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The Labyrinthine World, the Labyrinthine Text
Orhan Pamuk’s narrative strategies and “Muslim Turk characters”A. Didem Uslu (Beykent University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Email: didemuslu@beykent.edu.tr
ABSTRACT:
The entry of Turks into Europe was gradual because they filled in a gap that was left by the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire. Among the clan competitions and struggles of the Seljuks, the Muslim Oghuz clan became the basis for the Ottoman Empire which lived for approximately 700 years in the Mediterranean basin. This was all adventure in a labyrinthine world for the “Turks” who migrated from Asia to Europe. In the same way, Orhan Pamuk’s novels are labyrinthine texts with metafictional, mystical and magical detective stories. His narratives are the mixtures of opposites, paradoxes and ambiguities. The love stories are unlike those of the traditional and conventional love triangles, whereas the detectives are defeated figures. The narrative clues are meaningless and the identities are double, lost, stolen or exchanged. The resistance to closure makes the labyrinth a play ground of miscellaneous ways and solutions. The mysteries are complicated and yet the clues divert or baffle the detective form his search. The linear narratives are split by numerous stories and as a result the plot moves in different directions. Discussions on the design and the creation process are more important than the story itself. So the question is not how the labyrinth and the characters become meaningful but its future design. In this paper, the point of focus will be on the geographical imagination in Pamuk’s novels with reference to the power of religion, of migration and of mobility in a multicultural society.
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