Mass media security

Turkish Author Elif Shafak: 'We've Forgotten How to Laugh'

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. So when we write, we write with this knowledge in the back of our minds. And if someone says: I am not affected by this, I would not believe that person. The truth is: nobody can escape this pressure. And as a result, there is a lot of self-censorship. When I am writing political op-eds, yes 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.