Hay at Istanbul: Rankin and de Bernieres prove to be the cat's whiskers Before an escalating conflict with Syria drew protesters onto the streets of Istanbul, city residents were up in arms about a more local problem. Visitors to the ancient capital might get the impression that quite a large proportion of its fifteen million inhabitants get around on four legs. Cats and dogs rule the streets, to such an extent that authorities have proposed radical measures to curb their proliferation, including the creation of "pet parks" for neutered strays. On the last day of September, Istanbullahs furious over the plans to impound their furry neighbours, took to Taksim Square in their thousands to protest. The following week, at the Istanbul Tanpinar Literature Festival, it was the cats, rather than the British authors Louis de Bernieres and Ian Rankin, who turned out to be the guests of honour. Brought over by the Hay Festival for the annual festival, both authors attracted a variety of splendidly imperious felines at their events. One would saunter in midway through as the writer was answering questions, spring up onto the stage and plonk themselves within reach of a potential stroking hand, before proceeding to cock their hind leg up for a good clean and some extravagant yawning. Luckily de Bernieres and Rankin turned out to be cat people and shared the limelight with bemusement. Literary festivals are a rare and recent phenomenon in Turkey and the ITLF, with the backing of the British Council and Hay, has over the last four years been nurturing the idea of listening to writers speak. While Turks have always been great readers, novels and fiction have played a much smaller role compared to journalism and historical works, particularly outside the big cities. There are few public libraries and even now, Amazon does not operate in the country. But with home-grown internet booksellers taking off and the increasing success of Turkish writers on the international scene, fiction is staking out a growing claim on popular interest. As ambassadors for contemporary British writing, there is visually a cat and dog, Laurel and Hardy quality to de Bernieres and Rankin: the tall, frowning Scot with the straight dark mop next to the boiled egg roundness of the English man with the fancy French name, sky blue eyes and hair that sits like a cotton wool laurel around the back of his head. In style as well the two seem to be chalk and cheese. De Bernieres: the precocious child reader, growing up around books and always sure of his destiny to become a writer, who pens historical, magical realist novels in as he says "flowery language" set in exotic locations around the world. Rankin: a child with few books at home but an avid comic reader and borrower of adult fiction from the library who hides his poetry from his parents and who goes on to write contemporary, social realist crime novels in sparse prose, forensically excavating one location, Edinburgh, with largely the same set of characters. De Bernieres is the better known in Turkey, although he is less than impressed with the film adaptation of his bestselling Captain Corelli's Mandolin, despite getting to meet Penelope Cruz. He argues his real masterpiece, is Birds Without Wings, a novel set in First World War Turkey. Audiences were utterly amazed to discover that de Bernieres didn't live in their country before writing the book, but merely visited for three weeks and wrote the rest of it from some hefty academic research and his "imagination." Conversely what fascinates them about Rankin is how little research he does, whether into the cops or the robbers. Describing crime as a kind of imaginative therapy "crime writers would be very dangerous if we didn't write all this stuff down," he has avoided getting too involved with the police since some initial contact nearly resulted in his arrest. But the more they politely answer questions, the more similarities they reveal. Rankin dabbled in magic realism in his youth while de Bernieres learnt to carry a gun in Colombia. With only five years between them, both wanted to be musicians in their youth, although while de Bernieres actually formed a band, Rankin was the lead singer of a punk group that existed entirely in his imagination. Neither write with any strict discipline, but rather around the pressures of family life and deadlines. Both perceive that their writing is taking on a simpler, less adorned quality the older they become. More so, both are hilarious, dead pan raconteurs, who have the audiences, if not the cats in stitches. If anyone can persuade Turks that writers are worth listening to as much as reading, then it might certainly be these two.