17 10 2008- UNESCO declares 2008 as William Saroyan Year. Turkish Culture Ministry plans to open a Saroyan Museum in Bitlis in 2009

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Armenian-American writer's soul back in Turkey
Saturday, October 4, 2008
VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

The Turkish Culture Ministry has announced plans to open a museum in honor of Pullitzer Prize-winning Armenian-American writer William Saroyan. The museum will be located in the southeastern province of Bitlis, where Saroyan's family lived before migrating to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Saroyan is being commemorated on the 100th anniversary of his birth with various events in different parts of the world, including a UNESCO declaration of 2008 as the year of Saroygan. “The search in Bitlis continues on where exactly the house that belonged to Saroyan's family is located. If we could discover where it is located, we will convert it into a museum in early 2009,” said Ertuğrul Günay, the Turkish culture minister.
Speaking to the Turkish Daily News, Günay said Turkey had not been sensitive about its artists so far and had not shown enough interest in the places where they lived. “We will eliminate such perceptions. Changes will be introduced in the cultural realm in Turkey in 2009,” he said. Saroyan was born in Fresno, California. He grew up listening to stories being told by family members about Anatolia, the land where his ancestors settled. Saroyan attracted the attention of world literary critics with his first work. In 1939, he won the Pulitzer Prize, immediately after publishing his second book, “The Trouble with Tigers.” The Turkish Daily News conducted an interview with Rober Koptaş, editor-in-chief of Aras Publications, which publishes the Saroyan collection, and Aziz Gökdemir, editor of the collection.
For Gökdemir, a Saroyan museum in Bitlis is a dream that will not come true. “We just could not bear it if we knew the total number of valuable artifacts that Turkey has lost so far. The West has protected what Turkey would have lost. We just could not grasp the value of artists like Saroyan when they were alive. I do not believe in any possibility of opening a museum in memory of Saroyan,” he said. “In Turkey, there exists a widely held prejudice against the Armenian Diaspora. We aim to put an end to such a rigid prejudice with the Saroyan collection we publish,” said Koptaş. “On the one hand, there is a ‘diaspora,' the existence of which depends on its anti-Turkey stance. On the other hand, there are those diaspora members, such as Saroyan, who longed for Anatolia throughout their lives,” he said.
Anatolia drops from Saroyan's pen
“Saroyan's writing is warm. He is not didactic, not a message-driven writer. He is like one of the ordinary people of Anatolia,” said Gökdemir, adding that the United States was home to many Armenian writers similar to Saroyan. “Armenians carried the spirit of Anatolia to Fresno, California, Watertown and Glendal when they had to leave it. Warm and friendly people live thousands of miles away from us,” he said.
There are a considerable number of Saroyan experts of Armenian descent in the world, but Aras Publications employs Gökdemir as translator and editor of Saroyan's books because of his highly successful Saroyan analyses, which have appeared in most prominent literature journals in Turkey.

Saroyan before Bitlis, Saroyan after Bitlis
Saroyan was told numerous stories about Anatolia when he was a child. He came to Turkey in the early 1960s to pay his first visit to Bitlis, a southeastern province where his family had settled before they migrated to America at the beginning of the 20th century.
Gökdemir said the journey to Bitlis had a strong effect on Saroyan's writing. “If we want to study Saroyan, we should divide his life into two eras: Saroyan before Bitlis, and Saroyan after Bitlis,” he said, adding that the author's works written after his visit to Bitlis contain a deep feeling of melancholia.
Gökdemir said his favorite Saroyan story was “Summer Joy” (Yaz Neşesi).
“Whenever I read that story, I cry like a child,” he said.
“I hope humans will not have to face such pain in life anymore. I hope no one will ever have to leave the land where they live,” he added.
Koptaş, on the other hand, said the Saroyan series was one of the most prominent collections of Aras Publications. Six books by Saroyan have greeted Turkish readers so far.
Koptaş's favorite story by Saroyan is “Cowards are Brave” (Ödlekler Cesurdur). “I think this world needs not heroes but good-hearted cowards,” he said.

A.M.