Category: Culture/Art

Head for success

By Jan Dalley

Published: November 26 2010 22:36 | Last updated: November 26 2010 22:36

Oya Eczacibasi, chair of Istanbul Modern

Oya Eczacibasi, chair of Istanbul Modern

Oya Eczacibasi, Chair of the Board of Istanbul Modern, is tired, she says. Not that she looks it – she is still the chic and courteous presence of the previous day, when she hosted first a press conference then successive waves of visitors to the gallery’s new exhibition.

Now in its sixth year, the gallery has just opened a retrospective of the video work of Kutlug Ataman, the first in his homeland, despite international recognition over a long career. It also celebrates his return to Turkey after a long absence: his controversial work has led him into conflict with the Turkish authorities in the past.

A still from Kutlug Ataman’s ‘Never My Soul’, the story of a Turkish transvestite

The same conflicts and complexities – between the modernising Turkey and the traditionalists – made the setting-up of Istanbul Modern a long and tricky project. “This is,” Eczacibasi says, spreading her hands simply, “an Islamic country.”

The idea of establishing a museum of contemporary art in a country where there was none was the brainchild of Eczacibasi’s father-in-law, Dr Nejat Eczacibasi. In 1987 the first Istanbul Biennial attracted enough interest to point the way, and an endowment from the Eczacibasi Foundation enabled the conversion of the Feshane, a former textile plant, as the first museum.

“But,” Eczacibasi explains, “we opened in an ultra-religious district. There were difficulties.” After two years the challenges proved too much and the long hunt for premises was on again. It was not until the 8th Biennial, in 2003, that its location in warehouses on the Galata Pier looked promising, and eventually Prime Minister Erdogan approved their permanent use.

“But” – Eczacibasi tells what must have been a turbulent story very calmly – “it was a long time before we knew that we would not have to move again.”

To visit Istanbul Modern today is to glean no hint of problems in its inception. Sleek, white and spacious, with generous galleries and a terraced cafe with spectacular views over the Bosporus, it lives up to any world-class contemporary art space. Turkish Telecom is an important sponsor; the Ataman show is supported by Garanti Bank; it feels well settled. The spacious upstairs galleries host changing shows of the modern Turkish art collection; downstairs is devoted to temporary shows, mainly of Turkish artists, which can be design or fashion-led, such as that by fashion supremo Hussein Chalayan. Across the ceiling of the entry hall is slung an installation by British sculptor Richard Wentworth, of runaway books caught in a net – a scene-setting piece that welcomes and relaxes the visitor. Informality rules here, it seems to say.

“One of the things I’m most pleased about,” Eczacibasi tells me, “is that you can see a young woman in a headscarf sitting in the library next to a young woman in a miniskirt.”

Although she adds, in answer to my question about what it takes to attract the museum’s 500,000 annual visitors, that “some women with their heads covered are not sure whether they can come in”.

The laws made by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s still dictate that women cannot enter public buildings with their heads covered, and there is great depth of feeling about the issue. Sure enough, it emerges in Ataman’s video installation, “Women Who Wear Wigs”. Four women use wigs to alter their image or identity: one a cancer victim, one on the run from the police, one (a favourite theme of the artist) a transsexual prostitute whose hair has been cruelly chopped by the police. The fourth wears a wig to enable her to attend university without violating her beliefs. It’s shocking – and indeed confusing – to most liberals.

The social and political tensions of this country poised on the brink of two continents and two ways of thinking make for rich art. Ataman’s videos explore split identities, confused gender roles, internal worlds that grate against external strictures. To come into the orbit of such tensions also makes one realise the diplomacy, tenacity and tact it must have taken Oya Eczacibasi to steer Istanbul Modern to the present. As we look at some pictures together we pause at one taken during the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. On one side is herself, a picture of western elegance with long loose hair; on the other, two women in long robes with tightly bound heads. They are the wives of prominent cultural figures.

“That,” says Eczacibasi, pointing to the glaring contrast, “that is Turkey.”

www.istanbulmodern.org

via FT.com / Arts / Collecting – Head for success.

November 27, 2010
V. S. Naipaul pulls out of Turkey conference after protests

Nobel laureate author V. S. Naipaul has been forced to pull out of a major literary event in Turkey after conservative Muslims in the country took objection to his criticisms of Islam.

V S Naipaul, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 Photo: AFP

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent 5:36PM GMT 25 Nov 2010

V S Naipaul, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 Photo: AFP

Naipaul had been due to give the opening address at the European Writers’ Parliament, a gathering of prominent authors who are meeting in Istanbul to discuss the future of literature.

But he made what was described as “a mutual decision”, taken with the conference’s organisers, to withdraw at the last moment following a concerted campaign against him in Turkey’s religious press.

A number of Turkish writers had threatened not to attend the event in protest at Naipaul’s portrayal of Islam in two of his 30 books as a religion that sought to enslave and eliminate other cultures.

Calls for a boycott were led by Hilmi Yavuz, a columnist for the Zaman newspaper, who wrote: “How can our writers bear to sit by the same table with Naipul, who has seen Muslims worthy of so many insults?”

Born in Trinidad of Indian ancestry, Naipaul, 78, has condemned the manner in which Islam established itself in the non-Arab world.

Converts in countries such as Iran and Indonesia had been forced “to strip themselves of their past” in order to submit to the Muslim faith, he wrote.

“It is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism,” he wrote in Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples.

Naipaul has also courted controversy by attacking Pakistan while voicing support for the Indian nationalist party the BJP and other right-wing Hindu parties. Most notably he defended the destruction in 1992 of a mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by a mob of BJP supporters as an act of “historical balancing” – even though nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in the ensuing riots.

The campaign to keep Naipaul out of Turkey threatens to tarnish Istanbul’s credentials as this year’s “European Capital of Culture” and other writers at the conference insisted that he had the right to be heard.

“I feel that we would be stronger and more credible if we were to deal with divergent views within this meeting rather than excluding someone because of fear that offence might be given,” Hari Kunzru, the British novelist, told delegates as the event got under way.

via V. S. Naipaul pulls out of Turkey conference after protests – Telegraph.

November 26, 2010
İstanbul as seen by Turkish, French photojournalists

Today the French Cultural Center in İstanbul’s Taksim Square starts hosting a photo exhibition by İstanbul-based photojournalists from the Anatolia news agency and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Fotomuhabirlerin Gözüyle İstanbul” (İstanbul As Seen by Photojournalists), put together on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Anatolia news agency, is a collection that looks at the İstanbul of the 2000s from many different viewpoints — from arts to sports events and from social life to politics. The collection will remain on display until Jan. 15, 2011.

November 26, 2010
Istanbul welcomes Pink Floyd Ballet

Italian La Scala Theater’s Pink Floyd Ballet, which was created by choreographer Roland Petit in the 1960s following his daughter’s requests, has arrived in Istabul for the first time. The first performance is Thursday night at the Istanbul Congress Center and there will be four more performances until Sunday, featuring 13 Pink Floyd songs.

Istanbul is hosting Italy’s La Scala Theater’s Pink Floyd Ballet this weekend as part of the world-renowned show’s first trip to Turkey.

The ballet troupe makes its first performance Thursday night and will have four more performances Friday, Saturday and two on Sunday.

The ballet was produced in the mid-1960s by choreographer Roland Petit at his daughter’s request to make a ballet on Pink Floyd songs. Her request seemed impossible to him at first but later on Petit thought that it might be possible and produced the ballet.

“My daughter was then 12 years old,” Petit recently told daily Hürriyet. “One day she made me listen to Pink Floyd and asked me to produce a ballet show on its music. I told her that it was a dream but she insisted. I liked Pink Floyd but it seemed a very extreme idea to merge modern rock music with ballet composition. It was so bizarre that we could not even imagine the reaction of audiences. But we had a very big success.”

The ballet premiered in 1972 and has been traveling the world since then. Eight of the shows were joined by Pink Floyd. La Scala Theater obtained the rights for the show in 2009.

The show has been staged hundreds times around the world from Paris to Tokyo although it acquired even more high-cultural legitimacy when it moved to La Scala in 2009.

When creating the ballet, Petit attended one of the concerts of the band in London in order to talk to its members face to face and tell them his idea.

“There were 9,000 over-excited people in the concert. It made me very excited that this mass of young people, who used to listen to Pink Floyd like crazy, would see a ballet performance accompanied by this music,” he said. “We talked to Pink Floyd members after the concert and they were very excited, too. They proposed playing live on the stage [for the ballet].”

The show in Istanbul will not feature Pink Floyd live on stage but the audience will still witness a spectacular lighting and dance show.

13 songs to be performed

The ballet show has been changed twice, in 1991 and 2004, during which new songs were added to the show, while the lighting shows also underwent some alterations.

There will be 13 songs in the show in Turkey, including “Run Like Hell,” “Money,” “Is There Anybody Out There?” “Nobody Home,” “Hey You,” “One Of These Days,” “Careful With That Axe,” “Eugene,” “When You’re In,” “Obscured by Clouds,” “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Echoes,” which will be performed twice.

The show will be on stage Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. while the two Sunday showings will come before audiences at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Ticket prices range between 57 and 415 Turkish Liras.

Inaugurated in August 1778, La Scala Theater (Teatro Alla Scala) in Milan is recognized as one of the leading opera and ballet theaters in the world.

At the same time, the theater’s ballet company is also recognized as one of the most prestigious companies throughout the world and has featured leading dancers, including Alessandra Ferri, Roberto Bolle and Carla Fracci, at various times in the past.

Hürriyet

November 25, 2010
Why Turkey will emerge as leader of the Muslim world

By SONER CAGAPTAY

The AKP is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s global compass.

Turkey is not thought of as the Muslim country par excellence, but it is perhaps the most Muslim nation in the world. Due to its unique birth during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as a state forged exclusively by and for Muslims through blood and war, Turkey is a Muslim nation by origin – a feature shared perhaps only with partitioncreated Pakistan.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secularization in the 1920s veneered the country’s core identity with a Kemalist, nationalistic overlay. However, a recent perfect storm has undone Ataturk’s legacy: Whereas the events of September 11 have, unfortunately, oriented Muslim-Western relations toward perpetual conflict, the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara has helped reexpose the country’s core identity. When the AKP came to power in 2002, many expected that the party’s promise to de-Kemalize Turkey by blending Islam and politics would not only create a stronger Turkey, but would prove Islam’s compatibility with the West. The result, however, has been the reverse.

The AKP has eschewed Ataturk’s vision of Turkey as part of the West, preferring a Manichean “us [Muslims] vs them” worldview. Hence, in the post- September 11 world, stripped of its Kemalist identity, Turkey’s self-appointed role is that of “leader of the Muslim world.” The country is, in fact, well-suited for this position: It has the largest economy and most powerful military of any Muslim nation. After years of successful de-Kemalization, the only obstacle that remains is convincing its Muslim brethren to anoint it as their sultan.

Turkey was created as an exclusive Muslim homeland through war, blood and tears. Unbeknownst to many outsiders, modern Turkey emerged not as a state of ethnic Turks, but of Ottoman Muslims who faced expulsion and extermination in Russia and the Balkan states. Almost half of Turkey’s 73 million citizens descend from such survivors of religious persecution. During the Ottoman Empire’s long territorial decline, millions of Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims living in Europe, Russia and the Caucasus fled persecution and sought refuge in modern-day Turkey.

With the empire’s collapse at the end of World War I, Ottoman Muslims joined ethnic Turks to defend their home against Allied, Armenian and Greek occupations. They succeeded, making Turkey a purely Muslim nation that had been born out of conflict with Christians. Religion’s saliency as ethnicity lasted into the post- Ottoman period: When modern Greece and Turkey exchanged their minority populations in 1924, Turkish- speaking Orthodox Christians from Anatolia were exchanged with Greek-speaking Muslims from Crete.

All Muslims became Turks.

Although Ataturk emphasized the unifying power of Turkish nationalism over religious identity, Turkishness never replaced Islam; rather, both identities overlapped. Ataturk managed to overlay the country’s deep Muslim identity with secular nationalism, but Turkey retained its Muslim core.

Turning to the post-September 11 world, states created on exclusively national-religious grounds are vulnerable to a Huntingtonian, bifurcated “us [Muslims] versus them” worldview.

Until the AKP, Turkey was successfully driven by large pro-Western and secular elites, and there was not much to worry about in this regard.

However, the AKP has replaced these elites with those sympathetic to the us versus them eschatology.

AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his government, believe in Huntington’s clash of civilizations – only they choose to oppose the West. The AKP’s vision is shaped by Turkey’s philosopher- king, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who summarizes this position in his opus Strategic Depth, in which he writes that “Turkey’s traditionally good ties with the West… are a form of alienation” and that the AKP will correct the course of history, which has disenfranchised Muslims since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Undoubtedly, the AKP’s us versus them vision would not have had the same powerful resonance had the group come to power before September 11. Because those attacks defined a politically-charged “Muslim world,” the AKP’s worldview has found fertile ground and has changed not only Turkey itself, but also the nation’s role in foreign policy.

To this end, the AKP took advantage of Turkish anger with the US war in Iraq, casting it as an attack on all Muslims, Turks included. This reinforced its bipolar vision. Recently, while visiting Pakistan (of all places), Erdogan claimed that “the United States backs common enemies of Turkey and Pakistan, and that the time has come to unmask them and act together.” He later denied making these comments, which were reported in Pakistan’s prominent English-language dailies.

The AKP’s foreign-policy vision is not simply dualistic, but rather premised on Islam’s à la carte morals and selective outrage, and therein lies the real danger. One case in point is to compare the AKP’s differing stances toward Emir Kusturica and Omar al-Bashir. The former, a Bosnian film director who stood with the Yugoslav National Army as it slaughtered Bosnians in the 1990s, was recently driven out of Turkey by AKP-led protests, resulting in threats against his life – a victory for the victims of genocide in Bosnia. The latter, the Sudanese president indicted for genocide in the International Court of Justice, was gracefully hosted by the AKP in Turkey. Erdogan has said, “I know Bashir; he cannot commit genocide because Muslims do not commit genocide.”

This is the gist of the AKP’s à la carte foreign-policy vision: that Muslims are superior to others, their crimes can be ignored and anyone who stands against Muslim causes deserves to be punished.

The reason this vision will transform Turkey is because the country changes in tandem with its elites. Ever since the modernizing days of the Ottoman sultans, political makeover has been induced from above, and today the AKP is poised to continue this trend, as it is replete with pro-AKP and Islamist billionaires, media, think tanks, universities, TV networks, pundits and scholars – a full-fledged Islamist elite. Furthermore, individuals financially and ideologically associated with the AKP now hold prominent posts in the high courts since the September 12 referendum, which empowered the party to appoint a majority of the top judges without a confirmation process. In other words, the AKP now not only governs, but also controls Turkey.

Like their close neighbors, the Russians, Turks have moved in lockstep with the powerful political, social and foreign-policy choices that their dominant elites have ushered in. Beginning with the sultans’ efforts to westernize the Ottoman Empire in the 1770s, and continuing with Ataturk’s reforms and the multiparty democracy experiment that started in 1946, Turkish elites have cast their lot with the West. Unsurprisingly, the Turks adopted a pro-Western foreign policy, embraced secular democracy at home and marched steadily toward European Union membership.

Now, with the AKP introducing new currents throughout Turkish society, this is changing. In foreign policy, the dominant wind is solidarity with Islamist and anti-Western countries and movements. After eight years of AKP rule – an unusually long period in Turkish terms: if the AKP wins the June 2011 elections, it will have become the longest-ruling party in Turkey’s multiparty democratic history – the Turks are acquiescing to the AKP and its us versus them mind-set.

According to a recent poll by TESEV, an Istanbul-based NGO, the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim increased by 10 percent between 2002 and 2007, and almost half of them described themselves as Islamist. In effect, the AKP’s steady mobilization of Turkish Muslim identity along with its close financial and ideological affinity with the nation’s new Islamist elites is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s international compass.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and coauthor (with Scott Carpenter) of Nuanced Gestures: Regenerating the US-Turkey Partnership (2010).

, 24.11.2010

November 25, 2010
Women of Saudi Arabia Emerge on the Bosporus

ISTANBUL — A quiet evolution is taking place here inside a vast warehouse near the Bosporus and at an inland convention center where rarely seen Saudi Arabian art — including some with feminist themes — is on display.

In the warehouse known as Sanat Limani, or Art Port, the creative movement based in London and Jidda called Edge of Arabia has organized “Transition,” a collection of works from 22 Saudi artists that touch on issues of faith, culture and identity. On display through Dec. 26, “Transition” coincides with Contemporary Istanbul, an international art exposition that runs through Sunday.

At Art Port, across a parking lot from the Istanbul Modern, the photographer Manal al-Dowayan documents real Saudi women in their real jobs, from computer scientist, to doctor, to teacher, to petroleum engineer. In her “I Am” series, the engineer wears a hard hat and a uniform with a “safety first” label on her chest, but Ms. Dowayan has added a face veil heavily decorated with beads and coins.

“A lot of people don’t like that one,” said Ms. Dowayan, 37. “They say, for example, that the place where she works doesn’t require a veil and she is allowed to work as a petro-engineer fully.

“But I put it there because it looks so awkward. The feeling you get when you look at the image is the point I want to make. It doesn’t match. It doesn’t look right. Restrictions are awkward, especially when they don’t make sense.”

Ms. Dowayan, who was born and raised in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and works full time as an artist, addresses still other restrictions in her ongoing project, “The Choice.”

Those photos include pictures of women in activities they are not allowed to pursue — driving, athletics, voting — “different things that I think have been taken over, choices that women should make themselves, like whether to drive or not, whether to vote or not: Choices that have been taken away.”

“Movement,” she continued, “is a very big issue for Saudi women, the idea of transportation and moving from Point A to Point B. So I explore the idea of driving because women are not allowed to drive in Saudi. Other images address women’s sports in schools, which are not allowed. This is not something I am bringing up for the first time: this is a dialogue that exists within the community, in the media, in the elite class, in the lower class. But I portray the contemporary scene within the general discussion in Saudi Arabia.”

She is striking a theme that is common in Muslim countries. “There’s this whole dialogue about whether the rules are based on religion or tradition,” she said. “It’s a thin line that’s hard to find.

“I add jewelry to their work portraits as a link to tradition,” she explained. “Yes, the jewelry is beautiful, and tradition is beautiful, but when it’s imposed in the wrong place, it becomes strange and awkward and might cause a negative reaction.”

Another artist in the “Transition” exhibition, Hala Ali, is also showing a piece at Contemporary Istanbul. Organizers of the fair at the Istanbul Lutfi Kirdar Convention & Exhibition Center in the Harbiye neighborhood say that art valued at €25 million, or $34 million, from 14 countries is on display.

Aya Mousawi, the assistant curator of the “Transition” show, which is part of Istanbul’s European Capital of Culture celebration, explained the crossover: “Contemporary Istanbul is a young art fair and it’s attracting a lot of people from the Gulf, the international world. We want to support our artists and help them showcase themselves on these types of platforms. Because we’ve got our main exhibit in Istanbul, it only makes sense that we also have a collaboration with the country’s leading art fair.”

via Women of Saudi Arabia Emerge on the Bosporus – NYTimes.com.

November 25, 2010