act of expressing a
disagreement can be a death sentence… or an excuse to be tortured, beaten and
even raped. The situation of dissidents
in Turkey reminds me of the one in Russia under Vladimir Putin. Tyrants behave in
similar ways wherever they have a chance to rule. (Iran is another example that
comes to my mind, and it is a reminder of the consequences of allowing religion
to infiltrate the government).
One day, on her way to visit Adalet, Nuray crossed
paths with a soldier who served the interests of the president. This happened
in July 2016. The streets of Istanbul were in turmoil, so she was compelled to
report what was going on. When she showed the young soldier her journalist identification
card, the soldier grabbed it. He would later threaten to report her to the
police if she did not sleep with him. Nuray refused to acquiesce to his
harassment. This would lead to her arrest.
Nuray
had written a couple of articles criticizing the president, which was
enough of an excuse to be arrested, jailed and accused of being a terrorist. Tyrants
take advantage of situations of political unrest to gain support and persecute
dissidents. In fact, Erdogan called the attempted coup of 2016 a “gift of God.”
The so-called soldier would later desert his
post in the army to join a radicalized terrorist organization…
Reading A Coup by Phyllis Skoy has been
a remarkable experience. The tension is so intense that it is difficult to put
this novel down. We root for the main characters as we contemplate the
different aspects of their culture and life in Turkey. I inhabited their minds
while I "savored" their foods, appreciated their surroundings and plunged into
the depths of their conflicts and situations. I feared for their safety and
wondered about their future. I kept thinking of them when I was not reading the
book. This is what good literature does. It fosters empathy, which is why
tyrants support the banning of books. The novel may help people understand the
horrifying consequences of enabling tyrants who support authoritarian regimes.
Tyrants sow hate and division. They scapegoat
groups of people, oppress anybody who dares to disagree with them--even if they
belong to the same party. They censor and distort information to abuse their
power. The novel shows clearly how an authoritarian regime ruins the lives of
people.
Phyllis Skoy entices the reader into the realms of a vivid experience. The story delivers
something invaluable in response to the intrigue it creates. I researched the
context of the novel, and I am sharing supplementary reading material
at the bottom of this post to help you gain a deeper understanding of the
present situation.
One of the central aspects of the novel is the
friendship between Adalet and Nuray. Their friendship helped Nuray during the
darkest moments of her life, but there are other threads of resilience that
propelled Nuray forward amid her calamities, and I will let the readers find
those. These aspects of the novel can inspire fruitful conversations about
resilience…
Phyllis Skoy’s first novel, What Survives,
was shortlisted by the Santa Fe Writers project and was a finalist in the New
Mexico/Arizona Book Awards and First Runner-Up in the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize
shortlist. Her memoir, Myopia, is about what it is like to grow up with a
refugee father consumed with the fears and struggles of his past.
I received A Coup in exchange for an
honest review, and I now have the privilege to interview the author, Phyllis
Skoy, for My Writing Life blog: Awareness, Reflection, Inspiration. I
thank her for her time and cooperation.
Interview
Julia: I was impressed by the details on the social and political situation in
the novel. These details are woven carefully into the plot of the novel.
In-depth research is required to attain this. What sources of information
helped you?
Phyllis: I read a great deal, both novels and nonfiction, poetry and essays. I
have a friend who is a retired AP journalist who sends me all the articles she
receives on Turkey. There is a good deal of propaganda circulating in both in
the Turkish press media and in social media, so I do my best to read as much as
possible and to sort it out as best I can. I was asked the very question that
you have posed by a young Turkish gentleman in a predominantly Turkish
audience. After I responded as I have above, I asked him if he had been able to
recover all the facts from the attempted coup. He acknowledged that he had not
and everyone smiled. As we know all too well, even from our own government, the
truth is often obscured. Turkish politics are extremely complicated. But remember,
the novel is fiction, even though it is historically based.
Julia: The Turkish culture is vividly
featured throughout the novel. How did you accomplish this? What inspired you
to write A Coup?
Phyllis: My husband and I first traveled to Turkey in 1998. We both fell in love
with Turkey, its people and its culture--not uncommon for American tourists. I
became very friendly with several Turkish women. When we moved from Manhattan
to Placitas, New Mexico, I learned about The Turkish House (The Raindrop
Foundation) in Albuquerque. I studied the Turkish language for two years there,
as I believe that language shapes people and cultures, and I joined their
wonderful cooking classes. The language was very difficult for me at this point
in my life, but I will always be grateful for what I gained from its study. My
husband and I returned to Turkey in 2014, and we rented an apartment in
Istanbul so that I could work on the first novel in A Turkish Trilogy,
entitled What Survives. When the attempted coup happened in 2016, I was
on WhatsApp with the Turkish woman who had rented us the apartment in 2014. Her
experience was frightening, and I knew then that I would have to write about
it.
Julia: You have a talent for developing realistic characters and
getting inside their minds. You make them interesting and intriguing. I was
hooked from page one. Are these characters based on people you’ve met in real
life?
Phyllis: In “real life” I was a psychoanalyst. For a time, I was a
psychotherapist for the Deaf in American Sign Language (ASL) I also worked with
children and families. After a time, I narrowed my practice to psychoanalytic
patients on the couch. I retired in December of 2018. All of my characters are
conglomerates of people I have known in my practice or in my nonprofessional
life. No character is based on any one individual. Since I have studied the
workings of the human mind for many years, listened to so many stories, I
suppose it is not difficult to make them feel real. That is what I attempt to
do, in any event, and so I thank you for your kind words.
Julia: Are you planning to write another book about Nuray and
Adalet?
Phyllis: After completing the trilogy, I decided to take my next novel in a
different direction. Although it is difficult to leave Adalet, most especially,
since she is also my protagonist in What Survives, I wanted to address
different issues. The second book in the trilogy, As They Are, a prequel
to What Survives, focuses on Fatma, an older friend and mentor to Adalet
in the first novel. As They Are goes
back in time to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of The
Republic of Turkey. Nuray appears only briefly in What Survives, and not
at all in As They Are. Again, my objective is not so much to convey
history but to focus on how history, how politics, how disaster, affect
ordinary people.
The earthquake in Turkey in February 2023 has given me an
opportunity to take on several topics of importance to me through new characters,
some Turkish and Muslim, some American/Turkish and Jewish. Antakya, Turkey was
devastated in the earthquake, killing the last leaders of a tiny remaining
Jewish community there. This fact caught my attention and stayed with me.
Immediately, I began to read and research this compelling topic. I hope to do
this topic and related issues justice in my current undertaking.
Supplementary
reading material:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/turkeys-new-media-law-is-bad-news-but-dont-report-it/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/14/turkey-dangerous-dystopian-new-legal-amendments
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/15/turkey-erdogan-enes-kanter-renditions-critics/
https://time.com/5885650/erdogans-ottoman-worry-world/
https://stockholmcf.org/i-heard-screams-of-women-being-raped-at-a-turkish-detention-center-says-torture-victim/
https://www.turkishminute.com/2020/12/31/female-journalists-turkey-face-discrimination-and-harassment-at-work-says-media-association/
Photographs are courtesy of the author.
A special thank you to Cristina Deptula for her cooperation and support.
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