Interview with PEN Berlin spokesperson Deniz Yücel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 December 2024
»Maybe a clash had to happen«
Too critical of Israel for some, too soft for others: PEN Berlin is divided over a resolution on the Middle East. An interview with agitated co-spokesperson Deniz Yücel on a scandal that should concern the whole country.
Interview by Jens-Christian Rabe
Last Sunday, a conflict arose during a vote on a resolution by the writers’ association PEN Berlin on the protection of authors in the Middle East conflict. Broadly speaking, some wanted the text to be less critical of Israel, while others felt it was too watered down. The former prevailed, and 25 of the latter who lost the vote, led by the Berlin historian Per Leo, left the organisation. Among them were well-known German intellectuals, but above all seven Arab members, including the playwright Mohammad Al Attar, the journalist Dima al-Bitar Kalaji and the writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh. And in an open letter published in the Frankfurter Rundschau on Tuesday, they were particularly harsh in their criticism of Deniz Yücel, co-spokesman of PEN Berlin and a journalist for Welt. On the phone, Yücel is still agitated, but also reflective.
SZ: Mr. Yücel, how would you explain what has just happened at PEN Berlin to a friend who is interested but not familiar with the association?
Deniz Yücel: It depends on the mood I am in on the day. If I’m in a good mood, I’ll say that this is the association of freedom of opinion, with many opinions, and when those opinions collide, that’s when the clash happens.
And if you were in a less good mood?
Then I would say that there was a dispute because some people misunderstood the purpose of this association. We are all writers, none of us needs PEN Berlin if we think we can add our two cents to an issue. Resolutions are not the central part of our work.
What do you think PEN Berlin is really there for?
For the things that none of us can do alone. Things like the series of talks in East Germany or the alternative focus on Italy at the Frankfurt Book Fair – and above all the very practical human rights work, the support for persecuted colleagues. Meral Şimşek, for example, would be in prison in Turkey today, sentenced to eight years. Instead, she lives with her children in Berlin and has just given a reading in Spain.
Do you understand the anger of the 25 members who have now resigned in protest?
I can understand that they are upset about the fact that they did not win the vote. But anyone who takes part in a democratic voting process has to be able to live with the fact that they did not get what they wanted, or at least not all of it. By the way, most of the members who voted in favour of one of the two resolutions that did not win are of the same opinion. They say »at least as much« or »at least not worse«, they criticise, but they don’t resign.
The run-off vote was very close, 83-82.
Yes, and of our 730 members at the time of the meeting, just over 200 were online, which is a lot in an association where many members reject any kind of clubby behaviour. Thea Dorn and I, as spokespersons, together with the rest of the board, would of course have respected any other result, in which other members might have resigned.
But are you glad that didn’t happen?
I spoke in favour of this compromise at the General Assembly because it was the one closest to me in terms of content, because I found the attempt at a compromise valuable in itself – and with a view to the overall interests of PEN Berlin.
What interests do you mean?
PEN Berlin has only been in existence since June 2022 and is for the most part an association that works on a voluntary basis. And right now we are trying to lead what we have achieved out of the precarious start-up phase and to institutionalise ourselves more strongly. Not only to ensure the continued existence of the association, but also to be able to continue our specific human rights work. If the resolution proposed by a group around the historian and publicist Per Leo had been adopted, it would not have made these efforts any easier.
Those who have resigned accuse you of blackmailing the association with this very argument. They say that the association has lost its raison d’être if it only follows a “logic of self-preservation”. What makes you so sure that the Leo draft would have been detrimental to the association?
You know what happened with the last Bundestag resolution on the “protection of Jewish life”. Or the BDS resolution of the Bundestag from 2019. I won’t judge the content, but in Germany it doesn’t take much to be labelled “Israel-critical” or even “anti-Israel”. This is an emotionally charged issue in our country, and there are historical reasons for this, everyone knows that. And yet, in my discussions with potential sponsors, I would have defended any other resolution as a democratic decision. For that matter, it would have fallen on my shoulders to do so, and not on Mr Leo’s.
You sound as though you are upset with Per Leo, but 24 other members resigned with him, including seven authors from Arab countries. Do you regret that?
I take the resignation of some Arab and some left-wing Jewish colleagues very seriously. It makes me wonder what we could have done in the past to avoid this. For example, there is Yassin al-Haj Saleh, whom I know well personally and who spent 16 years in one of Assad’s torture prisons. Dialogue with him has broken down in recent months, and it wasn’t his fault.
Was it yours?
Yes, he wrote us a letter criticising the lack of presence of the Arab perspective in PEN Berlin. And I didn’t seek a conversation with him. It wasn’t out of any lack of esteem for him, it was out of avoidance of the conflict. My mistake.
In a way, this conflict caught up with you again on Sunday.
Yes, although the starting point was unique. A General Assembly always sounds so stuffy. But over the weekend, not only did many well-known representatives of the German culture and media industry come together, but also Arab or left-wing, Israeli colleagues – although the lines of conflict are not always along ethnic or cultural lines, but always along political ones. So there were real opposing views on Israel and Gaza, sitting in a Zoom, as members of the same association, who had agreed on a common basis – the Charter of PEN International. A circle in which, since 7 October and the war in Gaza, there has been a lot of disappointment, a hardening of views and many feelings of rejection. But now they wanted to talk to each other.
Why did it all go so wrong?
I now believe that this draft resolution was a last-ditch attempt at dialogue – in a form that the organisation as a whole could not ignore. But because this attempt at dialogue took the form of a resolution, it ended in confrontation. Nevertheless, as a board we tried to avoid a clash. After the General Assembly in Hamburg at the beginning of November decided not to decide on a – to put it simply – “pro-Palestinian” and a – to put it simply again – “pro-Israeli” draft resolution, we asked two members, both journalists working on Middle East issues, both with family roots in the region – to try to mediate. They were joined by Israeli writer Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus and author Jörg Friedrich, who represented both sides.
How did this round end?
Negotiating was probably not easy. But in the end they were able to agree on a paper. Friedrich and Dotan-Dreyfus, who belongs to the group that Per Leo would later come to represent, presented it to their people. But they were not in agreement, so both withdrew their signatures. Nevertheless, the compromise paper was proposed – and ended up getting adopted.
If 80 or 90 per cent of the members had voted in favour of it, the peace of your association would have been preserved.
Yes. But let us be honest: would a German association that voted by a large majority for a resolution to protect authors in the Middle East conflict have been worth a report for you?
From that point of view, everything went perfectly for you.
Unfortunately not.
Would another solution have been possible?
Not if the real reasons for the resignations were to be found in the resolution adopted. But the only difference between this and the Leo version is a few details that are being hotly disputed. And I suspect the reasons are different.
What are they?
There is a lot of disappointment about not being heard.
Where does PEN’s affinity for resolutions actually come from? Their real political impact is very limited, to put it mildly.
As I said, to me, resolutions are not the main mission of PEN Berlin. As a board we thought: OK, now there are draft resolutions, even though everyone knows that no association resolution can influence the course of the world. But at least for the German discussion it could be a gain if we could manage to unite both sides on at least one issue. There is an opportunity here that no one in Germany except PEN Berlin has.
And what would that be?
The chance for a dialogue between people who are not yet in dialogue with each other. I know that sounds ambitious, but before the resolutions, the General Assembly and all that, we had a chance that we unfortunately missed – especially me, as one in charge.
Aren’t the disappointments and the hardened views simply too great at this point?
Perhaps. But there is no alternative. And maybe a clash had to happen in order for things to move forward in a more constructive way. For example, I know from one of the people who has now resigned, the playwright Mohammad Al Attar, who is very involved in demonstrations for the Palestinians, that he has discussions with people that you and I cannot reach.
How does he do it?
He says: »Guys, it’s immoral, it’s unhistorical, it’s wrong and we’re harming the Palestinian cause when we have discussions here about whether the Holocaust was a lie or a blessed thing.« And there’s a lot more at stake here than just the atmosphere in a writers’ association. These colleagues who have left are not only artists and intellectuals, they are also representatives and mediators. Per Leo, for example, could pass on his interview requests to these colleagues. We miss them in our small PEN Berlin communication space, where we have to attempt to connect echo chambers that would otherwise not enter into dialogue with each other.
A loss.
A great loss. But I want to remain optimistic. And I’d like to ask everyone to be generous with what we are trying to achieve here. We are a young association. Sometimes things go wrong, you end up with a bloody nose and a lot of frustration. I’d like to invite all those who have resigned to ask themselves whether they want to weigh their disappointment about a resolution higher than the human rights work of this association – and the opportunity we have here: to talk to each other in a shared trust in the power of the better argument.
And what do you say to those members who are more sensitive about anti-Semitism?
They are right to be sensitive. But I’d also like to ask them: How important are your differences with an Arab writer who, not surprisingly, has a different view of the Middle East conflict from yours, and who finds certain terms and categories appropriate that you find wrong? And are these differences really greater than the common ground you share in rejecting anti-Semitism and racism outside our small association? I believe that the true extent of the changes in German immigrant society in the wake of 7 October and the war in Gaza, including in my milieu of Turkish background, will only become apparent in the next few years.