The link between Paris and Turkey was founded when both countries opened diplomatic relationships in the 17th century. Since then, the French culture, language and literature has been key to the Turkish intelligentsia, the first victim of the political instability the country is experiencing since 1960. Paris played the role of a window into the Western world, driving generations of writers to cultivate the myth of the Ville Lumière, city of love, revolutions and freedom. The debate on the place of Turkey in Europe justified a close look into the images of Paris in the contemporary Turkish literature. This study focused on three contemporary writers, who all worked under the shadow of Attilâ Ilhan the precursor, who died in 2005. Demir Özlü, the nauseated loner, for whom Paris will always remain an inaccessible dream, Nedim Gürsel, the prolix lover who turned the city into his mistress, and Enis Batur, the scientific explorer who observed each and every of its stones, have each in their own way placed Paris at the heart of their literary production. In doing so, they preserve the special status the French capital city enjoys in the Turkish collective imagination. Through their exiles and wanderings, they serve as a bridge between Turkey, whose traditions are grounded in the Middle-East, and Paris, which incarnates a Western world that is depicted either as flamboyant or decadent but will always remain obsessive. The fact that they are constantly split between two languages, cultures and places, Paris on the one hand, Istanbul and Turkey on the other hand, pulls them into a gnawing and permanent quest of their identity of human being and writer.
