Altan is a man who has succeeded in mocking every taboo there is in Turkey. You cannot take on such a challenge without putting your life on the line. He, a knight who felt no need to bring up this matter, has not once spoken about the countless death threats he’s received.
In a country where everything is spoken about inadvertently, in which people can never express themselves and their feelings directly, Altan taught us just how it is to speak and write genuinely. He is a very intelligent man. But this authenticity has brought him to the status of a “lunatic,” who can say anything at any time in the eyes of those who continuously travel with their suits of armor. When Altan wrote or spoke, even the most sinister of voices remained silent, changing their path as they hid in a secluded order so as not to come eye-to-eye with him. Those whose only possession was their jobs, statuses and ranks are scared to death of people like Altan. This fear is the fear of being naked -- the fear of the masque falling off and the shield being pierced…
Altan became the voice of all the oppressed, cast aside and marginalized. He challenged our macho world in a “manly” way. Altan, who is one of the greatest literary figures to have come from this land, has narrated the feelings women and their inner worlds the best. Consequently, it was women whom he surprised the most. Women were taken aback by how it was that a man could enter the secluded corners of their souls -- which they themselves were too scared to look at -- uninvited, but without shattering everything in sight.
If women only knew that a man, who knows their species so well, due to knowing Turkey just as well, always carried two guns on him, they would be shocked to their core. This is just the kind of man that Ahmet Altan is.
In the beginning of column I used the adjective “fearless,” but actually I don’t believe that anyone is fearless. I don’t believe that a fearless person can be human. But I think that there is perhaps such a thing as learning to live with fear. Man can do what he knows to be the right thing, despite his fears. I know that Altan is a man who refuses to surrender to his fears. He knows very well that the greatest courage of all is for man to be himself. In order to be yourself, you must shed all of your armor. And in order to be able to do this, you must pass through the corridors of fear. When man can feel the weakest, most aggrieved part of himself, he actually transforms into his strongest form. When one accepts themselves then others can too and only when one let’s themselves go can they live life, becoming a piece of the whole of humanity.
Without further ado, I would like to turn this piece over to the Man of the Year, the great master of literature, Ahmet Altan. I would like to share with you, the following excerpt I chose from his book titled “Tehlikeli Masallar” (Dangerous Tales)
“Do we suffer our greatest wounds when we defend ourselves the most; do we commit our greatest foolishness when we act most intelligent; do we lose our greatest happiness when we desire comfort and security the most and do we face our greatest fears when we are most scared? …
“If we didn’t defend ourselves so much, didn’t protect ourselves so much, would our regrets and pain be less?
“Is it because we try people so much, hide ourselves so well between our shields, because we cannot consent ourselves to any pain or trouble that those which we desire the most fall so far away from us and happiness transforms into an unattainable story bird.
“Life is filled with options and every choice is a loss…
One chooses on thing and loses something else
Or you can be unable to chose anything and lose everything
“One of two hearts is cold and the other is warm; the warm heart is cast into the trash and the cold heart has the value of diamonds.
“Our shields, fears, defenses, calculation all lead us to make a choice and our mind says, ‘We must not lose the other.’ And when we are most intelligent, strong, shielded and calculated, we lose everything; what we desire most falls most far away from us.
“What they call love, while not knowing that a statue of them is being built while they construct a large statue from a small hair that is removed from one human, secretly knowing all along that it will be toppled one day. And then they suddenly turn away.
The arms and legs of the statue move inappropriately and its pieces fall off. Each time they leave behind a broken statue to build new statue from new little pieces of hair, they utter the same words with the same grieved voice.
Farewell.”
And finally I would like to thank the editor-in-chief of Today’s Zaman, Mr. Bülent Keneş, who is himself an extremely authentic person and send my greetings and congratulations to all of Today’s Zaman staff who played in role in Altan’s selection as Man of the Year.
