Category: Culture/Art

Turkey’s non-Muslims expect more than mere calls of return

Laki Vingas (Photo: Sunday’s Zaman, Kürşat Bayhan)

24 March 2013 /YONCA POYRAZ DOĞAN, İSTANBUL

Nikolaos Uzunoğlu and his family had to leave Turkey in 1974 in an environment of economic and political turmoil in which most non-Muslim communities faced injustices.

The Uzunoğlu family, originally from Cappadocia, then started living in Greece. He is now making trips back to Turkey in hopes of finding homes for his fellow Greeks in the country that they had to leave in the past under bitter circumstances.

“If you’d asked me five years ago about this possibility, I’d say no. But it seems more likely now,” said Uzunoğlu, a university professor in Athens.

Now 62, he has been heading an organization, the Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans, which is an umbrella body for 26 local associations of Greeks who were forced to leave their homes in İstanbul.

“If the authorities are not just making gestures and if there are incentives to come back, there are Greeks who would like to move to Turkey,” he added in reference to Turkish officials’ calls on minorities who left Turkey in the past due to mistreatment to return to the country.

At the beginning of March, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, in remarks made at a conference organized by the Institute of International and Intercultural Dialogue in the German Bundestag, recalled his government’s record of improving the lives of minorities in Turkey by expanding their rights. He also called on minorities to come back to the country.

Then recently, Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik made statements in Moscow during an official visit where he also called on Christians and Jews who had to leave Turkey to return. “We tell them all, come back to your country,” he said.

In contact with various ministries in Ankara, Uzunoğlu’s organization presented in September of last year a number of suggestions to Turkish officials to ease such returns. Those suggestions include granting quick Turkish citizenship to people who would like to come back, giving them orientation classes in order to help them open up small businesses and learn Turkish, providing them with easy credit and even opening research centers in Greek schools in Turkey with the contribution of well-known Greek professors.

“We hope that we are moving toward a solution,” Uzunoğlu said. “The number of people who would like to return from Greece to Turkey will probably be quite small in the beginning but the important thing is that there should be an environment of peace; no more threats in Turkey. Then more people might be willing to come later.”

Laki Vingas, the elected representative of non-Muslim foundations at the Council of the General Assembly of the Directorate General for Foundations (VGM), said the calls by Turkish officials are not coincidental but they are not enough.

“Those calls are important and they are coming from important ministers. However, just mere calls are not enough,” he said, pointing out that there are still problems concerning non-Muslim minorities currently living in Turkey and most of this is due to the slow pace of bureaucracy.

“The Syriac community has problems; their villages are now Kurdish villages. The Armenians have problems. The Greeks still have unsolved inheritance problems, problems related to their schools. The past injustices inflicted on minorities in Turkey are not only restricted to ethnic Greeks,” Vingas said.

There is also the problem related to the Halki Seminary, which has been kept closed by the government since 1971. Without it, there are insufficient members of the clergy to hold religious masses.

But Vingas said that even if Halki is reopened, there are still other issues. He also pointed out the sociological factors. “Communities should not feel like they are being pitted against each other. The injustices inflicted on minorities should be carefully explained to the people of the country,” he said.

Large numbers of non-Muslims left their homelands in Anatolia starting from the upheaval of World War I and the ensuing Turkish War of Independence. In 1915 hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne gave Turkish minorities special education and property rights but various laws later passed discriminated against them.

Then there were the unfortunate events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, which started after a newspaper headline said that the home of the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in Greece had been bombed by Greek militants. Fired up by the media, mobs killed and harassed non-Muslims and non-Turkish minorities in a massive campaign.

Under a high court ruling in 1974, non-Muslim foundations lost thousands of properties. The laws on foundations have been altered several times, with new amendments following each other. In a more recent move, the government issued a decree to return properties confiscated from religious minorities since 1936, and in cases where the property belonging to such organizations had been sold by the state to third parties, the religious foundation would be paid the market value of the property by the Ministry of Finance. The process of return is ongoing.

Non-Muslims now make up just a fraction of Turkey’s population of 75 million people. The number of Turkish citizens of Jewish and Syriac origin has been estimated to be around 20,000 each, while this number is around 2,500 for Turkish citizens of Greek origin. The Turkish-Armenian community is the largest of the minority groups in Turkey with a population of approximately 60,000, mostly in İstanbul.

Hayko Bağdat, a civil society activist and a Turkish citizen from an ethnic Armenian background, said the officials deserve praise for their calls to minorities.

“Those calls are very valuable. Now they need to be supported by action. For example, the Armenians of Syria can be given Turkish citizenship; after all, they are our own diaspora,” Bağdat said.

Bağdat also mentioned the climate of unease among the Armenian community, giving the example of the murder of Sevag Balıkçı, a young man of Armenian descent who was killed while serving in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) as a conscripted private. His death was initially believed to be an accident but was likely the result of a hate crime. Balıkçı was shot dead on April 24, 2011 — the date the Armenian diaspora has chosen to commemorate the incidents of 1915.

Complaining about growing anti-Semitism in Turkey, particularly in the media, İvo Molinas, the editor-in-chief of the Şalom newspaper, a daily published by Turkey’s Jewish community, suggested a need to erase fears of discrimination.

“Jewish people of Turkey who live in Israel still speak Turkish and watch Turkish television. They still remember the smell of the Bosporus. We needed all these calls of return; this is very positive. If anti-Semitism simmers down, then returns can become a possibility,” he said.

Non-Muslims are also weary of conflicting practices, one such example being the Mor Gabriel Monastery. Last year, the Supreme Court of Appeals threw out a petition by the monastery to re-examine a decision handed down by one of its chambers, which had ruled that the monastery was occupying state land even though it has been paying taxes on that land for decades. The ruling had come following a conflict that began in 2008 between the monastery and its surrounding villages. Many international organizations, including the EU, have expressed concern over the situation.

“On one hand, there are calls of return, but on the other, the procedures tell us the opposite. Mor Gabriel is just the tip of the iceberg for the Syriac community. We have no recognition, no recognized legal rights,” said Tuma Çelik, editor-in-chief of Sabro, the first newspaper representing the Syriac community in Turkey.

In regards to recent news reports that the government is currently trying to find a solution for the Mor Gabriel Monastery, which was seized from Mardin’s Syriac community in 2005, Çelik said they are unaware of such an effort, which might be about plans to temporarily return the monastery and its land on a lease plan.

“If there is such a plan, how can it be possible that the government is planning to lease our own property to us?” he asked.

In the last 10 years, about 60 Syriac families returned to live in Turkey, Çelik said, and he is among them.

“It was not easy for us to leave our established lives. We came back to our own country where we have many problems. We are not regretful at all. We knew that we would face some problems, but not this many,” he said, adding that there are approximately 300,000 Syriacs of Turkish origin currently living in Europe.

According to sociologist Ayhan Aktar, who specializes on minority issues, Turkish officials’ calls to return are “sympathetic but empty.”

“What needs to be done is to pass a law and grant Turkish citizenship to non-Muslim minorities who had to leave Turkey for any reason. They should be granted dual citizenship to start with. And economic incentives should follow. The government is preoccupied with the process of making peace with Kurds at the moment. Maybe the government will have time for this issue as well.”

April 5, 2013
Turkey brings a gentle version of the Ottoman empire back to the Balkans
Growing presence in Bosnia has given Turkey an expanding field of influence in Europe
- Michael Birnbaum for the Washington Post
- Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 2 April 2013 14.03 BST
Turkish students in Sarajevo, where two Turkish-run universities have opened. Photograph: Jasmin Brutus/Alamy

Turkey conquered the Balkans five centuries ago. Now Turkish power is making inroads through friendlier means. Two Turkish-run universities have opened in Bosnia’s Ottoman-influenced capital Sarajevo in recent years, bringing an influx of Turkish students and culture to a predominantly Muslim country still reeling from a brutal ethnic war almost two decades ago.

Turkish investment has expanded across the Balkans, even in Croatia and Serbia, where mostly Christian residents remember the sultans from Constantinople (now Istanbul) as occupiers, not liberators. Turkey has helped broker talks between formerly bitter enemies in the Balkans. And the growing presence has given Turkey an expanding field of influence inEurope at a time when the country’s prospects of joining the European Union appear dubious.

“Turkish leaders are working at a new Ottoman empire, a gentle one,” said Amir Zukic, the bureau chief of the Turkish Anadolu news agency’s Sarajevo office, which has expanded in recent months. “Turkey, a former regional power, is trying to come back in a big way.”

Turkey’s presence in Bosnia was largely dormant during the more than 40 years that the Balkan country was part of communist Yugoslavia, which was not receptive to Turkish religious and historical influences. But during the mid-1990s, as Yugoslavia fell apart, Turkish aid started flowing to the Muslims who comprise about half of Bosnia. Since then, Turkish funding has helped reconstruct Ottoman-era monuments that were targets of ethnically motivated destruction.

Now Turkey’s cultural influence is hard to miss. Turkish dignitaries are frequent visitors to Sarajevo. A grand new Turkish embassy is being built near “sniper alley”, a corridor where, during the three-year siege of the capital city in the war, Bosnian Muslims struggling to go about their daily business were frequently shot at by Serbian snipers stationed on nearby hills. Billboards advertise round-trip flights to Istanbul for the equivalent of $75. And this year, a baroque soap opera based on the life of Suleiman the Magnificent, a 16th‑century ruler of the Ottoman empire, has mesmerised couch potatoes in Bosnia’s dreary winter.

The biggest outposts in Bosnia have been the two Turkish-backed universities, which have mostly Turkish student bodies.

At the International University of Sarajevo, students who enter the main door of the building erected two years ago have to pass under the watchful eye of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman ruler who introduced Islam to Bosnia in 1463. The private university is backed by Turkish businessmen who are close to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political party. The university started in 2004 and has grown to 1,500 students. It is shooting for 5,000, the capacity of its new building.

Classes are held in English, and there is a western curriculum heavy on practical subjects such as business and engineering. But both Turkish and Bosnian students say that part of the attraction of the school is the cultural exchange that takes place among the groups. Each cohort has to learn the other’s language.

Administrators are transparent about the school’s ambitions. “The Turks are attracted to come here because they believe that Bosnia, for all its problems, will be in the EU before Turkey is. And they see this as a bridge between two countries,” said Muhamed Hadziabdic, the vice-rector of the school, who is a Bosnian Muslim. Turkish people “like Bosnia”, he said. “It’s European, but it still feels like home. The smell, the culture, it’s recognisably Turkish.”

Bosnian students eye Turkey’s growing economy with interest; their country’s official unemployment rate last year was 46%, far higher than in Turkey. Many of the Turkish students, who make up 65% of the school, say they are there for a taste of freedom away from the watchful eye of their families. Some say they plan to stay in the region and develop businesses.

“When I was little, I wanted to go to a foreign country. I wanted to learn a foreign language,” said Fatih Selcuk, 19, a first-year student from Izmir, Turkey. “Bosnia was in the Ottoman Empire, so it’s similar to Turkey. My father said you should go to Bosnia-Herzegovina, because it’s Slavic but it’s Muslim.”

The other Turkish school in Sarajevo, the International Burch University, opened in 2008 and has connections to Fethullah Gulen, an influential Muslim Turkish preacher who runs an international religious and educational movement from Pennsylvania.

Officials at Burch also speak of their desire to forge connections between Turkey and the Balkans. Students there tend to be more religiously conservative, but as with the International University of Sarajevo, the curriculum is secular.

The Turkish expansion into the region comes as Turkey’s long-held dream of joining the EU seems remote. Western European powers, especially Germany, have been concerned that Turkey’s 74 million residents could flood Europe in search of jobs. Some officials have questioned whether the Muslim-majority country is European at all.

But Bosnia is firmly within Europe – even though Sarajevo’s old city is a dense warren of shops and centuries-old storefronts that is reminiscent of Istanbul. Turkey’s expansion into European regions that once were part of its empire is one way of making up for being excluded from the EU, some analysts say.

Turkey’s growing presence has upset some Bosnian Serbs, who maintain a parallel government in Bosnia under the complicated system dictated by 1995 peace agreements. Officials from the parallel government have complained that the Bosnian Muslim part of the country is falling under the influence of a former imperial power.

“For Islamists, a return of Turkey back to the Balkans is a fulfilment of ambitions. But for many Serbs and also for many Croats, their national struggle in the 19th century is still in their minds,” said Esad Hecimovic, the editor of news programmes on OMT, the private television station that has been airing the soap opera about Suleiman the Magnificent.

Still, even Serbia and Croatia have welcomed Turkish investment. Turkey was the third-largest investor in Mediterranean Croatia in the first three-quarters of 2012, and Erdogan has pursued closer ties with Serbia, a long-time rival. Turkish diplomats also have worked to broker talks between the Serbian and Bosnian governments.

The efforts in the Balkans have given Turkey a new venue for economic growth as it has grappled with ethnic violence that has engulfed neighbouring Syria. There, a diverse nation that also was once part of the Ottoman Empire is threatening to tear itself apart – a development that has similarities to what happened in Yugoslavia.

Many in the Balkans think they are merely a waypoint on the route toward Turkey’s broader goals. “They are a big regional power,” said Hayruddin Somun, a former Bosnian ambassador to Turkey. “The Balkans was always their path to conquering Europe. They had to come through here.”

• This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post
April 3, 2013
Miniature Paintings of Istanbul

Miniature Paintings of Istanbul

Hasan Kale is known to utilize small objects as canvases for his paintings. The Turkish artist uses fruit seeds, wings of taxidermied insects as backgrounds for his town Istaanbul. He depicts famous places and great architecture of the city. Nothing is too small for him. He can transform every small fruit into a piece of art. He uses his fingers as mediums of his work. See the videos for more information.

Read more: http://creativegreed.com/miniature-paintings-of-istanbul.html#ixzz2PPSCrszP

April 3, 2013
Cinematic Head Start on Istanbul Art Biennial

A scene from “Ah, Güzel Istanbul” (“Oh, Beautiful Istanbul”).

ISTANBUL — The 13th Istanbul Biennial — whose title theme is ‘‘Mom, am I Barbarian?’’ — doesn’t officially open until Sept. 14. But you can get a leap on the curator Fulya Erdemci’s views on the public versus private spheres, civility versus violence, and utopian societies by going to the movies this week.

Ms. Erdemci and her crew building the citywide contemporary art event have carved out a niche within the 32nd Istanbul Film Festival. Their subset of 17 curated films will play from April 6-11 in a festival category called ‘‘Am I Not a Citizen? Barbarism, Civic Awakening, and the City.’’

What’s that mean on the screen?

Well, it’s a chance to see classics like Luis Buñuel’s ‘‘The Exterminating Angel,’’ his 1962 take on how people behave in microsocieties. Another nostalgic choice is ‘‘Oh, Beautiful Istanbul,’’ a 1966 film by Atif Yilmaz about an aspiring actress who sets out from her village to seek fame and fortune in the big (bad?) city.

But it’s also an opportunity to see how international directors are documenting urban transformations in cities like Barcelona (‘‘Work in Progress’’ by José Luis Guerín) and Tirana, Albania (‘‘Dammi i Colori’’ by Anri Sala.) America is not spared: The Dutch director Bregtje van der Haak takes a hard look at people hit by the U.S. economic crisis in ‘‘California Dreaming.’’

A discussion of urbanization and capitalism and their effect on daily lives is particularly apt these days in Istanbul, a city undergoing rapid and intense changes as high-rise offices and residential towers increasingly compete for space against with the city’s historic skyline. Here, shiny shopping malls are replacing lovely older structures and even classic movie theaters like the beloved Emek, which long hosted the film festival and where protesters gathered this week to oppose its planned demolition.

via Cinematic Head Start on Istanbul Art Biennial – NYTimes.com.

April 3, 2013
Gate to Hell in Turkey: ‘We could see the cave’s lethal properties’

The Gate to Hell in Turkey which was found by Italian archaeologists is also called Pluto’s Gate and “any animal that passes inside meets instant death.” After passing a fenced entrance and entering the one-person cave, a staircase led down a corridor into a space filled with toxic gases that meant instant death for man and animal. According to an April 1, 2013, KSL report, “Italian archaeologists have discovered what ancient Greeks and Romans believed to be a portal to the underworld, located in an ancient Phrygian city in modern-day Turkey.”

The crossing of the River Styx and the gate to hell. According to Greek and Roman mythology, the dead would be ferried over this river upon entering the underworld.

Credits:

Wikimedia Commons

The discovery of the Gate to Hell in Turkey by archaeologists led by Francesco D’Andria from the southern Italian University of Salento, was made public just recently at a conference in Istanbul. Archaeologists found the Gate to Hell while doing archeological work on ruins in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis.

According to Greek and Roman mythology and ancient writings, the Gate to Hell or Pluto’s Gate, was used to for ceremonial sacrifices, for experiments, to prove superior powers, and for entertainment such as sending animals to hell and back.

Ceremonial sacrifices included sending animals like bulls into the cave knowing that they would never be seen again and become a gift to Pluto, the god of the underworld. Experimental activities included throwing in birds which “immediately breathed their last and fell.”

Priest proved their superior powers by entering the Gate to Hell and returning unharmed. As with many “magic tricks,” knowledge of science is the key. Knowing that the toxic gas in the cave would not be evenly spread but settle in certain places (carbon dioxide is heavier than air), priests were able to enter the Gate to Hell, hold their breath, and find pockets of air that were safe to breath. Returning from the Gate to Hell unharmed was a sign of divine protection and gave the priests superior powers.

Just as it would be the case today, the Gate to Hell was also a place for quite an unusual entertainment.

In her article, Rossella Lorenzi describes the experimental, sacrificial, and entertaining aspects of the Gate to Hell or Pluto’s Gate.

“According to the archaeologist, there was a sort of touristic organization at the site. Small birds were given to pilgrims to test the deadly effects of the cave, while hallucinated priests sacrificed bulls to Pluto. The ceremony included leading the animals into the cave, and dragging them out dead.”

Since the Gate to Hell was used for several purposes according to the ancient writings, archeologists were also able to find a temple, pool, and steps that surrounded the Gate to Hell. As with any stage performance, visitors were allowed in certain areas while priests were in charge of the main stage or, in this case, the Gate to Hell.

Because the area was considered to be of pagan origin, archeologists assume that it was destroyed by either Christians or an earthquake making the Gate to Hell mainly an existence in historical writings; until now.

And does the Gate to Hell still work today?

According to Rossella Lorenzi’s article, lead archaeologist Francesco D’Andria said that, “We could see the cave’s lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes.”

via Gate to Hell in Turkey: ‘We could see the cave’s lethal properties’ – San Diego Top News | Examiner.com.

April 3, 2013
‘Gate to Hell’ discovered in Turkey

Kate Seamons, Newser 12:56p.m. EDT April 1, 2013

“Any animal that passes inside meets instant death.”

— Ancient Greek geographer Strabo

As far as archaeological discoveries go, it’s a darker one: Pluto’s Gate — aka, the fabled gate to the underworld — has reportedly been unearthed in Turkey.

The team behind the dig made the announcement last month, and ANSA and Discovery report on the finding and the Greco-Roman mythology behind the portal: Cicero and Greek geographer Strabo made reference to the entryway to Hell in their writings, and placed it in the ancient city of Hierapolis.

NEWSER: The world’s least visited country is …

As Strabo explained of the cave opening, which spewed noxious vapors, “Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.”

Italian archaeologist Francesco D’Andria has been examining Hierapolis for years (he formerly claimed he found one of the 12 apostles’ tombs there). This time around, he explains his team found the portal “by reconstructing the route of a thermal spring” to the cave; he was also able to identify the ruins of a temple, pool, and steps — from which pagan pilgrims would watch sacred rites performed at the portal’s opening — referenced in descriptions of the cave.

“We could see the cave’s lethal properties during the excavation,” he says. “Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes.”

via ‘Gate to Hell’ discovered in Turkey.

April 2, 2013