Category: Culture/Art

Dallas museum returns looted mosaic to Turkey

Posted at 6:48 pm in Similar cases

Yet again, Turkey is in the news with a resolved restitution case. This time, it involves the Dallas Museum of Art. Interestingly though, the museum was the one that contacted Turkey after discovery that the artefact might have been looted – although whether this was as a pre-emptive move, knowing that they would be contacted by Turkey about it is unclear.

From:
Culture Kiosque

DALLAS MUSEUM RETURNS LOOTED MOSAIC TO TURKEY
By Culturekiosque Staff

DALLAS, TEXAS, 3 DECEMBER 2012 — The Dallas Museum of Art today signed a memorandum of understanding with the Turkish Director General for Cultural Heritage and Museums O. Murat Süslü, marking the first initiative in the Dallas Museum of Art’s new DMX international exchange program. DMX (Dallas Museum Exchange) is designed to establish international collaborations for the loan of works of art and sharing of expertise in conservation, exhibitions, education, and new media.

The DMA contacted Turkish officials earlier this year when the Museum discovered evidence that a work in the collection — the Orpheus Mosaic — might have been stolen from an archaeological site in Turkey. With the Museum’s planning for the DMX program already underway, the DMA’s engagement with Turkey regarding the mosaic opened the lines of communication that led to Turkey becoming the Museum’s first partner in the DMX program. As part of today’s ceremony for the signing of the MOU, the DMA returned the Orpheus Mosaic to the Turkish officials. The Republic of Turkey considers the voluntary return of the mosaic a sign of good faith, and both parties will undertake to continue their collaboration with museological education, conservation, symposia, and important loan exhibitions.

Under the leadership of Maxwell L. Anderson, who joined the Dallas Museum of Art as The Eugene McDermott Director in January 2012, the DMA has launched a number of initiatives in addition to the DMX program: the new Friends & Partners membership program; a program in paintings conservation; a new staff appointment in the field of Islamic art; and a Laboratory for Museum Innovation with seed capital to develop collaborative pilot projects in the areas of collection access, visitor engagement, and digital publishing. The Museum is also at work to link the Dallas Arts District — the nation’s largest — with other cultural districts worldwide. The initiatives grow out of Anderson’s vision to deepen relationships with audiences at home and abroad, a belief in promoting cross-cultural exchange, and a commitment to developing new models for international collaboration that extends back to his first museum directorship in 1987, when he headed the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta.

“As arts organizations in the United States and around the world address questions regarding cultural heritage, I have long believed there is a crucial opportunity to shift the terms of these discussions from an adversarial to a collaborative approach,” said Anderson. “We initiated the conversation with Turkish officials in this spirit, and the agreement with Turkey to become the Museum’s first partner in the DMX program speaks to the possibilities inherent in this approach to international cultural exchange. We are honored and excited to enter into this agreement with our Turkish colleagues and look forward to our ongoing partnership.”

“We are proud to be the first partner in the Dallas Museum of Art’s new Dallas Museum Exchange program, and to share the rich cultural heritage and artistic achievements of the Turkish people with the people of Texas and the United States,” said O. Murat Süslü, Director General for Cultural Heritage and Museums. “We also want to express our appreciation to the Museum for its ethical perspective during negotiations regarding the Orpheus Mosaic. With actual photos of the looting in progress that we were able to present, it could not be clearer that this ancient work was stolen from its archaeological site. We are very pleased the mosaic will return to Turkey, and equally pleased to enter this ongoing relationship with the Dallas Museum of Art. ”

The Orpheus Mosaic originally decorated the floor of a Roman building near Edessa, in what is modern-day Turkey. The work dates from A.D. 194 and measures 64 3/4 inches by 60 inches. It depicts the mythic poet Orpheus playing his lyre as he sits on a rock surrounded by wild animals, which are tamed by the magic power of his music. According to myth, Orpheus used his lyre to gain entry to the underworld, where he went in search of his dead wife, Eurydice.

The mosaic was purchased by the DMA in 1999 at public auction. Funds for the purchase were the gift of David T. Owsley via the Alconda-Owsley Foundation, and two anonymous donors, in honor of Nancy B. Hamon.

This year the Museum uncovered information indicating that the work might have been stolen from its archaeological site. The DMA alerted Turkish officials that the work was in the Museum’s collection and requested information on whether the object had been illegally removed from that country. Additional conclusive photographic evidence provided by Turkey documented the looting of the mosaic, proving the work had been stolen, and the DMA offered to restitute the work. The work was returned at a ceremony marking the signing of an agreement between the DMA and Turkey for ongoing collaboration as the first partnership in the Museum’s new DMX program.

In October the DMA announced the appointment of Sabiha Al Khemir as the Museum’s first Senior Advisor of Islamic Art. Dr. Al Khemir, the founding director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, will support Anderson and senior staff in building the Museum’s DMX partnerships. Dr. Al Khemir will also travel worldwide to further the Museum’s connections with the great collections of Islamic art across the world. The arts of Indonesia and the Philippines will be a particular focus, to complement and enhance the DMA’s collection strength in this area.

March 7, 2013
In Istanbul: The Rise & Fall of Society

By Chris Mayer | 03/04/13

It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, as the song goes. In this history is an omen for any powerful state (read: the U.S.). A somewhat obscure essayist knew all about it back in 1959. His little book deserves wider circulation. Below, we’ll take a look.

Constantinople was once the seat of a vast, rich empire. The successor to Rome, it ruled over a land that stretched from the Caucasus to the Adriatic, from the Danube to the Sahara. The Dark Ages were dark only if you ignore the flourishing civilization on the Bosporus.

Historian Merle Severy writes: “Medieval visitors from the rural West, where Rome had shrunk to a cow town, were struck dumb by this resplendent metropolis.” There were half a million people here. Its harbors full of ships, “its markets filled with silks, spices, furs, precious stones, perfumed woods, carved ivory, gold and silver and enameled jewelry.”

This civilization lasted for a thousand years.

Actually, it lasted for 1,123 years and 18 days after Constantine the Great made the city his new Christian Rome. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks.

The Hagia Sophia — once a cathedral, then a mosque, now a museum — the bones of a dead civilization.

Renamed Istanbul, the city would serve as the seat of yet another great empire, the Ottoman. And this one would last nearly five centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was perhaps the most powerful state on Earth. It was on one heck of a roll. After Constantinople, the Ottomans took Athens in 1458. Then it was on to Tabriz (1514), Damascus (1516), Cairo (1517), Belgrade (1521), Rhodes (1522), Baghdad (1534), Buda (1541), Tripoli (1551) and Cyprus (1571).

They almost took Vienna. The powers of Western Europe drew the line in the sand there. Interesting to think what would’ve happened if the Turks took Vienna. All of Western Europe would be at their feet. If they had succeeded, perhaps the majority of Europeans would be answering the call to prayer, echoing from the minarets of cathedrals-turned-mosques…

Your editor inside the courtyard of the famed Blue Mosque…

Yet the Ottoman Empire, too, would crumble. It was constantly at war. By one historian’s reckoning, the longest period of peace was just 24 years in nearly six centuries of reign.

In 1923, with the founding of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara became the seat of government. As historian John Freely notes: “For the first time in 16 centuries, the ancient city on the Golden Horn was no longer reigning over a world empire with only the presence of the monuments to remind one of its imperial past.”

It is not hard to think of the U.S. in the context of these great powers.

*** Enter Chodorov

One of the books I had tucked in my bag that I read while in Turkey was Frank Chodorov’s The Rise & Fall of Society. This is a slender 168-page book by a great, if somewhat forgotten, essayist and editor. It gives a tightly reasoned answer to the question “Why do societies rise and fall?”

Chodorov’s thesis is that “every collapse of which we have sufficient evidence was preceded by the same course of events.”

The course of events goes like this: “The State, in its insatiable lust for power, increasingly intensified its encroachments on the economy of the nation…” and finally gets to the point where the economy can no longer support the state at the level it is accustomed to. Society can’t meet the strain, so “society collapsed and drew the State down with it.”

The pattern is always the same, regardless of size or ideology. The state can grow only by taking. “Since the State thrives on what it expropriates,” Chodorov writes, “the general decline in production which it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom.”

Chodorov bases much of his thesis on what he calls “the law of parsimony.” In essence, it is simply that people try to get the most satisfaction with the least amount of effort. It is a natural law of human behavior.

The law does not say they always achieve this goal, of course. It simply says it is what people try to do. Cooperation with others enhances the ability to satisfy. “Sociability thrives on the mutual profits of cooperation,” Chodorov writes, “and when we observe how an acquaintance ripens into friendship as the mutually created wage level rises, it is hard to tell which is cause and which is effect.” The marketplace is the binding of society and coexistent with it. No marketplace, no society. No society, no marketplace.

Now enter the state (whose origins Chodorov covers, but I will pass over here). The state is also made up of men. They, too, are subject to the law of parsimony. So they will make efforts to enlarge and better their position, which they can only do by confiscation (taxes, fines, etc.).

“Rome had its make-work programs, its gratuities to the unemployed and its subsidies to industry,” Chodorov writes. “These things are necessary to make confiscation palatable and possible.”

Another tourist hot spot, the Topkapi Palace, where the sultans lived decadently… at the expense of the taxpayers, of course.

How, by various ways of obscurantism and promises, the state is able to grow ever larger and more powerful is the main narrative of the book. Chodorov’s writing is honey smooth and his ideas reflect the learning and thought of a lifetime pondering such questions. (He was 72 at the time of publication.)

Though the book is a slender, easy read, it is packed with ideas. Chodorov, long known as a great teacher, has a gift for stating ideas simply in well-turned phrases. (My copy has plenty of highlighted passages.) And his defense of the network of voluntary exchange that we call a marketplace is downright eloquent.

One of my favorite chapters is “The Humanity of Trade.” There he writes about how the markets make it possible that the fish of the sea reach the miner’s table. Northerners enjoy tropical fruits because they can trade for them with goods and services that make life in the tropics easier.

“It is by trade that the far-flung warehouses of nature are made accessible to all the peoples of the world,” Chodorov writes, “and life on this planet becomes that much more enjoyable.” Trade not only improves our material wealth. Trade brings an influx of ideas, stories of interesting people and other cultures that in turn enrich our own literature, arts and ‘operatic repertoire.’”

Reading Chodorov, one can’t help but marvel at the powers of voluntary social cooperation and exchange. Yet there is this never-ending cycle of the rise and collapse of societies. Can we break this depressing cycle?

Chodorov gives an answer in the last chapter, titled “One Can Always Hope.” He writes: “None has as yet been discovered. Nevertheless, the search for a formula for the ‘good society’ has never been abandoned, hope being what it is, and out of the laboratory of the human mind has come congeries of utopias.”

A bleak ending, perhaps. But Chodorov leaves out the possibility that in the U.S., at least, it may be possible to impede the state. Americans still have “a folklore of freedom.” This libertarian tradition may yet be revived. “It is worth a try,” Chodorov writes. He ends his book with a sentence that captures the most critical idea of all: “The will for freedom comes before freedom.”

The Rise & Fall of Society is a little treasure of a book. Laissez Faire Club (of which I am a member) made it a selection of the month recently and prompted me to pick up a copy. I have all of Chodorov’s books — The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, One Is a Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist, Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist and the posthumous collection, Fugitive Essays. Chodorov is among my favorite libertarian writers, a list that includes Murray Rothbard, H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock and Lysander Spooner. For whatever reason, I had never read The Rise & Fall, but it is classic Chodorov and worth a read.

You can pick up a copy here. (http://lfb.org/shop/economic-systems/the-rise-and-fall-of-society/)

Istiklal Caddesi on a Tuesday afternoon, a bustling street of shops, restaurants and plenty of people.

As I walked around Istanbul, admiring the architecture — the bones of a lost civilization — I still managed to feel optimistic. Life in Istanbul is, in fact, far better for the typical person than it was at the height of any of the dead empires. In material wealth, people live longer and far healthier lives today. They are literate and technologically more advanced. They have greater leisure and access to a wealth of ideas unimaginable in the old days.

This is despite the ugliness of states. And that, after all, is some consolation for the ideas of human progress and liberty.

Sincerely,

Chris Mayer

Original article posted on Laissez-Faire Today

Chris Mayer

Chris Mayer is managing editor of the Capital and Crisis and Mayer’s Special Situations newsletters. Graduating magna cum laude with a degree in finance and an MBA from the University of Maryland, he began his business career as a corporate banker. Mayer left the banking industry after ten years and signed on with Agora Financial. His book, Invest Like a Dealmaker, Secrets of a Former Banking Insider, documents his ability to analyze macro issues and micro investment opportunities to produce an exceptional long-term track record of winning ideas. In April 2012 Chris will release his newest book World Right Side Up: Investing Across Six Continents.

Read more: In Istanbul:The Rise & Fall of Society http://dailyreckoning.com/in-istanbul-the-rise-fall-of-society/#ixzz2MeAwNwey

March 5, 2013
Plans for giant mosque overlooking Istanbul stoke secularists’ fears

Thomas Seibert

ISTANBUL // A government plan to build a giant mosque on an Istanbul hill overlooking the Bosphorus has fanned concerns among secularist Turks that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party is steering the secular republic towards an Islamist system.

Work on the new mosque, which is to have six minarets and occupy an area of 15,000 square meters on Camlica, a hill on the Asian side of the Turkish metropolis, is expected to begin this month. Mr Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has said that the aim was to finish the project within two and a half years.

That announcement has secular critics of the Erdogan government worried.

“There are many places to build a mosque in Istanbul, but they want to send a message,” Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a legislator of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s biggest opposition group, said by telephone yesterday.

“That message is that they want to erect an Islamic republic in place of the secular system. They do that step by step.”

Erdogan Bayraktar, the minister for construction in Mr Erdogan’s cabinet and a member of the AKP, told the Hurriyet newspaper last month that the project had political significance.

“The aim of building the Camlica mosque is to create a work symbolising the era of AKP rule,” Mr Bayraktar said.

Since coming to power more than ten years ago, the AKP, an offshoot of a banned Islamist party, has been accused by secular groups of following a hidden agenda with the aim of turning Turkey into an Islamist state, a charge the party denies.

The AKP says that it has repeatedly won solid parliamentary majorities for its policies and that it has boosted basic rights of citizens in the last ten years, not limited them.

Although Mr Erdogan’s party has won three consecutive parliamentary elections since 2002 with a steadily rising share of votes that reached almost 50 per cent at the poll two years ago, plans for the Camlica mosque have rekindled the debate about where he wants to take Turkey.

Mr Ediboglu said the government was trying to win local, parliamentary and presidential elections in 2014 and 2015 by exploiting the religious feelings of voters.

“This is not piety, this is doing politics with religion,” he said. Mr Ediboglu said the AKP’s decision to end the ban of the headscarf for female students at Turkey’s universities a few years ago had served the same aim.

Istanbul has a rich heritage of Muslim, Christian and Jewish history and is home to two of the most famous Ottoman mosques in the world, the Blue Mosque and the Suleymaniye Mosque. The Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine church built 1,500 years ago, served as the principal Ottoman mosque for centuries, but was turned into a museum after the founding of the republic in 1923.

The new mosque will overshadow some of Istanbul’s famous houses of worship by its sheer size, critics say. The Blue Mosque is the only mosque with six minarets in Istanbul’s central area so far. A newly-built mosque in the outlying disctrict of Arnavutkoy has six minarets as well, but is far from the inner city.

On Camlica, the area surrounding the mosque will cover a total of 250,000 square meters and feature a museum, a cafe, children’s playgrounds, a platform offering a view of Istanbul and a park, Mustafa Kara, the mayor of Uskudar, the Istanbul district that includes Camlica, told a television interviewer last month.

“It is a big project,” he said, adding that the order to build the mosque had come from the ministry for construction in Ankara. “When we received the plans, we were very excited,” Mr Kara, who is a member of the AKP, said in the interview.

Page 2 of 2

According to news reports, Mr Erdogan personally ordered some changes to the design of the mosque. The reports put the cost of the project at 100m Lira (Dh204m). There has been no official statement about the cost.

The prime minister announced the Camlica mosque project last year and immediately angered critics by declaring his government was building a mosque “that can be seen from everywhere in Istanbul”.

The CHP in Uskudar and Turkey’s Chamber of Architects have turned to the courts to stop the project. “The plan will bring with it a destruction of the Istanbul and the Bosphorus silhouette,” the chamber said in a statement.

Other critics point out that no one in Uskudar had asked for a mosque to be built on the hill in the first place.

Canan Gullu, president of the Federation of Turkish Women’s Associations and an outspoken critic of the Erdogan government, said there was “no shortage of mosques” in the country.

“Our prime minister wants to erect a monument to himself and the AKP,” Ms Gullu said by telephone yesterday. She added that the project was also a sign that under Mr Erdogan, Turkey was turning more and more towards the Muslim world.

“A mosque that can be seen from every point in Istanbul will be a clear message to the Middle East,” she said. “The AKP has stressed the fact that Turkey is a Muslim country in certain areas ever since 2002. If that is modernity, I don’t want to see it.”

But it remains unclear whether the worries about the Camlica mosque would have any effect on the project itself.

Mr Ediboglu, the CHP politician, said the AKP was looking only at its own grass roots and was not interested in what other parts of society felt.

“Concern about the AKP is growing” in Turkish society as a whole, he said. “But they want votes, they want to stay in power. They are only watching their own followers.”

tseibert@thenational.ae

One-page article

ISTANBUL // A government plan to build a giant mosque on an Istanbul hill overlooking the Bosphorus has fanned concerns among secularist Turks that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party is steering the secular republic towards an Islamist system.

Work on the new mosque, which is to have six minarets and occupy an area of 15,000 square meters on Camlica, a hill on the Asian side of the Turkish metropolis, is expected to begin this month. Mr Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has said that the aim was to finish the project within two and a half years.

That announcement has secular critics of the Erdogan government worried.

“There are many places to build a mosque in Istanbul, but they want to send a message,” Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a legislator of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s biggest opposition group, said by telephone yesterday.

“That message is that they want to erect an Islamic republic in place of the secular system. They do that step by step.”

Erdogan Bayraktar, the minister for construction in Mr Erdogan’s cabinet and a member of the AKP, told the Hurriyet newspaper last month that the project had political significance.

“The aim of building the Camlica mosque is to create a work symbolising the era of AKP rule,” Mr Bayraktar said.

Since coming to power more than ten years ago, the AKP, an offshoot of a banned Islamist party, has been accused by secular groups of following a hidden agenda with the aim of turning Turkey into an Islamist state, a charge the party denies.

The AKP says that it has repeatedly won solid parliamentary majorities for its policies and that it has boosted basic rights of citizens in the last ten years, not limited them.

Although Mr Erdogan’s party has won three consecutive parliamentary elections since 2002 with a steadily rising share of votes that reached almost 50 per cent at the poll two years ago, plans for the Camlica mosque have rekindled the debate about where he wants to take Turkey.

Mr Ediboglu said the government was trying to win local, parliamentary and presidential elections in 2014 and 2015 by exploiting the religious feelings of voters.

“This is not piety, this is doing politics with religion,” he said. Mr Ediboglu said the AKP’s decision to end the ban of the headscarf for female students at Turkey’s universities a few years ago had served the same aim.

Istanbul has a rich heritage of Muslim, Christian and Jewish history and is home to two of the most famous Ottoman mosques in the world, the Blue Mosque and the Suleymaniye Mosque. The Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine church built 1,500 years ago, served as the principal Ottoman mosque for centuries, but was turned into a museum after the founding of the republic in 1923.

The new mosque will overshadow some of Istanbul’s famous houses of worship by its sheer size, critics say. The Blue Mosque is the only mosque with six minarets in Istanbul’s central area so far. A newly-built mosque in the outlying disctrict of Arnavutkoy has six minarets as well, but is far from the inner city.

On Camlica, the area surrounding the mosque will cover a total of 250,000 square meters and feature a museum, a cafe, children’s playgrounds, a platform offering a view of Istanbul and a park, Mustafa Kara, the mayor of Uskudar, the Istanbul district that includes Camlica, told a television interviewer last month.

“It is a big project,” he said, adding that the order to build the mosque had come from the ministry for construction in Ankara. “When we received the plans, we were very excited,” Mr Kara, who is a member of the AKP, said in the interview.

According to news reports, Mr Erdogan personally ordered some changes to the design of the mosque. The reports put the cost of the project at 100m Lira (Dh204m). There has been no official statement about the cost.

The prime minister announced the Camlica mosque project last year and immediately angered critics by declaring his government was building a mosque “that can be seen from everywhere in Istanbul”.

The CHP in Uskudar and Turkey’s Chamber of Architects have turned to the courts to stop the project. “The plan will bring with it a destruction of the Istanbul and the Bosphorus silhouette,” the chamber said in a statement.

Other critics point out that no one in Uskudar had asked for a mosque to be built on the hill in the first place.

Canan Gullu, president of the Federation of Turkish Women’s Associations and an outspoken critic of the Erdogan government, said there was “no shortage of mosques” in the country.

“Our prime minister wants to erect a monument to himself and the AKP,” Ms Gullu said by telephone yesterday. She added that the project was also a sign that under Mr Erdogan, Turkey was turning more and more towards the Muslim world.

“A mosque that can be seen from every point in Istanbul will be a clear message to the Middle East,” she said. “The AKP has stressed the fact that Turkey is a Muslim country in certain areas ever since 2002. If that is modernity, I don’t want to see it.”

But it remains unclear whether the worries about the Camlica mosque would have any effect on the project itself.

Mr Ediboglu, the CHP politician, said the AKP was looking only at its own grass roots and was not interested in what other parts of society felt.

“Concern about the AKP is growing” in Turkish society as a whole, he said. “But they want votes, they want to stay in power. They are only watching their own followers.”

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/plans-for-giant-mosque-overlooking-istanbul-stoke-secularists-fears#ixzz2MeA2bcXe
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March 5, 2013
Turkey: Short lived freedom for three books, poem censored

“Despite the ban on book lifted under Judicial Pack 3, nine days after the legal statutory period, three books by Umut Publishing were decided to be confiscated,” wrote Antenna TR in the Freedom of Expression Weekly Bulletin on 1 March 2013.

İstanbul 3rd Magistrate assigned to Anti-terrorism Law (TMK) Article 10 has decided to confiscate the book titles ‘Umut 30 Yaşında, Parti ve Devrim Şehitleri Albümü’, ‘Belgelerle TKP/ML-2, Fırtınalar İçinde Bıçak Sırtında’ and ‘İşkencehanelerde Kızıl Devrim Ruhunu Yaşatmaya Hazırlıklı Ol’, with regard to Chief Public Prosecutor’s requests of 2, 3, and 4 January 2013, on the grounds that the three books were found to contain terrorist organisational propaganda, and thus offending §5187 Press Law article 25/2.

The bans on these books had been lifted by the Judicial Pack 3 under the transitory amendment to the same law.

Another poem censured

According to the website bilgicagı.com by Onur Caymaz, now it is poet Cahit Külebi’s turn to be censored in a 9th grade course book.

The Turkish Education Ministry’s 9th grade ‘Literature book’ contains a well-known poem, ‘Hikaye’, by Cahit Külebi. The poem goes somewhat like this in (what Antenna TR describes as “a meek translation attempt”):

“At villages I was born / north winds prevailed / therefore my lips are parches / kiss me some!”

– where the last line now have been replaced with three dots:

“At villages I was born / north winds prevailed / therefore my lips are parches / …”

The book was edited by Dr. Sakin Öner.

Lately ‘Of Mice and Men’, and ‘My Sweet Orange Tree’ were found unfavorable as well, and poems by famous Turkish poets like Yunus Emre, Kaygusuz Abdal, Edip Cansever have also been removed by the censors, reported The Freedom of Expression Weekly Bulletin on 1 March 2013.

via Turkey: Short lived freedom for three books, poem censored « Knowledge and news about Artistic Freedom of Expression.

March 5, 2013
Jews are Number One Target of Hate Speech in Turkey

A Turkish foundation created in memory of a slain Armenian and human rights activist and journalist, Hrant Dink, revealed in its bi-annual report on discrimination in Turkish publications, that Jews and Armenians are the top targets of hate speech in Turkey, with Jews edging out the Armenians as the number one target of hate.

Hrant Dink, an Armenian who sought to promote Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and who fought against many kinds of discrimination in his native Turkey, was murdered by three gun shots to the back of the head on January 19, 2007. Dink had been charged several times by the Turkish government with violating Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code which makes it a crime to “denigrate Turkishness.” One of the primary targets of this criminal law is the public mention or promotion of the Turkish massacres of Armenians or Kurds as historical facts.

In Dink’s memory, the International Hrant Dink Foundation was created to promote equal opportunities and encourage cultural diversity and cultural relations among all the peoples of Turkey, Armenia and Europe, to support the democratization of Turkey and to allow the recognition of past nationalism and racism that has afflicted Turkey, and work to improve the present so that the past is not repeated.

One of the projects of the Dink Foundation is a Media and Hate Speech Watch, in which periodic reviews are made of all the nationwide news publications in Turkey, in order to determine whether and if so which groups are the targets of hate speech.

In the period between September and December, 2012, Jews were the most frequent targets of hate speech in Turkey, followed closely by Armenians, after that Christians were targeted and then there was a big drop-off to the fourth place Greeks living in Turkey. Westerners in general and then Greeks make up the bulk of the remaining victims of Turkish hate speech, according to the Dink Foundation report.

via Jews are Number One Target of Hate Speech in Turkey | The Jewish Press.

March 5, 2013
Phaleron: Athens’ Culinary Museum of Innocence

March 1, 2013, by Nicolas Nicolaides,

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Nicolas Nicolaides, an Istanbul-born Greek who moved to Athens in 1988. Nicolaides is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Athens whose research focuses on the Karamanlılar (Greeks from Anatolia).

Once a resort town on the outskirts of the Greek capital, Phaleron – only a few miles from downtown Athens – is now well incorporated into the city’s urban fabric. The area has remained an upscale neighborhood, but, sadly, it has lost its distinctive character: the sea is now polluted, the open-air cinemas have been turned into parking lots, and many of the stately mansions were demolished to make way for apartment blocks during the construction boom of the 1960s.

One thing does remain unique about the neighborhood: it is home to Athens’ largest concentration of Constantinopolitans, or Greeks of Istanbul, known as İstanbul Rumları in Turkish. Despite living for centuries under Ottoman and then for several decades under Turkish rule, the Greek community had long insisted on staying in their beloved city. Nevertheless, in 1964, amidst the Cyprus dispute, Turkey began deporting Greek nationals residing in Istanbul; soon, those holding Turkish passports also began to leave, following their relatives. In the years to come, the community was to shrink to no more than 5,000 people in a city of almost 13 million. Searching for a place in Athens that would remind them of the city they left behind, the migrants settled in Phaleron; the seafront there was the ideal backdrop for the nostalgic expats to relive long walks along the shores of the Bosphorus.

Without a doubt, what the newcomers missed most was the food. Over the centuries, Constantinopolitan women had developed a highly exquisite cuisine reflecting the city’s cosmopolitan heritage. East and West mingled in their kitchens, where French techniques were used to master traditional Ottoman dishes. The Constantinopolitans found the Athenian culinary scene rather bland; in their nostalgia, everything in Istanbul had simply tasted better, while the Greek equivalents were of disappointingly poor quality.

An accidental system developed; if someone was going back to Istanbul, the news would travel fast and people would call and ask the traveler to pick up their pension money and bring them limon kolonyası (lemon cologne) to rub their backs, holy water from the Church of Our Lady of the Spring (Balıklı Kilise) to heal their illnesses and save their souls and, of course, lots of glorious food and ingredients! Luggage was stuffed with yufka (paper-thin sheets of unleavened dough, similar to Greek phyllo), Turkish delight, baklava, wheat kernels and roses. Wheat is the main ingredient in kollyva, a dessert served in church after the memorial service for the departed; of course, wheat could be found in Greece, but the Constantinopolitans didn’t like it. Meanwhile, roses from Istanbul are edible and were used to make a superbly aromatic gül reçeli(rose jam).

The shop owners of Phaleron soon found themselves having to fulfill the demands of their new clientele. The owner of a butcher’s shop in the neighborhood even had to go to Istanbul to be trained in how to finely slice meat, as he could not stand the Constantinopolitans’ constant complaints that he was chopping meat too coarsely. Over the years, many Constantinopolitans opened businesses of their own, and Phaleron became known for its elegant patisseries.

Among these patisseries is Riviera, owned by Stelios Karapiperis, who was born in Istanbul in 1948 and has been in the pastry business since he was 13. Before being deported to Greece, he had a successful career as a pastry chef working for three prestigious Istanbul pastry shops: Baylan, Tilla and Tatlıcılar. “I was trained as a pastry chef during the golden age of the Istanbulite patisseries; in those days, renowned Swiss pastry chefs used to come to Istanbul to give seminars to the trainees,” Karapiperis recalls. He opened his own pastry shop in Phaleron in 1978 and his son, Yannis, has followed him into the business. When Paskalya çöreği (Easter brioche) is being baked in Riviera’s ovens, the scent of mahlep (an aromatic spice made from cherry seeds) and mastic (an aromatic resin) wafts over the entire block. Riviera also makes very good ekmek tatlısı (a syrupy toasted bread dessert) and excellent profiterole, a dessert that has a tradition of its own in Istanbul.

Kostas and Christos Lemoncoğlu, the owners of Divan Patisserie, have succeeded where others failed, by creating kaymak, a special type of clotted cream, in Greece. Producing kaymak is a risky business, as the recipe calls for water buffalo milk, which is extremely scarce in Greece. They nevertheless found a way to make kaymak using sheep’s milk, with a taste very close to the original. Besides its kaymak, Divan is also known for its excellenttavuk göğsü (milk pudding made with chicken breast), kazandibi (tavuk göğsü with a thin, caramelized crust) and crispy, syrupy baklava. “A business can be called ‘Constantinopolitan’ only if its owners were born and raised in Istanbul. My pastry shop will stop being Constantinopolitan when I retire and my daughters take over. They were born and raised in Greece; they go to Istanbul only as tourists, carrying the memories of their parents and grandparents of an era that has been irreversibly lost,” Kostas Lemoncoğlu says.

The Lemoncoğlu brothers can be proud of their kaymak success, as there have been many other attempts to produce Turkish specialties in Greece and they have all failed. It was determined to be impossible to achieve the creamy, gluey texture of an authentic Turkish delight or to make yufka so thin as to be transparent; the Constantinopolitans blamed the Athenian water for the mediocre results and decided that it was better to import these items. The demand for Turkish yufka in Phaleron is so high that a guy even began smuggling yufka into Greece using his own network in Turkey; Constantinopolitan ladies would place orders with him and he would wait for them at a certain streetlight to provide them with their precious sheets of yufka dough.

Benito’s Delicatessen also caters to Phaleron’s demanding clientele. Benito Sangioni’s Italian father settled in the western Turkish city of Edirne before World War I to work for the Ottoman railways, and stayed in Turkey after falling in love with a local Greek girl. When the family moved to Istanbul, Benito started working in a delicatessen, where he met his future wife, Eudocia. They moved to Athens in 1979 and now run a delicatessen of their own, along with their grown sons Liborio and Apostolo. Turkish delight, dil peyniri (string cheese), yufka, Turkish black tea, Efes Pilsen beer and spicy pickles are all imported from Turkey. Their sucuk (spicy sausage) and pastırma (spiced dried, aged beef) are in fact sourced from within Greece, as local charcuteries run by Armenians – themselves Ottoman-era refugees from what is now Turkey – make sucuk and pastırma of exceptional quality. Eudocia has also introduced her own line of products, including taramasalata (fish roe dip), savory pie made with pastırma, and yalancı dolma (rice-stuffed grape leaves); her silky baba ghanoush (eggplant dip), with its distinctive charred flavor, is renowned.

These days, Phaleron even has a new Turkish restaurant, Aialis, a little taverna opened about four years ago by Angelica Vingas, who emigrated from Istanbul in the early 1980s. To keep things authentic, she imports lakerda (pickled raw fish), yufka, red pepper paste and pickles from Turkey. Some of the traditional delicacies on Angelica’s menu are piyaz fasulye (bean salad), mantı(meat dumplings) and hünkar beğendi (“sultan’s delight”), an eggplant purée.

I was born in Istanbul and grew up in Phaleron myself; even though I moved out of the area a long time ago, each visit back to the neighborhood is an edible walk down memory lane for me. For us transplanted Istanbulites, memory goes hand in hand with food, as cuisine is so much a part of our identity. Every time we visit one of these shops in Phaleron, all these familiar foods are suddenly transformed into exhibits in our very own Museum of Innocence.

Riviera Patisserie

Address: Tritonos 119, Palaio Faliro

Telephone: +30 210 982 6670

Web: http://www.riviera.gr

Divan Patisserie

Address: Naïadon 51-53, Palaio Faliro

Telephone: +30 210 982 1927

Benito Delicatessen

Address: Thetis 22, Palaio Faliro

Telephone: +30 210 983 7677

Aialis Café & Meze

Address: Alkionis 24, Palaio Faliro

Telephone: +30 212 100 3311

(photos by Manteau Stam)

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March 2, 2013