We have just come across a bit of
fake news, which has been circulating since 2008, that in 1967 Oğuz Atay translated
two books under the pseudonym Mehmet Kerem, published by the aptly named Eros
Press. This first appeared in a book, Şiir
Hikayeleri, by Professor Haluk Oral, whose only 'evidence' is that the cover design was by Sevin Seydi. He
goes on to make psychological inferences. It is time to nail this. Sevin Seydi
writes:
“It was clever of Professor Oral
to track down a couple of pieces of hack work that I did 50 years ago, and
would rather were forgotten. Mehmet Kerem may well be a pseudonym if he is not
found anywhere else, but I can state categorically that he is not Oğuz Atay. He
did not translate these books just because I did the covers any more than he
wrote the handful of children’s books or the cookery book which I illustrated
at about that time.
Further, to speculate on such skimpy evidence about
his state of mind at the time is more gutter press than scholarship.”
”
