Politics & Power Quote by Orhan Pamuk

Pamuk’s line reads like a novelist’s understatement deployed as a warning flare. “Quite a clear upswing” is purposely mild phrasing for something he knows is combustible: nationalism doesn’t usually arrive as a policy memo; it swells as mood, as fashion, as permission. By choosing the language of casual observation, he smuggles in the more unsettling point - that this shift has become ordinary enough to describe as a trend.

The key move is his ventriloquism of the crowd: “Everyone is talking about it.” That “everyone” isn’t evidence so much as atmosphere. Pamuk is capturing how nationalism gains power through repetition, through omnipresence, through the sense that it’s the main topic you’re supposed to have an opinion on. The subtext is about coercion by consensus: once “everyone” is talking, dissent starts to feel like eccentricity or betrayal.

Then comes the clincher: “in Turkey as well.” The “as well” tucks Turkey into a global pattern, but it also hints at Turkey’s particular volatility. Pamuk has long written from inside a country where the nation’s story is contested terrain - secular vs. religious, Ottoman memory vs. republican modernity, ethnic majorities vs. minorities. He’s not merely noting a rise in flags; he’s pointing to the narrative tightening, the way a nation begins to demand a single voice. Coming from a writer who has faced prosecution and threats, the restraint is its own rhetoric: he’s describing danger in the only register that can travel publicly - calm enough to print, sharp enough to land.