Latest Elif Safak Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• After the Ankara bombings on October 10, people were asked to hold a minute of silence, but many refused. Our society can't even unite in grief to honor the victims. We've lost our empathy. That's maybe the worst.

  Elif Safak

  Grief, People, Silence

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can't ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.

  Elif Safak

  People, Pace, World

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Turkey has a very young, dynamic, curious population. In Europe, Facebook and Twitter are mostly about sharing daily experiences while for Turkish people, social networks are political platforms.

  Elif Safak

  Europe, Turkeys, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Turkey in general became too involved with what is happening in Egypt and in Syria. Some politicians with neo-Ottoman dreams developed this idea of being a major player in the Middle East, which hasn't gone as expected.

  Elif Safak

  Dream, Player, Egypt

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.

  Elif Safak

  Believe, Government, Optimism

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I would like the refugee crisis to become a new beginning in the Turkish-European relationship. But it would be very problematic if, during this process, human rights were forgotten. Democracy needs to be the priority.

  Elif Safak

  New Beginnings, Refugee Crisis, Rights

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I see two opposite tendencies in Turkish society: people feel demoralized, they lose the interest in politics and retreat to their private lives; or they become very angry and even more politicized, and radicalized. Both trends are troublesome.

  Elif Safak

  Opposites, Two, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Obviously, Turkey is not a typical authoritarian regime, and obviously it's very important that there are free elections. But it's also obvious that this is not a liberal, mature democracy. This is why I call Turkey a wobbly democracy. At any time, it can tip over and fall down.

  Elif Safak

  Fall, Turkeys, Democracy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it's a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women's rights.

  Elif Safak

  Rights, Europe, Fundamentals

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already.

  Elif Safak

  Powerful, Turkeys, Democracy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.

  Elif Safak

  Government, Democracy, Majority

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Many analysts compare Turkey with countries in the Middle East, but I think we need to compare it with Russia. Both countries come from a tradition of empire, and also from a tradition of the strong state.

  Elif Safak

  Country, Strong, Thinking

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it's very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.

  Elif Safak

  Eye, Years, Political

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan's government.

  Elif Safak

  Believe, Government, Numbers

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.

  Elif Safak

  Real, Book, Writing

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it's not ok anymore. We've forgotten how to laugh.

  Elif Safak

  Fun, Powerful, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Words are heavy in Turkey, and every writer, every poet and every journalist knows that, because of a word, because of a sentence, because of a tweet or even a retweet, you can be sued, you can be demonized by the media and you can even land in prison.

  Elif Safak

  Media, Land, Turkeys

  Source: www.spiegel.de