Tag: Gunay

  • Turkey arts under pressure from conservative gov’t

    Turkey arts under pressure from conservative gov’t

    Turkey arts under pressure from conservative gov’t

    By SELCAN HACAOGLU Associated Press

    Artists carry a banner that reads " don't touch my theaters!" during a May Day rally... ((AP Photo))
    Artists carry a banner that reads " don't touch my theaters!" during a May Day rally… ((AP Photo))

    ANKARA, Turkey—In a recent play in Turkey, two actors wore trench coats in their role as assassins posing as perverts planning to flash girls near a school.

    The scene and its themes of nudity and sexual depravity are at the center of a debate over freedom of expression in Turkish arts, where the Islamic-rooted ruling party has become increasingly critical of plays and television shows deemed to violate moral or religious values.

    Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is less strict than many other nations in the Muslim world. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday backed a move by Istanbul’s Islamist mayor to take over decision-making at Istanbul City Theaters, a theater troupe which is funded by the city and staged the play that outraged conservative critics.

    Erdogan also threatened to privatize state-run theaters—essentially cutting their funding—in response to resignations and protests by secular-minded artists against alleged political interference.

    That stoked fears that the government, which has a strong electoral mandate, might be seeking to put an Islamic stamp on daily life in this predominantly Muslim country that has long been proud of its secular political system.

    Erdogan for his part accuses artists of arrogance.

    “They have started to humiliate and look down on us and all conservatives,” Erdogan said.

    The prime minister’s remarks triggered an overnight sit-in by hundreds of artists outside an Istanbul theater. The protest came days after hundreds of artists, beating drums, marched through a main city street.

    Artists marched again on May Day with banners that read: “Oh Sultan! Take your hands off theaters.”

    “This is political interference on freedom of art,” said Nazif Uslu, an actor and official from the Theater Actors’ Association of Turkey.

    The scene with the flashers comes in the political comedy “Secret Obscenities” by Chilean playwright Marco Antonio de la Parra. It criticizes human rights abuses in Chile during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

    Yildirim Fikret Urag, the Turkish director of “Secret Obscenities,” said the play will likely be removed from the repertoire of Istanbul City Theaters due to pressure from the board of the pro-Islamic municipality.

    The play, which was restricted to audiences above the age of 16, was described as “vulgarity at the hands of the state” by Iskender Pala, a conservative columnist for daily Zaman newspaper. Pala, however, admitted he did not watch the play but only read its script.

    “The play has nothing to do with obscenity, it is pure black humor,” Urag said. The play was staged more than 70 times between February and mid-April as originally scheduled. “I think, the word ‘obscenities’ in its name and the tag of plus 16 are used as excuses to seize control of theaters.”

    Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay sought to reassure the public.

    “I wish for everybody to get rid of this worry. The artistic and cultural life in Turkey will in no way go backward,” Gunay said.

    But Erdogan suggested that state support for theater should be contingent on stagings that meet state approval. “If support is needed, then as the government we provide sponsorship to plays we want,” he said.

    Erdogan’s proposal came after Mustafa Isen, secretary general of the presidential palace, proposed establishing conservative artistic norms. Critics have alleged that the government wants more plays by Islamist playwrights.

    The government is currently scrutinizing a weekly TV police show, Behzat C, in which the lead character, a homicide detective, drinks alcohol, curses, beats suspects and had an out-of-wedlock affair.

    “The channel that broadcasts Behzat C has been twice punished for airing programs promoting alcohol and cigarettes and which could do possible harm to moral development at an hour when young people can watch it,” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said. “We’re monitoring the broadcasts closely.”

    The broadcaster, Star TV, said it has no plans to remove the show. But Muzaffer Balci, the president of the country’s Green Crescent Society, which fights alcohol and tobacco consumption, has predicted it will not last.

    “A policeman who is always holding a bottle of alcohol in his hand cannot be promoted as a hero,” he said on his organization’s website.

    via Turkey arts under pressure from conservative gov’t – San Jose Mercury News.

  • Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities

    Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities

    By SUSANNE GÜSTEN

    banner tarihimizISTANBUL — After years of pleading in vain for the return of Anatolia’s cultural treasures from Western museums, Turkey has started playing hardball. And it is starting to see some results.

    This month, Germany reluctantly agreed to return a Hittite statue taken to Berlin by German archaeologists a century ago. “It was agreed that the statue will be handed over to Turkey as a voluntary gesture of friendship,” the German government said after weeks of negotiations between the countries’ foreign ministries.

    Days later, Ankara announced it was stepping up a campaign to obtain a breakthrough in a similarly longstanding dispute with the Louvre in Paris over an Ottoman tile panel that went to France in 1895.

    The 16th-century ceramic, one of the finest surviving examples of Iznik ceramic art, once decorated the tomb of the Ottoman Sultan Selim II on the grounds of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. While the Louvre continues to maintain that the panel was acquired legally and is not eligible for restitution, Turkey says it was removed from the tomb by a French collector who replaced it with a fake and sold the original to the Louvre.

    The statue being surrendered by Germany is a stone sphinx that guarded a gate in the Hittite capital of Hattusa in central Anatolia between 1600 B.C. and 1200 B.C. Taken to Berlin for restoration in 1917 by German archaeologists excavating the site, it was not returned to Turkey, but incorporated into the collection of the Pergamon Museum, where it remains on display.

    The two artifacts head a list of cultural treasures from Asia Minor spanning several millennia that Turkey wants returned from the museums of half a dozen Western countries, including the United States and Britain.

    The list ranges from a small stele in the British Museum in London to the great Pergamon Altar, centerpiece of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and includes such items as the top half of a Roman statue in possession of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the bottom half of which is on display at Antalya Museum in Turkey.

    Although the Turkish cases for restitution of the sphinx and the tiles have always been more compelling than those for other treasures, like the Pergamon Altar, that were exported with permission of the Ottoman authorities, Ankara’s requests for their restitution went unanswered for years.

    via Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities – NYTimes.com.

  • Istanbul Hotel Opens at Site of Al Qaeda Attack

    Istanbul Hotel Opens at Site of Al Qaeda Attack

    By Ayla Albayrak

        Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images     The HSBC building in Istanbul after a terrorist attack in November 2003.
    Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images The HSBC building in Istanbul after a terrorist attack in November 2003.

    As the world was digesting news of Osama bin Laden’s death, Istanbul celebrated a symbolic victory over his terrorist network — a building al Qaeda bombed more than seven years ago reopened Monday as an upscale hotel.

     

    In November 2003, an al Qaeda suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives in front of the building — then HSBC’s headquarters in Turkey — and detonated it, killing three HSBC employees and wounding scores of others. The blast was part of coordinated week-long attacks that also targeted Istanbul’s Jewish community and the British consulate, killing 63 people and injuring hundreds.

    The HSBC building suffered massive damage. Glass and piles of rubble littered the street in the aftermath. Seven years and $150 million later, it reopened as the Istanbul Edition hotel, a monument to modern design with 77 rooms and a luxury suite. The renovation was funded by Azerbaijani businessman Mubariz Mansimov, the building’s owner. The result: one of Turkey’s most luxurious and expensive hotels, with prices starting at $600 a night, according to the hotel’s general manager Sedat Nemli.

    The glitzy ceremony with Turkish celebrities and officials attending came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama said Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. covert operation in Pakistan.

    “There is divine justice in the world,” Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertugrul Gunay said at the opening ceremony.

    A former HSBC employee recalled that immediately after the terror attack of 2003 the bank quickly moved its headquarters to a secret location, where work continued as usual. The bank didn’t officially discuss the attack or its victims at the time. In 2007, HSBC placed a monument — a blood-red Dove of Peace — in front of its new Turkish headquarters to commemorate the victims.

    Mr. Nemli, the hotel manager, said the hotel represents a new chapter for the building and is a fitting tribute to al Qaeda’s victims in Istanbul.

    “The memory of the terrorist attacks wasn’t a problem to the investor or to us,” Mr. Nemli said referring to the hotel management. “This building stands at a site that saw a lot of pain, but it has now breathed new life into the city.”

    via Istanbul Hotel Opens at Site of Al Qaeda Attack – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.