Symposium: Utopia and Dystopia in Turkish SF Literature
Interview with Selim Erdogan
Emre Bozkuş
Selim Erdoğan is the author of the novel Kurbağa Adası – Bir İstanbul Distopyası. The book was published in 2019 as part of the Pangea series by Ithaki Publishing. The novel presents a dystopian fiction set in a future after the great Istanbul earthquake. It deals with themes such as the effects of global warming, migration, demographic change, infrastructure disasters and social collapse. In this work, Selim Erdoğan draws attention with his minimalist narration of current issues in a gripping dystopian universe. Author Emre Bozkuş conducted a book interview on Selim Erdoğan’s dystopian novel Kurbağa Adası.
EB: In Kurbağa Adası, entropy is not merely a physical breakdown. It resembles the quiet unraveling of relationships, language, and solidarity itself.
SE: If you’re asking whether the book mirrors some kind of personal detachment from the world, I wouldn’t put it like that. Let’s say it was quietly there, like background noise you only notice once it stops. I was surrounded by the same slow disintegration. The place I lived in was coming apart: economically, socially, and morally. Social bonds were thinning, shared truths were disappearing, and migration was redrawing the lines of identity and geography. Naturally, this wasn’t unique to Turkey. That soon became clear. Conflicts between major powers intensified. The world continued to heat up, both in temperature and tension. Istanbul was part of it. In the book, the island is actually the European side of the city. One could sever it with a line drawn from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, just west of the city. A canal, at least officially. But it’s a metaphor, really. Perhaps the whole planet is now an island, and we are the ones lighting the match.
EB: Unlike most dystopian fiction, Istanbul in your novel feels like a living character. It breathes, remembers, and reacts. Do you believe cities eventually develop their own form of awareness, or was asking this question a literary need for you?
SE: Absolutely. Anyone who travels enough knows that every city has a temperament. Some are calm, others anxious. Some move in chaos, others run with mechanical order. A city can feel impatient, kind, grotesque, ruthless, pretentious, or dignified. Istanbul is like ancient nobility buried under weight it can no longer carry. Despite millions treading on its surface, it hasn’t completely lost its allure. In the book, Istanbul has already surrendered. It lies dismembered, inexorably collapsing piece by piece.
EB: In your novel, the family no longer feels like a shelter. It seems more like a space where helplessness is shared. Under dystopian strain, is it still possible to hold on to the idea of family, or does it dissolve along with everything else?
SE: The nuclear family is under stress. That’s evident. Statistics show that nearly half of all marriages end. The kind of marriage we know may not have a future. Or maybe it is simply changing form. If we understand dystopia as extreme social pressure, not just authoritarian surveillance, then we can ask how families respond. There is no single answer. Some collapse. Some grow closer. In Kurbağa Adası, the family is caught in between. The mother displays a stronger instinct to protect, especially when it comes to the child. She demands safety immediately. The father might fall behind. Tension builds. Sometimes this leads to separation. Returning to your question, when disintegration becomes the norm, people tend to cling to whatever structure still stands. That might be religion, ideology, or the family itself. Institutions, regardless of their nature, offer shape against disorder.
EB: Silence, heat, and thirst. Throughout the book, there is a threat that remains unseen yet constantly felt. What did you rely on while writing this invisible force? Sometimes silence can be more exhausting than screaming.
SE: I drew from what surrounds us today. That scattered and insidious form of violence, precisely because it is invisible, was what I leaned on. In the novel, that is the villain. But this villain doesn’t come with a face or a name. It appears suddenly through a dust storm, a sinkhole, an unbearable heatwave, or the sluggish flow of suffocating traffic. This presence is stronger than any antagonist we’re familiar with. It’s so vast that it exists everywhere at once. It doesn’t choose. It doesn’t aim. It simply exists. Sprawling, mindless, and ever growing. It is not evil by design. In fact, it lacks any design at all. It is the illegitimate child of the human struggle with nature and with itself. What emerged was a shapeless monstrosity. A clumsy giant. It has no pulse to silence, no will to reason with. You can’t destroy what never asked to exist in the first place. And above all, it is not imaginary. It is real.
EB: There’s a strong sense of “waiting” in the story. What wears the characters down isn’t the disaster itself, but the creeping feeling that it’s on its way. The atmosphere amplifies this tension—crafted with the kind of sparse fatalism we recognize in McCarthy, and a touch of Vonnegut’s absurd irony. Were there any works, films, or moments in your life that shaped these suspended instants in time?
SE: I do appreciate those writers. And yes, their work, along with others, may have influenced me. But I believe that in order to create emotional intensity, one doesn’t need to bombard the reader with explicit imagery. In fact, such approaches often reduce impact. Take the first Alien film for example. The creature barely appears, yet the dread it evokes lingers far more deeply than in later CGI-heavy films. The narrow, airless corridors of the Nostromo were more disturbing than the alien itself. But beyond cinematic references, what truly fed the tone was the world outside. When I read a report about dam levels, and realize they may never rise above ten percent again, or when even a mild earthquake halts traffic and breaks communication, I can’t help but think of Istanbul turning into a trap for millions. It only takes one event to close the lid.
EB: Nature in this novel is not just a backdrop. It seems to have a will of its own. Would you call Kurbağa Adası an eco-dystopian lament, or is it more of a belated warning?
SE: Kurbağa Adası is an allegory of a city, perhaps a world, where small-scale disasters occur almost daily. In that sense, it has the tone of a lament. But at the same time, it offers a highly plausible scenario, based on the continuation of an existing disorder. Or rather, a world gnawing at its own roots. Without pause, without conscience. If that continues, the scale of disaster grows with it. It’s not just grief speaking in the book. There’s also a sober estimation of consequences.
EB: In Turkish literature, science fiction is still often associated either with technical curiosity or adolescent excitement. With Kurbağa Adası, were you intentionally trying to break this perception, or did the story simply lead you there?
SE: Changing perceptions was never my aim, nor something I believe I could do. And yes, science fiction is seen that way here. But readers play a role in this as well. I’ve seen reactions saying the plot in Kurbağa Adası moves at a glacial pace. Some even thought that very little actually happens or that the story lacks a strong narrative arc. Those who approached it as conventional science fiction might have been disappointed. I don’t write with a specific genre in mind. I don’t start with the idea that this will be science fiction or dystopia. Categorization is done later by publishers, bookstores, and eventually, readers. Some books clearly belong to a genre. Agatha Christie, for instance, wrote pure detective fiction. A book like Kurbağa Adası, on the other hand, can easily be misunderstood when forced into a category.
EB: In the novel, trust seems almost completely eroded. As readers, we cannot fully hold on to any character. Was this sense of isolation a conscious choice, or a reality seeping in from the world we live in?
SE: When I was writing the book, the file was named Entropy. Of course, I wasn’t going to keep that name. This isn’t a physics manual. But the story shaped itself around that idea. Entropy refers to the inevitable increase in disorder within a closed system. Even the energy you use to restore order contributes to the overall chaos. Although a scientific term, I believe it applies socially as well. Kurbağa Adası presents a city, and in a sense a world, unraveling on every level. Infrastructure, social order, architecture, and demographics are all coming apart. Disasters can briefly bring people together. We saw this during earthquakes. But if the disaster is not regional, if it spreads into every corner of life and refuses to let go, alliances start to weaken.Principles fade. Beliefs dissolve. Hope disappears. What remains is the most basic instinct. Survival.
EB: Your novel isn’t a classic dystopia. There is no villain, no intense action. The tension builds gradually. Was this feeling of suffocation intentional? Does slowness function as an element of suspense for you?
SE: Yes, but not only slowness. A broken air conditioner. A customer service line that never responds. A pool covered in moss. Dust sticking to the windows. These are all forms of pressure. As I said earlier, the antagonist is not an evil force. It is the weight we leave behind. The marks we carve into one another and into the environment.
It lumbers forward. Not out of malice, but because nothing halts a world already collapsing under its own weight. Even its slightest movement is enough to create discomfort. You do not need to be chased. The threat is already present.
EB: While writing this novel, did you ever think: What if all traces of the future were already left behind in the past?
SE: I did. Almost everything suggested in Kurbağa Adası already exists today in some form. I simply asked what might happen if the same tendencies continue. Climate-driven migrations. Demographic changes triggering tension. Heat-related deaths in urban areas. Fragmenting social fabric. The rise of cults and extremist ideologies. Survival technologies. Private land acquisitions in supposedly safe regions. All of this already hums beneath our cities. Barely hidden. If the Kanal İstanbul project were actually realized, it would only be the final touch in a reality that has already reached its boiling point.
Selim Erdoğan was born in 1970 in İzmit. A graduate of Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Sciences, he spent many years working in both public and private institutions within the capital markets. Over time, his professional background gave way to a deeper engagement with literature, where he began crafting narratives that blend social critique with imaginative depth. His literary debut came with Denizatı Vadisi, published by NotaBene in 2012. This was followed by İkibinseksendört, Gofer Ağacı and Trinidad’ın Dönüşü, each expanding his voice across themes of memory, estrangement and quiet resistance. With Kurbağa Adası Bir İstanbul Distopyası, published by İthaki in 2019, Erdoğan envisioned a haunting future version of Istanbul. The novel was awarded the 2022 FABİSAD Gio Award for Best Novel. He later continued his collaboration with İthaki through the novels Sabotaj Anadolu’da Hazin Bir Komplo Öyküsü and Derin Merhamet, which further explored speculative narratives grounded in local history and political anxiety. His short fiction appears in science fiction anthologies such as Yeryüzü Müzesi and İlk, published by İthaki, and Arz Cephesi’nde Yeni Bir Şey Yok, released by Fihrist. In addition to fiction, he has written essays and commentary for Bilimkurgu Kulübü. In 2023, he served on the jury for the FABİSAD Gio Awards in the Best Short Story Collection category.
Emre Bozkuş was born in 1995 in Bakırköy, İstanbul. He studied Turkish Language and Literature at Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University. He began writing in 2014 through blogging and gradually turned to fiction and essays. His stories and articles have appeared in platforms and journals such as Bilimkurgu Kulübü, AçıkBeyin, Düşünbil, Kayıp Rıhtım and Lacivert Öykü ve Şiir Dergisi. He has also contributed to several short story anthologies. He works as an editor for Bilimkurgu Kulübü and Orm Fantastik, and is part of the editorial team at Roket Bilimkurgu Dergi. His essay collection Ay Kızılıydı Gece was published in 2022. His science fiction series for children, Uzaylı Pizzacı, recently began with its first book Kayıp Çoraplar Savaşı, published by Pamey Publishing. He continues to explore the boundaries of storytelling, working at the intersection of literature, imagination and editorial vision.
SFRA Review 