Reviewed by: Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960 by Ela A. Gezen Steffen Kaupp Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960. By Ela A. Gezen. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. Pp. xiii + 159. Cloth $85.00. ISBN 978-1640140240. Already Leslie Adelson in her pathbreaking book The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature (2005) made a convincing case against the so-called "between-the-worlds" paradigm when analyzing the cultural interventions of Turkish German literature in German society. Many scholars since have taken up Adelson's charge by showing how these texts shape cultural discourses, rather than locating migrants outside or between worlds, such as Tom Cheesman (Novels of Turkish German Settlement, 2007), Venkat Mani (Cosmopolitical Claims, 2007), Ruth Mandel (Cosmopolitan Anxieties, 2008), and Yasemin Yildiz (Beyond the Mother Tongue, 2012) to name but a few. Ela Gezen's Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960 presents an original, comprehensive, inclusive, and engaging contribution that highlights the interrelatedness of German and Turkish archives through the lens of Brechtian aesthetics and its importance for both Turkish theater as well as Turkish German literature. On the one hand, Gezen establishes Bertolt Brecht as a key figure in Turkey in the post-1960-coup era where his epic theater as a theory of engaged art offered young leftist intellectuals a foundation to link aesthetics and politics, allowing them to advocate for societal change once freedom of thought and freedom from censorship had become constitutionally guaranteed rights. On the other hand, and this is the most significant contribution, through both original archival research as well as close textual analyses, Gezen provides a new paradigm for considering Turkish German literature by moving beyond the consideration of labor migration as the foundational moment of Turkish German cultural interactions. Gezen turns to the Turkish archive in that she introduces the reception and adaptation of Brecht's conceptualization of the theatrical stage, and how the engagement with Brecht's work in and of itself must be understood as an intersection of the German and Turkish archives. By turning the attention to the Turkish archive, Gezen also expands the historical and geographical scope of what is typically understood to be Turkish German cultural production. Already in the introduction, Gezen connects this turn to the Turkish archive to larger cultural questions, in that she sees her paradigm as a rejection of the marginalization of Turkish culture within German society. That is, Gezen convincingly argues that by using the figure and oeuvre of Brecht, one can paint a picture of cultural inclusion that moves beyond the supposed incompatibility of German and Turkish culture. Ultimately, Gezen shows how transnational cultural practices are never unidirectional by showing how the Turkish and German archives are interconnected through the figure of Brecht, both shaping and being shaped by each other. [End Page 407] After a thought-provoking introduction that outlines the major theoretical and analytical interventions of the book, Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature is divided into three relatively short chapters. Chapter 1 presents a concise overview of the transformation of left-wing political culture in Turkey after the 1960 and 1971 military coups, and how Brecht's theoretical work on socially engaged theater offered these young revolutionaries a framework for using art to trigger real societal change. Rather than focusing exclusively on individual stagings of Brecht plays in Turkey, Gezen engages with Brecht's influence on the Turkish theater scene and political left more programmatically. By introducing key "Brechtians" in Turkey, such as Genco Erkal, Haldun Taner, and Vasif Öngören, the first chapter shows how Turkish dramatists did not merely stage Brecht's plays, but rather interpreted and adapted them in a collaborative effort for the sociopolitical agenda of their political contexts. This chapter is thus also very much a history of intercultural left-wing politics focusing on the links between aesthetic theory and political practice, as well as the exchange between national contexts and transitional politics. Gezen elaborates on this merging of the Turkish and German archives in her discussion of Haldun Taner's The Ballad of Ali of Keshan (1970) where...
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