Friday, September 29, 2006

Orhan Pamuk on the East's need for freedom

Erkan posted news of an interesting interview with Orham Pamuk ...

El Pais writes:The Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, examines the rift between western and eastern societies in an interview with the journalist and writer Rosa Montero. "My idea of the West is freedom, democracy, women's rights, three things that the East does not have. We have other things. Fraternity, for example! We are absolutely formidable in terms of fraternity! This pillar of the French Revolution suits us perfectly. As far as equality is concerned, that too is passable and there are notably some Islamic philosophers who speak of equality. But what we do not have is freedom, democracy and women's rights. I don't care about the rest. You can dress in eastern or western clothes, live in traditional houses or not. ... What really counts is that people may do what they want".

Sounds interesting but I'll need Erin to translate :) The full article seems to be in Spanish ... El Pais being a Spanish newspaper and all.

Anyway, it was located on an interesting site ... called euro topics .

euro|topics aims to contribute to the development of a European public sphere. In a daily press review and selected articles, the most important political, cultural and social debates are to be followed.

The objective of euro|topics is to make those debates, which up to now had almost exclusively been conducted at national level, accessible Europe-wide. In this way, trans-European discussions, as well as the development of new networks of media, cultural and political exchange, are to be encouraged and supported.

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