ISTANBUL
A Greco-Turkish publishing house in Istanbul is at the forefront of a revival in Turkey’s multicultural publishing tradition.
Istos – Greek for 'net' or 'web' – is the first Greek-language publishing house to start operating in almost half a century, drawing on a rich history of erstwhile Greek-language culture in Turkey.
Professional translators and amateur enthusiasts in the Greek language alike will be flocking to a translation workshop being held by Istos this weekend in Istanbul.
Anna Maria Aslanoglu, an Istos editor and founder says that although contemporary Greek literature is already being translated into Turkish these mainly come from English and French adaptations.
“Although some of the translations are very good, translation from another translation can remove the real meaning,” Aslanoglu says.
Istos removes this middleman approach. Aslanoglu claims that Turkish and Greek, which share close historical ties, are easier to translate directly. If there is another Western tongue in the process then the language loses meaning, she says.
Fellow editor and Istos founder Seckin Erdi mentions well-known Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy who, despite being translated to Turkish various times from Western languages, Erdi says: “Translating Cavafy directly from Greek to Turkish is different."
“There is a cultural richness in this country. Turkey’s publishing history is multicultural and multilingual despite it being interrupted during the transition period from Ottoman Empire to the republican era.”
Istanbul-Greeks were one of the largest minority groups in the city until the First World War. The population exchange between Greece and Turkey after WWI decimated the number of the Greeks living in Turkey.
The ‘wealth tax’ regulation of 1942 which resulted in many non-Muslim minority groups losing their assets and the 1955 attacks (also known as 6-7 September incidents) on Greek minority groups in Turkey decreased the number of Greeks in the country.
Nevertheless, an enthusiasm for Greek culture has remained with Erdi claiming that Turkish readers enjoy Greek literature.
In 2012 Istos published in a book titled ‘Abeyances and Ramps,’ by Hristos Anagnostopulos a semi-autobiographical work about a group of Greek Cypriots coming to Istanbul – the first such book published by an Istanbul-Greek in the Greek language in 50 years.
Another original work published by Istos is called ‘Can I Speak, Father?’, a memoir written by fellow Istanbul-Greek Yani Vlastos who migrated to Greece in 1979.
“He wrote both in Turkish and Greek. It is not a translation and he has 1970s Turkish,” Erdi explains.
Erdi also hinted at new release coming in September: ‘Leisure of Filotheos’, an 18th century fictional novel to be published dually in contemporary Greek and Turkish.
The last Greek-language magazine in Istanbul was ‘Pirsos’, the brainchild of veteran publisher, musician and translator Panoyat Abaci. Pirsos survived as a weekly publication until the 1960s.
The interest between these two neighbors’ languages continues to grow. Only this week a Greek newspaper printed a headline in Turkish as a mark of solidarity with those affected by the Soma mining disaster.
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