Publishing house head reveals threats over Turkish translation of Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses'

Can Öz, Rushdie and Erdal Öz.

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The head of a prominent publishing house in Türkiye has revealed that they had been threatened in the early 1990s after claims that they would publish the Turkish translation of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."

Releasing a statement on Twitter on Friday (August 12), following the stabbing attack in New York that left the novelist in critical condition, Can Öz, the head of the Can Publishing House, said, "I am very sad because of what happened to Salman Rushdie. This disgust is not only based on this bigotry infesting the world but also on an incident that took place 30 years ago."

According to Öz, about a year after Iran's then-supreme leader Khomeini issued an edict ordering the killing of Rushdie because of his 1988 novel, daily Hürriyet published a "fake report" that the Can Publishing House would publish the Turkish translation of the book.

"Can wasn't yet the publisher of Rushdie at that time. Following [the Hürriyet report], many threatening letters had come to the publishing house.

"One of them was sent to my father, Erdal Öz, and said the following: 'We will come to hour home on Saturday, XX, and we will first kill your children and spouse, and then you.'

"This was, of course, only one of the threats, and we, on that weekend, had gone to Şile, as we used to do every weekend. When we returned home, we had seen that the door was broken, and furnitures and paintings inside were shattered."

Years later, in 2011 or 2012, with the publishing house now publishing Rushdie's books, he had a meeting with the author's agent, Andrew Wylie in İstanbul, said Öz.

"He asked my why we didn't want to publish The Satanic Verses. I told him that we actually wanted to publish it, but we couldn't take the risk. Because it wasn't only the publisher who would be at risk, there was a terrible bigoted threat that would reach the editor-in-chief, editor, translator, publishing coordinator, and everyone.

"Can will continue to be Rushdie's publisher. But it will continue not to publish The Satanic Verses, which is a great piece of work. It's not something I'm proud of. On the contrary, it hurts my heart, but I'm not ashamed of the reasons I gave Andrew Wylie.

"I hope Rushdie gets well soon and continues to write against this bigoted darkness."

Threats and the Sivas Massacre

Many publishing houses and translators around the world who wanted to publish the book have been threatened. One of them was Aziz Nesin, a late intellectual who wanted to translate the book into Turkish.

Writing a column for the Aydınlık newspaper, Nesin said in 1993 that he would publish the book in Turkish, which prompted threats against him by Islamist groups.

The newspaper published some parts of the book, but the authorities had given orders to remove those issues from shelves.

On July 2, 1993, Nesin survived the Sivas Massacre, where 37 people, most of whom Alevi intellectuals, were killed when an Islamist group set fire to a hotel during the Pir Sultan Abdal Festivities in the city.

Rushdie remains in critical condition

Despite being taken off the ventilator and able to "speak a few words," Rushdie remains in critical condition in the hospital following the attack, his family said yesterday (August 14).

"Following the attack on Friday, my father remains in critical condition in hospital receiving extensive ongoing medical treatment," the family said in a statement.

Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humor remains intact, they said.

Earlier, Andrew Wylie, Rushdie's agent, said the road to recovery began.

"It will be long; the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction," Wylie added.

The suspect who attacked Rushdie was taken into custody, police said on Friday. The attack took place before a lecture he was about to present.

Rushdie suffered a stab wound to his neck and was transported to a hospital.

Pictures on social media showed Rushdie, whose works have prompted death threats, lying on stage at the Chautauqua Institution as police and bystanders attempted to provide first aid.

Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor of Khomeini, had a tweet deleted in 2019 that said the fatwah remained in place. (TY/VK)