YouSaid · the spoken record

Ece Temelkuran

lines on the record: 38
first: 2021-05-18
most recent: 2021-05-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Because he didn't join the Gizzi protests. She said, I cannot look at him. I cannot really, I am disgusted by him because how can you be so uninterested in life? How can you be so out of love that you don't go to Gizzi and their house was like five minutes to Taksham Square where all the protests were happening? So the price is the price of not being included in history is that being left out by the beautiful people of our kind. So by the beautiful members of our kind, you have to be loved. In order to do that, you have to be in the reality. And when you see the whole reality, when you're close enough to touch the reality, you would see that there's a lot of fun, a real fun in a whole reality. Yeah, this is what I would say to them, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I'm watching Netflix as well. And actually yesterday I ran into PK Blinders again and I was so happy. So there's nothing wrong in that. But I think we all need to understand our true size on this planet. And our true size can only be understood when we put ourselves in the history when it's happening. I can tell you that there is a big price to pay when history is happening and you're not there. People might think that they're protecting themselves from something. People might think that, okay, I'm going to wait here until it's all over. It's yes they can protect themselves. It's okay. But I have to tell them that there is a big prize to pay after the history is how should I put it? Ah, there's a story in the book. A friend of mine left her husband.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wherever I go, I put this table, I gathered my loved ones, my friends that's my home. And unfortunately some of us have to reinvent home in different ways, and obviously Helen was one of them. And yes, my language is my home as well. But then now I'm trying to speak English. I'm writing in English, but I'm not very good at speaking it. I'm trying to make English my home as well, another home. But then, recently, I realized that I am never a local. I have been born in Neesmere, my hometown. I lived in Ankara. I studied in Ankara. I lived in Istanbul quite a long time. And I never learned the names of the streets, roads, whatever. I was never a local, I noticed. And I'm now living in Zagreb for the last five years, and I know only two names of two streets. So I think there's something in me that... To be a local. I don't know.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, like my writing has been centered around two words. I think when I die, people, you know, somebody will write an article about me and it's going to say this, that she wrote about home and road. And she was all about this. So yeah, I unfortunately had to think about what is home for several times in my life in terms of country, in terms of actual home and so on. So I came to the point, I came to this understanding that the country is a home, the country is a table, actually. It is a table as big as big enough to accommodate your loved ones and the rest, the surrounding vastness is the rest of the country. And then now I'm thinking, I have this portable table and it's my home.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I do think that suddenly we found ourselves in an apocalyptic movie. And the most important thing that I see in this movie is that we don't actually kill each other like they say in the Hollywood movies or we don't go completely cannibals or something. So the first reflex of humankind is to help each other and help each other to survive together. This is what I saw throughout the pandemic. And this is what I liked, actually. And also people risk their lives to shout for dignity, especially in Black Lives Matter during the pandemic. So I thought also that humankind can still risk its life in order to defend the human dignity. So that's the other thing I saw in pandemic. And of course, the crisis that we are going through, the economic and political crises,”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My hometown is also run by main opposition mayor, Tun Soyar. He's an amazing person and he is really interesting to follow, I would say, selling the seeds in Turkey are forbidden, banned. So he is organizing exchange of seeds, markets. So the seeds that have been buried in places, I don't know, whatever, they came out. So he's actually making a lot of investment in food, in agriculture, which will be one of the main issues that we will have to think about in coming 10 years, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The wreck of democracy, current democracy into a living wreck. This is what I see for the future, especially in coming 10 years.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and this is what municipalities in Turkey doing, the opposition party municipalities. They're exactly doing this. It is the radical love because Turkey has been through a lot and there's this extreme polarization in the country. People really literally want to kill each other when they come from different political camps. Yeah, these municipalities are using the embracing kind of embracing politics and that kind of narrative, the together narrative, so to speak. So yeah, this will be the new thing. But also to keep these medium, how shall I put it, to keep the balance towards a little bit to the left, I think the new politics, the new political organisms that came up from Tahrir or Sachmunds, they're going to go around these local politics, these new local leaders, so they're going to turn”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm putting my eggs in Bernie Sanders basket, because if Bernie Sanders was not there, the balance of politics would have been completely different. Biden wouldn't have the courage to propose this plan, almost a new plan for a new deal. So, yeah. Because, Bernie, yeah, don't you think? Yeah.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Realistically, and so on. And as long as we talk about these things, it is actually building in our minds. Even to tell that you are more than your market value or you are not your market value to another person would change several things in our lives, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I wrote a book the entire book about that, so I don't know what to say. I think yeah, we have to think, imagine and start building a system that is beyond this. And it's not that difficult. It's not impossible. And we can do it. This is what I, and, you know, even the word we can do it, I think, should make people rallyable. Because, yeah, they're not earning enough, but they can actually change the world by joining the forces, so to speak. So yeah, this is how we build it. The last act of capitalism and we are suffering, all of us suffering on different levels. And there's going to be a new system. And this is the time, actually, this is our last chance to think about a new system and to think it properly.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And when you tell them to get angry, like, you know, why you are not angry and so on, like I'm talking about really working class people, they would spit on you because what anger I'm trying to survive. I have to keep my attention on surviving now. So yeah, and they are the ones who are suffering from most indignified situations in dignifying conditions and so on. But it's not easy for them to think about that and then also survive. Also, yeah, this is what I wanted to say actually on elaborating on that.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why pride? Because it's easy because pride is something that you can capitalize on in terms of politics endlessly. And dignity requires an overhaul taking down of the entire system that produces indignity. That is, of course, a revolutionary thing. Anyway, so yeah, dignity requires a system change. That's why it's not easy to talk about it, whereas pride does not change anything. And what has changed in England after you took these people took their pride back? Nothing. Nothing changed in their life. So it didn't really work, did it? Or for Trump as well? So yeah, pride is easy. Pride is politically utilized easily. So yeah, that's why pride. And, you know, this is not the first time people are doing choices against their interests. Yeah, the history is full of that.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Artist, as you call me, but yes, I do think that because there is no, you know, we have to think, we have to talk about thoughts and ideas more and less about emotions. It doesn't go anywhere. It just stops. It's a one-way conversation. It's a monologue, actually. I feel, okay, you feel. So what can I do? I cannot discuss you about your feelings. So, yeah, there's no discussion. There's no opening there, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. I think it started in 1980s. After there is no alternative, there was no need for confrontation. So in order to evade confrontation, in order to suppress antagonism, I should say, people started using this I feel expression whenever they want to tell something because they think it's still happening. They think that this protects them from any kind of challenge or any kind of counter argument. So it is actually an evasion of discussion. So if everybody feels who is going to think I want to ask and also, you know, yeah, this is why I'm so against this ideal thing. But also, yeah, emotions and the commodification of emotions. Also the inflation of emotions. I know it's a bit bizarre coming from.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a profit-based, irregular face, unregulated, sorry. So we are trying to build a morality out of this. We are trying to build a politics out of this. And we are new at it. I'm like, I told it in the book. I'm like, we are like these, you know, people who are going to seances, magnetism seances when electricity was first controlled or we are like those old people who are saying good evening to the tv presenter when tvs got to our homes so we are trying and we are learning together but it's not going too well i should say”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too much expression of anger does not leave a space for to think and to speak and to understand and so on. Angry communities are building in every language and it is as if they're working for Facebook or Twitter, whatever. They're not getting anywhere. So anger does not help anymore and we have to replace it with attention and attention. I think we have to cool down a little bit. Don't you think? I mean, like you've been through Brexit role for a long time. You know, you would know what I mean. It's too much, too much emotions. And the history does not care about our emotions. That's the thing I wanted to say, actually. The history cares about what we do. And in order to do something, we have to pay attention.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't call myself an activist because it would be unjust for the real activists, I think. But I know what you mean. And yes, I used anger and I still cannot watch my videos when I shout during the TV programs and so on. But I realized that it's not the anger, but maybe the inflation of anger or the extreme expressions of anger and feeling the communications fair with expressions of anger is my problem because people, you know, we are going through a period where emotions are commodified and we are communicating in a fair where algorithms are directing our emotions and so on. So in this case, I think anger does not function as it did in 1970s or 1980s or 1990s. Anger is now a spectacle and the spectacle does not change anything. One and second, it”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Matthew, I think I understood this thing about human nature in this mystery about human nature in Beirut. Actually, people, all of us, we secretly want to sacrifice ourselves to something because this eye is so, oh my God, so happy to carry. So we want to melt it in something. But also we are extremely afraid. Actually, we are terrified of melting as well. But it is this, you know, seducing effect. It's this pull and push of human existence. Yeah, we want to exist, but we actually want to melt into something, not to exist at all as the eye.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them after doing that, like these knights of some cause, so to speak. And yeah, this is what happens to people when you recognize them. They become powerful. Because having faith in saying that I believe in you makes a person exist, actually, in a different way. And with dignity, when we have dignity, we almost feel the space that we have to fill on this planet as a human being. We are becoming as big as a human being should be when we have dignity.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I wrote a novel called Banana Sounds. I stayed in Beirut for a year. So after this book was published, there were garbage collectors in Istanbul, Ankara, in other cities as well, and they know me through my writing. And because I wrote about their organization when they were trying to come against the municipality who were taking away their jobs and so on. I like them and they're garbage collectors. They simply have nothing in life. Like, you know, like they don't possess anything. But what they gave me during the publicity period of my novel was amazing. They got organized secretly and they went to the streets in several cities and they wrote the name of my novel stenciled it actually on the walls of the city. That is like illegal actually I shouldn't have said that but it taught me a lot because I so”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believing in that anyway. So the difference between two masses, I think, tells the actual difference between two words. One, one of them, you know, advertises hatred, and the other one advertises love. And I'm feeling really a little bit stressed out when I say the word love, but we also have to think about and talk about love with a political in a new perspective, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think it tells the difference between the two masses that we have been seeing in the world lately. One mass, masses of people actually all around the world, shouted dignity in different languages in Tahrir, in Hong Kong, in United States during Black Lives Matter and so on and so forth. And the other mass, like Rexit supporters, Trump supporters, Erdogan supporters or Orvan supporters in Hungary or Putin supporters, whatever, they were talking about pride. They wanted their pride back as if somebody can take it from them. And pride is such a word. It needs oppression to prove itself. It needs the other. It needs the smaller, weaker to exist. Whereas dignity does not exclude anyone. It cannot exclude anyone because it is inherent in us. And shouting dignity means”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is evil. This is a deep and extremely infinite plateau of discussion, but seriously we are at that moment again, and it's interesting that there are no uniforms or no fascism as we know it, but we still yet think about if whether the humankind is evil or not, right?”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the footage of men or women or people doing the right thing. And I think that is the main reason that make me think that people secretly believe in their kind and they really want to be better. This is an important thing to me because we are, the important thing is to think about the evil and the good in the people in humankind, in humans. I think this is one of those times we are going through another crisis like the Second World War and Nazi era. Nazi Germany inspired many thinkers like Freud, Hannah Arendt, Adorno and several others to think about the evil in the human and how it displays itself and so on. I think we are now in another moment where we have to or need to think about what is good in us and what”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I'm not an optimist and as you do, I am rejecting that pessimism optimism binary thing, but I am trying to tell the truth, really. That is true, that I am trying to be honest. And one of the things that terrifies me most, Matthew, it is that people think that if they don't know me from how to lose a country or from other political articles and so on, they would think that this is one of those rainbows and unicorns and love, love, heart, heart books. It is not like that. I am telling stories from the harshest reality from all over the world and so on. And also those moments in near history that you enumerated here now, I'm not connecting them, but I am looking at the fact that we are extremely enthusiastic when sharing those moments on social media, what we feel when we share.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I mean, you remember Obama, he just came to power repeating the motto, yes, we can, although it was a directionless weekend, but that even the word, those three words, like mesmerized people. So there is a strength, there is a power that we have to think about and we have to start thinking of using it to make the better world a better place with less hate and so on.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have faith in better now. So this is why I mentioned faith and religious aspect is it is either religious or poetry that I talk about, we talk about God and I talk it through poetry maybe. But this is what I want to do this time talk about faith in humankind and in ourselves because this is the thing that has been stolen from us I think after especially 1970s during 1980s especially”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but we have to keep searching for it, don't we? Because yeah, faith is a very dangerous word, as you know. It has a habit of getting out of hand and people kill each other, have been killing each other for centuries because of faith. So it is not easy to talk about faith in humankind, especially I'm a political person. I'm writing and talking about politics. But I do believe that we have to take the risk of speaking about faith, either religious or not, but I would prefer secular faith in humankind. We have to take that risk now because the emotions of politics or politics of emotions at the moment are very, very vigorous and as progressive people, people who want justice, equality and dignity, we have to be able to use the capability of having faith and making people”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you're going to do, or how you're going to be as a person or as a political agent. So hope is a very slippery word. It's fragile and it doesn't work because it is binary. It provides us with binary understanding of the word. There is hope or there is no hope. So what is it to us? If there is or there is no hope. It's about us. It's about our ability of believing in something that makes us create this world. So I think faith is a word that talks about reason to act. And I think it's not hope that people lost in the last three, four decades. It is the reason to act because they do not believe that there is no alternative, that propaganda worked actually. And people start thinking that there is no alternative. And this is our natural state. This is the best we can be. So I think they...”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are many differences, of course, but the one that interests me most is that hope can be absent. There are times that are hopeless, but faith cannot be removed from the human existence, I think, because we are the ones who invented faith and then we invented God's. Therefore, faith is inherent in us, whereas hope is a very fragile word for such times like ours. And also, I think hope became an emotional crutch for many people. Because after writing how to lose a country, it has been published in several languages. So I went around the world, talked to people about the book, and I, you know, I got feedbacks and so on. And the most popular question was, so is there hope? So I'm like, my answer was, what if there is no hope? And also, what if there is hope? I mean, like, does it change?”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love that only if the one who listens to you knows about mindfulness in fall because mindfulness has become this too popular it has become a commodity so to speak but when you look at the history of the concept it's something else it's so big and so on so yeah in that sense thank you very much it is an absolutely perfect description of the book and I wouldn't even call it a book maybe it's a you know as you said you have been moved by it I can call it a cardiac massage with words to the hearts of people who are who are a little bit hopeless at the moment I think”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The local politics are becoming more important and the political energy, I think, is channelized towards the local politics. It's going to happen all over the world, especially in those countries that are subjected to right-wing populism, fascism. I wrote a book like that so I can say the title of the book Turkey is always an insane and melancholic country but really we really miss the normal degree of insanity in Turkey. This is too much for everyone, I think.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do believe in people of Turkey, very much so. I think we have to look at it from this perspective. United States went crazy. People of the United States went crazy in four years of Trump. We had it for more than 20 years. So we are hanging there. That's one thing. We are not insane yet. And the helplessness and the pessimism, I mean, like they have a right to be pessimist for sure, but they also have the energy to fight back. That is why the big cities, the three big cities are run by opposition party, main opposition party now. And this is actually inspired me to, this inspired me to write a financial time story saying that this is going to be the new political phenomena all over the world, actually, because it happened in London during pandemic, it happened in New York during pandemic again.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God. You know, Matthew, this is my dream. And you know what? I really want Mary Streep to play Madame Lilla. I'm like, if you have any connections, please do let me know. Well, I think it's good.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was a time that I was fired from my work as a columnist. And at the time, there was a political, like always in Turkey, there was a political crisis. And I was almost stigmatized, labeled as the persona non grotta. So once you're fired, you are not eligible for hiring again. So I was basically, yeah, ousted, excommunicated and so on. And there were people did not know at the time about trolls, the government trolls and so on, but there was a big, horrible, a one-year-long attack on me, which made me feel horrible about myself. So it was a time. I was in Tunis trying to write this novel. So I kept it really exciting. So I could myself take off my head and my mind from what I am going through. So it is, yeah, it's about it is maybe a novel of escapism.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I decide deliberately on anything, but then I think I, like many other people who are writing, have layers inside me, or maybe I'm a crowded person anyway. So there are these people in me. One of them is a journalist, one of them is a novelist, and so on. And what I'm about to tell to the audience actually determines how I'm going to say it. Poetry is not for many people, and it's a very, very intimate thing. Journalism is for everyone, and you have to know how to speak to the mediocre, to the normality and so on. And Novel is for those adventure seekers, I think. So I think I'm a crowded person, and these are the languages of the people that are living in me.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello podcast listeners, I'm Connor and welcome to this week's episode of Intelligence Squared. Today we're joined by AJ Temul Karen, author of the new book Together Ten Choices for a Better Now and in Conversation with Matthew Taylor they discussed how we can move beyond our current crisis and create more enjoyable and fulfilling world by making some tough choices right now. It's a really fascinating conversation and if you do enjoy it you can find a link for EJ's book in the podcast description. But now let's go to the episode.”
2021-05-18 · Intelligence Squared · Choices for a Better Now, with Ece Temelkuran and Matthew Taylor · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source