Dear Rana, first of all, I would like to thank you on behalf of the University of Washington for agreeing to participate in the panel.
The club series invites the Turkish audience to confront history by conveying all the diversity, especially Jewish life, in 1950s Istanbul, and it does so with an honesty that is unusual in the mainstream.
Undoubtedly, the solidity and aesthetic consistency of the script play an important role in the success of the TV series Club, which focuses on the Jews of Turkey.
In addition, it is important that it brings up very important historical issues such as the Wealth Tax, which is often neglected in popular culture, Being a Minority in Turkey, Turkification Policies, the 'Citizen Speak Turkish' Campaign, the September 6-7 Events, the Sephardic Jews from Turkey, and the Ladino language has a role.
For these reasons, the project aroused great interest in university circles.
If you wish, let's talk about your story in the context of Sephardi, Non-Muslims and Minorities in Turkey. First, I would like to start with a few questions about you and Sefardim from Turkey.
First, I would like to start with a few questions about you and Sefardim from Turkey.
Could you tell us about the emergence of your story as the daughter of Rashel and Fistik İsmet, and the granddaughter of Matilda?
Of course. I also would like to thank you for this interview, for giving me the chance, and to the Washington University.
Actually, I've been telling the story for a very long time in peer-to-peer conversations.
'Cause this is where this whole thing stuck in my head When I was in the first grade of primary school, an old lady approached my mother on Istiklal Street.
And he spoke to my mother, whom I know as Aysel, as Rasel.
It was an interesting thing for me. I asked my mother. I said "Why does this aunt call you Rachel?"
My mother said that because I was a child with freckles and curly hair, this was the nickname they gave me at school.
However, there was already Matilda at home and I had never questioned Matilda.
Then I learned from my father that my grandmother and mother are Jewish.
Our upstairs neighbor Aunt Katina Rum.
But they don't matter to us. So these are names for people just like İsmet, Ayşe and Fatma.
Over the years, after I became a little younger girl, of course, my mother's instinct to hide her ethnic identity even from her own child, that reflex, had a great impact on me.
And I started to tell about it in friends circles.
Then I started a blog and wrote there for a while. I started to tell my family story on blogs.
Then, when I changed jobs and started working as a screenwriter, I started to put forward this story when I started to transfer some of the stories I observed from that period to the scripts.
Right after that, as I shared this story on social media, it took Pelin Distas's attention, who was the head of Kanal D (Channel D) at that time.
They invited us for a meeting. “We want to tell this story,” they said.
They wanted to share this story in the open channel then.
While trying to prepare this story, its general story, and the Bible of the story for a while, Pelin Diştaş left Kanal D. I also withdrew because I knew that I could not tell this story on open channel.
Then, in 2016, the project came to the agenda again with Zeynep Gunay Tan.
Zeynep became the Creative Director of 03 Media. When I called her to congratulate her new position, she said she was looking for a story.
Then I told her about the existence of this story, It was a story she had already read and was used to. That's how it started. That's how it came up.
That's wonderful! Going back to your childhood and youth, what kind of environment did you grow up in? How would you describe the Istanbul of that period and being a minority in Turkey?
Basically, when I tell this story on social media or in person, I think that the thing that most affects people who listen to it is that it is a somewhat unusual nuclear family story.
Because there was an interesting structure in that nuclear family in which we lived with my maternal grandmother, father, and for a while with paternal grandmother.
In the general society, it was a family that developed far beyond the rules accepted by the society, behavior patterns, and everything we say about "holy things" in quotation marks.
Sometimes reflexively, sometimes consciously
Therefore, when I was in that family, I started to learn at a very young age that I should never define people through labels, that these are not about us, the main thing is about being human.
Therefore, as I just said, I did not grow up with religious divisions around me, as I learned that I should make an effort to be a better person and be passionate about it, rather than developing an ethnic identity, a religion or a place of belonging.
Yes, we had Aunt Katina upstairs. Well, yes, we had Madam Katie in our backyard.
My grandmother was Matilda herself, but we never grew up knowing that it was something different.
My childhood years were during the 1970s
This is one of the things we fictionalize in the series.
I was not born in 1955, I was born in 1965.
My childhood years were in the 70s and my youth years were in the 80s
I learned to grow and live within the philosophy of the Denizer family by becoming a little independent from everything that is happening around, what is happening above, what is happening politically.
Actually I would like to go back to your answer to the very first question and ask a question related to that.
I was going to ask What you learnt about Jewish culture from your mother Rachel and your grandmother Matilda, yet you mentioned that you never talked about Aysel’s being Rasel.
I read somewhere that you learned how to prepare the Sabbath table from your grandmother, Matilda, but only later found out that it has to do with your Jewish roots. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yes, let me tell you this
I mean, for those questions like "Are we being born?" or "Are we dying?, What is the world?, What is a person?, Where do we go when we die?, What is God? etc. my direct contact was always my father.
Because he was such a special character
When I asked my father about God, he gave me the Iliad before me. I was 8 years old.
Read this. Start here. "We'll talk later," he said. That's the extraordinary family thing I just said.
Therefore, religious rituals in our house were not too dominant, perhaps because my mother and grandmother were already assimilated.
Likewise, there were not very dominant things about Islam.
But it is told as if it is a great nostalgia.
I grew up in a neighborhood, in a neighborhood on the street. We used to celebrate sister Katina's holiday together.
Here we used to set the Ramadan table together.
Therefore, I never grew up with such a discrimination story from my childhood.
But my grandmother used to set a raki table on Friday evenings.
I was with my grandmother because my mother and father were working.
She would pick me up and we would chat.
She would tell. As much as she can tell. Often when I asked about certain things, she would say, 'Some things happened'. Our Jewish friends will understand this very well.
She used to tell me "Some things happened". Years later, when I started to make friends over the internet, I found out by chance that I was setting the table on Friday evenings.
Then during the journey of this story, it is not because I do not know the Sabbath, but because of this story
But looking back, all of a sudden I just realized that my grandmother was actually setting the Sabbath table, that table was Sabbath table that she would take me in front of her every Friday night.
You must have heard this anecdote.
Thank you so much. With the sharing of your story, for the first time, Jews, who mostly live in Istanbul, became "visible" in their own words. What kind of reaction did you get from the Jewish community?
In this context, can you briefly talk about the transition process from Kayades to Avlaremoz? How did this process happen in Turkey? How was the transition from Silence to Let's Talk?
Now we have to thank the community for that matter.
Our director, Zeynep Günay Tan, is also close to the Jewish community, has neighbors and acquaintances. She was not someone who had no idea of the Sephardic Jewish community.
But there is one thing we should all accept that if they didn't believe and trust us, if they didn't open their doors so much, maybe we wouldn't be able to tell this part of the story so carefully and in such detail.
So once again, I would like to thank them, on behalf of all the creators behind this story.
They were very well received. In my one-on-one experiences, there were moments when I got very emotional.
So let me say this. All of the core cast you watch in this story are my family.
One is my grandmother, one is my mother, the other is my father.
No matter how much we fictionalize it, no matter how much we change it in fiction. I was not that emotional during the creation process of the work either.
So they were characters for me. I never looked at them as my mother or father until the last moment .
Maybe because of professional deformation. I was so excited when I watched it on the air.
Our dear friends from the Jewish community gave very interesting feedback.
In other words, the most impressive thing to me was when a very precious 85-year-old elder said to me in tears, "I have come to this age, I am visible to the wider society for the first time."
Something we are very impressed with. We tried to tell a conscientious story.
Of course, I say this for everyone who accepts this story, agrees to be in this story, wants to publish this story, who wants to shoot this story. We all wanted to tell a really conscientious story and
We have tried to explain some things that have been romanticized for years, some things that have been both caricatured and politically romanticized. I hope we succeeded.
Yes, it is certain that it proved itself to be a very successful project.
I want to ask a question about Ladino. What was the place of the Ladino language in your life? Can you talk about the Turkification policies and the effects of these policies on the Ladino language?
I don't remember Ladino at home, but I could speak Greek until I was about 6-7 years old.
Maybe because of Aunt Katina who used to live upstairs. My grandmother also spoke and understood Greek. My mother also spoke and understood Greek.
My grandmother already spoke 7 languages. Do I remember Ladino specifically? I really do not know. I guess I don't remember.
Losing Ladino, in particular, is very heartbreaking, of course.
I think the reason for this is rooted in Citizen Speak Turkish Campaign, but frankly, I don't think this is the only reason. I am just sharing my personal opinion.
Sad stuff, of course. I think that people should not be prevented from expressing themselves in their mother tongue.
But I think the persecution of the strong on the weak continues, changing shape over the years.
When this subject is discussed, I always say to my friends, "I am a screenwriter, if I want to take my profession to a global level, I have to know English.
If I don't speak English, I can only play in my own garden and pick fruit from the trees in my own garden.
In conclusion, I think nothing has changed. I think it just changed shape.
I think the obligations have evolved in a different way.
I don't have a political view, but this is my personal view about this
I wish the young people would get excited now and revive Ladino.
As for Kayades and Avleremoz, when this story started to take off, I was already a TV critic
using Ranini pseudonym who started in Ekşi Sözlük, later founded Ranini TV, became a screenwriter, and separated Ranini from her screenwriter identity.
I mean, I was someone who separated these identities from each other in the eyes of the crowd. I thought about it for a long time when this story was set to take off.
I mean, I have a proprietary pseudonym that I used when writing the screenplay, but while telling this story, I had a feeling that I shouldn't hide, that if I hide, it would lose something of its value.
and then I wanted to come out as Rana Denizer. I also wanted to become visible and talk using my own name, as opposed to Kayades, instead of disappearing and being silent.
Hopefully good things have happened.
For the citizens of Turkey with different identities, your story mirrors the years full of difficulties. It is a nice detail that all the colors in the country meet at the table where the "chosen family" sits together, as you said.
When you look at today's Turkey, what would you like to say about it as a Sephardim from Turkey?
When we look at today's Turkey, I think we have already said this in today's Turkey. So I think we said it's important to be able to sit at that table.
It was something about the present, not about the past. We wanted to say and said that the important thing is to be able to sit at that table, with its curves, with its right, with its mistakes, with its merits, and that everything can begin after you succeed in sitting at that table, in today's Turkey.
Thank you so much. Is there anything you want to add?
No, is there anything else you want to ask?
Thank you for this great interview and for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you so much
I thank you