Pamuk has gone, says his artist lover

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Karolin Fişekçi has become an object of intense media scrutiny since news of her relationship with Turkey’s Nobel laureate writer Orhan Pamuk came to light. DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL

Turkey’s Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk, has apparently left the country for Latin America but will eventually return, according to his lover, Karolin Fişekçi, who has become an object of intense media scrutiny since news of their relationship came to light.

“I do not fear losing Orhan. I am trying to explore and experience him. To possess is to capture. It is an objective concept; for that reason, I try not to possess Orhan. I let him be free,” Fişekçi, a Turkish-Armenian artist, told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview.

Fişekçi said her relationship with Pamuk was going through a traumatic period, but refused to comment any further.

She has been heavily criticized in the media and her identity as an artist has come under fire in recent days, she said.

“They say I only exist with Orhan and my name as an artist will be all but forgotten in five years. It is not my relationship with Orhan that brought me into being,” she said.

Her relationship and work draw reactions
Regarded by some as a provocative artist due to the heavy use of sexual themes in her works, Fişekçi said she nonetheless had a conservative family with whom she continues to share the same house. Both the public statements she made about her relationship with Pamuk and her frequent employment of sexual imagery in her works drew reactions, she said.

“As a woman, this repressive environment forces me to become an anarchist. Perhaps that is what makes me what I am,” Fişekçi said, adding that she did not care about rumors regarding an ongoing competition between Salman Rushdie and Pamuk about having relationships with young women. “Relationships are not planned, they are lived.”

News of the Nobel laureate’s two-and-a-half-year relationship with Fişekçi broke out amid rumors of an ongoing affair between Pamuk and Kiran Desai, a prominent writer of Indian origin.


Fişekçi said she did not think it was important that Pamuk had an illegitimate child from his German ex-lover, Professor Catharina Dufft, adding that she would continue supporting the man she loved.
“I like the shocking aspect of sexuality. I like to shock my family, I like temptation,” she said.

They had not yet met each other’s families, Fişekçi said, but refused to answer whether they had any plans to get married.

“I like mature men but I feel under pressure. For that reason, I undertake self-therapy by painting,” she said in response to a question about what it was like to be embroiled in a relationship with the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Fişekçi, however, said she had not read Pamuk’s works before she met him.

“I am prejudiced against bestsellers. My preference lies with world literature. I hadn’t read Orhan’s works for this reason. I began reading them after we met, and I loved ‘My Name is Red’ the most,” she said.