Beat Turkey: a belated influence

Abstract

The Beat relationship to Turkey is a strange one. References to Turkey appear in numerous Beat writings, but Istanbul never hosted a Beat enclave like the ones that formed in Paris or Tangiers. Today, Turkish writing has welcomed the Beats, and while they are certainly not household names, writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac have begun to have an influence in Turkey. Despite this renewed interest in the Beats and their writing, the temporal and cultural gaps between the post-war USA and contemporary Turkey have helped shape the ways in which the Beats and their texts function. The reason for this "delayed" reception in Turkey can only be understood in the context of a shift in Turkish culture that occurred after the 1980 coup. Headed by the General Kenan Evren, the coup was designed to curb the unprecedented political violence that Turkey had witnessed throughout the 1970s. The list of Turkish writers working in the Beat vein is extensive.