And it is that idea, Being on the road, that’s been chosen as the unifying theme of the Brussels Book Fair, which is taking place at Tour et Taxis from the 22nd until the 25th of February. More than four hundred publishing houses, bookshops, creative writing and illustration workshops, academies, cultural institutions, have come to share their passion for literature and the printed page. From different parts of the globe, authors come to meet and engage with their readers, talk about their past and current projects, they want to share their passion and despair, the secret joy they find in writing.

“I’m not interested in simply denouncing that torture is bad,” said Asli Erdogan, Turkish journalist and fiction writer, guest of honour at the Brussels Book Fair. “Of course torture is bad, most of us will agree on that. But I prefer to write with ambivalence, to invite the reader to ask herself the questions that are pertinent. She has to reflect for herself; otherwise, society cannot change. And for that I need literature.”

On Thursday 22nd, at Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Erdogan talked about freedom of speech in Turkey with Kurdish writer and lawyer, Burhan Sönmez, and journalist Kerenn Elkaïm. On Saturday she held a discussion with Paris-based, Morocco-born novelist Tahar Ben Jalloun, where they discussed the changes that have happened in Turkey since the creation of the Turkish Republic, the gradual erosion of secularism and women’s liberties, and the grim situation in the Kurdish region.

“I find Turkey fascinating, full of contradictions,” Erdogan said. “Women have been slowly losing liberties, and yet, the support for Erdogan among women is very high. Between 50 and 60% of women support Erdogan. And at the same time, women have been at the forefront of all the activist movements. This is Turkey. And despite all the terrible, painful things I have experienced and seen there, I am in love with my language, its musicality. I don’t ever want to lose it.”

On Friday night, the stand of Librebook bookshop hosted several writers who have made Brussels their home. Some of those present were: Damir Omeragić (BH), Veronika Valentová (CZ), Katarína Varsiková (SK), Mauricio Ruiz (MX), Loranne Vella (MT), Giuseppe Porcaro (IT/EN), Benito Martinez (CU), Aurelio Crespo (PT), Aile Alavee (EE), Pernilla Jourde (SE), Patrick Lowie (BE/FR) and Grażyna Plebanek (PL/EN). Librebook also invited EU Prize Winners: Carolina Schutti (AT), Gabriela Babnik (SLO), and Ioana Parvulescu (RO).

The fair has several forums and pavilions where discussions and panel debates are held. Europe’s square: dedicated to books and authors exploring themes of current interest in Europe; On the road: literature that takes its reader to enjoy other cultures and distant landscapes, past and present; Literary journey: popular and established writers; Words from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific: discovering the universe and voices from writers in other parts of the world; Thrillers and detectives; Destination teens and kids.

The book fair ends on Sunday evening, but not before some well-esteemed writers take the floor and greet their audiences. A few of them: Thomas Gunzing and Odile d’Oultremont, Myriam Leroy, Diane Ducret, Grégoire Delacourt, Olivier Guez, Viktor Lazlo, among many others.

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Aslı Erdoğan was trained as a physicist and began her career at CERN in Switzerland. Perhaps surprisingly, for someone who grew up facing torture and who recently spent five months in prison for her writing, she says that she found her experience at CERN “frightening”. It was a male-dominated, extremely competitive environment that she did not want to participate in. And so, in the 1990s, she found her way to writing.

It was at that time In her column in the Turkish newspaper Radikal that she recorded the rape of three Kurdish girls and found herself at the receiving end of death-threats. Aslı Erdoğan says that unlike a typical columnist, she does not “bang the table” and make noise: she is a storyteller who prefers to leave open questions and to invite the reader to form their own judgements. So when she wrote that one of the girls had been killed and that a post-mortem had concluded she had been violated with a bayonet, she did not expect to have “a cannonball hit me in the face”.

But as Burhan Sönmez affirmed, it is impossible to be a writer in Turkey and not be in trouble with the government. Since 2016, over 180 news outlets have been shut down in Turkey and it is the country with the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world. Writers such as Aslı Erdoğan and Burhan Sönmez refuse to be intimidated. Talking about his novel Istanbul Istanbul, based in part on his own experience of jail, Sönmez said that he wanted to “write about happiness in the language of pain”. The result is a book that has been hailed as a testament to the power of the imagination.

Asked whether it is really possible to imprison a writer who can always be free in mind, Aslı Erdoğan quoted Tolstoy: that there is no absolute freedom, and no absolute captivity. She reminded the audience that even in Auschwitz, people had written and had made beautiful works of art. Nevertheless, she agreed with Buhan Sönmez’s insistence that while an imprisoned writer may have the right to say they are still intellectually free, those outside prisons must demand the physical liberty of their fellows. She highlighted the case of Ahmet Altan, sentenced on 16 February to life in prison for allegedly supporting the coup attempt in 2016. Aslı Erdoğan called on the international community to show solidarity with Ahmet Altan. She added that the Foire du Livre had already shown solidarity by making her the guest of honour, and that the Turkish regime would have to take notice.

Sign the petition for the release of Ahmet Altan. Find out more about his case here

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