Ahmet Ümit – Room in the Pera Palas Hotel

The famous Pera Palas Hotel in Istanbul labels one of his rooms for rent “Ahmet Ümit”.

Turkish crime story writer Ahmet Ümit is working on a new book. It’s main character is an assassin of the abolished Ottoman Regime in the early days of the Turkish Republic. The New Regime consists out of a group of former Ottoman Officers going for the idea of a National state with a Western Modernization vision. The main character in the novel takes a room in the Pera Palace Hotel.

The Para Palas was opened in 1882 for the Passengers of the legendary Orient Express, a luxurious train shuttling between Paris and Istanbul: Agatha Christie is said to have written parts of her famous crime story “The Orient Express” in the Pera Palas Hotel.

One room is also carrying her name. Besides there is a Hemingway room, a Pierre Loti room and a Mata Hari room referring to the memory of one of the most famous female spies, who ones stayed here as well.

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Ahmet Ümit is well known for thriller crime stories with serious political impacts. His novel “Fog and Night” (1996) tells the tragic story of a police officer, who is involved in the hunt on leftist political groups. Executions without trial were real phenomenas in Turkey specially between 1960-2000. In “Kukla” (The string puppet) he unveils the structure of the deep state in Turkey. A couple of state institutions use a private army of criminals for political murder and other illegal businesses. In his new book Ahmet Ümit follows the roots of this dynamics back to the Ottoman empire times.