This week, the Turkish government has jailed a prominent politician who is referred to fondly as “Kurdish Obama” and shutdown Cumhuriyet, a popular newspaper. Amid these distressing developments, Kaya Genç looks towards books and history in her profile of 20th century Turkish humorist Aziz Nesin at The Millions. Nesin, who Genç compares to Christopher Hitchens and who once translated Salman Rushdie, “was illustrative of the contradictions of Turkey, a young country, in the 21st century,” contradictions, Genç writes, “worth fighting to preserve.”