Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence

A dull and detached bit of historical fiction about a complicated, turbulent, and violent period in the 1970s for the citizens of Turkey. The book centers on four university students in Ankara. Ohran and Faruk are on the right. They consider themselves religious idealists, but are called fascists by the other side. Nuray and Yunus, on the left, hope to elevate workers and the poor through socialism, but are simply denounced as Communists. There is some perfunctory stabs at romantic relationships, but nobody really has personality beyond declaiming and then questioning their political allegiances in the face of hatred and violence not only from the other side but through endless internecine squabbles.

It's a bit off-putting to slog show more through the four and a half pages of tiny print in the introduction in order to get some background before getting tossed into the alphabet soup of political organization acronyms that are also footnoted throughout the book.

The end result is a book that is pure muddle -- neither good history nor good fiction -- and a chore to read. show less