Archive

Elif Şafak Makes a Case for Women’s Rights in the Middle East

One of the pri­ma­ry ques­tions, or prob­lems as I see it, is this illu­sion” that same­ness will bring safe­ty. People start to think­ing that if we are sur­round­ed by sim­i­lar peo­ple, like-minded peo­ple, if we have com­mu­ni­ties based on same­ness, that will bring us safe­ty. That’s an illu­sion. That’s not the case at all. 

Elif Şafak on Memory and Learning from the Past

When I look at the signs today, I see a very strong trend back to what I call trib­al­ism, back to nation-states, nation­al­ism, reli­gios­i­ty, all those divi­sive forces that many intel­lec­tu­als in the 1940s, 50s, thought were going to dis­ap­pear grad­u­al­ly. That did not happen.