‘Nationalist and religious extremists are the beneficiaries of cultural boycotts’

When writers and academics stay away from countries in protest at human rights violations, it is the people who lose out

There are few issues among artists and writers as controversial as cultural boycotts. On almost every other subject we tend to agree, more or less: freedom of expression; the need to support local libraries; promoting literacy etc. But a cultural boycott is a conceptual rift that divides us. As a Turkish novelist, I am acquainted with both sides of that rift: I have dear friends – writers and academics – who have recently signed petitions to boycott Israel. And coming from Turkey, a country with a poor record of human rights, I also know what it feels like to be the one who is boycotted.

Related: As storytellers, we speak for pluralism and democracyy | Elif Shafak

Continue reading...