Category: Culture/Art

Greek Architects of Istanbul in the Era of Westernization

The Museum of the City of Athens – Vouros-Eytaxias Foundation inaugurated an exhibition of photos and archive material on “Greek Architects of Istanbul in the Era of Westernization“, on Monday, May 30th 2011. The exhibition is organized by the Zographeion Alumni Association (Istanbul) in collaboration with the ISTANBUL 2010 – European Capital of Culture Agency and is sponsored by Public Benefit Foundation John S. Latsis.

The main idea of the exhibition is to highlight the sectors in which the Greeks of Istanbul did exercise great influence. One of these was in the architectural movements of the mid-19th till the mid-20th century, where 57 architects (such as P. Fotiades, B. Kouremenos, L. Kaytantzoglou) designed and created over a 100 different buildings, shaping the urban landscape of Istanbul. These architects would introduce new types and styles of buildings, so that they contributed to the westernization of Istanbul and to the formation of the current landscape of the city.

The exhibition was first presented in Istanbul in November 2010. Afterwards it was moved to Thessaloniki and now is being presented in Athens.

A bilingual (english/greek) exhibition catalog with thirteen articles of both Greek and Turkish academicians is available.

via Greek Architects of Istanbul in the Era of Westernization « Mosaiko.

June 7, 2011
Turkey’s Kurds slowly build cultural autonomy

Music and the arts might be the healing salve for Turkey’s culture

by The New York Times

04:46 AM Jun 06, 2011

Not so long ago, playing Kurdish music over a loudspeaker in the Vizyon Muzik Market in Diyarbakir, Turkey, might have provoked the Turkish police. Just speaking the names of certain Kurdish singers at one time could have landed a Kurd in prison.

These days, hundreds of CDs featuring Kurdish pop singers fill one of the long walls in the small, shoebox-shaped Vizyon Muzik. Abdulvahap Ciftci, the 25-year-old Kurd who runs the place, said customers buy about 250 Kurdish albums a week.

With the general state of turmoil in that part of the world, the Kurds have been looking toward the elections to press long-standing claims for broader parliamentary representation and more freedoms, both political and cultural.

“It is now at least possible to talk about issues a little more openly,” said 38-year-old Sedat Yilmaz, director of the Turkish movie, Press, which recounted the torture and killing of dozens of investigative journalists working for the newspaper Ozgur Gundem. “The best way to do this is through films and plays and music, which is finally starting to happen.”

But change comes slowly, if at all. Concessions by the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009 made way for the first Kurdish national TV station, and the government also permitted the teaching of Kurdish language classes in private universities (but not public ones). But Erdogan’s government, guarding its tenuous majority in parliament on the verge of the elections, has assumed a more and more hawkish line lately.

“The changes are meaningful but still not sufficient,” said Burhan Senatalar, a Turkish professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “If you asked Turks today whether, in the abstract, people should be able to speak their mother tongue, most of them would say, of course, no problem,” he added. “But with Kurdish, fear clouds the picture. Language is the biggest Kurdish demand because language equals identity. It’s the root of any culture, and many Kurds, having had their language repressed, no longer even know the basics of Kurdish grammar. So the debate has inevitably turned to language.”

“With the state banning Kurdish in public schools, the trend is that in a few decades we could lose our language altogether,” said Gulten Kisanak, co-chairwoman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party. “That’s why our leading political demand is really a cultural demand: The use of our mother tongue … Turkish urbanisation has steadily threatened Kurdish culture, our music, our lullabies and fairy tales, which, coming from our villages, used to be how we transferred our heritage to new generations.”

Nevertheless, there are now more Kurdish-language books to be found in bookstores. A theatre troupe stages productions in Kurdish in Diyarbakir. Kisanak’s party also sponsors Kurdish acting and vocal groups across the region. Kurdish music, including Dengbej, the traditional Kurdish sung-speech, is everywhere.

“Compared to the past, we’re better off,” Ciftci said. “Eighty per cent of our identity as Kurds is in our music. If you are Kurdish today, even if you don’t speak the language, you can hear a song in Kurdish, and your soul roars. It makes you feel part of a struggle.”

At the Diyarbakir Institute for Political and Social Research, Nurcan Baysal and Dilan Bozgan, researchers in their 30s, said they never learned their own mother tongue because it was stigmatised in schools. But they grew up hearing it in Kurdish music.

“Music was for a long time the only semi-free zone for Kurds to express themselves in their own language in Turkey and also a kind of therapy,” she elaborated. “When my grandmother is alone, I hear her singing about her past.”

Baysal agreed. Her grandmother, too, sings at home. “My grandmother doesn’t speak a word of Turkish, and I don’t know Kurdish. If you lose a language, you can lose your family, because you lose your link to the past. But when I ask my grandmother about her life, she starts singing. It’s how we communicate.”

via TODAYonline | Entertainment | Music | Turkey’s Kurds slowly build cultural autonomy.

June 6, 2011
A meeting of minds on the Bosphorus

Istancool brings stars from across the globe together in intimate salon style. It’s the future of festivals, says Harriet Walker

Monday, 6 June 2011

Attending the Istancool festival is a little like one of those conversations in which each person nominates their dream dinner party guest.

Kirsten Dunst chats to Michael Stipe and Terry Gilliam over a Bellini on the terrace, while actress Tilda Swinton twirls fashion designer Haider Ackermann around the dance-floor, and photographer Ryan McGinley lends a hand to DJ and magazine mogul Jefferson Hack. Later on, Courtney Love arrives to perform an intimate set, in which she covers Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and dedicates a new song to Stipe. Who rushes right over to give her a hug.

Overwhelming? Slightly. Surreal? Certainly. But Istancool, now in its second year, is a festival unlike any other – and that is both its goal and its USP. And it carries it off. Far from being an exclusive celebrity smug-in, this fledgling event is a weekend of carefully curated panel discussions, screenings and audience-led Q&As, all of which are open to the public and free to attend.

There’s an air of informality which permeates both talent and hangers-on alike, so that the discussions take on a more relaxed feel: the speakers are more likely to respond without being frosty, and audiences do not feel the need to grill them. “It’s like a school trip” says Tilda Swinton, when she takes to the stage to be questioned alongside Turkish actor Serra Yilmaz.

Events range from set pieces, such as interviews and screenings, to more spontaneous round-tables and amenable chats stage-managed with alacrity by Jefferson Hack, whose magazine AnOther is media partner to the event. These types of conversatione hark back to a salon tradition with which the event very strongly identifies. The discussion of art and the role of the artist is difficult in a culture which immediately classes such dialogue as self-conscious, and pretentiously so. But when those discussing it are old friends, such as McGinley and fellow New York artist Dan Colen, the result is so genuinely warm and engaging that all else evaporates. “I wouldn’t call myself a street artist,” McGinley tells Hack at one point, “but I have sat on a lot of pavements.”

Istancool also hosted the world premiere of a series of music videos created for REM’s new album, Collapse Into Now, by Sam Taylor-Wood and Sophie Calle. One depicts Taylor-Wood’s husband, actor Aaron Johnson, dancing and cavorting with lamp-posts in East London.

“It comes from our ritual of ‘morning dancing’,” explains Taylor-Wood, winking at Johnson, who is squirming in the audience. These are the moments that make Istancool different from, say, Hay or Port Eliot – there is always a proximity, everyone is interlinked. There is little difference between those involved and those participating. So much so that Courtney Love turned parts of her Q & A on her audience, interested to find out how her music had inspired them. During Dunst’s talk (she arrived fresh from victory and ignominy at Cannes for her role in Melancholia) there is discussion of little other than her director Lars von Trier’s slip-up, but Dunst answers gamely.

“He says dumb stuff sometimes,” she admits. “He was trying to make people laugh by telling the story of his life, but it was not the right audience for it.”

The spontaneity that drives Istancool comes, in large part, from organisers Pablo Ganguli and Demet Muftuoglu. “The aim is to connect minds together for people all over the world”, explains Ganguli, who founded his company Liberatum in 2001, aged just 17, with the intention of staging events around the world. “To give people who don’t normally have it a chance to interact.”

Hence Istanbul. After a stint as European Capital of Culture last year (which saw Liberatum’s inaugural event there), Ganguli wants the spotlight of the world to remain firmly on the city that, literally, bridges Europe and Asia. And he has plenty more ideas to come.

“I’m talking to Angelina [Jolie]’s manager at the moment,” he says. “Let’s say I could bring her to give a talk with Sean Penn on the Balkans or Haiti. And I want an opera curated by Lady Gaga. Istancool will be bigger than Venice!”

via A meeting of minds on the Bosphorus – Features, Art – The Independent.

June 6, 2011
Turkey takes care of Ottoman legacy abroad

Turkey has been carrying out a broad initiative in a large number of different countries in the fields of education, cultural cooperation, energy, commerce, transportation, health, housing and administrative issues as well.

National papers frequently report that various historical edifices built in Ottoman times are dilapidated. Even graver reports note that mosques have been converted into pubs or bars. However, recently Turkey appears to have paid greater attention to the preservation of Ottoman heritage abroad.

In recent years, a growing number of historic buildings in Central Asia, the Balkans, Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been restored and renovated.

The restoration and renovation works are not limited to Ottoman heritage alone; Turkey has been carrying out a broad initiative in a large number of different countries in the fields of education, cultural cooperation, energy, commerce, transportation, health, housing and administrative issues as well.

The initiative features some humanitarian aid operations, too. Turkey sees this as a tool that will promote friendlier bilateral relations. Various organizations and institutions, including the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (DİB), the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of National Education are taking part in these projects.

While it is possible to refer to a common goal in these initiatives and studies, there is no working coordination and harmonization between the said institutions. It was even impossible to have the records for these initiatives as a whole as some of these have been held by civil society organizations. In consideration of this problem, the Office of Public Diplomacy, a newly established institution under the supervision of the Office of the Prime Minister, has taken action.

The office has drafted a comprehensive report providing details on such initiatives over the past years. The coordinator of the office, İbrahim Kalın, speaking to Cihan news agency, said on the publication of the report: “Turkey’s contributions are well known in these regions. We just wanted to make sure that the Turkish people would also know that humanitarian aid and other operations were carried out thanks to cooperation between the state and civil society organizations.”

Cooperation between equal brothers

Kalın says the report, “Dossier on Greater Turkic World” does not hold a nationalist connotation, stressing that it is actually a unifying concept between the Turkic republics, Turkey and the nations formerly ruled under Ottoman administration. İbrahım Kalın notes that the report is an answer to the question “who has taken care of the Turkic world?” Kalın however insists that Turkey does not have imperialistic motives. He further adds this is a process of cooperation between equals rather than a form of domination.

The report states that Turkey has diversified its forms of contributions to Turkic states. The initiatives include restoration of historical ruins, student exchange programs, a TRT television station intended for Eurasian audiences, meetings between members of Turkic communities in Turkey, construction of wells and hospitals, housing support and beekeeping training. İbrahim Kalın describes this as “expansion of the axis” of Turkey’s foreign policy, rather than an “axis shift,” as has been claimed by some writers concerned that Turkey was turning away from the West and toward the East.

The amount of foreign aid provided by Turkey has dramatically increased in the last decade from $85 million in 2002 to $967 million in 2010. The total amount of aid over this period of time has been almost $5 billion. This means that Turkey is providing nearly $1 billion in foreign aid to the greater Turkic world every year.

The new style in foreign policy and the growing Turkish national economy has had a visible impact on this transformation. The proactive foreign policy stance enables Turkey to get the necessary permits to restore and renovate historical buildings and ruins. For instance, Turkey is able to seek permission from the Greek authorities for the restoration of the Fethiye Mosque in Athens.

Many historic buildings from Ottoman era have been restored

Restoration and reconstruction work make up the larger part of the list of work done as part of the initiative briefly described above. Such work has been conducted in many areas including Central Asia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. The Turkish Monuments Project being implemented in Mongolia is probably one of the most important of these works. The project seeks to reconstruct the ruins of the Orhun Inscriptions, the oldest known written documents of Turkic history.

A substantial number of rare pieces of Turkic history have been discovered and identified during excavation works since 1994 as part of the project. Thanks to the Orhun Museum, these rare pieces and documents have been protected as the oldest written samples of Turkish literature.

The Sultan Sancar Tomb in Turkmenistan was restored by TİKA; in addition, funds were allocated for the identification of the grave of Seljuk Sultan Alparslan in this country and its reconstruction as a memorial tomb. Turkey is also working on the tomb of Arslan Baba, the teacher and mentor or Ahmed Yesevi in Kazakhstan and the site landscaping of the madrasah where Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi was born in Afghanistan.

The renovated and restored buildings and works include:

Mostar Bridge Restoration (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Belgrade Sheikh Mustafa Tomb (Serbia)
Prizren Sinan Pasha Mosque (Kosovo)
Parruce Mosque (Albania)
Osmanbasiç Mosque (Montenegro)
Mustafa Pasha Mosque (Macedonia)
Budapest Gül Baba Tomb (Hungary)
Razgrad Makbul İbrahim Pasha (Bulgaria)
Hafeez Ahmed Pasha Library (Greece)
Haji Giray Khan Tomb (Ukraine)
Sarı Saltuk Tomb (Romania)
Damascus Süleymaniye Complex (Syria)
Eastern Tripoli Mawlawi Shrine (Lebanon)
Al-Aqsa Springs (Palestine)
Ottoman works (Sudan)
Ottoman Ghar al Melh Castle (Tunisia)

Most important fields to use soft power: Education and culture

While Turkey’s foreign policy gets stronger in the region where it is located, one of the advantages of Ankara is seen as its “soft power.” For Turkey, soft power means Turkey’s historical depth. Co-habitation with the people of the region for centuries paves the way for Turkish people to grasp issues regarding the region in a better way. In relations with the countries in the Greater Turkic Lands, the schools built by Turkish businessmen, and the Turkish language surely play the most important role.

Turkish culture and foreign policy represent an entirety of a certain stance and values. The components of this stance are peace, compassion, diplomatic solutions, mutual economic dependence and the encouraging of accountability. Having all these features with Turkey and facilitating regional stability can be only possible through educational and cultural activities.

We witness state-sponsored developments that further deepen cultural and educational cooperation in the Greater Turkic Lands. As part of one such project, named the “Great Student Project,” 30,270 students from 57 countries and communities were placed in Turkish universities. Almost all of them are seen as Turkey’s honorary ambassadors.

Another project that Ankara puts emphasis on is the Turkology Project. The project was launched in 1999 and it vies to spread Turkish language and culture in the long term in neighboring, friend and other Turkic countries. Turkology, Turkish Language and Literature and Turkish Language Education Centers are opened in many countries as part of this project.

A Summer Internship Program, which has been held since 2003, also fulfills an important mission. About 100 students participate in the program every year and they receive Turkish, Turkish culture and history classes, also having the chance to see Turkey’s historical and touristic places. International Hoca Ahmet Yesevi Turkish-Kazakh University and Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University are also important bridges between Ankara and Central Asia.

Cihan news agency

June 5, 2011
Amy Winehouse finished assessment, not rehab time

HollywoodNews.com: Rumors recently came out that Amy Winehouse had already checked out of rehab after only checking in about a week ago, but it seems that is false and she is just getting started.

Her rep is reporting that she has finished her assessment and will be continuing treatment as an outpatient, states E! News. Winehouse will reportedly be preparing for her summer tour while dealing with rehab.

She will reportedly be in Serbia on June 18th and in Istanbul two days later.

Do you think Amy Winehouse will get better?

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via Amy Winehouse finished assessment, not rehab time | HollywoodNews.com.

June 5, 2011
Inside Turkey’s Young Art Scene

First it was China. Then India. Now Turkey is fast becoming the country du jour on the contemporary-art circuit. A slew of shows at prominent galleries in Europe, record-setting auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and a host of new venues in the country’s cultural capital, Istanbul, suggest that modern Turkish art is finally coming of age. At the “Confessions of Dangerous Minds” exhibition of contemporary Turkish art, a first-of-its-kind show held at London’s trendsetting Saatchi Gallery in April, half the works by 19 mostly emerging artists were sold before the doors opened.

Partly, it is about patronage. A fast-growing economy has spawned a new class of youthful art collectors, while established industrial families have launched signature museums in rapid succession. (There is almost no public funding.) It began in 2004 with the Istanbul Modern, owned by the Eczacibasi family, who made their fortune in pharmaceuticals. The venue features a vast collection (and a pleasant waterfront café). Last year, Omer Koc, scion of a heavyweight industrial dynasty, opened the gallery Arter on Istiklal, Istanbul’s busiest street. It was recently joined a few doors down by SALT, a state-of-the-art exhibition-and-research space in a radically restored heritage building, funded by Garanti Bank and directed by Vasif Kortun, Turkey’s best-known contemporary-art curator. (See pictures of the Streets of Istanbul.)

But there are also dozens of other smaller galleries tucked into side streets nearby, proof, perhaps, that there is no shortage of interesting work. “There is no other similar Muslim-dominant country which doesn’t have censorship in the arts and where artists are dealing with heavy-duty issues, like gender roles and religion,” says Kerimcan Guleryuz, director of Gallery X-ist, which has showcased many politically charged pieces.

A great way to see what all the fuss is about is to visit the Istanbul Biennial, which has made spectacular strides since its debut in 1987. The next biennial, put together by top-name curators Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa, runs from Sept. 17 to Nov. 13. You’ll be working your way through some pretty hefty crowds if the current buzz about contemporary Turkish art is anything to go by. Visit iksv.org for more.

via Inside Turkey’s Young Art Scene – TIME.

June 5, 2011