Symposium: Utopia and Dystopia in Turkish SF Literature
Interview with Gökçe Bilgin
Ferzan Şer
Gökçe Bilgin is the author of 05.45 Istanbul, published in 2024 by İletişim. The novel follows a serial killer who constructs a robot from the limbs of his victims. Here she is interviewed about the novel by Ferzan Şer.
FS: The opening lines of books seem to me one of the most difficult and fundamental things like a kind of ground survey. In the first sentence of 05.45 Istanbul, the narrator has a watch on their wrist, there’s a clock on the wall, and one on the desk. Yet despite looking at each of these, the narrator also reaches out, in a sense, to look at the clock in the square outside. When all the clocks show the same time, they say to themselves, “You can begin.” But must all clocks show the same time? I set my watch a few minutes ahead; that way, I don’t end up late. Time differs—right now, the clocks in Istanbul and Basel are showing different things.
GB: The repetition of clocks in the novel’s opening shows that time is not merely a technical measurement tool; it is also a threshold for decision-making, initiation, and awareness. Even though the watch on the narrator’s wrist, the clock on the wall, and the one on the desk all show the same time, there is still a need to confirm it with the clock in the square. This need reveals a search for alignment between individual perception and public reality. Just like setting your watch a few minutes ahead to avoid being late, Nevin, too, is seeking harmony among the clocks. But this harmony is tied to a sense of security. Just as you rely on an adjusted clock to protect yourself from being late, Nevin relies on the synchronization of all clocks to not fall behind in her mental journey. The time difference between Basel and Istanbul evokes not only a geographical gap but also cultural and emotional differences in how time is experienced. The question “Should time be the same everywhere?” turns into a broader inquiry about norms. 05:45 speaks to both internal and external time.
FS: “I’m a humanoid robot. You made me,” says Robot Murat. It’s a kind of reversal of Frankenstein. Doctor Frankenstein creates a monster. Nevin, on the other hand, is a teacher; Frankenstein is male, Nevin is female. One constructs from what he gathers in graveyards, the other obtains parts from the living beings she kills herself. Frankenstein’s creature is ugly, while the robot is beautiful because Nevin’s selection of body parts is guided by aesthetic principles. Frankenstein’s monster has no name, but the robot is named Murat. Is this kind of reversal a deliberate choice or a creative reinterpretation? For instance, in his work The Signs Taken for Wonders, Franco Moretti likens Frankenstein’s monster’s body to that of the working class and notes that Doctor Frankenstein does not want it to reproduce. The doctor seeks to destroy it. Here, on the contrary, the creator herself becomes the captive. And yet, Nevin also sees the reproduction of robots as a threat to humanity.
GB: “I’m a humanoid robot. You made me.” This sentence is both a reference to and an inversion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Instead of a male doctor constructing a hideous creature from dead bodies, here a woman—Nevin—a teacher, designs a robot based on aesthetic criteria. Nevin’s creation of Murat with an aesthetic sensibility suggests that their relationship is not only one of creator and creation, but also of desire coming to life. As Franco Moretti argues in The Signs Taken for Wonders, Frankenstein should be read in a political context—so too should 05.45 İstanbul. Yet this time, the creator is the captive, and the creation is the one who is free. Feminism has come a long way. And I come from the East. Frankenstein is a product of the West. We, on the other hand, rarely speak of mystical beings or dreamlike apparitions as monsters. Even if it is a monster, for us it can also be a savior. It is the body, the idea we have long awaited, loved, and yearned for. Moreover, this text is the first of book of a trilogy. We do not yet know what will happen. Still, its direction is clear: the intuitive aesthetic of Al-Jazari’s robotics will merge with the West’s rational technicality. Externally, it will follow Western methods, but internally, it will be guided by the East’s memory, intuition, and knowledge of love. In other words, a trilogy written with the techniques of the West but carrying the essence of the East.
FS: Mary Shelly’s mother was one of the prominent feminists of her time, and there were times when she gathered with certain groups to write stories together. It’s said that Frankenstein was actually the product of such a literary circle. What was your family environment like? Did it have any influence on your writing?
GB: My mother didn’t read books. Neither did my father. They were both farmers. I was born on a farm. My father worked as a steward there, and my mother worked alongside him. We children were also workers on that farm. While my mother served the landlord’s family, I carried away the empty tea glasses and coffee cups. Our life resembled scenes from the American movies we watched. I lived the life of those Black characters. But then there was nature, the one place where I could roam freely, think about anything I wanted. My mother is illiterate. We speak Kurdish. The farm was surrounded by oil wells. Giant machines, makeup products that resembled pale skin, whiskey, laughter, entertainment… and at the same time, there were the years I spent in YİBO, the regional boarding school. My childhood and early youth were woven with snakes I tried to outrun, trucks, tractors, hunting rifles, dandelion seeds, the rough-and-tumble of boys’ games, and red dreams I hid under my dress, wearing my mother’s nightgown. It was a difficult childhood. But maybe that’s exactly why—couldn’t that, too, be considered a kind of book club?
FS: The idea of a female serial killer is intriguing. Though, to be honest, Nevin never really feels like a killer to me. I can’t quite believe she is one. It actually reminds me a bit of Iranian cinema—where even the darkest characters are often portrayed with deep emotion and sensitivity. Still, I’d like to ask this in terms of form: when it comes to feminism, are all aspects of womanhood automatically affirmed or celebrated?
GB: I’m not idealizing womanhood. I want to represent it as it is. Women, too, can get angry, hold grudges, even kill. The issue isn’t about declaring women innocent or guilty—it’s about granting them the right to be agents. The fact that Nevin isn’t a “typical killer” reflects how, even when women commit acts of violence, there’s still an urge to explain it away or over-sentimentalize it. Just like in Iranian cinema, or in Yeşilçam, where the criminal woman is often portrayed as someone who “suffers” or who was “left with no choice”—I didn’t want to frame it that way. Nevin’s agency is a form of subjectivity; 05.45 İstanbul is not simply a story about murder—it is a dystopian response to suppressed rage and the control exerted over the female body. When it comes to systemic power, it doesn’t matter what gender the powerful belong to. That’s where Nevin stands out: she doesn’t internalize the system—on the contrary, she resists it. Feminism doesn’t glorify women; it recognizes them in all their complexity. So to “like” Nevin isn’t about liking a murderer—it’s about taking seriously the possibility of a woman being a perpetrator. It’s about remembering that women don’t exist just to be loved.
FS: Irony and parody are deeply embedded in the text. For example, people are killed for using liquid soap—it’s absurd. In that sense, it offers something unexpected from a dystopia. Don’t we usually expect darker, more somber themes? So, where exactly do humor and satire—emerging from the evil we live in—stand within the fictional world that mirrors this landscape of real-world cruelty?
GB: When we think of dystopia, what usually comes to mind is a dark, harsh, oppressive atmosphere. But in 05.45 İstanbul, I deliberately wanted to break that expectation. Yes, there is oppression, surveillance, and discipline—but I often presented these alongside the absurd. A scene like “being electrocuted for using liquid soap three times” clearly illustrates the relationship between dystopia and absurdity. Here, I didn’t use humor as a way to lighten the mood or provide relief. Instead, it’s a way to show just how extreme the interplay between the absurd and oppression can be. What’s laughable is actually the system’s disproportionate punishment mechanisms. So, the irony and parody in 05.45 İstanbul establish a narrative mode that exposes both the logic and the internal contradictions of the system.
FS: You don’t use quotation marks or any punctuation marks for the dialogues.
GB: In this text, the dialogues serve less to advance a traditional plot and more to carry the intellectual and emotional flow. The conversations between Nevin and Murat often intertwine with internal monologues, fragments of memory, and associations. This already renders the classic dialogue–punctuation distinction obsolete. The text has a clear mental movement, a current. I aimed to erase the boundaries between thought and speech, emotion and reaction. I do not entirely reject punctuation marks. Rather, in this particular text, I chose not to use them in a way that fits its formal reality. When necessary, I can use punctuated narration as well. I change the form depending on the intensity of the moment and the distance between the characters.
FS: The president’s face is everywhere. For this reason, you sometimes prefer an exaggerated style of narration in the text. A similar intensity was present in Helîm Yusiv’s novel Toothless Fear: the president, his statues, and portraits were everywhere. Is the scene you depict truly an exaggeration? Or are you implying that reality itself has long since crossed those boundaries?
GB: The president’s face being everywhere in 05.45 İstanbul is not just a representation of power; it is also a matter of visual imposition and an occupation of memory. I believe I made this explicit with the lines in the text: “The president’s face and voice are in so many places I can’t count them. It’s impossible not to listen. Sometimes I blink to avoid seeing.” Here, I wanted to describe not only physical oppression but also sensory coercion. Therefore, it’s not an exaggeration but a state of hyperreality. This reality differs from Western biopolitics and the panopticon. The president is everywhere because power no longer exists only as a political regulation but has also materialized as an aesthetic category. Yet, the novel’s concern is not limited to this. The dystopia in 05.45 İstanbul is constructed through the coexistence of two fundamental tensions: one is the struggle for womanhood, and the other is the effort to produce something entirely different by stepping outside the existing system. The question is this: will bringing together those fragments that escape or are expelled from this system really be enough to create something new?
FS: At one point, Nevin reflects on what she has done and questions herself, saying, “But worse than that is that I may have done things even I am unaware of.” I read this as a kind of theoretical insight. Is this how creative writers relate to theory? Should it be this way?
GB: For me, theory is less about pre-acquired knowledge and more about an intuition that emerges in the moment of writing. When we write, we reveal not only what we consciously know but also what we unknowingly know. This is not theoretical knowledge but intuitive knowledge. This form of intuitive knowledge fits my characters much better because their class, cultural, and social backgrounds—often feminine, fragmented, and repressed spaces—do not directly align with institutional language or academic discourse. Therefore, when I write, I incorporate theory not through theoretical language but by sensing it through lived experience.
FS: You’ve used very little depiction, am I mistaken?
GB: Yes, that was a conscious choice. (Of course, I mean the lack of external description; there is plenty of internal description.) In 05.45 İstanbul, I tried to avoid traditional depictions in the classical sense. Because in this text, I want the reader not to see the place or the person, but to hear them, feel them, and sometimes be left in a void. I aimed to create an ambiguous and challenging atmosphere. To me, this feels like the atmosphere of questioning. Depiction is a form of showing that fixes and freezes something in place. But the world I wanted to convey is fragmented, fluid, and undefined. Moreover, this choice has a feminist dimension: rather than defining the female body or space, I wanted to engage with them on emotional, mental, and intuitive levels. While constructing my dystopia, I didn’t impose an artificial role on ourselves. I wanted us to be fully there—from the way of thinking to even killing—everything to be feminine. Because this was not just a dystopia. I wanted it to be a feminist dystopia.
FS: In one place, you say “walking to oneself,” and in another, “They came with horses, carriages, planes, and feet.” The expression “coming with feet” or “walking to oneself” isn’t common in Turkish, but is widely used in Kurdish. It’s like thinking in Kurdish and writing in Turkish. Do you find yourself caught in this way of expression sometimes?
GB: Yes, there are moments like that. But it’s not so much being stuck between two languages; rather, I write from a place where the two languages flow into each other. Over time, this internal flow has become natural and is one of the defining features of my style. This was also fitting for my characters’ situations. Both Nevin and Murat needed a fragmented, intuitive narration. Because this narrative is highly abstract, but I wanted to convey emotions not by describing them, but by bodily constructing emotion through thought. This, in turn, comes from Kurdish’s intuitive power—I consider myself lucky.
FS: At one point, Nevin says, “Istanbul has been lost.” Is this loss very significant? For example, in Zabel Yesayan’s pre-1920 texts, after leaving and returning to Istanbul, she says something like “where is the old Istanbul?” In the 1970s, in Yılmaz Güney’s film Arkadaş, a character says, “Sir, that old Istanbul is gone.” Istanbul often seems like a nostalgic city, remembered with a melancholic longing. In your text, Istanbul is now lost. What exactly makes Istanbul so important, so self-enchanting, and what is this longing for its old state that seems always to be getting “dirtier”?
GB: Yes, the whole melancholic mood in the novel is closely related to Istanbul being a place constantly sought to be conquered. Saying that the city is lost is actually a deliberate intervention against this nostalgic view. Istanbul has been described in almost every era as a city that is “no longer the same.” But I did not want to surrender to this longing. That’s why in some parts I sharply cut through that nostalgia. The city seems to be always under construction, constantly changing. Yet at the same time, it is always desired to be conquered. Perhaps what makes Istanbul special is precisely this excessive desire to possess it. Everyone wants to rule over it: states, capital, men, ideologies… This turns into a very rough kind of love. For this reason, in the novel, the loss of Istanbul is a kind of inevitability. If we think of it as a character, it is the kind of thing where one says, “I killed it because I loved it too much.”
FS: There are certain words in the novel that are specially emphasized: Wise, Master, We, Pain, Enemy, Heart, Science, Language, Fire, Ash, Sleep, Greed, Land, Losses, Readers, Knowledge, Scribes… And even more striking, emphasized words like: IT WAS SHINING, I WAS BLIND, TELL, DISTANCE. I don’t think these were chosen randomly.
GB: The Zoroastrian faith stands out with its dualistic structure: good and evil, light and darkness, fire and ash… This duality operates not only on an ethical level but also through natural rhythms and the perception of time. Fire is sacred and is identified with knowledge. Speech, writing, and memory are powerful tools. At the same time, it involves a relationship with the unseen, ritual purification, memory practices, and foresight of the future. In the dystopia of 05.45 İstanbul, the beliefs of the group living beneath the city were inspired by Zoroastrianism. That’s why those words are emphasized. Moreover, the entire novel carries this duality. In the tension between Nevin and Murat, opposites transform into each other. Desire turns into violence, machine into human, master into slave.
FS: “Is it possible to create something new without being influenced by what has come before?” I read this as a kind of anxiety about influence. Attachment to tradition versus breaking away from it. For example, Nevin cuts off and buries the Master’s fingers and tongue. This made me think about tradition, lineage, literary ancestry. Mehmed Uzun thinks the opposite: “I couldn’t create anything new without breaking old value systems.” Could you reinterpret tradition and innovation—even creativity? For instance, I find I can’t write when I’m not reading.
GB: In 05.45 İstanbul, “innovation” often does not arise from a moment of chaos, but from the bending of memory and the transformation of form. Change here is not a sharp break; it is more of an interweaving, a repetition, a process of transformation. Nevin’s desire to build a robot is not about severing ties with the past; it is about transforming that connection. Because for her, the past is not an inspiration but a compulsion. It doesn’t guide her, but it enables transformation. There is no masculine, sharp attitude like “destroying the old” in this text. The bodily and intuitive cannot be conveyed with such sharpness. The feminine way of learning is not about destruction, but about reshaping. Therefore, my literary journey cannot be defined by the destruction of the past. I am indeed building my own writing; I am not settling in anyone else’s garden. But I didn’t create my garden out of nothing either.
FS: Nevin says, “I should be someone who falls in love with what she creates, so why did I tell others that I loved them? A lie. I am only one of those women who fall in love with what they create. A lie, now I am a woman who will fall in love with what I write here.” The text contains religious and mythological elements. Yusuf is present. The idea of falling in love with one’s creation made me think of two things: Pygmalion and Oedipus. Here, there is a kind of reversed Oedipus. Is it something like a mother’s love for her child? Nevin says she has not loved anyone among men. Is this a kind of love for a woman? The robot’s name is a male name—does this relate to gender performance as well?
GB: The love here is intertwined with a divine arrogance; it creates, exalts, and can also destroy. In this respect, it resembles Pygmalion, but with a difference: Nevin is not a man, but a woman. And not just a man, but a consciousness she creates. Here, myths are turned upside down. In Oedipus, the son kills the father and is with the mother; here, the mother—Nevin—has already erased the men. Nevin’s love is not directed at a son, but at the being she invented. Murat is not like a child; he is neither obedient nor in need of protection. Yet he is a “first”: the first creation to come from Nevin’s language, hands, and anger. His parts were taken from others, and his heart was set free. In other words, Nevin is actually in love with her own consciousness, her own power. With what she “wrote,” what she “created” …
FS: Goethe, Bernard Shaw, and Helîm Yûsiv are authors who engage with Pygmalion. You should be placed among them as well. But as Galeonawari would say, there is a “reverse world school” here. The woman creates the ideal man. However, this time, it is the creator herself who breathes the soul. Unlike Pygmalion, 05.45 İstanbul features delicate craftsmanship.
GB: Nevin wants to create not only love but also an aesthetic that she has shaped with her own hands. This aesthetic is not only external but also intertwined with ethics, memory, and wounds. Thus, 05.45 İstanbul is not just a love story but offers a radical perspective on who constructs love, how, and for what purpose. Nevin’s world is filled with fragmentation, crime, memory loss, and controlled bodies. When we focus on the story of the parts she used to create Murat, this becomes clear. For Nevin, another thing as important as love is anger—and this anger is so deep that it could not be directly shown within the form of the ideal.
FS: Nevin’s constant speaking and Murat’s act of listening seem to offer a kind of answer to the question, “Can the marginalized speak?” What do you think?
GB: This situation directly refers to Spivak’s question, “Can the subaltern speak?” Yes, the subaltern can speak—but will their voice be heard? Will it be recorded? Will it become law? Nevin’s words do not echo. Nevin’s language remains outside the boundaries of society, law, and the public sphere. In this universe, a woman speaking about her own desire, her own crime, her own creation has no legitimate ground. That is why Nevin is actually alone when she speaks. She addresses her own conscience, her own body, her own memory. The subaltern speaks here, but her interlocutor is not human—it is a machine.
FS: There is an Upper Istanbul and a Lower Istanbul. Turkish literature often describes Istanbul through its neighborhoods—the contrast between Fatih and Harbiye, for example, is well known. Here, however, Istanbul is divided into upper and lower parts. This reminds me of the places of Africa and Latin America in postcolonial theory. While authors like Edward Said and many others often reduce the world to East and West, the anti-colonial struggles of Latin America and Africa divide the world into North and South.
GB: The division of Istanbul into upper and lower parts is not merely a spatial choice. It is also related to a map of knowledge, power, and belonging. This map aims to give voice to a “lower” that is fragmented, suppressed, yet carries its own wisdom, standing against the East-West binary that fails to overcome the West’s crisis of representation. Thus, 05.45 İstanbul should not be read merely as an urban dystopia but rather as a postcolonial imaginative space. Love, technology, memory, and anger serve as carriers of a literary language constructed from below. This reflects the posture of speaking from a subspace frequently encountered in postcolonial literature.
FS: What does a wall mean to you? The walls of our home, the walls of our garden give us peace. They are somewhat like a return to the mother’s womb. But there are also prison walls. Would it be very bad if Istanbul were surrounded by walls?
GB: In 05.45 İstanbul, walls stand right at the heart of duality. The wall drawn around Istanbul is not merely a physical boundary; it is also a desire to suppress memory, history, and resistance. Who stays outside or inside is no longer determined by security, but by how much one’s identity and memory align with the system. In this context, the wall does not only divide space; it fractures time, memory, and subjectivity as well. Personally, walls have never felt safe to me. They feel more like constraints than protection. I always prefer to roam freely in nature, moving by following the direction of the wind and the sun, rather than being confined by walls. Because true security arises not from a locked door from within, but from free and open relations with the outside world.
FS: In the metafictional parts of the novel, you hint that the continuation of this story will come. You refer to these series as seasons, which is very interesting and beautiful. Each novel blends with life, nature, and humanity like a season. Seasons connect us with nature. What do you think- will the new novel really be like the “summer love” you mention?
GB: Yes, each novel in this trilogy corresponds to a season. 05.45 İstanbul was “spring”. It is the season of awakening, fragmentation, and the first loss. It is when Nevin confronts her memory, finds Şişe, creates Murat, and simultaneously when Istanbul begins to change. Spring appears as a time of new beginning but is also when vulnerabilities are most visible. That is why the spring of 05.45 İstanbul both creates and destroys at the same time. It is no secret that the next novel will be about love. It is designed as a summer season. But this novel is not a “summer love” in the classic sense, not a light, fleeting, or flirtatious love. Rather, it is a season of intense, ripening, even burning emotions. A summer when the sun is at its peak, shadows disappear, and hiding becomes impossible. A space where everything is stripped bare, where skin, consciousness, and anger directly touch.
Gökçe Bilgin was born in 1984 in Adıyaman. In 2021, she won the Vedat Türkali First Novel Prize for her novel Porcelain A Matter. Her second novel 05.45 Istanbul was published by İletişim Publishing in 2024. She scrutinizes feminism at the intersections of intellectual and everyday life. Her articles on art, literature, politics and travel are published on various platforms. She lives in Istanbul.
Ferzan Şer was born in Batman in 1986. He completed his undergraduate education at Hacettepe University, his master’s degree at Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Comparative Literature, and his doctorate at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
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