Egyptian culture minister holds high hopes for TÜYAP fair
A dynamic Nile folkloric music and dance troupe swaying in mesmerizing unison, billowing national flags, prominent ministers, literary representatives from all over the world, thousands of eager revelers and thunderous drumming building up to a rumbling carnival finale.
One could have easily mistaken the opening of the TÜYAP International ?stanbul Book Fair on Saturday, this year hosting Egypt as its guest of honor, as an international summit of the highest order. Yet according to Egyptian Culture Minster Emad Abu-Ghazi, that is exactly what the event is.
Taking time out of his busy schedule to speak with Today's Zaman Saturday morning, Abu-Ghazi said that one of the primary issues that acts as a barrier to cultural understanding between nations is language. “In order to engage in sincere cultural dialogue with other nations, education must play a principal role. Language unfortunately often poses a barrier to this. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that aside from Naguib Mahfouz [the prolific Egyptian author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988] very few Egyptian authors have had works translated into Turkish. Thus the importance of the TÜYAP fair for us is the focus placed upon the value of translation as a means of promoting cultural understanding between our countries,” he said.
The Egyptian culture minister, it transpires, however, is no stranger to the Turkish language, having dabbled in it during his years as a student in Cairo, “I studied the Turkish language for five years when I was a student in the history department at Cairo University … but unfortunately this was 40 years ago, and really I remember very little,” he confessed, adding, “But I do like a lot of Turkish authors; I am a great fan of Nazim Hikmet."
The festival theme, “Hope, Dream or Reality?”, is one very much aimed at the high hopes resonating through many of the Arab countries in the aftermath of the democratic revolutions earlier in the year. How significant does Abu-Ghazi see the choice of theme as being? “The question of whether hope is something tangible or a mere dream is one of the most pertinent today. In this case it can mean many things. It can refer to the light of a new dawn that people in the Arab nations hope to see, or it can refer to our hopes to forge a deeper relationship with Turkey through the arts and culture field. Something I always liked about Turkish literature actually is that the authors always spoke of hope. Hope is something real, and it something we must all have.”
With a packed program of Egypt-themed conferences, discussions and film screenings running alongside the main exhibition throughout the duration of the fair, Abu-Ghazi expressed hopes that the presence of some of the most prolific names in Egyptian literature at the fair would facilitate an introduction between Turkish readers and some of Egypt's finest authors.