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The author of the recently published novel called Yalancı Tanıklar Kahvesi (Café of False Witnesses) Vedat Turkali says: ‘When the position and the living conditions of an individual in society where s/he struggles to exist are reflected correctly, then we can talk about a ‘typical character’ formation.  I tried to depict the individuals of the society who were in an important phase of history’.

Yalancı Tanıklar Kahvesi (Café of False Witnesses) is a new novel by Vedat Turkali.  Turkali is a wise man, 90 years old.  He tells us with a clear conscious about the yearning of the youth, trying to exist in the chaotic society of Turkey just before 1980 and carrying the hope for making a difference in this country, for a better world.  Although the protagonist of the novel, Muhsin, is a son of a wealthy family or rather to say son of a landowner (aga), he portrays a character, rejecting his family and family fortune at first.  He plans to spend his fortune for revolution.   That is why he always helps his friends and comrades.  On the other hand, he always falls in love with somebody so that he cannot take place in revolutionary movement properly; he endeavours to construct his being.

Despite of them being close friends, Muhsin and Salih have completely different characters from each other.  Salih applies his thoughts of revolution in practice and sacrifices his life for it at the end whereas Muhsin always thinks but cannot act and agonises over his contradictions.  Reyhan, whom Muhsin is passionately in love with, is a character who keeps her nose clean and lives her love affair and her present moment with all her honesty…  Turkali also questions the left movement prior to the year 1980 in his novel; emphasizing the detachment from religion leading to detachment from society and being unable to empathise.  If we would like to explain it through the words from the novel: “while trying to be loyal to our beliefs, we stayed attached only to what we had memorized”.  In this aspect, Turkali draws attention to the importance of questioning and identifying the faults of the left movement prior to 1980. 

Almost all the characters of the novel aim to protect their movement with all their goodwill.  They risk their lives for the sake of their beliefs.  Only the protagonist of the novel, Muhsin cannot be brave enough to act as one of them.  He always stands at the border.  His cowardice is underlined in the book.  He thinks that he lives because of his cowardice.  Turkali refers to the political issues of today that have roots in the past and are discussed in every decade, the conflict of left and right, the irreconcilability of religious laws with secular system, the Kurdish conflict and the Alawi conflict in his novel Yalancı Tanıklar Kahvesi (Café of False Witnesses) through a character who cannot exist in society, cannot follow a path in life and always in contradiction with himself.