Exploring Turkish Cultures : Essays, Interviews and Reviews [1 ed.] 9781443827584, 9781443826396

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Exploring Turkish Cultures

Exploring Turkish Cultures: Essays, Interviews and Reviews

By

Laurence Raw

Exploring Turkish Cultures: Essays, Interviews and Reviews, by Laurence Raw This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Laurence Raw All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2639-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2639-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements................................................................................... viii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I: Education, Culture, Politics Chapter One............................................................................................... 12 Intercultural Competence: Does it Exist? Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 21 Reconstructing Englishness Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 34 Recognizing Difference: Interdisciplinarity and the Cultural Studies Association Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 42 Towards a Pedagogy for Teaching Foreign Languages and Literatures Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 54 The European Union and the Modernization of the Turkish Education System Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 57 Postcards from østanbul Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 64 Postmodernisms in the Turkish Context Chapter Eight............................................................................................. 75 The Writer’s Search for Freedom of Expression Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 82 The Ambassador’s Reception

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Table of Contents

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 86 Cultural Policy in the Turkish Republic Chapter Eleven .......................................................................................... 90 Educating the People: Representations of National Identity in the østanbul Military Museum and the Sofia Museum of National History Chapter Twelve........................................................................................ 104 Marketing Mediterranean Museums Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 117 The Poetics and Politics of Translation Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 120 Talât Halman: A Man of Many Parts Part II: Theatre Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 144 Translating Theatre Texts: Shakespeare’s As You Like It Chapter Sixteen........................................................................................ 153 Every Inch a King: Cüneyt Gökçer’s King Lear Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 162 Yıldız Kenter: Spanning the Decades Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 181 Genco Erkal – The Theatre of Commitment Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 200 Staging Waiting for Lefty: Or, Agit-Prop in Ankara Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 210 Evolving Attitudes to the American Dream: Death of a Salesman in the Turkish Context Chapter Twenty-One................................................................................ 222 Nesrin Kazankaya: Challenging Theatrical Orthodoxies

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Part III: Film Chapter Twenty-Two ............................................................................... 236 T. E. Lawrence, The Turks, and the Arab Revolt in the Cinema: Anglo-American and Turkish Representations Chapter Twenty-Three............................................................................. 250 Ayhan Iúık: Long Live the King Chapter Twenty-Four............................................................................... 260 The Many Faces of Türkân ùoray Chapter Twenty-Five ............................................................................... 274 The Turk Abroad: Otobüs (1974) Chapter Twenty-Six................................................................................. 281 Derviú Zaim: “To Return to the Past Means Embarking on a New Journey.” Chapter Twenty-Seven............................................................................. 299 Telling it Like it is: Recent Turkish Documentary Feature Films Chapter Twenty-Eight.............................................................................. 333 Tolga Örnek: A Fresh Look at Old Stories Chapter Twenty-Nine .............................................................................. 353 Secular Populism in Recent Turkish Historical Films Bibliography ............................................................................................ 364 Index........................................................................................................ 397

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been written without the help and encouragement of many people and different institutions. First and foremost, I’d like to thank those artists who generously gave of their time to allow me to interview them: Yıldız Kenter, Genco Erkal, Nesrin Kazankaya, Türkân ùoray, Derviú Zaim, Pelin Esmer, Özgür Do÷an, Ben Hopkins, Tolga Örnek. In particular I’d like to pay tribute to Talât Saït Halman, who not only gave of his time to give two extended interviews, but graciously put me in touch with Erkal and Kenter. I’d also like to thank all interviewees for reading my original drafts, and making constructive criticisms and/or suggestions. The book’s first section on cultural policy owes several debts of gratitude. I’d like to thank Emel Do÷ramacı, Oya Batum Menteúe, Himmet Umunç, and all my former colleagues at Hacettepe University, Department of English. I not only spent ten happy years there teaching undergraduate and graduate learners (and hence learning a lot about why English Literature was taught), but had the chance to discuss at length the history of the discipline in the Turkish Republic. I published numerous interviews with my ex-colleagues, which have been quoted in the text. The late Engin Uzmen, sometime professor of English at Ankara University, and later on at Hacettepe, offered valuable insights into the past history of literary studies in Ankara, as well as being a valued friend. I should also pay tribute to a wonderful group of learners, several of whom have gone on to become academics themselves – for example Defne Ersin Tutan, Deniz Örücü, Zeynep Özek, Sinem Bingöl, Aykut Uluer, Burcu Harmankaya Ergün, Ümay Altınok Aktan, Cenk Erdil, Rahúan Giritli Kurban, Tolunay Yelesti øçduygu, Hanzade Ayas Çetiner, Pınar Önköl, Zeynep Savaú Çetiner, Demet Satılmıú and Ebru Öngören Yıldız. At the same time I was also working full-time at Bilkent University, Ankara, and benefited from the advice and wise counsel of Bülent Bozkurt, my head of department at the time. Others who helped me during my researches at that time included Özdemir Nutku and Sevda ùener, who talked with me about theatrical history both past and present. Much of the research for the Cüneyt Gökçer essay was done during this period. I was fortunate enough to interview Gökçer himself, with the help

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of my wife Meltem acting as translator. My deepest thanks to both of them. I also pay homage to the late Basil Coleman and his designer, the late Roger Andrews, both of whom allowed me to talk to them at their respective London homes. Much of the work on cultural studies and postmodernism was done during my seven years with the British Council. For giving me the opportunity to do this, I am eternally in debt to Alan Mountford, at that time the English Language Officer of the British Council in Turkey. I am also grateful to Nick Wadham-Smith, once the British Studies Officer and later the founder member of the thinktank Counterpoint, both for his support, and for providing opportunities for me to present my research at conferences. I also thank Susan Bassnett of the University of Warwick for academic and professional support. On the professional front, I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate in the founding of the Group for Cultural Studies in Turkey [Türkiye Kültür Araútırmaları Grubu] by Gönül Pultar. Other colleagues-notably Günseli Sönmez øúçi and Ayúe Lahur Kırtunç-gave me the chance to help co-organize and present my research at the Ege Cultural Studies Seminars, then (as now) a valuable source of inspiration for anyone interested in the discipline. I also thank other institutions-Middle East Technical University, Bo÷aziçi University, Marmara University, and Ankara University-for giving the chance to present my work at conferences. Turning now to my present university, I would like to thank all those learners–whose names are listed in the appropriate chapter-who helped me work on the production of Waiting for Lefty. For advice and discussion on educational matters, I thank several people (who continue to provide me with inspiration), including Joanne Collie, Andy Daventry, Tony Gurr, Nehir Sert (I couldn’t wish for a better office-mate), Fuat Altunkaya, Sevgi ùahin, Gonca Gültekin, and all those dedicated colleagues at Ayúeabla Kolej in Ankara, who gave me the opportunity to teach speaking skills to fifth-grade learners during the academic year 2008-9. Other colleagues who have helped me write the sections on film and theatre include Maureen Freely, Iain Robert Smith, Savaú Arslan, Tamer Levent, Lemi Bilgin, Gönül Dönmez-Colin (whose book on Turkish cinema provides an invaluable survey of the topic), Graham Powner (that wonderful editor of Theatreworld Internet Magazine), Ayúegül Yüksel, Baran Germen (who acted as interpreter in my Türkân ùoray interview), and Gemma Newby (producer of the radio documentary The Ambassador’s Reception).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staffs of the following libraries for helping me with my research: Baúkent University, Bilkent University Library, the British Film Institute, the British Library, Hacettepe University Library, Milli Kütüphane (the National Library of the Turkish Republic in Ankara), and the Middle East Technical University Library. I’d also like to thank the anonymous sellers of GittiGidiyor.com, the Turkish equivalent of Ebay, for providing much-needed resources at a critical time. Many of the articles included in this collection were published elsewhere. I’d like to thank the editors of the following journals for permission to reproduce them: Theatre Journal, Kültür ve øletiúim, øletiúim, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, European Journal of American Studies and Literature-Film Quarterly. I’d also like to thank Victor Ostapchuk, book reviews editor of the H-Turk online site, and Gene Glass, editor of the Education Review site, for commissioning some of the reviews published here. I’d like to thank the staff of Cambridge Scholars Press for their help, notably Carol Koulikourdi and Amanda Millar. Lastly, I’d like to give special thanks to two people whose support and encouragement is beyond words. Audrey Uzmen, friend, colleague, fellow theatrical, once of the Old Vic and the State Theatre, has been a friend and fellow-partner in adversity for nearly two decades now. If it weren’t for her–particularly in my early years-I doubt whether I would have lived for so long in the Turkish Republic. And lastly, and most importantly, my wife Meltem, who has not only lived with these experiences over the years, but has provided an incalculable source of love, support and encouragement.

INTRODUCTION

I had been planning to collect my writings on the Turkish Republic– that includes theatre, film and book reviews, extended analyses of landmark films and theatre productions, as well as critical analyses of the growth and development of English Studies–for quite some time. Until recently, however, I was well aware that while the essays were interesting in themselves, the book as a whole lacked a conceptual framework–that is, until I read a recent letter to the editor of the London Independent newspaper arguing against the Turkish Republic’s proposed entry into the European Union. The writer strongly believed that the nation was “culturally alien” from the rest of Europe, and dominated by a political divide between “extreme nationalism and growing Islam,” which apparently invalidates its “democratic and secular claims.” The only way to maintain social stability is by means of the army, which staged “periodic coups” against the elected government (the last of these took place in 1980). Turkish society is riddled with intolerance, especially against Shia Muslims and Christians (“Turkey Has No Place in Europe” 2010, 42-3). Such observations are not much different from those expressed by western intellectuals in the eighteenth century: M. E. Yapp shows how many people at that time criticized the Ottoman Empire for its lack of industry and its despotic style of government which was considered “inimical to progress” (Yapp 1992, 154). Nonetheless some politicians believed that the Empire could change for the better: Lord Palmerston wrote in 1839 that it might become “a respectable power” by creating “a partnership of people, one in which Muslims and non-Muslims should work together as equals: (qtd Yapp 1992, 155). The partnership metaphor reappears in contemporary articles on the future of the Turkish Republic and the European Union: John A. Scherpereel’s “European Culture and the European Union’s ‘Turkey Question’” claims that there exists a considerable degree of “cultural overlap” between Turks and citizens in the EU:27. Both employ soccer imagery and Hollywood movie allusions to interpret current political events (Scherpereel 2010, 826). Meanwhile “a professional, well-connected core of Turkish policymakers” strives to work with the EU so as to increase their citizens’ mobility as well as attracting investment “to bolster their [the policymakers’] political positions and/or

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Introduction

promote national development.” The Turkish Republic/ EU partnership does not emphasize cultural convergence, but rather integrates the Republic into the EU’s “deeply institutionalized policy-making apparatus” (Scherpereel 2010, 827-8). All these comments invoke familiar binaries–tolerance/ intolerance, west/east, religion/secularism, nationalism/ Islam, Europe/Asia–which reveal the orientalist mentality that dominates western writing about the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.1 As Orhan Kemal Cengiz complains in a recent collection of essays, western Kemalists–or those who claim to understand Kemalism–simply do not understand: “[They] disregard the particularities of Turkey and try to understand it from an orientalist viewpoint as a result of their misconceptions” (Cengiz 2008, 5). If we are to understand anything about the Republic’s past, present and future, we have to set aside these oppositions and accept that there are different versions of Turkishness defined by numerous factors including race, gender, class, religion, history and geography. These constructions change over time, as well as involving concepts that might seem unfamiliar to western commentators–for example nomadism, or a belief in the interconnectedness of past, present and future. Through a series of essays, reviews and interviews with prominent figures from the worlds of theatre, films and academia, this book provides a series of snapshots of the different ideas, values and belief-systems that have dominated the Turkish cultural agenda over the last eight decades. I do not aim to be comprehensive; nor do I analyze in any great depth issues of politics, culture and identity. Such issues have already been covered in numerous books in both Turkish and English.2 Rather my aim is to understand instead how the present has been influenced by the past and vice versa. For example, in a series of case studies I focus on the work done by policymakers in the mid-twentieth century to try and disseminate Mustafa Kemal 1

See, for example, the BBC reporter Jonathan Head’s analysis of the recent referendum in the Republic, which endorsed the reforms of the judiciary. Head’s reading is couched predictably in binarist terms: “[Prime Minister] Erdo÷an has governed Turkey with a strong parliamentary majority for the past eight years, yet in that time he has not found a way to bridge the gulf of mistrust that divided secular and religious Turks, or those who love and hate him” (“Referendum Result Fails to Mask Turkey’s Divisions,” BBC News Europe, September 13, 2010. Accessed September 14, 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11288360. 2 See, for example, Gönül Pultar and Tahire Erman (eds.), Türk(iye) Kültürleri [Turkish Cultures], (østanbul: Tetragon øletiúim Hizmetleri A.ù., 2005), or E. Fuat Keyman (ed.), Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007).

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Atatürk’s views on secularism and westernization by translating western classics into Turkish. I subsequently look at how such views have continued to dominate the translation agenda, while being challenged by creative translation strategies that seem more in tune with popular tastes. Other case studies examine how western classics and/or westernformulated critical theories have been used both to reaffirm and challenge Kemalist beliefs in secularism and national unity. In another set of case studies and reviews I look at the work of the Village Institutes and their supporters such as the academic Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu, and why the government eventually closed them down. Even though it is nearly sixty years since the schools closed down, their influence lives on, as Turkish educational theorists search for more creative approaches to learning. This becomes more and more significant as the years pass: in an interview with documentary filmmaker Öznur Do÷an, I look at how his film øki Dil Bir Bavul [On the Way to School] (co-directed with Orhan Eskiköy) (2009) criticizes current government policy for its insistence on maintaining a monolithic view of Turkish culture, and thereby excluding minority interests (for example, the Kurds). Other case studies look at how Yeúilçam cinema of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s set behavioral and cultural standards for popular audiences. Stars like Ayhan Iúık (1929-79) functioned as role models of masculinity, as well as re-invoking systems of belief dating back to the thirteenthcentury mystic poet Rumi. Türkân ùoray (1945-) provided an example for young women to follow; she has been a star for over five decades now; with of her major achievements being her ability to reinvent her screen image in line with prevailing views of femaleness and femininity. In another essay I look at the experiences of Turks abroad during the early 1970s as represented in Tunç Okan’s Otobüs [The Bus] (1973).3 Although circumstances have changed significantly since then for migrant Turks in Europe, their experiences today remain similar in many ways to those experiences by Okan’s characters: many people find it difficult to cope cultural adjustment, and have created new versions of “Turkishness” in response. Despite the diversity of subjects, the majority of the essays in this book engage with issues to do with cultural policy. Ever since the creation of the Republic in 1923, successive governments have instituted hegemonic strategies of citizenship–through education, cultural policies or by funding film and/or television productions through the Ministry of Culture (now the 3 Throughout this book, I will try as much as possible to give both the Turkish and English versions of the titles of plays, books or films quoted in the text.

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Introduction

Ministry of Culture and Tourism)–designed to unify the nation through ideology. However the thinking behind such strategies has always caused considerable critical debate, with attention focused specifically on what “Kemalism” actually means. In this book I follow Hasan Bülent Kahraman’s view that it represents “a cultural ideology disguised in politics,” which is simultaneously innovative and conservative in approach (Kahraman 2007, 55). On the one hand Kemalism likes to associate itself with progress, in the belief that it is the Republic’s responsibility to catch up with modern (understood in this context as western) civilization by accommodating notions of cultural pluralism. This is evident in various cultural spheres: in the selection of plays for performance by directors of the State Theatre, or the choice of subjects for exhibitions by museum curators. On the other hand Kemalism is often highly conservative in outlook, particularly in its insistence on a top-down style of government and the restriction of alternative ways of life. In fact, it can be considered retrograde in its desire for the Republic to return to the so-called glory days of the 1930s when Kemal Atatürk was alive and in power. The contradictions of Kemalist ideology are clearly evident in two case studies of museums in the Turkish Republic–the Military Museum in the Harbiye district of østanbul and the Antalya Museum. The displays in the Antalya Museum illuminate the Mediterranean region’s cultural pluralism by paying tribute to great civilizations of the past (Greece and Rome), while celebrating the local village cultures that continue to survive in certain areas. In contrast the østanbul Military Museum promotes a feeling of patriotism and national identity by recounting great Ottoman and Turkish victories over the past one hundred and fifty years, concentrating in particular on Atatürk’s achievements during the first two decades of the Republic. While this unified view of national identity has held sway in official circles (it provided the justification for the military interventions of 1960, 1971 and 1980), it has been repeatedly challenged by writers, actors, directors or academics, as well as through the politics of everyday practices-the tactical trajectories through which members of different cultures past and present trace their own stories within and against an imposed political terrain. In recent years governments have tried to neutralize such responses by reviving what Yılmaz Çolak describes as an Ottoman approach to pluralism, involving the peaceful co-existence of different ethno-religious and cultural communities under an overarching political umbrella (Çolak 2006, 557-8). However the future of this strategy has been questioned not only by conservatives (who regard any form of cultural pluralism as a potential threat to national unity), but by those who

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believe that governments have not gone far enough in the direction of acknowledging minority rights, including speaking one’s native language (Kurdish instead of Turkish, for instance). By examining these issues in more detail, I show how many artists and intellectuals in the Republic have endeavored to create what the sociologist Nilüfer Göle recently described as “a new public constellation,” independent of government interference, that brings to light new codes of habitation and interaction (Göle 2009, 291). The book is divided into three sections. The first looks in general terms at issues of cultural policy. Inspired by my own experiences of working in Turkish departments of foreign language and literature, two case studies look at the birth and growth of these departments; how they were established on the principles of westernization and secularism, designed to create successive generations of learners who would be loyal to the Republic and its principles. Prominent among those who helped to establish these departments was Halide Edip Adıvar (1884-1964), one of Atatürk’s closest allies, who headed the Department of English Literature at østanbul University from 1940 onwards, and later wrote a comprehensive history of English Literature in Turkish. I also show how a concern for the national culture remains of paramount importance to members of these departments-which helps to explain their tendency to accommodate new constructions of literary and/or cultural theory into a Kemalist model. The Group for Cultural Studies in Turkey [Türkiye Kültür Araútırmaları Grubu] was created in 1999, with founder members (including myself) originating from departments of literature, sociology and anthropology. Its specific remit was to promote research into different cultures within the Republic, and thereby act in the national interest. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism provided funding for their researches. In another case study, I argue that such activities have led to the creation of culturally-specific notions of postmodernism that reaffirm a commitment to westernization, while rejecting western-inspired forms of postmodernism that place emphasis on cultural relativity. Turning to more general issues to do with education, another essay looks at the work of the pedagogical theorist øsmail Hakkı Tonguç (18931960), one of the architects of the Village Institutes. Although his work has been somewhat neglected–especially by the Ministry of Education–his ideas form an ideal basis for more innovative pedagogies of teaching language and literature at school and university levels. Through a case study of my own teaching experiences with trainee teachers of English, I suggest that Tonguç’s ideas could form the basis for an approach to

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Introduction

learning that expands the boundaries of the possible–to set aside preconceived objectives and engage in a process of discovering how texts are produced and reproduced in different contexts, as well as encouraging active rather than passive reading. However to express such notions in the public sphere can be dangerous–particularly in contexts dominated by those in power who profess to be democratic or independent-minded, even while suppressing dissenting voices. In a review-essay I look at some recently published books in English translation, celebrating the work of intellectuals such as Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu, who spent most of his life fighting against those hegemonic forces which tried to restrict freedom of expression. He was eventually expelled from his post at the University of østanbul in 1960 for harboring anti-government views; although he was found not guilty and offered the chance to return, Eyübo÷lu chose to teach art history at østanbul Technical University instead, while continuing to oppose any policies or ideas he considered undemocratic. Eyübo÷lu’s experiences are still significant today in a context where activists such as the Turco-Armenian Hrant Dink lose their lives for commenting on contentious issues, both past and present. The section concludes with a look at official cultural policies both past and present, showing how they have changed over time. I include an extended piece on Talât Saït Halman, including a long interview where he looks back on his long career as an academic, record-shop proprietor, translator, poet, ambassador and politician (he was the Republic’s first Minister of Culture). He discusses his own career, as well as looking at issues to do with translation and westernization. In a revealing series of observations, he also explains the difficulties involved in constructing an effective cultural policy–particularly when dealing with fellow-ministers who might not appreciate the potential of cultural education, whether direct (in the form of classes) or indirect (in the form of concerts and plays). The book’s second section looks at aspects of Turkish theatre, both past and present. Following on from Halman’s interview, I include two pieces focusing on approaches to translating western texts in the Turkish Republic. I contrast what might be described as the ‘official’ translation policy, established by the government-sponsored Translation Office-which encouraged target texts to keep as close as possible to their original sources, with the ‘unofficial’ translations produced by independent publishing houses, which adopted a more irreverent approach to their sources by rendering them in more idiomatic terms. This was particularly evident, for instance, in the popular renderings of Conan Doyle or Mickey

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Spillane, which incorporated elements derived from Turkish folk-tales. I subsequently profile Cüneyt Gökçer, a former director of the Ankara State Theatre, as well as a great Shakespearean actor, who throughout his career attempted to implement official state cultural policy-in other words, encouraging the idea of a unified national identity. But this did not stop him criticizing the government whenever he thought it necessary; in his 1981 revival of King Lear, for instance, he implicitly questioned the military junta’s repressive strategies of imposing order on the country in the wake of the military takeover of September 12, 1980. This section also includes a series of interview-essays with leading personalities-Yıldız Kenter, Genco Erkal and Nesrin Kazankaya-who represent different aspects of the contemporary Turkish theatre. Throughout her long career as an actor, director and producer, Kenter has emphasized the social and educational aspects of theatre; it can not only help to train people, but it can tell audiences a lot about the importance of national values in the past, present and future. By contrast Erkal’s work has focused on more politically committed theatre; inspired by Brecht, he has always tried to produce plays that directly criticizes government policy. Kazankaya believes that theatre should encourage audiences to think for themselves; to become independent-minded citizens with a social conscience. With this belief in mind, she has moved outside the confines of the State Theatre to establish a private theatre company of her own. I conclude the section with two case studies looking at how classic American plays such as Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman have been received in different contexts, and how the subject matter of both plays might address contemporary issues of particular interest to Turkish learners. In the final section I shift the focus to look at aspects of Turkish cinema past and present. One case study discusses Lütfi Ö. Akad’s 1952 film øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı/ English Kemal Against Lawrence, a boysown adventure yarn in which the eponymous central character (Ayhan Iúık) outwits the British led by T. E..Lawrence (Muzaffer Tema). I suggest that Akad deliberately tapped into the patriotic mood of the early 1950s, when the Republic had just emerged with credit from the Korean War, as well as obtaining membership of NATO. By comparing øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı with David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), I show how Akad turns Lean’s orientalist view on its head; it is the British who are the demons, threatening Turkish territorial integrity. In another essay focusing on recent Turkish historical films (Giden Yol 1914 [1914 The Way Home] (2007) and Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali [Knockout Ali The Last

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Introduction

Ottoman] (2007) being two examples), I show how directors have reinvoked this opposition as a way of emphasizing the importance of Turkish national integrity at a time of significant social and political change, as the country strives to enter the European Union. Other case studies look at Turkish popular cinema (known as Yeúilçam) and its legacy. I survey the career of Ayhan Iúık, showing how his star image was reinforced both on and off-screen through fanzines like Ses and general interest publications such as Hayat. Another essay contains the first major interview ever published in English with Türkan ùoray, who not only looks back on her early career as an actor, but also tries to explain her enduring popularity with audiences. From her experiences we learn that while the majority of Yeúilçam melodramas were cheaply-made, recycling familiar plots and themes, everyone involved in making them–actors, directors, and producers–felt they were involved in creating a new national cinema that proved highly popular with filmgoers of all social backgrounds. There was a feeling of excitement at that time–a belief that Turkish filmmakers were making creative use of indigenous cultural traditions rather than simply imitating Hollywood models. Turning to the present, this section contains a length piece looking contemporary documentaries such as øki Dil Bir Bavul and Pelin Esmer’s Oyun (2005), looking at how the respective directors have sought to recapture this spirit of enthusiasm and creativity. In two interview-essays Özgür Do÷an and Pelin Esmer assert that mainstream cinema has become too predictable, too obsessed with making money and hence avoiding contentious issues. Their response is to produce low-budget films recording ordinary people’s experiences–a group of women in the Mediterranean region producing a play for themselves, and a teacher from the west of Turkey trying to adjust to a new life in Demirci, a remote village in the east of the country. By doing so both films show how everyday practices often challenge official government policies in the areas of equal rights and education. This section also contains another interviewessay with Tolga Örnek, a filmmaker whose documentaries include Atatürk (1998) and Gelibolu [Gallipoli] (2005), and who has subsequently branched out into feature films such as Devrim Arabaları [Cars of the Revolution] (2008). Like the other directors, Örnek challenges what might be described as “official” historical interpretations of the Gallipoli campaign or of Kemal Atatürk’s contribution to the development of the Turkish Republic. Another interview-essay looks at the work of the Turkish Cypriot director Derviú Zaim, whose “guerilla filmmaking” not only possesses a

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social conscience, but also encourages us to focus on the relationship between past, present and future. Through films such as Cenneti Beklerken [Waiting for Heaven] (2007) and most recently Nokta [Dot] (2009), Zaim delves into the country’s Ottoman past to demonstrate how individuals cannot divorce themselves from the past, despite the government’s best efforts to do so since the creation of the Republic in 1923. This is also true in Cyprus: a film like Çamur [Mud] (2005) shows how any future strategies designed to unify the Greek and Turkish communities must inevitably acknowledge the consequences of past struggles. In putting this collection of essays together, I realize that the experience has been one of personal as well as intellectual growth. Although I have spent nearly two decades living and teaching in the Turkish Republic, it was not until I started talking to people that I understood the significance of different ways of thinking as a way of understanding how a country works. As the psychologists Alfonso Montuori and Urusa Fahim have suggested in a 2008 article, it is only through cross-cultural encounters such as mine that one comes to understand “the extent to which we are in and from a culture, and that culture is in us.” More importantly, through the experience of working with and talking to members of other cultures, individuals can transcend what they perceive to be their facticity and “open up the possibility of new ways of being-in-the-world” (Montuori and Fahim 2008, 263). I hope that this collection has gone some way towards fulfilling this aim.

PART I: EDUCATION, CULTURE, POLITICS

CHAPTER ONE INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE: DOES IT EXIST?1

The subject of intercultural competence has been one that has preoccupied me, ever since I started teaching British and/ or Comparative Cultural Studies at Turkish universities in the early 1990s. In a paper originally presented at the 2nd Warwick conference on British Cultural Studies in 1991, I tried to show how the study of a text such as Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables coupled with a video version of the play (John Schlesinger’s well-known adaptation from the mid-1980s starring Alan Bates), could be used as a basis for comparative intercultural studies, which gives learners an insight into how certain elements of British culture have penetrated their own culture, while demonstrating that there are important differences in contexts of cultural interconnection (Raw 1992, 17-22). In another paper, I suggested that this kind of study could be enhanced by deconstructing what Alan Sinfield described as those “stories” by which we make sense both of ourselves and the foreign culture (Sinfield 1989, 23). Stories are lived and experienced; they appear comprehensible to us because we have been or are currently involved in them. By investigating the foreign culture through the medium of their own cultures, learners might be able not only to come to terms with differences between the two cultures, but also change their view of the world by exposing their own cultural identity to the contrasting influences that the foreign culture and language might exert. I also pointed out that for a course like this to succeed, there needs to be considerable negotiation about what constituted suitable material for inclusion on the course, and the ways in which the course should be taught not least because such a process might help the learners and the educator alike to come to terms 1

This essay was originally presented at a conference-“Looking into England”-held at the University of Warwick from September 24-30, 1999. Reprinted with revisions.

Intercultural Competence: Does it Exist?

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with intercultural differences. A course created in this way could reveal the different stories upon which individual British and Turkish cultures are based, and thereby promote an understanding of how intercultural knowledge and understanding derives as much from the resources of the group as from reference to specific texts. What seemed acceptable at the time no longer seems so today. Greater exposure to different groups of learners at a variety of levels in countries other than Turkey, ranging from upper-intermediate learners of English, to graduates taking courses in comparative cultural studies, have made me understand how the development of intercultural competence is a great deal more problematic than I had first assumed. In this chapter I will suggest that teaching and learning culture in the Turkish context involves contending with difference, which may not only be intercultural but intracultural. This kind of pedagogy demands that difference should be looked at not only in terms of binary oppositions (self/ other, occident/orient, source/target cultures), but requires us to look for the specificities of difference within given cultural contexts. It is this engagement with difference that should prompt reflection not only on what is being learned, and how it is learned but also most significantly on why learners learn. The term intercultural competence carries different associations in the Euro-American context. It can be used to describe an understanding of behavioural rituals different from one’s own–a 1989 book Turkish Culture for Americans offers a series of imaginary cross-cultural encounters, comprised of prose texts plus supplementary questions, each of which “illustrates a Turkish cultural point which may be confusing to Americans” (Dindi et. al. 1989, vii-viii). If readers discover the “correct” answer (as constructed by the authors), then they might be able to experience Turkish culture more immediately. Intercultural competence can also encourage deeper understanding of the ways in which cultures work, and how they are similar to or different from one’s own culture. There are other forms of intercultural competence, which involve a process of decentring, or relativizing self and other in an effort to understand both on their own terms (Kramsch 1997, 5-6). However until the early 2000s there appeared to be little enthusiasm for an intercultural approach to teaching foreign languages in the Turkish education system. Partly this could be attributed to the belief, shared by many schools and university departments of English language (known as Hazırlıks, or preparatory schools, designed to prepare learners for their undergraduate courses, as well as providing extra courses in English for

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Chapter One

learners already taking undergraduate courses), that any focuses on the cultural aspects of language detracts from the “real business” of language teaching. At the high school level, most learners work with textbooks that omit references to foreign cultures, preferring instead to use examples drawn from mainstream Turkish culture. In subjects that require extensive knowledge of foreign cultures, such as English and/or American Literature, intercultural competence is largely defined as acquiring information about the foreign culture–its history, political and social institutions, and its leading artists and/or writers. Little or no attention is given to how a literary text relates to social practice, which might lead to an understanding of how cultural realities are represented and re-represented. But perhaps we should take care when considering what intercultural competence actually means in a mainstream Turkish educational context. In Western Europe it might be defined as the promotion of “tolerance of a culture similar yet subtly different from our own […] [which] involves acceptance of others, refraining from wishing to destroy them or at least to banish them because they destroy us” (Byram 1989, 88-9). In the Turkish education system intercultural competence might be defined as a two-tier process serving to promote the national culture. At its most basic level, learners are made aware of the ways in which a foreign language can contribute to this process–hence the absence of references to other cultures in high school textbooks. The origins of this strategy can be traced back to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who wanted to draw on foreign models yet reinterpret them in the light of native traditions. While introducing the Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic script, he described it as being composed not of “European characters,” but “new Turkish characters” (qtd Sonyel 1989, 121). Once learners have acquired competence in the foreign language either at high school or in Hazırlıks, they can pursue a course of intensive study of the foreign culture in English or American literature, or International Relations courses. This strategy makes both economical and educational sense in a country that since the late 1980s has undergone a radical expansion in tourism and trade, while the politicians at the same time have tried to preserve a distinct Turkish identity (Robins 1996, 74). The need to train graduates who are not only fluent in the foreign language but possess a knowledge of other cultures provides the foundation for this policy, and helps to explain why the number of universities expanded radically throughout the 1990s and 2000s in both the private and public sectors. To expect Turkish learners to acquire intercultural competence, as defined by Byram, is nothing more than a form of educational colonialism similar to that described by Homi K. Bhabha with reference to the British

Intercultural Competence: Does it Exist?

15

in nineteenth century India: “[This process figures] those ideological correlatives of the western sign–empiricism, idealism, mimeticism, monoculturalism […] that sustain a tradition of […] authority” (Bhabha 1994, 166). If any course is to be intercultural in focus, I suggest that one of its principal aims should be to investigate more closely what the term involves. This may involve an analysis, however brief, of the sociopolitical history of relations between the Turkish Republic and the west, and how they are articulated through binary oppositions. Further research should reveal how the terms of such oppositions are differentially weighted so that one element in the dichotomy is more valued or powerful than the other. Jacques Derrida argues that power operates between the two terms involved in any binary opposition in such a way that there is a necessary imbalance of power between the two terms (Woodward 1997, 36). This is clearly evidence, for example, in the way in which Europe was given a higher priority than Asia in the former Turkish President Süleyman Demirel’s claim, made in 1995, that “we [Turks] are Europeans […] We would like to share the values of European civilization;” and the British journalist Richard Falk’s observation that “Turkey is not so much stranded at the European doorstep, but confined to the servants’ quarters in the European house” (qtd Robins 1996, 65). Yet it is not sufficient just to point out the existence of such oppositions. Byram defines intercultural competence as simply the promotion of “tolerance of a culture similar yet subtly different from our own” (emphasis mine): in the Turkish educational context, a more radical framework is required that not only encourages tolerance, but enables educators and learners alike “to cross [their] memories, to exchange [their] memories” (Ricoeur 1992, 122). This means acknowledging the existence of pluralism in the classroom–and thereby resisting the policies imposed by the Turkish Ministry of Education and the Higher Education Council (YėK), most of which are designed to foster a belief in monoculturalism. This issue has been addressed in the American context by Kramsch, who calls for a critical foreign language pedagogy that seeks not to erase difference, but rather establishes “a dialogic context in which the vital necessity to continue dialogue ensures a mutual base to explore the sometimes irreducible differences between people’s values and attitudes” (Kramsch 1997, 6). Such an approach can provide the framework for the exploration of cultural differences, both intercultural and (more significantly) intracultural. In the higher education context, learners originate from a variety of

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Chapter One

backgrounds, both urban and rural, but hitherto they have little opportunity to explore such backgrounds. The only question might be this–how can this type of learning be accommodated in an educational context that places such a high priority on the learning of foreign languages and/or cultures, but offers comparatively little space for cross-cultural analysis? One solution might be to look at the notion of linguistic distance–in other words, the extent to which source and target languages are removed from one another. The greater the distance between the source language (i.e. the learners’ native tongue) and the target language, the more difficult it might be to learn the target language (Snoeck 1990, 118). A good example of this is provided by John Berger’s description of a Turkish worker’s (Gastarbeiter’s) first experiences of living in Germany: How opaque the guise of words […] He treated the sounds of the unknown foreign language as if they were silence. He learnt twenty words of the new language. But to his amazement at first, their meaning changed as he spoke them. He asked for coffee. What the words signified to the barman was that he was asking for coffee in a bar where he should not be asking for coffee. He learnt girl. What the word meant when he used it, was that he was a randy dog. Is it possible to see through the opaqueness of these words? (Berger 1975, 26)

What emerges from this cross-cultural encounter is that the distance between German and Turkish is not simply linguistic: words mean little in this situation–as a non-European living in a western European country, it is highly likely that the Turkish man would be both excluded and insulted. Calling the Turk a dog is not simply racist (only Europeans are permitted to be human); the comment represents a more complex form of social fantasy, defined by Bhabha as “the desire […] [for] the Stranger, whose languageless presence evokes an archaic anxiety and aggressivity by impeding the search for narcissistic love-objects in which the subject can rediscover himself and upon which the [white man’s] group’s amour propre is based” (Bhabha 1994, 166). Berger’s anecdote reveals that the concept of difference separating German from Turk is ambivalent, having both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, establishing distance–linguistic or otherwise–between cultures leads individuals to symbolically close up ranks and dismiss anything they consider ‘impure’ or ‘abnormal.’ This explains why non-European immigrants to Germany were historically termed Gastarbeiter–temporary residents not qualified to obtain a German passport, even if they were domiciled there. On the other hand, the

Intercultural Competence: Does it Exist?

17

presence of someone different is also very powerful and attractive, as it poses a threat to the established socio-cultural structure. Once this notion of differentiation has been understood as the basis of the binarism that lies at the heart of the relationship between the Turkish Republic and the west, then perhaps there would be a chance to create a pedagogy occupying a space somewhere between the source and target cultures. This model of an intercultural pedagogy is based on two premises–first, that any dialogue between cultures can only be established once learners and educators learn to communicate with one another. This means, for instance, that in the foreign language class, communication should be in both source and target languages. Even is the class is designated as an English Language or English Literature class, taught in an English-medium institution (several private universities in the Turkish Republic pride themselves on offering this kind of education to learners–at a price, it must be noted), there is no reason why the lesson shouldn’t be conducted in Turkish, or any other language, if teachers and educators agree to do so. Secondly, this pedagogic model places less emphasis on the acquisition of intercultural competence and more on the investigation of difference. Learners might have to acquire an understanding of intercultural issues (particularly if they hope to get a job working with a foreign company, or with a local company dealing with foreign clients), but rather than acquiring a set of skills to achieve proficiency in this form of communication (i.e. becoming “competent”), they should feel happy occupying a space in between cultures, in which the ideological, social and political bases of difference can be investigated. To do this, however, it is important for learners and educators to acknowledge the importance of pluralism. This means setting aside one’s belief in the national culture and acknowledging the right of everyone in the classroom to think differently. This struck me quite forcibly as I read accounts of the experiences of second-generation Turks in Belgium and Australia. According to the author of a report published in 1990, Turkish children in Belgian elementary schools, most of whom originate from central Anatolian villages around Konya and Eskiúehir, have only limited experience of the outside world: “[They] grow up in an impoverished and rather isolated environment, with very little encouragement and stimulation from their parents [....] [and] hardly speak or understand French despite the fact that this is the dominant language [...] The rather isolated situation of the Turkish community and the sometimes explicit resistance to integration account for this' (Snoeck 1990, 1l6-7). In another report published the same year, an educator from Melbourne, Australia insisted that while it

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Chapter One

was important for Turkish children to participate in an English-speaking community, they also “need to be aware of traditional Turkish family and cultural values if they are to return to Turkey, often to villages, to live. A female student interviewed, soon to return to Turkey herself, also made this point on the value of learning Turkish at school” (Kalantzis et.al. 1998, 83). The “traditional Turkish family and cultural values” are associated with life in rural Central Anatolia. Such differences are seldom if ever explored in the Turkish educational context: one Turkish Cypriot learner with twelve years of learning English behind her at school and university, expressed her frustration with the fact that, in the foreign language classroom in Turkey, it was considered unimportant to reflect on the relationship between language and culture. Foreign languages were “objective:” once you had acquired competence in them, and thereby become the kind of person who could contribute to the development of the national culture it was not necessary to conduct any further inter- or intracultural research (Giritli 1997, 1). For any kind of cross-cultural investigation, it is important to recognize the significance of both inter- and intracultural differences: all learners speak from particular subject positions, determined by background, age, gender, and education level. In an article developed in the British context but applicable to other contexts, Avtar Brah conceptualizes and addresses such differences in four ways: (i) Difference as experience, defined as “[the] practice of making sense [...] [of] material conditions and their meaning; (ii) Difference as social relations, which should prompt reflection on the circumstances in which 'difference' becomes an expression of cultural identity; (iii) Difference as subjectivity, which focuses on the interaction between social and psychic realities; and (iv) Difference as identity, which focuses on the relationship between personal and collective experiences (Brah 1997, 140-4). While this theoretical model might not be appropriate for the classroom, except at a higher educational, it can nonetheless provide a framework for the investigation of difference. Once learners understand the importance of difference as experience within their own lives, they can start to trust in their own opinions (which might help them to become more proficient in the foreign language). More importantly, this skill can help to forge a more collaborative learning environment, in which teachers and learners alike find out more about one another. Investigating difference as social relations, and difference as subjectivity could prompt reflection on exactly what constitutes one’s identity (whether local, regional, or national), and how such constructions might challenge stereotyped binary oppositions. To investigate difference

Intercultural Competence: Does it Exist?

19

as identity should prompt learners and educators alike to reflect on (and hopefully question) their own position as representatives of an education system dedicated to promoting the national culture. In this way, both teachers and learners should be able to create a pluralistic approach to the analysis of both the home culture and the foreign culture, as a basis for exploring differences between people's values and attitudes. To many academics, especially those brought up to believe in the certainties of the Kemalist national culture, this approach might be considered subversive, in that it appears to contradict the unifying impulse which has formed the backbone of the education system since the foundation of the Republic. On the other hand this kind of learning acknowledges the realities of the contemporary Turkish Republic, in which ethnic diversity and diversity of geographical origins have become increasingly recognized and appreciated […] ‘lost worlds’ and ‘lost homelands’ have suddenly been rediscovered (Robins 1996, 74-5). Successive governments have acknowledged such changes–at least in theory–in the late 1980s the then President Turgut Özal proclaimed that a “mental revolution” was about to take place, while more recently Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an has pursued a cultural policy designed to accommodate minority groups. There is still some way to go, however: the present government currently refuses to allow the use of names and titles characteristic of the Kurdish alphabet, like “w,” “q,” and “x.” Through this case study of language and culture learning, based on my experiences of teaching in high schools and universities throughout the 1990s, I propose a shift of focus from learning language towards pluralism and diversity, which might help learners and educators alike to understand the importance of differences at both national and local levels. In 1992 I was preoccupied with universals, asking learners to focus on the text of Separate Tables–in both its written and visual form–to understand how the English middle class behaves, and how such behavior might differ from that of the Turkish middle class. In its place I suggest that we should encourage learners and educators alike to value the individual point of view as a basis for dialogue and the revaluation of one’s cultural identity. What this chapter has also suggested is that for this kind of approach to be a success, educators should perceive themselves both as facilitators and participants within the cultural learning environment. In 1992, I saw myself as the performer, the focus of learner attention as I pointed out possible cultural differences between Britain and the Turkish Republic. Now I see myself as an educator engaged in the collaborative process of reflecting not only on my own culture (whatever that might be, after two

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Chapter One

decades of living in the Turkish Republic) but also on the academic culture I am involved in. Perhaps we should get away from the idea that the main purpose of learning a foreign language or culture is to acquire intercultural competence, and rather endeavor to acquire the kind of open-mindedness and fluidity of viewpoint, in ourselves and in our learners, that might form the foundation for the (re)-negotiation of cultural differences.

CHAPTER TWO RECONSTRUCTING ENGLISHNESS1

The previous chapter looked briefly at the ways in which the Turkish education system forged belief in the national culture through foreign languages and cultures. This chapter looks at this process in more detail by tracing the evolution of English Literature departments at the university level, and how they maintained–and continue to maintain–a particular construction of Englishness. The concept of Englishness and English identity has recently come under intense scrutiny: many commentators believe, for instance, that it has to be reinterpreted in light of globalization. Writing in 1999, the academic Antony Easthope suggested that the notion of the nation-state has been superseded by a belief in “nation-as-culture,” as expressed through their “inherited English discourse [...] a discursive form with almost the full range of jokes, ironies, empiricist tropes and gestures” (Easthope 1999, 157). Jeremy Paxman, by contrast, wrote a year earlier that by comparison with the French, the English “speak a language that belongs to no one.” Yet this is something to be celebrated, not mourned: “[the English] seem not merely to have adjusted to the fact that they no longer control their language, but positively to exult in its growth.” While “the England the rest of the world knows is the England of the British Empire,” the English have established a new nationalism which is “modest, individualistic, ironistic, solipsistic, concerned as much with cities and regions as with counties and countries” (Paxman 1998, 235, 263-5). What Paxman is clearly attempting here is a process similar to that explored in the previous chapter; to reposition the concept of national identity in the new global space: Now nation-states are no longer as important as global cities, such as London, New York or Tokyo, which have become centres of corporate 1

This essay was originally presented at a conference-“Looking into England”-held at the University of Warwick from 24-30 September 1999. Reprinted with revisions.

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Chapter Two organisations and “the strategic nodes in corporate networks. These cities are where the symbolic analysts congregate” (Robins 1998, 26).

However Paxman writes from an anglocentric perspective, which frequently does not acknowledge the fact that the notion of “Englishness” might be constructed very differently in other parts of the world. I want to demonstrate this by looking at the relationship between the introduction of English language and literature programmes in the Turkish Republic, and the Kemalist (i.e. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s) vision of a national culture. Taking as his starting-point the idea that culture was “a basic element in being a person worthy of humanity [...] a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal,” Atatürk hoped that the new national culture would encompass the nation's creative legacy as well as the best values of world civilisation, and thereby emphasize personal and universal humanism (Atatürk 2000). In pursuit of this ideal, the Kemalist republic implemented a policy of westernization; and by doing so aligned itself with a specifically Eurocentric project of modernity, which, from the sixteenth century onwards, had been characterized by two paradigms. The first regarded western Europe as “the culture of the center of the world system” (Dussel 1998, 4)-a super-hegemonic power acquired through conquest, colonisation, and the socio-economic processes that constituted the dynamics of the project-capitalism, industrialization, educational and technical innovation. This provided the justification for the second paradigm, which formulated the phenomenon of modernity as exclusively western European, as Max Weber once observed: “in Western civilization, and in western civilisation only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and value” (emphasis mine) (Weber 1958, 13). The nascent Turkish Republic had no particular fondness for the English, or for English culture; but they did believe that, by establishing English language and literature programs, they could expose students to the best values of world (i.e. European) civilization. This may suggest a willing subjection to the colonizing process; but the policy was justified by the belief that it enacted the Kemalist vision of a national culture, whose values were fundamentally different from those posited by the west.2 I shall also show that the focus 2 cf. Partha Chatterjee's observation in respect to former European colonies: “The most powerful as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa are posited not on an identity but on a difference with the 'modular' forms of national society propagated with the modern West.” In The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993): 5.

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on universal humanist ideals persists to this day in English departments, as many senior academics treat the notion of pluralism with skepticism–a concept they identify in many cases as potentially threatening to the stability of the national culture. The idea of using linguistic reform as a means to construct a new Turkish identity appeared very early on in the history of the Kemalist state. It was discussed at the economic congress in øzmir in 1923, as a means to repudiate the nation’s Ottoman past and within five years, the old Arabic script had been outlawed, and replaced by a series of new Turkish characters, based on the Latin alphabet. The Turkish Language Society (formed in 1932) adopted far more radical policies, in line with a general movement of secularization and westernization. They replaced Arabic and Persian words with purely Turkish words, borrowed from dialects, from other Turkic languages, and from ancient texts. Words of European origin remained intact-indeed, a number of new ones were even imported, to fill the gaps left by their Arabic or Persian equivalents. Despite numerous setbacks-and criticism from some intellectuals who advocated the restoration of Arabic and Persian words into the language-this movement achieved a final symbolic triumph when the Turkish constitution was translated into “pure” Turkish and promulgated in January 1945. This movement was accompanied by a rapid expansion in translation activity. A journal Tercüme first appeared in 1940 under the auspices of the government-sponsored Translation Office, with the express purpose of introducing the best of world literature to the reading public. Although the publication of translations based on western models had continued ever since the mid-nineteenth century, this was the first time that it had formed part of government policy. By rendering the universal humanist values of European literature accessible to a wider audience, translators would contribute both to the development of the language and the national culture.3 An editorial published to accompany a special issue on Goethe emphasizes the importance of translating great literature into Turkish: Poetry is not only the product of a nation, but also of the world. Great poets like Goethe transcend beyond national boundaries by means of such poets, nations get to know, respect, value one another. So poetry is a language that can be understood by all nations [...] Our translators have the opportunity to recreate his genius in their own language (“In Praise” 1949, 1) 3

This strategy is a good example of what Mona Baker describes as a “conceptual (disciplinary) narrative.” In Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge, 2007: 39-44.

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Chapter Two

If this task was successfully accomplished, then the translator deserved recognition, as Hasan-Ali Yücel, the Minister of Education, observed in the first issue published in 1940: “Translating a work engages the creative processes; consequently a good translator is like a great writer” (Yücel 1940, 8).4 But how were translators to acquire the kind of cultural literacy, as well as proficiency in foreign languages, that would enable them to produce such works? In the Ottoman period, there had been several attempts to introduce some form of foreign language education, beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when ambassadors travelling abroad took with them young Turkish secretaries, whose duty it was to study the languages of Europe-chiefly French-and to learn something of the ways of western society. Two new grammar schools were set up in 1838 at the Sultanahmet and Süleymaniye mosques in Istanbul; their syllabuses included provision for teaching French and modern subjects to pupils who ultimately would become government officials or translators. Five years earlier, the Sultan had created a “translation chamber” (tercüme odası), in the Sublime Porte (the central office of government), and subsequently opened chambers in other departments of state. These developments served to create a new élite who “owed their first steps towards advancement to their knowledge of a foreign language. For the shopkeeper's son, as for the others, French was the talisman that made the clerk a translator, the translator an interpreter, the interpreter a diplomat, and the diplomat a statesman” (Lewis 1968, 118). In the Republican period successive Ministries of Education introduced a far more systematic approach to foreign language education. Several university departments of foreign languages-known as philology departments at the time-were created, and with government support produced an impressive output of research and publication, together with new curricula based on western models. In the Department of English Philology at Ankara University (established in 1936), the origins of the four-year undergraduate programme could be traced back to Oxford University, combining basic literature courses (Shakespeare, the Romantics, the 4

For more on this subject, see Laurence Raw, “Translation in Turkey: Tercüme and the development of a national culture.” Paper given at the “Beyond Europe” conference, British Comparative Literature Association, University of Warwick, July 1991. Hasan-Ali Yücel (1897-1961), also founded the Village Institutes during his time as Minister of Education-which had a profound effect on educational policy in the Turkish Republic. Their effect is explored elsewhere in this volume.

Reconstructing Englishness

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eighteenth and nineteenth century novel) with courses in English grammar and philology, Latin and Greek (Dixon 1991, 66-8). Several young lecturers, both from Ankara and østanbul Universities, were sponsored by the Ministry of Education to undertake postgraduate work in Britain; having returned to Turkey, their experiences helped to develop new approaches to the teaching of language and literature (Uzmen 1998, 43-6). A popular technique, pioneered at Oxford and Cambridge during the late nineteenth century, consisted of giving students a series of philological notes-a set of privileged facts about specific writers and their work. These notes had at least three advantages. Firstly, they could be covered by reference to basic editions and/or literary anthologies, if there was no time in lectures. Secondly, they relieved students of the immense burden of reading an author's complete works (especially difficult in a country like the Turkish Republic, where the works were unavailable, either in English or in translation) Thirdly, they lent themselves precisely to neat summary during examinations. One of the most powerful influences on the teaching of English Language and Literature in the Turkish Republic was F. R. Leavis and members of the Scrutiny group. Leavis himself has been described as “that most potent of educators, a teacher of teachers. Young men whom Leavis taught [...] became lecturers or schoolmasters” (Bergonzi 1990, 47). At least two Turkish lecturers-Vahit Turhan of østanbul University and ørfan ùahinbaú of Ankara University-are known to have attended his seminars; they subsequently played a major part in the development of English Literature studies in Turkey.5 For Leavis English Literature was the central discipline of the humanities; it embodied a tradition of universal values, which had been all but forgotten in a world obsessed with industrialisation, technology and mass communication. It was the literary critic's duty to rediscover and re-enact these values-humanity, religion, morality, creativitythrough a process of responsive critical reading, in order to demonstrate that “literary criticism was culture's gift of wisdom to a blinded civilization” (Bergonzi 1990, 52). If this task was successfully achieved, then perhaps readers and/or students might be encouraged to make the same kind of discriminating judgements for themselves. Although Leavis’ focus of interest was restricted to English society and culture, his approach to literary study seemed eminently appropriate for the newly-established 5

Both Turhan and ùahinbaú enjoyed long and profitable academic careers at the Universities of østanbul and Ankara. They were particularly noted for their Shakespeare translations: ùahinbaú’ version of King Lear formed the basis for the 1983 revival at the Ankara State Theatre, explored elsewhere in this volume.

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Chapter Two

departments of English in the Turkish Republic. He invested literary criticism with a clear rationale, transforming it from part of the profession of letters into a fully-fledged academic (and scientific) discipline-systematic and susceptible to proof. As Francis Mulhern remarks: Where the prevailing modes of discourse in society were content to manipulate abstract ‘counters,’ literary criticism held fast to the concrete and particular; where political and economic thought dwelt exclusively on ‘means,’ literary criticism returned constantly to the problem of ‘ends.’ It was [...] ‘the keenest instrument we (i.e. human beings as a whole) have for the understanding of human values, and hence an indispensable control in the culture as a whole’ (Mulhern 1981, 117-8).

The policy of importing English intellectual and moral values could be justified on numerous counts. Lecturers were encouraged not to imitate their western counterparts, but rather to develop their own approaches to literary criticism, as the writer/academic Halide Edip Adıvar (who became head of the Department of English in østanbul University) observed: “Total and slavish imitation of a model is the very opposite of the spirit of Western civilization. This point needs special attention from late-comers to this civilization” (Adıvar 1946, 11).6 Only then could they contribute significantly to a new, progressive Turkey that rejected its Ottoman past in favour of the modern west. Having completed their training at a British university, lecturers were expected to return to Turkey and start producing original work for themselves. At østanbul University, for instance, a Shakespeare seminar led by Adıvar and Vahit Turhan produced a series of Shakespeare translations in the 1940s and 1950s. These translations, which aimed for linguistic simplicity, in order to communicate the plays’ humane values (even if that meant using prose rather than verse), included commentaries, notes and lengthy critical introductions; and ultimately helped to initiate serious scholarship in Turkey. Hamlet (1941) was the first translation of the play to be rendered from English sources, in a volume that also included a life of Shakespeare, a description of the play’s sources, a list of the dramatis personae, an explanation of some of his more 6

Adıvar (1994-1964), a noted activist during the early years of the Republic, had a profound influence over the growth and development of literary studies in Turkeynot only because of her name, but because of her learning. She wrote a seminal history of English Literature in Turkish, and provided a role-model for successive generations of academics. Her career as an academic has been comprehensively recounted in øpek Çalıúlar, Halide Edib: Biyografisine Sı÷mayan Kadın (Halide Edib: A Woman Beyond Biography) (østanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2010): 409-44.

Reconstructing Englishness

27

obscure allusions (for audiences unacquainted with Greek or Roman mythology), a study of the play’s characters and themes, selections of critical views spanning three centuries, and a guide to the dramatic action (Edib [sic] and Turhan 1941, 1-41). The introduction as a whole ran to forty pages. The volume was so popular that it was used in a production in the same year that ran in østanbul for a record-breaking fifty performances (Paker 1986, 98). These kind of projects have been described by Akbar Ahmed as part of “the Muslim modernist phase,” in which the leaders of many Muslim states engaged with European and/or British methods of criticism, translation or other forms of textual analysis, and subsequently utilized those values in the best interests of the communities they represented (Ahmed 1992, 30). In the seventy years or so since the creation of the first departments of foreign languages and literatures, there has been a gradual tendency towards specialization. English Philology departments have been transformed into English Language and Literature departments, concentrating mostly on literature. English language teaching is currently undertaken in a variety of institutions-private language schools, secondary schools, and university Hazırlıks, whose position in the educational system was explored in the previous chapter. In at least two universities, new departments of translation and interpretation have been established. What is most striking, however, is the extent to which departmental policies still appear to be dominated by the twin beliefs in universalism and the national culture. In a 1976 conference held at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Necla Aytür, then a member of the English department at Ankara University, reemphasized the importance of close textual reading, in which emotion should be allowed to play no part. She believed this was the best way to understand the writer’s purpose in creating “an artistic masterpiece through the use of creativity, that is, […] something that should be learned by the [literature] student” (Aytür 1976, 13). The educator’s primary task was to teach learners how to read (and more importantly understand) the English language as set down in canonical texts, which was “only possible through careful reading. In today’s Turkey the number of young people who have this skill is very low; it is something that can only be acquired through the 7 study of literature” (14). Once that skill had been acquired, learners could make a major contribution to the national culture. At the same conference 7

See also Necla Aytür, Kitaplar Arasında: Amerikan Edebiyatı, Kültür ve Dil Yazıları [Amongst Books: Writings on American Literature, Culture and Language] (østanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2010): 189-201.

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Ahmet Evin of Hacettepe University, Ankara, suggested that learners should be guided towards “an understanding of specific texts, and [be taught] how to analyze them through critical methods” (Evin 1976, 42). This could be best accomplished through acquiring an objective standard of judgment by which to judge a text’s value. Fourteen years later Güray König, from the linguistics department at Hacettepe University, emphasized the fact that English is “a universal language.” If learners acquired proficiency in writing and speaking it, they would make a significant contribution to “the process of modernization” in Turkey (König 1990, 85, 90). Any approaches to foreign language learning, which might have been developed with English and/or American learners in mind, have to be reinterpreted in the best interests of Turkish learners. Thus it may be more advantageous to teach “the English language [and English literature] through local contexts which learners are familiar with,” to prevent the possibility of “serious socio-psychological problems” arising if learners have “to develop a new identity through the target culture” (Özögül 1998, 25). If students acquire competence in a foreign language, and pass the university entrance examination, they may wish to take translation courses, focussing on “the similarities and differences between the two languages [source and target languages].” Once this knowledge has been acquired, then a student can readily contribute “to her own people and language through the introduction of some foreign writers and their works” (Tosun 1985, 134, 131). Alternatively students may wish to embark on a four-year program of English Literature. Although they are dealing with foreign cultural products, it is expected that they should have acquired sufficient linguistic competence to prevent them from experiencing the “serious socio-psychological problems” of the language learner. Ideally the study of English Literature should have a completely different effect on them, as they are exposed to its humanising influence: Students of English Literature are much more understanding, much more tolerant, and open to new ideas. In general, they do not like violence [....] [Literature] should bring people together [...] and to be open to criticism (Do÷ramacı 1999, 15).

However, this can only be achieved by continuing the tradition of English Literature as a scholarly and scientific discipline-in other words, relying on the modified version of Leavisism, introduced in the 1940s and 1950s, whereby texts are subjected to close empirical analysis. Students may learn

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about British Culture, British or English identity, but such knowledge is important only insofar as it sustains the belief that “the [Turkish] state, [and] […] nationality, is of the first importance” (Do÷ramacı 1989, 11). Many of the theoretical developments, which have ultimately challenged and/or discredited Leavis, appear to have been seamlessly accommodated into this literary project. Most English Literature curricula include at least one, if not two literary theory courses at the undergraduate level-the focus is mainly empirical, consisting of a series of fact-based lectures on major western theorists, which students have to learn and reproduce in examinations. Given time and encouragement, students should use this knowledge to develop their own approaches to literary criticism. Himmet Umunç, who co-ordinated a “Criticism Study Group” at Hacettepe University, Ankara during the late 1990s, observed that Our teaching of literary criticism has so far been diachronic, that is, they [the students] have an historical perspective of literary theory; but they do not yet grasp the concept of synchronicity-that is, the structural aspect of theory, and its application at a particular moment. This is what students need to learn in the future; to focus less on the historical perspective and to find out more about how to use a particular theory in the study of literature. They will engage in more applied criticism, and not simply reproduce previously-learned literary theories (Umunç 1999, 7)

Another strategy consists of introducing interdisciplinary courses such as British Studies, or cultural atudies into the curriculum, and then teaching them from a modified Leavisite perspective. Students are given background factual or theoretical material, and subsequently analyse a text about Britain in terms of its universal civilizing function. Here is what one professor who taught cultural studies at Hacettepe University during the late 1990s had to say on the subject: My first lecture was about contemporary British Culture. I gave some bare facts derived partly from Arthur Marwick’s book Culture in Britain Since 1945 (1991), making comparisons with the Turkish situation for the students to have a better understanding both of the issues under discussion and of the context in which they occur by making them see things from a more universal perspective and/or in a global framework. My method was to bring to their attention that while a certain issue was being taken up or had become dominant in Britain, something else, some other issue was more important in Turkey or in other parts of the world; or the same issue

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Chapter Two or phenomenon may have appeared in different countries at different times within the same century or decade or time bracket (Menteúe 1998, 89-90).

Whilst it might be interesting for students to be introduced to contemporary debates in Britain concerning Englishness or English identity outlined at the beginning of this chapter, this should not prompt them to question their own sense of Turkishness, or their belief in the national culture, which is clearly defined in relation to a symbolic Other-the “universal perspective” or the “global framework.” Courses in British Studies or cultural studies should not challenge the universality of English Literature, but rather reinforce it: “Literary texts can answer many of the questions posed by Cultural Studies-on gender, on ethnicity, on identity. Perhaps literary texts can answer these questions even better on occasions” (Menteúe 1999, 7). If any modifications are made to existing curricula, they should be for the benefit of long-established English Literature departments, which “by declaration and tradition, must have acknowledged unequivocally the lasting and universal importance of ‘English’-or perhaps ‘British’ Literature as a scholarly and intellectual discipline.” The newer, less wellequipped departments, on the other hand, may wish to keep up “with the present academic and business scene in this country,” by confining their focus of interest to “Applied Studies in British Language and Culture” or “British and Comperative [sic] Studies” (Bozkurt 1998, 6). It is clear that members of literature departments, as well as those who teach English language or translation, are interested in English or Englishness only if such material serves the interests of the national culture-and even then, they would prefer to treat it from a universalist, rather than a culture-specific perspective. The main justification for this lies in the belief that, particularly in recent years, it has become necessary to resist what many academics perceive as “threats” to the stability of that culture, originating from both outside and inside Turkey. Chris Rumford suggested in the late 1990s that “Instead of official national identity it [globalization] encourages multiple popular identities [...] Modernity and nationalism are under threat from ‘the globalising trends and high technologies of the market [...] [which] ensnarl the country with all their energy and unruliness’” (Rumford 1999, 7). One of these popular identities is a form of Islamic modernism, associated with the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which since 2002 has been the ruling party in the Turkish Republic. Despite the fact that the party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an, has portrayed itself as a moderate and conservative party, advocating a liberal market economy and

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membership of the European Union, it has been perceived as potentially threatening to the country’s secular future. In 2007 thousands of Turks demonstrated in most of the major cities–østanbul, Ankara and øzmir– against the government, which had been criticized by the military for allegedly tolerating radical Islamic activity. “Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” the protestors shouted (“1.2 Million Turks,” 2007) Several pro-secular groups, including NGOs and universities in both the private and public sectors have responded by trying to forge “a new consensus [among the people] that makes communication across social, political and theoretical divides possible while upholding the universal principles of truth and justice” (Bozdo÷an and Kasaba 1997, 12). Even those academics who are not necessarily interested in forging a consensus are still conscious of the importance of literary studies as a way of ensuring the country’s future stability. Iúıl Baú, president of the English Language and Literature Research Association (IDEA), stresses the point in her introductory piece to the proceedings of the Association’s third international conference: “Being a graduate of these [English literature] departments is perceived as a requirement for global cultural integration” (Baú 2008, 3).8 At this point, it might be asked: exactly whose “universal principles of truth and justice” are being invoked here? For the pioneers of western language and literature departments, the answer must seem fairly straightforward; such principles were located in the cultural products of European modernity- for example, F. R. Leavis’ literary criticism - which appears to be the embodiment of “civilized” values. Although this suggests a willing subjection to western imperialism, it can be defended on the grounds that, once these values have been internalized, Turkish literary critics can challenge the whole discursive field in which they have been produced and reproduced. In recent years, however, the concept of universalism has been identified with respect for and loyalty to the national culture. The thinking here is very similar to that of the American conservative E.D. Hirsch jnr., who wrote in the late 1980s that “if we had to make a choice between the one and the many, most Americans would choose the principle of unity, since we cannot function as a nation without it.” American culture might encourage pluralism, but at heart it embodies 8 Baú kindly quotes this article in her analysis, as well as referring to two other sources: Seran Do÷ançay-Atkuna and Zeynep Kızıltepe, “English in Turkey,” World Englishes 24, no. 2 (2005): 253-65, and Seran Do÷ançay-Atkuna, “The Spread of English in Turkey and its Current Sociolinguistic Profile,” Journal of Miltilingual and Multicultural Development 19 (1998): 25-39.

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shared values such as “a civil religion that underlies our civil ethos [...] We believe in altruism and self-help, in equality, freedom, truth telling, and respect for the national law” (Hirsch 1987, 95, 98-9). Whereas contemporary constructions of Englishness might promote respect for local and regional cultures, many academics in Turkey prefer to view such developments through the prism of “universal principles of truth and justice.” Yet to criticize Turkish academics for their apparent conservatism is to assume that western modernity occupies the centre of the world system. The modernist project is still alive and well in the Turkish Republic (as in other parts of the world) which, as Frederic Jameson observes, should remind us that the “liberation” associated with plural identities “can also be experienced as a threat and a force of disintegration of traditions from which new and alternative possibilities might otherwise have been expected to emerge” (Jameson 1998, xv). Many of the Turkish academics quoted in this paper are cultural policy-makers-past and present deans, or heads of department-who have set the educational agenda for many years, and who still have an important role to play in forming the images that the Turkish nation presents both to itself, and within the international arena. In the light of recent developments, particularly in the political field, these policy-makers have been forced to re-examine their objectives and strategies for achieving such objectives. A 1997 book Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey suggested that several factors contributed to the fragmentation of Turkish society-the rise of radical Islam, the reemergence of Kurdish nationalism, and globalisation (Bozdo÷an and Kasaba 1997). Many cultural policy makers–especially in departments of foreign literature–have tried to restore confidence in the national culture by re-emphasizing the value of studying texts from a Leavisite perspective, and thereby giving students access to the kind of universal human values which may teach them the value of tolerance and consensus. They have stressed the significance of such studies to the future well-being of the Turkish nation-hence the emphasis on learning English from a local perspective. Both strategies might be considered reactionary; but from the academics’ point of view they emphasize a continuing commitment to the nation. By contrast, some of the most recent formulations of English identity, such as those outlined at the beginning of this paper, may appear unimportant to Turkish academics. Two interrelated conclusions may be drawn from this-first, that identities are constructed in relation to varying others. Jeremy Paxman contrasts the “new nationalism” of the English with the “England of the British Empire” known to the rest of the world.

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Compare that with the nationalism of Turkish scholars of English Literature, which can be defined by their commitment to Leavisite criticism and secularism. Secondly, it may be fruitful to consider identity in terms of identifications, a series of concerns that people recognize as their own at any given moment in time. This not only enables one to show how different narratives are constructed around particular phenomena-Leavisite criticism, for instance-but also demonstrates how such phenomena can signify a community of which individuals imagine themselves a part. This strategy also enables one to conduct a wider analysis of discourse in which any texts become, in effect, social texts providing fields for identification (Bowman 1994, 138-42). Such identifications are also subject to constant change over time and space. It has become a site of conflict, not restricted by national or cultural boundaries, in which identities are defined and redefined.

CHAPTER THREE RECOGNIZING DIFFERENCE: INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND THE CULTURAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION1

Despite the fact that many humanities departments seek to preserve the values associated with the Turkish national culture, this does not mean that they are immune to change. In recent years there has been a concerted effort by universities–especially the newer institutions in the private sector - to restructure their humanities departments. A two-semester introductory English course for first-year learners at Bilkent University, Ankara, advertised itself as genuinely interdisciplinary or intercultural in nature, offering programs in non-research based writing in the first semester, and research-based writing in the second. In the early 2000s the university represented itself, both in the print media and online, as “committed to a 'liberal arts” approach to education, meaning that learners had the opportunity to study areas outside of their own faculty. They could take a variety of courses, ranging from the Holocaust to film and media studies (Hodson 2000). In the academic year 2000-1 the university implemented a more extensive program of humanities education for engineering learners, organized by American faculty members, which sought to broaden learners’ understanding of inter- and cross-cultural issues through exposure to a wide variety of material, both literary and non-literary (Komins 2000). Another program run by the Department of Cultural Studies at Sabancı University, østanbul, invited learners to explore a range of theoretical models and methodologies for studying the critical relationship between culture, knowledge and power. It is designed to introduce learners to the related disciplines of Anthropology, 1

This essay was originally presented at a conference-“Looking into England”-held at the University of Warwick from 24-30 September 1999. Reprinted with revisions.

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Literary Criticism and Cultural History, and to familiarize them with the scholarly norms, practices, and ethics necessary to investigate the conditions of production, reception and use of contemporary forms of symbolic representation and communication (Sabanci University 2001).

On the face of it, such programs aim to establish an interdisciplinary or intercultural model of learning quite different from that of the older English Literature departments. Here the emphasis is on freedom of choice; on learners being able to transcend disciplinary boundaries and create their own combination of subjects. By doing so, they might become better equipped to investigate the “conditions of production and reception,” both in their own culture and other cultures, and thereby acquire a more developed sense of intercultural competence. This new approach to learning, I suggest, could not have been possible in Turkey were it not for the economic reforms of the 1980s instituted by the then President Turgut Özal. He was implacably opposed to what he called the “deification of the state,” arguing that “development was no longer the prerogative only of the state.” The objective was a new liberalized economic order, open to foreign investment and trade, while at the same time “inculcating a sense of freedom and responsibility to [...] ordinary people” (qtd Robins 1996, 73-4). In the educational sphere, Özal’s policies led to the establishment of private universities set up by entrepreneurs with government help. Learners were now treated as customers, with the freedom to choose whether to pursue further education in the state or private sectors. Even if they could not pay the fees, the private universities offered scholarships, in order to attract the most academically gifted learners. Since the mid-1980s, most private universities have continually tried to market their supposedly unique qualities-a web-based education, or an interdisciplinary approach to cultural studies-providing a flexible alternative to the traditional subject-based education at state universities. Yet perhaps this model is not as radically different as it pretends to be. An interdisciplinary or intercultural education might encourage learners to interact with learners and educators from other cultures, or with Turks living abroad (for example, the Gastarbeiter in Germany). Alternatively it might prompt learners to understand the significance of cultural difference–particularly if a class includes learners from different subject areas. However, it seems that many policy-makers have been more concerned to initiate an acculturation process, in which humanities education has been adapted to reinforce belief in the national culture. Like their counterparts in English Departments discussed in the previous

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chapter, members of the cultural studies department at Sabancı define their objectives in developmental terms: learners should become “cultured” or culturally sensitive. “Cultured,” in this sense, can be defined as the acquisition of sufficient linguistic and/or intercultural competence to pursue careers “informed by culture (ranging from journalism, advertising, public relations, art and literary criticism to politics, diplomacy or administration)” (Sabancı University 2001). This example raises certain interesting questions about the purpose of interdisciplinary or intercultural programs in the Turkish education system. Should one depart from established subject areas, and introduce more radical curricula? Can the notion of interdisciplinarity be translated (or more precisely, acculturated) in a context where a homogenous national culture is promoted over pluralism? Is the term simply a marketing tool, imported by Turkish university departments from the west to demonstrate their commitment to modernization, and at the same time attract the interest of potential undergraduate learners? In some institutions in the state sector the term interdisciplinarity implies that a curriculum should contain a core discipline–for example, literature in American studies– supplemented by other disciplines such as politics or sociology. In the late 1990s I participated in an experiment to introduce a multidisciplinary program in British Studies, based on the idea that there would be no core discipline, with learners acquiring a variety of skills derived from the disciplines of anthropology, literature and media studies (Raw 2000, 24-6). However this experiment foundered, as the program was criticized for its perceived lack of academic rigor. Other institutions, as well as Sabancı, introduced cultural and/or humanities based programs of education, including the state-funded Bo÷aziçi University and the privately owned Bilgi University in the same city. Many of these programs still exist today, but perhaps they are not genuinely focused on pluralist ideas. GĘnül Pultar and Ayúe Lahur Kırtunç remarked in 2004 that the focus in all of them tended to be on “training the students in the theories of the major theories of Anglo-centric cultural studies (with that of the ubiquitous French as part of [their] corpus, to allow them to ‘perform’ namely, do research, teach, participate, in the international academic arena as masterfully as all other international scholars” (Pultar and Kırtunç 2004, 138). On this view the purpose of such programs is very similar to that of the old-style English Literature curricula; to create generations of learners educated in western ideas that will subsequently contribute to the advancement of the national culture. If any alternatives to this model are to be created, then it might be

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incumbent on the cultural policy-makers–university vice-rectors, heads of department, as well as other educators–to come up with new ideas.

Cultural Studies and the Policymakers Major debates over the future of literature and/or interdisciplinary studies in Turkey are comparatively recent: until the late 1990s, with the growth of private universities offering new curricula, most departments (in common with English Literature) were content to accommodate interdisciplinary studies into their existing programs. It was only with the establishment in 1996 of an annual cultural studies conference at Ege University, a state university in øzmir, at first through university funding, and subsequently with the financial support of two foreign cultural agencies, the British Council and the United States Information Service (now absorbed into the State Department), that the future of humanities education really became a subject for debate. In a keynote speech to the 1999 conference, Talât Halman, a former Minister of Culture and the Chair of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University, challenged colleagues to “turn [their] attention to [their] Turkish culture and bring [their] accumulated knowledge and expertise in terms of new perspectives, new analytical strategies to the field [...] It is very rich, waiting to be discovered by its own people” (Halman 2000a, 11). This represented a new departure in terms of humanities education; rather than focusing on foreign cultural or intercultural study, Halman suggested that educators should focus on Turkish cultures, adopting a pluralistic approach that might lead to the formulation of new theories and strategies. If that meant using Turkish as opposed to English as the mode of communication, then this was perfectly justified on the grounds that this might be the best means to express “the basic keys to understanding a culture [within the Republic]” (Pultar and Kırtunç 2004, 147). At the same time a new group was formed, comprising twelve educators from various departments, in both the state and private sectors, calling itself the Türkiye Kültür Araútırmaları Grubu [Group for Cultural Studies in Turkey]. Its main aims, as set forth in a mission statement (written in both Turkish and English), were as follows: Cultures generated over centuries in what is now Turkey and by Turks [...] constitute an invaluable heritage. Yet studies pursued in this field of culture [...] often do not go beyond descriptive work that merely transcribes or reports documentary material. Devoid of a critical perspective and failing to offer any synthesis, these studies have fallen

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Chapter Three behind cultural studies done currently in the West [...] [which] have evolved in an interdisciplinary direction [...] (Cultural Studies Group 2001).

The group has defined its aim as “using an interdisciplinary scholarly approach, to develop methodolog[ical] and theoretical formulations by carrying out research in cultural history and comparative cultural studies; and to conduct and support applied studies” (Cultural Studies Group).2 In June 2000, the Group held a major two-day seminar, supported by the Ministry of Culture, on “Migration on our Culture,” in which members spoke briefly about different facets of cultural studies, both in Turkey and elsewhere. Topics included a brief history of the discipline in Turkey, popular culture, cultural studies in anthropology, architecture and cultural studies, literature and cultural studies. The seminar participants (around 75 in all) were subsequently divided into discussion groups, organized by subject area (literature, social science, fine arts, etc.), and debated the future of cultural studies in Turkey, before coming together for a final panel. Press reaction to the event divided into two camps. On the one hand, there were those who believed that existing subjects-such as literature (whether Turkish or foreign literature) already covered much of the theoretical and methodological ground mapped out by the conference. If this was the case, then there is very little need for educational reform (Onaran 2000, 6). On the other hand, there were others who stressed that cultural and/or interdisciplinary studies could contribute to the reform of humanities education in the Turkish Republic through an analysis of the workings of power in Turkish society (Kahraman 2000, 9), or through the regular publication of short essays on the topic in both Turkish and English (Kırtunç 2000, 6). Since then the group have organized a series of events and brought the work of different theorists to light – for example, the anthropologist Bozkurt Güvenç, Suat Sinano÷lu, author of Türk Humanizmi [Turkish Humanism] (1980), and Hilmi Ziya ĥlken, author of øslam Düúüncesi [Islamic Thought] (1946).3 They have held regular conferences at various venues in Turkey; the latest on media and culture took place in 2

I have to admit an interest in this group, as I was invited to be one of the founder members in 1999. 3 Bozkurt Güvenç (1926-), architect and sociologist, author of essential works on Turkish identity (1992, 2008) as well as education (1991); Suat Sinano÷lu, also a sociologist, featured on the cover of Life Magazine in the USA in 1963; Hilmi Ziya Ülken (1901-74) philosopher and novelist who spent most of his career at Ankara and østanbul Universities.

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July 2009. Meanwhile the group has now morphed into an association with its own website (Kültür Araútırmaları Derne÷i, 2010). Perhaps we might look more closely at the association, its purpose and its aims, in the light of the preceding discussion on humanities, cultural studies and interdisciplinarity. It is evident from the original name “Group for Cultural Studies in Turkey” that the association identified itself as acting in the national interest; in the early years it obtained the support of the Ministry of Culture. There may be ideological conflicts between individual association members, but such conflicts are mitigated by a shared belief in the importance of adopting a pluralistic approach to culture and/or education. This creates a paradoxical situation in which the association’s activities are informed by the principles of certainty (a shared concern for intellectual advancement) and relativism, wherein all knowledge is formed as a series of hypotheses open to challenge (Giddens 1990, 44). The association’s activities provide a good example of how national cultures can accommodate notions of pluralism, as theorized by Stuart Hall: Instead of thinking of national cultures as unified, we should think of them as a discursive device which represents difference as unity or identity. They are cross-cut by deep internal divisions and differences, and ‘unified’ only through the exercise of different forms of cultural power (Hall 1992, 297).

Sixty years ago, the Ministry of Education created the Translation Bureau, with the specific objective of translating western canonical works into Turkish, and rendering them accessible to the widest possible readership. This issue has been explored elsewhere in the book. It seems that history repeated itself in 2000, as the Ministry of Culture sponsored an association whose stated aim was to create pluralist approaches to studying different aspects of Turkish cultures. In the last decade the association has more than fulfilled its objectives, having promoted a series of events and advanced the work of scholars whose methodologies are the equals of, if not superior to those of their colleagues in the west. As their work is written in Turkish, rather than English, they can encourage future scholars and learners from a variety of disciplines and/or backgrounds towards a deeper understanding (and appreciation) of their indigenous cultures. At the most basic level the association’s work has been interdisciplinary, in the fact that its members have been drawn from different disciplinesliterature, sociology, anthropology and architecture. On the one hand, this represents a radical departure from established educational practice-apart

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from isolated instances (such as the cultural studies program at Sabancı University), educators have restricted their focus of attention to their own subject discipline. On the other hand, the limits of interdisciplinarity were clearly defined: as the original mission statement suggested, it existed to promote syntheses of material drawn from different disciplines, helping educators to formulate new critical perspectives, which would have a greater local significance than the kind of cultural studies practiced in the west. Like the old-style literature departments, the association’s ideological emphasis has always centered on progress, development and modernization; however, they have always welcomed pluralistic approaches to the study of Turkish cultures. In its first few years, the association seemed to provide a good example of the workings of the public sphere in what Jürgen Habermas has described as “social-welfare-state democracies,” in which representatives from diverse subject constituencies negotiated and compromised among themselves and with government officials (representatives of the Ministry of Culture), while excluding the public from their proceedings. Public opinion-as expressed through the press-is, to be sure, taken into account, but not in the form of unrestricted public discussion (Habermas 1989, xii). The limits are clearly defined, both through the association’s mission statement, and through the papers accepted for presentation at seminars. Press coverage serves less as a means of providing a forum for information and debate, and more as a means for promoting the association’s message about the importance of creating new interdisciplinary approaches to studying the humanities and/or social sciences in the Turkish Republic. Of the four reviews that appeared following the seminar in June 2000, two were written by Group members themselves (Halman 2000b, 15; Kırtunç 2000, 6); one was authored by a member of Sabancı University's cultural studies faculty (Kahraman 2000, 9), while the remaining review was written by a literary critic (Onaran 2000, 6). On the other hand, the association has also encouraged research from an anti-disciplinary perspective, encouraging radical interventions from scholars more concerned with local rather than national interests. Many papers have been delivered on topics such as the cultures of displacement and transplantation; cultures which might be described as internally diasporic. Recent analyses published in English of østanbul’s rapidly expanding upper-middle class suburbs (Danıú 2000, 123-31) and gypsy culture (Yumul 2000, 111-23), have revealed the existence of hybrid identities, which consciously challenge the belief in an homogenous

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Turkish culture.4 Researchers are free to write (and publish) whatever they wish, even what might appear “radical” from one point of view might well be considered “progressive” from another. On this view perhaps the association’s future is assured; not only does it foster new inter- (or anti-) disciplinary perspectives that challenge the hegemony of westernoriginated methods of study, but it offers the chance for scholars from different backgrounds to make their own interventions, and thereby foster the pluralist cause.

4

Since I wrote this article a number of studies have appeared on the same subject in English. Most recently øpek Türeli’s essay “østanbul Through Migrants’ Eyes,” addresses the whole question of immigration and class especially in the year 2010 when it became one of the European Cities of Culture (In Operating østanbul, eds. Deniz Göktürk, Levent Soysal and Türeli, London and New York: Routledge, 2010: 144-65).

CHAPTER FOUR TOWARDS A PEDAGOGY FOR TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES1

While the Cultural Studies Association has encouraged scholarly activity that adopts a pluralistic view of Turkish cultures, they have not to date made any innovations in terms of pedagogical theory. This seems surprising, as many writers in the past have dealt with this topic-for example øsmail Hakkı Tonguç (1893-1960), one of the architects of the Village Institutes [Köy Enstitütleri], which were established by Minister of Education Hasan-Ali Yücel during the single-party era of the 1940s as a way of spreading mass education. Unfortunately the Institutes were closed for good in soon afterwards, but Tonguç’s work still remains as testament to the prevailing spirit of innovation of that period. In his view education should give everyone, regardless of class, gender or background, the chance to express themselves, permit the unheard to speak up, and ensure that the hitherto suppressed experiences of individuals should be valued: “These heroes [particularly the peasants] enduring misfortunes […] will speak out [….] Then we will hear new sounds. It is necessary to listen to these sounds without being appalled. It is necessary to greet those who bring new colors and sounds from the village with respect. Then we will understand the real village and our country” (Tonguç 1947, 43-5).2 Such 1

Much of the material for this chapter is based on “Towards a Pedagogy for Adaptatıon Studies, by Laurence Raw and Sevgi ùahin, in Redefining Adaptation Studies, eds. Laurence Raw, Dennis Cutchins and James M. Welsh (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2010): 71-85. 2 øsmail Hakkı Tonguç (1893-1960), educational philosopher, helped to establish the Village Institutes after a career spent in primary education not only in Turkey but in other parts of Eastern Europe. His ideas. He also helped to establish children’s villages [Cocuklar Köyü] in the Turkish Republic and Sweden. All translations of Tonguç’s work are by Seçkin Özsoy in his article “A Utopian Educator from Turkey.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 7, no. 2 (2008): 250-278.

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ideals could not be accomplished through state intervention; rather they had to be implemented by enlightened educators who could help people to be “stimulated and brought [to] consciousness in such a way that nothing and nobody can exploit them cruelly for their own account, treat them as serfs and turn them into work animals who work unconsciously without any charge” (85). In considering Tonguç’s ideas, we have to understand that they were very much influenced by the prevailing conditions in late 1940s Turkey: more than 80% of the population at that time lived in conditions which could best be described as Spartan. The government did not expect them to think for themselves; rather they sought to keep them under control through deliberate neglect. Tonguç believed that the peasants should be able to participate in all areas of government, “beginning from the village to the parliament, without looking for any prerequisites other than the qualifications he [sic] has and […] to raise the awareness of Republican citizenship in the peasants to act” (qtd Altunya 2002, 2). He wanted to create “new human types,” who could “overcome nature and fate,” “created new opportunities for life,” who were of benefit to society, “capable of standing on their own two feet and is competent in their career” (Tonguç 1947, 19). The only way to achieve this would be through a genuinely democratic education, allowing everyone to realize their “creative potential through their voluntary participation in social life and by working for society’s well-being […] Democracy and freedom are […] the never-ending processes of people’s (demos) self-creation and freedom” (Özsoy 2009, 267). Tonguç also believed that this could only be achieved through “education as praxis”–in other words, the kind of education that “reinforces the individual’s control over his/ her own life and liberates his/ her vision” (Özsoy 2009, 269). He had no time for “knowledge memorized; it is the general and pure knowledge learned through work at work” (Tonguç 1947, 664). In today’s parlance, what Tonguç advocated was a learner-centered education that would teach practical as well intellectual skills: the word “work” embodied both concepts for him. His vision was not liberal but liberating, designed to empower all learners. Tonguç’s ideas were not universally popular: in a 1998 article M. Asim Karaömerlioglu dismissed him as a fanatical Kemalist determined to indoctrinate the peasants and thereby persuade them to support the ruling hegemony (Karaömerlioglu 1998, 47-73). Nonetheless Tonguç adumbrates many of the ideas put forward by western theorists over the last two decades or so. In Critical Pedagogy, the State and Cultural Struggle

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Henry A. Giroux argues for the creation of “a pedagogy […] that allows educators to understand how subjectivities are produced within those social forms in which people move but which are often only partially understood” (Giroux 1989, 145). Once that goal has been achieved, then educators and learners alike can understand how experiences are constructed and reconstructed in different contexts. This type of activity might be described as “learning for empowerment […] [that] both confirm[s] and critically engage[s] the knowledge and experience through which learners authorize their own voices and social identities” (Giroux 1989, 149). This type of learning moves away from educator-centered instruction and creates instead what Paolo Friere describes as a “problem posing” environment which affirms learners and lecturers alike as “beings who transcend themselves” (qtd Macedo 1994, xviii). However Tonguç’s ideas tended to be neglected in the Turkish Republic, especially during the mid-twentieth century. In departments of foreign language education the policy of imitation gained ascendancy, while the search for original solutions to education declined (Ünder 2008, 421). There was also the question of changing curricula: in 1998 the Ministry of Education redesigned the undergraduate programs of the teacher training departments–which produced foreign language educators– so that many theoretical courses were replaced by practical courses. Hasan Ünder cites the example of Ankara University, which currently runs a doctoral program in the philosophy of education, but has no suitably qualified educators to teach it (Ünder 2008, 425). In literature departments most educators adopted a Leavisite approach to analyzing literary texts, with the emphasis placed on acquiring objective judgment of the worth of a text, rather than actively engaging with it and thereby acknowledging the presence of difference in the classroom. This chapter will reflect on how Tonguç’s ideas might form the basis for a more innovative pedagogy for teaching literature and language both at school and university level. I begin by exploring the consequences of introducing new cultural or interdisciplinary curricula into universities, and whether such innovations (which have been quite widespread since the late 1990s) have actually had an effect on teaching methods. While learners are encouraged to draw on their own experience in such courses, I still suggest that the (western) text remains the most important object of study, which might prove the truth of Hasan Ünder’s assertion that many educational institutions in the Turkish Republic are still dominated by the desire to imitate their western counterparts. In the next section of this paper, which describes in detail my experience of teaching literary texts over the last

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two years in a department of English Language Teaching (ELT) at Baúkent University, Ankara, Turkey; and subsequently presenting my findings at a conference in østanbul, I propose that greater attention needs to be given to the aims of language and literature education, enabling learners to reshape classic texts according to their own local culture, using whatever language– English or Turkish–they prefer. By this means they can understand how the classroom offers a research-based space for experiment and creativity, promoting active literacy as well as creating an atmosphere suitable for Tonguç’s learning for empowerment. Following Sabancı University’s example, several state universities revised their curricula in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to accommodate changing theoretical and pedagogic approaches. GĘnül Pultar and Ayúe Lahur Kırtunç observe that at Ege University, øzmir, the Department of American Literature introduced new courses in semiotics and film study to promote “awareness [amongst learners] that they could adapt the same skills [acquired] in deconstructing and analyzing academic cultural products for texts that were not part of their curriculum. This meant a significant improvement in the critical thinking abilities of the students” (Pultar and Kırtunç 2004, 132). In this model textual study was approached from an interdisciplinary perspective: learners viewed films (or other types of text) as products of a particular moment in American history, and engage with the social, political and historical issues arising from them. The objective here was not to reinforce the status of the American literary canon, but rather to show how the meaning of classic texts can change over time.3 If learners could empathize with this process, then they would be well on their way to developing their “critical thinking abilities.” But I am not sure that such courses develop active engagement with a text. The Department of Cultural Studies at Sabancı University claimed in 2008 that, by means of their “critical pedagogical practice” of comparing locally produced texts to those produced in other countries (especially the west), learners will be able both to analyze and participate in “contemporary cultural dynamics in Turkey and the world at large” (Sabancı University 2008). This might go some way towards fulfilling Tonguç’s vision of learning for empowerment by promoting inter- or cross-cultural comparison. For example learners can analyze texts closely as a means of investigating their own received opinions about the foreign 3

I have adopted a similar approach in two recent books: Adapting Henry James to the Screen: Gender, Fiction and Film (Lanham MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006), and Adapting Nathaniel Hawthorne to the Screen: Forging New Worlds (Lanham MD: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 2008).

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culture, which are often of a partial and prejudiced nature. However this approach still has its neo-colonialist elements; it does not permit learners to value their own experience, but simply to draw upon it as a way of interpreting a western text (whose significance as an object of study remains unchallenged). The educator’s role in this critical pedagogical practice remains unclear; what strategies should they use to analyze the “contemporary cultural dynamics in Turkey and the world at large?” The solution, it seems to me, lies in creating a pedagogy derived to a large extent from Tonguç’s ideas, placing the learner rather than the educator at the center of the classroom experience. The remainder of this chapter will concentrate on how I tried to achieve to achieve this in my own classrooms, focusing in particular on how poetry might be taught both to trainee educators of English, and to the learners they will eventually work with in schools. Let me begin by describing my current academic situation. In 2007 I transferred from the Department of American Culture and Literature at Baúkent University, Ankara (which practices a model of “critical pedagogical practice” similar to that of Sabancı University) into the Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) within the same institution. In my ELT department undergraduates undergo a course of professional training, with the emphasis placed firmly on practical rather than theoretical issues–something common to all foreign language teacher education departments. A course such as “Approaches to English Language Teaching” introduces learners to presentation strategies, as well as understanding the significance of nonverbal communication in the classroom. In the final two years of their curriculum learners work parttime in high schools with practicing educators, at first acting as observers and subsequently teaching classes on their own (to a maximum of twenty hours per semester). Learners work with young learners of English from a variety of age groups ranging from 7 to 17. The four-year undergraduate curriculum also contains six literaturebased courses (out of a total of thirty-five), comprising a two-term foundation course (“Introduction to English Literature”), plus four courses in “Analysis and Teaching” focusing on the short story, the novel, poetry and drama. Hitherto these courses had been taught as survey courses, giving learners an introduction to classic British and American literary texts in an attempt to expand their knowledge of foreign cultures. Most of the teaching to date has been through lectures, in the belief that this is the quickest and most effective means to transmit information, as well as helping learners to acquire sufficient knowledge of the text under study (its socio-historical origins, for instance) to as to be able to comment

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objectively on it. The thinking here, as with most literature-based courses in the Turkish Republic, owes a lot to Leavis. With the approval of our department chair (who wanted to improve the learners’ linguistic skills, as well as their teaching techniques), I dispensed with the lecture format and collaborated with the learners to create an alternative syllabus-design incorporating a variety of texts–novels, poems, films and sound recordings. The inspiration for this came from Tonguç’s model of participative learning, in which everyone has the right to determine how a lesson–or a series of lessons–might be organized. This approach to syllabus design also exploited the learners’ existing skills; by their third year they have become accustomed to adapting materials for their ELT lesson plans, using textbooks and/or other available resources (newspaper cuttings, website material, etc.). My second objective was to develop ways of increasing the learners’ self-confidence through negotiation. With this in mind, the first week of the course was devoted to defining its aims and objectives, focusing in particular on how the material used in class might best benefit everyone in terms of improving their teaching technique. In the end we came up with the idea that, while the choice of texts for the course was very much the learners’ responsibility, they would seek to find ways of analyzing and teaching them according to their own culture-specific social, cultural and/or academic requirements. Rather than simply using a text as a basis for intercultural comparison (as in the Sabancı University model), we acknowledged the fact that they are consumed differently in different contexts. I use the term “consume” deliberately: in our course the focus was not on content (what is contained within the text), but rather on process–how a text is constructed and reconstructed by writers, readers and learners. To the best of our knowledge this kind of creative pedagogy had rarely been attempted in literature courses: the prospect was not only fascinating (especially at Baúkent University, where a large proportion of the learners originate not from the three principal metropolises–Ankara, østanbul and øzmir–but from smaller provincial cities or rural villages) but also daunting. All of us–educator and learners alike-drew upon our own experience of reading and adapting other literary texts, and then had to explain how that experience shaped our understanding of the text. This experience formed the basis of creating lesson-plans for use in schools. To give one example-in the course “Poetry: Analysis and Teaching” learners chose their own texts and tried to create new and innovative ways of presenting them in the language class, using role-plays, prediction and writing activities. The motivation for this was not hard to identify; hitherto they had only learned poetry through Leavis-inspired methods of close

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textual analysis, communicated chiefly through the lecture format. Consequently they wanted to develop more active modes of teaching and learning that would not only promote greater empathy with the text but also increase awareness of the sound, as well as the sense of words. Among the most popular texts were poems specifically intended for children–such as Lewis Carroll’s “Beautiful Soup,” or Roger McGough’s “The Leader”– as well as short lyrics such as Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird Came Down the Walk.” One group working on the Carroll poem drew on their experiences of the popular Turkish television program Yemekteyiz (itself an adaptation of the British lifestyle program Come Dine With Me), in which a group of five contestants cook meals for each other and give their evaluations in terms of marks out of ten. At the end of each week (after each contestant has cooked a meal), the person with the most marks is judged the winner. In the learners’ version the speaker of the Carroll poem was transformed into Yemekteyiz contestant desperately trying to satisfy her guests’ desire for “beautiful soup.” In the end the guests had had their fill, but the contestant decided to teach them a lesson by giving them so much soup that they were eventually sick. The last stanza (“Beau-ootiful Soo-oop!/ Beau-ootiful Soo-oop!/ Soo-oop of the e-e-evening,/ Beautiful, beauti-FUL SOUP!”) was delivered in a gleeful tone, as the contestant watched the guests suffering. This version of the poem parodied a common theme of Yemekteyiz, where most contestants take a dislike to one another’s food, even before they have tasted it. Through the collaborative activity of rewriting the poem according to their own experience, the learners came to understand how Carroll chooses words as much for their sound as their sense. Roger McGough’s poem “The Leader”–chosen by a mixed group of learners (three girls and one boy)–was reconstructed to expose prevailing gender stereotypes in Turkish high schools, where the boys are expected to be dominant, even if they have no idea what to do. This is partly attributable to family background (patriarchy is still very strong, especially outside the main urban areas), as well as cultural conditioning within most high schools, whose curricula actively promote a division between “masculine” subjects (mathematics, science) and “feminine” subjects (English, foreign languages). With this in mind, McGough’s poem, especially when delivered by a male learner, becomes a lament for his lost masculinity. Another group worked with Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird Came Down the Walk” in the belief that the poem’s basic premise (the speaker observing a bird’s movements) could be easily appreciated by learners regardless of context. The traditional lecture-based way of teaching poetry in the classroom requires close analysis of structure, language, metaphor

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and so on; but in many classrooms such tasks only de-motivate learners as they try to make sense of what might seem an intractable text. Our learners tried to deal with this by developing dramatic activities using both English and Turkish that appeared essential to create involvement and to achieve a better understanding and response from the learners: A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw. And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pass. He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroadThey looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home Then oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon, Leap, splashless, as they swim (Dickinson 2009).

Their lesson plan was divided into three parts. At the very beginning of the class, a warmer activity focused on the title “A Bird Came Down,” and what it might mean to learners (and their learners). The responses from the rest of the class were culturally significant: the memory of watching a bird eating a worm evoked memories of childhood, family and social stability. In many communities in the Turkish Republic, both urban and rural, the family constitutes the basic unit of society; when learners graduate, they are often expected to return home and prepare for marriage and parenthood. In the second activity the poem was read out loud, with any unknown vocabulary explained on the board by means of visual equipment and materials. The poem was read out once again, while the group members acted out each line silently with the help of props such as a cardboard beak

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and a feather boa extending across the shoulders and arms to approximate wings. Having witnessed the role-play, the rest of the class were divided into groups and invited to discuss the poem’s meaning in whichever language they preferred–English or Turkish. Again the theme of childhood, home and family became an important topic: why did the bird’s eyes look like “frightened beads,” or example? Was it because he was alone, without the security of anyone to look after him? And what did the metaphor of “rowed him softer home/ Then oars divide the ocean” actually mean? There were numerous explanations: for example, the birds were so small that they made no impression on the sea or the ocean. Once again this discussion stimulated memories of the learners’ childhood; and how many young people remain oblivious to the natural world surrounding them– especially those brought up in the large concrete apartment blocks that disfigure many of Turkey’s urban landscapes. In the final activity the class were asked to write a short story–either in Turkish or English-based on the poem, but choosing other animals instead of birds. So the poem could be rewritten as “A Cat Came Down” or “A Dog Came Down” or even “A Human Being Came Down.” This activity proved particularly interesting; some of the learners’ work was deliberately comic–suggesting, perhaps, a certain reluctance to engage with Dickinson’s material-with a dog taking a bone or a biscuit, suggesting (perhaps) that the poem might be about an animal’s feeding rituals. Others took the poem as a romantic idealization of a bird by a speaker longing to acquire its freedom, yet painfully aware that she could not. Dickinson remained a human being, unable to fly. Once again this evoked painful associations: many learners likened themselves to caged birds, unable to realize their dreams of freedom in a family environment where their destiny had already been mapped out after they graduate–job, marriage, home and family. This helps to why teaching English is so popular amongst young female undergraduates (or, more precisely, their parents, who choose the course on their children’s behalf); once they graduate, they are expected to return to their home towns, teach English in local schools or universities and start a family of their own. When this activity was presented as an example of collaborative classroom practice at an international conference attracting Turkish and international participants in October 2008, one American participant understood Dickinson’s poem as a nostalgic evocation of childhood. The bird was re-imagined as a symbol of lost youth flying over an endless ocean, while the butterflies “off banks of noon” evoked a spring-like world of perpetual sunshine (“noon” in this sense, being re-characterized as a symbol of the best part of the day). Dickinson’s poem appealed so deeply

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to his inner soul that he could not bear even to read it out to his fellow conference-participants. What are the conclusions that might be drawn from such activities for the future of language and literature teaching in the Turkish Republic? The majority of activities described in this chapter were designed as group activities, in which learners were empowered as a result of cooperation and collaboration using whatever language they wished. This “work” (understood in Tonguç’s sense as both intellectual and practical work) helped them to become more confident learners, once they presented their findings to the rest of the class (for example, by talking openly about their own lives). The experience also helped them to learn more about themselves and their backgrounds as well as valuing their own responses. More importantly, when they presented the same activities to their own classes during their teaching practice, they had sufficient confidence to manage the class on their own. This proved extremely useful in implementing Tonguç’s principle that education should teach self-reliance, as well as helping learners in their future careers. From my own point of view as the educator, this kind of approach to language and literature teaching involved a minimum of extra input; rather than telling my learners whether their interpretations were “right” or “wrong,” I invited them to consume the poems; in other words, reconstruct them according to their own cultural values. As this chapter has suggested, this process taught them a lot about their backgrounds and aspirations (or lack of them, in some cases). This is perhaps the best form of learning for empowerment: learners and educators use the experience of a text to learn about themselves and their potential. Once the course “Poetry: Analysis and Teaching” had been rethought in this way, it provided an alternative to the kind of learning experienced in many practical courses taught at the university level, which according to one researcher tend to be “overwhelmingly prescriptive,” denying the learners the opportunity to learn “through explanatory talk and discussion” (Akünal 1993, 257). The same applies to courses taught in Turkish both in foreign language and other teacher training departments.4 From a language teaching perspective, our course emphasized the fact that 4

Many graduates of teacher training departments other than ELT have drawn on their experiences as a basis for research into teaching standards. See, for example, Gülsen Ba÷ıo÷lu, “Genel, Mesleki, ve Teknik E÷itim Fakülterindeki Ö÷retmenlik Uygulaması Dersine øliúkin Ö÷retim Elemanı ve Ö÷renci GĘrüúleri” [Lecturers’ and Students’ Opinions on Teaching Practice Courses Offered in General, Vocational and Technical Education Faculties], MA diss., Hacettepe University, 1997.

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Chapter Four [L]anguage is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated–overpopulated– with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents is a difficult and complicated process (Kramsch 1993, 27).

However difficult that process might be, it is nonetheless liberating, helping us to hear what Tonguç believes are the “new sounds” of learners with the confidence to express their opinions in a non-judgmental environment. Could this model be reproduced in other educational contexts within the Turkish Republic? In English language departments, the answer is certainly yes. Teacher training encompasses various methods of assessment, ranging from portfolios of essays, lesson plans and peer evaluation of performance in the classroom. By focusing on how texts can be used in the classroom, inspired by Tonguç’s theories, we can identify the learner’s needs more closely; and perhaps reformulate the curriculum to accommodate them. At present this looks a remote prospect; most teacher trainer curricula in Turkey are still determined by the Ministry of Education [Milli E÷itim Bakanlı÷ı], which appears indifferent to any theoretical innovations acknowledging regional and/or cultural differences amongst learners. However individual courses can still be reoriented (such as the “Poetry: Analysis and Teaching” course). In other contexts– particularly in literature departments–both foreign and Turkish literatures– Tonguç’s theories might prompt more reflection on how texts are produced and reproduced in different contexts, as well as encouraging active rather than passive reading. Learners are not simply exposed to the best of western classics as part of their cultural education, but instead acquire a practical, “general and pure knowledge” (Tonguç’s term) about the writing process. This in turn might help them release their potential–which could provide a justification for the introduction of creative writing courses into the curriculum. Seçkin ėzsoy remarked recently that “the world [especially in the Turkish Republic] more than ever needs wise individuals who are ‘realistic and desire the impossible’ and who in this way expand the borders of the possible, who criticize the existing in light of what is supposed to be and produce alternatives soon, who ‘plant utopias and harvest realities’” (ėzsoy 2009, 272). This chapter proposes an approach to learning which tries to “expand the borders of the possible” in the hope of challenging the realities of language (and to a lesser extent, literature) education in the Turkish Republic. My recent teaching experience attests to the value of a

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collaborative approach to learning, in which learners and educators alike engage in a process of discovering not only how texts can be reshaped, but also finding out more about the contexts in which they live and work. By “doing” literature through language–writing, creating and discussing it–we forged a mutual bond, while simultaneously learning to understand one another better.

CHAPTER FIVE THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE MODERNIZATION OF THE TURKISH EDUCATION SYSTEM1

The question of Turkey’s entry into the European Union has been on the political agenda for decades. Although obtaining candidate status, there has not yet been any definite date set for the country’s admittance. According to Bülent Tarman, this reluctance can be attributed to Turkey’s ambivalent relationship with the European Union, and the European Union’s reluctance to classify Turkey as a European nation (Tarman 2008, 10). Such ideological obstacles can only be negotiated through a change of mind-set both on Turkey’s and the European Union’s part. The European Union and the Modernization of the Turkish Education System looks at how this issue might be addressed from a Turkish perspective. Tarman argues that the best way to alter anti-European attitudes is to reform the education system, which he believes is too limited in scope, based on teacher-centered methods and using textbooks with a nationalistic focus. Tarman sets forth a program of reform, focusing in particular on the teaching of history and social studies. His research is based on two major data sources–a series of interviews with policy-makers and academics and a 2004 document “The Curriculum of Social Studies and Citizenship,” which proposes a radical shake-up of existing high school curricula. Tarman’s interviewees criticize previous Ministers of Education and their civil servants, who tended to be “incredibly backward concerning the establishment of human rights consciousness […] they still regarded the citizen as different from the state” (109). However the Turkish people have 1

Review of The European Union and the Modernization of the Turkish Education System by Bülent Tarman. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008, first published on the Education Review website http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev851.pdf (July 2009). Reprinted with permission.

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been incredibly adaptable once they understand the significance of a particular cause: “When we came from Central Asia and met with the Muslims, we proved that we can carry and live Islam better than the Arabs do” (110). In terms of history and social studies education, the main objective consists of developing a persuasive strategy that will encourage reform. Tarman argues that this can be best achieved through a bottom-up approach, encouraging teachers and students to develop their own curricula attuned to their specific needs. The Ministry of Education’s role should be to provide resources designed to expedite this process–in other words, acting as a facilitator rather than as a monolithic organization, imposing their will on high schools. Tarhan shows how the government-sponsored report “Curriculum of Social Studies and Citizenship” (2004) was inspired by the example of other countries within the European Union. It proposes an emphasis on skill-based learning and on more democratic approaches to classroom practice promoting collaboration rather than teacher-centeredness. The document also proposes a variety of approaches to historical enquiry– while not underestimating the importance of Turkish nationalism (and its origins in the creation of the Republic in 1923), the authors recommend the development of oral, family and local histories. Perhaps “herstory” should be studied alongside “history.” Students should develop a more openminded approach to the subject; rather than focusing on fact-based learning, they should learn to question written and/or visual evidence, and participate in research trips both in their local area and elsewhere, to learn how the past influences the present. However there are certain obstacles to reform. Tarman suggests that the Turkish education system lacks the resources, both financial and educational. While inner-city schools could readily redevelop their curricula, the majority of rural institutions lack textbooks as well as access to the Internet. Tarman also quotes from certain unnamed nationalist teachers, who approach such initiatives with suspicion as examples of “rightist, liberal and conservative thought […] based on the globalist liberal mentality [and] does not include the variety and richness in this country [i.e. Turkey]” (140). The European Union and the Modernization of the Turkish Education System ends on an optimistic note by showing how Turkey has already embarked on the reforming process, with the nationalist mentality being gradually superseded by beliefs in individual rights, pluralism and democratization. Tarman believes that this change can be expedited through a variety of strategies–reducing the influence of the military over

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the educational agenda; abolishing YėK, the Higher Education Council (a government-appointed body responsible for all state university education) and allowing universities to govern themselves; and promoting greater exchanges between teachers and administrators in Turkey and the rest of Europe. Tarman’s book offers a coherently argued blueprint for the future of history and social studies teaching in Turkish schools. Sometimes it betrays its origins as a doctoral thesis; the author draws on Milton J. Bennett’s model of intercultural sensitivity, which contributes little to the overall argument. As a work advocating a bottom-up approach to educational practice, I’d have liked to hear more from history and/or social studies teachers in high schools, focusing in particular on their day-to-day experiences in class, and assessing whether there are any realistic opportunities for reforming the curriculum. Sometimes their views offer an important counterweight to those expressed by academics or policymakers. Nonetheless Tarman’s book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in educational reform in the social sciences, whether in Turkey or elsewhere in the Near Eastern region.

CHAPTER SIX POSTCARDS FROM øSTANBUL

This sequence of personal reflections, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from May 3-7, 2010 to celebrate østanbul’s elevation to European City of Culture during 2010, had two main aims: firstly, to prove the point made by the author Moris Farhi (one of the contributors) that “østanbul is where the spirit of Turkey becomes palpable […] Every panorama from the Bosporous [sic] or from the Sea of Marmara or from the luxurious expanses of pine and cypress woods reflect centuries of history (Farhi 2007, 415). The second objective of this sequence was more intriguing–to suggest that life in østanbul can be likened to a circle with no horizontal or vertical axis. Anyone can plunge into that circle, so long as they understand that there exist no clear starting-points, thresholds or endings; past, present and future are inextricable. Elif ùafak–another contributor to the sequence–expresses the point succinctly: “No matter at which instant or with what particular instant I make the first move, there will always be a time preceding that start of mine–always a past ahead of every past and hence never a veritable outset” (ùafak 2004, 8). The first talk given by Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, took us back to ancient times, when Emperor Constantine chose the city as the new capital of his Roman empire. By naming it “Constantinople,” or the new Rome, Beard suggested that Constantine tried to re-orient Roman culture towards the east. This movement has continued throughout the city’s checkered history, especially during the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4, when the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the city, which was at that time capital of the eastern Roman Empire. The campaign has been identified as one of the final acts in the great schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Beard subsequently looked at what she identified as østanbul’s unique fusion of cultures–for example, Hagia Sophia began life as a church built in AD 360, and was rebuilt several times until it was sacked by the Fourth

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Crusaders. By 1453 the church had been converted into a mosque as the Ottomans conquered the city. Nearly five centuries later the mosque became a permanent museum on Atatürk’s orders in 1935. The building’s history prompted Beard to conclude that none of østanbul’s most famous landmarks are quite what they seem today. Each civilization modeled and remodeled them according to their specific wishes. Underlying Beard’s talk was the belief in østanbul’s multiculturalism, which encompasses a galaxy of Greco-Roman myths, the cultural highlights of the Byzantine worlds well as the modern Turkish Republic. But this is not a benign multiculturalism in which cultures co-exist in peaceful harmony, but one that depends on perpetual conflict and contradiction. However much the Kemalists have tried to erase the Ottoman and Byzantine pasts–through legislation, for instance–it remains there for all to see in østanbul’s most famous monuments. Beard’s talk concluded by suggesting that the past was inseparable from the present in the city, by drawing on an argument first put forward in her 1995 book The Classics: “If Classics [or Byzantine culture] exists […] in the ‘gap’ between our world and the ancient world, then Classics is defined by our experience, interests and debates as well as by theirs” (Beard and Henderson 1995, 31). Elif ùafak’s talk developed the notion that nothing in østanbul–its buildings, people or its history–is quite what it seems; it resembles a labyrinth, a fascinating cocktail of multiple identities, some of which are yet to be discovered. She likened the city to a collection of Russian dolls: when you open one up, another one lies inside. ùafak categorized the rapidly-expanding population in four distinct groups: the first of these being the native østanbullus, many of whom display huzun, or melancholy for the city’s past, when it was the center of the Ottoman Empire. By contrast the new residents–i.e. those who have moved to the city during the Republic’s years of economic growth since 1980–identify the city as a source of prosperity and/or social advancement, unlike the rural areas from whence they originated. The third group constitutes those members of østanbul’s past civilizations–the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans– who may longer exist but have left their legacies in the form of buildings or other ancient monuments. Finally there are the sojourners–artists, poets, language teachers, tourists–who spend a brief time in the city before moving on to somewhere else. ùafak associated each group with the sound of a particular musical instrument: the native østanbullus’ experience, for example, is summed up by the ney, an end-blown flute dating back to Egyptian times. The new residents’ experiences are represented by a davul,

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another ancient instrument still used today as a call to prayer during Ramadan; while the previous civilizations’ world is symbolized through the kanun, a zither with its origins in ancient cultures of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The sojourners’ experience, not surprisingly, is summed up by a piano–unlike the other three instruments, this is familiar to western ears–playing alaturca music. ùafak’s talk was informed by the desire to deal with what she describes in her novel The Bastard of østanbul as a peculiarly Turkish understanding of time–“a multihyphenated line, where the past ended at some definite point and the present started from scratch, and there was nothing but rupture in between” (ùafak 2007, 165). Such ruptures include the Kemalist project to erase all traces of Ottoman culture from the public sphere through education, or by banning the wearing of items of clothing such as the fez. ùafak used the three ancient instruments–the ney, the kanun and the davul–to acknowledge the continuity between past and present. By listening to their sound, listeners learn to understand the power of memory as something both affective and magical that transcends both time and space. It reminds them that they are members of communities with roots in oral and/or ancient tradition, and hence gives them the courage to deal with more recent experiences of social or political upheaval. ùafak’s representation of østanbul acknowledged the living presence of history in the city–in its sights, sounds and smells–while suggesting that past, present and future are indissoluble. The travel writer and spy novelist Jason Goodwin invoked østanbul’s gastronomic history to make a similar point. He argued that the Ottoman Empire-with Constantinople at its center–depended for its stability on the regular supply of foodstuffs from outlying territories: grain from Egypt, fruit and vegetables from Anatolia, fish from European territories around the Black Sea. The Ottomans took these raw materials and transformed them into their own unique cuisine (which can still be sampled today at restaurants such as Hacı Abdullah in Beyo÷lu). Goodwin argued that this process emphasized their organizational capacities; they could create order where none had previously existed. His thesis was certainly persuasive, but overlooked the fact that the Ottomans ruled on their own terms, often exploiting the minorities within their empire. The janissaries (the infantry that formed the Sultan’s household troops from the fourteenth century onwards) were originally Christian, but were offered the prospect of social advancement if they converted to Islam (which also meant changing their diet). Such a move required them to suppress their pasts and despise their native cuisine(s).

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Times changed, however: when the Republic was established Atatürk moved the capital to Ankara, leaving østanbul looking back on its illustrious past with an all-encompassing huzun. However Goodwin claimed that over the last three decades the city had experienced a revival in its fortunes: new investment coupled with rapid population-growth has transformed it once again into a place where individuals can “feel the world’s pulse,” while simultaneously looking forward to new and potentially exciting cultural (re-)formulations. Since writing a well-received history of the Ottoman Empire (Goodwin 1998), Goodwin has cemented his reputation as an author of a series of detective stories set in mid-nineteenth century østanbul, a “promiscuous mix” of faiths and cultures, as he described it in his talk. In his novels he spends considerable time describing the “shadowy people” inhabiting the city’s back streets (Goodwin 2008a, 102). Following ùafak’s example, he describes his experiences metaphorically: “If Pera was the sea creature, the Grande Rue [now known as østiklâl Caddesi] was its spiny ridge, all the way from the top of the waterfront to the great water tank which gave its name, Taksim, to the street beyond” (Goodwin 2008b, 155). He reflects on the city’s continuities: a hundred and fifty years ago one could witness “men and women of every nationality” walking up and down østanbul’s fashionable streets (Goodwin 2008b, 156). The same is also true today, which would appear to prove the fact that past and present exist as one. However I would argue that Goodwin’s vision of østanbul as a teeming city of intrigues perpetuates a tradition of orientalist spy-thriller writing traceable back to Graham Greene (Stamboul Train (1932)), Dennis Wheatley (The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935)), and Eric Ambler (The Light of Day (1936)).1 This is certainly not the case with writer Moris Farhi, who was born in Turkey but has spent most of his life abroad. In his talk he reflected on the experience of half a century of exile by means of a parable involving a merman and a fish called Yunus. Farhi recounted how he felt duty-bound to seek an education abroad, but nonetheless admired the Republic, and the citizens of østanbul in particular, for their resilience. Despite repeated attempts of politicians–both inside and outside Turkey–to change the city’s unique character, Farhi argued that its people continually defy them and search for a “gracious future” on their own. He quoted the Ottoman theologian Sheikh Bedreddin (1359-1420), who imagined a society in which everything could be shared, “except the lips of the beloved.” Like 1

Kemal Aydın has discussed this topic in his excellent book Images of Turkey in Western Literature (Hull: The Eothen Press, 1999).

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the merman in Farhi’s parable, østanbul perpetually renews itself, which helps to explain why Farhi identified so closely with it, in spite of his lengthy exile. Following ùafak, Farhi envisaged life in østanbul as a continuum in which people are drawn together through folk-tales or fables, and thereby discover a means of determining their collective destiny. However he introduced an overtly political element; in his opinion collectivity could only be achieved by maintaining østanbul’s uniquely pluralist character. If was lost, then the city would “become monolithic and ultimately perish as a result of inbreeding” (Farhi 2007, 265). This is not the kind of surface plurality described in Goodwin’s spy-thrillers; Farhi imagined a society “evolving in such a way that you’re always a butterfly, never a larva. It means freedom from fear” (Farhi 2002, 60). Pluralist societies should never remain static; they have to evolve on their own without government intervention. This could best be achieved by trusting in the people, the majority of whom understood the importance of self-renewal. The novelist and translator Maureen Freely gave the final talk of the series. She returned to the idea of huzun with particular reference to the work of Orhan Pamuk (whose novels she has translated into English). Pamuk sees it as symbolic of østanbul’s melancholy–a feeling of deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful outlook on life. It is actually a much sought-after state of mind; it is the absence, not the presence of huzun that causes the sufferer distress. Huzun is not a singular preoccupation but a communal emotion–a mood shared by all citizens. Freely saw this huzun as a mourning for østanbul’s past greatness as an imperial city, coupled with shame at the decaying houses and imperial palaces that dominate its landscape. At the same time she believed that the city possessed a wonderful dignity: standing beside the Bosphorus at sunset prompts reflection on its manifold pasts. Freely reminisced about her childhood there, when she would take a ferry to Emirgan with her father, returning during the evening to the cosmopolitan suburb of Bebek where her father (the academic and historian John Freely) would share a beer with a variety of acquaintances including artists, poets and fellow-academics. At such moments Freely felt østanbul was “the best place in the world to be a child.” She envied the pupils at the local government-school, who began each day with a paean of praise to their political and (possibly) spiritual father Atatürk. While times have changed now as the city has rapidly expanded, and some intellectuals have questioned the legitimacy of Atatürk’s policies, østanbul retains its unique charm. Freely could gaze at old black-and-white photos of the city taken by the photo-journalist Ara

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Güler (1928-) and experience the city’s collective huzun–a yearning for the past which can simultaneously offer hope for the future. Freely’s talk emphasized the complexity of responding to life in østanbul, which invariably represents different things to different people. In her novel Enlightenment (2007), one of her characters outlined three golden rules for living in the city: “1) Everything is mired in history; 2) No one ever tells you the whole story, so you can never be sure you know where you are; 3) You tie the knot at your peril, because the story never ends (Freely 2007, 233). The first rule is irrefutable: all five speakers in this series affirmed how history underlies everyone’s reactions to østanbul. There is no such thing as “the whole story:” Farhi’s talk showed how the city’s inhabitants are perpetually renewing themselves, while Freely herself emphasized how østanbul’s story has changed since the late 1950s and early 1960s when she grew up there. No one tries to impose specific categories on the city (for example, looking at its past, present and future as separate entities), as they simply do not reflect the realities of day-to-day life there. Freely’s Enlightenment offers a more accurate representation: “She couldn’t get the past out of her head […] When ghosts came out of the woodwork, they just walked right through them [rational thoughts], and Jeannie had to hand it to them, seeing their courage did her heart good, but she had no idea how they did it and it was pretty obvious she never would” (Freely 2007, 340). The main achievement of Postcards from østanbul was to explode the notion proposed by recent historians that some kind of opposition exists between past and present, or “Islamist” and “Republican” ideologies. Esra Özyürek claims that “In late 1990s Turkey, both Kemalist and Islamist politicians located their utopias in the past rather than the future. As opposed to the Kemalists, who yearned for the 1930s, Islamists took an alternative approach to memory-based identity and idealized the Ottoman period when Islam was the official religion of the state” (Özyürek 2007, 135). All five speakers proposed a more pluralist construction of identity in which past, present and future were inextricable, and concepts such as Islamism, Republicanism and Ottomanism could no longer be readily distinguished. This approach owes a lot to the work of Orhan Pamuk, whose novels have been described by western critics as drawing upon “the whole trunk of postmodern literary devices: narratives within narratives, texts that come alive, labyrinths of signs and symbols, more doubleness and identity swapping” (McGrath 2006, 13). Novels like The New Life outline the journey of the hero, Osman, in which nothing is quite what it seems; My Name is Red incorporated styles of artistic representation both

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past and present, including Persian miniature painting, Italian Renaissance painting and contemporary western realism. Pamuk’s novel østanbul: Memories and the City, published in Turkish in 2004 and translated into English a year later, tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory, in which all attempts at defining it become østanbul as self-portrait, østanbul as Pamuk himself–a map of a man’s huzun. I am not sure that Pamuk’s technique should be termed postmodern without qualifying it first; his evocation of the city offers refreshing alternatives to the representations put forward by most western writers. The same applied to Postcards from østanbul–apart from Goodwin’s re-evocation of orientalist stereotypes, the other four speakers (both Turkish and non-Turkish) looked at the city through the eyes of memory, and by doing so evoked a multilayered world of diverse experiences, few of which can be coherently articulated. But perhaps it’s not necessary to do so; in a city whose people feel at ease with complex and fluid cultural constructions, such binary oppositions as individualism and identity, west and east, past and present no longer seem very significant. Elif ùafak’s description in The Bastard of østanbul offers a more realistic starting-point: the city, like its people are “full of contradictions and temper, utterly disharmonious […] sensitive, reactive and ready to explode at any time” (ùafak 2007, 200).

CHAPTER SEVEN POSTMODERNISMS IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT1

The importance of how one responds to difference in various contexts is especially significant while focusing on how authors, critics and other opinion-formers in the Turkish Republic have responded in recent years to the issue of postmodernism. In a 2000 article published in the communication journal øletiúim, Erdal Da÷taú analyzes D. M. Thomas’ 1995 novel The White Hotel as an example of postmodern literature, whose author employs specific techniques such as indirect narration, the use of metafiction, and inclusion of a plurality of voices, forcing readers to make up their own minds as to the novel’s meaning (if one exists, that is). Da÷taú concludes that Thomas is not out to create any particular literary “system,” but rather creates a narrative that challenges existing belief-systems, wherein “reality and imagination, logic and belief, the universal and the multicultural, subject and object, high and low cultures go hand in hand” (Da÷taú 2000, 113). With Da÷taú’ ideas in mind, in a paper “Teaching the Postmodern: John Fowles’ ‘The Enigma,’” I tried to investigate what might the postmodern might signify in the Turkish context, referring to work by literary critics as well as academics from other disciplines. I tried to show that books such as The White Hotel provided Turkish students with an understanding of contemporary western values, which explains why they were included on undergraduate courses in English Literature (Raw 2003, 77-85). However, this is only one way of looking at the postmodern, shaped by those who believe that foreign literatures and theories have to be reshaped to serve the interests of the national culture. This chapter surveys other approaches to the issue written in both Turkish and English that demonstrate how new possibilities might exist to reaffirm existing belief systems within the Turkish Republic (to use Da÷taú’ model). Such developments have been viewed skeptically by critics on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as those concerned with maintaining the 1

This chapter is based on material originally published in øletiúim [Communication] 11 (Winter 2001): 125-47.

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Republic’s secular orientation. It will be divided into two sections; the first will focus on a variety of redefinitions of postmodernism that see no future in the national culture, and concentrate instead on how to take advantage of the fragmentation of contemporary Turkish society. The second will show how several writers have identified postmodernism as a threat to mainstream political beliefs that hitherto have sustained the Republic over several decades. In a concluding section, I suggest that the desire to eliminate this ‘threat’ (in whatever form it might take) still influences the ways in educational and cultural policies are determined. Some academics and cultural commentators firmly believe that postmodernism in common with other belief-systems can open up new constructions of Turkish intellectual and/or political culture. This might involve looking at how Turkish writers have dealt with the subject–notably Orhan Pamuk, Murathan Mungan, Adalet A÷ao÷lu or Alev Alatlı, or even looking at the way the subject has been treated in literary journals (Uçar 2007). In a 1985 book Kiiltiir Konusu ve Sorunlarımız [Questions of Culture and Our Problems] the anthropologist Bozkurt Güvenç emphasized the need “to develop our culture, not change it.” This can only be achieved by acknowledging theoretical developments outside Turkey, whether in the west or elsewhere: “We must have cultural history and theory courses to educate our students [...] and make them understand that they will have to protect and pass it on to the next generation” (Güvenç 1985, 145-6). Güvenç believes that any Turkish-inspired theories can only evolve through research into local sources, as well as through comparison academic work being done in other countries: “We must learn about ourselves by learning about other cultures” (145). He advocates a pluralist approach to research, not only looking at the cultures of “Anatolia, Middle Asia, Turkey and the west,” but also concentrating on how the past influences the present and vice versa (117). Akúit Göktürk made the same point in a 1984 essay: for him The concept of ‘culture’ in Turkish becomes clearer, as a result of the definitions provided by Atatürk: when we think of culture, we think of the possibilities that a community can achieve in terms of government, intellectual life and the economy. This is what a true civilization is. Culture is not something fixed, but rather something that is fluid, encompassing the future as well as the past. Atatürk also believes that ‘culture is reading, understanding, seeing, extracting meanings from what is seen, and cultivating the mind’ (Göktürk 1984, 186).

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To ensure continuing intellectual growth and development, Turkish academic culture needs to promote the notion of “cultivating the mind”–in other words, giving scholars the freedom to conduct research in any way they wish, even if it means challenging established concepts and values. A truly democratic culture, in Göktürk’s view, is one that draws no absolute distinction between “dominant” and “opposing” viewpoints, but acknowledges that the construction of such concepts is relative, depending on a variety of factors – social, political and historical. Such ideas were enthusiastically developed during the 1990s. Sibel Bozdo÷an and Reúat Kasaba’s edited collection Rethinking Modernity and National Identity (1997), suggested that the Turkish Republic was now entering a post-modernist era wherein the image of a “progressive middleclass society” (as promoted by successive governments and the media) has been finally dismantled by “an economically polarized, politically contentious and ethnically divided people” (Bozdo÷an and Kasaba 1997, 31). Many women chose to express their identity through wearing the headscarf, despite vigorous opposition in government circles. They received support through different areas of the media: as Mutlu Binark and Barıú Kılıçbay suggest, by the dawn of the new century veiling practices were “inseparable from consumption, community, and patterns of pleasure. Wearing the headscarf can now be a statement of fashion, as well as a mark of one's religious conviction (Binark and Kılıçbay 2000, 7-26). Sometimes it is very difficult to draw a distinction between the two, which helps to explain why Islamic-based companies have chosen to market their products on so-called secular “infotainment” channels (Oncü 2000, 315). The headscarf issue has since become a regular battleground in the debates over the future of secularism and the rise of an alternative discourse of Islam (as represented by the governing AKP party under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an). The AKP’s ideology has been analyzed by Anwar Alam who identifies the emergence of a new postmodern Turco-Islamic identity emphasizing a commitment to Europe with a respect for Islamic tradition (Alam 2009, 352-75). Other studies have focused on new constructions of Turkishness amongst migrant communities in Europe. Talip Küçükcan and Velis Güngör’s encyclopedic anthology Turks in Europe: Culture, Identity, Integration (2009) contains numerous essays highlighting different beliefsystems–for example, amongst German-Turks and French-Turks: [W]hen juxtaposed with German Turks, the Turks in France are somewhat closer to aspects such as secularism and are more comfortable in the French language, both of which are indicative of their active part in a

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specific purpose of modernization and integration [….] The German Turks, however, foster an affinity towards creating cosmopolitanism, hybrid, global and reflective identities that redefine their European identity” (Küçükcan and Güngör 2009, 395).

Turks in the Netherlands believe that the European Union “emphasizes democratic values and economic cooperation rather than religious dimensions. Turks in Holland think that the EU is not a Christian Club as described by a minority group [in Turkey] who oppose Turkey’s membership” (457). Turkish Cypriots in Britain are more concerned with setting up their own businesses, while “the second and third generation migrants are encouraged to take up employment and business ownership in the legal sector by their families which see this as a marker of their integration to the [sic] British society and as prestigious choices for their children” (517). Most recently Küçükcan has guest-edited an issue of Insight Turkey, a quarterly publication of the SETA Foundation for Political, Social and Economic Research based in Ankara. This looks as the ways in which Turks in Europe have responded to recent developments, such as the post 9/11 “culturalist” trend, which has “perpetuated negative stereotypes and sweeping generalizations about Muslims” (Küçükcan 2010, 4). He believes that this has strengthened the sense of regional identity. The influence of the media in reinforcing or undermining such stereotypes has been explored in Ayúe Öncü’s “The Banal and the Subversive: Politics of Language on Turkish television” (2000). She also suggests that the media explosion of the mid-1990s, when several private channels emerged as rivals to the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), has given rise to speculation on what constitutes “proper,” or “improper” Turkish, and what should be considered appropriate for broadcast purposes. This provides but one example of how the authority of state institutions, which hitherto have been “the major suppliers and organizers of public knowledge,” has been challenged by “audio-visual media” (as well as the Internet), both within Turkey and elsewhere (Öncü 2000, 313). The consequence of such challenges has been explored recently by Ayhan Kaya, who identifies the emergence of a new construction of Islam amongst second-generation German Turkish women who wear the veil as a way of emancipation from the repression of both parental culture and traditional institutions. In doing so, youngsters make use of modern telecommunications provided by the contemporary processes of

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Chapter Seven globalisation. The media and information technologies have certainly provided an important role in the emergence of a new breed of Islamist intellectual whose activities represent a form of hybridized, counterhegemonic ‘globalisation from below’” (Kaya 2010, 52).

In today’s postmodern world, it seems that the veil can now be regarded as a symbol of liberation from secular values, which to many young Turks are perceived as repressive. The impact of such studies in Turkish academic circles cannot be underestimated. In an essay published in 1990, the sociologist and television commentator Emre Kongar was still talking of “Turkey's cultural transformation” in terms of a “synthesis [...] an amalgamation of western and pre-Islamic Turkish cultures to replace the previously dominant Islamic culture” (Kongar 1990, 19). Within six years–even before the AKP came into power-he was warning online readers about the emergence of “two dangerous polarizations” in Turkey’s socio-cultural structure, one of which was “Islam vs. secularism” (Kongar 1996). Hasan Kösebalaban attributes such developments to former President Turgut Özal, who reoriented the Republic’s economy towards international competition: This led to a rise of Anatolian business interests which, despite being called ‘Islamist,’ demanded even stronger economic integration with global business interests […] Authoritarian-secularism’s political hegemony could not prevent the rise of this new generation who had escaped from the control of the state” (Kösebalaban 2009, 94).

The same was also true of Turks abroad-for example second-generation men and women in Germany who escaped from the control of hegemonic institutions such as the family (which embodied secular values) and constructed their own Islamic identities. Such developments have been viewed with alarm by pro-secular academics and commentators. In a 1996 essay “Sanatta ve Edebiyatta PostModernizm" [Postmodernism in Art and Literature], Oya Batum Menteúe doubts the value of the “postmodern moment,” symbolized by globalization, which she believes “always deconstructs and ruins what already exists, but never creates anything,” while promoting "discontinuity [...] division [...] disappearance ... inner conflicts [and] disturbing works" (Menteúe 1996, 37). Such ‘deconstructions’ are evident both in the literary and political spheres, with frequent anti-government demonstrations. In her novel Da÷ın Oteki Yüzü [The Other Side of the Mountain] (2000), Erendiz Atasü likewise suspects that postmodernism might promote fragmentation and conflict:

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I have to thrust my way through layers of electromagnetic waves loaded with images of ugliness and foul phrases, flowing from the quarters of the masters of finance to the hostels of those few who aspire to wealth but aspire in vain [....] The living organism right there in the depths, which merged Ionian vases with Phoenician amphorae, and porcelain decanters; the powers which refused to surrender to personal, material gain, and so refused complicity with those who invaded in the first two decades of this century; the powers that postmodernity think weird and eccentric because they put the survival of the homeland above individual gain? (Atasü 2000, 259)

Postmodernism and/or globalization might encourage cultural pluralism and personal autonomy, but Atasü clearly suggests that this is important only when it can benefit the community as a whole. On occasions it might be necessary to adopt the apparently “weird and eccentric” strategy of putting “the survival of the homeland above individual gain,” as a way of counteracting the potentially destructive forces of globalization, whose control of the “electromagnetic waves” threatens social cohesion (for example, by promoting the culture of consumerism). The writer/journalist Ahmet Oktay criticizes postmodernism for paralyzing Turkish political culture, especially those on the “leftist intellectual wing.” Now people no longer fight for their class identities, accepting in its place a globalized culture based solely on outward show, in which the so-called østanbul high society indulge in pursuits such as an African safari, hunting for polar bears or surfing, while the lower classes merely imitate them by jogging, taking more holidays and buying pets. Such trivial pursuits are reinforced by the plethora of lifestyle and cooking programs on television, particularly the private channels (Oktay 2000, 924). This so-called “degeneration” has become even more pronounced since the time Oktay wrote, with the advent of the Internet. The effects of this belief-shift can be seen in contemporary novels, which no longer focus on social issues but rather on sexuality, pastiche and parody (77-9).2 While postmodernism has “widened the field of critical questioning” and “redefined entrenched positions,” it has led to the eclipse of “real socialism,” which can only be rediscovered through renewed political struggle (135-8). The fact that such struggles might themselves be the

2

The writer/poet Atillâ ølhan (1925-2005) was a regular critic of the postmodern moment, criticizing it for its lack of style, and an emphasis on outward show in storytelling at the expense of plot and character. See for instance “Anlamsız Bir ‘ùeyir!,’” [A Meaningless Plot]. Cumhuriyet, June 20, 2001, 20.

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expression of the postmodern moment–as hitherto neglected minority groups at last finding a voice–has been overlooked. In a diatribe against what he perceives as western-inspired beliefsystems, the right-wing polemicist Oktay Sinano÷lu insists that postmodernism (in common with structuralism, post-structuralism and cultural studies) should be set aside in favor of a return to more traditional Turkish-inspired values such as nationalism and secularism. Otherwise students might be in danger of losing their identities as citizens of the Turkish Republic: “America and England are making the Turkish public Anglo-Saxon […] In Russia, the Turkish societies are being Russianized. Russian schools and their graduates are being supported. Soon the word ‘Turk’ will be erased from history.” Although coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum to Oktay, he likewise advises his readers to “pull together” and resist this kind of intellectual colonization: “New or old, Ottoman or Ça÷atay, all is Turkish, so long as words are used and published according to the rules of our language" (Sinano÷lu 2000, 1719).3 Although Erdal Da÷taú claims that diatribes like this are largely attributable to ignorance (“the claims of Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida and Guattari/Deleuze are not understood clearly enough” (Da÷taú 2000, 95)), I suggest that both Oktay and Sinano÷lu use postmodernism and/or globalization as a pretext to voice their suspicions of the west and its potentially destructive threat to the country’s future. Their views are representative of a new nationalist movement, which has gained currency throughout the past decade as the AKP have instituted a radical package of democratic reforms, in the hope of obtaining EU membership for the Republic. Only recently (April 2010) the party put through Parliament a program of 27 changes to the constitution, including limiting the jurisdiction of military courts. For nationalists such reforms represent a threat to national sovereignty. Rezzan Gürkan offered a potential solution to this problem in a 2001 article: while postmodern culture is “democratic, pluralistic and […] 3

Sinano÷lu’s book has proved an enduring best seller; it has now spawned a website (www.byebyeturkce.com), which profiles the author (a former professor of chemistry at Yale University), as well as giving translations of his views in German and Dutch. It quotes an (unnamed) professor at Middle East Technical University, who emphasizes that at his university Turkish is not to be used as the language of instruction, only English (“Burası ODTÜ, lütfen Türkçe degil, øngilizce konusun.”) Sinano÷lu concludes that in such institutions only western theories would be considered acceptable subjects for study (http://www.byebyeturkce.com/anasayfa.htm, accessed May 7, 2010).

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creates participation,” it can only truly flourish “in a fair manner” through the operation of law exerted by a “civilized” government that permits differences “to live together” (Gürkan 2001, 92). On this view postmodernism should be seamlessly accommodated into a hegemonic order that tolerates difference while simultaneously reinforcing the importance of Turkish sovereignty based on “historical awareness, race unity and language properties” (Özönder 2000, 2).4 But can an emphasis on pluralism and cultural difference be described as postmodern? If we refer to Da÷taú’ formulation cited at the beginning of this chapter that postmodernism entails a criticism of “existing systems, wherein [...] the universal and the multicultural, subject and object, high and low cultures go hand in hand,” then the answer must certainly be yes. However, the sociologist Nilüfer Göle insisted in 1996 that “the postmodern situation” did not prevail in Turkey, “since the two outstanding characteristics [...] of a postmodern society, playfulness and relativism, are not visible.” Any dispute over the value of postmodernism was restricted to academic culture, with left and right wing critics vying to make an “absolute claim [...] on truth” (Göle 1996, 4). Belkıs Ayhan Tarhan’s essay “øslamcı Hareketin Söylemi ĥzerine Eleútirel Bir De÷erlendirme" [On the discourse of Islamic revivalism: a critical assessment] likewise claims that the rise of Islam in the Republic is modernist rather than postmodern in spirit, emphasizing progress and development rather than problematization and/or playfulness (Tarhan, 2000: 46-69). But perhaps people’s understanding of the postmodern has changed in the decade or so since then: now different groups have vastly different understandings of what Turkishness represents. Such constructions transcend binary oppositions such as Islam vs. secularism, and have a lot more to do with an individual’s lived experience in a place and/or community. Ayúe Ça÷lar sums up the spirit of cultural relativism thus: a growing number of people […] feel at ease with subjectivities that encompass plural and fluid cultural identities. Attempts to theorise the lifestyles pursued by such people […] highlight the inadequacy of 4

Özönder’s comments were made in a program Türkiye’den, broadcast on TRT Avrasya, the international channel of the state broadcasting company TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) from 1999 to 2001. Summaries were once available online in Turkish, English and Russian from the Middle East Technical University website (www.metu.edu.tr), but have unfortunately been removed. This quotation (as with all other from the program) has been taken from the original 2001 essay on which this chapter is based (133).

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Chapter Seven commonsense assumptions about culture as a self-contained, bounded and unified construct (Ça÷lar 1997, 170).

The film scholar Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp sums up the current postmodern context: “This altered […] experience now has a larger geography and multilayered temporality and there are many worlds in each, experienced and coded differently. Even in the same city, diverse experiences abound and none of them is familiar to the other; they become foreign countries to each other” (Süalp 2009, 225) Filmmakers such as Yeúim Ustao÷lu have dealt with issues of nationalism and otherness in works such as øz [Traces] (1994), and Bulutları Beklerken [Waiting for the Clouds] (2004) by focusing on the stories of “small people who are squeezed and smashed by the system” (226). The state and its representatives have frequently responded by trying to reinforce what Ça÷lar describes as “commonsense assumptions” about the unity of Turkish culture, using a variety of strategies. Bureaucrats and NGOs continue to support the headscarf ban in all state institutions, including state and private universities, a belief traceable back to the One Party Era of Turkish politics (1925-45), when police officers did not allow people who did not dress in western clothing through the checkpoint at the entrance of Atatürk Boulevard in Ankara. Etyen Mahçupyan recently cited instances recently of laicist members of audiences harassing women with headscarves at public events such as jazz concerts, to such an extent that the women were forced to leave (Ça÷lar 1997, 156-7). Orhan EskikĘy and ėzgür Do÷an’s recent documentary øki Dil Bir Bavul [On the Way to School] (2009)5 deals with the experience of a recently qualified teacher working in the east of the country, where Kurdish-speaking children are forced to speak Turkish all the time in school, and learn about Turkish history. The Ministry of Education gives them no space in the curriculum either to talk in their own language or study their own cultures. The state has often more direct methods to silence opposition–for example, by imprisoning those who criticize its policies. In the years leading up to the two military interventions (1971 and 1980), many writers and intellectuals experienced this fate (something explored in subsequent chapters). Some critics were simply liquidated–alleged victims of the so-called “deep state” (derin devlet), a term used to describe members of the security forces acting outside the law in what they judge to be the Republic’s best interests (understood, in this sense, as maintaining the unity of the national culture). 5 This is not a literal translation but the title used for the film’s English language release.

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This issue hit the headlines once again in 2007 when the activities of an ultra-nationalist gang known as Ergenekon were exposed. They had planned to assassinate a string of intellectuals, including the novelist Orhan Pamuk, and thereby foment chaos and initiate a military intervention.6 The AKP government would be toppled, and a secular administration installed in its place with military support. Earlier that year the “deep state” had allegedly been responsible for the death of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007; like Pamuk, he had committed the “crime” of insulting Turkishness in their writings.7 However the government’s handling of the investigation has come in for considerable criticism: numerous public figures, including journalists, television executives and academics, have been indicted. This has prompted the suspicion in some sections of the media that Ergenekon is being used as a pretext to suppress oppositional viewpoints.8 The disputes over postmodernism in the Turkish Republic sum up many of the struggles experienced in the country over the last two decades, as the country moves (in Ayúe Gül Altınay’s words “from a plural to a pluralist polity and society. There are many dilemmas and a heavy historical burden to address in this process” (Altınay 2007, 23)). On the one hand the state has tried to provide a space for alternative discourses (for example, in university curricula, where postmodern theories can be studied as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate course)), but still limits the opportunities for voices of democratization or pluralism to articulate themselves. This is particularly evident where issues of national interest are concerned. On the other hand the same period has witnessed a rapid growth in writing–both theoretical and fictional-and/or other cultural productions that question long-established beliefs in secularism and nationalism, while stressing the importance of difference. If nothing else, the postmodern moment has inspired artists, teachers and other cultural 6

Pamuk has been called a ‘postmodern’ writer, but the author sees himself as embroiled within contradictions between west and east, past and present, modernity and tradition. See Erda÷ Göknar, “Orhan Pamuk and the ‘Ottoman’ Theme,” World Literature Today, November 1, 2006: 26-9. 7 Dink was prosecuted three times before his death for denigrating Turkishness, and received numerous death threats from nationalists. The suggestion he was a victim of “deep state” was intensified when photographs of Dink’s assassin, O÷un Samast, were published with him being flanked by smiling police officers, posing side by side in front of the Turkish flag. 8 See “Ergenekon Case Summary 2007-2008.” http://www.ataturktoday.com/RefBib/ErgenekonCaseSummary.htm (accessed May 10, 2010).

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workers to think beyond simple binaries (west/ east; Islam/ secularism, Occident/Orient) and focus instead on how individual lives are constructed.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE WRITER’S RIGHT TO FREEDOM 1 OF EXPRESSION

In recent years there has been protracted debate both inside and outside the country about Turkey’s future as a prospective member of the European Union, as a mediator in the Middle East peace process, and as a secular Islamic nation with strong links to the west. In January 2009 we witnessed the sight of Prime Minister Erdo÷an walking out of a Davos debate in protest at what he perceived as an excessively pro-Israeli stance adopted by the mediator, the journalist and novelist David Ignatius. The reaction–especially from sections of the Turkish media–was ecstatic as they claimed that Erdo÷an had made a stand on behalf of the nation against western and Zionist interests. Six months later the journalist Nedim ùener from Millyet stood trial for having written a book about the killing of the activist Hrant Dink. These incidents brought contradictory demands to the fore. On the one hand, Erdo÷an’s act of “nationalism” could be seen as an expression of resentment against the west–both America and the European Union–which still refuses to accept the Turkish Republic as an equal peer. On the other hand, ùener’s arrest also reminded us of the pre-election demonstrations in 2007 when thousands of nationalists marched through the streets of østanbul and other major cities, shouting slogans in support of Atatürk and laicism, and portraying Erdo÷an and the AKP as a major threat to the country’s secular future. They deliberately evoked memories 1

This is a book review of Selections from Varlık 1933-2008, edited by Osman Deniztekin (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 2008), p/bk 343 pp. ISBN 9789754243571; Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu, The Blue and the Black, translated by Hughette Eyübo÷lu and Lynne Saka (østanbul: Türkiye øú Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2008), p/bk 198 pp. ISBN 9789944884686; Bengisu Rona, Orhan Kemal in Jail with Nazım Hikmet (østanbul: Anatolia Publishing, 2008), p/bk 181 pp. ISBN 9789789275860. Reprinted from European Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (2009): 3-11 with permission.

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of the Hrant Dink funeral (where the mourners had shouted “We are all Hrant Dink”) by wearing Atatürk masks and shouting “We are all Atatürks.” As Michel Foucault reminds us, however, “where there is power, there is resistance.” There are still a remarkable number of independent publishers prepared to issue material written by intellectuals–both past and present–who envisaged a better world in which people of different political persuasions (socialist, liberal, Islamic) could learn from one another. It is this spirit, I believe, which has inspired the translations of Selections from Varlık, The Blue and the Black, and Orhan Kemal in Jail, all of which are designed to help western readers make sense of the contradictory positions characteristic of Turkish political life. The first two books have been issued by established organizations (Varlık, Türkiye øú Bankası) that have substantial back catalogues of books on Turkish culture (in Turkish as well as English). Orhan Kemal in Jail comes out under the Anatolia Publishing imprint, a small outfit backed by a textile firm. The translations seek as far as possible to recreate the rhythms of the Turkish text, and thereby help readers understand the significance to the Republic of principles such as secularism, westernization and democracy. Selections from Varlık brings together forty prose pieces from the literary magazine, established in 1933 by Yaúar Nabi Nayır, which has regularly published work by major Turkish writers. Most authors and critics who have established a reputation both at home and internationally have appeared in the journal: the poets Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet Anday and Hilmi Yavuz, the novelists Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Selim øleri, and critics Talât Halman and Hasan Bülent Kahraman. The editor of Selections from Varlık, Osman Deniztekin, claims that the book’s basic aim is to examine key concepts such as modernization and westernization and their relationship to twentieth century Turkish history: “In their [the contributors’] thinking, as probably in the mind of Atatürk, ‘civilization’ […] would be taken to mean ‘modernization,’ all amounting to the same idea: the process of socio-economic development” (Deniztekin 2008, 10). The experiment with the Village Institutes in the mid-twentieth century was an important example of this: “[it] signified a kind of ‘Rural Enlightenment’ or even Renaissance” (11), as the government embarked on a campaign of mass education. In this case, modernization and westernization were interchangeable, as the government tried to implement Atatürk’s desire to emulate European standards. The contemporary relevance of this statement is obvious–although the Village Institutes are long gone, Deniztekin implies that the process of development continues to

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this day, as the Turkish Republic accommodates itself “to the globalizing world” (13); and thereby renders itself suitable for EU membership. However such processes have often encountered considerable resistance from writers of different political persuasions. In a 1939 essay included in the anthology, the writer/translator øsmail Hüsrev Tökin observed that: “a deep traditionalism dominates Turkish village life entirely. Inhibition against innovation, commitment to wisdom and methods acquired from forefathers is ingrained in the Anatolian villagers’ mentality” (Deniztekin 2008, 33). Eight years later the academic and poet Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu pointed out that many of the educated elite were opposed to the Village Institutes, in the belief that their social position might be under threat: “These retired and naïve reactionaries of the revolution period hamper the revolution, not so much with their presence as with their way of thinking and acting which they pass on to young generations” (70). In modern times many artists have encountered similar resistance, not so much from the educated elite, but from successive governments living in the shadow of the military’s 1982 constitution and the oppressive laws enacted by the government at that time. The critic Göksel Aymaz’s article “The City in the Distance, the Distance in the City” (2003) claims that “he [the artist] could only be a run-of-the-mill photographer who does cheap work, and the reality, which did not grant what he wanted, which kept him from his aspirations and dreams, stands relentlessly in the way” (Deniztekin 2008, 266). This statement expresses many of the contradictions inherent in contemporary Turkey: artistic expression is suppressed by those in power who profess to be democratic and/or independent-minded, yet practice censorship in the interests of state security. Nonetheless Selections from Varlık celebrates successive generations of creative artists and intellectuals who have transcended such difficulties and contributed to the advancement of the Republic’s intellectual culture. In the poet Yakup Kadri Karaosmano÷lu’s words (written in 1953), they have “achieved greater command of our beautiful Turkish language […] and achieve[d] the pleasure of expressing the myriad manifestations of life with the voice of their own flesh and blood” (Deniztekin 2008, 116). Sometimes this can be achieved by imitating western models, but as the poet Atillâ ølhan observed in 1966, many writers preferred to find their own distinctive voices and thereby created “a significant, expansive and interesting national literature” (175). Varlık has continually provided an outlet for those who have followed this advice. The sociologist Adnan Binyazar’s 1992 essay “A Turkish Culture Emerging in Germany” shows how writers from Gastarbeiter families began to develop their own voices,

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expressing both longing for their homeland and yet celebrating plural identities. The literary critic Jâle Parla writes about her colleague Berna Moran–one of the pioneers of comparative literature study in Turkey–who discovered motifs pertaining to Turks in Renaissance literature, and showed how “pioneering novelists such as Ahmet Murat Efendi and Samipaúazade Sezai have not only been inspired by bard’s tales, but have been intrigued by this genre enough to translate Western romances” (2589). Esra Akcan’s sociological study of neighborhoods in Germany and Turkey (2005) concludes that Turkish writers have embraced “a new kind of intertwinedness, one that can tell the individual […] interrelated stories of different countries, and one that does not unify merely by assimilating the non-dominant to the dominant” (306). Selections from Varlık ends on a somber note by returning once again to the case of Hrant Dink, who was slain for speaking “whatever is on his mind, hid[ing] nothing, and open[ing] his entire heart and mind to others via his discourse” (328). Editor Deniztekin understands that there are forces within the ruling elite which would like nothing better than to suppress dissenting viewpoints, and who are prepared to commit murder to achieve their aims. One of the ways of fighting back in a struggle which might not be successful, but which might help intellectuals of all persuasions, whether Turkish or non-Turkish, to learn how to “fail better,” as Beckett once put it. This helps to explain why Selections from Varlık is such an important book. Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu (1908-73) worked for the Ministry of Education until 1947, as well as directing the government-sponsored Translation Office. A strong supporter of the Village Institutes, he taught at østanbul University on and off until 1960, when he was one of a group of 147 professors who lost their jobs in the wake of the military takeover. Thereafter he taught Art History at the Technical University. A prolific translator and essayist, Eyüboƣlu firmly believed in opposing those hegemonic forces in government which tried to restrict freedom of expression. The Blue and the Black (1965) is a collection of his pieces from a forty-year writing career, which now appears in English for the first time, co-translated by his sister-in-law Hughette Eyüboƣlu. Eyüboƣlu’s emphasis on intellectual resistance as a way of ensuring the Republic’s future is as important today as when the book first appeared over four decades ago. He despises those who treat writers “with suspicion and answering with unfair accusations” (Eyüboƣlu 2008, 184). In an essay “The Witch-Hunt for the Left” (1960), Eyübo÷lu asks why the authorities should deprive the citizen, innocent in the face of the law, of his job for

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having said, read or written this and that, or for pursuing a new idea instead of buying property or goods?” (154) Despite their claims to believe in Atatürk’s dictum (“Peace at home and peace throughout the world”), the “leeching parasites” of the ruling oligarchy have absolutely no intention of promoting dialogue, enabling people to develop a genuine curiosity about what others are saying within the Turkish Republic and abroad. By such means Eyüboƣlu shows how Kemalism can be identified with repression and censorship. The only way to challenge this viewpoint is to modernize, which in Eyübo÷lu’s opinion means to trust in the people, who in the past “resisted the church and the palace in order to enhance their voice, their language, their own color” (39). Such resistance, he believes, would help to create a pluralist society guaranteeing freedom of speech, in which an individual “talks as much as he [sic] understands; he asks questions as much as he can, even at the cost of falling into […] intrigues” (40). To lay the foundation for this kind of world, however utopian it might be, Eyübo÷lu proposes a wide-ranging program of educational reform designed to develop new ways of thinking into the young: “The great majority of the schools […] have not been able to free themselves from memorization, from the spirit of the middle ages [….] This is why our top students have no opinion about the world, or even about themselves, ad the reason why, once their schooling is complete, they are transformed into some kind of sleepwalker” (146-8). This process does not involve slavishly imitating previously formulated models, but developing strategies for independent thought. In Eyübo÷lu’s view this is what the Village Institutes were endeavoring to achieve by “transform[ing] pain into joy, weakness into strength, difficulty into pleasure, the teacher into a friend, [and] the blackboard into soil” (152). In some ways the experience of reading The Blue and the Black is a depressing one, as it demonstrates how little the conservative mentality pervading the institutions of power (e.g. the judiciary, the Ministry of Education) has changed over the last five decades. The Turkish Republic can only develop intellectually if it permits independent thinking, tolerance and the recognition of difference at all levels of society. This process would be greatly helped if western attitudes also changed: rather than adopting essentialist positions (e.g. that the Turkish Republic is an “Islamic” or “a developing country”), people should try to understand better what is ideologically important to Turkish intellectuals of all political persuasions. Both Nâzım Hikmet and Orhan Kemal might subscribe to this view; as the two writers were imprisoned during the mid-twentieth century for

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expressing their political views. Hikmet’s cause became something of a cause célèbre, as a 1949 international committee that included Picasso, Paul Robeson and Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned unsuccessfully for his release. Orhan Kemal (the nom de plume of Mehmet Raúit Ö÷ütçü) was a novelist imprisoned for five years during the 1940s for expressing supposedly subversive political views. Bengisu Rona’s compilation Orhan Kemal in Jail with Nâzım Hikmet, translated from letters and essays written by Kemal himself, tells the story of how his political and artistic views were shaped through regular association with Hikmet in Bursa prison. The essay “Three and Half Years with Nâzım Hikmet (Nâzım Hikmet’le 3.5 Yıl), informs us that Hikmet “had the utmost respect for working people,” while at the same time insisting upon the individual’s right to selfexpression: “He respected people who believe in a cause, whatever it might be. That’s why he respected Mehmet Akif […] for being ‘a man of character’ who believed in his cause” (Rona 2008, 76-7). Like Eyüboƣlu and Hrant Dink, Hikmet would never be dissuaded from expressing his opinions, despite all attempts to silence him. Inspired by Hikmet’s example, Kemal stresses the importance of giving artists the freedom to develop their own idiosyncratic forms of discourse even if they challenge received opinions: “He [Hikmet] loved words which were a combination of originally Turkish words and ones which people were in any case already using colloquially.” Hikmet believed that artists had a central part to play in Turkish intellectual life, as they were capable of using language creatively–unlike the members of the conservative oligarchy whose “topdown commands” imposed constricting verbal forms on to daily conversation” (80). Hikmet believed that the only way to initiate ideological change this was to rely on creative artists, who wrote for themselves while fighting for the rights of their people as citizens of the Turkish Republic. They could not use weapons; but like Eyübo÷lu they understood the capacity of words to persuade or to move. In the light of recent events–for example, the killing of Dink and the ensuing trials–I would argue that the state (backed by the military) are well aware of such possibilities, which helps to explain why they are so keen to silence, imprison or even liquidate anyone questioning their views. Or perhaps, as Meltem Ahıska recently observed, their response consists of organizing apparently spontaneous demonstrations in support of the nationalist cause, such as those taking place in 2007: “The intimacy produced through the displayed form becomes the medium for redefining Turkish ‘native’ modernity and the dangerous others within– and of course Orientalizing them” (Ahıska 2007, 142). On this view,

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intellectuals are categorized along with ‘Islamıst’ politicians as potential threats to social stability. Orhan Kemal in Jail with Nâzım Hikmet ends with a series of extracts from Kemal’s notebooks covering the period 1941-3. From these we learn something about Hikmet the man, who sometimes appeared “so impervious that [Kemal] […] became consumed with anger and ran away” (144). On other occasions Hikmet would look “meaningless and vacant,” with a facial expression that could only be understood by his fellow-intellectuals. Like Mahatma Gandhi he understood the value of passive resistance; it was better to allow others to voice their opinions–however superficial they might be–rather than talking too much. By doing so he became renowned as someone whose life and work captured the spirit of “the Turkish people, of honest humanity, of our country and of this beautiful world” (159). Although spending much of his life either in prison or exiled from his country of birth, Hikmet contributed far more to the cause of Turkish intellectual life than an entire cabinet of politicians: “[T]he artist is an engineer of the psyche [….] What is developing is not without hope, it is not without joy” (166). Taken together, all three translations tell us a lot about Turkish history, and how intellectuals of all political hues have struggled to express themselves in the face of continual repression from the state. Moreover, it is clear that such struggles remain as significant today as they were seven decades ago when Hikmet was imprisoned-otherwise the publishers would not have commissioned the translations in the first place. On the one hand all three books celebrate the capacity of the creative imagination to overcome adversity–whether mental or physical. Whatever hardships they might have endured, writers such as Hikmet, Kemal, Eyübo÷lu and the Varlık contributors show how intellectuals continually reframe the nation’s cultural agenda, despite repeated attempts by the authorities to suppress them. On the other hand the translations stress the importance of understanding the lessons of the past as a way of looking at the Turkish Republic’s future both internally and in terms of its future relations with the west. Perhaps one day the members of the ruling oligarchy might come to appreciate this point.

CHAPTER NINE THE AMBASSADOR’S RECEPTION1

Presented by Maureen Freely, this BBC Radio Four documentary The Ambassador’s Reception recounted the visit to the Turkish Republic of Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter in 1985. They had been invited to the country by Dr. Mehmet Ali Dikerdem on behalf of PEN, the international writers' association.2 Dikerdem's father Mahmut was a victim of a show trial staged by the military government, having already spent four years in prison; and Mehmet Ali wanted to try and raise awareness amongst foreigners about what was happening. This was no easy task: for most diplomats-particularly in the United States-the Turkish Republic remained an important ally in the Cold War against Soviet Russia, and they were not keen to put that relationship in jeopardy by investigating Turkey's policies too closely. Miller and Pinter were greeted in østanbul airport by the academic Gündüz Vassaf and the young Orhan Pamuk.3 In a memoir published to celebrate Miller’s 80th birthday (1996), Pinter recalled that he had lost one suitcase in transit, and had to borrow socks off his fellow-dramatist: “Bloody good ones they were too” (Pinter 1996).4 Miller and Pinter subsequently met several writers and their relatives who had suffered at the hands of the military junta for expressing their views. Many of them spoke 1 A review of a documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on April 10, 2010. Originally printed on the Radio Drama Reviews website (www.radiodramareviews.com). 2 Mehmet Ali Dikerdem (1949-), social scientist and political activist, now resident in Great Britain. 3 Gündüz Vassaf (1946-), writer and psychologist, and newspaper columnist with the newspaper Radikal. 4 “Campaigning Against Torture: Arthur Miller’s Socks” (written as a tribute to Miller on his 80th birthday), http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_torture.shtml (accessed May 10, 2010).

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for the first time about their experiences in The Ambassador's Reception. The painter Orhan Taylan had been in prison since 1982; his then wife Melek found Miller to be cool and detached in his opinions, while Pinter remained exuberant, talking to many people at the same time about different subjects.5 The dramatists’ presence in the Turkish Republic was not always appreciated: Melek quoted from a front-page article published in the mass-circulation newspaper Milliyet on March 27, 1985, which accused them of trying to spread seditious lies about government policy amongst the foreign community.6 Nonetheless, as a distinguished dramatist, Miller was invited to dine at the American Ambassador’s residence in Ankara. Pinter came along as his companion. Miller recalled in a memoir of the event that he spent much of his time talking about the imprisoned artists and writers he had encountered. While the ambassador promised to inquire about them, he pointed out to Miller that: “We can’t push them [the military] too far […] We don’t want to lose them” (Miller 2001, 215). Things did not go particularly well at the dinner-table: the conservative journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, who had been briefly imprisoned by the junta from 1980 to 1983, knew that there was torture in Turkey, but was also violently anti-leftist. She told Pinter to mind his own business; this was a Turkish problem that could be solved by Turks alone.7 In her view Pinter had come to listen to what leftists told him and subsequently put it into a profitable play. Not surprisingly Pinter took this as an insult and threw it back in her face. The ambassador quickly tapped his glass with a silver spoon and brought silence to the proceedings. “I wish to welcome Mr. Miller as our honored guest,” he said, and went on to extol the dramatist’s work in the theatre (Miller 2001, 216). Miller responded with an impassioned speech, which, while praising the United States for their support of the Turkish Republic, nonetheless suggested that they might be “helping to alienate the [Turkish] people by siding so completely with those [the military government] who have deprived them of their rights” (217). Erdal ønönü, at the time the leader of the main opposition party, the Social Democracy Party, replied 5 Orhan Taylan (1941-) figurative painter who according to his website is a firm believer in “standing up for democracy both against a police-state and a fundamentalist state” (“Meeting the Artist,” accessed October 4, 2010. http://www.orhantaylan.com/ingcontact.htm. 6 “Yediler, øçtiler: Zehir Kustular” (They Spoke Venomously Against Turkey), Milliyet, March 27, 1985: 1. 7 Nazlı Ilıcak (1944-), conservative journalist and one-time member of the proIslamic Fazilet (Virtue) Party

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that he could not help but agree with Miller’s views and wanted to add his welcome to that of the ambassador.8 Ambassador Strausz-Hupé, an archconservative appointee of President Ronald Reagan, thanked his guests and talked about developing democracy in Turkey.9 Looking straight at Pinter, he emphasized the fact that all points of view were welcome in the country, regardless of what the dramatist might think. Miller responded by saying that hundreds of intellectuals were currently imprisoned in the Turkish Republic for their thoughts: “Where does that leave our understanding of democratic values?” The Ambassador thanked him for his speech and the dinner ended. Pinter went to look at the paintings in the hall, but the Ambassador followed him and accused him of not understanding the political realities of the situation: “Don't forget, the Russians are just over the border. You have to bear in mind the political reality, the diplomatic reality, the military reality.” Pinter's response was short and to the point: “The reality I’ve been referring to [...] is that of electric current on your genitals.” The Ambassador drew himself up to his full height observed to Pinter that “you are a guest in my house,” turned on his heel and walked away. Pinter observed to Miller that “I think I’ve been thrown out,” to which Miller replied: “I’ll come with you.” The entire experience, according to Pinter, was “one of the proudest moments of my life” (Pinter 1996). The two men subsequently held a press conference in østanbul, where they repeated more or less what they had stated at the ambassador’s reception. The next day they returned to London, where they learned that reporting of the event had been banned in the Turkish media, and a full enquiry was to be launched into the whole affair. Not that it made much difference: Prime Minister Özal still claimed in a speech to the Washington Press Club a few weeks later that no political prisoners existed in the Turkish Republic (Miller 2001, 219). Despite the military government’s efforts to make light of the whole affair, The Ambassador's Reception suggested that the incident had major repercussions. Miller and Pinter’s visit achieved its purpose by raising awareness of what was going on in the Turkish Republic, as well as embarrassing the American government. On March 28, 1985 an article 8

Erdal ønönü (1926-2007), physicist and politician, deputy Prime Minister from 1991-1993. 9 Robert Strausz-Hupé (1903-), naturalized Austrian who came to the United States in the 1920s, created the Foreign Policy Institute in the mid-1950s, and led a full-time life as an academic before entering the diplomatic service following Richard Nixon’s election in 1968.

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appeared in the New York Review of Books, signed by Susan Sontag and Robert Brustein (amongst others), calling for the release of the theatre director Ali Taygun, who had been imprisoned for over two years for belonging to a movement called the Turkish Peace Association, which had been declared subversive by the military junta (Hersey et. al. 1985, 17). We heard extracts from Taygun’s letters, praising Miller and Pinter for their efforts in making Turkish writers aware that they were not alone; there were writers in other countries who thought in similar ways, giving their Turkish counterparts the courage to speak out. Strength emerged out of solidarity.10 The Ambassador’s Reception reminded us of just how difficult it has been for many writers and intellectuals to express their opinions in a context dominated by three military coups (1960, 1971 and 1980). The producer was Gemma Newby.

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“We are more ‘together’ now than we would ever have been, had we been together physically. I know that. A toast, my friends: ‘To the triumph of human dignity. Fraternally” (Ali Taygun to Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter, March 12, 1985, http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/letter10.html (accessed May 10, 2010).

CHAPTER TEN CULTURAL POLICY IN THE TURKISH REPUBLIC1

This provocative collection of essays focuses on cultural policy in Turkey past and present, beginning in the late Ottoman period and culminating in the new initiatives produced in the wake of østanbul’s selection as one of the European Cities of Culture in 2010. It begins with an historical survey of cultural policies during the first four decades of the Turkish Republic by Murat Kato÷lu, focusing in particular on the ways in which successive governments tried to foster belief in the new national culture through educational institutions (the People’s Houses, the Village Institutes), research organizations (Turkish Language Institute) and institutes of the performing arts. Many of these organizations benefited from the expertise of foreign scholars-especially in the fields of arts and culture. Examples include the French painter Léopold Levy and the German theatre director Carl Ebert. However Katoƣlu suggests, quite rightly, that these developments gave rise to an “East-West problematic” (Ada and ønce 2009, 63): while the Republic’s leaders worked hard to establish a culture that would be “westernized with the will to live” (63), they had to contend with a traditional rural culture that frequently resisted such changes. One way of dealing with this was to stimulate the growth of folklore studies as a basis for artistic creation. As Pertev Naili Boratav, one of the main instigators of this movement, observed in 1942: “[T]he better and more frequent use of folklore by our artists, the more their art will acquire universal value” (74). Making use of folk traditions would help

1 This is a review of Serhan Ada and H. Ayça ønce (eds.), Introduction to Cultural Policy in Turkey (østanbul Bilgi University Press, 2009), originally published on the H-Turk Discussion network (2010) (http://www.h-net.org/reviews/review_browse.php?list=81&page=1, reprinted by permission).

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Turkish artists produce original works, rather than simply imitating western models. While Kato÷lu congratulates successive Republican governments for enabling the Turkish Republic to speak “the common language of civilization” (85), he still believes that more needs to be done: new arts centers need to be established in all parts of the country–for example, an Institute for Folklore Collection and Archives, or a Turkish Art and Heritage Central Museum. Kato÷lu also insists that subsidies should be allocated to those who try to create new Turkish art forms incorporating both western and local traditions. Serhan Ada’s essay “For a New Cultural Policy” develops this argument further. He believes that the government-sponsored “Kemalist-Turkish culture” has lost its significance in a multicultural society. He argues instead for a more inclusive cultural policy, in which governments collaborate with local administrators, and representatives of various cultural and arts institutions, as well as the private sector. An example of how this might work in practice is provided by the Diyarbakır Arts Centre in the east of the country; established in 2004, this successful non-profit making institution, offering films, art exhibitions as well as other activities funded by local government with additional support from the European Cultural Foundation and østanbul Bilgi University. H. Ayça ønce’s essay “Cultural Politics and Local Public Administration” concentrates in detail on similar experiments in other provincial towns– Çanakkale, Malatya and Antakya. The Antakya Municipality Strategic Plan (ABSP) states its objectives as follows: “[We are] making a contribution so that our country can compete with leading countries in the world in science, arts and sports” (255). On this view a genuinely multicultural cultural policy can benefit the nation, as well as different local communities. Inevitably, however, this kind of cultural policy can be difficult to put into practice by governments (whether on the national and local levels) who have been accustomed to centralizing strategies. Asu Aksoy’s “The Atatürk Cultural Centre and AKP’s ‘Mind Shift’ Policy” offers a good example. She quotes from a 2007 speech by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an, which emphasized the importance of sustaining the Republic’s “rich and competitive cultural life” by “encouraging the private sector and non-governmental organizations to play an active role in the cultural domain” (193). On the other hand this same government still does not allow the use of names and titles containing letters characteristic of the Kurdish alphabet. Bearing this in mind, Aksoy wonders whether AKP’s

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‘mind shift’ policy is nothing more than an excuse for “privatization and competitive advantage seeking” (210). Aylin Seçkin’s exhaustive analysis of nine five-year development plans in Republican cultural policy (19632013) reaches a similar conclusion; despite several statements about the importance of collaboration between public and private sectors, so as to develop a more enlightened cultural policy, all the plans suffer from “a lack of coherence. This in turn exposes the ambiguities within the cultural policies themselves. One hopes that a resolution will eventually be found whereby culture is no longer defined in narrow nationalistic terms but rather as a phenomenon of world significance” (131). On the other hand the private sector’s involvement in cultural policy is not always a force for good. Gül Pulhan’s “Cultural Heritage Reconsidered in the Light of Recent Cultural Policies” refers to a law passed in Italy, whereby the government allowed for the privatization of cultural heritage sites as well as other relevant services (security, cleaning, restaurants, etc.) This provoked a barrage of protest: thirty-six of the leading museum directors of the world wrote to President Silvio Berlusconi, reminding him that the purpose of such sites was to serve the public rather than make a profit. While Pulhan believes that the private sector could be involved in the process of creating or revitalizing historic sites, she believes that the ultimate responsibility for their upkeep should lie with the state, which is principally concerned with “passing on cultural heritage to future generations” (156). This view is contradicted both by Deniz Ünsal, who attacks stateinitiated cultural policies on the grounds that they reflect the concerns of “the political elite” (168), and by Philipp Dietachmair of the European Cultural Foundation, who predictably believes that cultural policies should be formulated by “strong, independent cultural actors and NGOs dealing with various new fields of artistic expression” (221). Perhaps the way forward for the Turkish Republic lies somewhere in between these two positions: Osman Kavala proposes that while formulating cultural policies at both local and national levels should be the state’s responsibility, cultural initiatives should be implemented by private organizations and/or artists. What is more important, however, is that both the state and the private sector should cooperate with one another in the public interest: “Participation in cultural activities is an integral part of the socialization process. It is necessary, especially for young people from deprived families, to have access to such experiences” (215). While the methods of disseminating culture have changed in the Republic over the past eight decades, the fundamental purpose remains the same.

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Introduction to Cultural Policy offers a comprehensive summary of how successive Turkish governments have addressed the issue of cultural education, as well as offering pointers for the future. The book spends a lot of time focusing on initiatives for the 2010 østanbul City of Culture year; I’d have welcomed a little more attention devoted to the policies of other major Anatolian cities–Ankara, øzmir, Bursa. Sadly it seems that many of the issues raised by the book have blighted the City of Culture celebrations. Korhan Gümüú, a representative for the NGOs involved in the project, claimed in January 2010 that: “Our democratic approach was overshadowed by the state’s technocracy and privately funded commercial models.” Faruk Pekin of the Cultural Awareness Foundation resigned from the agency involved in the project on the grounds that “the administrative structure […] was left to state officials […] [who] do not approach the projects as if they were cultural projects. The agency has become an arm of the state” (Schewina 2010) Perhaps the parties involved should have read Introduction to Cultural Policy in order to learn from the past and thereby plan more coherent policies for the future.

CHAPTER ELEVEN EDUCATING THE PEOPLE: REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE øSTANBUL MILITARY MUSEUM AND THE SOFIA MUSEUM OF NATIONAL HISTORY1

In a 2000 article for Kültür ve øletiúim, Bekir Onur draws attention to the importance of a museum as a means of education; of curators using objects to develop their visitors' sense of historical awareness, and sharpen their “sense of aesthetics, criticism and creativity” (Onur 2000, 27). This may involve the creation of new displays, appealing to specific socioeconomic groups, or the promotion of touring exhibitions in alternative spaces. Museum education is particularly important for children, but can prove significant for adults too. The main objective should be to render museums accessible to all people, something that is characteristic of any democracy (Onur 2000, 28). How should museums fulfill this educational role? For the Nigerian director-general of museums, Dr. Yaro T. Gella, writing in 1994, their main function consists in emphasizing the importance of the nation, especially for countries who have been subject “to colonial rule.” A museum is both “the fruit of a people's history and a determinant of history,” using its displays to communicate the indigenous ideas, values and systems that give meaning and order to people’s lives (qtd Kaplan 1994, 45). This can be accomplished through various methods; the chronological arrangement of exhibits that focus on ancient as well as modern history (giving the impression that individual nations have existed 1

This article was originally published in Kültür ve øletiúim [Communication and Culture] 5, no.1 (Winter 2002): 39-63. Reprinted with revisions by permission of Ankara University, Department of Communication.

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for a long time), or the creation of displays that focus on key themes in a nation's history, both on the domestic and international fronts. In this chapter I want to examine how these ideas have been put into practice (while bearing in mind that the Turkish Republic has not been subject to colonial rule), through a case study of two museums: the Military Museum in østanbul and the Museum of National History in Sofia. There are two main objectives behind this case study; in recent years, it has almost become mandatory that museums in the west should concentrate on the presentation and the preservation of cultural diversity (Lavine 1990, 155). The British government instructed its state institutions to draw in more visitors from ethnic minorities or face a cut in funding-a directive that was only abandoned on the grounds of impracticality (“Ethnic Museum” 2001, 2). This chapter will discuss how museum education in state-funded institutions in the Turkish Republic and Bulgaria has been designed to foster belief in a common culture based on a single national identity. A second aim of this chapter will be to demonstrate how this form of cultural policy involves a deliberate process of othering, as the museums in both countries suggest that their respective national identities have been forged out of cultural encounters between Turks and Bulgarians. Such strategies do not necessarily involve bias or prejudice; such terms are too crude for analyzing such issues, because they suggest a simple divergence from “objectivity,” which is in itself a disputed term. Through a deliberate arrangement, of objects; accompanied by explanatory texts where appropriate, each institution creates a set of narrative discourses that approach the question of national identity from different, often contradictory perspectives. An example of how a display has been arranged in one of the museums should clarify my intentions dearer. In 1994 the østanbul Military Museum mounted an exhibition of paintings on Turkish military history, largely drawn from its own collections, supplemented by loans from the city’s Maritime Museum. Beginning with the crossing of the Ottomans to Rumeli (1353) and ending with the march, of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror from Edirne to Constantinople, exactly a century later, the exhibition proved that the Ottomans were not only good fighters, but represented a dynamic and unifying force in a period of military strife. One picture, the anonymous “Crossing of the Ottomans to Rumeli,” shows the standard in the foreground, while one soldier points the' way forward. The emphasis in on discipline: the soldiers stand in serried ranks, while their colleagues row them across the sea.

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Military success is also the theme of two paintings by Stanislaus Chelebowski2 of the battle of Varna (November 10, 1444), in which an Ottoman victory sealed the fate, of the Balkans and the Byzantine Empire.3 One shows an Ottoman soldier mounted on a white horse, cutting a swathe through a mass of soldiers, his sword at the ready, followed by his fellowsoldiers bearing the standard. The Ottoman forces are represented as skillful, as they preserve their military shape in the midst of a chaotic struggle. Chelebowski’s second painting “The Pitched Battle of Varna” communicates a similar message, with an Ottoman soldier mounted on a white horse galloping towards his adversaries followed by the standardbearer and the rest of the army. The Military Museum’s 1994 exhibition contained two other anonymous paintings focusing on Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror and his role in the Constantinople campaign of 1453. The siege lasted fifty-four days, with a regular Ottoman army of not less than 50,000 faced by a defending force of 5,000. The battle represented a triumph of modern technology, with the Ottomans entering the city through a breach in the walls opened by cannons. One painting by Hasan Rıza (1936), “The March of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror with his Army from Edirne to østanbul,” gives pride of place to the cannon glistening in the sunlight.4 Sultan Mehmet sits astride a white horse, his troops behind him, the standard proudly flying. The other painting, the anonymous “Launching of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror’s ships to the Golden Horn” stresses the orderliness of the troops as they board the ship, taking pride in the national flag (prominently displayed in Sultan Mehmet's private barque) as well as the Sultan himself. Compared to the Ottoman troops, the opposition in all these paintings has been depicted as inferior. In Chelebowski’s first painting of the Battle of Varna, a rider is clearly not in control of his horse; it is clear that he will prove no match for his Ottoman opponents. Chelebowski’s “The Pitched Battle of Varna” depicts the death of an Ottoman adversary as he tries to 2

Stanislaus Chelebowski (1835-84), Polish painter who took up residence in Constantinople from 1864-76 as master painter for Sultan Abdulaziz. 3 In this battle Sultan Murad II defeated the Polish and Hungarian forces under Wladyslaw III of Poland and Jãnos Hunyadi. It was the first battle of the Crusade of Varna. The defeat set the stage for the fall of Constantinople in 1453. 4 Hasan Rıza (1857-1912), commercial artist who based himself at Karaa÷aç, a village near Edirne, and spent much of his career painting the foremost battles and events of Ottoman history. For a biography, see “A Painter at the Side of Mehmed the Conqueror,” Osmanlı Araútırmaları, http://www.os-ar.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=165 (accessed September 19, 2010).

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retreat from the marauding troops. By choosing to flee rather than fight, he does not deserve to live. All five paintings discussed above were arranged in historical sequence in the 1994 exhibition, with the earliest events placed closest to the gallery entrance. Disp1ays of this kind are frequently found in military museums elsewhere: both the National Army Museum and the National Maritime Museum in London contain extensive collections of paintings recounting important battles on land or at sea. What differentiated the østanbul Military Museum’s exhibition from those of its British counterparts was the rationale behind the displays. The National Army Museum in London tells the stories of British soldiers from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds, in an attempt to show how the army has had a unique impact on British, European and world history (“National Army Museum” 2010). For the 1994 exhibition, the østanbul Military Museum was not concerned with European or world history, but focused exclusively on the army’s collective contribution to the development of the Ottoman Empire and (later on) the Turkish Republic. In their visual retelling of the period 13531453, certain historical facts were consciously suppressed-for example, the way in which the Empire survived numerous crises (civil war, crusader invasions) (ønalcık 1973, 17). Instead the exhibition emphasizes the importance of good leadership, singleness of purpose and self-discipline amongst the troops, which brought its own rewards on the battlefield. These virtues were also evident in less successful military campaigns. Part of the exhibition focused on the Russian wars of 1877-8, which concluded with the signing of the San Stefano Peace Treaty, giving limited powers of self-government to the Bulgarians.5 The Russians tried to justify their invasion of Ottoman territory on the grounds that they were acting of behalf of the Bulgarians, their Balkan Christian neighbors; but their main reason for intervening was to exploit potential trade routes. The British mobilized their forces in defense of the Ottoman Empire when it realized that the Russians were about to enter Constantinople and thus threaten vital trade routes to India. Needless to say, none of these events appeared in the Military Museum’s pictorial representation of the 5

Russia claimed that the Treaty was nothing more than a rough draft. However it formed the basis for future foreign policy in Bulgaria, lasting until 1944 and leading to the disastrous Second Balkan War and Bulgaria's even more disastrous participation in the First World War. The enlarged Bulgaria as created by treaty alarmed the major European powers, including France and Great Britain. As a result, it was never implemented, being superseded by the Treaty of Berlin (also 1878).

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campaign. The Ottoman Empire might have been disintegrating, with major foreign powers controlling its finances, and different ethnic groups struggling to escape from centralized control; but the exhibition concentrated on the Turkish soldiers fighting to preserve their country’s territorial integrity (and hence foreshadowing the Independence War of 1920-2). Simeon Agopyan’s picture of an unspecified Ottoman-Russian battle shows the Ottoman forces defending a small hill at night.6 One soldier brandishes his sword-a seemingly easy target for the Russian foot soldiers, all armed with rifles. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this picture is the smallness of the people set against the vast night sky. Despite the Russians’ best efforts, they would never have sufficient forces to conquer it completely. Another Agopyan painting of the battle of the bastion of Aziziye depicts a similar theme, with Ottoman soldiers firing at the unseen enemy, supported by cannon fire from the ramparts of a fort.7 Two other paintings show Ottoman forces returning from Russian battlefields, defeated but unbowed. On December 10, 1877 the great fortress of Plevna, south of the Danube in what is now Bulgaria, fell to the Russians after a six-month struggle.8 Three hundred thousand refugees fled the city by railway, truck or ox-cart (Mansel 1995, 305). The painter Bedri’s 1901 representation of these events depicts soldiers returning to Constantinople-one blinded, one mounted and the third looking warily around for potential adversaries as he leads his horse by the bridle.9 The emphasis here is on companionship as the Ottoman soldiers stick together in the face of adversity. Sami Yetik’s depiction of the same events focuses on the hard winter of 1877-8, when the Ottoman soldiers braved snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures to return to Constantinople and defend their capital. Even if they are half-dead with cold and hunger, they have sufficient presence of mind to stay together.10 Given the right circumstances, the Turkish army could draw upon these qualities of loyalty and companionship in the service of the nation. In a book written in the wake of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, the British 6

Simeon Agopyan (1857-1921), Armenian painter active in Constantinople, best known for his landscapes. 7 The Bastions of Aziziye and Mecdiye in the province of Erzurum in the east of the Turkish Republic were specifically built during the Russo-Turkish war to repel Russian attacks. There were 21 bastions in total, all built out of rough-hewn stone. 8 The siege lasted until December. The Ottoman commander Osman Pasha surrendered the city; he was treated honourably, but his troops either perished because of the cold or were murdered by the marauding Bulgarian forces. 9 Unfortunately no information exists about the painter. 10 Sami Yetik (1878-1945), painter best known for rural and urban landscapes.

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Poet Laureate John Masefield observed that, while the Ottoman forces suffered horrific loss of life (like their Allied counterparts), they won the battle on account of being “very good fighters, furious in attack and resolute in defence,” keeping together in every situation (Masefield 1915, 173). Ercüment Kalnık’s 1945 painting of the campaign justifies Masefield’s admiration: the troops keep together in battle, driven by a common loyalty to the national flag, held high by an (apparently unarmed) standardbearer.11 The painting's composition is remarkably similar to those of Chelebowski, with one significant difference–the soldier’s head is swathed in bandages. Yet he continues to defend his home territory against potential colonizers. The capacity of the Ottoman and the Turkish armies to fight successful campaigns is underlined by a display in the Military Museum’s permanent collection dedicated to battles between 1792 and 1908. There are several military souvenirs of European origin, including German and British rifles and pistols (Askeri Müze 1968, 42-4). Due to its pro-western policies, dating from the Tanzimat period, the Ottoman Empire was more than a match for its European adversaries (Emiro÷lu et. al. 1973, 58). This reminds us of the original purpose of the Military Museum, whose origins date back to the eighteenth century, when Sultan Ahmet III desired to set up a museum based on the Enlightenment principles of objective and/or universal knowledge (Emiro÷lu et. al. 1973, 48). By exhibiting actual examples of weapons captured from the enemy in the various Ottoman campaigns, Ahmet III hoped to promote the idea of a national culture by stressing its highest values and its proudest moments. The purpose of the modern-day museum is much the same: visitors to the 1994 exhibition participated in a narrative deliberately structured by the curators that emphasized the history, beliefs and achievements of the Turkish nation, both past and present. This narrative was distilled down to a series of triumphs, and largely purged of social, ethnic and political conflict. Carol Duncan has described this experience as analogous to a religious ritual, which “confers identity or purifies and restores order to the world through sacrifice, ordeal or enlightenment” (Duncan 1990, 92). How does museum education function in this particular context? At the beginning of this chapter, I invoked Bekir Onur’s suggestion that museums should' be rendered accessible to everyone. On the one hand the østanbul Military Museum and its exhibitions certainly meets this objective, as they show the past has helped to forge national stability. At another level, the 11

Ercüment Kalnık (1909-), painter who is best known for portraits and landscapes. His house was restored as a museum in 1971.

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museum automatically assumes that its visitors are members of a common culture; it does not acknowledge that people might view the exhibits differently. This is what prompts Onur to call for new kinds of display, appealing to an individual’s “sense of aesthetics, criticism and creativity.” However, such displays might also prompt people to question the museum’s function as a means of reinforcing the stability of the common (and by extension, the national) culture. The Sofia National Museum of History was established in 1973, with the express purpose of preserving and/ or illustrating the Bulgarian cultural-historical heritage. Its permanent collections are divided into a series of rooms defined by historical period: on the first floor, there are galleries devoted to old coins and treasures, prehistoric society, Bulgarian lands in ancient times, and the Bulgarian state during the Middle Ages; on the second floor attention shifts to Bulgarian history from the fifteenth century to the present day. For the purposes of this chapter I survey the displays in two galleries–“Bulgarian lands in the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century,” when the country was part of the Ottoman Empire; and “The Bulgarian National Revival,” covering the period from the midnineteenth century until the end of the Russo-Turkish War in 1878. Compared to the Military Museum, which neglects the Ottoman army’s opponents in its historical representation of the period 1400-1900, the first of the Bulgarian Museum of National History’s galleries continually refers to the Ottoman presence–as witnessed, for instance, in the display of a plate from øznik and gold coins minted during the reign of Süleyman 1 (1520-1566). Through a series of explanatory texts printed beneath the exhibits and in the guidebook, the museum stresses, that despite their attempts to “civilize” (their term) the Bulgarians, Ottoman authority was never total or complete. The “authentic” voice of Bulgarian culture not only survived but also appropriated some of the Ottoman power in order to redefine the terms of its knowledge (Bhabha 1985, 179). Local crafts flourished, while printers secretly produced a book of sermons “intended to satisfy the people's search for [Christian, rather than Islamic] education” (Dmitrov 1994, 128). Religious icons produced at that time are perceived as symbolic of “the Bulgarian struggle for national survival […] [It was] the monasteries where cultural life seethed, literary work developed, icons and murals were painted” (Dmitrov 1994, 118). Some of the language contained in the explanatory texts might seem a little over-nationalistic, especially for non-Bulgarian visitors. Here is an example:

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Through brute strength and weapons, a theocratic monarchic order was established which was alien to the age-old traditions of the Bulgarian people. It was supported by the [Ottoman] Sultan and his army, and Islam became the dominant religion. The Bulgarian people, deprived of rights, were subject to cruel religious and ethnic discrimination (117).

Yet despite this hardship, the people’s spirit could not be suppressed: Although brutally suppressed and jolted from its natural path of historical development, the Bulgarian people did not stop living, but rather struggled and created. Its resistance against the foreign rule found expression in various forms: the most striking of which were the people’s uprisings at the end of the XVIIth century (117).

The guidebook draws a distinction between the Bulgarian people and their Ottoman conquerors, whose very presence disrupted “the natural, path of historical development.” This “development” is identified modernization and/or Europeanization; by implication, the Ottomans are anti-modern and anti-European. In the Bulgarian context the museum’s chief objective is to provide positive images of a shared national culture, which was often derided by western intellectuals. According to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu the poor Bulgarian woman dressed herself “in a great variety of coloured glass beads and [is] not ugly, but of tawny complexion,” a clear sign that they were different from the Turkish women of Sofia, much admired by Montagu for their “shiningly white skins” (Montagu 1995, 59, 65). The distinction between “uncivilized” Bulgarian and “civilized” Ottoman cultures in the region was re-emphasized a century later by two travel writers, Stanislas G. B. St. Clair and Charles A. Brophy, who observed in A Residence in Bulgaria (1869), that unlike the Bulgarians, the Ottomans were “good, clean” hospitable and industrious,” although threatened by a western world too easily influenced by “anti-Moslem propaganda,” and by bureaucrats “who cheat, steal, and seem to be every bit as lazy as the despicable Bulgarian rayah” (qtd Kostova 1997, 125). Even those politicians who supported the Bulgarians against the Ottomans often represented the Bulgarians in negative terms: while praising them for their “industry, primitive [ways] and docility,” William Ewart Gladstone likened them to lambs to the slaughter of the Ottoman sword. It was the Montenegrins, with their aggressive and warlike capacity forged through years of “cold, want, hardship, and perpetual peril,” that ultimately secured victory over the Ottomans (Gladstone 1879, 308).

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At least some Bulgarians benefited from Ottoman rule. Every spring, two or three thousand of them, “strong rude men” in brown jackets and green caps, drove flocks of lambs and goats into Constantinople. During the summer they worked in the fields outside as milkmen and gardeners. Many Bulgarians made their home in the city; by the beginning of the nineteenth century there were over 40,000 residents, some of whom occupied important positions in the Ottoman hierarchy. Stefanaki Vogoridi, the Grand Logothete of the Patriarchate (also known as Stefanaki Bogoridi), while encouraging the Bulgarian cultural revival and ecclesiastical independence, nonetheless remained a loyal Ottoman.12 He assured the British ambassador in the late 1850s that “the Bulgarians would be the “warmest defenders of the Turks against Russia if they could see the chance of success” (qtd Mansel 1995, 282). Nonetheless, the Bulgarian community in the Empire hoped to achieve some form of autonomy. In 1845, acting for the first time as a separate national group, the Bulgarians chose two representatives, Ilartion Makariopolosky and Neofit Bozveli, who asked for a Bulgarian church in Constantinople, and bishops in districts with a Bulgarian majority.13 In the National Museum of History, the exhibits from this period (housed in the Bulgarian National Revival gallery) once again stress the theme of resistance; how local industries such as wood-carvings and metalwork, were influenced by western European art and thereby guaranteed the survival of Bulgarian culture in a context dominated by “backward Ottoman feudalism, which was not prepared to meet the biddings of the new time [i.e. the Enlightenment]” (Dmitrov 1994, 129). Makariopolosky and Bozveli are characterized as the main protagonists in “a true nationwide movement for church independence,” in which “the Bulgarian community in Constantinople became the center of the struggle.” Both men “worked out a program for national-cultural autonomy, i.e. an official recognition of ethnic Bulgarians in the boundaries of the Ottaman Empire” (159). On display in the museum is a silk paliza, embroidered in gold, 12

Stefanaki Vororidi, also known as Stefan Bogoridi (c. 1775/1780–1859), was an Ottoman statesperson named after Boris I, the first Christian ruler of Bulgaria. His was the only Christian house to have welcomed an Ottoman Sultan since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He helped to build a Bulgarian Orthodox Church in østanbul in the Fener district in 1849. 13 Ilartion Makariopolosky (born Stoyan Stoyanov Mihaylovski)) (1812-75), was a cleric as well as an activist. He was exiled to Mount Athos between 1845 and 1850. Neofit Bozveli (c. 1785–1848) was a cleric also exiled to Mount Athos in 1841, only to escape and return in 1844.

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celebrating the “Christ's Raising” of April 3, 1860-a moment described in the guidebook as “unforgettable for all Bulgarians” (170)-when Makariapolosky rejected the supremacy of the Ottoman Patriarch by not referring to him during the ceremony at St. Stephen’s Church.14 Compared to the Military Museum, the National Museum of History offers radically different reading of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. The all-Bulgarian uprising of 1876, which triggered the Russian invasion of Ottoman territory, is described in the guidebook as “the most heroic [...] revolt” that “provoked a wide international response in support of the Bulgarian people.” Despite repeated attempts to find a diplomatic solution, Ottoman intransigence prompted Russia to declare war, which generated “general excitement [...] among all Bulgarians” (Dmitrov 1994, 176). The Bulgarian Vassil Levski is described as “the main organizer, leader and ideologist” of the uprising; his portrait (dating from 1895) is prominently displayed, with the text underneath portraying him as “the Apostle.”15 Other items on show include the “belongings necessary to every insurgent,” including a gun, a knife, a rebel’s uniform and a hat with a lion–the symbol of Bulgarian freedom. The National Museum of History’s version of the conflict itself indicates that the Russian invasion, with Bulgarian support paved the way for the creation of a new Bulgarian state. In 1878 Tsar Alexander II presented the Preobrazhenski Monastery in Sofia with a giant church bell weighing more than 800 kg.16 The guidebook describes the item as “a symbol of Russo-Bulgarian cultural connections during that time” (178). Such alliances were obviously effective; with many Bulgarians acting “as scouts, interpreters and hospital attendants. Their participation was a natural continuation of the struggle for independence” (176-7). Several exhibits celebrate the San Stefano Peace Treaty of March 1878, which initiated Bulgaria’s progress towards independence. An 1860 portrait of 14

On April 3, 1860, during Easter service in Constantinople, Ilartion intentionally did not mention the name of the Patriarch of Constantinople, which, according to the canon law, was an act of defying his authority. The result was exile, together with together with the bishops that supported him, Avksentiy Veleshki (Auxentius of Veles) and Paisiy Plovdivski (Paisius of Plovdiv). 15 Vassil Levski (1837-73) was a revolutionary renowned as the Bulgarian national hero. He organized the movement to liberate the country from the Ottomans. Founding the Internal Revolutionary Organization, he tried to foment a nationwide uprising through a network of secret regional committees. 16 The monastery was named after Father Matey Preobrazhenski (1828-75), the clerical name of Mono Petrov Selzmonov, who accompanied Vassil Levski on his tour across Bulgaria as well as taking an active part in revolutionary work.

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the Russian Tsar Alexander II (who signed the Treaty), hangs above glass cases containing a cross from the Russian Mausoleum in San Stefano, and a cup presented to one Bulgarian volunteer who had fought on the Russian side on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the treaty in 1902. At last Bulgarian culture had the chance to make the kind of intellectual progress characteristic of Western Europe in the post-Enlightenment period. A manifesto written by King Ferdinand dated September 22, 1908 (when Bulgaria finally gained its independence) makes this point clear: “Having always been peace-loving, today my people are longing for cultural and economic progress; nothing would impede Bulgaria in this way […] That is the people’s desire, that is the people’s will.”17 Museum education in the National Museum of History promotes a common culture at the expense of plural identities. The same is also true of the østanbul Military Museum, but perhaps we need to reflect more on the historical constructions of their respective policies. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk believed that “all obstacles in the way of […] development [of a national culture] must be removed. All superstitions and misconceptions must be forever banned” (qtd Sonyel 1989, 110). However such “superstitions and misconceptions” have led to discrimination against the Turkish minority in Bulgaria since independence was declared in 1908. Bilâl N. ùimúir has chronicled in great detail the era of “terror and darkness” during the 1930s, when Turkish newspapers, schools and social clubs in Bulgaria were closed, and many intellectuals forced to emigrate (ùimúir 1990, 165). In an excess of nationalist zeal, the Bulgarian government of the 1980s tried to force Turkish families to substitute their Muslim names with Bulgarian equivalents, and imposed stiff penalties on anyone speaking Turkish in public places. Dimitur Stojanov, then the minister of foreign affairs, unequivocally expressed the rationale behind this policy: “All our countrymen who reverted to their Bulgarian names are Bulgarians [....] There are no Turks in Bulgaria” (“Officials Say” 1995, 5). Despite some attempts to restore civil and political rights to the Turkish minority since the collapse of the communist government in 1989, relations between Bulgarians and Turks are far from harmonious. A survey of inter-ethnic relations carried out by a sociological collective in June 1992 found a high level of prejudice among Bulgarians towards Turks and other minorities. 51.1% of Bulgarians considered the Turkish minority a real danger to national security; 83.8% thought Turks were religious fanatics; while 17

King Ferdinand (1861-1948) became Tsar of Bulgaria on October 5, 1908; the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed soon afterwards. This was one of the speeches he gave to celebrate independence.

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36.5% thought that more should be done for Turks to return to their own country (Eminov 1997, 22). On a state visit to Bulgaria in 2001, the then Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer recently received a delegation of Turks, who described some of the difficulties they continued to experience (“Notes” 2001, 15). Given this level of prejudice against the Turkish minority abroad, it is not surprising that the Military Museum in østanbul should continue to celebrate Turkish or Ottoman victories in the Balkans. However, it is unlikely whether Sofia’s National Museum of History would describe their exhibitions as anti-Turkish. Tony Bennett offers two different models of museum display-one concentrating on its educative role and its responsibility in relation to the public, the other focusing on reciprocal interaction between the museum and the plural communities that make up its visitors. The first model is characteristic of museums established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the height of Empire: in Britain, France and elsewhere museums functioned as instruments of government, collecting and repackaging objects and presenting them as part of an overall program of reform which imbued people with specific civic attributes. Although the second model can be deployed as part of government polity, its purpose is no longer to implement reform, but rather to promote respect for, and tolerance of cultural diversity (Bennett 1998, 210-3). While the first model may be perceived as old-fashioned by museum curators in Western Europe, in the Bulgarian context it is still of paramount significance to the ideal of national unity–even though the country itself is now a member of the European Union. The museum suppresses the notion of cultural pluralism in an attempt to show how Ottoman rule engendered a new spirit of nationalism among the Bulgarian people, whether directly (through rebellion), or indirectly (through a renewed emphasis. Local indigenous cultures survived intact, but they too were imbued with the spirit of nationalism, as they protected themselves from so-called “foreign” (in this case, Ottoman) influences. Several historical statements made in the museum’s display could be challenged on the grounds of accuracy: the historian Halil ønalcık observes that especially during the fifteenth arid sixteenth centuries, the Bulgarian territories in the Ottoman Empire– especially the cities of Plovdiv and Sofia-thrived as a result of rapidly expanding trade with Europe (ønalcık 1973, 140-50). Yet the museum is notconceti1ed with historica1 accuracy; its main purpose is to establish a binary opposition between themselves and the colonial other-in this case, a non-Christian nation whose status as a member of mainland Europe (and the European Union in the future) is perpetually debated.

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Throughout this chapter, I have tried to suggest that the model of museum education proposed by Onur is fundamentally antithetical to the interests of both museums in østanbul and Sofia. Both are more concerned with promoting the values of their national cultures, based on civic attributes. In the case of the Military Museum, these might be defined as companionship, self-discipline, organization and loyalty to the national flag. The Bulgarian museum promotes, industry and individual enterprise, especially if it is undertaken in the service of the state. The Military Museum focuses on the achievements of ordinary soldiers in battle; the National Museum of History recognizes individual contributions to victories in battle. In such contexts, there are clear difficulties involved in developing a more pluralist model of museum education based on respect for cultural difference and accessibility of the exhibits to different socioeconomic groups. In celebrating the difference of Bulgarian identity from that of the Ottoman colonizer, the National Museum of History's discourses-whether verbal or visual-discriminate against the Turkish minority. Far from eliminating or negotiating difference; this strategy serves to reinforce it. Yet one cannot see now any alternative polities could be introduced in a context that seeks to create new models of Bulgarianness for an era when the country has just entered the European Union. The situation is slightly different in the Turkish context. While the Military Museum certainly expresses pro-government views in its representation of the people, it is also designed to make a significant contribution to national stability. The museum promotes heterogeneity over homogeneity in terms of its representation of the national culture. In the Turkish and Bulgarian contexts, the concept of national identity as represented in the two museums as overwhelmingly based on soil and/ or roots, which have had to be defended against foreign invaders. For any socalled “enlightened” policy of museum education to be implemented, curators must first address certain issues posed nearly two decades ago by the Indian critic S. P. Mohanty: “How would it be possible for us to recover our ommonality, not […] our shared human attributes […] but, more significantly, the imbrication of our various pasts and presents, the ineluctable relationships of shared and contested meanings, values and natural resources?” (Mohanty 1989, 23). This can only be achieved if museum curators are prepared to reconsider the relationship between, the museum, the funding institutions and the visitors. Questions need to be answered, such as what is the function of a museum in contemporary culture? Can the museums create displays that prompt radical new

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approaches to the issues of national, regional or ethnic identity?18 To answer these questions, curators need to contemplate alternative methods of funding that can be found from the private sector, so as to implement a new educational policy, especially in institutions such as the Military Museum that concentrate on national history. Only then can answers be provided to Onur’s questions, which might ultimately lead to a significant increase in visitor numbers, and thereby guarantee the museums’ continued existence.

18

This question has been addressed by Olga Demetriou in a recent article “The Cyclops, the Sultan and the Empty Past: Sites and Histories in Turkish (Re)appropriations of the Thracian Past.” She argues that modern Turkish citizens have the ability to look at the past in ways “much more diverse than nationalist classifications might indicate” (In Anna Stroulia and Susan Buck Sutton (eds.), Archaeology in Situ: Sites, Archaeology and Communities in Greece (Lanham, MD, and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2010), 235 (221-39)).

CHAPTER TWELVE MARKETING MEDITERRANEAN MUSEUMS1

For the aspiring tourist, the museums of the Turkish Republic’s Mediterranean region constitute one of its most valuable (and profitable) cultural resources. They encompass the Antalya museum, with its fourteen galleries and its children's section (the only one of its kind in the country); the open-air theater at Aspendos, which was built in the first century AD. and is today the site of an annual opera and ballet festival; and the ancient cities of Perge and Termessos, as well as numerous other sites from the classical and Seljuk periods. New facilities have been built recently; these include souvenir shops and improved box-office arrangements. Most sites also contain several cafés and/or restaurants. The fact that the Antalya museum won the European Museum of the Year Award in 1988 only helps to increase its potential attraction for tourists. This chapter will focus on how these museums and/or historic sites currently market themselves. By focusing on four sites in particular-the Antalya museum, and the three ancient cities of Lycia, Termessos, and Perge-it will suggest that curators have attempted to construct an image of the Mediterranean and its people that not only incorporates Eurocentric notions about its classical past and its exotic present, but which reinvents such myths to promote the Turkish Republic as a dynamic country, with its own traditions and values based on democracy and secularism. This image is designed to attract local people as well as foreign tourists in an attempt to demonstrate that “the forces that sustain popular culture [in this case, museums and historic sites] are animated by a thoroughly modern, nationalist discourse” (Shryock 2000, 34). The chapter will be divided into three sections. The first will focus in general terms on the importance of marketing museums and/or historic sites to visitors faced with a wealth of 1

This chapter was first published in Nedret Kuran-Burço÷lu and Susan Gilson Miller (eds.), Representations of the ‘Others’ in the Mediterranean World and their Impact on the Region (østanbul: The Isis Press, 2002): 253-69. Reprinted with permission.

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alternative attractions. This has prompted a reconsideration of the museum's role within a society; whereas once it functioned as a means of civic education, using its exhibits to promote such virtues as loyalty to the state, now it has to think far more in terms of reciprocal interaction between itself and its public. Kevin Moore believes that its function consists primarily of presenting “a dissection of the meaning of popular [as well as so-called 'high'] culture in an accessible manner” (Moore 1992, 104-5). The second section will discuss how this objective has been put into practice, focusing in particular on the Antalya museum. It will show how their displays have been deliberately arranged to evoke certain myths of the Mediterranean and its people, whose origins can be traced in European (specifically British) travel writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time, such myths have been rewritten to incorporate the achievements of the Turkish nation. The third section will demonstrate how guidebooks to historic sites within the Antalya region have been written to fulfill a similar objective, using the work of modern European anthropologists and/or ethnographers as a basis. Martin Stokes believes that official Turkish culture is perpetually faced with the “problem” of remembering, especially since the creation of the Republic in 1923, which was designed to efface the country's Islamic and Ottoman past (Stokes 2000, 225).2 The image of the Mediterranean projected by the Antalya museum and the surrounding historic sites attempts to deal with this by synthesizing the past with the present, and thereby establishing a link between classical European, Ottoman and official Republican cultures. The 1990s witnessed a major policy shift for museums and historic sites, not only in Turkey, but also in the west. Hard questions have been asked by governments about whether they should continue to be subsidized, and what their function in the community should be. The principal answer to such questions has been to stress that the museum fulfills an educational role; it provides an opportunity to change a visitor's perception or knowledge of the world. A document published in 1999 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the United Kingdom expresses the point well: Museum collections need education to turn them to good purpose. It is culture in action, the uses of culture for learning, which define the quality 2

This is certainly not the case with other cultures within the Republic; throughout this book–in films and literary texts–writers have shown how individual artists dramatize the act of remembrance and its significance, showing how the past inevitably influences the present.

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Chapter Twelve of a museum and a society. It is the responsibility of museums and galleries to help each generation to re-engage with the cultural energy embodied in their collections, and to contribute to what Michael Oakeshott described as ‘a public conversation through the ages’ [....] By making education the raison d’être of all their activities, museums can both reaffirm the purpose for which they were first created, and meet the purpose of [...] [a] learning society (Anderson 1999, 11).

Exactly how a museum can achieve this purpose, however, is less clearly defined. In 1992, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill suggested that public interaction with the institution was generally restricted to looking at displays whose definitions had already been determined in advanced by the curator (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 7). This form of museum presentation can be traced back to the Enlightenment, when individual nations sought to promote national and civic unity through education. The purpose of a collection was the awakening of a spirit of reverence and devotion; museums were temples; their directors and assistant priests while visitors came to worship their efforts, which were invariably sealed off from them in glass cases (Hudson 1987, 46-7). In recent years, however, much published research has shown that museums and/or historic sites do not appeal equally to all social classes. The sort of people most likely to visit them are the better-educated and the affluent: one study suggested that around 20% of the population never went at all, while a mere 2% visited eleven or more times (Moore 1992, 15). Even those museums which are designed to appeal to minority interests-for example, those depicting the experiences of immigrant communities-have difficulty attracting patrons, especially if they are classified for funding purposes as “folk” or “ethnographic” museums (Shryock 2000, 54-5). Critics such as Kevin Moore have suggested that, in order for museums to regain public confidence as a “critical resource” in society, they should determine their USP (Unique Selling Proposition)-in other words, what they can offer that no other institution can (Moore 1992, 25). This may require them to be provocative-to present exhibitions in new ways that might be unexpected or even challenging. Curators should also recognize the heterogeneity of their audiences: an exhibition might have to be marketed in different ways to different interest groups-schoolchildren or ethnic minorities. Paul Martin recommends that museums are faced with bridging the gap between themselves, as professionalized and socially approved institutions, and their visitors, whose interests are so diverse that they can be treated suspiciously by the museum and antiquities establishments (Martin 1999, x-xi).

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Bekir Onur’s article “Müze Ortamında Cocukla øletiúim” [Communicating With Children in Museums] applies such recommendations specifically to the Turkish context. Drawing upon Hooper-Greenhill’s work he suggests that while many curators have endeavored to increase visitor numbers, especially to ancient sites or those museums containing substantial amounts of ancient artifacts, they could do more to develop the visitors’ sense of historical awareness, and sharpen their “sense of aesthetics, criticism and creativity” (Onur 2000, 27). This may involve the creation of new displays, appealing to specific socio-economic groups, or the promotion of touring exhibitions in alternative spaces. Museum education is particularly important for children, but can prove relevant for adults too. The main objective should be to render museums accessible to all people, something that is characteristic of any democracy (28). One way to meet this objective consists of taking a fresh look at familiar images, symbols or conventions, in an attempt to reclaim a lost certainty of identity from the past, or to establish future possibilities for the construction of identity. For the tourist reading about Mediterranean Turkey in guidebooks produced in Europe or the United States, the area appears to have three main selling points-sunshine, sea, and a wealth of classical sites and museums. The online Rough Guide refers in detail to Antalya’s Hadrian’s Gate (c. 130 AD) and the Museum (Rough Guide 2001). The classical ruins outside the city are “impressive.” In a spate of hyperboles, the United States-produced Go To guide describes the city as “mythological [...] which housed the Gods and Goddesses [and] now exhibits all its secrets and marvels to mankind.” King Attalus, who founded Antalya, evidently considered it “the most beautiful piece of land on earth;” in the Roman period it became “an outstanding region,” while Hadrian's Gate is part of “the most amazing area in the whole ancient Pamphylia region” (Go To: Antalya 2001). Such enthusiasm was also characteristic of those travelers who toured the Mediterranean region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Sorrento, Italy in 1864, the British traveler John Addington Symonds was enraptured by human beings that matched his conception of Hellenic beauty: “They seem […] to retain some of the old Greek loveliness of shape and dignity of carriage. Girls carrying pitchers on their heads have the neck of bust of a statue, and the young men look like Athletes with deep ardent eyes” (qtd Schueller and Peters 1967, I, 439). To the expert eye of the archeologist, it was the details of posture, dress and ornament that were most recognizably Hellenic. The British traveler Charles Fellows, during his expedition into south-western Asia Minor was

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struck by the similarity between the costume, sandals, jewelry and hairstyles of the modern Anatolians and those he had seen in Greek sculpture; in the gestures of the dancers he recognized “the attitudes displayed in the fauns and bacchanal figures of the antique" (Fellows 1834, 94, 103, 128, 150). Those with an understanding of art had long been familiar with the Italian Mediterranean, while romantic poetry had whetted the appetites of those who preferred the mountain scenery to be found in Italy or Greece. John Stuart Mill found that his classical knowledge gave him an intense appreciation of Mediterranean culture. After having surveyed the Greek landscape, he observed that: “the more than earthly beauty of this country quite takes away from me all care or feeling about the historical associations” (qtd Mineka and Lindley 1972, 429). Nearly a century later, the orientalist writer Lawrence Durrell observed that the phrase “a Mediterranean woman” conjured up a “rich mental image [...] descended from her foam-born prototype Aphrodite [...] who raised woman's independence into a cult which combined freedom and sensuality in equal parts” (Durrell 1971, 369). Perhaps inspired by such imagery, the Antalya museum devotes one of its exhibition halls (entitled “The Gallery of Gods”) to a series of life-size marble statues of gods from the Greek and Roman periods. Most of them have been excavated from the ancient city of Perge, and date back to the 2nd century AD. In the photographs published in the museum guidebook, they are lit from the front, and pictured against a dark background, to emphasize the individual traits of the faces-the furrowed foreheads, the tightly closed mouths, the swelling under the eyes-with the folds of the clothing sharply defined. In the museum itself, the statues are arranged in serried ranks, separated from the visitor by ropes. Visitors are asked to admire the sculptors’ achievement in creating “magnificent works of art [...] [in] linear style with details [...] clearly set off against one another" (Özgen and Özgen 1992, 68). The displays are clearly meant to vindicate Atatürk’s observation, quoted in the guidebook’s preface, that Antalya is “the most beautiful city of the world,” whose "Homeric charm [...] justifies the legendary myths of ancient times" (Dörtlük 1992, 5). Both the museum and its guidebook are also keen to stress the contribution made to Antalya’s history by Turkey's indigenous cultures. The “Gallery of Ethnographic Material” displays material from the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, including tiles and bricks, works of art, ceramics, metal and carpets. The guidebook refers specifically to these artifacts, dating from the eleventh century onwards, as evidence of “the beginning of [the] permanent Turkish presence in Anatolia,” as well as reflecting some

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of the more creative periods in Islamic art (Özgen and Özgen 1992, 143). The Mediterranean culture of the Antalya region has evolved by means of different civilizations throughout its history, with each one making its own distinctive contribution. There is a commitment to cultural diversity, with a particular emphasis on how the contemporary Turkish Republic has been shaped by the past. A similar pluralism of approach underlies the way in which religious objects are presented in the museum. To nineteenth century travelers, the only religion worth worrying about was Christianity; in the Mediterranean the Bible was being recalled all the time. In the 1850s the British writer Arthur Stanley watched Biblical tales coming to life: The vineyards with their towers I noticed at Hebron and Bethlehem. On the hills above Bethany, and still more in the valley of Jehosaphat, I saw the shepherds hiding their flocks of sheep and goats, white sheep and black sheep intermingled. In the cornfield of Sechem women and children were carefully picking out the green tares from the wheat (Prothero 1894, I, 456).

Islam was tolerated, but only insofar as it matched the Victorian Christian ideals of social control, decorum and piety. In 1888 Isaac Taylor paid tribute to Muslim devoutness, and attributed to it the endearing behavior of the Egyptian lower classes: “Religion seems to exert a greater binding moral force in the conduct of the laboring classes than in London, Paris or Berlin. It restrains men from evil, and tends to make them kindly, virtuous and moral” (Taylor 1888, 8). In the Antalya museum’s Gallery of Icons, largely dating from the nineteenth century, the main exhibits depict the Virgin and Child, scenes from the life of Christ, and important saints. There is also a box containing relics of St. Nicholas from Myra (now known as Demre), whose portrait has been painted on the lid; and a Bible, the covers of which are decorated with embossed silver plaques. In the Gallery of Ethnographic Material, in contrast, there is on display a Koran, dating from the thirteenth century, which stresses how the Seljuks “became ardent converts of Islam” (Özgen and Özgen 1992, 143). Relics of Christianity and Islam are kept in different galleries, in keeping with their periods of origin; but the Antalya museum seems determined not to encourage the visitor to prioritize one religion over another, in an attempt to stress their commitment to secularism and toleration. Compare that with the attitude of European orientalists such as Lawrence Durrell, whose enthusiasm for things Mediterranean did not

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apparently include the Turkish Republic.3 In his travel book The Bitter Lemons of Cyprus Durrell befriends a hodja of the local mosque; but can only describe him in terms of animal imagery: “His huge head wobbled on its stalk, gleaming with sweat, like a toadstool. ‘Welcome,’ he said, raising his paws in the mouse-gesture, ‘Will you stay tonight?’” (Durrell 1971, 238). He continues: “He [the hodja] ducked up and down, his head imitating the jogging motion of a camel, his underlip thrust out in commiseration” (238). Compare this description with that of the devout Christian attacking the shrine “as if she would wrench, by the force of her prayer, the required miracle from it” (376). It is part of the Antalya museum’s policy to write back to Durrell by suggesting that Mediterranean culture, in its modern form, can tolerate people of all religions. It would seem that curators of historic sites in Antalya are faced with a more difficult task than their counterparts in museums, as they are limited in the ways they can represent historical material. The very permanence of the site offers what Paul Martin describes as solidity: “Objects [in an historic site] ‘are.’ Their solidity is in itself reassuring. We, however, only ‘might be’ and can never quite know if or what we ‘are.’ We can only reify that which ‘is’ (the object) with what we want or value, and hence recover our psychological balance” (Martin 1999, 24). Yet perhaps the significance of an object is not as fixed or as reassuring as Martin would have us believe. Several years ago Michel Foucault identified what he described as three major epistemes-a series of unconscious but positive and productive set of relations within which knowledge is produced and rationality defined (Foucault 1970, 191). What counts as knowing is, of course, dependent on social factors, whether cultural, social, political or scientific, which interact with one another in different ways in different contexts. Despite this, Foucault discovered large-scale congruence in the ways in which intellectual activity has been conducted in different periods; this formed the basis for his epistemes, which he categorized as Renaissance, Classical and Modern. In the Renaissance, the basis for interpretation was similitude, with things being read for their hidden relationships to one another. Such relationships could be endlessly 3

It is claimed that Durrell’s attitude towards Turkey was inevitably clouded by his experiences of having to leave Cyprus during the mid-1950s at the height of the crisis. He was drawn into the Greek movement for enosis, and took a job with the British Information Service. One biographer claims he did not necessarily believe in Greek supremacy in Cyprus, but was unwittingly drawn into it. His published work might suggest otherwise (“Biography of Lawrence Durrell,” http://www.poemhunter.com/lawrence-durrell/biography/ (accessed July 16, 2010)).

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rewritten, which allowed for a plurality of viewpoints (Foucault 1970, 30). The Classical episteme set itself a much more restricted project. Its main premise was one of order, achieved through measurement and the drawing up of tables. Knowledge, which was previously thought to be limitless, was now felt to be definable and controllable; it was possible to create universal understanding, if the exact relationship of one thing to another could be classified and recorded (74). The Modern episteme Foucault believed made the human sciences possible. Problematics were raised; a new form of knowledge was developed, based on the questioning, analysis and explication of relationships between objects. It was no longer sufficient to merely place objects in classificatory order to reveal their immediate links; knowledge required deeper questions to be asked about human beings and their relationships to these objects. It is this episteme that provides the basis for Paul Martin’s observation about the power of an object to restore psychological balance. It also provides the basis for an analysis of how curators of historic sites in Antalya have constructed their own image of the Mediterranean. James Amelang observes that, unlike northern Europe (where the emphasis is on the individual) several anthropologists and/or ethnographers have identified collective experience as the basis of Mediterranean culture. He also suggests six other characteristics of southern European cities and the surrounding areas: 1. Patronage. Individuals and institutions carrying out functions of mediation and brokerage are seen as crucial to social relations, not just in the countryside, but in cities as well; 2. The role of kinship, which precipitates both conflict and reconciliation within individual families; 3. The importance of friendship, and the difficulty of separating it from kinship and patronage; 4. The importance of hierarchy and segregation. Social classification is patterned most firmly along the lines of gender, age and background. The result is the public marking of separate social spaces for rich and poor, men and women, young and old; 5. The intensity of life in a small neighborhood. This is chiefly due to a belief in the family as the basis unit of society; 6. The highly emotional quality of social interaction. People live on their emotions, and place particular emphasis on multiple and conflictive value systems (honor/shame; the struggle for social prestige on limited resources, etc.) (Amelang 2001, 20-1).

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Such definitions were also employed by nineteenth-century European travelers to make sense of their experiences of the Mediterranean. Crimes of the sort familiar in northern Europe-violent robbery and theft-were apparently extremely rare: “There are crimes frequent with us and the French of which they are never guilty,” wrote Mary Shelley of the Italians in 1844. There might have been crimes of passion, but “brutal murders committed for filthy lucre” were unknown. Even the banditti were full of “redeeming traits” (qtd Pemble 1987, 136). The intensity of Mediterranean life was captured by the novelist George Meredith, who wrote in 1848 that his purpose in writing Vittoria (a novel about the Milanese uprising) was to “represent the revolt itself, with the passions animating both sides, the revival of the fervid Italian blood, and the character of the people” (qtd Watson 1919: 293). European intellectuals visited the Mediterranean to rediscover their humanity, to take a rest from the business of writing and appreciate the emotional quality of life. George Henry Lewes, on holiday with George Eliot in Naples in 1860, gazed at the mountains and felt “a sort of yearning to be among them [the Mediterranean people] without any of the intellectual strife and vicissitudes of English life” (qtd Haight 1978, III, 292). Such observations may serve to prove the truth of Martin’s thesis that contact with an object on a historic site might sustain one's psychological well-being. On the other hand, this process could also be described as orientalist. By attempting to reify the object “with what we want or value,” they are accommodating it within their own frame of reference, in an attempt to maintain their own cultural superiority. All this might seem to be unrelated to the subject of the chapter-Turkish museums and historic sites in the Mediterranean. Yet perhaps not: by categorizing or classifying Mediterranean life, twentieth-century ethnographers also seek to contain it within western-originated models. In a collection of essays published in 1966 on honor and shame in the region, J. G. Peristiany writes: Speaking mainly for the Greek Cypriot, I find in him a predilection for his own conception of ‘men of honor’ [sic]-that is, for the exemplification of absolute values, consistent with, and as distant as, his Byzantine heritage. He endows things Greek with magic, from music to epic poetry, as he finds in these an echo of his conceptions of a world where honor is an active value (Peristiany 1966, 113-14).

Not only does Peristiany try to speak for the Greek Cypriot community, but he conflates their experiences-men and women alike-into one person, who is not only aware of his history, but cognizant with “things Greek”

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such as epic poetry. This is what renders him educated and hence “honorable.” As with their counterparts in the Antalya museum, the curators of historic sites in the Turkish Mediterranean are faced with the difficulty of how to challenge such stereotypes. In many cases, they have rewritten their guidebooks, paying tribute to western Europeans who have written about the Mediterranean in the past, but also celebrating the achievements of the Turkish nation. The English language guide to Lycia, distributed by the local firm of Desti Turistik Yayınları, quotes from the American archeologist George E. Bean,4 whose work contains many of the stereotypical characteristics of Mediterranean life referred to earlier on in this essay. Ancient myths such as that of Byblis and Caunos, daughters of the King of Miletos (c.3000 BC) depict the intensity of life in the region: Byblis loves her brother so much that she cannot stop fondling him. Well aware that such feelings are unnatural, she writes a letter to Caunos, revealing that her devotion to him exceeds a fraternal affection. Upon reading this letter, Caunos is disgusted [....] Byblis cannot bear to be parted from him and, losing all hope of finding Caunos, jumps off the rocks in a suicidal attempt [...] Since then, all hopeless love affairs all over the world are called LOVE OF CAUNOS (Duru and Tor 1992, 20-1) (original emphasis).

In the Roman period, Lycian life became hierarchical, with the Romans “naturally” responsible for questions of war and peace, and “internal affairs, justice and security [...] controlled by the [Lycian] League officials, who continued to be regularly appointed” (16). However, the guidebook is also at pains to stress that “nowhere in Anatolia is there a better opportunity to appreciate the native culture than in Lycia.” Despite the presence of buildings from the Hellenistic and especially the Roman periods, there are tombs, sculptures and buildings from the Seljuk and Ottoman eras, which “are still in excellent preservation” (17). In an uncharacteristic verbal flourish, the authors will consider themselves privileged if their guidebook can provide foreign visitors with assistance in their progress through “this bewitching land. How lucky for us if we can shed a shred of light on your route” (3). Mustafa Uysal and Azmi Buyruk’s guide to Termessos (translated into English by F. S. Arnas) first appeared in 1985. Since then it has gone through four editions, with the addition of new photographs and line drawings. Following the example set by nineteenth-century European 4

George E. Bean first published his guides to the Mediterranean in the mid-1950s. Since then they have become seminal texts for academics and non-specialists alike.

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travelers, the authors allude to the fact that the Greeks and Romans achieved “a very high level of civilization [...] they were undoubtedly influenced by the extraordinary beauty around them.” This enabled them to create an “unparalleled synthesis of nature and beauty” (Uysal and Buyruk 1990, 6-7). The achievements of Turkish archeologists are also recognized; they have made Termessos what it is today: “[A] perfect bridge from our past to the present. The relics of the past are wrapped by the loving beauty of nature. This gives visitors an extraordinary feeling transcending time” (83). In slightly less rhapsodic vein, the curators of the Perge excavation pay tribute to the work done by Turkish archeologists on behalf of østanbul University and the Turkish Historical Society: “As a result of [their] excavations, the city of Perge has regained its present well organized appearance and thanks to the statues recovered there, the Antalya museum has come to be an important statue museum” (Gürdal et. al. 1990, 18). As well as specialist guidebooks, most historical sites in Antalya distribute general guides to the region, intended for the non-specialist visitor. ølhan Akúit’s Antalya and the Southern Coast of Turkey, published in Istanbul by the travel agency Akúit Turizm, is a good example. It makes use of similar conventions as the specialist guidebooks, drawing attention to the connection between ancient Greek and Roman and contemporary Turkish civilizations: “It has often been said that many Greek gods were imported to Greece from Anatolia and were developed from the religious culture of the Hittites. This idea was popularized by the Turkish poet, the fisherman of Halicarnassos” (Akúit 1993, 93). The intensity of life in the Mediterranean is referred to once again: the people of Selge are “a scrappy lot” (34); while the legend of the foundation of Letoon is described as a consequence of Zeus having fathered Apollo and Artemis “n one of his amorous escapades” with Leto (92). There is only one archeologist worth mentioning-Cevdet Bayburturo÷lu, whose work in Arykanda in the late 1970s led to the discovery of the Odeon.5 Of perhaps more significance, however, is the, layout of the guide, where photographs of the deep blue sea and the amenities of the region are juxtaposed with pictures of ancient sites and local crafts such as weaving, basket-making which survive in the region to this day. Clearly the intention is to emphasize the sheer range of experiences available for the visitor to the region, which incorporate classical Greek and Roman, Anatolian and modern European traditions 5

Bayburto÷lu’s guides, published in both English and Turkish, have become required reading for would-be archeologists in the region. See the bibliography (in Turkish) at http://site.mynet.com/arkeolojidunyasi/arkeoloji/id7.htm (accessed July 16, 2010).

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within the umbrella term Mediterranean culture. Antalya is for everyone, whether Turkish or non-Turkish. This chapter has proposed a very specific cultural construction of the Mediterranean, as constructed by the Antalya museum and the surrounding historic sites, in the hope of increasing visitor numbers. It constitutes part of an overall marketing strategy which is designed to attract visitors from as many social groups as possible, whether Turkish or non-Turkish. There are many reasons why this strategy has been adopted: as with publicly funded institutions elsewhere, the Antalya museum has to justify its existence to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in the face of competing claims from other institutions. Moreover, the Antalya museum has had to rethink its strategy according to guidelines issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which has identified the Antalya region as the Turkish Republic's tourism capital, in the sense that it has witnessed the most rapid increase of foreign visitors over the last decade. The image of the Mediterranean that emerges from this analysis can best be described as non-confrontational and accommodating. Its origins can be traced not only to ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, but also to the wealth of material that appeared in the post-Enlightenment period, as writers traveled over Europe on the Grand Tour in search of unfamiliar experiences, or to bring their classical education to life. It is clear that Turkish museum curators have recognized the influence exerted by such writing on the modern European visitor’s perception of the Mediterranean. At the same time many Europeans’ perception of the area are inherently colonialist in outlook, as they seek to categorize it within their own fields of reference, or contrast it with their own (apparently mundane) existences. Rather than simply repudiating these ideas (which might prove counterproductive), the museum curators have sought to extend them by drawing attention to the past and present achievements of the Turkish nation. This strategy itself is worth commenting on, given the fact that the existence of museums (and museum education) is a comparatively recent phenomenon in the Turkish Republic. A guide to the country, published in 2001 by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, claims that museums only came into being as a result of Atatürk's commitment “to the unearthing and exhibition of the rich cultural heritage of Anatolia” (“All About Turkey” 2001).6 By doing so, the Antalya museum curators not only reaffirm the official culture’s 6

Atatürk had other reasons for opening museums; in 1925 he ordered the dervish lodges to be closed down and re-opened as museums–for example, the Mevlâna Center in Konya, which became a museum when the institutional expression of Sufism was outlawed in the Republic.

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commitment to westernization, but also suggest that the westernizing process is not based on the slavish imitation of European models, but on the adaptation of such concepts to local conditions. The Antalya museum's image of the Mediterranean is one that reflects the cultural specificity of the region. If its ancient artifacts were to be exhibited elsewhere, then the image would change-as happened, for instance, with a 2001 exhibition “Troy: Myth and Reality” at the Landesbank Forum, Stuttgart, Germany, where treasures from the Antalya museum, as well as three hundred exhibits which had never been seen before, were designed to illuminate “Troy as a theme in European culture” (Schmidt 2001, 6). Ludmilla Jordanova insists: “[T]he social and cultural construction of museums demands our closest attention-it is a large and important project [...] to develop an understanding of the peculiar preoccupation of modern Western societies with mastering ‘objects of knowledge,’ and then publicly commemorating the victory by putting on a show” (Jordanova 1989, 40). This chapter has sought to show how, through an efficient marketing strategy, such mastery can be questioned and subsequently reconstructed on less confrontational terms in non-western museums.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF TRANSLATION1

ùehnaz Tahir Gürça÷lar’s The Poetics and Politics of Translation in Turkey focuses on translation activity in the first fifty years of the Turkish Republic. Her basic contention is that there were two opposing movements–the dominant position represented by the governmentsponsored Translation Office and the resistant position maintained by private publishers. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, more precisely defined as “a method or mechanism between social webs and the actual practices performed by individual actors” (Gürça÷lar 2008, 44), she argues that the early years of the Turkish Republic were dominated by cultural planning, which could be divided into two distinct phases. The first phase involved the creation of the Translation Office in 1940, the creation of the People’s Houses (Halk Evi) in fourteen towns and cities as a way of disseminating newly-produced translations to the people, and the establishment of Village Institutes, which provided an important means to propagate the official culture through reading programs and critical debate. Gürça÷lar quotes Vedat Günyol, who taught French at Hasano÷lu Village Institute near Ankara in the 1940s, and maintained that literature teachers made a special effort to teach Translation Bureau-produced versions of French classics to students (78). The second phase–which Gürça÷lar terms the “de-planning” phase (82)-began soon after the transition to a multi-party system of government in 1946. The Village Institutes were abolished, and the People’s Houses converted into cultural foundations for the general public. Translation activity was refocused, with the emphasis placed not on the introduction of western classics into Turkey, and rather on the production of patriotic 1 A review of ùehnaz Tahir Gürça÷lar, The Poetics and Politics of Translation in Turkey 1928-1960 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), p/bk 331 pp. ISBN 978-90-420-2329-1, originally published on the H-Turk Discussion network (2010) (http://www.h-net.org/reviews/review_browse.php?list=81&page=1, reprinted by permission).

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material. Throughout the fifty-year period covered by these two phases, however, the prevailing approach to translation remained roughly similar. While translators were recognized for their efforts–as their names appeared on the title-page immediately below the original author’s name–the Translation Bureau expected them to observe the principle of sadakat, which Gürça÷lar defines as “fidelity to textual integrity, fidelity to content and form and fidelity to the ‘tone’” (138). Such strategies would expand the capacity of the language to express complicated concepts, as well as contributing more generally to the cause of Turkish humanism. By contrast the field of popular literature was governed by an entirely different poetics. In a fascinating series of chapters–drawing on primary sources hitherto not discussed in English–Gürça÷lar argues that private publishers shunned the idea of fidelity in translation. Classic texts were ruthlessly plundered, often appearing in heavily abbreviated form; in most cases the translator’s and the author’s names did not appear on the titlepage, and the text’s status as a translation or an ‘original’ work was not specified (196). Early examples of this type of work included Hindistan Ormanlarında (In the Forests of India), first published in 1926 in Ottoman script. This was a pamphlet of 16 pages, bringing Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin together. No author’s name appears, while the nominal translator–Selâmi Minir Yurdatap–is introduced as the nakil (or “agent of transfer”). Gürça÷lar argues that this soubriquet denotes “a gray area between translation and indigenous writing” (213). In truth this distinction had no significance in the popular imagination; what mattered more was that texts should incorporate elements derived from Turkish folk-tales, while prioritizing action over psychological, social and stylistic elements (227). Gürça÷lar shows these ideas in action in Kemal Tahir’s versions of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, the first of which appeared in 1954 and sold over 100,000 copies. Such texts, she argues, are distinguished by “the appropriation of foreign characters, the indifference towards the authorial provenance of the [original] works and the lack of a clear-cut distinction between translated and indigenous works” (259). What mattered most–in the publishers’ eyes at least–was that such texts possessed local appeal. The book concludes with a close analysis of different translations of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The conclusions are much the same–that there were two distinct poetics and cultural habituses guiding the production, marketing and reception of the texts. Sometimes Gürçaglar’s analysis betrays its origins as a doctoral thesis–for example, in its rather mechanical structure with innumerable sections and subsections, which make the argument rather difficult to follow. Her book might have benefited from

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more judicious subediting, as its basic thesis is repeated ad nauseam. Nonetheless Gürça÷lar is to be congratulated for her thorough and painstaking analysis of a subject hitherto untouched in English, which tells us as much about the Turkish Republic’s cultural policies in the midtwentieth century as about the translations themselves.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN TALÂT HALMAN: A MAN OF MANY PARTS1

Talât Saït Halman (1931-) has enjoyed several careers as a diplomat, politician, professor, critic, poet, newspaper columnist, business person and translator. He currently acts as Chair of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters. He has published over sixty books and nearly three thousand articles, reviews and essays both in Turkish and English. Halman has been one of the leading figures in rendering Turkish literature both ancient and modern accessible to English-speaking audiences through translations, lectures and critical essays. In this chapter, based on two interviews conducted at Bilkent University in March and April 2010, Halman looked back on his various careers and thereby raises some important issues that have dominated the Turkish cultural agenda over the last five decades. One of these is the question of humanism. In his published writings Halman has shown how this is an “abiding tradition in Turkish culture” shaped by “changes of locale, shifting cultural traditions, new religious allegiances, warfare against many nations and communities, [and the] struggle for survival in the face of natural disasters.” Humanism can best be defined in this context as a “concern for peace, brotherhood, man’s [sic] intrinsic significance, and humanitarianism” (Halman 1981, 1-2). In this formulation human beings work towards achieving mutual understanding that transcends national and sectarian divisions and liberates them from dogma. This helps to explain why Halman has perpetually worked to secure the liberation of writers imprisoned by governments, as well as working for PEN on an international level. In a 2002 essay on Nazım 1

Halman has had an interview biography published in Turkish by Cahide Birgül, with the title Aklın Yolu Bindir [There are a Thousand Logical Paths – punning on a Turkish proverb] (østanbul: Türkiye øú Bankası Yayınları, 2003).

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Hikmet Halman expands on his humanistic beliefs; despite long imprisonment for protesting against injustice and inertia in Turkey and elsewhere, Hikmet’s work has “a lyric power virtually unequalled by any modern Turkish poet, and a highly developed faculty for dramatizing the human predicament.” Later on Halman quotes Jean-Paul Sartre, who paid tribute to Nazım Hikmet’s “great human qualities and his indomitable energy” (Halman 2007e, 329, 337). Such humanism is not just confined to twentieth century writers: Halman detects the same spirit in the thirteenth century poet Mevlâna Celaleddin-i Rumi, who had a “humanistic, universalist humanitarian vision” of life: “One of his famous rubais invites all human beings, regardless of creed, ethnic background, social status, or nationality, to his shrine (Halman 2007d, 260). Humanism is something trans-historical, which helps to explain why Rumi’s poetry is still very much valued in contemporary Turkey. The same view also applies to western writers: Halman wrote a play on Shakespeare for the actor Müúfik Kenter containing a poem written in English attesting to Shakespeare’s humanism, transcending national boundaries to such an extent that “Shakespeare, like Atatürk, condemned those who make spears/ They both sang loving praises of those who break spears/ Our nation is Atatürk’s but also Shakespeare’s” (Halman 2003, 46). Halman remains preoccupied with universalism which, in his view, should not be equated with westernization, but is defined instead as a universal mythology focusing on human beings who have been crushed by society and ostracized from their environment. Halman comments on the work of the poet Melih Cevdet Anday: “[He is concerned with] the odyssey of human struggle to end alienation. Anday implies that man may survive through the conscious–and creative–functioning of his mind” (Halman 2007a, 75). If writers can make such struggles accessible to wider audiences, then they can be classified as truly “universal.” In 1983 Halman expressed the hope that contemporary Turkish dramatists might be able to achieve this by producing work with “a unique personality,” which functions as part of “mankind’s common heritage” (Halman 1983, 48). This task is not an easy one: writers might be dissuaded from producing universal work by publishers, theatre producers and other leaders in the creative industries, who generally prefer more commercial work. However Halman counters this by asserting that writers should follow Rumi’s example by regarding themselves as responsible only to God; they are in a sense “God’s light in human form,” belonging not to one culture or one nation, but to all humankind: “All countries and cultures should consequently regard as their own – as a spiritual guide and master poet of

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humanity [….] He sought to bring humanity together in love and peace” (Halman 2007b, 295).2 It is this belief in communicating the views of great artists to promote peace that inspired Halman himself to translate so much Turkish poetry into English, or English poetry into Turkish, as well as create poems of his own in both languages. Given this view of literature, it should come as no surprise that Halman has little time for overtly political work, which he believes becomes too reductive in scope. Thus he has little time for the early works produced by Turks living in West Germany, many of which he believed were “pessimistic” in tone: “The peasant [abroad] is often presented as a lesser human whom we should pity. In novel after novel, this compassion, despite its noble intentions, deteriorates into a literary device–and this sympathy, based on hopelessness, breeds what one would reluctantly identify as ‘the banality of pity’” (Halman 2007c, 203). Despite his reputation, Nâzım Hikmet’s work sometimes degenerates into “sheer invective or ideological polemics;” as a result “banality sets in and curtails the effectiveness of both aesthetic appeal and doctrinal substance” (Halman 2007e, 338). On the other hand Halman has been a staunch advocate of experimentation within Turkish literature as it seeks to find its own voice to suit changing times. In 1982 he suggested that authors “are creating an authentic synthesis of national and universal elements. If the synthesis succeeds, the literature of modern Turkey might well be ranked as a major literature in the not too distant future (Halman 1982, 36). The word “synthesis” is important here: Halman believes that new literatures are not formed simply by imitating western (or other models), but by using them as a basis for new and inspirational work. The fact that many writers have understood this provides ample evidence of the capacity of Turkish literary (and other cultures) to evolve according to changed social, political and institutional circumstances. Halman quotes Cemal Süreya’s eloquent lines, written in 1966, which he believes “embody the revolutionary experience, the disorientation as well as the optimism and the stirring search of the ‘New Turkey’: “We are the novices of new life/ All our knowledge is transformed/ Our poetry, our love all over again/ Maybe we are living the last bad days/ Maybe we shall live the first good days too/ There is something bitter in this air/ Between the past and the future/ Between suffering and joy/ Between anger and forgiveness” (Halman 1982, 36). In 2

Halman also points out that this view of life negates tragedy, as understood in the west: “Tragedy does not exist, because it is just another act or revelation of God. In the Sufi (mystic) tradition, the only suffering that has a human dimension is separation from God” (Halman 1983, 26).

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a later essay Halman commends the poet Murat Nemet-Nejat, whose work “imagines bridges over the Bosporus like the two that Leonardo da Vinci had designed in the early sixteenth century [….] For Nemet-Nejat, eda [a literary term signifying ‘distinctive poetic style’] stands as the variegated essence of all the authentic hallmarks of Turkish culture and poetry. In an important sense, it is what makes Turkish poetic creativity both universal and uniquely original (Halman 2004, 1-3). It is this spirit of building bridges between cultures to create a distinct eda–whether poetic, dramatic, or diplomatic–which has informed, and continues to inform Halman’s career, and renders him such an important figure in modern Turkish cultural history. I began by asking him about his early years: LR: You once said you had the urge to become ‘a man of many parts.’ Where did that urge come from? TH: As I child I always wanted to be a specialist in one field, although I never knew what that field was. I kept switching from engineering to poetry, and I fancied myself as a musician, if I had the talent. When I went to Robert College3 I became familiar with that marvelous English expression “Jack of all trades, master of none.” I challenged this: why couldn’t one be “Jack of all trades, master of all–or, at least, master of most?” As a teenager I first learned that expression, and had the desire to become a man of many parts. This became an abiding ambition for me. LR: Did you have any specific interest or ambition at that time? TH: Above all else I wanted to be a poet; nothing else mattered. However I also resolved to be successful–or at least very competent–in a variety of fields. If ever any opportunities came my way, I took advantage of them. 3

Founded in 1863 by by two Americans, philanthropist Christopher Rhinelander Robert and Cyrus Hamlin, to offer an American style education under the Ottoman Empire, Robert College has been in operation longer than any other Americansponsored school outside the United States. The school and its sister institution, The American College for Girls (founded in 1871) have over the years educated many of Turkey's leading citizens since the Republic was founded in 1923, including two Prime Ministers, many cabinet-level ministers, ambassadors, and leaders in medicine, law, business and the arts. The higher education division was transferred in 1971 to the Turkish government and became Bo÷aziçi (Bosphorus) University.

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LR: Did those opportunities simply come your way, or did you make them? TH: A combination of both. Several opportunities came my way when I simply had no previous interest in them–for example, being a business executive. When I was a doctoral student at Columbia University, I got married and had a son. My wife did not want to work; she wanted to read, read, read, as well as look after the child, so I had to get a job to supplement my income as a teacher at Columbia to support my family, as well as pay my tuition fees. I had a terribly difficult time trying to find a job, because I was not qualified for anything, but eventually I was sent by an employment agency to a firm called The Record Hunter, the biggest firm in the world at that time specializing in the retailing of long playing records.4 The owner of the firm was a genuine eccentric with an extensive knowledge of classical music, and he hired me immediately after an interview. I started work on January 10, 1955, earning the princely sum of $1 per hour. I was so desperate for money that I worked 100 hours in my first week, including the weekend: the store was open from early morning until midnight, seven days a week. I was determined to cling on to that job, as I knew how difficult it was to get anything elsewhere; I impressed the owner with my industry and ambition–to such an extent that within a few weeks I was promoted from being a clerk to the owner’s assistant. I learned a lot about the business of record retailing, as well as having an education in classical music. Eventually I became responsible for the firm’s financial affairs, as well as ordering records and writing advertising copy, as well as commercials for the local radio stations. Sadly in April 1956 the owner of the firm had a heart attack and died. The family was saddened by the loss, but they asked me to take over, as I had previously worked as his assistant. I had not turned 25 yet, with only fifteen months experience of the firm; but I decided I would take up this challenge. LR: How long did you run the firm for?

4

Situated on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 42rd Streets, The Record Hunter lasted 47 years until it finally closed in 1993. For more on the store’s history, see Douglas Martin, “Strictly Business: How the Music Stopped for the Record Hunter,” New York Times, January 4, 1993. URL http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/04/nyregion/stricly-business-how-the-musicstopped-for-the-record-hunter.html?pagewanted=1 (accessed April 7, 2010).

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TH: I ran it until late 1960. I became General Manager then turned the firm into a corporation, so as to avoid bankruptcy. I was faced with about 125 creditors and their lawyers, who all descended on me as the only responsible person left within the firm! Somehow I saved it from ruin; and eventually became vice-president of the new corporation. The experience of dealing with business people was fascinating; some of them became good friends.5 LR: At that time, had you decided to come back to the Turkish Republic? TH: Oh, yes. I wanted to enter the Foreign Service and become a diplomat, which is why I had studied political science, international relations and international law at Columbia. LR: Were you writing poetry at that time? TH: Oh yes. I had published some translations while studying at Robert College, and I never stopped writing poetry thereafter. I felt I had the talent to do so. I wanted to translate from English into Turkish: after having worked during the day at the record company I used to listen to recordings done by the poets themselves (such as Wallace Stevens or T. S. Eliot), or poems by other actors, and try to capture the rhythms of poetic English. Remember I had the advantage of working for the largest record-retailing firm in the world, and had easy access to such recordings. About this time I also got an offer to participate in United Nations radio broadcasts in Turkish translated from English. I used to narrate documentaries on the United Nations’ work round the world as well as occasionally reading UN news. I used to do the translations as well from English into Turkish. This job led to my voicing documentaries for the 5

Halman also became something of a local celebrity. The New York Times, describing him as “a hipster from Turkey” reported on June 8, 1960 that he brought seven poets, painters and entertainers from Greenwich Village to perform in the shop window, as a way of publicizing some recently-released poetry and music records. It was apparently a crowd-pleaser until the secretary of the Fifth Avenue Association complained to the police. Halman was charged with violating Section 435-10.0 of the City Administrative Code, which makes a live demonstration in a store a misdemeanor. Halman claimed that “if we are convicted, we shall appeal on the ground of a constitutional right” (Ira Henry Freeman, “Live ‘Village’ Contingent In Store’s Display Results in Complaint and Summons,” New York Times, June 8, 1960, 45. Eventually Halman paid a $25 fine (New York Times, November 10, 1960, 39).

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Voice of America. I enjoyed the fact that I was doing different projects at the same time. LR: Let us move on a bit to your work with the Ministry of Culture. How did the offer come about? TH: Many prominent Turks used to come and visit me at The Record Hunter, because I offered them discounts! One such person was the journalist Abdi øpekçi, who was later to be assassinated.6 He suggested that I should send him articles from America, as well as news items of specific interest to Turks. One such story concerned Hickey Freeman, the prominent firm of tailors in Rochester, New York, which was looking for new recruits.7 They felt that they had imported enough people from Italy, and needed tailors from other countries as well. I suggested to the firm’s president that he might like people from Turkey; as a result, I sent an item back for publication on the front page of øpekçi’s newspaper, which led to a flood of new applications! This became something of a scoop. I left The Record Hunter in 1960 and returned to Turkey to do my military service, even though later (after 1963) I served the record company as a consultant. I subsequently began teaching in a joint appointment at Princeton and New York Universities, but because of my association with øpekçi, I became an American correspondent for Milliyet.8 I also sent series of special reports to the newspaper, on topics such as the number of Turks who had been successful in the United States, or those who had created scandals, and so on. I did a series of five pieces on the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who at that time was becoming very famous 6

Abdi øpekçi (1929-1979), was a journalist, intellectual and indefatigable campaigner for human rights. He was a proponent of the separation of religion and the state. On February 1, 1979 he was assassinated by Mehmet Ali A÷ca, who later shot Pope John Paul II. øpekçi is now buried in the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery, østanbul. 7 Founded in 1899 by Jacob Freeman, Thomas Mahon and Jeremiah Hickey, the company was originally called the Freeman, Hickey and Mahon Company. When Mahon, an entrepreneur, returned to his original leather business, the firm was renamed Hickey & Freeman Company. After purchasing two small clothing makers in Rochester, the company renamed itself the Hickey Freeman Company in 1908. It continues trading to this day. 8 Milliyet, a leading Turkish daily newspaper, came into being on May 3, 1950. During the 1960s and 1970s it had a reputation for offering a balanced political view under øpekçi as editor-in-chief. In 1980 the paper was sold to the Do÷an media group, which also owns the daily newspaper Hürriyet.

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in Turkey, as well as articles on race relations in the United States. In 1968 øpekçi came to New York and offered me a position as a full-time columnist. I was extremely flattered–after all, I had never done anything like that before. I was asked to come back to Turkey, as the column was a daily column; initially I felt that, as I had a full-time job and a young family, I did not want to accept the offer. Eventually, however, after a good deal of persistence on øpekçi’s part, I changed my mind, and returned to Turkey in February 1969. This was another challenge for me; I had never done it before, and relished the opportunity to try something new. I asked for leave of absence from both universities and returned to østanbul. I had a high-profile column on page two of the newspaper, and believed I had to discipline myself to write it. The writing process was never an easy one for me; to get started was always a big problem; but once I started the job, I overcame this mental block. The column attracted considerable attention, as it criticized all ideologies, all political parties. I created an image of objectivity–or at least, as objective as one could be in Turkey at that time. LR: Were you shaped by Milliyet’s politics? TH: No, no. The newspaper had socialist columnists and right-wingers. My predecessor on the column was particularly right wing. LR: Would you describe yourself as apolitical? TH: On the contrary, what I was writing was intensely political, not ideological. I tried to keep an open mind, and criticize anything that I thought was wrong at that time. For example, Abdi øpekçi was a great admirer of [former Turkish President] øsmet ønönü, and never wrote a single word against him. From the beginning I was criticizing ønönü, [Süleyman] Demirel, as well as other public figures.9 LR: How did readers of the newspaper react to your columns? TH: Some people felt that I should be attached to a political party, or embrace an ideology. I received many letters asking me to “reveal my color.”

9

Süleyman Demirel (1924-), served as Prime Minister seven times and was the ninth President of Turkey.

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LR: Were you ever criticized as an outsider coming in to Turkey after having spent to many years in the west? TH: No–that criticism was never leveled at me. However I was accused of being a communist by critics objecting to my criticism of the center-right government at that time. On the other hand a communist weekly And published a photo of me with a big “X” over my face with the caption “Washington’s Handmaiden” underneath. This was because I attacked the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. LR: How long did you do the columnist’s job for? TH: As a daily columnist I worked from February to September 1969, then I returned to Princeton. I continued to write a weekly column for Milliyet. In 1971 a military coup occurred in Turkey, and a new civilian government came to power headed by the lawyer Nihat Erim, who had served as deputy Prime Minister under ønönü a decade earlier.10 As part of his program presented in front of the National Assembly, he proposed that a Ministry of Culture should be created. The idea came from France, where André Malraux was still doing the job: Evim had had his education there, and he believed it would be a great innovation for Turkey to have a Ministry of Culture. I read that statement, and felt that I could do that job, so I developed an entire program of action, which I put in one of my newspaper columns, entitled “Ministry of Culture.” I received a call from the Deputy Prime Minister Atillâ Karaosmano÷lu, asking whether I was intending to return to the Turkish Republic in the near future.11 I replied that we were coming to østanbul in three weeks time for a summer vacation, and he asked if we could talk. Soon afterwards I received a call inviting me to Ankara where I met Prime Minister Erim. He asked me to expand on my ideas, and I promised to have a report ready by the next morning, if a typewriter could be sent to my hotel. LR: You must have been tremendously enthusiastic about the idea … TH: I was. But there was a background to this story; in 1961 I started my military service, and received an appointment as a reserve officer after my 10

Nihat Erim (1912-1980), served as Prime Minister for fourteen months only from 1971 to 1972. He was assassinated in 1980. 11 Atilla Karaosmano÷lu (1931-), politician and former Deputy President of the World Bank.

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basic training. The State Planning Organization (DPT) had been established a few months previously,12 and they made me head of the Department of Press and Publications. While I was there I prepared a two-page report outlining the Planning Organization’s responsibility to plan for the country’s future economic, social and cultural development. While there were departments of economic and social planning already in existence, there was no culture department, and I called for one to be established. However the second in command in the State Planning Organization considered this a very dangerous idea, even though the law called for the creation of such a department. He tore the report up. LR: Why did it happen? TH: Astonishingly this man was one of the most liberal-minded bureaucrats in Turkey. It was simply an individual apprehension of his. So I had the idea in mind for a long time; and if a department like this could be established, I could head it. I felt that I could work in cultural development; so much could be accomplished in a country like Turkey, with its diversity of cultures, its archeological wonders. It was worth having a major ministry to take care of all these things. LR: When you were appointed to the post of Minister in 1971, did you have any particular brief? TH: From day one I was criticized by the Prime Minister. In the second speech I gave as Minister, I said that Turkey was ready for a “Cultural Revolution.” I really believed in that idea, but the Prime Minister disapproved of it, because it was associated with the Maoist Chinese. I meant something quite different, but I was told never to use it again. LR: Why do you think the Prime Minister thought like this? TH: He turned out to be a terrible disappointment. To use the American expression, he was a “scaredy-cat.” Despite his imposing appearance, he was terribly afraid of the military commanders. If anyone disagreed with him personally, he would immediately retreat–which helps to explain why eleven members of the cabinet summarily resigned, in protest at the way he

12

The full title is Devlet Planlama Teúkilatı Müsteúarlı÷ı.

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changed his mind.13 I had first-hand experience of this. There was a folk poetry festival in Konya, to which the Ministry of Education had been regularly invited; when the Ministry of Culture was created, I was invited as well. I gave a speech there in the form of a folk poem, using local expressions and local poetic meter. The audience just loved it; I was given a standing ovation. However when I came back to Ankara, the Prime Minister advised me that a minister should never read poems. LR: So in a sense this view of the Ministry of Culture was not dissimilar to that expressed by the bureaucrat a decade earlier? TH: They thought that culture was potentially dangerous. LR: What kind of a budget did you have? TH: Minimal. The ministry was created during one of the biggest financial crises that Turkey had experienced. It is normally the case that budgets are put before Parliament in January and implemented in February. My ministry was created in July 1971, so there was no specific budget allocated for that financial year. There was provision made for the following financial year, but I didn’t last that long! LR: How long did you last for? TH: Five and a half months. LR: Did you have any particular successes during that time? TH: Oh, yes. This was a time just after the coup, when there was a civilian government, but the real power lay with the military. Several well-known writers and other cultural figures were arrested, but I managed to get many of them released. Arthur Miller wrote a piece about it in the New York Times.14 13

The members resigned on December 3, 1971 in protest at Prime Minister Erim’s weak policies. However, he was appointed once more by President Cevdet Sunay, and formed his second cabinet on December 11, 1971, leaving Halman out altogether. 14 Arthur Miller, “Men and Words in Prison: Because of Outside Protest, More than One Writer is Alive Today who Wouldn’t Be.” New York Times, October 16, 1971, 13.

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LR: Why did you resign in the end? TH: I didn’t resign. The Prime Minister liquidated the ministry in the wake of the mass resignation of eleven cabinet ministers. I wanted to continue, but he expected me to resign also. He did not want to be seen to be getting rid of someone remaining loyal to him, so he closed the ministry altogether. This was a wicked thing to do, but at that time he was doing a lot of things out of cowardice. LR: Did you have certain projects in mind that could have been accomplished if you had stayed on? TH: I had started something I was very proud of–to provide free cultural activities for children, including classical concerts, theater, opera and ballet. This had begun both in Ankara and østanbul: every day primary and secondary school children were collected during class hours, and taken to the State Theatres, Opera Houses or the Presidential Symphony Orchestra hall–as many as 800 at one time. For many of them this was their first experience of professional performances.15 I also wanted to create the definitive Turkish dictionary encompassing all vocabulary, including etymological origins, usage, and data about the first time each word appeared in the language. Sadly this project never got off the ground; it would have taken at least five years to complete.16 LR: What do you think of the Ministry of Culture these days? TH: Not bad, but I think its work has been hampered by the fact that it is now the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Tourism is a vast, laborintensive industry, and requires a great deal of attention. Perhaps it was a mistake to combine the two ministries. Rural areas in particular get little chance to see theater or opera. When I was at the ministry, I was 15

Halman describes this initiative in more detail in 21 Yüzyılda ĥniversite ve Kültür [The 21st Century University and Culture], Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi Forumu 1 (Ankara: Tübitak Matbaası, 2002), 36-40. 16 In a 1974 essay “The Turk in Rumi,” Halman also recalls that he was due to give a speech at the Mevlâna Mausoleum on December 17, 1971, which called for the creation of an International Mevlâna Institute whose work would embrace all Muslim as well as non-Muslim countries. Such plans for a “universalist institute” would have helped to overcome nationalist differences between Turkey and Iran over whether Rumi was Turkish, Iranian or both (Halman 2007b, 296).

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negotiating for trucks that could be converted into temporary theaters that would tour small towns and villages, bringing traveling theater to the people.17 LR: By the end of 1971 you had resigned from the Ministry of Culture. Where did you go then? TH: I went back to Princeton and resumed my teaching career. I was disappointed by what happened at the ministry; I had such high hopes and great public support for what I was doing. If the project to bring theater, opera and ballet to children had continued, I believe that by now over forty million people would have seen such performances.18 Probably theater itself would have become more popular than it is now. LR: What happened to the Ministry of Culture after you left? TH: It was resurrected less than two years later. LR: After that experience, you never envisaged going full-time into politics? TH: Never did. I was given the chance to join several parties, but never accepted. 17

Halman remarked recently to the NewYork Times: “Forty years ago, østanbul was so devoid of cultural life that every concert was a major event [...] There’s so much going on now. We’re a global metropolis.” “My østanbul,” New York Times Travel, February 21, 2010. URL: http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/travel/21headsup.html?scp=4&sq=talat%20h alman&st=cse (accessed April 7, 2010) 18 In a 1982 pamphlet issued for foreign readers by the Ministry of Culture, we are told that from 1971 onwards numrous regional offices were establshed “to bring national cultural activities to larger portions of the population. The anonymous author cites the following activities as examples: “the establishment of the Departments of Cinema and Folklore, the advancement of the ongoing work on Turkish classical music; the opening of Art Galleries all over the country; the new Symphony Orchestras; [and] regional theatres and the foundation of faculties and conservatories of art.” However Halman’s name is conspicuous by its absence (Characteristics of the [sic] Turkish Cultural Policy and the Present Conditions (Ankara: T. C. Kültür Bakanlı÷ı, 1982), 2)). For more on the Ministry of Culture, see “Bagımsız Bir Kültür Bakanlı÷ı” (An Independent Ministry of Culture), Cumhuriyet, August 14, 2007, 14, and Jayne L. Warner, “There are a Thousand Paths for the Intellect,” in Cultural Horizons: A Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman (Syracuse University Press/ Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001), 5-6 (3-18).

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LR: Why was that? TH: Because I did not want to be pigeonholed. I wanted to maintain my intellectual integrity. If I had gone into politics, I couldn’t have said certain things, or opposed certain policies. I always wanted to be completely free and independent. I’m also a workhorse, and don’t like to spend too much time arguing! LR: It seems that your training at The Record Hunter stood you in good stead, giving you a goal-oriented outlook on life? TH: Absolutely. LR: How did you become Turkey’s Ambassador for Cultural Affairs, later in the early 1980s? TH: I was teaching at Princeton, as well as pursuing many other interests– giving lectures, appearing on television on programs about Turkey and/or Middle Eastern matters, as well as Islamic culture. I was teaching courses in Islam; for seven years I taught the basic undergraduate introductory course at New York University. This course was always over-subscribed; at least 150 students in a class, and was recognized by New York magazine as one of the best courses in American universities. I also published a great deal, and maintained a high profile. I had also become friends with ølter Türkmen, then the Turkish Ambassador to the United Nations, who was well aware of my activities.19 He became Foreign Minister after the 1980 military coup, and offered me the special position of Ambassador for Cultural Affairs, with specific responsibility for organizing cultural affairs for Turkey abroad.20 LR: Did you have any particular brief, or could you make your own agenda? TH: I made my own. To that extent this was a much better job than that of Minister of Culture. I had full independence to act as I thought right, even though I couldn’t criticize the government of the time. I left full-time 19

ølter Türkmen (1927-), diplomat and politician, served as Foreign Minister between 1980 and 1983. 20 Halman also served as Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Both posts lasted between 1980 and 1982.

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teaching, and took up the post the next day. Although I was based in New York, I had responsibility for the whole world except Turkey. My office was at the Turkish Center, just across the road from the United Nations; I had half of one floor and two secretaries. Much of my work was done in coordination with the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the government’s policy of making Turkish culture better known internationally at that time. I had had a lot of experience of working with cultural organizations outside Turkey. For example, when I was Minister of Culture, I had contacted [the impresario] Sol Huroc, who had successfully brought many major Soviet artists to Europe and the United States. I was happy that he could undertake to do the same thing for Turkish artists–in other words, send them on tour to many countries. That would have been something marvelous for Turkish musicians and orchestras, opera and ballet: everyone who worked for Huroc enjoyed considerable success. LR: Did you have any specific objectives as Ambassador? TH: I tried to make Turkish culture more accessible to a wider audience through exhibitions, concert tours and other exchanges.21 I had another plan, which was to negotiate the return from major museums of the world of Turkish artifacts, which had been smuggled out of the country many years before. I negotiated one such deal, which was unfortunately vetoed by a committee in Ankara comprised of civilians and army officers. LR: Is this a further example of that suspicion of culture held by many in Turkey? TH: Yes. There are people in government who are paranoid about cultural affairs, and sometimes they use their power to sabotage schemes. This agreement had been forged with Dumbarton Oaks, the great Byzantine museum in Washington DC, which had possession of the Sion silver (about eighty pieces in all), originating from the Antalya region. These items had been dug up by local peasants and sold to a dealer in østanbul, who had them shipped abroad to the United States via Europe. I talked to the Dumbarton Oaks museum director, and told him that it would be of great 21

See Suha Özkan, review of Modern Turkish Architecture eds. Renata Holod, Ahmet Evin and Özkan, new ed. (Ankara: Chamber of Architects in Turkey, 2006), Middle East Technical University Journal of the Faculty of Architecture 2007/2: 179-82.

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prestige internationally if the smuggled silver was returned. In exchange I proposed to bring a traveling Byzantine exhibition from østanbul to Dumbarton Oaks, containing items that had never been seen outside Turkey. The director was bothered that the Sion silver had been illegally acquired, and resolved to do his best to expedite the exchange. He secured the permission of the Board of Trustees at Harvard University, and helped to secure final approval from the Department of Justice. The museum also undertook to do restoration at their own expense, as well as providing professional restorers who might come to Turkey and teach others about the restorer’s art (their lodging and travel to be paid for by the Turkish government). The silver would subsequently be exhibited in Turkey, and then put on exhibition abroad, with due credit paid to Dumbarton Oaks for restoring it to its rightful place. The only thing we needed was to have the agreement approved by the committee in Ankara–even though the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Culture had formally signed their assent, the scheme was sabotaged by just two military officers: I was furious.22 LR: Tell me about your involvement with PEN? TH: I became a member of the American and Turkish PEN Centers in the late 1960s. The American PEN Center would ask me about Turkish writers in prison; there were quite a few at that time. Later I was elected as a member of the Executive Board of the American PEN Center, but just about the same time I became Minister of Culture. In September 1971 the International PEN Congress met in Dublin; I was invited as guest of honor. I accepted, even though I knew I’d be asked difficult questions. There I explained that I was doing my best to secure the release of some of the writers who were imprisoned in Turkey at that time. LR: What sort of things were writers being imprisoned for? TH: For their publications and/or their dissenting views. The targets were generally those identified as communists or socialists. Many of them were simply critics of the government, but they were branded on account of their liberal views. They were arrested–at least for a few days–and quite literally frightened into silence. 22

To date the Sion collection is still in Dumbarton Oaks. See “Byzantine Treasures,” URL http://www.learn.columbia.edu/dbcourses/publicportfolio.cgi?view=95 (accessed April 7, 2010).

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LR: How could you campaign for their release without being seen as working contrary to government interests? TH: I secured the release of writers such as Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu, Vedat Günyol, Azra Erhat and Tahsin Saraç. I talked to the Deputy Prime Minister Sadi Koçaú, who was in charge of such affairs.23 He was a retired army colonel with good intentions, who also found it difficult to handle the situation at that time–often he carried out orders from the top brass against his better judgment. All he could say to me was that he would do the best that he could; he could not promise anything, although he could help those intellectuals who had no tangible connection with socialism. The government was particularly apprehensive of France, whose newspapers were publishing several critical articles at that time. So they decided to teach the French a lesson by imprisoning those such as Eyübo÷lu who were known to have a connection with the country. Some of the intellectuals I knew well; others I knew only by reputation. I became great friends with Azra Erhat, who was a dyed-in-the-wool social democrat. We carried on an extensive correspondence after I returned to the United States; many of her letters to me I published in literary magazines.24 LR: Why do you think life was so difficult for writers; indeed, it seemed to become much worse after you left the government? TH: Many members of the cabinet I worked for had left-liberal leanings. After they resigned in December 1971, Erim’s new cabinet was filled with right-wingers. From then on the situation wavered; under some Prime Ministers the climate of censorship was fairly mild, under others intellectuals and other people were persecuted. In the second Erim cabinet, for instance, the military had a virtually free hand to imprison anyone with leftist or even progressive liberal sympathies. Three leftist militants, including Deniz Gezmiú were executed as a result.25 The military thought 23

Sadi Koçaú (1919-1998). Politician and Member of Parliament since 1962. Halman talks more about his subsequent friendship with the writer Azra Erhat (1915-1982) in Aklın Yolu Bindir: 66-70. 25 The Israeli ambassador Efraim Elrom was abducted and killed in May 1971. The Turkish People’s Liberation Front, a faction of the splintered left, claimed responsibility. The government responded by increasing the numbers of arrests including members of the intelligentsia, authors (including well-known writer Yaúar Kemal), students, young academics, trade unionists and supporters of the Workers’ Party. They also curtailed civil rights, press freedom, the autonomy of the universities and the freedom of the state broadcasting service (TRT). Three 24

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this was the best way to teach a lesson to young people, even though it created an atmosphere of terror. It was happening exactly the same way in Latin America, where dictators were trying to silence their critics, many of whom happened to be noted intellectuals. Turkey was going through a phase of repressive government in the early seventies, and again in the early eighties. LR: Were you ever silenced? TH: No. I was sued, of course, for a number of articles I wrote in Milliyet. I was sued by Prime Minister Turgut Özal, Özal’s Ministry of Justice and Necmettin Erbakan. Özal sued me for defamation of character in an article where I tried to appraise what he had achieved and not achieved in his government. For some reason he took offense and personally sued me for the equivalent of $75,000. Prior to this it had always been someone who had signed the petition on his behalf. I was in the United States at the time, and was not planning to return, but Milliyet’s attorney claimed that the case was already lost. Apparently the judge was a new appointee, who had spent most of his life in provincial courts, and had applied for a transfer to østanbul to be with his family by applying directly to ėzal. ėzal had complied with his request. In a case like this, the judge could not possibly acquit me. I came to østanbul and made a statement in the court in my own defense, which I am pleased to say was applauded by several people in the courtroom. I lost the case, but the amount I had to pay was reduced to the equivalent of $48. My attorney wanted to pay it, but I was determined to take the matter to a higher court, in the belief that I should be acquitted. The case was reviewed by the higher court, whose vote was 9-0 in favor of rescinding the original decision. Milliyet celebrated with a banner headline: “Özal Loses!”26 LR: Do you think the situation is better now? TH: Of course. Now Turkey is a candidate country for EU membership, the situation has dramatically improved. activists including Gezmiú were arrested in early 1971 and accused of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order. They were given a death sentence in October 1971; and eventually hanged on May 6, 1972. In 1980 Erim was assassinated by the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party (Devrimci Sol) in revenge. 26 “Özal’ın açtı÷ı davayı kazandık” [We won the case Özal opened] Milliyet, November 3, 1989, 1.

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LR: Let us move on a bit to consider your work in performance. How did your play on Shakespeare in Turkey come about? TH: It was commissioned by the actor Müúfik Kenter of the Kent Theater in østanbul.27 I had worked on Shakespeare translation before, having published forty of his sonnets in 1964 to considerable acclaim. Both Kenter and his sister Yıldız enjoyed reading them in performance. I did the play fairly fast, and deliberately wrote too much, giving Kenter the choice of what to perform on any particular occasion. From my earliest years I had such reverence for Shakespeare’s plays and poems that I welcomed the commission. Kenter performed it 75 times–mostly in østanbul at his own theater. LR: Did you work from the original English versions, or did you use any previous translations? TH: I never use previous translations, because I think they might affect me the wrong way. I’d rather do it as a virgin experience. Anyway, many of the translations had so many errors that I did not want to use them. I read all the material I could on Shakespeare, and then translated the plays. I had done the same for the sonnets in 1964. The original title of the “Turkish Shakespeare” play was Heroes and Clowns [Kahramanlar ve Soytarılar], and it was first presented in 1987. LR: In translating, do you try to keep to the original, or produce a version most suited to the target language? TH: I try to arrive at a happy marriage between the two. That has always been my approach to translation. It has to be authentic in the target language, but should not tamper with the original, just for the sake of making it more palatable to the target language speakers. This has always been my approach to translation, especially poetry. LR: Eventually you ended up performing the Turkish Shakespeare play yourself. What was that experience like? TH: Wonderful. I’d never envisaged performing the play myself, but when I came to Ankara in the late 1990s to start working at Bilkent University, I had so many offers to give lectures that I thought I would run out of 27

Müúfik Kenter (1932-), actor and director, brother of Yıldız Kenter.

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material. Then it occurred to me that I could offer the play instead. I first proposed the idea to Ankara University, and they willingly accepted. I was quite apprehensive at first, as the idea of performing was not a pleasurable experience. One major shortcoming I have had since childhood is that I cannot memorize anything. I do not know any poem of my own by heart. On the few occasions I have appeared on stage I had taken very small roles–in a production of Macbeth at Robert College I appeared as Second Murderer. For the Shakespeare play I was not going to perform it like Müúfik Kenter, but rather do a dramatic reading. Luckily I received a marvelous critical reception. LR: Why do you think the play had such an effect on people? TH: I think everything gelled together. For one thing the play reveals a passionate love for Shakespeare; in my opinion he is the “most popular Turkish playwright.” This has been true for at least a century: Hamlet was produced in østanbul in 1914, and there were earlier productions during Ottoman times. Since then the passion has increased; in 1960 in østanbul Hamlet was performed 164 times consecutively to full houses–a world record. Richard Burton broke that record later in the decade with his performance on Broadway. I also believe that my play contained excellent translations; the Turkish language lends itself to good translations of dramatic and poetic forms, especially those of Shakespeare. Many translations are dreadful; they are prosaic … LR: Even the Orhan Burian versions? TH: They are authentic and dependable. I have always thought of Burian as a great cultural hero, but his Shakespeare translations do not work well on the stage. Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu’s translations are somewhat better, but the best versions are those done by practicing playwrights, for example Turan Olfazo÷lu. He has that poetic sense.28 LR: Do you think there is any such thing as a “perfect” Shakespeare translation? TH: Of course. 28

Turan Oflazo÷lu (1932-), poet and playwright, author of a book on Shakespeare (østanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1999), and translations of Romeo and Juliet, Othello and The Winter’s Tale.

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LR: Do you perform the Shakespeare play in English as well as Turkish? TH: Oh, yes. I perform it sometimes as a two-hander with Yıldız Kenter, or with my daughter Defne both here and abroad.29 My daughter and I did it at the østanbul center of the Turkish Cultural Foundation, a new institution in Washington DC, where they have a series of monthly lectures and performances.30 LR: You have known Yıldız Kenter for a long time. How did you meet? TH: I first saw her acting on the stage in 1951. I saw many of her subsequent performances and loved them all. In 1955 she received a Rockefeller Fellowship to study theater in the United States. At that time my wife was working for the United Nations, and she invited Yıldız and her first husband Nihat Akçan to participate in the production of UN documentaries in Turkish on the radio. We became great friends as a result–I even took them to Copacabana, the chic New York nightclub!! In 1990 the Young Presidents’ Association, an international organization of young millionaires, got in touch with me and asked me to prepare a program for them in østanbul. I offered to do for them a program based on the evolution of Turkish culture and arts; not a lecture, but a vibrant presentation comprised of music, drama and poetry. There were possible risks, as I was told that if members of the association did not like what they saw, they would immediately get up and walk out of the auditorium. They asked for an actress to be involved; I contacted Yıldız, and she agreed. I had presented it in scores of universities, museums and other institutions, but this would be the first time I had done it with an actress. We also had the actor Ali Taygun, who came on stage in costume. Following this production, Yıldız and I decided to do something else–a sequence of Turkish love poems, which we did in English to begin with and subsequently in Turkish. I’ve also been doing a lot of Rumi programs with her in both languages, as well as revised version of the Shakespeare play. We now have four programs that we do together on different occasions, both in universities and for international congresses. “Turkish Arts through the Ages” is particularly popular as an opening event for such congresses, 29

Defne Halman (1962-) born in New York and studied at the School of American Ballet at Juilliard. She has performed extensively in Turkish film, theater and television, as well as off-Broadway. 30 Turkish Cultural Foundation [Türk Kültür Vakfı] established in January 2000 (www.turkishculturalfoundation.org).

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where the participants want to learn something about the culture of the country where the event takes place. LR: So what you are doing is cultural tourism? TH: No, it is pure culture. We don’t do it as a tourist event, but as a pure cultural program to introduce Turkey to our guests. One of my events was filmed: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave me a distinguished service award, and they wanted “Turkish Arts through the Ages” to be presented in English in Ankara at the award ceremony to an audience of diplomatic corps. It was filmed and distributed to various embassies throughout the world. I understand the film is sometimes used at a dinner party or on a special occasion.

PART II: THEATRE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN TRANSLATING THEATRE TEXTS: SHAKESPEARE’S AS YOU LIKE IT1

There have been two Turkish translations of As You Like It, both published in 1943-one by the Shakespeare Seminar of the University of østanbul and the other by Orhan Burian of the University of Ankara.2 The play has enjoyed two professional productions-one at the Municipal Theatre, østanbul in 1943, using the Shakespeare Seminar translation, the other at the Ankara State Theatre (1990), where the British director, David Leveaux used an altered version of the Burian translation. The text was linguistically updated, while several speeches were rewritten in an attempt to the translation more suitable for performance. By comparing the original and revised versions of Burian’s work, and the contexts in which they were created, this chapter will show how the translation and performance of As You Like It has been significantly influenced by developments in Turkish history and over the past fifty years. Following the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced a wide-ranging program of cultural reform. As explained in previous chapters, the Turkish language underwent radical changes: in 1928, the Roman alphabet was adopted in place of the Arabic script, and throughout the 1930s, thousands of words of Persian and Arabic origin were replaced by newly-created words borrowed from Turkic dialects, or technical terms derived from ancient and Western languages. Meanwhile the Ministry of Education formed a Translation Office, with the specific remit to render western classics into Turkish. Inevitably Shakespeare was high on the agenda: in 1942 the Ministry collaborated 1 ArtIcle originally published in Shakespeare Worldwide, 14-15 (1995): 91-101. This slightly rewritten version is reprinted with permission. 2 The two translations were published under different names: the University of østanbul translation was called Naıil Hoúunuza Giderse (Shakespeare 1943b), Burian’s translation Be÷endi÷iniz Gibi.

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with the British Council in a scheme to render “selected English classics” into Turkish, and 1945, the first of these-Coriolanus-had appeared (“Shakespeare’s Plays in Turkish” 1943, 39). The universities helped to lay the foundation of critical study in English Literature by publishing their own translations of Shakespeare with lengthy introductions, notes and commentaries. Under the supervision of Halide Edib Adıvar and Vahit Turhan, the Shakespeare Seminar at the University of østanbul translated the 1945 Coriolanus, as well as Hamlet (1941), As You Like It, and Antony and Cleopatra (1949). During the same period Orhan Burian of the University of Ankara made his own translations of OthelIo, As You Like It, Timon of Athens, Hamlet and Macbeth. The translation studies scholar Saliha Paker suggested in 1986 that Burian’s Hamlet was written in “a discourse that was more in line with the current linguistic norms,” and hence considered suitable for educational purposes, as compared to the Shakespeare Seminar rendering of the same text (Paker 1986, 99).3 The Turkish theatre made its own contribution to translation activity. At the Municipal Theatre, østanbul, Muhsin Ertu÷rul (who later became director of the Ankara State Theatre) commissioned translations of six Shakespeare plays between 1930 and 1940, including Hamlet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night; and distributed them free in serial form to his audiences.4 He believed that he could educate Turkish playgoers by promoting an interest in and a love of Shakespeare. The British scholar A. R. Humphreys (who had been seconded by the British Council in 1945 to work at Istanbul University) confirmed that this policy proved a great success, while witnessing a performance of Twelfth Night in which several playgoers were following the text as they watched the action on stage: Try to imagine yourself in the theatre, hanging on every word that carries the plot to a conclusion as yet unknown. That experience Ertu÷rul Muhsin [sic] has given his audiences [...] No wonder there is a freshness about Shakespeare in Turkey (Humphreys 1945, 200).

3

For a list of published translations of Shakespeare in Turkish, see Mert Vuraldi, Shakespeare in der Turkei. European University Papers Series XIV, Vol. 69 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang GMBH, 1979): 101-2. 4 Muhsin Ertu÷rul (1892-1979), actor and director. He began his career at the østanbul Municipal Theatre (City Theatre), and was the first director of the Ankara State Theatre from 1947 onwards before returning to østanbul. Also a filmmaker who began his directing career in 1922.

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Ertu÷rul made use of the Shakespeare translations published by university professors. His 1941 Hamlet was based on the Shakespeare Seminar translation, and ran for fifty performances; two years later, he turned to the Shakespeare Seminar version of As You Like It. Whether produced in Ankara or østanbul, the majority of translations published at this time concerned themselves with fidelity to Shakespeare's text. They based their work on an easily accessible English edition (normally the Arden edition), and attempted to provide exact equivalents in Turkish for Shakespeare's words, images and figures of speech. Any shifts in meaning-for example, when an obscure pun or allusion had to be re-defined in the interests of clarity-were kept to a minimum. By paying due respect to the source text, especially its stylistic features, most translators (as well as those who commissioned the translations) believed that they were creating the best possible version of Shakespeare, for the purposes of educating their readers and audiences. Ertu÷rul suggested in a 1945 interview that such texts might help Turkish actors perform “Shakespeare even better than they do him at Stratford” (qtd Humphreys 1945, 201). By working directly from the English-and not from French or German adaptations, as in the past-the translators also attempted to show the capacity of the rapidly evolving Turkish language to express the best of Shakespeare. Humphreys summed up the spirit of the times: “Shakespeare in a good translation is irresistible to Turks, one of whose hobbies is fine language-well-turned phrases and their own musical tongue” (201). Orhan Burian’s version of the song “Under the Greenwood Tree” ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech (As You Like It, II, v, 118/24) provides a good example of the kind of translation which was produced at that time. Although the syntax differs, the translator tries to sustain the lyrical form of Shakespeare’s text (Shakespeare 1943a, 44): Koyu gölgeler var Benimle kim yatar Kim sesini katar Tatlı kuú sesine Buraya gelsin o, buraya Karúılayan De÷il düúman Ancak kıú ve sert hava. (There are dark shadows in the forest/ Who’d like to sleep with me/ Who’d like to sing with me/ To the sound of the sweet bird/ He should come here, here, here/ He would not see any enemy but cold and winter weather)

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In Burian’s version of Jaques’ famous “All the World’s A Stage” speech, the basic strategy remained the same; to keep as close to Shakespeare’s text while rendering the lines in colloquial Turkish (Shakespeare 1943a, 55): Bütün dünya bir oyun sahnesidir. Kadın erkek bütün insanlar da sadece oyuncular. Her birinin giriú ve çıkıú zamanları vardir. Perdeleri yedi çaƣ olan oyunda insane bir çok roller oynar. (The whole world is a stage. All the people, men and women, are the only players. They have their entrances and exits at their proper times. In the play whose acts are the seven ages, man plays very few parts).

It may be argued that Burian, by rendering these lines in prose, devalued Shakespeare's text. Jaques is temperamentally opposed to verse, but his natural gravity and his character as a courtier and moralist ensure that he speaks it here. But Burian produced his translation in response to the demands of his commissioners (the Translation Office). He attempted to find an exact Turkish equivalent for each phrase, apart from the odd occasion when a difficult word or metaphor had to be clarified. It is likely that he turned to the Arden edition for guidance: the Arden definition (“players and nothing else”) for Shakespeare's phrase “merely players” was much the same as the translation (“sadece oyuncular.”) Burian also added the word “zamanları” (their proper times) to stress that each one of the players had their parts to play on the stage of life. The cultural climate in the Turkish Republic had changed radically three decades later. Scholarly activity flourished in the universities: the plays were extensively taught on English Literature courses, while scholars published regularly on his plays in both English and Turkish. Minâ Urgan’s books in Turkish on Macbeth and clowns in the Elizabethan age (both from the University of østanbul) were commended for their originality in O. J. Campbell’s Shakespeare Encyclopaedia (1966).5 Metin And published his History of Theatre and Popular Entertainment in Turkey- the first of its kind in English-in 1964; in the same year, he provided a survey of “Shakespeare in Turkey” for Theatre Research (Halman 1966, 900; And 1964a, 122-8; And 1964b, 75-84.) Like several of his colleagues, And–a professor of theatre at Ankara University-took a 5 Minâ Urgan (1915-2000), writer, translator and academic. She made her name with translations of various authors including Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. She later wrote a best-selling autobiography Bir Dinozorun Anıları [Memoirs of a Dinosaur] (1998), and a sequel, Bir Dinozorun Gezileri [Travels of a Dinosaur] (1999).

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keen interest in the professional theatre; he was a full-time reviewer for one of the daily newspapers, and regularly accepted commissions to write lengthy critical articles in the programs for individual productions mounted by the State Theatre as well as theatres in the private sector.6 Much of the theatrical energy at that time was spent on creating drama departments in universities, focusing in particular on providing the kind of practical curriculum found in similar departments in Europe and the United States. Muhsin Ertu÷rul hoped in 1956 that such institutes could be the envy of the world (qtd Nutku 1986, 172). Within two years, his dream had come true: both Istanbul and Ankara Universities established theatre schools, with courses in the history of Turkish and world drama, criticism and playwriting. The østanbul school closed in 1962, but re-opened two years later as a drama department, offering a comprehensive program of study including acting and costume-design, as well as playwriting. These departments employed theatre professionals to teach specialized courses; in return, they provided the theatre with a regular crop of tyro writers, directors and actors. The theatre began to attract new audiences of educated playgoers who had studied Shakespeare in school and university (in Turkish and in English), and who wanted to see more innovative productions. Engin Cezzar’s portrayal of Hamlet as an angry young man, reminiscent of John Osborne’s Jimmy Porter (in a modern-dress revival at the østanbul City Theatre (1959) appealed particularly to the younger generation: the production ran for 150 performances.7 In his review for the English periodical Theatre World, Ossia Trilling recorded that the coup de théâtre of Hamlet smashing “his uncle's miniature on the ground after violently wrenching it from his mother's neck [...] evoked thunderous approval all around me” (Trilling 1960, 49). The popularity of Shakespearean revivals increased rapidly, reaching a peak in 1964 when the City Theatre staged seven productions to celebrate the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth, while the Ankara State Theatre staged Julius Caesar as well as a compilation of extracts from several plays. These developments in the academic world and the world of the theatre led to a call for new approaches to translating Shakespeare. Vahit Turhan (of the østanbul University Shakespeare Seminar) argued in 1965 that translators had to take note of the current trends in scholarship and 6

Metin And (1927-2008), professor of theatre at the University of Ankara and historian of the Turkish theatre. 7 Engin Cezzar (1935-), actor/manager who ran his own company with his wife Gülriz Sururi before turning freelance in films, theatre and television.

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playwriting; they should not rely on one English edition but consult “Onions [...] Variorum and [...] Ardens.” Translators should also work towards creating a “free verse” or “poetic prose” of their own, which would provide “a closer adherence to the sense in the original” (Turhan 1965, 59-60). Talât Saït Halman's observation (made in 1966) that most translators had hitherto “failed to convey Shakespeare's dramatic power,” reflected the growing interest in performing and staging plays (Halman 1966, 900). One of the earliest translations to put these ideas into practice was Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu's version of Hamlet (1965). In an afterword, Eyübo÷lu admitted that as his grasp of English was limited, he had relied on Burian’s translation, coupled with the French translations of Yves Bonnefoy and Francois-Victor Hugo. He did not attempt to find exact equivalents for Shakespeare's phrases, creating instead a poetic prose akin to free verse, which followed the lineation of the original (Eyübo÷lu 1965, 210-11). Since the 1960s, the linguistic and stylistic criteria governing Shakespeare translations in Turkish have remained the same. Engin Uzmen-a Shakespeare specialist from Hacettepe University, Ankaraaccepted a commission from the State Theatre to translate Richard III (1976); he recalled fourteen years later that he consulted “as many edited texts as possible, including the Variorum editions,” so that he would have “a greater variety of possibilities” (Uzmen 1990). He tried to create a rhythmical prose that “preserved the shape, as well as the sound, of a Shakespearean speech,” in the belief that he had to make Shakespeare “sound right.” In the light of such changes over the previous five decades, we might ask why Burian’s translation of As You Like It was chosen for the Ankara State Theatre’s revival of the play in 1990. If his work seemed acceptable in the 1940s, it seemed inappropriate for a context in which other published translations of the play-for example, the Shakespeare Seminar’s version, also published in 1943-had tried to create a more free-flowing type of prose, rather than being concerned with issues of textual fidelity (Shakespeare 1943b). A major factor in the State Theatre’s decision lay in the fact that, despite the volume of published translations, there had been a decline of interest in Shakespearean revivals and translations since the late 1970s. The State Theatre ignored Uzmen's Richard III, while another version of Hamlet by Bülent Bozkurt of Hacettepe University in Ankara (1982) remained unproduced, even though Bozkurt claimed to have created a performance-orientated mode of expression. On the few occasions

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when a Shakespeare play was staged, directors took the safe way out by making use of existing translations (many of which had been continuously reprinted since the 1940s, chiefly for educational purposes). Orhan Burian’s work still had a major influence in the contemporary Turkish theatre. Uzmen suggested rather bitterly in 1990 that: “people prefer [Burian’s] translations, that are [...] old, and slightly impersonal. Very often the translators are no longer with us [Burian died in 1953 aged only 39] [...] so their works are public property” (Uzmen 1990).8 Many theatre professionals used such texts as basis for their Shakespeare revivals, making such changes as necessary, so as to render them comprehensible to their audiences. In a revival of The Merry Wives of Windsor (1983)-where he acted as a consultant–using a Burian translation originally published four decades earlier, Uzmen worked with the actors and before the start of rehearsals, concentrating on those aspects of a line (cadence, word-order) which demanded a vocal or physical gesture, altering the text “if there were combinations of syllables or words which difficult to pronounce or enunciate” (Uzmen 1990). Özcan Özer, one of the Ankara State Theatre’s resident dramaturgs, adopted a similar strategy for the 1990 As You Like It, directed by David Leveaux. Using the Burian translation, he updated any obsolete words, and checked the reliability of the Turkish text by comparing it with as many editions of the play as possible, including the Arden edition (1975), the Cambridge edition (1957). Özer also drew on more recent versions of the text in Turkish, including Bülent Bozkurt’s Size Nasıl Geliyorsa (Shakespeare 1996), and subsequently amended the text in collaboration with the actors.9 8 Orhan Burian (1914-1953) worked on numerous translations of Shakeapeare’s plays. Throughout his career as an academic at the University of Ankara, interspersed with visits to the Universities of Cambridge and Princeton, Burian strove to produce what he considered definitive translations that would keep close to Shakespeare’s text and thereby communicate his greatness to local readers. His achievement was duly recognized in 1951 when he wrote an article on Shakespeare in Turkey for the Folger Library’s Shakespeare Quarterly (“Shakespeare in Turkey,” Shakespeare Quarterly Vol.2 no.1 (1951): 127-8). For Burian’s own view of this article, plus a tribute written by an American colleague Frederick P. Latimer to his achievements as a translator, see his diary entry for December 27, 1950 in Günlük [Diary] 1950-1952, ed. Zeki Arıkan (østanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2006), 40-2)). 9 ėzer kindly allowed me to see the promptbook during the run of the performance. All subsequent quotations are from this text. A copy of the promptbook, containing the Burian text in typescript with only minor pencil alterations, is now in Bilkent University library, Ankara (Shakespeare 1990).

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In the original published translation, Burian had translated Orlando's lines “O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books/ And in their barks my thoughts I'll character” (III, ii, 5-6) as “Ah Rosalind!/ Bu a÷açlar benim kitaplarım olacak, onların kabu÷una düúündüklerimi yazaça÷ım” (Ah Rosalind! These trees will be my books, 1 shall write my thoughts on their barks) (Shakespeare 1943a, 58). Özer changed the word “books” into its singular form “kitabım” - and re-wrote the line “onların kabu÷una düúündüklerimi yazaça÷ım” as “kabuklarım yazaça÷im düúündüklerimi” (I shall write what 1 think on their barks). Like German, the Turkish language normally places the verb at the end of a phrase or sentence: by placing the verb “yazaça÷ım” (I shall write) before the qualifying phrase “düúündüklerimi.” Özer attempted to imitate in prose the techniques of Shakespeare's blank verse, in which the normal word order is also inverted (“my thoughts I'll character”) (Shakespeare 1990, 32, 54). Although David Leveaux had not directed As You Like It before-either in English or in translation-he had worked previously on productions in a foreign language with the help of a translator (e.g. The Dance of Death in East Berlin and Finland, Les Liaisons Dangereuses in Tokyo). He had learned that a good director, supported by a competent cast, could facilitate the task of adapting an existing text through an ingenious use of aural and visual detail. As Amiens sang “Under the greenwood tree,” Jaques (Soner A÷ın) emphasized the rhythm of the song by dancing a little two-step, and repeating the word “buraya” several times under his breath. This provided an immediate justification for his line “I do not desire you to please me, I do desire you to sing” (II, v, 15/16), and his subsequent decision to conduct the musicians as they performed the second verse.10 It is clear that Shakespearean production and translation in Turkey is characterized by a series of paradoxes. Most modern revivals have used the old Ministry of Education translations (which were intended for a reading public), rather than the versions claiming to be written in a performance-orientated mode expression. But the 1990 As You Like It demonstrated that the older translations fulfill and effective function in the contemporary theatre if they are not treated reverentially. By considering them as basic scenarios to be reworked in different ways, adaptors, actors and directors have transformed them into theatrically effective texts. It would appear that the translators’ role in recent Shakespeare revivals has been reduced, as they have had to adapt existing texts, rather than create 10

Most of the production observations are based on my own review, published in English and Turkish in Türk Sahnerlerinden øzlenimler [Impressions from the Turkish Stage] (østanbul: Mitos Boyut Yayınları, 2009): 16-20.

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new versions of their own. But this has encouraged many translators to test their notions of what makes a speech or a line “performable” in rehearsals. In a sense, the claim to have translated Shakespeare in a performanceorientated mode of expression is difficult to prove, as the concept of performance is seldom defined. This is especially true of recently published translations in Turkish, which have been undertaken by academics with limited practical experience of the theatre. By taking a more active part in a production, and discovering what kind of speechrhythms can be performed successfully, some contemporary translators have enhanced their reputation; they have made Shakespeare appear relevant and important once again in the contemporary Turkish theatre.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN EVERY INCH A KING: CÜNEYT GÖKÇER’S LEAR

Cüneyt Gökçer (1920-2009) was one of the Turkish Republic’s most celebrated stage actors. Following his training at the Ankara State Conservatory run by German émigré Carl Ebert, he joined the Ankara State Theatre, and quickly established himself as one of their leading performers. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s he played a series of leading roles in classical plays, including Malvolio (1948-9), Peer Gynt (1949-50), Hamlet (1950-1), Cyrano de Bergerac (1951-2), Henry IV (1955-6), King Lear (1959) and Oedipus (1959-60).1 In 1958 he assumed the position of director of the State Theatre in succession to Muhsin Ertu÷rul, a position he held until 1983. During the same period Cüneyt Gökçer became something of a matinee idol with leading roles in films such as Vatan ve Namık Kemal (Namik Kemal and the Motherland) (1951), Barbaros Hayrettin Paúa (also 1951), and Büyük Sır (The Big Secret) (1956). As Gökçer grew older, so his stage appearances declined, as he became more involved with directing opera and theatre as well as running the State Theatre. However he did have some notable successes in musicals: Fred Graham in Kiss Me Kate (1963), Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady (1966), with his wife Ayten Gökçer as Eliza Dolittle, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof (1969-70) and Don Quixote in Man of la Mancha (1970-1). His screen persona altered, as he became a character-actor in films like Yaprak Dökümü (The Fall of Leaves) (1967) based on the celebrated novel by Reúat Nuri Güntekin,2 and a biopic of Mevlâna Celaleddin-i Rumi (1973). 1 A full list of Cüneyt Gökçer’s stage roles can be found in Cüneyt Gökçer Sanatta 50 Yıl, eds. Türel Ezici and Filiz (Sanaç) Erel (Ankara: T. C. Kültür Bakanlıƣı, 1994). 2 This novel has been filmed several times-in 1958 and 1988–and turned into two television miniseries (1988 and 2006).

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At the same time Gökçer enjoyed the benefits of stardom: in early 1974 he gave readers of Hayat magazine an insight into his family life in a chic apartment in Bahçelievler, at that time the most fashionable district of Ankara (“Evde Kimin” 1972, 9-10). Gökçer left the State Theatre in 1983; and two years later joined the staff of the State Conservatory, followed by a stint as head of the newly established drama department at Bilkent University, Ankara. His last stage role was in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof (1994); four years later he made his final film Mektup [The Letter] (1998). King Lear (1981) was Gökçer’s last major role in a classical play (his final straight play role was as George in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, seven years later). The director was Basil Coleman, a former actor (who had made his debut in 1940 in the Old Vic’s production of King Lear John Gielgud) who had subsequently gone on to direct on television as well as the stage. In 1978 Coleman had been responsible for As You Like It, one of the first productions in the BBC/ Time Life Television’s ambitious plan to film all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays (197885). Filmed entirely on location at Glamis Castle in Scotland, the production was given a lukewarm reception by critics, who disliked the rather stilted style of presentation. Nonetheless the revival fulfilled the producers’ requirements that the series should be shot in as authentic a manner as possible, using historically accurate sets and costumes.3 Having seen this production broadcast on Turkish State Television (TRT) in 1979, Gökçer asked the British Council to bring Coleman and his designer Roger Andrews (who had worked on As You Like It) to work on King Lear. This rest of this chapter looks at the production in detail, concentrating in particular on how Coleman shaped it according to Gökçer’s particular skills as an actor. As previously indicated, Gökçer enjoyed considerable success early on his career on stage and screen, playing romantic leads in Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean classical plays. In his first attempt at Hamlet (1950), he portrayed the young prince as a gentle person, both temperamentally and emotionally unable to carry out the responsibilities placed on him by the Ghost. He could assume heroic poses, but could not translate them into direct action. Like Laurence Olivier in the film version (released four years previously), Gökçer deliberately tried to evoke audience sympathy for a man who could not make up his mind. The same also applied to his portrayal of Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1 (1955-6). A 3 See Susan Willis, The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1991), passim.

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production photograph shows him staring direct to camera, holding his hands out towards the viewer, his face pale and drawn with stress, in the hope of soliciting their sympathy. Gökçer’s screen persona is clearly evident from the posters for some of his films; in Vatan ve Namık Kemal he is dressed in a crown and long flowing robes, with a pencil moustache reminiscent of Clark Gable. In Nilgün (1954) he dominates the frame in his striped red and white dressing-gown, tenderly caressing the head of his female co-star Erika Remberg, while in Büyük Sır he assumes a benevolent paternal authority as he stands behind his female lead Cahide Sonku. Gökçer’s first attempt at Lear (1959) used a translation by ørfan ùahinbaú, professor of English at the University of Ankara (which, like many translations of the time, tried to keep close to Shakespeare’s text while endeavoring to recreate some of his poetic effects in Turkish),4 Gökçer’s interpretation was shamelessly romantic; in his long white beard and flowing robes, he revealed a tender concern for all his daughters. His only fault was that perhaps he loved them too much, rendering him ripe for exploitation by Goneril (Muazzez Kurdo÷lu) and Regan (Beyhan Gönenç). Once this had happened, his love turned to hate; and he became cruel, almost petulant in his responses–especially to Cordelia (Gülgün Kutlu). However Lear did not deserve to be treated so harshly: even in the face of adversity he retained his compassion, cradling the head of Edgar (Haluk Kurdo÷lu) to warm him up during the storm on the heath. Such moments were deliberately designed to solicit sympathy, in spite of his shortcomings in his treatment of his daughters. This production proved a popular and critical success in both Ankara and Ístanbul.5 Gökçer admitted in a 1963 interview that Lear was one of his two favorite roles–the other being Hotspur (Vassaf 1963, 23). In the twenty-two years separating the two Lears, Gökçer became more of a character actor–particularly in films such as Hazreti Ömer’in Adaleti [The Justice of Hazreti ƿmer] (1969) or Yaprak Dökümü, where he supported leading player Fatma Girik. In the former film he deliberately played on his image as a crowd-pleaser by portraying a saint, encouraging 4 When teaching his courses, ùahinbaú always insisted that a drama text should be treated as material for performance, and that students should learn how dramatists use particular theatrical conventions. His experience of the theatre was vast: for many years, he was Chair of the Ankara State Theatre's play selection committee, which determined which plays should be performed every season. 5 This success was reflected in the newspaper coverage; the production received a two-page spread in the lifestyle magazine Hayat [Life] (“Kral Lear,” February 13, 1959: 10-11).

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viewers to identify with his point of view. The poster suggests this: Gökçer stands alone, his eyes looking to the right, raising his hands in prayer. His roles on stage were conceived in similar fashion; in Fiddler on the Roof, for instance, he made conscious efforts to make the audience laugh with him, rather than at him. He even had a Top Twenty hit with the Turkish version of “If I Were a Rich Man.” I saw Gökçer’s last appearance in the musical at the Büyük Tiyatro (Grand Theatre), Ankara in 1994; throughout the performance his eyes focused as much on the spectators as on his fellow-players, in the (quite justifiable) belief that they had paid their money to see him revive one of his greatest performances. Gökçer decided to revive Lear for the same reason; when I interviewed him about the production in 1990, he told me that the play represented the pinnacle for any actor in terms of technique and emotional engagement. He had been fortunate enough to see some great performers essaying the role– for example, John Gielgud at Stratford-upon-Avon (1955) in the celebrated production by George Devine with designs by the Japanese artist Isamo Noguchi which, although dismissed by one critic as “unimportant, unintelligible gibberish,” nonetheless delighted the designer with its “fearful joy” (Noguchi 2010). Gökçer himself remembered how Gielgud’s presence filled the stage, forcing the audience to concentrate on his characterization, in spite of the designs. By reviving Lear, Gökçer hoped to consolidate his reputation as a great actor, whose presence resembled that of Gielgud, as well as other giants of the British stage such as Sir Donald Wolfit (Gökçer 1990).6 As conceived by director Coleman and designer Andrews, Gökçer’s 1981 Lear (using the ùahinbaú translation once again) became a prehistoric tragedy–the elemental tale of a king living in a savage, world where concepts of good and evil simply had no meaning. Partly this was Lear’s own fault; his absolute role had created a world based on the survival of the fittest. In the past he had managed to hold on to his authority; now he was an old man he was at his elder daughters’ mercy. As Audrey Uzmen, who worked as costume-designer on the production, recalled: Coleman decided on a very basic set of a platform with movable blocks to suggest various changes of scenes without being realistic. These were also very primitive and monolithic […] and created an almost solid grey-black background so that […] the costumes would provide the colour of the 6

The actor Oliver Ford Davies refers to both Wolfit’s and Gielgud’s Lear in the introduction to his fascinating book Playing Lear (London: Nick Hern Books, 2003): 4-6.

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production. Basil Coleman wished to get away from the skins and leather look of usual Lears, […] [while] Roger Andrews created a legendary period of his own, starting with the Scottish kilt idea which he felt would create a great deal of movement - the Scottish kilt is very good in movement (Uzmen 1990, 62-3).

The principals wore long, flowing robes in sober colors; what was most important was the crown, the symbol of royal power. Once Lear had given it away, he was metaphorically naked; when he removed his clothes on the heath (in the line “off, off, you lendings!/ Come, unbutton here” (III, iv, 106-7), it was simply a physical expression of his state of mind.7 Despite the fact that this Lear was planned as a star vehicle, both Coleman and Gökçer made some implicit allusions to recent political events that had taken place in the Turkish Republic–most notably the conflicts between left- and right-wing groups in the late 1970s that culminated in the military takeover of September 12, 1980. The new government imposed martial law, abolished Parliament, suspended the constitution and banned all political parties-measures that some commentators welcomed as an effective way to restore order (“Önce Ortam Hazırlandı,” 2005). By contrast Coleman and Gökçer showed how absolute power corrupts individuals-to such an extent that they are even prepared to sacrifice family loyalties as a means of demonstrating their authority. In the opening scene Lear made it clear that he had no intention of retiring (despite his decision to divide the kingdom into three), while forcing his daughters into showing absolute loyalty towards him. They would be his assistants, assuming the day-to-day business of government while deferring to his authority. By asking to say how much they loved him, he was acting like a true despot: for him words assumed more importance than deeds. Here was a man accustomed to flattery; as Goneril (Birol Uzunyayla Türker) praised, Lear sat in a chair at the center of the stage nodding his head in approval. When Regan (Gülgün Kutlu–who had played Cordelia in the 1959 production) spoke, Lear stood up and indicated what part of the kingdom she would receive on a large map spread on the center of the stage (“To thee and thine, hereditary ever,/ Remain this amply third of our fair kingdom” (I, i, 78-9). When Cordelia (Canan Özdeno÷lu) refused to participate in this ritual, Lear responded by 7

All references to the text of King Lear from the Arden edition, ed. Kenneth Muir (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1986). For convenience, I cite the English version of the Shakespearean text, even though the Turkish version was used in the production.

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turning his back on her, and punching his throne in frustration. The rest of the scene continued in similar vein: Lear threatened to strike Kent (Zafer Ergin) when the Earl protested against his decision to expel Cordelia, and then ran off stage accompanied by a silent court. Another example of Lear’s shortcomings as an absolute ruler emerged later on, when he entered Goneril’s palace accompanied by his servants carrying tables, chairs, and a freshly killed wild pig (I, iv). He assumed that his daughter would make him feel welcome-even if he turned up at an inappropriate moment. When the servant Oswald (Mustafa ùekercio÷lu) greeted him coolly, Lear’s reaction was one of withering contempt; how could Goneril permit her staff to behave so disrespectfully towards him? (“What says the fellow here? Call the clotpoll back” (I, iv, 46)). The fact that Oswald didn’t work for Lear was unimportant; as a father figure the King expected unswerving devotion from everyone around him. However Coleman saw to it that such behavior did not go unpunished. In a powerful scene Goneril not only criticized Lear for failing to keep Kent under control, but accused the King of being mad. As she spoke, Lear grew more and more wide-eyed in astonishment; this was not how a daughter should talk to him. This moment seemed especially significant in a context where until recently it had been unthinkable for children to talk to their elders, let alone answer them back. Lear’s state of mind deteriorated as his daughters’ demands grew more and more monstrous. He seemed to grow physically weaker, falling slightly as if hoping that someone would offer physical or moral support. However nobody came forward: Lear had oppressed his people to such an extent that they were unwilling to assist him. Clearly he was looking for their sympathy; but the way in which he delivered the lines (“Old fond eyes,/ Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out,/ And cast you, with the waters that you lose,/ To temper clay” (I, iv, 299-302))-suggested that while he was gradually becoming aware of his shortcomings as a father, he could not acknowledge them just yet. Lear’s inadequacies also had a profound effect on the state he tried to govern. Coleman emphasized this by means of the Fool (Erdal Küçükkömürcu), who was dressed in a tattered costume-a representative of the suffering masses whom Lear had neither cared about nor listened to. As Lear listened to his daughters questioning his judgment and depriving him of his powers (“Hear me, my lord,/ What need you five and twenty [knights], ten, or five,/ To follow in a house where twice so many/ Have a command to tend you? (II, iv, 258-61)), the Fool stood behind him-a perpetual reminder of how the personal and the political were indissolubly

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linked. It was perhaps this aspect more than anything else that precipitated Lear’s emotional breakdown as he realized how his tyranny had not only destroyed his family, but given his people no future. However Coleman was determined not to let this pessimistic interpretation of the play persist: Lear’s sympathetic qualities had to be emphasized as well. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the stage on the heath, covered with a blanket, a spotlight trained fully on him, Lear put his arm round the Fool as he led him into the hovel (“In boy, go first. You houseless poverty, Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep” (III, iv, 26-7)). The Fool shivered and crouched down beside Lear, as the old king turned his face towards the audience, sighed, and delivered his “Poor naked wretches” speech (III, iv, 28-36) in a plaintive tone. At last he understood the consequences of what he had done–in his preoccupation with absolute rule, he had remained totally oblivious to the desperate plight of his subjects. Although Gökçer’s interpretation of this speech was consciously theatrical in the sense that he seemed to be playing to the audience rather than speaking directly to the Fool, the actor showed how Lear had at last begun to acknowledge the feelings of others. He was not in the least insane; rather his experiences on the heath contributed to the process of transforming him. However this process was not an easy one: Lear kept retreating into fantasy so as not to acknowledge the consequences of what he had done in the past. This was evident in his tendency to blame his daughters rather than himself for his sufferings (“nothing could have subdued nature/ To such a lowness but his unkind daughters” (III, iv, 6970)). Gökçer delivered these lines in a high-pitched tone, something totally different from his normal speaking voice. As Lear moved towards selfawareness, so he had less and less need for such fantasies. Rather he put his arm round the Fool and asked everyone to shelter from the storm in the hovel. While seeming pathetic in a simple knitted woolen smock, he had nonetheless started on a voyage of self-discovery, which continued into the fourth act as he placed an arm round Gloucester’s (Sönmez Atasoy’s) shoulder and urged him to be patient. The sight of these two once-powerful old men crouched at the center of the stage was incredibly moving. Gökçer achieved a similar effect in the production’s final scene, as he embraced the dead Cordelia, delivered the lines-“Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir,/ Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,/ Look there, look there!” (V, iii, 308-10)-in a serene voice and smiled before collapsing next to his daughter. The smile said it all: Lear knew perfectly well that his daughter was dead, but he also knew that he was about to join

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her. His spiritual journey towards self-awareness and familial love had been completed, and he could now accept death willingly.8 The critic Ayúegül Yüksel observed that at this moment “the fatherly side of Lear” was most apparent (Yüksel 1986, 12). The production ended with great pomp and ceremony, as the stage darkened and Lear and Cordelia were carried off by eight soldiers, their bodies illuminated by single spotlights to the accompaniment of a regular drumbeat. This scene re-emphasized the fact that anyone entrusted with the responsibility of government, whether civil or military, had to consider their people’s welfare rather than concentrating than themselves. Only then would they eradicate corruption and maintain social and political stability. This point was made far more overtly in films such as Yılmaz Güney’s Yol [The Road] (1981), which was immediately banned in the Turkish Republic for its depiction of a society under an oppressive rule in which there is no significant difference between life inside and outside of prison (Kaftan 2009, 157-8). At the same time Gökçer’s performance was clearly intended to appeal to the emotions, rather like Donald Wolfit’s interpretation which, according to the theatre critic J. C. Trewin, writing in 1951 was notable for its “breadth and energy […] He never toyed with a play: he seized it between his teeth and shook it. He has, and still has, a quality that compels the attention, seizes the mind; in as theatre of mildly genteel acting he ‘flamed amazement’” (Trewin 1951, 268).9 The anonymous reviewer of the daily Milliyet newspaper noticed this–although Coleman’s revival adhered to Jan Kott’s famous dictum of rendering Shakespeare our contemporary, it nonetheless gave Gökçer the chance to tug at the audience’s heartstrings (“Kral Lear” 1980, 8). Another reviewer congratulated Coleman on his ability to bring the best out of the State Theatre and thereby demonstrate the “compelling passion” held by many Turks for Shakespeare’s work (Shakespeare in Turkey 1993, 1). Bülent Bozkurt summarized this passion well in 2003 when he admitted that

8

ørfan ùahinbaú likewise stressed the importance of Lear’s discovery of familial love in the introduction to his translation of the play. Gökçer and Coleman were not out to create a radically new interpretation of Lear, but one which they thought could be most appreciated by the Ankara audience. ùahinbaú’ comments suggest that the notion of family was perhaps the reading most likely to achieve this purpose (“Kral Lear’e Dair” [“On King Lear”], in Kral Lear (Ankara: Maarif Basimevi, 1959): 8. 9 Cf. the critic Kenneth Tynan, writing in 1953: “Mr. Wolfit’s Lear is a brilliant compound of earth, fire and flood” (Tynan 1961, 40).

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Shakespeare had transformed his (Bozkurt’s) life, quoting Dylan Thomas to support his case (Bozkurt 2003, 17).10 To British or American playgoers accustomed to a more naturalistic acting-style (for example, Paul Scofield’s Lear in Peter Brook’s famed 1962 production (filmed in 1971), or Laurence Olivier’s performance in Michael Elliott’s 1983 television production), the experience of Gökçer’s Lear might have seemed somewhat old-fashioned, an evocation of an era when bravura performances were as important as a coherent interpretation of the play as a whole. But this was precisely what Gǀkçer wanted-as Basil Coleman recalled in a 1991 interview, the actor believed that this was the best way to sustain the Turkish audience’s interest in Shakespeare (Coleman 1991). King Lear played to full houses throughout the 1981 and 1982 seasons, and went on tour to the Soviet Union. It was subsequently filmed in the Büyük Tiyatro–without an audience-by the state television service (TRT). Coleman returned to Turkey several times as director, working on diverse productions such as Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the musical Woman of the Year, with Ayten Gökçer in the lead. However he still remembered Lear as one of the highlights of his later career–not only because of Gökçer’s involvement, but because of the way in which the production showed off what was best about Shakespeare in Turkey, in other words, giving actors plenty of opportunity to show off their abilities, while at the same time trying to comment on the world outside the theatre (Coleman 1991). The importance of Shakespeare as a vehicle to express one’s own opinions is well summed up in “Türkiye’de Shakespeare” (Shakespeare in Turkey), a short poem by Can Yücel, which plays on Hamlet’s famous speech to say that from now on in the country “not to be or not to be” will become the watchwords (Yücel 1991, 63; Fergar 1992, 122)

10

“øyi bir úirr, gerçeƣe eklenen bir katkıdır. øyi bir úiir, dünyaya geldikten sonar, artık o dünya asla aynı dünya olamaz. øyi bir úiir evrenin anlam ve biçimini deƣiútirir, insanın kendisiyle ve içinde yaúadıƣı dünya ile ilgili bilgisinin ufuklarını geniúletir” [“A good poem is a contribution to reality. As soon as a good poem is born into the world, that world is never the same again. A good poem changes the meaning and form of the universe, and it increases man's knowledge about himself and his environment”] (Bozkurt 2003, 17).

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN YILDIZ KENTER: SPANNING THE DECADES

For over six decades Yıldız Kenter has been one of the leading lights of the Turkish theatre as an actor, director and company manager.1 Born Ayúe Yıldız to a former diplomat father and a Scottish-Irish-French mother, Kenter trained at the Ankara State Conservatory before joining the State Theatre in 1948. After a decade, during which time she graduated from supporting player into leading performer, Kenter established her own private theatre company, Kent Oyuncuları (Kent Players) with her brother Müúfik in 1960.2 For its first eight years Kent Oyuncuları led a nomadic existence, performing at various venues in østanbul including Karaca Tiyatrosu and Dormen Tiyatrosu. In 1968 the company established its own base–the Kenter Tiyatrosu–in Harbiye on the European side of the city, where it continues to perform to this day. Kent Oyuncuları has also toured throughout Anatolia; its productions can regularly be seen today in major cities such as Ankara or øzmir.3 Kenter has played many notable roles, both in Turkish and non-Turkish plays. She has performed Güngör Dilmen’s Ben Anadolu [I, Anatolia] (1984)-a one-person show presenting the history of Anatolia through fifteen female characters, from the Roman Empress Theodora to Halide Edip Adıvar–nearly four hundred times, both in the Turkish Republic and abroad. Dilmen’s play has been translated into English by Talât Halman. 1

Kenter was the subject of a congratulatory profile by the writer Aziz Nesin, which gives some idea of her influence on the Turkish theatre (“Bu, bir Mucizedir” [This is a Miracle], Milliyet Sanat Dergisi 87, no.1 (January 1, 1984), 23. 2 Kenter’s stage career to the early 1960s has been comprehensively detailed in M. Nihat Özön and Baha Dürder, Türk Tiyatrosu Ansiklopedisi [Encyclopedia of the Turkish Theatre] (østanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1963): 252-3. 3 The company’s achievements were celebrated at a tenth anniversary party, enthusiastically covered by Ses magazine (“Kenterlerin 10. Yıl Kokteyli” [The Kenters’ Tenth Anniversary Cocktail], Vol. 9 no. 47 (November 21, 1970), 16].

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Kenter has received numerous awards for her work on stage and screen, including an honorary prize from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (1995), Best Actress (1996) for her role in Refik Erduran’s Ramiz and Jülide (1996), another special award from the International østanbul Theatre Festival for her contribution to the Turkish theatre (1997), and the Female Artist of the Year Award, given by the Ankara Sanat Kurumu (Ankara Art Association).4 While Kenter’s career has largely been confined to the theatre, she has had notable film roles in Pembe Kadın [A Woman Called Pembe] (1966), directed by Atıf Yılmaz, Fatma Bacı [Sister Fatma] (1972), and Hanım [A Lady] (1988), both directed by Halit Refi÷. She has also been in demand as a supporting player in vehicles such as Zulüm [Cruelty] (1983), starring the singer Orhan Gencebay. More recently Kenter has given notable screen performances in Sen de Dilersen [Whatever You Wish] (2000) and Beyaz Melek [White Angel] (2007), as well as numerous television series. However her first love remains the theatre; her latest production–which has toured all over the country–was Eugene Strickland’s Queen Lear [Kraliçe Lear]. Kenter has always been a versatile performer, who can turn her hand to comedy, tragedy and melodrama. One of her first major roles was that of Catherine Sloper in The Heiress [Miras], Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s adaptation of Henry James’ Washington Square, which she first essayed in 1950 for the State Theatre and repeated fourteen years later for Kent Oyuncuları. Although dominated by her father, she acquired considerable strength of character, which enabled her to reject Morris Townsend’s advances and pursue a life on her own. Writing in 1964, Lütfi Ay felt that Kenter showed how any woman–whether in the past or the present–had the potential to break free of the bonds of patriarchy and become independent, so long as she possessed sufficient self-belief (Ay 1964, 6). Kenter’s interpretation of Antigone in modern dress (1960) was considered tragic yet stunningly contemporary (Vassaf 1961, 9). As Alison in Look Back in Anger (State Theatre 1958, Kent Oyuncuları, 1960), Kenter acted as a foil to Müúfik Kenter’s Jimmy Porter: despite his incessant abuse towards her, it was evident that he could not survive without her. Kenter also distinguished herself in farces such as Odd Man In [Evdeki Yabancı], a complicated tale involving a man who inadvertently takes a sleepingdraught and wakes up in a strange bed next to a strange woman, Jane, who 4

For a comprehensive list of Kenter’s awards, see the Turkish Cultural Foundation profile of her life and work. Accessed October 13, 2010. http://www.turkishculture.org/whoiswho/theater/yildiz-kenter-583.htm.

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has also taken a sleeping-draught. Jane’s husband arrives and chaos ensues. One critic noticed Kenter’s evident relish in the role of Jane, protesting her innocence while secretly enjoying the fact that her husband was so jealous of her (Vassaf 1960, 24). Kenter’s successes in her later career included Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Kent Oyuncuları, 1983), whom she transformed into a lovesick middle-aged woman tormented by past memories. Her oneperson show Hep Aúk Vardı/ There was Always Love (Kent Oyuncuları, 2000-3) was commended by critic Zeynep Oral as a masterpiece of theatre, in which Kenter was convincing in three roles – as herself, her mother and her daughter Leylâ (Oral 2003, 189). Kenter has also proved sensitive to changing theatrical tastes; in the early 1960s she was involved in absurd dramas such as Ionesco’s The Chairs as well as British ‘New Wave’ work such as Pinter’s The Caretaker; two decades later she had graduated to Alan Ayckbourn as well as Colin Higgins’ succès d’estime Harold and Maude. Most recently she has essayed recent Broadway and London hits such as Margaret Edson’s W!t (2000) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s The Night Season (2006).5 Ever since Kent Oyuncuları was established, Kenter has worked hard to promote new Turkish playwrights. One of her major successes, on stage as well as on film, was Hidayet Sayın’s Pembe Kadın [Pink Woman], a realist drama dealing with social problems in a village. The eponymous central character (played by Kenter) has been deserted by her husband and becomes all the more desperate when she learns that he has married a rich woman in a faraway city. Gradually she comes to hate all men, which provokes her into more and more extreme behavior. While such subjectmatter might seem melodramatic today (forming the basis for countless Yeúilçam films of the 1960s and 1970s), it captured the audience at the time of the play’s first performance. Writing in the daily newspaper Tercüman, Halit Fahri Ozansoy praised Kenter for her ability to communicate the desperate plight of a village woman coming to terms with the loss of her husband while trying to care for her daughter. Vecdi Bürün in Yeni østanbul described the experience of the production as unforgettable, while Dikmen Gürün in Kim commended the costumes, sets 5

Turgut Güngör observes that Kenter has created “a second” and “a third” Yıldız, to suit different generations in her theatrical career (“Türk Tiyatrosunun 35 Yıllık Yıldız” [Yıldız’s 35 Years in the Turkish Theatre], Milliyet, December 20, 1983, 6. For an assessment of the company’s work in the mid-1980s, see “Tiyatroda Yeni Sezon Heyecanı” [Excitement of the New Season at the Theatre], Hayat Vol. 27, no. 2 (September 8, 1986), 12-13.

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and music, all of which emphasized Pembe’s Spartan existence (“Kent Oyuncuları Basında: Pembe Kadin” 1965, 23-5). The play ran for 366 performances: when it closed in May 1966 Adnan Tahir wrote in the daily newspaper Milliyet that Kenter had captured the spirit of the times in her portrayal of a woman who, while devoted to her family, was not prepared to accept a subordinate role–especially when her husband had treated her in so cavalier a manner (Tahir 1966, 3).6 Two years earlier Kent Oyuncuları had attracted equally fulsome praise for their production of Necati Cumalı’s Derya Gülü [The Sea Rose], a drama focusing on the eternal triangle of wife, husband and lover set in and around the sea. Kenter played Meryem, a lovely and frustrated woman coping with a sterile marriage to a sea-captain (ùükran Güngör).7 Milliyet commended Cumalı’s sympathetic treatment of characters trying to cope with abject poverty, while paying tribute to Kenter’s, Güngör’s and Müúfik Kenter’s characterizations. Cumhuriyet considered the production a great technical achievement as well as being a riveting piece of theatre (“Derya Gülü Basında” 1963, 17-18). In a 1981 survey, the critic Lütfi Ay praised Kent Oyuncuları’s and Kenter’s respective contributions to the development of the Turkish theatre (Ay 1981, 40).8 This comment should come as no surprise to Kenter, who has spent much of her life emphasizing the social and educational importance of theatre to the Republic’s future. She has regularly taught drama at universities in østanbul (at the time I interviewed her in July 2010 she was working at Koç University), while her company has always been a training-ground for aspiring performers (Onur 1962, 3). In 1968 the film fanzine Ses published an interview with the film stars Kartal Tibet and Sema Özcan acknowledged their debt to Kenter as teacher and mentor 6

The article includes tributes to Kenter’s achievement from numerous writers and critics. 7 The play has been reviewed in English by Talât Halman in World Literature Today 66 (1992): 575-6, and subsequently incorporated in Halman and Jayne L. Warner’s anthology of modern Turkish drama (Syracus: Syracuse University Press, 2008). ùükran Güngör (1926-2002) was one of the co-founders of Kent Oyuncuları, who married Kenter in 1964 and enjoyed a long career in both theatre and films. His life has been well documented in “Güle Güle ùükran Güngör” [Farewell ùükran Güngör], Tiyatro Tiyatro no. 123 (October 2002): 10-21. 8 Gülayúe Erkoç argues that this spirit of encouraging new writing was characteristic of a period following the coup d’état of May 27, 1960, when the Republic experienced “a free milieu” and a new dynamism (“1960-1970 Dönemi Tiyatro Hareketleri” [Theatrical Movements During the Period Between 1960 and 1970], Tiyatro Araútırmaları Dergisi 13 (2002): 6-34.

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(“Hocam Daha” 1968, 10-11). Kenter has regularly spoken about the theatre and its future; this aspect of her work became more and more important during the 1980s and 1990s, as more aspiring dramatists turned to television and films rather than writing for the stage. She suggested that theatre managers needed to formulate specific strategies to develop new writing (“Kükremeye øhtiyacımız Var” 1990, 12). However this could only be successfully accomplished if the State Conservatory had sufficient resources to build a suitable performance space to develop new and experimental work (Atiko÷lu 1991, 12). This task needed to be accomplished sooner rather than later, to encourage young people to reflect more closely on their futures and the potential contribution they can make to the development of the Republic, rather than simply chasing after money (Yücel 2003, 27).9 In the light of such statements, it comes as no surprise to find that Kenter has been constructed in the media as an ideal role model of an independent woman who nonetheless understands the importance of the family as a source of personal and social stability.10 Her second marriage to ùükran Güngör (who died in 2002) was a long-lasting success both personally and professionally; the two of them performed in several Kent Oyuncuları productions, as well as acting in films such as Büyük Adam Küçük Aúk [Big Man Little Love] (2001). The Kenters’ personal life formed the subject of many a magazine article: unlike many of their contemporaries (whose personal lives were often widely different from those portrayed in the media), they remained enviably happy in one another’s company. A story published in the general interest magazine Hayat in 1972 showed the two of them with daughter Leylâ at home by the Bosphorus, enjoying a quiet weekend and caring for one another while Yıldız went to hospital (Zorlutuna 1972, 10-11). In another story the couple was shown visiting the White House while touring North America (Sarper 1973, 3).11

9

For more on Kenter’s career and her views of theatre, see Nergiz Gün øsmayılov, “Tiyatroya Adanmıú Bir Ömür” [A Life Dedicated to the Theatre], Yaúamdan Portreler Vol. 3, no.14 (August/ September 2007): 12-16. 10 The fanzine Ses wrote enthusiastically about her new Chevrolet, which she evidently used regularly to travel around østanbul. This was clearly written in the days before traffic clogged the city’s streets (“Artistler ve Otomobilleri” [Artists and their Cars], Vol. 23, no. 4 (June 4, 1966), 16). 11 They were actually touring Nezihe Araz’s play Hayattan Yapraklar/ Leaves from Life at the time the article appeared.

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Kenter’s reputation as a role-model has been greatly enhanced by her willingness to explore women’s lives on stage and screen–especially those living on the margins of Turkish society. In many instances she uses gestures rather than words to suggest character, in the belief that such people find it very difficult to express their feelings verbally. As Fatma in Halit Refi÷’s Fatma Bacı her eyework–looking down at the ground while her daughters Halime (Fatma Belgen) and Ayúe (Leylâ Kenter) fight with each other–suggests that she is ashamed of both of them.12 Despite her best efforts to bring them up, they have not yet learned to co-exist with one another. Fatma remains painfully aware of her lowly social status as a janitor, doing errands for all the bourgeois residents living in her apartment block. She walks slowly along the street, her back slightly bent, staring straight ahead of her and refusing to engage any passers-by in conversation for fear that they might criticize her. Kenter essays a similar role in Kızım Ayúe [My Daughter Ayúe] (1974), where she plays Huriye, a village woman moving to the city and working all hours to support her daughter Ayúe. Eventually the financial strain proves too much for her, and she is forced to sell her beloved sewing machine in order to survive. Director Yücel Çakmaklı cuts to a close-up of Huriye staring wistfully at the machine as the trader takes it away; for her it represents a life of domestic harmony that can never be recreated. The film ends with Huriye returning to her old home and looking silently at the empty dust-filled rooms. Kenter’s mastery of nonverbal communication is also evident in her stage work. As Jane in Strickland’s Queen Lear, for instance, she shows how age has a profound effect on a woman’s mental faculties through a series of gestures–a nod of the head, a hand raised in protest, a short walk round and round the playing area.13 Despite her enthusiasm for playing the role of Lear, she can hardly remember her lines, but remains too proud to acknowledge it. The gestures are a means of deflecting attention away from her condition. In the award-winning Hanım (1988) Kenter plays Olcay, a lonely woman dying of cancer whose children seldom talk to her. Her isolation is emphasized in one sequence shot on an østanbul bus: Olcay stares straight ahead of her, her face virtually expressionless. In the background we hear the lively chatter of students on their way to university. Olcay glances at them and smiles momentarily before looking 12

Kenter’s daughter Leylâ enjoyed a brief career as an actor, appearing in three films between 1971 and 1972. She later became a university teacher at Bilkent University, Ankara. 13 I reviewed this production for Theatreworld Internet Magazine (www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com).

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down at the ground, half-fearing that they might take notice of her. This wordless sequence tells us a lot about Olcay’s longing for her lost youth, while at the same time emphasizing her reluctance to talk to anyone in case that she might be rebuffed. In a youth-oriented society, senior citizens are generally treated with contempt. Nonetheless there are times when Kenter shows her characters taking pleasure in the past. As the widow Melek in the film Beyaz Melek, she looks at a photo of her dead daughter and her face instantly lights up. Although apparently alone in the retirement home, she feels that by looking at the photograph she can communicate with the angels. Kenter’s performances have an underlying moral purpose, designed to reveal something about the audience’s lives–both on stage and in the movie-theatre-and the worlds they inhabit. Despite her reputation, Kenter knows when to retire into the background and let her fellow-actors occupy the limelight. In the stage production of The Night Season (2006) she plays Lily, a mother figure who seems apparently mad but understood life’s hidden truths. Like Olcay in Hanım, Lily yearns for someone to take notice of her; hence her desire to associate with the film actor (Selçuk Yöntem). However she also realizes that she can never succeed, as her granddaughters Rose and Maud also fancy him. Instead of complaining about it, Lily does the decent thing and lets the younger women pursue their desires while she retires into the background.14 Kenter does much the same thing in the film Sen ne Dilersen, a star vehicle for ùükran Güngör. As the faithful servant Mimi she has a small part, but manages to portray a fundamentally decent soul who displays considerable strength of will, even while trying hard not to offend her employers. When forced to tell the truth about young Eleni’s (Iúık Yenersu’s) true feelings to them, Mimi grasps her handbag with both hands and speaks in clear, lucid tones. It might be difficult for her to impart such information, but she understands her responsibilities. Kenter’s virtues as a company member are re-emphasized in Beyaz Melek, where she spends her entire life caring for her fellow-guests in the retirement home. This is something she believes she has to do, as “it is them [the guests] who kept me alive.” This comment sums up Kenter’s interpretation of the theatrical and (to a lesser extent) the cinematic events: although they are primarily designed as entertainment, they are communal activities, in which actors and spectators alike should explore themselves and the societies they inhabit, and hopefully benefit from the experience. This is especially important in a fast-changing world, in which elderly women like 14 I wrote more about this production in Türk Sahneden øzlenimler [Impressions from the Turkish Stage] (østanbul: Mitos Boyut Yayınları, 2009): 96-7.

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Melek in Beyaz Melek are often left to die alone. For Kenter theatre and film should ideally remind people of their collective responsibility, which is why she considers them so important to the future health of Turkish society. I began the interview by asking Kenter about her early life:15 LR: I have read accounts of your early years and your relationship with your mother, Olga Cynthia. Can you tell me what nationality she was, and what her original profession was in England? YK: Irish Scottish Londoner. She was a mannequin. Her parents had a traveling theatrical company, so mostly my mother lived with her grandparents. LR: Did she have the theatrical blood within her? YK: I don’t know. My mother never wanted me to go to drama school – the Ankara State Conservatory [Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı].16 We were living in a small district called Cebeci, and there was a school in Musiki Muallim Mektebi, where boys and girls were learning to be music teachers. There was such gossip about that school, with the students staying in the same dormitories, that my mother was a little scared of sending me to train as an actress. After a long fight, I managed to persuade them, and entered the school. Most of the teachers were German, who had run away from the Nazi regime in their country, and they were really excellent–Carl Ebert and his colleagues.17 They spoke German, but there were translators around to help us. LR: How did your mother react once you had entered the Conservatory? 15

Kenter has been interviewed many times in the press: the most comprehensive recent interview in Turkish appears in Adem Dursun (ed.), Yaúamlarını Tiyatroya Adayanlar [Those who Dedicate Their Lives to Theatre] (østanbul: Kartiú Matbaaúı, 2010): 290-9. 16 First opened in 1935, the State Conservatory had some illustrious personalities as their first directors. Paul Hindemith directed the music school, while Carl Ebert ran the theatre department (open from 1936 onwards). From 1982 onwards the jurisdiction for the Conservatory has been assumed by Hacettepe University. 17 Carl Ebert (1887-1980) helped to set up the Conservatory, and later on the Turkish State Opera and Ballet. He served as a professor at the University of Southern California, before returning to his home country in 1954 as director of the Städtische Oper (now known as Deutsche Oper Berlin);

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YK: She changed her mind, after seeing the success I had made in my studies. She always looked out for her children; if ever any of them got into trouble, she took special care of them. After my father had to resign from the diplomatic service, she had to work to support the family; she started giving English lessons to families who could afford it.18 LR: Did she regret her decision to come to Turkey? YK: Never. She was always in love with her husband, and this is what inspired me to write the play Hep Aúk Vardı. If she hadn’t been in love, we wouldn’t have enjoyed such a secure childhood. LR: She seems to have been a source of stability … YK: Oh, yes. When my father resigned from the diplomatic service, he couldn’t find a decent job, and so he took to drink. When I was born the family lived in poverty; my mother had to make diapers out of bed sheets. People told them to get a divorce, but neither of them wanted to because of the children. However Jak, my eldest brother by my father’s first marriage couldn’t stand my father’s drinking and ran away when he was fifteen. He came back, of course, and my mother spent a lot of time talking to him. We all fell in love with him as well. My father’s life changed when he got a job at Ziraat Bankası in Ankara, which is why we moved there. LR: Did you talk Turkish all the time at home? YK: Yes. At that time there was this call for everyone to speak their own language so as to reinforce belief in the nation. Mother was afraid to speak English, so she used Turkish all the time with the most beautiful accent.19 I enjoyed playing her in Hep Aúk Vardı – particularly when she swore!!

18

Yıldız Kenter’s father Naci Bey was a successful diplomat for foreign affairs, and had helped øsmet ønönü, the first Prime Minister of the Republic, to prepare the documents for the Treaty of Lausanne (1922-3). After he fell in love with Olga Cynthia, he was asked to leave his position in government, as bureaucrats of that time were not allowed to take foreign partners. Olga Cynthia took the name Nadide after marriage and converted to Islam. 19 This issue of spoken and written language has been explored in detail by Geoffrey Lewis in The Turkish Language: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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LR: At school were you ever considered different, because you had an English mother? YK: No. It was accepted as something quite natural. After a while it simply didn’t worry me; likewise my father’s drinking. To be honest, family life was great fun: my mother used to bring stray animals and lonely people home with her–an old man selling vegetables, a Scottish French émigré, and a soldier. Once I had to give up my bedroom for a homeless woman who had just given birth to a baby. It was just how things had turned out. It wasn’t till very much later in life that I started questioning myself. LR: Do you ever experience any conflicts of identity, given your background? YK: Not really. There are occasions when I feel I don’t belong to certain cultures, but this can happen even within Turkey; when I go home to østanbul I feel sometimes that I am not part of that city. This was particularly true when I had been touring in Anatolia for three months– every day a new place, preparation for the night’s performance, and the next day hopping on a bus once again and visiting a new area. I did this every summer for eighteen years. LR: What made you want to become an actress in the first place? YK: I think I liked the sound of two hands clapping. I was a very shy child, and didn’t perform in front of the family. But perhaps this is good; whatever you have to do, you have to be able to hold something back. I did perform on radio during the children’s hour, which I think helped me. I have to say that my time at the Conservatory was extremely happy; it was a boarding school, but my house was very close by. I used to go home at weekends, but I missed school all the time. I was happy to be away from the home environment; and had lots of opportunity to work. I used to get up very early at 5 a.m. to make sure I got a room to myself, and spent all my time in quiet. We had a building called On Odalar [Ten-roomed Building], and whoever got there first could occupy a room on their own each day. LR: Did you like studying on your own?

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YK: Yes, and I still do. However I did get a lot of help from Agah Hün, an actor living to our house.20 One of my first roles at school was Juliet, and a lead role in J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea.21 They gave me the ambition to learn more about every aspect of theatre. LR: Did you go to see other performances? YK: Oh, yes. At that time the State Theatres weren’t open, but I had the chance to go and see opera–Madame Butterfly in particular seemed like a dream! LR: What was the most important aspect of your training? YK: Probably the use of the body. Madame Adler, she was so good at this aspect of the theatre!22 We also had a lot of classical training; our speech teacher, Nurettin Sevin had been in England and knew a lot about Shakespeare.23 We used to act out short scenes, both in English and in Turkish. LR: What was your first professional production? YK: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, where I played Olivia [1948]. I was very young and slim, and looked quite beautiful: the critics said I looked like a peacock. When I started to speak it didn’t seem quite so good!24 At that time we did a lot of classical plays–Goethe’s Faust, Sophocles’ Antigone [both 1949], Ibsen’s Peer Gynt [1950]–but not very many Shakespearean works. However I wasn’t really happy; the parts I had played at school were much bigger, including Lady Macbeth and most of 20

Agah Hün (1918-1990), actor with the Ankara State Theatre and the østanbul ùehir Tiyatrosu. 21 Written in 1904, Riders to the Sea is a poetic tragedy of rural Ireland. It was translated as Denize Giden Atlılar and first published by the Ankara State Conservatory in 1940. 22 Kenter discusses this aspect of her life in more detail in an interview with S. D. Karahalilo÷lu, “Kibele’nin Kızı ‘Ben Anadolu’da’ Hayat Buluyor” [Cybele’s daughter finds life in I, Anatolia] (October 31, 2007), http://divitt.net/index.php?route=view_det&id=649 (accessed September 4, 2010). 23 See an interview with actress Ayla Algan (1999) on the Tiyatro Bo÷aziçi website for more on Nurettin Sevin’s influence on generations of Turkish actors (http://www.bgst.org/tb/yazilar/s_aahz.asp (accessed September 4, 2010). 24 See “Interview: Yıldız Kenter.” Skylife, February 2010: 37-9.

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Eugene O’Neill’s major heroes.25 I knew him so well – likewise Anton Chekhov, all of whose major plays I performed. But then I couldn’t have expected much else at the State Theatre, as I was a junior performer. LR: Did you enjoy working at the State Theatre? How long would you have for rehearsing individual productions? YK: I did. I liked my fellow-actors. Most of us worked together rehearsing for at least six weeks on a particular production. We used to talk a lot about a play’s thematic aspects, and spoke the lines quite a lot in order to understand them. This made the learning process very easy. Once you understand “who are you?;” “what are you saying;?” “why are you saying it?;” and “in what manner should you say the lines?,” a play becomes quite easy to perform. At the State Theatre I sometimes had two different parts in repertory, but at my own theatre I played four roles at a time during a season. LR: Did you have any ambitions to go into films? YK: Not really, as performing in the theatre took so much time. However I enjoyed acting on screen if people asked me to! I actually prefer theatre to films, in truth. LR: Why? YK: Because I can develop my performance, while learning from others around me. Each night is different: in a film your characterization is fixed. If it doesn’t work, you can’t change it. In the theatre you live your character each day–sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Sometimes you find your attention wandering, so you have to reconsider what you are doing, and re-rehearse the part. I am frightened of giving a mechanical performance; I want to keep my humanity alive whenever I am on the stage. LR: Isn’t it difficult sometimes about emotionally involving the person sat at the very back of the theatre?

25

Anna Christie first appeared in translation, published by the Ministry of Education in 1946.

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YK: You use your body. Through gesture you can amplify the sound of the words on the stage. I don’t mean that you exaggerate; you just try to affect your audience. That’s why you put make-up around your eyes, just to be seen.26 LR: Do you think that when you are performing, you become a different person on the stage? YK: No, I am always myself. Every human being comprises so many personalities to draw upon; this is why we are all different from one another. When I played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, all the emotions concerning the character were within me, and I brought them to the surface. Acting gives you the chance to express them safely. LR: So acting is a kind of therapy for you? YK: Oh yes, certainly. I come to the theatre feeling tired and exhausted, but the performance helps to cure me. Maybe this is because acting gives you a kind of energy; when you make a mistake, you work hard to cover it up, and sometimes you get well applauded for it. LR: Have you ever forgotten your lines? YK: Yes. At school I was doing Schiller’s Lady Frederick, and suddenly … everything … went blank. I didn’t know how long it took, but I suddenly picked up the thread. LR: Do you ever have a prompter at the side of the stage? YK: Never. Someone is there during rehearsals, but never in the performance. LR: Let’s go back to your career. After working at the State Theatre for a few years, you went to America on a scholarship provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. Can you tell something about your experiences there?

26

Kenter recorded several poems for an audio CD entitled Yıldız Kenter’in Sesinden [The Sounds of Yıldız Kenter] (østanbul: Abdi øbrahim ølaç A.S., 1998), which gives a good idea of the importance she gives to pronuciation.

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YK: I loved the experience of working there, and developing the technique I had learned while at the Conservatory. I was going to stay there, but I had my daughter Leylâ to look after, and my mother begged me not to take her with me. The Rockefeller Foundation was willing to pay all the expenses, but family was more important to me. I’m not sure whether I’d have liked to stay in America: maybe I would have had my opportunities, but I don’t regret coming back. LR: Why did you establish Kent Oyuncuları? YK: Because we [Kenter, Müúfik and ùükran Güngör] were left all alone. The former State Theatre director Muhsin Ertu÷rul was pushed out in a way that we could not tolerate, so we resigned from the theatre.27 We came to østanbul, with no house, no salary–nothing. We stayed in Metin And’s parents’ house for a while, just so that we could survive. LR: What was the first play your company produced? YK: William Gibson’s Two for the Seesaw in østanbul (1959), Look Back in Anger in Ankara (1960), which was the first play I directed; I played Alison as well, a part I had also in the State Theatre production in østanbul in 1958.28 In the Kent Oyuncuları production Müúfik played Jimmy Porter. LR: Where did the money come from? YK: All of it was our own money; we suffered so much. We were often penniless; it was artistic ambition alone that kept us going. However I didn’t regret leaving the State Theatre: I worked much, much harder, because I could now have the freedom to do what I wanted to do. Had I stayed with the State Theatre, I’d have become a civil servant [memur], performing plays each year. I’d never really want to go back, even though I’d take a part in one of their productions, if offered.

27

For more on Ertu÷rul’s career see Gökhan Akçura, Do÷umunun Yüzüncü Yılına Arma÷an: Muhsin Ertu÷rul [100th Birthday Celebration of Muhsin Ertu÷rul] (østanbul: østanbul Büyükúehir Belediyesi Kültür øúleri Dairesi Baúkanlı÷ı Yayınları, 1992). 28 Two for the Seesaw was revived in the 1969-70 season; Look Back in Anger was translated as Öfke [Fury] by Kemal Konuúmaz.

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LR: Have you ever performed one play in a straight run for eight or nine performances in a week? YK: Oh, yes. In the State Theatre we used to perform every day except Monday, with two performances on Saturdays and Sundays. It was exhausting, but the adrenalin of performance keeps you going. I remember having to bear this in mind when I performed The Heiress 1950) in the State Theatre on a straight run of several months or so.29 This was my first big role, given to me by Cüneyt Gökçer with ùahap Akalın as Sloper.30 Acting is a healthy thing; it keeps you young. LR: Let’s go back to Kent Oyuncuları. In the early days, how many plays per season did you try to produce? YK: At the beginning, at least four per season, including a good comedy, so as to attract good audiences and bring some money into the theatre. It didn’t matter where it came from – it could be American, European or Turkish–so long as it had a small cast. Thus we couldn’t do someone like Bernard Shaw, even though I always wanted to produce his work. However we did do boulevard comedies like Jean Kerr’s Mary Mary (1962), or Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple [Bir Garip Çift] (1966). We tried to give a variety of plays–comedies plus plays like Ionesco’s The Chairs [Sandalyeler] (1962-3). LR: You did a lot of touring, didn’t you? YK: Oh, yes. We would take four plays around Anatolia for at least three months per year. We’d often stay in filthy hotels, and have very little time to prepare our productions. Sometimes I’d get upset about the conditions: on one night we were due to play Edmund Morris’ The Wooden Dish [Tahta Çanaklar] (1959-60), and I was so upset I went up to my room and cried. However I really enjoyed the experience of touring; we did it continuously for eighteen years. LR: How many nights would you play in each town? YK: One or two. In some towns like Gaziantep in the east of Turkey we played four nights; we had a good audience there. Sometimes we’d get a 29 30

Kent Oyuncuları revived the play in 1963-4. ùahap Akalın (1916-1978), actor and director in theatre and films.

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really good supper from hoteliers–especially in the Black Sea, when people would join us for an after-show party. Mostly we played the productions that premiered in østanbul; it’s a bit different now, as sometimes I like to open productions outside of østanbul–in øzmir or Ankara, for instance–before bringing them back to østanbul. LR: Do you miss the old touring days? YK: Yes, because you really got to know the country and its people. Nowadays you just go for one night, and then return. LR: Let’s go back to the process of preparing a play. In general how many weeks of rehearsals do you like to allow for each of your productions? YK: It depends on the play. Sometimes six weeks; sometimes even more. We often worked ten hours a day to get a production right. Some plays were extremely difficult: when we did Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf [Kim Korkar Hain Kurttan] (1963), we were faced with particular challenges, because the play was a new, emotionally difficult text, full of swear-words yet intellectually stimulating. One columnist wrote at the time that he never realized Yıldız Kenter could use such foul [ayıp] words. LR: Do you ever favor experimental work? YK: Not really. I’m interested in plays that were about people. I remember reading Melih Cevdet Anday’s Mikadonun Çöpleri [Mikado Sticks], about two people sitting and talking (even though we’re not sure whether they’re two people or not), and being totally astonished by its language. I called Müúfik and there and then we decided to do it.31 LR: You have also directed a lot of plays as well as acted in others. Do you approach a play differently as a director, as compared to being an actor? YK: In truth, it’s the actors who direct the director, especially when rehearsals have started. Directors often have an idea about the play in mind, but their opinions are often changed once they see actors performing. Every actor is their own director; it’s the director’s job to 31

Produced in the 1967-8 season. Melih Cevdet Anday (1915-2002) was a multitalented poet, novelist, playwright and critic.

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bring all the performances together. I think a play depends on the strength of its company, with each actor learning from their fellow-actors and growing together. The director I think has to be adaptable, and have his views shaped by his actors. LR: When did you move into your permanent premises in Harbiye? YK: In 1968. I was inspired by an idea given to me by Talât Halman of selling individual seats in advance so as to raise capital. We also had financial assistance from Hürriyet, whose owner bought ten seats. LR: What was your company’s first play in the new building? YK: Hamlet. I followed Muhsin Ertu÷rul’s example of opening each season with a Shakespeare play. Müúfik played the title role; he was one of the best Hamlets I’ve ever seen. Luckily the production played to full houses, which helped our financial position greatly. The director was Denis Carey.32 LR: Do you think your company has reflected changing trends in Turkish theatre history? YK: I always wanted to produce plays with human interest. I didn’t really follow changing theatrical movements: whatever I liked, I wanted to produce, so long as the budget allowed it! Nor did I follow public taste; I just wanted good plays that focused on the characters’ lives and made the audience want to find out more about them. Even a farce like Barillet and Gredy’s Forty Carats [Kırk Kırat] (1968-9) had its share of believable situations. The play I’ve recently done, Eugene Strickland’s Queen Lear [Kraliçe Lear] focuses seriously on the dilemma of the central character. 32

Hamlet opened in 1968 at Kenter Tiyatrosu’s new premises in Harbiye on the European side of østanbul. Until that time the company had played at various other venues including Karaca Tiyatro, ùiúli Site and Ses Tiyatro. For more on the company’s move to Harbiye and Hamlet, see Emre Erdem, “Her úey bir düúle baúladı” [Everything Started with a Dream], Referans, April 16, 2009, http://www.referansgazetesi.com/haber.aspx?YZR_KOD=172&HBR_KOD=1210 63 (accessed September 4, 2010). Denis Carey (1909-86) was an actor/director, a former director of the Bristol Old Vic, as well as working at the Old Vic as well as the West End; his greatest success was the musical Salad Days, which ran for 2283 performances from 1954 onwards.

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The playwright Güngör Dilmen told me it was one of the best he had ever seen.33 LR: Do you think you’ve managed to attract a regular audience to Kent Oyuncuları? YK: Yes, but it’s getting smaller. Perhaps this is because people now have alternative entertainment–televisions, computers, the Internet. There’s also the problem of østanbul traffic. LR: Can you tell me why you have such a fondness for Chekhov? YK: I think it’s because The Seagull was one of the first productions I played that I became attracted to him.34 I always find myself very close to his characters–men and women, both young and old. He has such an ability to understand emotional truths that everyone can understand–my audience and myself alike. Whenever I’m in a Chekhov play I feel I’m playing myself.35 I know that silences are important in his plays, but they can become boring. I saw four Chekhov productions done at London’s Royal National Theatre by a Russian company; they were so slow, that they lasted nearly four hours each. No one has four hours or so to spend in the theatre, and we should realize that. LR: Do you think the theatre has a future in the Turkish Republic? YK: Yes I do. The theatre has had its ups and downs, but there’s really nothing to compare with the experience of live performance. I really want to continue performing all kinds of plays; so long as they are well written, I believe they are worth staging. Sadly very few people in Turkey write for the theatre now; they all write for television. LR: Do you ever consider retirement? YK: Not at all. I want to die in the theatre working, or going to sleep and not waking up. I have enjoyed my sixty-two years on stage to date. I have

33

Güngör Dilmen (1930-), playwright and author of I. Anatolia. Kent Oyuncuları revived the play in 1962 and again in 1998-2000. 35 Other Chekhov productions in which Kenter has been involved include Three Sisters (1970-71), Beware of the Dog (1972-3) and Uncle Vanya (1978-9) 34

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been lucky to do what I loved doing, and have managed to entertain audiences by doing so.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN GENCO ERKAL: THE THEATRE OF COMMITMENT

Genco Erkal’s early theatrical career began in private companies in østanbul, beginning with Kent Oyuncuları run by Yıldız Kenter, followed by stints at the østanbul ùehir Tiyatrosu and the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu (Ankara Art Theatre). He made his name in plays such as an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman–a one-person show first staged at the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu and later televised on Turkish State Television (TRT) in 1974.1 In 1969 Erkal established Dostlar Tiyatrosu (The Friends Theatre), a company in østanbul dedicated to what they describe as “the theatre of enlightenment”–a blend of new plays and revivals designed to promote criticism and discussion amongst audiences on contemporary issues.2 In the 1970s the company dedicated themselves to contemporary theatre, including revivals such as Peter Weiss’ The Investigation, and new plays such as Alpagut Olayı (The Alpagut Affair), focusing on a miners’ strike in Turkey, and Orhan Asena’s ùili’de Av (Hunting in Chile), which dealt with Salvador Allende, president of Chile from 1970 to 1973, who was forced to flee the country following the coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973. In subsequent decades their repertory has included productions of Edward Bond’s Summer, Vaclav Havel’s Largo Desolato and Maxim Gorky’s Enemies, plus adaptations from the poems of Nazım Hikmet (Kerem Gibi), and the short stories of the Turkish satirist Aziz Nesin (Azizname).3 Dostlar Tiyatrosu has also 1

Erkal’s early career has been summarized in “ùehir Tiyatrosu Âilesine Katılan øki Sanatkâr” [Two Craftspeople Entering the City Theatre Family] Türk Tiyatrosu vol. 35, no.362 (March 1965): 27. 2 “Dostlar Tiyatrosu,” Unpubl. Publicity Leaflet, 2 (reprinted by courtesy of Genco Erkal) 3 Genco Erkal explains in considerable detail (in Turkish) why he responds to readily to Aziz Nesin’s work in the foreword to Birtakım Azizlikler (østanbul: Adam Yayınları, 1997): 7-11.

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specialized in Brecht; their productions include Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Dostlar Tiyatrosu 1990, 1-11). Erkal has been involved in all aspects of the company’s work, as producer, actor, director and adapter (he wrote Kerem Gibi). In the mid-1960s the critic Eric Bentley wrote about what he called the theatre of commitment, which was neither exclusively political nor polemical, but rather engaged the audience’s attention; to make sure they are “roused from their semislumber” and understand that theatre represents “what the powers behind the [broadcast] media wish to have swamped. It is the last refuge of personal association, of the simple association of persons with common interests at something less huge and overpowering than a stadium.”4 The theatre of commitment focuses on issues that might be considered too contentious for the television or the cinema; and although it might attract small audience, its impact can be immense. Throughout his varied career as an actor, director and company manager, Genco Erkal has embraced this form of theatre, despite all the sociohistorical changes the Republic has undergone over the past four decades (Manyaúlı 1994, 30-1). Critics have recognized his contribution to Turkish theatre: in 1984 ùükran Kurdakul likened Erkal’s work to writing on a page that would always be deciphered by future audiences.5 In the theatre of commitment it is often the writer, rather than the actor or director, who assumes paramount importance. Nâzım Hikmet (19021963) is particularly popular with Erkal’s Dostlar Tiyatrosu, as much of his work emphasizes the importance of radical dissent and courage in the face of adversity (ùener 2005, 172-4). Hikmet once wrote that he wanted his poems “to address all readers’ problems […] If a young man falls in love with a girl, he should be able to read by poems to his sweetheart. An old man in the grip of sadness about the approach of death should read my poems.”6 In his one-person show Kerem Gibi, which recounts Hikmet’s life through his poems, Erkal tries to achieve a similar effect: first performed in 1975, the play has been periodically revised since then.7 The 4

Eric Bentley, “The Theatre of Commitment,” in Thinking About the Playwright: Comments from Four Decades (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1987), 180. 5 ùükran Kurdakul, “Genco Erkal’la Yirmi Beú Yıl” [Twenty-Five Years with Genco Erkal], Bilim ve Sanat 42 (June 1984), 16. 6 Qtd in Saime Göksü and Edward Timms, Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nâzım Hikmet (London: Hurst and Company, 1999), 350. 7 The following analysis of the play is based on my review of Erkal’s performance, first published in Theatreworld Internet Magazine (www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com) on May 31, 2010.

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title recalls Kerem, a mythic character, who literally died for love, as his unbridled passion for his beloved ùirin on their wedding night raged beyond control. Erkal’s narrative communicates the strength of Hikmet’s political convictions; his determination to seek a better world in which social inequalities no longer existed. Despite all official attempts to suppress him–including imprisonment, banning the publication of his work and ultimately exiling him–Hikmet retained an astonishing ability to inspire audiences. Partly this was due to his gifts as a poet; he writes in a simple, direct style in which the sounds of words assume as much significance as their meaning. More importantly Hikmet was an outstanding speaker, recalling poetry’s intimate connections to folklore and/or the oral tradition. It was this quality that made him such a potentially subversive threat to official state ideology. In Kerem Gibi, Erkal uses a variety of images and sounds projected on to a screen at the back of the stage to underline the significance of Hikmet’s words. Sometimes Hikmet appears in newsreel footage, either reading his works or moving in front of the people–whether in the Turkish Republic or Soviet Russia–whose lives he so deeply identified with. He eventually became something of an international icon; his funeral was attended by thousands of mourners paying tribute to his achievements both as a writer and a visionary. Kerem Gibi also includes several disturbing images, reminding us of Hikmet’s enduring significance–these include black-and-white footage of the atom bomb exploding and its aftermath in Hiroshima. As the play unfolds, however, we gradually become aware that it is not just about Nâzım Hikmet, but Erkal himself. He delivers the lines with such conviction, his voice moving through several registers without the least sign of strain. Perhaps uniquely amongst his peers, Erkal understands the importance of non-verbal and well as verbal communication; his gestures and bodily movements have the grace and poise of a gymnast. If Hikmet understood the importance of commitment through words, Erkal achieves a similar effect through words and gestures. Kerem Gibi is the work of an actor of unshakeable conviction, who has tried to arouse audiences from their theatrical slumbers ever since Dostlar Tiyatrosu was established. Kerem Gibi might be only just over one hour and twenty minutes long, but it possesses the emotional kick of a mule, inspiring audiences to applaud with some of the views it expresses. Hopefully this enthusiasm might inspire some people to press for social and economic change once they have left the theatre.

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Erkal’s gifts as an interpreter of Hikmet’s poetry are evident in his poetry readings, which comprise a major part of the composer Fâzıl Say’s oratorio Nâzım (2001). The poem “Kerem Gibi” [Like Kerem] is particularly memorable: Hava kurúun gibi a÷ır!! Ba÷ır Ba÷ır Ba÷ır ba÷ır ba÷ırıyorum Koúun kurúun erit-me÷e ça÷ırıyorum... O diyor ki bana: -Sen kendi sesinle kül olursun ey! Kerem gibi yana yana... “Deeeert çok, hemdert yok” Yürek-lerin kulak-ları sa÷ır... Hava kurúun gibi a÷ır... Ben diyorum ki ona: - Kül olayım Kerem gibi yana yana Ben yanmasam sen yanmasan biz yanmasak, nasıl çıkar

Air heavy as lead Shout Shout Shout I am shouting Run I am calling you To melt lead He tells me: Hey! You’ll become ashes with your own voice burning burning like Kerem’s burning Many troubles No fellow-sufferers The ears of the hearts are deaf The air heavy as lead I tell him Let me burn to ashes just like Kerem’s Burning If I don’t burn if you don’t burn if we don’t burn how will the light

Genco Erkal – The Theatre of Commitment karan-lıklar aydın-lı÷a. Hava toprak gibi gebe. Hava kurúun gibi a÷ır. Ba÷ır ba÷ır ba÷ır ba÷ırıyorum. Koúun kurúun erit-me÷e ça÷ırıyorum......

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vanquish the darkness Air pregnant as earth Air heavy as lead Shout shout shout I am shouting Run I am calling you to melt lead……8

The poem talks about burning and melting lead for two reasons; to dispel nazar (the evil eye) and to call listeners to arms–i.e. to melt lead to cast bullets to fight against those who oppress them. Erkal’s voice ascends to a crescendo with the repeated word “Ba÷ır” to emphasize the intensity of the speaker’s feelings; and then he enunciates the three words “kurúun eritme÷e ça÷ırıyorum,” making it sound like a call to arms. The phrase “Kerem gibi yana yana” is delivered in light, rhythmical tones, resembling the chorus from a folk-song, which contrasts starkly with the chiding tone adopted for the lines “Yüreklerin kulakları sa÷ır.” No one appears to take heed of Kerem’s example. To call his listeners to action, Erkal takes short pauses between the phrases “Ben yanmasam/ sen yanmasan/ biz yanmasak” and delivers the subsequent words “nasıl çıkar karanlıklar aydınlı÷a” in a dominant voice: collective action is the only way in which the darkness of oppression can be dispelled. The poem’s ending (with the phrases repeated from the beginning) is spoken softly, rising to another crescendo on the phrase “kurúun eritme÷e ça÷ırıyorum.” Written in 1930, the poem retains its popularity today: Erkal’s inspirational reading demonstrates why.9

8

Translated by James Ryan and Hüda Cereb. Reproduced by permission of Eleven Eleven Magazine. 9 The recording of Say’s Oratorio, with Say as soloist accompanied by Erkal, the singer Sertab Erener and the baritone Tuncer Tercan, with the Cumhurbaúkanlı÷ı Senfoni Orkestrası (Presidential Symphony Orchestra) conducted by Nacı Özgüç, was issued on Imaj CDs, in association with the Ministry of Culture in 2001, and

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Nâzım Hikmet’s poetry still has the capacity to inspire or inflame listeners, depending on their political persuasions. During a conference to commemorate the sixteenth-century poet Pir Sultan Abdal (of which more later) on July 2, 1993, thirty-seven people were burned to death in a hotel fire started by right-wing extremists. Those who perished included Azım Bezirci, a scholar noted for publishing Nâzım’s writings. The tragedy seemed to confirm the validity of Nâzım’s warning about the political exploitation of Islam. Erkal took the events of that fateful day and transformed them into Sivas 93, a docu-drama first performed in 2007 by a 6-strong cast, including Erkal himself, with music by Fâzıl Say. As with Kerem Gibi, Erkal uses different media to make its point-contemporary newspaper reports, original television news footage, recorded interviews with the survivors, comments by intellectuals, government officers and others closely involved with the tragedy.10 Sivas 93 tells the story of the massacre and its consequences for contemporary Turkish history. The event was seen as a major assault on free speech and human rights, which seriously deepened the rift between the religious and secular wings of society. On the anniversary of the massacre, demonstrators hold protests and vigils to commemorate the victims of the fire. In Sivas 93 Erkal underlines the seriousness of the tragedy by having the entire cast perform the play dressed in black, with original news footage from the event screened at the back of the stage (Dursun, 2010, 96-7). In the program-notes, Erkal mentions that the cast try to perform the play in a manner similar to that of the Greek chorus: they represent the survivors of the massacre, as well as those who continue to honor the memory of the victims. His purpose, as with most of his productions, is to perpetuate the theatre of commitment, wherein audiences reflect on the significance for the Turkish Republic–in the past, present and future–of the events they witness on stage. In dramatic terms Sivas 93 has the effect of a kick of a mule, jolting playgoers out of their complacency (for example, that they come to the theatre simply to be entertained), and making them realize just how destructive religious radicalism can be, particularly if it is permitted to flourish unchecked. Erkal invites us to think deeply about the events, particularly as they still dominate the political agenda: in 2008 it on Kanal D DVD. Extracts from the performance–which was also broadcast on TRT–are now accessible on YouTube. 10 My comments on Sivas 93 are based on my review for Theatreworld Internet Magazine, originally published on March 15, 2008 and reprinted in Türk Sahnelerinden øzlenimler/ Impressions from the Turkish Stage (østanbul: Mitos Boyut Yayınları, 2009): 138-40.

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was announced that the former hotel would be transformed into an Alevi cultural centre, but to date this has yet to occur.11 Apart from some clips of his more recent shows,12 little visual evidence remains of Erkal’s long and distinguished stage career. However we can get some idea of his technical control of emotion and gesture in some of the few films he has made. In Hakkari’de Bir Mevsim [A Season in Hakkari] (1983), based on the novel by Ferit Edgü, he plays a schoolteacher posted to Hakkari, an isolated village in the east of Turkey. He is both fascinated yet alienated by his surroundings–a city-dweller completely out of place in a feudal society permitting polygamy and ensuring that its women remain second-class citizens. Most of the children can neither read, nor write, and speak Kurdish rather than Turkish. For much of the film director Erden Kıral intercuts close-ups of Erkal’s face, creased with confusion with long panning shots of the mountainous, snowcovered landscape. He remains a prisoner of his situation; at one point he tries to escape by walking along a hilly path, but cannot stand the cold. The villagers bring him back home on a sledge, wrapped in blankets and suffering from frostbite. Just as the teacher begins to understand the rhythms of life in the east, an official from the Ministry of Education visits Hakkari to tell him that school will be closed. In a climactic sequence– notable for what is not said rather than what is said-the teacher tells the children of his imminent departure, while desperately trying to keep himself under control. His jaw quivers and he looks at the ground while speaking in a halting voice that is quite at odds with the confident tones with which he began the film. Eventually he darts out of the side of the frame, leaving us to look at the blackboard covered in writing–a living testament to what he has achieved with the children within a few short months. A quarter of a century later in Ben Hopkins’ Pazar: Bir Ticaret Masalı [The Market: A Tale of Trade] (2008), Erkal plays Uncle Fâzıl, the unwilling accomplice of serial wheeler-dealer Mihram (Tayanç Ayaydın). In an interview–parts of which have been quoted elsewhere in this book in the chapter on documentaries, Hopkins described the film thus: “[It] 11

Clips from a performance of Sivas 93 from March 17, 2008 are accessible on http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9hg3x_sivas93-fragman_creation (accessed June 29, 2010). 12 A short clip of his recent show Marx in Soho [Marx’ın Dönüúü], first performed in 2008, is now accessible on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=248304248094, accessed June 29, 2010).

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resembles the Brecht of the late plays, where a singer or narrator interrupts the action to comment on it. Remember that Mother Courage is a play about a black market trader who believes she can survive on her own wits, but is eventually outwitted by the forces of capitalism.” The film captures a certain moment in recent Turkish history–which in Hopkins’ words signaled “a massive change in culture and in people’s ways of life. That’s why I had the scene in the film where Mihram meets the young executive with the artificial smile and the clichéd phrases drawn from American English. Maybe the scene was slightly overplayed to contrast modern capitalism with more traditional lifestyles, but the audience laughed, so its function was fulfilled. It’s a bit like a Shakespearean comic interlude.”13 It is likely that the Brechtian material, as well as the film’s socio-political message, appealed to Erkal, which is why he agreed to be in it. Erkal’s performance as Fâzıl is rich in small details; in one sequence Mihram tries to make a deal with a factory manager in Azerbaijan; the two of them haggle over figures, becoming quite animated in the process. Hopkins cuts to a two-shot of Mihram in the foreground and Fâzıl in the background, apparently disinterested in the proceedings. After a few moments Fâzıl turns towards the camera and silently holds up four fingers, signaling the final asking price of $400. The manager is visibly taken aback by this gesture; and he almost instantaneously agrees, much to Mihram’s jubilation. Erkal understands the importance of minimalist gestures to create a believable character. Hopkins described Erkal’s performance thus: “[Erkal] is obviously from an older generation in the theatre, which values diction perhaps more than they do today. However the uncle in the film is something of a theatrical, larger-than-life personality. Even in a scene where he doesn’t speak, such as the bargaining scene, he plays brilliantly and the audience is well aware of his presence. I didn’t have to direct him much, in truth; he did most of it himself. Actually I am a bit of a minimalist director; if you’ve got good actors you don’t need to tell them anything really.14 I began the interview with Erkal by asking him about his theatrical origins: LR: Let’s start at the beginning. You were a graduate of Robert College in østanbul?

13 14

Ben Hopkins, interview with the author, June 27, 2010. Interview with the author.

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GE: Yes, I graduated in natural sciences, then I went to study psychology at the University of østanbul. LR: Very interesting. How did you get from psychology into acting? GE: I always considered myself an actor, even at Robert College, where we had four, sometimes five productions a year, half in English, half in Turkish. I played Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice in English. However my father did not want me to become an actor, so he asked me what my next preferred choice of subject might be. I said psychology. I was only eighteen years old and as yet didn’t have the choice to become an actor. LR: Did your psychology studies help you as an actor? GE: Yes, a lot. Because acting is about knowing people first, and then playing them. Since psychology helps one to understand human behavior, it becomes the basis for any performance. This was especially important when I performed Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, when I visited local psychiatry clinics and spent considerable time observing the patients.15 This was the first real one-person show in the Turkish theatre. LR: Did you have any favorite actors who might have influenced the way in which you chose to interpret roles?

15

This production of Diary of a Madman [Bir Delinin Hatıra Defteri], translated by Coúkun Tunçtan and directed by Erkal himself, opened at the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu (Ankara Art Theatre) in the 1965-6 season. The critic Yıldırım Keskin observed in the literary magazine Varlık that as a result of this performance Erkal had become one of the most talented, if not the most talented actor of his generation (“Kuúa÷ının en baúarılı oyuncularından birisidir Genco Erkal, e÷er en baúarılısi de÷ilse”). The director Cem Emüler observed in 2008, prior to a revival of the play, that it had become so identified with Erkal’s performance that it now posed a considerable challenge for actors to create alternative interpretations (Both quotations from “Modern Take on Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ Opens Ankara’s Newest Stage,” Today’s Zaman, January 4, 2008, 4). Photographs from Erkal’s revival, plus a page of extracts from contemporary reviews (including Keskin’s observation quoted above) have been reprinted in Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu 45. Yıl [45 Years of the Ankara Art Theatre] (Ankara: AST, 2008): 26-7.

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GE: Yes. I had seen films with Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and John Gielgud from the British stage. I also admired Jean-Louis Barrault and Jean Vilar.16 LR: They are all cerebral actors … GE: I am a cerebral actor too–perhaps more cerebral than all of them later on, as I became interested in Brechtian theatre. However I am not an actor that wants to change my identity completely for every play. I remain myself always. LR: So acting becomes a way of expressing different aspects of your personality? GE: I try to find myself in every character I play. In the most recent production of Kerem Gibi I am not only celebrating the work of Nâzım Hikmet, but also outlining a journey of thirty-five years. This play has been part of me for so long.17 LR: When you started your career, did you find it easy to get roles? GE: Very easy. I was president of the Robert College Players in my last year of high school, and I had a free choice of plays. I subsequently joined Genç Oyuncular [Young Players], and we had some new ideas of how Turkish theatre could be modernized.18 My own company, Dostlar Tiyatrosu, is actually an extension of that company.19 I spent the first ten 16

Jean Vilar (1912-1971), French actor and director, who created the Avignon Theatre Festival in 1947. 17 First performed in 1975, Kerem Gibi [Like Kerem] has become an essential part of Erkal’s later work. The story of the play over the years has been told–in Turkish–on the Dostlar Tiyatrosu website (http://www.dostlartiyatrosu.com/tiyatro_oyunlar_kerem.html (accessed June 27, 2010)). 18 Erkal has talked many times about his career and ideas in the Turkish media. See, for example, Kerem Ersev, “øki kelime: Genco Erkal” [Two Words: Genco Erkal], øzmir Plus 1, no. 10 (May 2004): 16-19. 19 Established in 1957 and disbanded in 1962, Genç Oyuncular was a company comprised of young, educated actors, who were among the first to introduce absurd drama into Turkey. Their play Vatandaú Oyunu [Citizen Play], revived the traditions of Ottoman Turkish Ortaoyunu. For more on the company, see Kerem Karaboga, “Absürd’den Geleneksel’e Genç Oyuncular Deneyimi: Tavtati Kütüpati

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years of my professional life working in private companies; the first was with Yıldız and Müúfik Kenter, where I stayed for three and a half years as a contract player. She was a great teacher for me: I didn’t actually study acting; I learned it by doing it every night. Later on I joined Arena Theatre, and later the company led by Gülriz Sururi and Engin Cezzar,20 where I played Iago to Cezzar’s Othello. LR: Let’s talk a bit about your acting technique. You appear to be someone who places importance on the body, as well as the mind in your performances. GE: Maybe I should have been a ballet-dancer! I always wanted to dance– preferably in modern works–and perform in opera, but now I try to combine elements of all three disciplines in my acting. I believe in choreographing my performances, as well as learning the lines. Do you know the shaman tradition? I have always tried to preserve it through storytelling, songs and performance. Their work inspires my acting. LR: Let’s go back to your early career. How did you end up performing in Ankara during the mid-1960s? GE: I worked for the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu while undergoing my military service. I worked as a teacher in primary schools in the mornings, then went to rehearsals in the afternoons, and in the evening I performed in plays like Diary of a Madman. I didn’t want to be a soldier, so I chose to be a teacher instead. LR: Why did you become a teacher? Was it because you were developing a social conscience at that time? GE: Yes, that was part of it. But there was also at that time a surfeit of young people joining the army, and too few teachers. So I worked for two years in schools, with only four months of military training. I worked in the Altında÷ district of Ankara, in a very poor school. In my time at the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu I also did my first Brecht–The Irresistible Rise of ve Vatandaú Oyunu” [The Experience of the Young Players from Absurd to Traditional: Tavtati Kütüpati and the Citizen Play], http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/13/178/1368.pdf (accessed June 27, 2010). 20 Gülriz Sururi (1929-) and Engin Cezzar (1935-), husband-and-wife acting team who founded their own company in 1962.

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Arturo Ui.21 The experience at the school affected me–I remember one occasion on a winter’s day when a girl turned up and her hands were almost purple with cold. I had to deal with a lot of very wild boys and girls from poor backgrounds, who were regularly beaten by their parents; it was difficult to keep them under control. I brought this girl towards the stove to warm her hands, and there was a hush in the classroom: teachers didn’t do things like this normally. From that moment on they saw me as a fatherfigure, and they had great respect for me. Until that time I had had a privileged existence in østanbul, and was not aware of the poverty that existed in other parts of the country. On several occasions I played teachers–notably in the film Hakkari’de Bir Mevsim-and my experiences in Ankara helped me a lot.22 LR: Let us move on a little bit to Brecht. You played your first role in 1965, and have subsequently played several roles.23 GE: In the 1960s in particular the world was very political, with the events leading up to 1968–Vietnam, the campus revolts. The same also existed in Turkey; until the new constitution of 1960, many works had been banned– for example, the poems of Nâzım–but little by little they were now being published. This new exchange of ideas coincided with the rise in popularity of Brechtian drama, not only in Turkey but elsewhere. For us as theatre people, Brecht provided the answers to what we were looking for– helping us to develop a social consciousness. We were interested in his messages, but as yet we were not really acquainted with his particular dramatic methods. I went to see the Berliner Ensemble in 1968, I was astonished at what I saw; from the first moment onwards everyone was involved in the dramatic event. I bought as much as I could about Brecht– books, LPs, music-and went to see his plays in Berlin over and over again. I was passionate about them.

21

Erkal played in one other production for Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu: Anthony Newley’s Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! He also directed George’s Michel’s The Sunday Walk. 22 Directed by Erden Kıral, the film won five awards at the Berlin Film Festival and another award at the Corsican Mediterranean Film Festival. Based on a novel by Ferit Edgü, the film deals with the problems faced by an intellectual living amongst the Kurdish population in eastern Turkey. 23 Brecht’s plays staged by Dostlar Tiyatrosu include The Life of Galileo, Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

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LR: Was it this experience that helped you develop a political consciousness? GE: I already had it, but Brecht helped me understand how I might translate it into theatrical terms. LR: How did Dostlar Tiyatrosu come about? GE: After ten years of working for other companies, I joined up with some friends and formed our own company, making use of our collective experience.24 We wanted to create a theatre of enlightenment–recalling the spirit of the French Revolution associated with Voltaire–but realized that this had been lost somewhat in Turkey, with the coming of the Democrat Party, which wanted to reintroduce Islamic values.25 In a developing country like Turkey, literature and theatre has a social responsibility to accommodate opposing ideas; to create a forum for discussion and thereby advance the country’s intellectual culture. Hopefully audiences might continue the discussion at home once the plays had finished. By such means we could change their minds, and they might change their society. LR: Isn’t this process a difficult one, in view of the fact that people have such entrenched ideas about theatre and society? What was the reaction from audiences when Dostlar Tiyatrosu came on the scene with its theatre of commitment? GE: At that time the country was becoming more and more politicized; sometimes the performances turned out to be like political meetings, with people chanting “Sosyalist Türkiye!” [Socialist Turkey] or “Ba÷ımsız Türkiye!” [Independent Turkey] instead of applauding. Our work turned out to be very ‘hot.’ We didn’t really like this; we wanted audiences to think rather than shout slogans. On the other hand, performing at that time was very exciting, because after the military coups [of 1971 and 1980] 24 The other founder-members included the actor Mehmet Akan (1939-2006), the actor/poet ùevket Altu÷, the actor Ferit Erkal, the actor Arif Erkin (1935-) and the writer/ translator Nurten Tunç. 25 The Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi) was the first of the opposition parties to rise to power in Turkey, de-seating the ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) at the 1950 election. It was ultimately removed from government in 1960, as a result of military intervention; and the party itself was suppressed on September 29, 1961.

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some of our plays were banned, sometimes we had problems with the authorities. All of our plays had to be sent to the censor before performance, and came back covered in red ink with suggested deletions. However once they reached the stage, they were often enthusiastically received. For example, in The Investigation–the story of Auschwitz– [staged in 1972] an officer defends himself by saying that he only did what he was told, and is told that he is nothing more than a cold-hearted killer. This was followed by a blackout; and at one performance the audience stopped the show by applauding for five minutes non-stop; it summed up their reaction to the military coup.26 LR: Was your choice of play deliberate, in the hope of producing such reactions? GE: Of course. We wanted to comment on what was happening in the country. We did The Good Soldier Schweik [in 1971-2], an anti-militaristic play, to criticize the military government.27 We couldn’t always be up-tothe-minute, as plays took a long time to translate and produce, but we tried to keep up with the times. LR: Who did the translations? GE: Sometimes we used existing work, but since I speak English and French, I collaborated with literary advisers on all the plays I produced. LR: Did you choose plays because they had good parts for you? GE: I was a star before founding my own company, having won lots of awards, but when I founded Dostlar Tiyatrosu I wanted to erase myself; to foster a company ethic. On many occasions I played small parts. After ten years, however, we found we could not continue as a permanent company due to financial reasons. From then on I assumed responsibility for paying the actors, and did plays on a play-as-cast basis each year. After that time, the company became my company; I had to play leading roles to ensure its continued survival.

26

Translated as Soruúturma by ĥlkü Tamer, this production was directed by Erkal and included Mehmet Akan as one of the co-stars. 27 Produced in the 1971-72 season, adapted by Erkal and directed by Umur Bugay, with Erkal himself playing the title role.

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LR: To what extent do you think audiences are attracted by your presence in the cast, rather than the play you are performing? GE: I think my name stands for something. When people come to see my company’s performances, they know more or less what they are going to see. Those who are interested in political theatre come to see us. I would say that I attract a different audience from other private theatre companies; they tend to buy books but not interval drinks–not even coffee or tea! LR: Let’s go on a bit to discuss acting-styles. Has Dostlar Tiyatrosu cultivated a particular approach? GE: That’s a difficult question. We have always been a political theatre company, and our productions reinforce this. I staged The Life of Galileo in 1983-4, just after the military coup [of 1980] at a time when many professors were being forced to conform to government rules against their will.28 I felt it was my duty to show how intellectuals should be allowed the freedom to think and write as they wish. I think that our audience–which tends to be middle-class–came face to face in that production with their own problems; they questioned themselves and their own views of the military government. The next year we did Barefoot in Athens by Maxwell Anderson, based on Socrates and his trial and death, focusing in particular on his refusal to sacrifice his beliefs, even though under pressure to do so. It was very interesting to stage these plays in successive years.29 Sometimes our work became too political: I had my passport removed for eight years from 1980 onwards for reciting Nâzım’s poetry in public. I had been given a scholarship by the American government to study drama in the United States, and applied to have my passport renewed. No one actually refused me, but they didn’t do anything either. I tried everything to persuade the authorities, but they showed me a file of information collected about me, containing all the reports of my having read Nâzım’s poems at various meetings. They also accused me of going to Greece for an international peace conference, and took me to court for being a member of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). I was acquitted, but they still refused to renew my passport.

28

Translated by Adalet Cimcoz, Teoman Aktürel and Genco Erkal, directed by Erkal, with Erkal in the title role. 29 Translated by Minâ Urgan, directed by Genco Erkal. The play was staged once again in the 1998-9 season.

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LR: Why do you think the authorities were so scared of your reading Nâzım’s poetry in public? GE: Nâzım exerts great influence over people, which explains why he was kept in prison for so long. His poetry was so impressive, so moving-not for the intellectuals, but for ordinary people, the workers and the peasants. The authorities saw him as a real threat to social stability. In Turkey poets have great influence–think of Pir Sultan Abdal, who became something of a bard.30 LR: Is this because of the oral tradition? GE: Yes. But this is not only for Turkey, but in all of the East. LR: Let’s talk a little bit more about Kerem Gibi. What encouraged you to do a play about Nâzım in the first place? GE: As soon as I read his poems, I believed I had to do something with them. They were so exciting; they contained a music all their own. I wanted to share this with audiences. Although the poems are very dramatic, as well as cinematic (Human Landscapes, his major work, is written like a film script), I had to find a theatrically effective way of staging them. Eventually I decided to use the biographical form, assembling the story of his life through a collage of eight different scenes. I also wanted to highlight the political importance of his work, which is why I included references to recent events, such as the Taksim Square massacre of May 1, 1977, when 34 people were shot.31 LR: Do you think that audiences understand the political implications of Nâzım’s poems? GE: They do. It’s an interesting point; I performed another version of that play thirty-five years ago, and I would say that audiences applauded in 30

Pir Sultan Abdal (c. 1480–1550) wrote his poems in Turkish, appealing both to Turks and Kurds. He wrote about love, peace, death and God, and was an implacable opponent of the Ottoman Empire. 31 On Labor Day May 1, 1977, 500,000 people gathered for a rally: the security forces opened fire and later intervened with armoured vehicles and water-cannons. Most of the fatalities were caused by the panic arising from this intervention. After the incident over 500 demonstrators were detained and 98 indicted.

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twenty-five different places. Remember that the first performance took place fairly soon after another military intervention. Perhaps that kind of enthusiasm doesn’t exist now. LR: Why? GE: I deliver the lines differently now, because audiences today are not as political as they were thirty-five years ago. At that time people were oppressed; they had to burn their books, and if they were involved with socialism, they were in a very dangerous position. The younger generation at that time–and after 1980-were afraid of politics. Now these days people seem more concerned with cars, capitalism, and take little heed of the future of their country. Nonetheless the country is becoming more politicized now, and I think it is my responsibility to make them aware of the political implications of Nâzım’s poems once more. Now I present the show as a documentary, with films sychronized with his poems. It starts with a shot of me, and includes lots of newly discovered archival films about Nâzım’s life, especially during his time in the Soviet Union, plus footage of his funeral. I also include films about the Turkish War of Independence, intercut with shots of Hiroshima. Kerem Gibi is now a marriage of documentary film and poetry, integrating factual information with emotion. LR: Let me go on a bit to look at Sivas 93. The subject is still a very emotive one: what made you decide to dramatize it for the stage? GE: I’d always been interested in adapting other people’s material for the stage–Nâzım, Aziz Nesin, John Steinbeck32-and making it theatrically effective. With Sivas 93 I was more of an author than an adapter. Dikmen Gürün wrote a newspaper article on the anniversary of the Sivas tragedy, asking why anyone had not written a play about it.33 I spent considerable time reading about the subject; after two months I managed to write ten pages, and saw at that time how to transform the material into a dramatic form, using choruses to communicate ideas.

32 Erkal adapted Steinbeck’s 1936 novel In Dubious Battle, about a member of “the Party” (the American Communist Party), who organizes a strike amongst fruit pickers. The production was staged in the 1976-7 season with Erkal directing. 33 Dikmen Gürün has been a long-time reviewer and writer on the Turkish theatre, as well as chair of the østanbul International Theatre Festival committee.

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LR: Didn’t you think it was a potentially risky venture? GE: Many of my friends warned me not to do it, but I’m not afraid of anyone. Whatever they do, they do. Eventually I settled upon a structure combining dialogue, music and film. I think it worked well; the play was performed more than 200 times, with 40 performances outside TurkeyParis, London–with subtitles. LR: What kind of reactions did you get? GE: I expected the newspapers to criticize it, or politicians to object. However they were very clever; they ignored it instead. If they had said anything, they might have seen to be defending those who committed the atrocity in the first place. I think it still has something to say about the current political situation. It shows the real danger of speaking too freely, particularly on issues of nationalism and religion. People can be told to do anything–remember the September 7, incidents, when the Greek minority in østanbul had their properties attacked.34 People believed that as Atatürk’s house had been bombed, all the Greeks had to pay for it. In the case of the Sivas incident, it was Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses that sparked the conflict: Aziz Nesin wanted to translate it, and this provided the pretext for the attack on the hotel. LR: Did you interview any survivors of the tragedy? GE: Yes I did. One of my interviewees had been given up for dead, and taken to the morgue. Eventually he was taken to the military hospital; he had forgotten everything, but his memory eventually returned. I also interviewed some of the mothers who lost their children, and the lawyer who was their defendant at the subsequent court case. LR: Did they see the play when it was performed? GE: They did. The first performance took place in østanbul, but the families came from Sivas to see it on a specially chartered bus. I can’t 34

The østanbul Pogrom was directed primarily at the Greeks on September 6-7, 1955. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate at Thessaloniki on Greece–where Atatürk had been born in 1881–had been bombed the day before. The events greatly accelerated the emigration of Greeks, reducing the population from about 135,000 to 7,000 by 1978.

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describe the emotion of that night–everyone cried as they relived their experiences once more. They saw it once more when I brought it to Ankara; some of them claimed they could see it ten, perhaps twenty times, and still not tire of it. They didn’t feel alone any more; the play gave them the spirit of solidarity, in that someone had brought their experiences to a wider audience. LR: You’ve now been in the theatre for fifty-one years. Do you think that theatre in Turkey can still speak to audiences? GE: Not as much as I would like, but I’m convinced that things will change. However we more politically minded theatre groups; in the seventies there were over fifty, now there are very few. Now many intellectuals seem preoccupied with “in-your-face” theatre, with plenty of sex and violence. Many young actors are more concerned with being famous or rich; they don’t seem to have the passion I had, and still have. I think the system of theatre needs to be changed; many State Theatre actors with lifetime contracts just work year in, year out, taking payments until they retire. In the theatre we require; the desire to do better than your rivals. You must work and try to improve yourself, and hopefully you will discover passion. The state also needs to give money to other companies– small companies of young people with energy–rather than just subsidizing the State Theatre.

CHAPTER NINETEEN STAGING WAITING FOR LEFTY: OR, AGIT-PROP IN ANKARA1

The premiere of Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty took place on January 6, 1935 in New York. It was listed on the throwaway without an author's name, simply as “presented by the cast of The Eagle Guy” (another play that was playing at the same time). Ticket prices ranged from 25 to 90 cents. The director Harold Clurman recalled what happened soon after the play's beginning: The first scene [...] had not played two minutes when a shock of detailed recognition struck the audience like a tidal wave. Deep laughter, not assent, a kind of joyous fervor seemed to sweep the audience toward the stage. The actors no longer performed [...] Audience and actors had become one (qtd Gibson 1981, 315).

With this propaganda piece, which cost only $8 to produce, Clifford Odets at the age of 28 had achieved his wildest dream; to present his experience to an audience in such a way that the performers and audience would merge. Most people agreed that the premiere was a unique moment in theater history. It was not just the twenty-eight curtain calls; nor the fact that spectators were shouting and throwing their hats in the air in ecstasy. Rather, as Clurman recalled, it was the fact that once the final lines (“Strike! Strike!”), had been delivered, the audience became aware that Waiting for Lefty constituted “the battle cry of the thirties [...] It was a call to join the good fight for a better life in a world free of economic fear, falsehood and craven servitude to stupidity and greed” (qtd Gibson 1981, 316).

1

This article was originally published in Journal of American Studies of Turkey 19 (2004): 117-25. Reprinted with permission.

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Although the play continues to be anthologized today, there seems to be a general consensus that it constitutes little more than an historical curiosity. A trawl through the Internet reveals that it has been given the dubious accolade of inclusion on student-oriented sites such as gradesaver. com, where one critic describes it as “a salient work on the ill effects of capitalism, and on the ways the common man can combat them” (“About Waiting for Lefty” 2010). Even those critics who have focused more specifically on Odets’ work such as Gerald Weales observe that Waiting for Lefty was “tailored to do a specific job” in the 1930s (Weales 1988, 55), while Gabriel Miller suggests that “it [the play] retains its distinction not because it is a great play - it isn't - but because it represents a uniquely successful molding of the [agit-prop] form” (Miller 1989, 178). Clurman believed that “Waiting for Lefty is undoubtedly ‘dated’” (Clurman 1979, xi). But perhaps we should not accept these opinions too readily. This article focuses in detail on a revival of the play, performed in Ankara in November 2004, which grew out of our work in an undergraduate course on American Drama.2 I begin by explaining the reasons for staging it in the first place, as an attempt to understand Odets’ views on the collapse of the ‘American Dream’ at the time of the Great Depression, as characters from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds are forced into militant action by social circumstances that victimize them all. I subsequently analyze how specific scenes were staged-looking at the problems presented by Odets’ text, and how I resolved them. Finally the chapter will examine the possible relevance of Odets’ play to the contemporary Turkish context, in an attempt to challenge the prevailing critical orthodoxy that the play is dated. Many learners of American Studies in the Turkish Republic harbor their own personal “American Dreams”-for example, continuing their education in American higher education institutions in the belief that they will obtain greater opportunities for professional and personal selfadvancement. Alternatively they might develop a fondness for American consumer goods: the wearing of Levi’s and Lee Cooper jeans becomes a status symbol in several institutions. This of course is nothing exceptional; the same could be said of learners in any academic department. What differentiates American Studies learners from their contemporaries is their apparent inability to connect the material studied on their undergraduate 2

The class of learners I taught also contributed to this article. Many thanks to Ayten A÷artan, Burcu Akcan, Berna Ayvalı, Serap Bizcanlı, ørem Bayamlıo÷lu, Sibel Çekmez, Sunal Özbek, Dilek Örnek, Esra Selçuk and Ahmet Anıl Yeniay.

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programs with their day-to-day experiences of American culture. They may study the origins and development of the American Dream in history, culture or film courses, but many of them find it difficult to apply that knowledge to their own experiences. Partly this can be explained by the exam-oriented nature of the curriculum that prioritizes essay-writing and knowledge acquisition over an ability to think across cultures. But there also exists, a belief (not exclusive to learners in Ankara) that the pastparticularly the past of another culture is somehow not relevant to the learners' experience. Anyone teaching American Studies abroad is faced with the responsibility of developing historical understanding and empathy, as well as promoting inter- or cross-cultural awareness. At least, this is what emerged during our final year undergraduate course in American Drama, which according to the course-description published at that time “aims to trace the development of the American theater in the twentieth century” (AMER 346, 2010). With this in mind, we looked at Waiting for Lefty in an attempt to establish some kind of empathy both on the historical and cross-cultural levels, and thereby forge connections between the world of the text and the contemporary Turkish world. As the British teacher trainer D. Shemilt observed over two decades ago, performing a text can be “most readily justified as an aid to empathy” - even though he rather disdainfully regarded it as an example of “what Americans call ‘gee whiz’ history [teaching] methods” (Shemilt 1984, 67). Staging a play may help learners understand Odets’ unique gift for language-a torrent of words heard on the street, in cafés, sports arenas and restaurants; in other words, the places that the learners themselves frequent. Why Waiting for Lefty? Partly our choice of text for performance was influenced by the desire to deconstruct the idea of the American Dream. We wanted to stage a play that questioned received wisdom about the United States that frequently influences the ways in which it is portrayed in the contemporary media. For example, we regularly hear about the role played by the Americans in preserving the so-called “free world,” and spreading the idea of democracy into countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Waiting for Lefty, on the other hand, has Sid rather cynically remarking that We [our family] worked like hell to send him to college - my kid brother Sam, I mean-and look what he done-joined the navy! The damn fool don’t see the cards is stacked for all of us. The money man dealing himself a hot royal flush. Then giving you and me a phony hand like a pair of tens or something. Then keep on losing the pots ‘cause the cards is stacked against

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you [....] Yes sir, he [the man in power] says, get up on that ship and fight those bastards who's making the world a lousy place to live in. The Japs, the Turks, the Greeks. Take this gun - kill the slobs like a real hero, he says, a real American. Be a hero! And the guy you’re poking at? A real louse, just like you, ‘cause they don't let him catch more than a pair of tens, too (Odets 1979, 18-19).

This extract shows how the American Dream–with its emphasis on freedom and democracy - went sour for many people in the 1930s, while suggesting that their experiences were similar to those experienced by citizens of other countries. Once the learners had understood this, they could identify more closely with the characters’ lives in the play. We also chose to stage Waiting for Lefty in the hope of developing historical as well as cross-cultural understanding. The play is a good example of agit-prop theater in which the didactic purpose of each scene takes precedence over character development and dramatic action. Gerald Weales observes that the characters “are not realistic figures but thickenedout agitprop cartoons. This can be seen in his [Odets’] use of significant names” (Weales 1988, 48). Waiting for Lefty seems especially appropriate for learners–particularly the class I was working with, which comprised nine females and one male. Roles could be exchanged at will, without concern for verisimilitude of characterization; moreover, this kind of play requires a simple method of staging, with minimal props and costumes. We wanted to engage out audience’s emotions, while stimulating their critical judgments in whatever way possible. With this in mind, our revival began with the lights coming up on a bare stage to reveal the cast sitting on chairs arranged in two lines on either side of a desk placed at the center of the stage. All of them were dressed in blue boiler suits with a company's name emblazoned on the back (thoughtfully provided by Ayten). This enabled Harry Fatt-played by a woman (ørem) in a top hat-to talk directly to the spectators. As s/he spoke, the rest of the actors heckled him, using whatever epithets-whether in English or Turkish-they thought appropriate. This scene was intended to provoke the audience in two ways: first, they were directly addressed as if they were members of the striking taxi-drivers’ union; and secondly, they were hearing the kind of earthy language that would not normally be expected from learners (especially in the Turkish Republic). In staging this scene, we also wanted to show how the American Dream had collapsed for the workers. The playing area was bare except for the chairs, the desk and a mountain of trash-rolled-up newspapers, dog-eared flyers and discarded cigarette butts, which the actors kicked around from time to time in

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frustration. This underlined the importance of Joe’s lines; like the cigarette-butts, the taxi drivers had been “kicked around so long we're black and blue from head to toes [....] And that's why we're talking strike-to get a living wage!” (Odets 1979, 6). As rehearsals progressed, we began to understand the difficulty of promoting historical empathy while at the same time rendering the play interesting to early 2000s audiences. The temptation was always to opt for the easy solution by staging certain scenes in a fashion reminiscent of Yeúilçam melodrama, involving familiar characters and plots.3 This was especially true of the “Young Hack and His Girl” scene in Waiting for Lefty, in which Irv tries to prevent his sister Flor from seeing her boyfriend Sid, and FIor and Sid eventually decide to part for good. Gabriel Miller remarks that this scene shows how “the Depression has dug a chasm between romance and reality [....] Through music–Odets’ frequent symbol of the ideal-the lovers embrace, but the moment cannot be sustained” (Miller 1989, 171-2). The situation was a familiar one; but we wanted to show how the lovers were the victims of circumstance, as economic hardship forced them to part forever. The roles of Sid, Flor and Irv were played by three women (Serap, Sibel and Ayten): Serap and Sibel were best friends, while Ayten remained the outsider. This helped to stress the idea that despite his concern for FIor (“I remember you when you were a baby with curls down your back” (Odets 1979, 16)), Irv never understands the depth of feeling between his sister and Sid. The dialog between Flor and Sid was kept largely intact, but the phonograph scene at the end was replaced by a sequence where the two of them slowly danced to the sound of a mournful bluegrass song (“No Depression in Heaven” sung by Peter Rowan (1942-))4 played through the sound-system. The music stopped: Sid delivered the line “Good-bye Babe” (Odets 1979, 20) and then moved off stage, while Flor looked at him. Sid suddenly turned back; Flor screamed “No!” and the two of them ran together and embraced once again. By replacing the phonograph music with the blue grass song, we hoped to situate the action once again in its socio-historical context. The ending of the scene was rewritten to emphasize Flor’s and Sid's predicament; they had to part but could not endure the thought of doing so. The fact that both roles were played by women did not seem at all incongruous: the Great Depression clearly affected everyone, irrespective of race, class or gender. The two scenes either side of the “Young Hack and His Girl” scene-the “Lab Assistant Episode” and the “Labor Spy Episode” proved slightly 3 4

This particular form of popular Turkish film is explored later on in the book. Accessible at http://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/peter-rowan/id878429.

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more straightforward to stage. As in the opening scene, the Lab Assistant Episode began with Fayette (Berna) sitting behind a desk at the back of the playing area with Miller (Sunal) sitting in front of him. The remainder of the cast once again sat on chairs arranged either side of the desk, save for Fatt who observed the proceedings from a place immediately to Fayette's right. This emphasized the link between the two characters; their names sound the same, and their sole intention consists of exploiting the workers for personal gain. While Miller and Fayette were speaking, we introduced a new piece of stage-business in which Dr. Brenner (Ahmet) and Joe (Esra) talked silently to one another in the background; this was done to highlight Miller's observation in the text that “He’s [Brenner is] an important chemist” (Odets 1979, 14). Brenner was also a fair man who, by being seen talking to Joe, demonstrated his support for the workers’ cause. In Fayette's view, however, Brenner represented a threat to national security; someone who might pass on his research to “those goddam Japs” (Odets 1979, 14). It was hardly surprising that Miller should react in the way he did, having rejected Fayette's offer to spy on Brenner, Miller stood up and felled him with one blow, repeating Fayette's line “no hard feelings” with heavy irony (15). Odets’ text has Miller saying that there is “nothing suave or sophisticated about me! Plenty of hard feelings! Enough to want to bust you and your kind square in the mouth!” (15). Our revival omitted this speech in the belief that actions speak louder than words-as Miller delivered his knockout punch, the rest of the cast cheered, while Brenner shook Joe’s hand. The workers might not have had much, but at least they preserved their self-respect. In structural terms, this scene suggested that whereas the American Dream might no longer exist in material terms for many people, they could still draw strength from their sense of collective identity. This was reinforced further in our staging of the Labor Spy Episode (scene IV), in which Burcu (the smallest member of the cast) played the dissenting Voice. When Fatt ordered the Gunman (Berna) to “take care of him” (Odets 1979, 21), it seemed like a clear case of bullying, with two powerful women and one man (Clayton, played by Ahmet) kicking the voice around as if she were a rag doll. The tone of the scene abruptly changed, however, once the voice revealed that she had “slept with him [Clayton] in the same bed sixteen years. HE'S MY OWN LOUSY BROTHER!” (22). Clearly the workers had nothing to fear from him any more; they got up from their chairs and chased Clayton and Fatt off, before gathering in a group center stage facing the audience, their arms around the voice. Odets’ text describes Clayton as “a thin, modest individual” (Odets 20); in our revival

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Ahmet, a thickset man of imposing presence, played the part. The fact that both he and Fatt had been forced to quit the stage was testament to the power of the workers both to challenge-and ultimately usurp-their superiors’ authority. The possibilities of collective-as opposed to individual-resistance, as a way of fulfilling individuals’ specific American Dreams were also stressed in this revival through a deliberate use of repeated action. Scene 1 in Odets’ text (“Joe and Edna”) is constructed around the motif of embraceinitially thwarted, as Joe compensates for the loss of the family furniture by attempting to embrace his wife. She pushes him away with the contemptuous phrase “Do it in the movies, Joe-they pay Clark Gable big money for it” (Odets 1979, 7). The scene ends with a symbolic-and potentially more powerful-embrace, as Joe kisses Edna “full on the mouth” (11) and rushes out to find Lefty Costello and espouse the activist cause. Our revival developed the theme of embracing still further, as Joe moved towards Edna (Dilek) but was pushed away in disgust. The Clark Gable reference was deleted (on the grounds of obscurity for a local Ankara audience of 18-22 year-olds) so Edna spat the line out “Maybe you'd like to talk about-books?” with a derisive sneer. Once Joe had acquired sufficient self-belief to go out and find Lefty, he embraced Edna and his two children (Sibel, Burcu) who had been added as two extra characters. He subsequently turned towards the rest of the cast-who sat on chairs around the playing area-and shook their hands. He no longer had to fight alone; there were other people who shared the desire to fulfill his American Dream of social justice and an end to capitalist exploitation This seemed a more effective coda to the scene than Odets’ text, which has Joe exclaiming “We gotta walk out!” before returning to his seat (11). The importance of this belief was re-emphasized in Scene V-the Intern Episode. The action began quietly, with Barnes (Berna) telling Benjamin that he had been removed from his post at the hospital-not because of poor work, but simply because he was expendable. Benjamin initially felt sorry for himself and his family who “gave up an awful lot to get me this far. They ran a little dry goods ship in the Bronx until their pitiful savings went in the crash last year” (Odets 1979, 24). Like Joe, however, Benjamin realized that he had to take positive action if he wanted to change the world; he had to “Fight! Maybe get killed, but goddamn! We'll go ahead!” (25). Ai this point in our revival Benjamin got up from his seat and beckoned to his fellow workers to join him at the center of the stage. Everyone got up and joined in a clenched fist salute, yelling “Fight! Fight!” as they did so: even Doc Benjamin emphasized his commitment to

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the cause by stamping his foot on the line “And stamp down hard!” (25). The group then moved towards the audience and held their position for five seconds, as if inviting the spectators to join their cause. In terms of the revival as a whole, this scene suggested that while one American Dream-of wealth, prosperity and individual freedom-might have collapsed, another manifestation of the Dream had risen like a phoenix from the ashes, based on collective action. In her definitive biography of Odets, Margaret Brennan Gibson believes that this is the play's central theme, as the author counsels himself “not to wait passively for his personal success of salvation, but to join with his Group brothers [both on and off stage] and deliver an uppercut to ‘the enemy’ responsible for all of their problems, ranging from betrayals by women to material deprivation” (Gibson 1981, 305). With this belief uppermost in their minds, the workers became the dominant force in the play’s final scene. Fatt tried to intimidate them by having the Gunman pistol-whip anyone who tried to heckle him; but it was clear that he was terrified of what might happen if the workers were encouraged to revolt. This scene was rewritten somewhat: it began with Joe-rather than Agate, as in Odets’ text-emerging from the group of, workers and observing (in some newly-written dialog) that he “used to think all our union officers were good. That is, until I met Fatt and his men. Now I understand what they are doing-working for themselves!!!” The long speech describing Agate’s glass eye (which he wore "like a medal ‘cause it tells the world where I belong - deep down in the working class!”) was omitted altogether (Odets 1979, 25-6). Partly this was due to casting limitations (not enough actors for all the roles); but partly we wanted to shift the play’s focus of attention away from class-conflict into a more generalized call for collective resistance. Fatt and the Gunman tried to silence Joe; but Joe broke free and rejoined the group of workers. They advanced threateningly on the union leader as Joe shouted: This is your life and mine!! Christ, we men are dying every day? For what!! It’s war!! Sid and Florrie, the other boys, old Doctor Barnes, Benjamin, fight with us for our rights! It’s war!! We need to keep our families!! Tear down the walls of our old lives!! Let freedom really ring!! (27)

An unnamed man (Berna) rushed on stage, telling everyone that Lefty had been found “behind the car barns with a bullet in his head!” (27). Odets’ text has the man coming in “up the center aisle from the back of the house” (27); this was not feasible in our revival (where no central aisle existed in

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the theater), so the man entered from the back of the stage. All the workers recoiled for a moment, then suddenly and without warning, they chased Fatt and the Gunman off the front of the stage and into the aisles either side of the auditorium-much to the audience’s surprise. The sound of muffled cries could be heard at the back of the theater, as they finally enacted their own form of rough justice on those who had exploited them for so long. They subsequently returned to the stage in a triumphant procession, formed themselves into a group and listened to Joe’s pronouncement (which had been rewritten slightly): “Hear it, boys, hear it? Hell, listen to me! Coast to coast! We’re the workers of America and Turkey who will die for what is right. Put fruit trees where our ashes are!!!” (27). Everyone participated in the call “STRIKE, STRIKE, STRIKE!!!” emphasizing commitment to the cause with another clenched fist salute. The ending was rendered deliberately upbeat-inviting the audience not only to sympathize with the workers, but also realize the potential of collective enterprise as a way of resisting exploitation and unjustness. In trying to assess what Waiting for Lefty might signify for learners involved in this revival, perhaps we should begin not by looking at it in terms of its contemporary relevance, but rather examine whether it was possible to empathize with what Odets was trying to say. Perhaps the play should be best understood in its historical context as a commentary on the American Dream in the 1930s-where workers had no safety net to protect them from dire poverty, and no realization that Communism could also be corrupted, or that World War II wouldn't only be a bonanza for arms dealers but also an imperative struggle against fascism and genocide. On the other everyone involved in our revival believed that Waiting for Lefty contains certain themes-for example, the consequences of poverty on family and/ or personal relationships-which struck a chord in the contemporary Turkish context, as the economy has continually veered between the opposite extremes of boom and bust. There are many Harry Fatts who exploit their fellow-workers in pursuit of personal gain. It was these themes we sought to underline by means of a simple, yet passionate staging that could metaphorically grasp the audience by the lapels and thrust them into the furnace of anger, idealism and (above all) active participation that Odets and the Group Theater achieved over seventy years ago during the worst crisis in American economic history. This revival certainly contained rough edges; but it was precisely those rough edges that made it as powerful as a work of theater, expressing the rage Odets and his peers felt about the corruption and inequality of the capitalist economy, and how it destroyed people's dreams of wealth and prosperity

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(Berson 2005). And this is something that anyone should be able to empathize with.

CHAPTER TWENTY EVOLVING ATTITUDES TO THE AMERICAN DREAM: DEATH OF A SALESMAN IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT1

As in other countries, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman has become a popular text in the Turkish theatre, as well as being taught on many university courses in American Literature. It has received at least twelve productions in Ankara and Istanbul; and has been translated at least twice– the first appearing in 1952 under the title Satıcının Ölümü, published by the Ministry of Education and translated by Orhan Burian (Burian 1952). The second translation (using the same title and based on the Burian version) was published commercially in Ankara in 1994 (Miller 1994). Death of a Salesman was first included in literature syllabi in Turkish universities as long ago as the late 1950s, although the first departments of American Literature were not established until 1982. Necla Aytür attributes this to the fact that, throughout the 1960s, there was a steady flow of Fulbright scholars coming to teach in Turkey, many of whom it appears were preoccupied with Arthur Miller (Aytür 1996, 60). Nowadays, the play is regularly taught, both in departments of American Literature and in literature survey courses provided for trainee teachers of English in education departments. Why should the play have remained so popular? As in other parts of the world, it has become a staple part of the American literature canon; however, this chapter will suggest that there are other more countryspecific explanations for its popularity, relating specifically to the notion of the American Dream. I begin with a short historical introduction, 1

Originally published in European Journal of American Studies, Vol. 1. no. 3. (February 15, 2008). Accessed April 24, 2010. http://ejas.revues.org/index1933.html.

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showing how the Turkish Republic was introduced to the idea after 1945, both as a result of a rapid increase in American imports and an expansion in educational exchanges. I will subsequently discuss how these factors contributed towards the formation of a Turcocentric view of American culture from the mid-1950s, which in turn shaped the way in which Death of a Salesman was performed and/or studied. America was regarded as the land of opportunity, where individuals would be rewarded for creative effort; if such notions could be transplanted into Turkish culture, then perhaps the process of creating a secular republic based on western models–as envisaged by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk three decades earlier– could be expedited. On this view, Death of a Salesman was viewed as an example of what was best in the American theatre, in spite of its cynical take on the American Dream. Once learners and/or audiences had been exposed to it, then perhaps they might acquire a deeper understanding of western social and moral values and thereby make a more fruitful contribution to the development of the Turkish Republic. The second section of the chapter will show how attitudes towards Miller’s play changed in the 1970s and 1980s, as it was interpreted as a cautionary tale of a small-time loser; a modern-day Everyperson destroyed by a dog-eat-dog world in which only the fittest survived. This view of the play still prevails today, especially amongst those who have to cope with dwindling funds from the state while witnessing the private sector undergoing rapid expansion (with financial assistance from successive governments). Death of a Salesman can be seen as a requiem for the American Dream–not only in America itself, but also in the Turkish Republic. The optimism experienced by those growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s proved a false dawn: Turkey might have become more westernized (by adopting free market principles) but it had also created the kind of social inequalities that prevented rather than enabled individuals to fulfill their aspirations. Susan Harris Smith argues in a 1995 essay that, when she taught Death of a Salesman to her learners at the University of Pittsburgh, she asked them initially to focus on the issues that inevitably arise in the initial discussion of the play: America as a geographical, concrete reality […]. America as a political construct […]. America as the embodiment of abstractions and values [….]. America as the site of the American dream of unrestrained individualism and assured material success (Smith 1995, 27-8).

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She subsequently recounts how most of her learners–who came from bluecollar and middle-management families in which the mother stays home and the father struggles to “make it”-responded strongly “to the obvious thematic concerns of Salesman, usually feeling torn between Willy’s corrupted Franklinian urges and Biff’s poorly realized Jeffersonian ones” (29). This interpretation is very different, for instance, from that adopted by Soviet theatre directors in the late 1950s, who approached the play as “a step-by-step exposure of the faulty, inhuman American economic system, which relentlessly destroyed Willy Loman’s dreams.” This was typical in a context “where art was expected to advance the cause of socialism” (Murphy 1995, 117-9). In the Turkish Republic of the 1950s the play was perceived, interestingly enough, as an ideal occasion for expanding cultural awareness of western–particularly American-values amongst local readers. Partly this could be attributed to favorable political conditions, as Turkey and America’s strategic relations converged following the emergence of the United States as a superpower and the beginnings of the Cold War. A symbolic event often cited as signaling the beginning of this relationship occurred in April 1946 when the U.S. warship Missouri visited Istanbul. The 1947 Truman Doctrine followed soon after, funneling $400m towards strengthening Turkey and Greece against Soviet aggression. The Marshall Plan, announced in June of that year, provided additional support. Following the Turkish contribution to the Korean War in the early 1950s, NATO offered membership to the country in 1952, and formally included it in the western defense bloc (Prager 2003, 6). Turco-American diplomatic relations were also strengthened at the educational level as USIS (as it was known then) brought over American lecturers to teach in Turkish universities; the first of these, Sidney Burks, gave lectures at Ankara University in 1953-4. In the same year, Robert Hamilton Ball, coauthor of A Short View of Elizabethan Drama (1943), was appointed to teach American literature in the same institution (Aytür 1996, 60). The Fulbright Commission also arranged for Turkish educators to complete their education in American universities. New universities were created in Ankara (Middle East Technical University) and the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum (Atatürk University) according to American models. Perhaps most significantly, American goods and cultural products became more and more available to general consumers: Coca-Cola and 7Up appeared in aluminum cans rather than bottles, while fast food outlets were opened selling hamburgers (Aylın Yalçın remarks that such eating habits were entirely foreign to Turkish traditions, where people normally

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spent long hours over meals (Yalçın 2002, 44)). American music became more widely accessible both through local and American services radio. Many songs were written in praise of Turco-American relations: one published in 1954 contained the following lines: “Ankara and Washington/ My øzmir and your San Francisco/ Are said to resemble one another/ In their beauty” (Yalçın 2002, 47). Popular musicians such as Cem Karaca and Erkin Koray created “Anatolian Rock”–a synthesis of American music and Turkish lyrics. Koray performed his first concert at Galatasaray College, Istanbul, in 1957; his repertory consisted of five songs, of which two were by Elvis Presley-“Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” (Bulut 2006). Such developments helped construct an overwhelmingly positive image of America in the Turkish Republic as a place that not only provided educational opportunities but also offered new possibilities- economic, musical and intellectual–for everyone, even if they were not fortunate enough to be able to visit the United States. University English departments responded by incorporating recent American works like Death of a Salesman or A Streetcar Named Desire into their curricula. The rationale behind this move was clear; if learners could be exposed to what was perceived as the best recent works of American literature, they could not only understand what the country was like, but by doing so would make a positive contribution to the Republic’s policy of westernization. They would become what Matthew Arnold described a century earlier as “a class of the educated–a class that could be definable and thought of as essentially and unequivocally that” (Leavis 1969, 44), discovering new possibilities for themselves, or applying their minds “to the problems of [western] civilization, and eagerly continu[ing] to improve its equipment and explore fresh approaches” (Leavis 1943, 59). Stephanie Palmer–an American scholar who has spent several years working in Turkish universities–recalls the enthusiasm expressed by many scholars (and their learners) for American literary texts: “they enjoyed the sensibility of the naïf or the upstart; a group of faculty members wanted to be independent of their university department administration; one scholar found the Peace Corps teachers [many of whom acted as teaching assistants in university English departments] enthusiastic and glamorous” (Palmer 2006). Theatre scholars and practitioners of the time expressed equal enthusiasm for Miller‘s play. Orhan Burian’s preface to the 1952 translation explains that the reason for publishing it so rapidly in Turkey– only three years after its Broadway premiere–was to make people aware of recent developments in American theatre, and thereby set an example to

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anyone seeking to create similar material in the Turkish context, whether on the stage or in printed form. Death of a Salesman had attained the status of a “classic” (i.e. a western classic) within three years, and deserved to be brought to the attention of Turkish readers (Burian 1952, 3). An American critic passing through Turkey in 1953 acquired a copy of the translation and observed that it [Death of a Salesman] is a very effective means of promoting in this country a sound appreciation of North America’s values which extend beyond technology or purely material advantages and comforts (Dalton 1953, 16).

The play received its Ankara premiere in 1957; the critic Ayúegül Yüksel saw the production as a learner-recalled the play provided a unique insight into contemporary American values (Yüksel 2003). When Death of a Salesman was first performed on the American stage in 1949, some critics saw it either as the study of a failure, or as a challenge to the American Dream. Harold Clurman, in one of the most overtly Marxist analyses he produced, observed that the play showed how the ideals of hard work and courage had been replaced in the United States by salesmanship, the ability to put over or sell a commodity regardless of its intrinsic usefulness (qtd Murphy 1995, 65). The Ankara interpretation was considerably more optimistic: Miller reinforces the American Dream in the sense that it could promote American values in a culture seeking to align itself closer to the west (and the United States in particular) both politically and intellectually. In an ideal world, both learners and theatre audiences could use their experience of the play to create their own pathways to personal success, similar to that expressed by Happy at the end of Miller’s play: “He [Willy] had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have–to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him” (Miller 1961, 111). Such messages recalled the Depression Era in the United States, when advertisers responded to the economic crisis by reaffirming and reinterpreting the success ethic. The Erwin, Wasey and Company agency took the lead in 1929 with a full-page ad taken out in a number of newspapers. “All right, Mister!” it challenged the reader. “Now that the headache’s over, Let’s Go To Work!” The Outdoor Advertising Association of America initiated a campaign in which a woman in flowing robes with a torch proclaimed “Forward America! Business is good-keep it good” (Marchand 1985, 256). This is precisely what the citizens of the Turkish Republic hoped to achieve two decades later.

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By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the educational and theatrical climate had changed. On the one hand, the older generation of educatorsthose who had been trained in departments of English during the 1950s and early 1960s, when the first Fulbrighters came to teach-interpreted the play in much the same way as it had always been, as a text which help to train learners’ and educators’ minds in western-particularly American values, and thereby help to fortify the educated middle or upper class (Aytür 1996, 60). This task became even more important as a means of reinforcing the status quo while resisting alternative constructions of Turkish identity and/or political Islam (Rumford 1999, 140). On the other hand, there were several younger educators emerging from Departments of American Literature rather than English Literature (the first of these had been established in Ankara in 1982), who viewed this approach as fundamentally reactionary. Not only did it remain “fixated on literature and oblivious and immune to all other developments” in literary, critical and cultural theory (Pultar 1999, 13), but it remained fundamentally oblivious to contemporary political realities, both in Turkey and the United States. They preferred instead to interpret Death of a Salesman as a critique of western capitalism, which often seemed indifferent to the needs of individual people, only favouring those with sufficient financial muscle to be able to profit at other people’s expense. Such an approach, as we have seen, is very reminiscent of what critics such as Clurman wrote some three decades earlier when the play made its Broadway debut. On this view Death of a Salesman tells the story of a representative of an oppressed socioeconomic group, as well as of the dominant majority. There was a feeling amongst educators and their learners that, while the 1980s and early 1990s had led to a period of economic prosperity in Turkey, it had also sharpened the distinctions between rich and poor. President Turgut Özal had come to power after the 1980 military coup, and immediately set about increasing exports: Turkey increased its trade with the Middle East, but business to the European Community increased as well. This encompassed a wide variety of products: whereas, in 1979, 60 per cent of Turkish exports were agricultural products, by 1988 80 per cent came from industry. Textiles in particular proved an outstanding success. At the same time, however, many honest hard-working people who would once have enjoyed a relatively prosperous standard of living were crushed by rampant capitalism. In the major cities, the contrast between the conspicuous consumption of the rich in their glass office high-rises, suburban single family dwellings, and the poor whose cement block and

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plaster dwellings with tin roofs stood sometimes just a few blocks away, was perpetually evident. The 1980s and early 1990s also witnessed a change in educational policy. Learners now had the chance to attend private universities, if their families had the wherewithal to pay for them; the first of these, Bilkent University, was opened in Ankara in 1985. At the same time, it was widely believed that private enterprise might threaten the unity of the Turkish state, in the sense that it favored diversity, difference and choice. Instead of official state policy, private enterprise encouraged freedom of choice– something that, if left unchecked, could lead to the revival of political Islam as an alternative to westernization. Chris Rumford remarks that, in the 1990s, the Turkish Republic was “located in a contradictory position between homogeneity and heterogeneity; between the decline of the official [pro-western] Turkey and the ‘return of the repressed’” (Rumford 1999, 143). Such developments exerted a profound influence over the way in which Miller’s plays were interpreted both in the theatre and the academy. In a preview article published to accompany the østanbul State Theatre’s production of Orchestra (1997), Leman Yılmaz portrayed the dramatist as an implacable opponent of capitalism, concerned for the future of the working classes in a world preoccupied with wealth and self-advancement (Yılmaz 1997, 47). Anyone who had experienced the social upheavals in Istanbul could identify with his work. Many citizens from Willy Loman's socioeconomic background became so disillusioned with government policy that they rejected westernization and turned instead to political Islam. As Douglas A. Howard observes, parties such as the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) articulated a vision of the just society in Turkey through the use of a commonly understood Islamic religious idiom [....]. It had been supported by a rising group of newly urbanized laborers, shopkeepers, small businessmen, and industrialists who did not fit the traditional Kemalist mold (Howard 2000, 177-8).

In the 1995 general election, it became the first religious-leaning party to obtain a majority of seats. Although not produced on the Turkish stage during this time, plays such as Death of a Salesman acquired a renewed political significance for those involved in teaching and studying the play at universities. The opening stage-direction of Death of a Salesman seems especially relevant, as Willy's old-fashioned cottage, lit by a soft blue light, is surrounded and

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dwarfed by a “solid vault” of apartment blocks illuminated by “an angry glow of orange” (Mıller 1961, 7). Linda Loman’s description of her husband sums up the experiences of many Turkish workers in the mid1990s: When he [Willy] brought them business, when he was young, they [the customers] were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old buyers that loved him so and always found some order to hand him in a pinch– they’re all dead, retired. He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Boston. Now he takes his valises out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he’s exhausted. Instead of walking he talks now. He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. And what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? (Miller 1961, 44-5).

Within a decade, attitudes towards the play had shifted once again. In the wake of 9/11, and the subsequent efforts by the American government to introduce democracy in Iraq, several educators and learners have come to view Miller’s work as a critique of American politics, focusing specifically on the links between the personal and the political. The entire Loman family’s faith in the American Dream blinds them to the truth about their lives; they would rather sustain themselves with fantasies of success. Biff refuses to talk about his criminal record in Kansas City, preferring instead to create a western myth about his life. Linda hides her doubts about Willy’s effectiveness and her denial of her own needs behind a screen of wifely supportiveness, while Happy conceals his self-doubts about being only “one of two assistants to the assistant” (Miller 1961, 104). Such fantasies are not only restricted to one family; they may be shared by contemporary politicians-especially those interested in “freedom” or “democracy” in the Middle Eastern region. At least, that is the view expressed by many learners in contemporary Turkey as a reaction to current events: like Willy Loman, America seeks to sell the American Dream abroad, but as time passes, fewer and fewer people seem prepared to buy into it. For them, Linda Loman’s final speech may appear particularly ironic: “We’re free and clear. (Sobbing more fully, relaxed). We’re free (BIFF comes slowly toward her.) We’re free. … We’re free. …” (Miller 1961, 112). The glory days of the 1980s and early 1990s have passed: while privatization continues to flourish in the Turkish Republic, the number of job opportunities in both the private and public sectors has gradually dwindled. Growing economic inequalities threaten to disenfranchise an

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increasingly urban and youthful population from the rights of citizenship. Many literature learners believe that the American Dream of wealth and prosperity no longer applies to them. Biff’s speech assumes a chilling significance for them: How the hell did I ever get the idea I was a salesman there [in Bill Oliver’s office]? I even believed myself that I’d been a salesman for him! And then he [Bill] gave me one look and - I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been! We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk (Miller 1961, 82).

As a result, they are “torn between the hopes of constructing a more participatory public sphere and disillusionment with the nation-state as the embodiment of modernity” (Neyzi 2005, 112). The old liberal humanist ideal of studying texts like Death of a Salesman to acquire a knowledge of western values and contribute towards the ideal of national unity seems dead and buried. Instead, the play tends to be taught on a much more personal level, with greater emphasis placed on its analysis of human relationships, especially Miller’s concern with the difficulties experienced between fathers and sons. The educator Suat Karantay likened the dramatist’s technique to that of Henrik Ibsen, as he focuses relentlessly on how Willy’s obsession with material success renders him oblivious to his son’s inadequacies (Karantay 1997, 23). As Biff emphasizes at one point, Willy’s relentless belief in the American Dream leads to disaster: The man don’t know who we are! The man is gonna know! [To Willy] We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house! [….] I never got anywhere because you [Willy] blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! Think whose fault it is! (Miller 1961, 104).

No real bond exists between father and son; Biff becomes just a pawn in Willy’s visions of success. However, once Biff tells his father the truth about their relationship, Willy discovers–perhaps for the first time-that his son has always loved him: “Oh, Biff! [Staring wildly] He cried! Cried to me. [He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise] That boythat boy is going to be magnificent! (106). The word “magnificent” has nothing to do with material success, but rather emotional feeling. Karantay remarks that, in speeches like this, Willy discovers his own personal American Dream–to be able to communicate on the same level with his son (Karantay 1997, 25).

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Other Turkish readers have sought to focus on Miller’s exposé of the cultural stereotypes that dominate Willy’s and his sons’ view of women, particularly Linda (Yılmaz 1997, 47). Happy likens his sexual relationships to bowling: “I just keep knockin' them over and it doesn't mean anything.” Nonetheless, he longs to “find a girl - steady, somebody with substance [...] somebody with character, with resistance! Like Mom, y’know!” (Miller 1961, 18-19). Willy is so preoccupied with the dream of material success that he cannot stand any interruptions from his wife: BIFF: He [Bill Oliver] did like me. Always liked me. LINDA: He loved you! WILLY [to Linda] Will you stop? [To Biff] Walk in very serious. You are not applying for a boy’s job. Money is to pass. Be quiet, fine and serious. Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money [...]. LINDA: Oliver always thought the highest of him -WILLY: Will you let me talk? (Miller 1961, 31).

As the action unfolds, Miller shows that it is Linda, not Willy, who possesses true strength of character, as she vigorously protects her husband from her sons: Get out of here, both of you, and don’t come back! I don’t want you tormenting him any more. Go on now, get your things together! [To BIFF] You can sleep in his apartment. [She starts to pick up the flowers and stops herself] Pick up this stuff, I’m not your maid any more. Pick it up, you bum, you! (Miller 1961, 98).

She may only be a housewife, but she knows how to manage her siblings. Perhaps she should be regarded as the true head of the Loman family (Yılmaz 1997, 47). Such issues are of particular interest to contemporary Turkish learners, many of whom experience similar familial conflicts. Like Biff, they seek to pursue lives of their own, even if that means defying their parents’ wishes. Women in particular are no longer satisfied with the traditional career paths of marriage, home and family, with the consequent expectation that they should accept their male partner’s wishes. The sociologist Leyla Neyzi cites the example of one literature learner-a female from østanbul-who experienced considerable pressure from her family to marry as soon as possible and reject what was perceived as the “unnecessary” option of postgraduate work. The learner observed with some justification that “despite their image as presented on TV ads, I don’t believe young people today are free at all” (Neyzi 2005, 113).

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Using this observation as a starting-point, I asked one class of eight undergraduate learners of American Literature at Baúkent University (who were studying Death of a Salesman during the 2004-5 academic year) to complete a free-writing project speculating on how the play might have continued after Willy's death. The results were particularly intriguing, as most of the class–six females, two males-focused on Linda Loman as she considered the prospect of life without her husband. In their opinion, Linda would have commented on how an overwhelmingly patriarchal American society of the mid-20th century silenced people-not just women, but also children–while placing unreasonable expectations on them of what an ideal family life should be like. The American Dream was not something positive; on the contrary, Willy’s obsession with it encouraged both him and his sons to believe that patriarchy and capitalism were “natural” ways of life, if you wanted to advance in the world and be somebody. They sustained “a kind of false consciousness about how happiness could be gained in a system that was built only to tear [them] down” (Fuchs 2005, 223). The only way to challenge such expectations was to repudiate the dream of financial success altogether and live according to one’s own inclinations. Perhaps then, everyone might achieve a more permanent and more satisfying American Dream. As one learner wrote, for a person like Linda Loman (or anyone else) to achieve this, they must “dig beneath all the lies and dreams we lived by, and our families taught us, and make a life for ourselves. We must choose to think and to live, this time.” What this chapter has proposed is that the changing fortunes of Death of a Salesman in Turkish educational and theatrical culture over the last half-century tells us less about the United States and more about the economic history of the Turkish Republic; how it sought to foster relations with America in the 1950s, how the growth of capitalism led to significant social and economic changes in the 1980s and early 1990s, and how Miller’s play in the contemporary context can now be viewed as a critique of the whole idea of the American Dream, particularly when it is concerned with the notion of wealth and social advancement. The varying interpretations of Death also reflect generational changes: while older Turkish educators trained in English departments sought to incorporate Miller’s play into an ideal of national unity, this objective no longer has much significance either for teachers or learners. A more fruitful course of action for them seems to be to pursue their own American Dreams, which may have little or nothing to do with supporting national (or westernized) values, or obtaining financial rewards, and to focus instead on the notion of self-fulfillment. In today’s Turkish Republic, Death of a Salesman is seen

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as a text that may persuade people to reject the American example and pursue their own ambitions. Matthew C. Roudané’s introduction to a 1995 collection Approaches to Teaching Death of a Salesman suggests that the plight of the Lomans raises important aesthetic and cultural issues that […] invite learners and teachers to test multivocal critical attitudes regarding literary and cultural essentialism (Roudané 1995, 23). This survey, I think, proves the truth of this statement; it is impossible to define the experience of studying the play in essentialist terms, especially when taught in different contexts and in different historical periods.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE NESRIN KAZANKAYA: CHALLENGING THEATRICAL ORTHODOXIES

Nesrin Kazankaya and her company, Tiyatro Pera, based in østanbul, form one of the most lively ensembles in the contemporary Turkish theatre. Kazankaya herself is a bundle of energy–a polymath who writes, acts and directs. Her recent productions for Tiyatro Pera include Death and the Maiden, The Merchant of Venice and Uncle Vanya; her plays include Profesör ve Hulahop [The Professor and the Hula-Hoop], Dobrinja’da Dü÷ün [Wedding in Dobrinja (Trilogy of a Day)], ùerefe Hatıralar (Cheers to Memories) (østanbul 1955), and Quintet-Bir Dönüúün Beúlemesi [Quintet-Pentalogy of a Return].1 Kazankaya’s productions are very different from those offered by the State Theatres. They are not only fluidly staged in the studio space of Tiyatro Pera, but she places considerable emphasis on diction and gesture. The Merchant of Venice (2007) updated Shakespeare to the contemporary world.2 Antonio (Can Baúak/ Muhammet Uzuner) and Bassanio (Kayhan Teker) were sharp-suited business tycoons, forever on the lookout for a good deal. With their black suits, gelled hair and Ray-ban sunglasses, Lorenzo (Erdinç Anaz) and Gratiano (Mehmet Aslan) recalled the Men in Black from the Hollywood film of the same name. They placed style above substance in their search for public recognition. Portia (Kazankaya) and Nerissa (Baúak Meúe) were the ultimate city slickers, watching the computer screen for the latest share prices and judging a person's worth 1

Kazankaya’s career has been comprehensively summarized in English on the Turkish Cultural Foundation website (http://www.turkishculture.org/whoiswho/theatre/nesrin-kazankaya-1101.htm (accessed July 20, 2010)). 2 Thıs review was originally published in Türk Sahnelerinden øzlenimler/ Impressions from the Turkish Dstage (østanbul: Mitos Boyut Yayınları, 2009): 156-9. Reprinted with permission.

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purely on their marketability. In a significant change from Shakespeare's text, Morocco (Ömer øvedi) and Arragon (Osman Alkaú) made their false choice from the caskets in two consecutive scenes. This was conducted via a television screen, with the caskets appearing as a computer graphic to be clicked on with a mouse. The two suitors never appeared on stage but communicated with Portia via video camera. The entire sequence showed how technology and money alienated people from one another: Portia had no interest in meeting (or loving) her future husband; his bank balance was all that mattered to her. As portrayed by Kazankaya, she was a ruthless schemer who would stop at nothing to increase her profits in a dog-eat-dog world. Shylock (Mehmet Ali Kaptanlar) likewise strove to profit from this world, but experienced racist abuse at work and in the home. In a newly created prologue Kazankaya showed Shylock and his family happily enjoying a feast in a square in the city located at the back of the stage. Antonio and Bassanio burst in, clearly intent on arguing with Shylock, who responds by asking them to leave. Eventually they did so, but both of them spat in the Jew's face in contempt. Despite their protestations of piety-as expressed later on in the production-they were basically intolerant. The two themes of profit and racism were painfully evident when Shylock came looking for his daughter Jessica (Zeynep Özden) at a masked ball (in a rewritten version of Shakespeare’s text (II, ix)).3 Kazankaya situated the action at the Venice carnival. Salarino (Okan Kayabaú) and Salanio (ølker Yi÷en), both disguised as devils, espied Shylock on the Rialto and decided to have fun at his expense by taunting him about his religion and his (allegedly) misplaced concern for his daughter. The two of them prepared for the “sport” by snorting cocaine; with plenty of easy money to spend, they didn't believe in taking life too seriously. Abusing the Jew was a game for them; the kind of thing young children might try in the playground. This fondness for game playing assumed a more serious aspect in the trial scene, when Shylock tried to claim his pound of flesh. Portia and Nerissa clearly enjoyed their little charade, as they disguised themselves as the lawyer and the assistant, freed Antonio and forced the unfortunate Jew to convert to Christianity. The climax of this scene proved especially harrowing as Shylock shuffled out of the courtroom, while the Christians hugged themselves in self-congratulation on their “achievement” in ridding their society of a potential threat to their stability. 3

All refs to the Shakespearean text of The Merchant of Venice from the Arden edn., edited by John Russell Brown (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).

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However Kazankaya was not content to leave the Jews in isolation. In a newly devised ending she showed them gathering once again in a celebration of community (recalling the party in the opening scene). Shylock re-entered and embraced his friends. All of them looked at the television screen, which showed an airport timetable with a flight to Tel Aviv at the top. Jessica came in, having realized that her marriage to Lorenzo (and her proposed change of religion) was nothing more than a sham; the Christian simply wanted to get his hands on her family's money. She shyly approached her father, and the two of them left the stage together. Although expelled from Venetian society by a racist Christian culture, the Jews sustained their sense of community, which gave them hope for the future once they had returned to Israel. The acting in this revival was perhaps a little too broad at times: Shylock’s gestures occasionally recalled Laza Wolf the butcher in Fiddler on the Roof, while Portia veered towards the hysterical, especially while disguised as the doctor. Nonetheless, this revival took Shakespeare's play by the scruff of the neck and recast it as a modern parable in a translation (also by Kazankaya) that subtly alluded to today’s Turkish Republic, where old-style family values are increasingly threatened by a desire for easy money and consumerism. This was one of the most lucid and gripping Shakespearean performances I had seen in a very long time. For her revival of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, produced for the østanbul International Theatre Festival of 2010, Kazankaya offered numerous opportunities for the eight principal characters to disclose their feelings of hopelessness while trying to compensate for this hopelessness through incessant chatter.4 The revival might best be described as centripetal in concept. At the beginning of each sequence of dialogue the characters moved from the sides of the Pera Theatre’s open stage towards a dining table and chairs placed at the center of the playing area. They sat down or remained standing and commenced speaking; once they had finished speaking, they moved back to the sides of the playing area, to be replaced in the center by another group of characters. The table and chairs became the site of conversation, while the audience looked on as if they had been invited to an early twentieth century Russian salon–a gathering of middleclass men and women seeking both to enjoy and educate themselves through conversation.  In a program-note, Kazankaya likened the play to a pastoral symphony in three acts: “The first act starts pianissimo […] [and] ends with an 4 Review originally published in Theatreworld Internet Magazine, May 21, 2010 (www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com). Reprinted with permission.

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explosion of a night […] The next day, a hot summer noon opens the second act which starts allegretto. Then it transforms into a pianissimo night again …”5 This aspect of the production was underlined through speech-rhythms: in the first act the characters began by speaking serenely, listening to what one another was saying and then formulating well-crafted replies. By the end of the second act the atmosphere had changed: everyone tried to disclose their real feelings but soon understood that nobody was listening to them. This only served to increase their sense of emotional distress. Dr. Astrov (Selçuk Yöntem) turned to drink, while his way of speaking became more and more coarse, punctuated with frequent gasps for breath and vile scowls directed at no one in particular.6 Vanya’s (Levend Öktem’s) frustration was evident as he walked wildly round and round the playing area as if looking for a way out. The salon-like atmosphere could no longer satisfy him; he needed some alternative space to breathe. Unable to find any alternatives, he tried to commit suicide, but even this proved an absurd failure. All he could do was to complain to no one in particular: “I have no past, the present is awful because it’s so meaningless!” Yelena (Nesrin Kazankaya) likewise admitted that she saw no future for herself: “I don’t know what to do […] How am I suddenly to start teaching and doctoring them [the peasants] for no earthly reason?”7 Although her reactions were not as extreme as Vanya’s (the possibility of suicide never entered her mind), Yelena’s turbulent state of mind was evident in her rapid emotional shifts–laughter was abruptly followed by tears, then anger, and laughter once more. In the pianissimo mood of the third act everyone made strenuous efforts to recreate that urbane, civilized conversational atmosphere which characterized the first act. However we understood from their expressions that this task was futile: both Astrov and Yelena gazed longingly out towards the audience, while Marina (Zeynep Özden) looked towards the theatre exit, as if believing that she could solve her emotional turmoil by escaping from the production altogether. They were part of the dying 5

Nesrin Kazankaya, “Önsöz” [Preface], Vanya Dayı [Uncle Vanya] (østanbul: Tiyatro Pera, 2010), 3. 6 Yöntem’s presence in the cast provides a good example of what Kazankaya described later on in this chapter, of her managing to persuade star actors to come and perform in her productions. A former Ankara State Theate stalwart, whose credits include David Leveaux’s As You Like It (discussed elsewhere in this book), Yöntem has subsequently become a star of films and television with occasional forays on to the østanbul stage. 7 These are my translations of Kazankaya’s Turkish text.

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world of the landed gentry, living in a limbo-like world of the past and unable to engage with a fast-changing outside world.  At the same time Kazankaya suggested that their days were numbered. Both at the beginning and the end of the production we heard the sounds of the impending revolution (of January 1905)–the songs, and the peasants’ clamor–while at the back of the stage we saw the workers (Ömer øvedi, O÷uz Turgutgenç, Volkan Aktan, Özlem Kaynarca) bonding together by picking up implements and shaking hands with one another. They represented Russia’s future–a world of social equality and mutual cooperation that would sweep away the class-based society that had dominated the country under Tsar Nicholas II. Both Vanya and Astrov were well aware of this impending threat, as they glanced fearfully off stage as if expecting the workers to come and capture them at any moment. This knowledge only served to exacerbate their feeling of hopelessness.  Compared to other revivals, this Vanya placed greater emphasis on the play’s political aspects: Chekhov wrote it at a time when Russia was on the cusp of major social and political transformation. Nonetheless director Kazankaya paid scrupulous attention to character-development: we empathized with their respective predicaments, even though there was nothing we could do to alleviate them. In spite of the heat both inside and outside the theatre, this production was enthusiastically applauded.  With my reactions to Uncle Vanya fresh in my mind, I wanted to know how Kazankaya first became involved in the theatre: LR: What drew you to study theatre in the first place? Did you have any particular idols/ role models, or were you inspired by the desire to study drama? NK: My passion for acting began at quite an early age as I was given the leading role in fifth grade, elementary school. We had three productions on a large stage, which gave me my first experience of working in front of an audience. From a very early age, every weekend my family and I would go to see plays at the øzmir State Theatre. I was in the science department in high school; I also studied chemical engineering for a year in university. My family didn't object to my interest in theatre, dance and sport. But naturally, they didn't expect me to become an actress. Pursuing acting wasn't-and to this day, isn’t-considered a solid career choice. During my high school years, I also took part in plays in the øzmir Public Theatre, where I received the Best Actress award. It became evident that I had to choose drama as a career, and I needed formal training. Without telling my

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parents, I auditioned for the Ankara State Conservatory, and got accepted successfully. LR: Did it take a lot of time to convince your parents of your intentions to study at the Conservatory? NK: Initially they objected, but eventually after three months they gave in. I had fallen ill, you see, and I think they understood that the only way I could get better was to follow my interests. LR: Can you tell me about life at the Conservatory? NK: I graduated cum laude from the Ankara State Conservatory in five years. I studied with older teachers who had, at the time, participated in the founding of the conservatory (such as Cüneyt Gökçer, Mahir Canova, Nüzhet ùenbay),8 and younger teachers who were recent additions to the faculty (such as Can Gürzap and Yücel Erten). I have to say that there were two distinct methods of teaching. One–the traditional method, you might say, was largely imitative. You watched the great actors performing and tried to emulate them. A lot of time was spent on close textual study, discussing the authors’ motives. This was especially true when you did classes with Cüneyt Gökçer. Then there were the younger teachers such as Can Gürzap or Yücel Erten,9 who brought in new techniques of improvisation, while allowing actors to develop their own interpretations. They gave us the freedom to create things for ourselves. I’m not saying that Gökçer wasn’t a great actor; he certainly was. But as a teacher he seemed to us quite conservative. LR: Did you have the chance to direct as well? NK: I was the first student in the conservatory's history to direct, and at the same time act in a Brecht play. We did a production of the first act of The 8 Mahir Canova (1915-1993), theatre director of the Ankara State Theatre, whose productions included Romeo and Juliet, Merry Wives of Windsor and Lysistrata; Nüzhet ùenbay (1910-1991), theatre director and author of seminal theatrical training texts such as Söz ve Diksiyon [Speech and Diction] published in the mid1940s and still in print. 9 Can Gürzap (1944-), actor who trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, now a regular performer in private theatre companies in østanbul; Yücel Erten (1945-), theatre director, actor and playwright.

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Threepenny Opera (with Turgay Erdener as the musical director),10 accompanied by a small orchestra, for the graduation performance. I didn’t start acting professionally right away, because I wanted to do some work in directing. However there was no directing course in Turkey, so I applied and was accepted to the program in the directing department of Folkwanghochschule, a public university in Essen, Germany. I learned several important lessons there. If I was going to direct a play, I needed to research it thoroughly. I also had to be responsible for every aspect of the mise-en-scène: one has to take responsibility for everything happening both on and off the stage. At the end the production should feel like a completed puzzle, comprised of character analysis, lighting, direction and all the other elements. This is where I feel my scientific background helps me; I know how to examine things in minute detail. LR: You’re a teacher as well as an actor, giving classes to students at Tiyatro Pera. Do you use improvisational methods in your own work? NK: Most certainly. I always look at the students’ personalities, to try and determine what kind of abilities they possess. If they feel they can’t do something, I try not to criticize, but offer improvisations to help students deal with their difficulties. For example, if a student has difficulties using their bodies, I give a series of exercises to help them develop it. Students need to use their hearts, as well as their heads in learning how to perform. LR: Let’s talk a little bit now about your approach to directing plays. Are you someone who begins rehearsals with a clear idea about how a particular play should be staged? NK: Oh, no! I usually begin with only a very general idea of what I want to do. Our first rehearsals are normally devoted both to research and discussion; even before rehearsals begin, I have usually spent some considerable time discussing the play with my creative team–Zeynep [Özden] my assistant and dramaturge ùafak Eruyar–before working with the actors. Although I act in my own productions, I always want to be an actor and a director; I have a passion for both. The one informs the other. However I do believe that one should have a social consciousness while directing or acting in a play. We should not forget the world we 10

Turgay Erdener (1957-), composer of stage and orchestral works performed both in Asia and Europe. Also provided the music for other Brecht productions such as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1980) and Mann ist Man (1997).

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inhabit, nor should we shy away from telling others–especially audiences– how we perceive it. I cannot imagine an artist who would not oppose the iniquities of the capitalist system, unjust wars, or the extremes of backward regimes. I think my education in Germany allowed me to discover a sharper focus on these matters. LR: You spent many years at the Ankara State Theatre. Can you give me some sense of what life was like as a member of that company? NK: I worked eight years at the Ankara State Theatre as a full-time performer. Our parts were assigned to us; sometimes we performed one or two plays per season; on other occasions we did more. The main advantage of the State Theatre was that we could do a lot of different plays in repertory, ranging from classics to modern literature, as well as gaining a lot of experience by working with older actors and actresses. On the other hand, as with any large organization, there were cliques and groups fighting against each other; moreover, as we were government employees, we were paid whether we worked or not. However I have always tried to work in other companies as well as the State Theatre. I opened training courses in different institutions, as well as staging and performing plays for children in Ankara. During my TOBAV years,11 I rented the Operet Theatre or worked in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, to stage or perform different plays.12 I also directed plays for private theatres. At one time in Ankara I was acting in two plays and staging another one at the same time. While working for the østanbul State Theatre, I rented part of an old monastery in Tarlabaúı and wrote a play named Kaybolma [Missing], which came about as a result of our improvisations. The play was chosen for the International østanbul Theatre Festival [1995] and later for the Biennial of Bonn [1996], as the representatives of Turkey. We weren’t an official theatre so the Germans named us as the “missing theatre.”13 Doing different things is an important aspect of your work when you are with the State Theatre. You’ve got to look after yourself, make sure 11

TOBAV – Devlet Tivatrosu Opera ve Bale Çalısanları Vakfı, a foundation dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of theatre, opera and ballet in the community, established in 1981 (www.tobavnet.org/english). 12 Ankara Operet Sahnesi, situated in the Art Gallery, Ankara, with a capacity of 426. 13 For more information on this event, see Emre Erden’s report (in Turkish) at http://www.tiyatrokeyfi.com/gorusler/bonn.html.

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you renew yourself intellectually, so that you can resist the generally conservative attitude of the directors. LR: Why did you move to østanbul? NK: I came to østanbul because of family reasons; in 1990 my son Emil was born and I applied for a transfer to østanbul to be with my family. When I came, I realized that this was a really good decision; audiences in østanbul tend to be more broad-minded than elsewhere in Turkey, even though they are developing in smaller cities such as Eskiúehir, øzmir and Adana. In Ankara unfortunately there seems to have been a contraction of interest in theatre; now there is really only the State Theatre left there, and even their play selection tends to be over-determined by governmental politics. LR: When did you begin to translate plays? NK: I had always experienced problems with existing translations, which I thought did not capture the spirit of the source texts. Even when I was a student I kept making corrections to the texts. Since then I have always wanted to translate plays for myself–for example modern German classics (like Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening),14 as well as many contemporary plays. My first staged, official translation was Leonie Ossowski’s Voll auf der Rolle [1984], translated as Tam Rolünde – a play for teenagers. I had it performed at the Festival of Youth and Children’s Theatre, run by the State Theatre in Ankara. When I am translating, keeping close to the source text is very important for me. I try to empathize with the writer. For me some published translations are insensitive and superficial; some others are like interpretations that stray far away from the source text. I often take a long time translating a play–for example, when I do a Shakespeare play it can often take over a year to do. I have to look for a way of rendering his text theatrical in the target language. Once I have finished the translation, I sometimes shorten it; linking some scenes or changing the order of some scenes. On other occasions I change not one word. I work on both English and German texts, as well as using other Turkish translations–for example, when I worked on Measure for Measure for the østanbul State Theatre in 1998-9 I used the original text plus a German translation. I could have used the adaptation published by Zeynep 14

Translated as ølkbahar Uyanıúı and published by Mitos Boyut Yayınları (1997)

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Avcı, but chose not to.15 With The Merchant of Venice [2007] I did the text myself using English and German texts as sources. LR: How and why did Tiyatro Pera come about? NK: I had become artistic director of the østanbul State Theatre, but I was relieved of my duties when the General Director of the State Theatres changed. Although I had worked very hard to produce a good mix of plays reaching out to different audiences, this cut no ice with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. At the time I was the head of the Pera School of Fine Arts Theatre Department, where I had been teaching since 1996. I turned the empty space on the ground floor into a theatre and established Tiyatro Pera in 2001. Most of the actors were my former graduate students, many of whom took part in children’s plays and played bit-parts in main house productions. In the first years, several close friends of mine came to work for me–for example, our first play Death and the Maiden had Ayúe Lebriz, Devrim Nas and Yetkin Ditkinciler in the cast.16 It’s much the same these days; sometimes well-known players come to perform in my productions and give their services free as teachers in the Pera Theatre School. Tiyatro Pera represents a fulfillment of a dream of mine; I now have my own theatre and my own school. I believe it has its own house style, based on performing plays with a particular importance for contemporary audiences. The students who are educated in my school and who become professionals in my theatre share my outlook and try to maintain a uniform acting style based on a naturalistic approach to character. In 2000 I devised a new curriculum for high schools; many of my first graduates have become teachers in the high school themselves. We are trying to create a unique house style–a theatre with a social role in contemporary østanbul. LR: Tiyatro Pera adopts a style to direction and performance very different from that of the State Theatre. Was this a conscious decision on your part? NK: I didn’t consciously set out to be new; it just evolved out of the creative team that we formed, including ùafak Eruyar and Zeynep Özden. 15

William Shakespeare, Toplu Oyunları [Complete Plays] I: Kısasa Kısas, Onikinci Gece, Venedik Taciru [Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice] (østanbul: Mitos Boyut Yayınları, 1996). 16 All stage actors who alternate between theatre, film and television in the østanbul area.

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We are also lucky to get the continuing support of the Sabahattin Özbakır, who owns both the school and the theatre. This enables us to take risks: while taking the audience’s tastes into account, we try to offer something new as well. We don’t want to be populist; this is a non-profit-making theatre. We’re very particular about our choice of plays. Often we make the decision up to a year in advance; and then we spend several months preparing for them through research and discussion. Once that preparatory work has been completed, we begin rehearsals. We try to offer an alternative form of cultural education for the television-dependent, apolitical younger generation that emerged after the coup d’état of 1980. LR: What would you like to see from Tiyatro Pera in, say, the next five years? NK: I always say that a good artistic director should plan well ahead for the next three years at least. I’d like to keep producing a mixed repertory of plays–classics and Turkish plays–that still have something to say to younger audiences. We can’t predict whether our theatre will make a major contribution to the development of Turkish theatre, but at least we can go forward if Tiyatro Pera continues to uphold our ideals and sustain an idiosyncratic artistic view. I know that we have to work more–produce more plays, arrange more seminars, do more studies with the creative team and with the actors. We have to remain a free, politically independent theatre that makes a positive contribution to society and its improvement. LR: You are a polymath: writer, director, actor, teacher, and translator. Do you have any particular favorite amongst these roles? NK: Acting forms the basis of all my artistic production. I became a director because acting only was not enough for me, I think. I took up writing because I was looking for new texts, both in terms of theme and style. Each career inspired the others. LR: Do you think the theatre in Turkey has opportunities for future growth and development, particularly in østanbul? NK: I hope so. østanbul is still the country’s artistic capital, promoting intellectual freedom of thought in all artistic spheres. The democratic and cultural life of the Turkish Republic is improving through all our efforts.

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We still have a long way to go in the path towards enlightenment and democracy, but I do believe we can achieve some kind of stability. I have great hopes for the future, and I hope to contribute to it through non-stop work.

PART III: FILM

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO T.E.LAWRENCE, THE TURKS, AND THE ARAB REVOLT IN THE CINEMA: ANGLO-AMERICAN AND TURKISH REPRESENTATIONS1

The Arab Revolt against Ottoman occupation began on June 5, 1916, as the ruler of the Holy Cities, Hussein, proclaimed himself King of the Arab Countries, a title he later modified into King of the Hejaz, following protests from the British and French.2 The Ottoman army in Arabia was stationed in the Yemen, and along the new Hejaz Railroad in Syria connecting Medina with Damascus. Hussein organized the Bedouin chiefs under his control into a guerilla army commanded by his son Feisal with the help of several British officers including T. E. Lawrence. The immediate effect of this revolt was to cut the Hejaz Railroad and overrun the Ottoman garrisons at Mecca, Cidda, and Damascus. All other towns in the Hejaz were soon under rebel control with the exception of the Media, which remained under siege, and the Yemen was entirely cut off. The Arab Revolt paved the way for the Syrian campaign, where a combined British and Arab force began an offensive that would result in the Ottomans quitting the country within a year, and surrendering to the Allies on November 13, 1918. The Allied forces invaded the Ottoman Empire with the firm conviction that since the Ottoman Turks had arbitrarily slaughtered millions of their subjects, they had forfeited the right to rule themselves. Admiral Calthorpe, the Allied High Commissioner, remarked in 1

Originally published in Literature/Film Quarterly Vol. 33 no. 4 (2005): 252-61. Reprinted with permission. 2 These names have been spelled in different ways - Hejaz can also be known as Hedjaz or Hijaz; Hussein as Hüseyin (in Ottoman/Turkish writings) and Feisal as Faysal (again in Ottoman/Turkish texts). For convenience I have used the common English versions.

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a 1919 letter: “it has been our consistent attitude to show no kind of favour whatsoever to any Turk” and “all interchange of hospitality and comity has been rigorously forbidden” (qtd. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 329). By contrast the British supported the Arab claims for full national rights and selfgovernment: at the Paris Peace Conference of January 1919, Lawrence was called upon to represent the Bedouins. This chapter focuses on two cinematic representations of these events from the Anglo-American and the Turkish points of view, in David Lean’s biopic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Lütfi Ö. Akad's øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı (English Kemal Against Lawrence) (1952).3 The orientalism of Lean’s film has been extensively analyzed by Steven C. Caton (1999) and Martin Stollery (2000), focusing in particular on how the director's representation of Arab culture challenges familiar stereotypes of the sophisticated west compared with the uncivilized east. Caton in particular argues that the film is critical of the colonialist project within the constraints of the historical (post-Suez) and cultural contexts from which it emerged (Caton 1999, 199). However, there has been scant critical attention paid to the portrayal of the Ottomans in the film, who are represented as inefficient, ruthless, or perverted.4 There are two explanations for this-first, that Michael Wilson’s treatment and Robert Bolt’s eventual screenplay largely follow Lawrence’s account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, wherein the Arabs are shown to be fighting for liberation from the colonialist yoke of Ottoman rule (Wilson 1995, 30).5 In their efforts to challenge orientalist representations of the Arabs, the screenwriters-like Lawrence himself-orientalized the Ottomans. Lawrence of Arabia stresses the contrast between the two races by drawing upon a tradition of homosexual orientalism, applied specifically to the Ottomans (and the Turks) that dates back to the work of nineteenth-century travelers such as Sir Richard Burton, and that persists in more recent films such as Midnight Express (1978). Lean was not particularly anti-Ottoman;

3

Lütfi Ömer Akad (1916-), film director active between 1948-1974, who subsequently worked in television. 4 It is important to draw a distinction, for historical purposes, between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, which came into being in 1923, particularly when applied to films such as øngiliz Kemal. For this reason, I shall refer to the Turkish forces in Arabia as Ottomans rather than Turks. 5 The screenplay was originally credited to Bolt alone, as Wilson was in exile from America, owing to was given joint credit. For an analysis of the contributions made to the film by Wilson and Bolt, see Caton 1999, 100-29.

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rather he chose to demonize them as a means of explaining the behavior of his Arabic and British central characters. On the face of it, Lütfi Akad’s øngiliz Kemal Lavrens'e Karúı simply reverses this opposition by foregrounding the Turkish struggle against British colonizers (particularly Lawrence), while reducing the Arabs to marginal figures in the background of many shots, However, I suggest that the director sought both to celebrate the achievements of the Turkish nation in general and in particular the achievements of an adventurer who played an important role in its creation. “øngiliz Kemal” (real name Ahmet Esat Tomruk) was a British-educated spy who passed vital information about Allied plans on to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which proved vital in the subsequent campaign to expel all occupying forces from Turkish territory. Tomruk’s exploits rapidly passed into legend, following the publication of his best-selling autobiography in 1946. By the late 1950s he had been transformed into a popular cultural icon-a Turkish version of James Bond who appeared in a series of five adventure novels (bearing an increasingly tenuous relationship to historical fact) and three feature films. øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı is the first of these films. In an “Apologia” for Lawrence of Arabia, Robert Bolt sought to answer those critics (for example, Lawrence's youngest brother Professor A. W. Lawrence), who objected to the film's portrayal of the central character and his involvement in the Arab Revolt, particularly in the scene where he appears to enjoy participating in the massacre of a column of retreating Ottoman soldiers outside the village of Tafas (Bolt 1995, 33). Bolt argued that the principal source for this scene was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, in which Lawrence recounts how his reaction was prompted by the sight of what the Ottomans had done to the villagers: I looked close and saw the body of a woman [...] bottom upwards, nailed there by a saw bayonet whose haft stuck hideously into the air from between her naked legs. She had been pregnant, and about her lay others, perhaps twenty in all, variously killed, but set out in accord with an obscene taste [...] I said, ‘The best of you brings the most Turkish dead,’ and we turned after the fading enemy, on our way shooting down those who had fallen out by the wayside and came imploring our pity [...] By my order we took no prisoners, for the only time in our war (Lawrence 1991, 631-32).

Righteous indignation might seem a natural response; but by Lawrence's own admission, he continued slaughtering for a day and a night: “In a madness born of the horror of Tafas we killed and killed, even blowing in

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the heads of the fallen and of the animals; as though their dead and running blood could slake our agony” (Lawrence 1991, 633).6 The Ottoman atrocities provoked him to commit another terrible crime in a mood of dreadful excitement; as a result “’others’ lives [especially Turkish lives] became toys to break and throwaway” (634). Lowell Thomas, whose 1925 book With Lawrence in Arabia helped create the Lawrence legend, quotes from Lawrence's diary in which he describes the “agony of cruelty and revenge which was burning in our bodies and twisting our hands about so that we could hardly shoot” (Thomas 1962, 184). Lean emphasizes the carnage in Tafas by means of a slow panning shot, showing a disemboweled man, several blood-drenched women, and a three-legged dog.7 It is this sight that prompts Lawrence to wreak revenge on the Ottomans. The ensuing battle begins with an Arab soldier galloping alone toward the Ottomans, only to be cut down by machine-gun fire just before he reaches them. The action cuts to a close-up of a trickle of blood on the ground next to him. This image recalls the close-up earlier on of blood seeping through the back of Lawrence's (Peter O’Toole’s) uniform, as he returns to the British garrison following his ordeal at the hands of the Ottomans in Deraa. The sight of the body in the sand provokes an extreme reaction from Lawrence, as he is shown in close-up, his face contorted with emotion as he shoots any Ottoman soldier unfortunate enough to stand in his way.8 Having completed the massacre, Lawrence and the Arab soldiers are shown marching on either side of a burnt-out Ottoman cart, its tattered flag fluttering in the breeze. Lean’s version resembles that expressed by Anthony Nutting (who served as an adviser to the film) in his 1961 biography Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and The Motive: “Almost every one of the two thousand Turks [...] had been slaughtered-at the express orders of the gentle archaeologist who despised the soldier's profession […] Such was the depths of the nightmare in which he [Lawrence] was now engulfed” (Nutting 1961, 162-63).9 6 In a letter to Bolt dated November 27, 1962, another one of Lawrence's close friends, Captain Basil Liddell Hart, argued that this passage did not imply that Lawrence had been involved in the killing; on the contrary, it was the Arabs alone who indulged in “a one-day orgy of killing [...] The Arabs were completely out of hand" (qtd Morris and Raskin 1992, 151). Bolt rejected this interpretation. Two days later Professor A. W. Lawrence told Liddell Hart that Bolt's script was “a brilliant misrepresentation of events and personalities” (153). 7 This shot first appeared in the restored version of Lawrence of Arabia, which received its premiere in February 1989. 8 This shot likewise only appeared in the restored version of the film. 9 Nutting had in fact been hired as an adviser in March 1960, a year before his

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While accepting the view that the second half of the film depicts Lawrence’s descent from heroic supporter of Arab liberation into a cynical, ruthless killer (Caton 1999, 140), I would nonetheless argue that Lean maintains a basically anti-Ottoman stance throughout: even if some of the colonizers are victims of Lawrence’s irrational fury, they still get what they deserve. They cannot compete with the marauding Arabs; in the attack on Aqaba, for instance, three Ottoman soldiers try to set up a machine-gun post, but find themselves overrun by the Arab cavalry. Lean cuts to a long shot of the Arabs entering the city and moving inexorably toward the seashore. In the background the strains of Maurice Jarre’s theme music can be heard as the camera tracks left to right, surveying the scene. A burnt-out Ottoman gun emplacement can be seen on the right of the frame; on the left, the jubilant Arab forces are seen in the distance celebrating their victory. Despite their lack of military equipment, their superior fighting skills prove decisive. Lawrence emphasizes this point in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "What we had taken here was a rich prize […] [although] We had no supports, no regulars, no guns [...] no communications, no money even, for our gold was exhausted, and we were issuing our own notes, promises to pay ‘when Akaba is taken,’ for daily expenses” (Lawrence 1991, 306). The justness of the Arab cause is further emphasized later on in the film, as Lean adopts Lawrence's view of the Ottomans in Seven Pillars as “so many godless transgressors of their creed and their human duty-traitors to the spirit of the time, and to the higher interests of Islam” (52). Once Lawrence has been captured at Deraa, he is put into a line-up inspected by the Turkish Bey (Jose Ferrer).10 There follows a close-up of the Bey’s shiny leather boots-a clear allusion to his sado-masochistic desires - before he rips open Lawrence's shirt and observes: “Yes, you are a deserter […] but from which army? Not that it matters at all. A man cannot always be in uniform” (qtd Stollery 2000, 53). The Bey admiringly kneads Lawrence’s muscles between his fingers, remarking, “Your skin is very fair.” Lean cuts to a close-up of the Bey’s moist lips, followed by a close-up of Lawrence’s frightened eyes. Lawrence strikes out in homophobic fear, which prompts the Bey to issue an order to strip him to the waist and beat him. The Ottoman soldiers respond by shouting something incomprehensible book was published. Thus it comes as no surprise to see that his book and the film should be similar in interpretation. 10 Significantly the Turkish Bey is not given a name-‘Bey’ in Turkish simply means “Mr.” It seems clear that Lean intends to dehumanize him as much as possible.

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(neither in Turkish nor in Ottoman) and strapping Lawrence face downward on a wooden bench, taking care to ensure that his legs are well spread.11 The punishment is not shown directly; but Lean conveys the emotion behind the scene through a series of reaction-shots of the soldiers grinning lasciviously, contrasted with Lawrence’s agonized look as he sees the whip being raised to strike him. On the soundtrack the cough of the Bey can be heard; despite the fact that he was supposed to have left the room, it is clear that-in common with his troops-the punishment offers him sexual excitement.12 This is underlined at the end of the scene by means of a quick cut to the half-open door, with the Bey peeping round it from the safety of the adjoining room. Lean contrasts Ottoman brutality with Arab humanity, as he subsequently cuts to a sequence where Ali (Omar Sharif) stands behind a column outside the prison listening to what is going on inside. The camera captures his horrified reaction in medium shot, and then zooms slowly toward him; in the background, the sound of drumbeats can be heard. The orientalist identification of the Ottomans as predominantly homosexual originates with nineteenth-century travelers such as Sir Richard Burton, who observed in Section D of his “Terminal Essay” to the translation of the Arabian Nights (1885) that the whole of the so-called “Sotadic Zone,” covering the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia had been colonized by the “’unspeakable Turk,’ a race of born pederasts.” Evidently in the towns and cities of Anatolia “Le Vice [i.e. homosexuality] prevails more [...] than in the villages, yet even these are infected, while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India” (Burton 2004, 15). This stereotype persists in travel accounts of Turkey written nearly a century later: in Journey to Kars Philip Glazebrook observes: “I’ve no idea how possible it was for a [nineteenthcentury] traveler to have affairs with Eastern women, but it must always have been more dangerous to pick the rose from the encircling thorns-far more dangerous than to have homosexual relations” (Glazebrook 1985, 188). Other western writers have represented the Ottoman Empire as synonymous with brutality: Eric Ambler’s thriller The Light of The Day 11

In the Turkish dubbed version of Lawrence of Arabia, the soldiers are given the chance to speak coherently as they give their orders in Turkish. 12 Omar Sharif recalled Lean’s suggestion that Ferrer “do a sort of sexual cough” which, according to one reviewer “voluptuously punctuates one of the most daring homosexual scenes of indecent assault ever to be filmed decently” (qtd in Morris and Raskin 1992, 107).

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recounts how a sultan “had all his younger brothers killed off to prevent arguments about the succession” (Ambler 1962, 117), while Joan Fleming’s When I Grow Rich has a Turkish character observing that “we Turks have made a habit throughout history of throwing everything which is of embarrassment either in to the Golden Horn or the Bosphorus.” One character kicks his ex-lover “down the water steps and now she lay, a distance of not more than two feet from the bottom step, but a long way down; food for the Bosphorus” (Fleming 1962, 212). The traits of homosexuality and violence are combined in Ambler’s novel as the hero recounts how a Turkish prison officer “took a rubber glove and a jar of petroleum jelly from the wall cabinet and searched my rectum” (Ambler 1962, 50). The fact that both works appeared in the same year that Lawrence of Arabia was released suggests that negative Ottoman/Turkish images still held sway in the western popular imagination. Giovanni Scognamillo’s comprehensive survey Batı Sinemasinda Türkiye ve Türkler (Turkey and the Turks in Western Cinema) shows that such images appeared equally frequently on the big screen. The silent era produced works such as The Captive (De Mille, 1915), Auction of Souls (Apfel, 1919), and Turkish Delight (Sloane, 1920); two decades later a succession of talkies appeared including Journey into Fear (Foster, 1942), Background to Danger (Walsh, 1943), Anything Can Happen (Seaton, 1952), Five Fingers (directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with a screenplay by Michael Wilson, 1953) and østanbul (Pevney, 1956). All of these films represent Ottoman/ Turkish territory as a site of intrigue, where the white male protagonist struggles against the enemy, who may be Turkish or nonTurkish. Background to Danger transposes the Casablanca scenario to østanbul, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre as Nazi collaborators and George Raft as their heroic adversary.13 Five Fingers tells the story of Cicero, an Albanian valet employed by the British Ambassador to Ankara (James Mason), who passes on secrets to the Nazis, including the plan for “Operation Overlord”-the Allied plan for the invasion of Europe. Lawrence of Arabia continues this tradition of representation by giving Jose Ferrer a memorable cameo as the Turkish Bey-a role that Ferrer himself relished. He recalled later: “If I had to be judged by only one performance, it would be my five minutes in Lawrence. They are my best work” (qtd Morris and Raskin 1992, 107). Whereas the Arabs’ behavior in Lawrence of Arabia might seem equally cruel and unreasonable to western filmgoers, Lean seeks to justify 13

Raft was originally asked to play the role of Rick in Casablanca but turned it down. Warners offered Background to Danger as a consolation prize.

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it in terms of local traditions of male honor and leadership. This is clearly evident, for instance, in the following exchange between Ali and Auda (Anthony Quinn): ALI: [stiffening slightly at the insult] Does Auda take me for one of his bastards? AUDA: [regarding his adversary with a sardonic smile]. No, there is no resemblance. [He turns]. Alas, you resemble your father. I knew your father well. All: [steadily fixing the challenger with a grim and determined look]. Did you know your own? [AUDA swings round as if to rush his opponent. LAWRENCE, dressed in his brilliantly white robes, immediately intervenes.] LAWRENCE: Auda! We are fifty; you are two. How if we shot you down? AUDA: Why then you have a blood feud with the Howeitat. Do you desire it? (qtd in Caton 190)

Bearing in mind that the ritual of challenge and counter-challenge is perceived as characteristic of tribal societies of the Middle East, we are invited to judge Ali’s and Auda’s characters “in terms of the cultural system” they represent. It would seem that Lütfi Ö. Akad's øngiliz Kemal simply reverses this opposition; the Arabs are portrayed as violent, while the Turks participate in a legitimate struggle for freedom. In one scene two Arabs appear in the background while Lawrence (Muzaffer Tema) receives a letter ordering him to leave Arabia as soon as possible for Constantinople. They sit with their backs to the camera clothed in robes; as soon as a messenger enters, they exit carrying guns in their left hands. The implication is clear-they are a war-like people who prefer guns rather than words to express their point of view. The film’s pro-Turkish stance is emphasized at the outset through a montage of contemporary newsreels depicting the major figures of the First World War-George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, David Lloyd George. A voiceover informs us that during this period the majority of the Turkish people were so tyrannized by the Ottoman government that they were provoked into fighting for their independence. The sequence ends with a shot of their leader Mustafa Kemal (later known as Kemal Atatürk), who is described on the soundtrack as “the supreme believer in the nation.”14

14

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Turkish dialogue in øngiliz Kemal are my own.

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However, the real enemy in Akad’s film is neither the Arabs nor the Ottomans but the Allies-specifically the British. The historian Geoffrey Lewis observes that many Turks in the post-1918 period […] had been ready to face with equanimity the loss of the Arab provinces. A favorite theme of Turkish novelists has been the sorrows of Anatolia, with the flower of its young manhood sent to die in the service of an empire from whose survival they had nothing to gain, wasting the best years of their lives amidst Arabs whose theoretical reverence for the Caliph of Islam did not inspire them with love for his tax-collectors and garrisons (Lewis 1974, 64)

By contrast the potential threat posed by the Allies to the country's independence engendered a “Turkish nationalist spirit [amongst the people], distinct from Pan-Turkism […] In every part of Turkey patriotic societies sprang up [...] despised by their former subjects, betrayed by their [Ottoman] leaders, the Turks had suddenly begun to find themselves” ( Lewis 1974, 65). The principal representative of Allied colonial interests in øngiliz Kemal is undoubtedly Lawrence himself. As portrayed by Tema,15 he is a black-haired, smooth-talking villain with an unshakeable conviction (expressed at the end of the film) that he remains “the uncrowned emperor of Anatolia and the best spy of the Empire!” Akad and his screenwriter Osman F. Seden16 invent a fictitious scenario in which Lawrence comes to Constantinople to consolidate British interests after the Paris Conference of 1919 and frustrate French plans to appropriate more Turkish territory for themselves.17 He disguises himself as Major Ward, the commander of the British garrison, who takes pleasure in seeing other people suffer. When condemning Ahmet Esat's friend Reúit to death, he slaps his drillstick on his thigh and smiles before issuing his judgment in a matter-of-fact tone. In another scene he recounts how he shot a soldier in cold blood; when asked by Ahmet Esat/ øngiliz Kemal (Ayhan Iúık) whether he has any 15

Muzaffer Tema (1919-), stalwart of Yeúilçam cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, invariably cast as the baddie. 16 Osman F. Seden (1924-1998), film director, screenwriter and film producer, responsible for over 120 films between 1955 and 1987. 17 Lawrence recalls in Seven Pillars that before the outbreak of the First World War he spent “many years going up and down the Semitic East [...] learning the manners of the villagers and tribesmen and conditions of Syria and Mesopotamia.” Although he claims to know the Anatolian character, he does not appear to base his judgments on any experience of visiting Turkey (Lawrence 1991, 55).

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respect for death, Lawrence replies that he cares so little for it that he will have no qualms about executing the Turkish prisoners the next day. Unlike Lawrence of Arabia, where Lean suggests that Lawrence's cruelty only emerges as a spontaneous reaction to the Tafas massacre, Akad characterizes him as a cold, calculating sadist who will stop at nothing in his quest to dominate the Turks and at the same time line his own pocket. If that means employing two Arabs as bodyguards (both of whom have willingly subjugated themselves to his authority), then so be it. In a novelization of øngiliz Kemal based on Osman F. Seden's screenplay, which appeared in 1958 as a first-person narrative written from Ahmet Esat’s point of view, Lawrence forms a close-knit band of (mostly Arab) acquaintances to spy on the Turks and outwit the French. He accepts bribes from everyone from the Arabs, from British officers, and from dispossessed Ottomans eager to recover their financial position (Fehim 1958, 99-100). By contrast Ahmet Esat Tomruk sacrifices everything for his nation. At the end of the film he embraces his girlfriend Leman (Gülistan Güzey) who has ably assisted him in outwitting Lawrence; but subsequently announces that he must continue serving his country until the War of Independence has ended. Akad intercuts close-ups of Ahmet Esat and Leman, as together they repeat the phrase “after the war has ended.” The real Ahmet Esat Tomruk (1892-1966) was educated in østanbul, and subsequently spent some considerable time in England being educated at the Royal Naval College, where he became a boxing champion. In 1914 he returned to Turkey, and spent much of the First World War on active service. By 1918 he had become a spy, making full use of his language skills to infiltrate the Allied garrisons and pass on secrets back to the Turks. During that period he acquired the soubriquet “øngiliz Kemal.” There is no record of him actually encountering Lawrence, but there is little doubt that from the Turkish point of view he was perceived as morally superior, on the grounds that he put the interests of his country above persona] gain (Türkmen 2000, 1-10). Akad repeatedly emphasizes this point throughout lngiliz Kemal. In one long sequence Ahmet Esat challenges-and defeats-a much bigger (and far stronger) opponent in the boxing ring. However, the chief focus of interest centers not on the fight itself-which intercuts close-ups of the actors with unconvincing stock footage-but on the spectators' reactions to it. Lawrence (disguised as Major Ward) and his junior officer view the action with studied indifference. Two American sailors watch intently-one chewing gum, the other (an AfricanAmerican) staring open-mouthed in admiration. Only the Turks seem

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really involved in the action, shaking their fists and cheering every punch Ahmet Esat lands on his opponent. For them this is not just a sporting contest, but a struggle to preserve the integrity of the nation. On another occasion Ahmet Esat (while ostensibly employed by the British) plans a daring raid to save his compatriot Reúit (Turhan Göker) from execution. Akad cuts to a shot of an imam removing a gun from under his robes, followed by a sequence of brief close-ups of a British soldier, the imam, Reúit, and the imam once again. Suddenly another British soldier emerges from the firing squad and begins to shoot his own men; only after a few moments do we realize that it is Ahmet Esat in disguise. He holds the rest of the British forces at gunpoint while the prisoners walk out of the compound into the østanbul streets. In cinematic terms, the entire scene recalls Harold Young's The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934); but whereas Sir Percy Blakeney (Leslie Howard) enjoys the thrill of outwitting his rival Chauvelin (Raymond Massey), Ahmet Esat considers it his duty as a Turkish citizen to liberate his people from would-be colonizers. øngiliz Kemal seeks to reinforce this nationalist spirit through a series of dramatic set pieces that contribute little to the plot but celebrate different aspects of Turkish popular culture. One of these takes place in a meyhane, or tavern, where long shots of the waiters bringing food to the customers are intercut with close-ups of a belly dancer gyrating in front of the customers to the sound of local folk tunes. The sequence ends with a long medium shot (using a static camera) of the dancer's routine that culminates with her throwing herself to the ground in an erotic pose. Another scene depicts the Turks as doughty fighters, as they throw a party of British soldiers out of the meyhane. Akad intercuts lengthy shots of the brawl with close-ups of individual Turks exclaiming “this is an English fist for you!” Such sequences provided the inspiration for the film's publicity: one article quoted Seden as saying that øngiliz Kemal would appeal to everyone-not only lovers of adventures, spy thrillers, love stories, and crime dramas, but those who liked to see Turks fighting and winning (“Kemal Film” 1952, 10). The audience’s support for the Turkish cause is greatly increased by the casting of Ayhan Iúık as Ahmet Esat. After having won a search for a star contest organized by the fanzine Yıldız (Star), he made his debut in 1951. Within a year he was well on the way to becoming Turkey's first major box-office superstar, with his dashing figure and pencil mustache directly modeled on Clark Gable. His career and contribution to the Turkish film industry will be explored in the next chapter.

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On the other hand, it might be claimed that, in spite of its anti-colonial stance, lngiliz Kemal has been colonized by Hollywood conventions-not only in the casting, but in its construction that largely derives from the western. In the meyhane scene for instance, the patrons express their appreciation for the belly dancer’s routine by firing their pistols into the air. The fight scenes incorporate familiar moments such as a bottle being smashed over one man’s head, while the bartender cowers behind the bar, clutching the cash box to his chest. Once Ahmet Esat has taken his leave of his girlfriend Leman at the end of tile film, he climbs on his horse and rides off into the desert as the credits roll. However, it is important to remember that, unlike Hollywood, the Turkish film industry was still in its infancy in the early 1950s. Although filmmakers had been operating since the end of the First World War (most of them with a theatrical background), no one had either the resources or the talent available to produce work on a regular basis. However, in the post-1945 period the climate changed; the economy expanded rapidly, while the government introduced a tax of 25 percent on all cinema ticket sales, in an attempt to generate money for new films (Shaw and Shaw 1977, 400-13). The benefits of this policy were rapidly felt; film production increased annually between 1950 and 1958, and new production companies came into being. Directors now had the freedom-and the financial muscle-to establish a new cinematic language of their own dealing with topics of specific interest to Turkish filmgoers. In 1951, for instance, thirteen historical films were made, eight of which were concerned with the War of Independence (1920-22). With this in mind, I would argue that, while Seden’s screenplay for øngiliz Kemal certainly draws on Hollywood conventions, it simultaneously celebrates the achievements of the nation in the past (through the exploits of its central character) and in the present (i.e., the early 1950s) as the local film industry begins to produce new, original, and challenging work that seeks to challenge the dominance of American films in the Turkish cinema. The subject of T. E. Lawrence and his contribution to the Arab Revolt has clearly proven fruitful for filmmakers. In the mid-1930s Alexander Korda commissioned a screenplay based on Revolt in the Desert, the abridged popular version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom that first appeared in 1924. The first draft was written by the actor Miles Malleson and subsequently revised by the director Brian Desmond Hurst and the writer Duncan Guthrie; but the film was never made, on account of the fact that the Foreign Office was concerned about the possibility of offending the Turks, who at the time were one of Britain's allies. Such fears were justified: having read one draft of the script in October 1937, Mr. Ors,

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counselor at the Turkish Embassy in London, protested to the Foreign Office that the script showed the Turks “as tyrants and oppressors of Arabs, and he felt it was most undesirably that a film which cast such aspersions on Turkish history and national character should be exhibited” (qtd Kelly et. al. 1997, 8). A glance at the script proves the truth of this assertion: while Lawrence is portrayed as the dashing hero, whose experiences in Arabia cure him of “crude ambition” but leave him “with a craving for good repute among men” (KelIy et. al. 1997, 129), his Turkish adversaries are sadistic brutes. One scene has their leader Jemal Pasha hanging three Arab soldiers in front of King Feisal, remarking as he does so that to achieve victory over the British, “we must have the loyal support of your people.” As Feisal exits, Jemal turns to his fellow Turkish officer and observes: “the only way to get obedience from an Arab is to treat him like the slave and dog he is” (Kelly et. al. 1997, 38-39). Robert Bolt’s script for Lawrence of Arabia views Lawrence more critically, depicting him as a flawed hero, a megalomaniac and a sadist. This is perhaps typical for its time (the early 1960s), when Lawrence's character was subject to revaluation in a series of biographies (including Nutting’s Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and the Motive), and Britain's contribution to the Arab Revolt was subject to a similar process of scrutiny. As Steven C. Caton argues, both Bolt and Lean characterize the British army as self-interested-witness Feisal’s (Alec Guinness’) observation that "protecting the Suez Canal [during the Revolt] [....] is an essential British interest. It is of little consequence to us [the Arabs]” (qtd Caton 1999, 176-77). While Lawrence of Arabia tries to understand the Arab state of mind (particularly its preoccupation with male honor and blood feuds) it simultaneously orientalizes the Ottomans, who are treated as violent, destructive, and perverted. When the film was released in Britain in 1962, the Turkish government issued an official protest against the depiction of their soldiers (Caton 1999, 61); it was subsequently banned in Turkey. øngiliz Kemal sums up Turkish attitudes of the immediate post-1945 period toward the Arab Revolt and its aftermath, with its depiction of the British as rapacious colonialists, epitomized by Lawrence, and its simultaneous suggestion that the Arabs have already become their subjects. This provides the pretext for Ahmet Esat’s adventures as depicted in the film, as he strives to save the Turkish people from a similar fate. In truth, the Turkish army was not interested in the fate of the Arabs-although they had been ordered to serve there by the Ottomans. By the end of World War I, it was far more interested in overturning the vindictive settlements that

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had been imposed on them by the Allies (Shaw and Shaw 1977, 340). However, Seden’s rewriting of history is deliberately designed to celebrate the Turkish nation that was born out of the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire, despite the best efforts of the Allies to prevent them. Until the founding of the Republic in 1923 “the Turk” had been scorned by Ottomans and foreigners alike (Shaw and Shaw 1977, 375); øngiliz Kemal tries to redress the balance by celebrating the achievements of one of its heroes. Since øngiliz Kemal and Lawrence of Arabia appeared, there appears to have been a limited revaluation of attitudes amongst western critics toward the films and their representations of the Arab Revolt.18 The restored version of Lawrence of Arabia was shown in Turkish cinemas in 1991 (two years after its American premiere); it is now freely available on DVD in local retailers. In Europe and the United States postcolonial critics of Lawrence of Arabia have condemned the film for its unspoken association of the westerner with “productive, creative pioneering” compared to the Arab or the Turk, who are associated with “underdevelopment” (Shohat and Stam 1994, 148). The chief focus of interest of øngiliz Kemal for many cineastes now lies in the fact that it contains one of Iúık’s early performances. So far as I know the film remains unseen outside Turkey. However attitudes towards Lawrence himself have not really changed within the Turkish Republic: as a later chapter will show, filmmakers have still used him as a demonic figure, whose interests are primarily in undermining Turkish/Ottoman integrity.

18

I use the term “limited,” as Lawrence has been the subject of two further film biographies, that concentrate on his weaknesses, yet still adopt an orientalist stance towards the Ottomans. Lawrence After Arabia (1992) has Ralph Fiennes reprising O’Toole’s role; the film hardly mentions the Ottomans as it recounts Lawrence’s role in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. PBS’s Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World (2004), adopts a post-9/11 view of the subject by portraying the Arabs sympathetically, but still succeeds in demonizing the Ottomans.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE AYHAN IùIK: LONG LIVE THE KING

Ayhan Iúık (1929-79) was one of the biggest stars of the Turkish popular cinema in the middle of the last century. Born Ayhan Iúıyan in øzmir, he started his working life in a class factory, while studying fine arts at university. In 1951 he won a ‘search for a star’ competition organized by the fanzine Yıldız (Star), and changed his name to Ayhan Iúık. From then on he never looked back; in a 27-year screen career he made over 130 films, mostly playing the kind of heroic roles that eventually earned him the nickname Kral (The King). Iúık’s fame was confined to the Turkish context; in 1959 he traveled to the United States in the hope of becoming an international star, but nothing came of it on account of his lack of English. When film work dried up in the early 1970s, Iúık embarked on a second career as a singer of Turkish classical music, with several hit singles to his credit. At the time of his death from a brain hemorrhage (aged only fifty) he was due to star in a police series for Turkish State Television (TRT). Iúık’s star image had its roots in Karagöz (Turkish shadow theatre) – a form of entertainment depending for its success on a close relationship between performers and audience. Metin And comments: “The acting area [in Karagöz] is not separated from the audience, there is no line between them, and no transparent fourth wall” (And 1987, 14). Karagöz emphasized the importance of the actor/audience relationship by relying on stock characters, who could be divided into three distinct groups–(1) the basic figures (heroes and villains) forming the backbone of the drama; (2) feminine roles (wives, mothers, dancing girls or confidantes); and (3) comic secondary characters (And 1987, 68).1 While witnessing a Karagöz 1

The emphasis on repetition is identified as characteristic of Yeúilçam cinema. See Atilla Tokatlı, “Caractères Specifiques et Fondements Sociaux et Culturels du Cinéma Turc” [Specific Characteristics and the Social and Cultural Foundations of

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drama, audiences experienced the pleasures of familiarity, as if they were re-encountering old friends. Iúık evoked similar emotions in film after film, as he played characters drawn from the first category–clean-cut heroes upholding traditional virtues of justice and fair play. More importantly, Iúık’s star image demonstrated how loyalty to the divinity offered a solution to social problems of various kinds–marital disharmony, financial troubles or inter- and intra-familial rivalry. The majority of his films–most of which were set in østanbul-were constructed around binary oppositions: eastern/western values, lower/ upper classes, metropolitan/ provincial cultures. The big city élite drove American cars and frittered their money away on parties, while the provincial or rural middle and lower classes led simpler lives but could always be trusted to do the right thing. Iúık was a member of this social group, with a world-view–similar in concept to that expressed by from the thirteenth century mystic poet Rumi-in which “everything serves as a sign-vehicle for the Divine [….] in Islam Logos [the voice of God] may penetrate all bodies” (Erdo÷an 2002, 244). While class-conflicts, or conflicts between individuals and society certainly exist, they are insignificant when compared to the notion of following the right path–in other words, listening to the divine voice. Such beliefs transformed Iúık into a force for good, eliminating bad characters (villains, adulteresses) while encouraging those that remained to listen to the voice of God while striving to sustain family stability. Using examples from some of his films of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as articles published in fanzines and other periodicals, I shall look at Ayhan Iúık’s star image in closer detail, showing how he not only appealed to the film-going audience’s sense of familiarity (in a direct echo of Karagöz), but also reinforced the importance of divine loyalty as a way of restoring and sustaining social harmony. Throughout his career Iúık played ordinary working people–mechanics, coach-drivers, architects–struggling to make a living in the country or the city (reflecting the social origins of the majority of his audiences). Even when he essayed an historical role (such as øngiliz Kemal in øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı [English Kemal Against T.E.Lawrence] (1952), he upheld the values of integrity and loyalty. While some critics complained that Iúık–like many of his contemporaries–played basically the same role in every film, filmgoers enjoyed the fantasy of believing that they were in the presence of a man-of-the-people-someone whom they could trust. Although Iúık became one of the highest paid stars of Yeúilçam, he never lost the common touch. Onscreen he was always willing to assist those in the Turkish Cinema], in Regards Sur le Cinéma Turc (Ankara: Baúnur Matbaası, 1966): 21-9.

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need (often at great personal cost), and his devotion towards his family members remained unshakeable–even when some of them broke the law. While the fanzines regularly wrote about his latest fancy acquisitions (cars, clothing, etc.), they likewise characterized Iúık as a public-spirited soul, ever willing to give up his spare time to visit local hospitals or children’s homes and perform spontaneous concerts-particularly in the latter part of his career. This helped reaffirm the importance of the belief that, as God speaks through all things, even superstars like Iúık remained humble and content, as they offered succor to the needy or underprivileged. It was this capacity to act on behalf of others–both on and off screen–that earned him the soubriquet Kral [the king].2 The construction of Iúık’s star image as a man of the people was apparent even at the start of his career. The fanzine Yıldız introduced him to their readers as someone who coped with adversity from a tender age; his father died when he was six years old, and he had quit high school early in order to support his family. He had worked hard to put himself through university before beginning his working life as a commercial artist (“Ayhan Iúıyan” 1951, 7). A year later the same fanzine reported that while some people might consider him arrogant, Iúık had strenuously endeavored to carve out a career-path for himself (Ayúın 1952, 8). In his first major hit Kanun Namına [In the Name of the Law] (1952), he plays Nâzım, a mechanic devoted to his wife Ayten (Gülistan Güzey), and his workmates. However he remains innocent of the corrupt ways of the city, and thus becomes easy prey for rapacious Halil (Muzaffer Tema), who works with Ayten’s sister Nezehat (Neúe Yulaç) to break up the family. Nazım also suffers at the hands of good-time girl Perihan (Pola Morelli). Eventually Nazım shoots Ayten by mistake, while killing Nezehat and Halil. The action comes to a climax with a long chase-sequence, as Nazım is pursued by police officers and takes refuge in his workplace, armed only with a single shotgun. There is no prospect of escape: police surround the entire area. Ayten pleads with him to give himself up; after a while he emerges, drops his gun on the floor and accepts his punishment. In a voice-over Ayten tearfully looked forward to a time when the two of them live happily together once more. The film puts Nâzım’s credentials as an honest, hardworking member of the community to the test; and he passes with flying 2 Iúık was not always so obliging off-screen: the director Memduh Ün recalled that he could be quite difficult on set (Filmlerini Anlatıyor [Memories of My Films] (østanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2009), 213-17, 227-9. He said much the same things in an interview with Pınar Tınaz Gürmen (Sinema Dersleri [Cinema Masterclasses] (østanbul: ønkilâp Kitabevi, 2006): 57-85).

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colors. Although pursued by police officers, he still finds the time to give money to a beggar slumped pathetically on a street-corner. Unlike Perihan, he does not favor self-indulgence. Iúık earned considerable praise from reviewers for the “lifelike realism” of his portrayal of a mechanic who triumphed over the “immoral conspiracies” that threaten his marriage (“Kanun Namına” 1952, 9).3 Iúık’s public image changed little, even when he had established himself as Yeúilçam’s principal male box-office attraction.4 An interview published in the general interest magazine Hayat (Life) in May 1961 rehearsed his family origins, his initial career as an artist and his subsequent rise to stardom. When asked about his ideal woman Iúık stressed the importance of marriage and platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex (so long as they remained platonic). He recalled one occasion when a female admirer had traveled from Ankara to østanbul (352 km) simply to have lunch with him. After the meal had concluded, Iúık ensured that she was safely put on the train back home (Etingü 1961, 10). This anecdote reaffirmed Iúık’s basic decency as someone who had never forgotten his humble origins. Such qualities also ensured that most of his vehicles were box-office successes. In Yaralı Aslan [The Wounded Lion] (1963), he plays a factory worker who travels from Adana to østanbul with three of his friends on the pretext of visiting his relatives. Realizing that they think of him as little more than a provincial bumpkin, Iúık decides to have some fun at their expense by pretending to be a mincing effeminate with a penchant for flowery shirts and a perpetually runny nose. However he leads a double life as he assumes the role of an avenger foiling plots to blackmail innocent factory-owners and their employees. The film contains an exciting climax where Iúık kills off the villains in a prolonged gun-battle, removes his mask 3

The film has been described thus by Giovanni Scognamillo: “The camera is no longer there to witness the action; it is part of the action. It becomes one with the protagonists and their surroundings […] The surroundings and the action are as one. This creates a new sense of [documentary] reality” (Türk Sinema Tarihi [Turkish Film History], østanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 1998: 144) (my translation). A critique of the film in English can be found in Aslı Daldal, Art, Politics and Society: Social Realism in Italian and Turkish Cinemas (østanbul: The Isis Press, 2003): 148-50. 4 Iúık has formed the subject for one major biography – Nigar Pösteki’s Yeúilçam’dan Bir Portre: Ayhan Iúık [A Portrait from Yeúilçam: Ayhan Iúık] (østanbul: Es Yayınları, 2007). The book concentrates on the construction of his star image, as well as analyzing some of his major films, including Kanun Namına (90-107).

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and thereby reveals his true identity. Unlike his outwardly sophisticated relatives, his modest upbringing has given him a social conscience. Iúık’s concern for the welfare of others was also apparent in his domestic life, as the fanzines portrayed him as an ideal family man. Two photo-stories published in Ses magazine in 1966 saw him cradling his daughter Serap on a sofa: one had him reading a bedtime story; the other created an imaginary dialogue in which Serap asked him whether the plaster cast he was wearing (having broken a bone in his foot) was painful or not. He replied that it was not painful at all (“Artistler Evleri” 1966, 1617; “Ayhan Iúık: øki Ay Filim Çeviremeyecek” 1966, 3). Six years later Hayat contrasted Marlon Brando–the social outcast–with Iúık, the man of the people, with a beautiful wife Gülúen and daughter Serap. Two photographs depicting the family in their living room reinforced the image of happy domesticity (Güney 1972, 20-1). In films such as Zafer Davuto÷lu’s Katilin Kızı [The Daughter of the Murderer] (1964), Iúık portrayed a family man fighting to retain custody of his daughter (Parla ùenol), after having brought her up as a single parent. His behavior remains impeccable, as he refuses to go out with another woman (Hülya Koçyi÷it) in case it would sully the memory of his late wife (who died in childbirth). The camera repeatedly zooms in on his wife’s photograph, to emphasize how much her memory lives on in his conscience. The film ends with Iúık understanding the importance of the nuclear family for his daughter’s future well being; hence he agrees to marry, while turning his late wife’s photograph of his wife to the wall. A chapter in his life has come to an end. Iúık’s image invoked the performative traditions established by Karagöz, as he heroically strove in film after film to reinforce his position as a man of the people.5 This strategy proved so successful that critics and fanzines frequently described him in familial terms (for example, calling him “The Father of our Cinema” (“Türk Sinemasında” 1972, 10-11)). When Iúık died in April 1979, a writer in Cumhuriyet claimed that “our cinema has lost its king”-someone who for twenty years had portrayed the struggles of the Turkish people onscreen (Diçleli 1979, 8). In two films dating from 1964-5 (Kral Arkadaúım [My Best Friend], and Sevinç Gözyaúları [Tears of Joy]), he plays a lawyer standing up for the old-fashioned virtues of friendship, loyalty and frugality. In the first film he triumphs over the 5

Most stars of Yeúilçam cinema played the same roles in film after film; this required screenwriters to sacrifice originality in favor of producing variations on specific themes. See Serpil Kırel, Yeúilçam Öykü Sineması [Yeúilçam Narrative Cinema] (østanbul: Babil Yayınları, 2005): 118-35.

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villains; in the second, however, his virtues prove no match for Filiz the good-time girl (Ajda Pekkan). As in most Yeúılcam films, she meets a violent end; but not before she tried to shoot her sister Selma (Filiz Akın), who happens to be Iúık’s fiancée. The implication is clear–while all good people are vulnerable, it is important that they retain their integrity to avoid falling into corruption like Selma. Audiences certainly identified with Iúık’s heroes; in 1965 Ses asked its readers to send in look-alike photos and published one of student Enver E÷in, who bore a striking resemblance to the actor in his younger days (“Hangi Artiste Benziyorsunuz” 1965, 1). Iúık had a pragmatic view of his screen image; in one interview (published to mark his twentieth year in films) he claimed that he never complained about the parts he was given. This made him very popular amongst directors as well as audiences, and hence guaranteed him regular work (“Türk Sinemasında” 1972, 10-11).6 However there were occasions when Iúık’s carefully cultivated star image of a man of the people appeared to be undermined. By the early 1960s he was the highest-paid star in Yeúilçam cinema, earning 70,000 Turkish lira (about $8000) per picture, as opposed to 1800 lira eleven years earlier (“On Bir Yıl Önce” 1963, 9). He regularly promoted luxury items in fanzines, and thereby transformed himself into “a total item of merchandise” which neither wore out nor diminished upon consumption (Morin 1960, 137). One article published in Ses in November 1961 analyzed Iúık’s dress sense beside a photograph of him wearing a sports jacket, American shirt and brown tie (Tahúin 1961, 12-13). In other newsitems Iúık showed off his latest cars, including a 1957 Chevrolet and a topof-the-range Mercedes costing 140,000 Turkish lira (about $16,000) (“Yıldızlar ve Otomobilleri” 1961, 12-13; “Artistler ve Otomobilleri” 1966, 16-17). Most bizarrely the star was the subject of a photo-story wearing all the latest hunting-gear and accessories, including cravat, shoulder-bag, rifle, magazine and binoculars (ùensoy 1965, 15-18). Such articles constructed Iúık as a special person, not a man of the peoplesomeone “original, rare and unique even when she [or he] is widely distributed and used” (Morin 1960, 138). To overcome this contradiction, Iúık’s image-makers deliberately invoked the notion (inspired by Rumi’s writings) that as God lives through all things, human beings should heed his divine warnings. Of particular significance was the belief that “the idol-temple of lust and wealth,” could 6

For a brief summary of Iúık’s career and his star image, see Burçak Evren, Türk Sinema Sanatçıları Ansiklopedisi [Encyclopedia of Turkish Cinema Artists], (østanbul: San Vakfı Yayınları, 1983), 82.

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easily drive people away from the path of virtue [….] Many people get lost in the echoes of this world and are so charmed in them that they imprison themselves in the walls of forms, although the key of freedom is in their own hand” (Türkmen 2002, 127, 130). Iúık made a lot of money, but he could not be seen to indulge in too much conspicuous consumption. Consequently several articles appeared in which he was seen to make charitable donations, or appearing in person at local schools, offering gifts as well as participating in carefully staged question-and-answer sessions (“’Kral:’ Ilk ve Son Defa” 1970, 3). On other occasions Iúık attended special film screenings, signed autographs (“Filmini Seyretmeye” 1972, 26), or gave free concerts where he would sing Turkish classical music standards (“Sinemamızın Taçsız” 1974, 8). Iúık’s reputation as a man of the people was secure, devoting time, energy as well as money to those less fortunate than himself. Religion–understood in this context as the need to recognize divine power, while being aware of one’s community responsibilities–formed an important theme in Iúık’s films. Bir Avuç Toprak [A Handful of Soil] (1957) contained a scene in which an entire village is shown praying to God for the loss of one of their number. In Aslan Pençesi [The Lion’s Paw] (1966) Iúık plays øsmail, whose younger brother Yılmaz (Kuzey Vargın) departs from the moral straight and narrow to join local mobster Reúit (Turgut ėzatay) in a life of crime. Yılmaz ultimately sees the error of his ways and marries his teenage sweetheart, but the two of them have to be punished for their crimes, as they are pursued by Reúit and his mob. Even though øsmail offers temporary shelter in his forest retreat, Yılmaz cannot escape his inevitable fate as Reúit shoots him in the back, while the thugs rape and kill Yılmaz’s young wife. øsmail enacts some form of revenge by killing Reúit, but can do nothing else other than to drag Yılmaz and his wife’s corpses out of the retreat and rejoin their hands together in death. The film ends with øsmail sinking to his knees offering a silent prayer. Happiness eludes him, in spite of pursuing a virtuous life; he seeks divine guidance to help him secure “the key of freedom” from material and worldly affairs. Yet we nonetheless admire his devotion to the cause of religion: in time he might become someone who (in Rumi’s view) could cultivate “the kind of self that expresses the attributes of God, which in Islam are 99 in number […] If we want to be with God or be his friend, we should try to possess some of His attributes” (Türkmen 2002, 133)–for example, respecting the divinity while setting an example of humility for others to follow (Türkmen 2002, 183). Iúık certainly achieved this objective in some of his historical film

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roles. øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı [English Kemal Against Lawrence] (1952) saw him playing Ahmet Esat Tomruk, a heroic spy who knows no fear. In the film he is shown looking skywards before challenging a bigger–and far stronger–British opponent in the boxing ring. After a bruising conflict (which required Iúık to master the basic arts of pugilism (“Rol øçin” 1952, 8-9)), Tomruk emerges the winner, much to the delight of the overwhelmingly Turkish audience. On another occasion Tomruk plans a daring raid to save his compatriot Reúit (Turhan Göker) from execution. The scene opens with a shot of a man removing a pistol from underneath his robes, followed by a series of close-ups of a British soldier, Reúit and an imam. Suddenly another British soldier emerges from the crowd, looks briefly up at the heavens and apparently begins to shoot his own men; only after a few moments do we realize that it is Tomruk in disguise. He holds the British at gunpoint while the prisoners–including Reúit–walks out of the compound and into the østanbul streets. Both sequences clearly imply that God preserves the integrity of the nation by giving Tomruk the confidence to overcome the British single-handedly. However this devotion to duty comes at a price. At the end of the film Tomruk is shown taking leave of his girlfriend Leman (Gülistan Güzey), climbing on his horse and riding into the sunset at the credits roll. In a context where soldiers were trying to create the new Turkish nation out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, personal feelings have to be set aside– especially by those who followed Rumi’s advice and cultivated “the kind of self that expresses the attributes of God.”7 The theme is explored once again in Aúktan Da Üstün [Superior to Love] (1962), in which Iúık plays Binbaúı Kemal [Major Kemal), another Turkish spy infiltrating the Ottoman government to discover details of their latest campaigns. However he proves so convincing in the role that his fellow-Turks believe that he has betrayed them–especially when he falls for rich countess Nilüfer (Peri Han), even though he has already pledged his troth to the honest village girl Perihan (Serpil Gül). Kemal’s brother Captain Nazmi (Ahmet Mekin) is so incensed that he bribes Nilüfer to pass on information about Kemal’s movements in the Ottoman corridors of power. The film’s conclusion is predictable: Nilüfer is eventually killed for being untrustworthy, while Nazmi understands that the most effective means for his brother to prize secrets out of the Ottomans was to develop a 7

Iúık’s early career has been discussed by Giovanni Scognamillo in relation to Lütfi Ö. Akad’s early films (Türk Sinema Tarihi I: 1896-1959 (østanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1987: 127-33)). See also Nijat Özön, Türk Sinema Tarihi 1896-1960 (østanbul: Artist Reklâm Ortaklı÷ı, 1962), 155-67.

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close relationship with Nilüfer–something that the major was duty-bound to do, even if it put his family loyalties at risk. The two brothers are briefly reconciled, before Nazmi shoots the Ottoman leader Muallim Ismail Hakkı (Nubar Terziyan) and then perishes himself in battle. Kemal looks skywards and nods his head slightly, as if understanding the divine logic that decrees that sacrifices are necessary if the Turkish people are going to achieve their dream of freedom. While such films strengthened Iúık’s image as a selfless personality, blessed with the common touch, they also confirmed his status as a national hero of the Turkish cinema. This was an important step; in his early career one MGM executive who happened to be visiting Turkey likened him to Tyrone Power on account of his masculine physique (“Ayhan’in Aúk Sahneleri” 1951, 3). With his pencil-thin mustache and slicked-back hair, he also resembled Clark Gable in some of his early roles. As the years passed, so Iúık’s image divested itself of its Hollywood associations and became more culture-specific. I suggest that this was inevitable, as Yeúilçam cinema reached a peak of popularity during the 1960s (lasting until the late 1970s), producing nearly two hundred films a year that not only entertained domestic audiences, but proved equally popular in other Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Iúık captured the mood of increasing national self-confidence, as Yeúilçam put the Turkish film industry firmly on the cinematic map (it became the third largest in the world) (Evren 2005, 238). As in Greek cinema of the same period, his style of performance drew on local Karagöz traditions which established a powerful link between an actor’s star image, style of performance and the characters he played (Eleftheriotis 2001, 187). Iúık was simultaneously positioned outside and inside his films, playing different characters but also performing with reference to other roles and other films. As a result the narratives of most of his vehicles tended to be predictable, involving the struggles between good and evil. More importantly, Iúık’s star image rejected a basic assumption of European socio-political thought-that human beings are ontologically singular, while gods and spirits are in the end “social facts,” and that the social exists somehow prior to them. Being human meant, as Ramchandra Gandhi once observed, discovering “the possibility of calling upon God without being under an obligation to first establish his reality” (qtd Chakrabarty 2000, 16). This had a social as well as a religious orientation; by invoking divine assistance, Iúık not only set himself on the path of virtue, but set an example to his audiences of the importance of understanding how a belief in the divinity transcends distinctions between good and evil, rich and

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poor. In Rumi’s formulation: “God is above these confines [….] for good dies not exist apart from evil. Since good and evil are not two and there is no separation between them, therefore it is impossible that there should be two creators” (Türkmen 2002, 163). Once people understood this, they could perhaps follow Iúık’s example and tread the path of virtue.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE MANY FACES OF TÜRKÂN ùORAY

Türkân ùoray has been a star of the Turkish cinema for over half a century now. Born in 1945, she graduated from Fatih Kız Lisesi in østanbul. While living with her mother and sister Nazan (also an actress) in rented accommodation, she found out that the landlords were the parents of Emel Yıldız, one of the earliest stars of the Turkish cinema. This proved to be ùoray’s passport to stardom, by 1960 she had made her film debut in the melodrama Aúk Rüzgarı [Love Wind],1 aged just fifteen years old, and was signed to a long-term contract. In the next five years ùoray established herself as the principal female star in Turkish cinema (acquiring the popular soubriquet “Sultana” in the process), making over sixty films in the process, and while doing so acquired more and more artistic influence over her material. By 1969 she had created what came to be known as the “ùoray Rules,” which gave her almost total artistic control over her film career. They gave her the right to be given a script at least one month before shooting began and make whatever changes she desired. She could choose her cast, as well as director; anyone contradicting her could be deemed surplus to requirements. Every film she made had to be shot only in østanbul, and she would not work on Sundays. One critic described her as “the tyrant of film sets. The [choice of] producer and male star depend on her” (“Türkan ùoray Film Setlerinin” 1965, 3) Nonetheless she continued to work at an astonishing rate, by the end of the decade she had made nearly one hundred films. In the next two decades ùoray reinvented herself as a more dramatic actor, portraying strong women whose life-expectations extended far beyond the traditional goals of husband, home and family. In 1987 she told Cumhuriyet newspaper that “Society has changed. In actual fact the rules were not imposed by me but were perhaps a direction given to my cinema 1

Released in 1960, the stars were Göksel Arsoy and Leyla Sayar.

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career by the audience. All of this is now well in the past, and henceforward we must be up to date.”2 ùoray’s private life underwent a similar transformation, as she divorced her actor husband Cihan Ünal in 1987 and lived as a single parent, bringing up her daughter Ya÷mur. ùoray’s increasingly bold choice of roles brought her awards–for example, Best Actress at the Tashkent Film Festival for Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım [The Girl with the Red Scarf] (1978), directed by Atıf Yılmaz; Best Actress at the Antalya Film Festival for Hayallarim, Aúkım ve Sen [My Dreams, My Love and You] (1987) (also directed by Yılmaz); and Best Actress at the Bastia Film Festival for So÷uktu ve Ya÷mur Çiseliyordu [It was Cold and It was Raining] (1992), directed by Engin Ayca. In recent years she has continued to play challenging roles, combining them with work in sitcoms on television such as Tatlı Hayat [Sweet Life] (2001-4).3 More recently she has hosted a chat show on the private television channel NTV, looking back on Turkish film in general, and her own career in particular. Perhaps more than any actress, the development of ùoray’s career is synonymous with the development of Turkish cinema as an art form. One of the main explanations for her remaining a star for so long has been her capacity to reinvent herself on screen and in other media. In her early career she appeared as the ingénue, a young girl invariably ruled by her parents, whose sole aim in life was to find the right man. In Aúk Yarısı [Race for Love] (1961) she falls in love with handsome footballer Fikret (Fikret Hakan), much to her father’s displeasure; but he eventually changes his mind once he sees how devoted Fikret is to her. Two years later she spars with fellow-lawyer Osman (øzzet Günay) in another romantic comedy Beni Osman Öldürdü [Osman Killed Me] (1963), either hitting him over the head with whatever comes to hand or kissing him, depending on the particular circumstances. In Sayın Bayan [Dear Lady] (also 1963), ùoray plays Serpil, a village girl whose mother disapproves of her daughter’s relationship with eligible bachelor Do÷an (Tamer Yi÷it). The mother tries every possible strategy to break the two of them up, but eventually realizes the futility of her task and gives Serpil permission to see Do÷an. The film ends with a romantic reunion as the two lovers embrace on a train 2

“Toplum de÷iúti. Aslında kurallar bana dayattı÷ı de÷ildi ama içinde belki bir yönü benim sinema kariyerine dinleyiciler tarafından verildi. Bütün bunlar artık geçmiúte iyi ve bundan sonra biz güncel olmalıdır” (Cumhuriyet, September 20, 1987: 4). 3 Based on the American hit The Jeffersons (1975-85), this comedy also starred Haluk Bilginer and was directed by Bora Tekay.

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departing from østanbul. In Gençlik Rüzgarı [The Wind of Youth] (1964), ùoray’s Fatma has to cope with her father, who has been jailed for murdering his wife’s lover, as well as two lovers competing for her hand in marriage–the ever-reliable Mehmet Ali (Ediz Hun), and American wouldbe tycoon Charlie (Süleyman Turan). Eventually her father is released and cleared of all charges, while Fatma opts for stability (as personified by Mehmet Ali). Although frustrated in his suit, Charlie generously wishes Fatma and Mehmet Ali future happiness. Sometimes ùoray’s young women made the wrong choice of man, and endured terrible suffering as a result. In Sana Layik De÷ilim [I am Not Worthy of You] (1964), she plays Türkân, who falls in love with Osman, an apparently eligible young man (Önder Sömer). He tries to kill her by letting the brake of her car off and pushing her down a hill. Blinded as a result of the accident, Türkân is gradually restored to health through the attentions of middle-aged loser Ekrem (Sadri Alıúık). Although Türkân and Ekrem do not actually marry, they retain a close companionship that sees them through adversity; perhaps they will tie the knot in the future. At this stage in her career ùoray was also an object of male fantasy, invariably appearing in beach sequences dressed in a skimpy bikini. Sometimes it seems she went even further: Seçil Büker describes the star’s 1961 film Sevimli Haydut [The Lovable Bandit], which has her “naked from the waist up [….] her hair hides her nipples […] but the greater part of her breasts is visible” (Büker 2002, 159).4 The fan magazines at that time liked to include cheesecake photos of her: in the issue dated August 30, 1961, the general interest magazine Perde featured ùoray on the front cover, clad in a black mini-dress and yellow sun-hat, her legs stretched invitingly towards the camera (“Haftalık” 1961, 1). Other fan-magazines tried to find suitable husbands for her: in a 1964 article Artist magazine stated quite firmly that she was about to marry movie mogul Rüchan Adlı, some twenty-five years her senior. The story occupied a three-page spread in Pazar magazine a year later (“Seni Seviyorum” 1965, 6-9).5 However there were occasions when ùoray admitted to the fanzines that she wanted a husband so as to settle down to a more ordered life (“Yeni Bir Hayatın” 1963, 5).

4

See Zeynep Çi÷dem Karabekiro÷lu, “1960’larda Popüler Dergilerde Yıldız ømaji: Türkân ùoray” [Türkân ùoray’s Star Image in Popular Magazines of the 1960s], Biyografia 8 (2009): 121-41, for a more detailed analysis of how the star was portrayed at this time. 5 ùoray lived for many years as Adlı’s “kept woman” before marrying Cihan Ünal.

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Such priorities were also important to her screen image from the mid1960s onwards, as she gradually reinvented herself as a young woman trying to cope with the responsibilities of marriage.6 As Türkân in Elveda Sevgilim [Goodbye My Lover] (1965)-a melodrama with distinct echoes of Romeo and Juliet–ùoray is forced by her tyrannical father to spurn her lover Kemal (Ediz Hun) and marry Osman (øzzet Günay) instead. Osman is her distant relative; Kemal, on the other hand, is a member of a rival family, who has been feuding with Türkân’s family for generations. However she refuses to comply with her father’s wishes and elopes with Kemal. Enraged by this wanton show of disloyalty, her father pursues the lovers; but accidentally falls into a quagmire. Kemal rescues him, and the three of them are reconciled as a result. Akúam Güneúi [The Evening Sun] (1967) contains a similar basic plot, with ùoray’s Jülide having to conform to the will of her tyrannical father Nazmi (øzzet Günay), who cannot accept that morals have become slightly more lax during the 1960s. Jülide is faced with the prospect of marriage against her will; although she is spared this indignity, she harbors a lingering resentment against her father. In the end he dies of a heart-attack: Jülide feels the loss very keenly, but resolves to lead a life of her own and choose her own marriage-partner–even if it is not what Nazmi would have wanted. Sometimes ùoray’s characters made the wrong choice of marriage partner–and suffered terribly as a result. In Seven Kadın Unutmaz [A Loving Woman Does Not Forget] (1965), ùoray plays Türkân, an office worker who falls in love with an attractive young man (Ediz Hun). However things do not work out between them; and the young man marries an older woman (Çolpan ølhan) who turns out to be an alcoholic. Türkân enjoys her clandestine meetings with the young man, but realizes that she will always be “the other woman,” unable to marry her chosen lover. Eventually she takes the only course open to her in a society that, for all its apparent openness (with semi-naked women like the younger ùoray appearing scantily clad in the fanzines), still frowned upon adulterous relationships. Director Osman F. Seden’s camera zooms in on her tortured face as she takes a gun in hand and commits suicide. The film might be seen as a comment on ùoray’s private life at that time. Ekmekçi Kadın [The Bread Seller Woman] (also 1965) has ùoray playing a dual role as Ayúe, a mother abandoned by her husband who is arrested on suspicion of murdering him; and Leyla, her hedonistic daughter enjoying the high life .

6

ùoray’s image in the press and fanzines of the 1960s has been explored by Evrim Zuhal Aras in “Türkân ùoray: Bir ømajın Baúarısı” [Türkân ùoray: The Success of an Image], Biyografia 8 (2009): 63-77.

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of bars and casual relationships in østanbul. ùoray shows how difficult it was for married women in the mid-1960s to cope in patriarchal societies, as they serve their husbands while assuming sole responsibility for their children’s welfare. Ayúe simply cannot face such tasks–especially following her arrest, which explains why she ends up selling bread on the streets to raise a few coppers to support herself (hence the film’s title). In keeping with her altered screen image, ùoray made sure she was portrayed in a less frivolous way in the print media. Cheesecake shots of her in a state of déshabillée were replaced by on-set stories of her preparing for dramatic roles (“Kör Oldu” 1966, 10-11), or writing notes about forthcoming parts in her diary (“El Yazıları Artistleri Ele Veriyor” 1967, 4), or making carefully-arranged goodwill visits to underprivileged areas of østanbul (“Gecekondu Dilberi” 1967, 22). Although unmarried herself (and pursuing an adulterous affair in private), ùoray took care to be photographed in family-type situations–for example, kneeling in a garden with a young boy surrounded by two dogs (“Hayatta En Çok O÷lumu A÷açları Köpekleri Seviyorum” 1967, 25). As the 1960s evolved into the 1970s, so ùoray rethought her screen image once more; now she played women who were strong and determined, posing a challenge the constricting conventions of behavior imposed on them in a patriarchal society. In Vesikalı Yarım [My Licensed Beloved] (1968) she plays Sabiha, a prostitute working in a nightclub who meets honest artisan Halil (øzzet Günay again). Although not interested in him at first, Sabiha is gradually won over by his innocent charm, and resolves to leave her profession and set up home with him. A few years earlier this kind of arrangement would be unthinkable on screen (witness Seven Kadın Unutmaz), but director Lütfi Ö. Akad allows them at least a few moments of mutual happiness. Sebiha eventually tires of life as a housewife and returns to her old ways, much to Halil’s disappointment. Although she repents later on, she finds to her chagrin that Halil has moved away, leaving her isolated.7 In Bana Derler Fosforlu [They Call me Phosphorus] (1969) and Cemo (1972), ùoray deliberately questioned the stereotypes commonly associated with “maleness” and “femaleness.” In the earlier film she plays a worldlywise street girl wearing male attire in public and female attire in private. The reason for this was simple: she had spent most of her life fending for herself, without the controlling presence of a mother or a father. Hence she could make her own decisions as to what to wear. ùoray’s assumption of 7

The film is discussed extensively in Feride Çiçeko÷lu’s book Vesikalı ùehir [Women Streetwalking the City] (østanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2007).

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the erkek kadın (manly woman) role, associated in the past with her fellowstar Fatma Girik,8 was evident once more in Atif Yılmaz’s Cemo (1972), where she regularly engages her beloved Memo (Fikret Hakan) in one-toone combat with staves. She also proves a dab hand with a pistol as she kills the bad guy in a western-style shoot-out set in the stark terrain of eastern Turkey. In some of her later melodramas, ùoray offers new possibilities for women. Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (1978) offers a good example, as ùoray’s Asya forges a new life for herself and son Samet (Elif ønci) with the amiable middle-aged Cemúit (Ahmet Mekin). She is not in love with him, but he offers a reassuring presence for her son. Asya’s husband ølyas (Kadir ønanır) unexpectedly returns, having previously abandoned her for a younger woman, but now professing eternal love for her. Asya is drawn towards ølyas–despite his behavior she has always been in love with him– but her mind is made up for her when Samet runs away from ølyas and into Cemúit’s arms. Marriage as an institution counts for little: what matters most for Asya is that she should create a stable and loving environment in which to bring up her son. ùoray makes a similar decision in Tatlı Nigar as she runs away from her affluent but sterile marriage to øskender (Erol Taú) and returns to her lock-keeper boyfriend Ahmet (Bulut Aras). Although Ahmet has no money to speak of, he treats Nigar as an equal rather than as a rich person’s plaything. In Bodrum Hakimi [The Boss of Bodrum] (1978) ùoray plays Nevin, a recently qualified judge trying to restore order to the city of Bodrum, which is currently ruled by gang-leader Ömer (Kadir ønanır). Needless to say the two of them fall in love–which makes Nevin’s task that much more difficult when she has to sentence Ömer for a succession of petty crimes. However she understands that all judges should set aside private feelings and carry out their social responsibilities. This is particularly true in a provincial Turkish city where women are invariably treated as second-class citizens. Hence she has no choice other than to condemn Ömer to prison. However ùoray also understood that many women simply had no opportunity for self-expression. Consequently many of her vehicles drew on the notion of excess to expose their mental and physical sufferings (Blandford, Grant and Hillier 2001, 87). Sometimes this was expressed through visual style–as, for example, in the garish costumes she wears as a 8

See Büker, “The Film Does Not End,” 161-2. Fatma Girik (1943-), had a film career spanning the late 1950s to the late 1980s. She later became mayor of ùiúli in østanbul. More recently Girik has returned to character roles in films and television.

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singer trying to eke out a miserable living in the male-dominated world of the nightclub in Hayatım Sana Feda [I Sacrificed My Life], Arım, Balım, Pete÷im [My Bee, My Honey, My Honeycomb] (both 1970), or Tatlı Nigar [Sweet Nigar] (1978). On other occasions her directors employ florid camera-movements to emphasize her state of mind–in Dert Bende [I Have Trouble] (1973), Orhan Elmas repeatedly zooms in on her tortured face, as she sees her beloved Faruk (Murat Saydan) marrying her best friend Fatma (Esin Engin). To emphasize her state of mind, Elmas cuts to a shot of a small bird singing pathetically in its cage. Sometimes ùoray’s protagonists endure almost unbearable torment as they try to make something of their lives–in Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? [How To Save Asiye] (1973), she grows up in a dysfunctional family, with a mother who spends most of her evenings drinking with a series of “uncles.” Asiye (ùoray) herself is mercilessly teased at high school for not having a father and drifts into a succession of dead-end jobs. Eventually she takes up with a violent boyfriend (Orçun Sonat), who puts her to work as a prostitute. The only way she can save herself is to kill him and go to the police to give herself up. For her the prospect of a prison sentence is infinitely preferable to living in the outside world. ùoray’s preoccupation with female roles is nowhere more evident than in ùerif Goren’s On Kadın [Ten Women] (1987), where she portrays multiple characters–a battered village housewife, a middle-aged woman raped by her close relative, a campaigning journalist, a gipsy, a highsociety feminist.9 Some of these women are assertive; others downtrodden; but what unites them all is that they are victimized by a patriarchal society. Both the housewife and the middle-aged woman are arrested for killing their male assailants; the journalist is jailed for lewd behavior in a hotel room (despite the fact that she is only working there with her male colleague); the feminist risks imprisonment for standing up to the police, despite the fact she is trying to protect a wife from being abused by her husband. Clearly a lot more needs to be done both in terms of legislation and education-especially amongst male police officers, who invariably identify women as guilty even before they are proved innocent. Despite her undoubted sincerity of purpose, ùoray’s public image suffered, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, when her acting-style was considered somewhat passé. Reviewing her performance in Sahmaran (1993), based on a local folk-tale, the critic Atilla Dorsay wrote: “Türkan ùoray struck me for the first time as being ridiculous […] She had become 9 ùerif Goren (1944-) active in films from 1974-93, later worked on documentary series in Germany.

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a mask woman, and with her extreme stylization and symbolic approach reminded one of the Japanese Kabuki theatre” (qtd Bulut 2006, 167). Consequently ùoray reinvented herself yet again as a mature performer with sufficient presence of mind to take a hard-nosed look at her previous career and analyze its shortcomings. In an interview with documentary filmmaker Can Dündar published in 2004, she looked back on her four decades as an actress, claiming that she had lived her life through her films. This certainly had its advantages, as she had remained responsive to her audience’s likes and dislikes; but simultaneously insulated her from the social and political changes experienced in the Turkish Republic since the 1990s. It was only in recent years that she had tried to acknowledge such changes in her film work (Dündar 2004, 40-7). ùoray expanded her ideas in a series of conversations with writer Feridun Andaç, published in 2008 as Türkân ùoray øle Yüz Yüze [Face to Face with Türkân ùoray] (Andaç 2008). ùoray’s later films likewise seem infused with a spirit of selfevaluation. As Gülfem in Gönderilmemiú Mektuplar [Unsent Letters] (2003), she plays a middle-aged housewife living in the provincial city of Amasra whose life is turned upside down by the unexpected reappearance of ex-lover Cem (Kadir ønanır).10 Having spent many years trying to suppress the affair in her mind, she understands the impossibility of doing so: the past invariably has a profound influence over the present. The only way forward for her is to acknowledge this–even though her marriage to dependable husband Ali (Barıú Çakmak), and her close relationship to daughter Ceren (Rojda Demirer) are destroyed in the process. Hayatımın Kadınsın [You are the Woman of My Life] (2006) contains a remarkable commentary on ùoray’s previous career as an actress. Ostensibly she plays a singer called Asuman, who has retired from regular performance and is now doomed to a life of drudgery with violent second husband Nejat (Yıldırım Memiúo÷lu). However she encounters long-time fan Tayfur (U÷ur Yücel), who reminds her about a brief romantic encounter they had enjoyed several years previously after one of her concerts. At first she 10 ùoray and ønanır often did not see eye-to-eye on set, but they acted together in several films, forming one of the legendary partnerships of Yeúilçam cinema: “He has the best qualities of a typical Anatolian brunet: he's tall, slender, and athletic; he has strong black hair, black eyebrows, and a moustache that sharpens his expression. The Anatolian beauty that Türkan ùoray embodied has finally found its male counterpart.” (“Kadir ønanır,” Istanbul Film Festival Lifetime Awards (2010), http://www.iksv.org/film/english/press_release.asp?cid=459 (accessed July 16, 2010)

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pretends not to remember, but as the action unfolds she admits that she had been attracted to Tayfur, but never taken the opportunity to tell him. She had spent too much time enjoying the superficial benefits of stardom– money, drink, and a limitless succession of casual yet meaningless affairs.11 Having left the bright lights behind, she can now understand the importance of close personal relationships as a way of coping with her (increasingly violent) life. The film ends with Tayfur killing Nejat and driving off into the sunset in his motor-launch to begin a new life cohabiting with Asuman and daughter Ahu. As in Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım, the subject of marriage is discreetly avoided. In a critical appraisal of ùoray’s career Seçil Büker claims that she has suffered the fate experienced by Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950)–in other words, being unable to break free of her screen image: “No matter how much the nature and content of the narrative [in her films] changes, the Sultana can never be independent of her doppelganger. For some, she is still Sultana, for others she is a has-been, and for a third group she is kitsch. She has to parade in reception rooms, in parties with stock gestures, she has to flash her fake, customary smile to her entourage, and she has to play the adored woman” (Büker 2002, 168). I suggest that ùoray has been much cleverer than this by continually reinventing herself according to different circumstances. This helps to explain why she has been able to occupy the public gaze for five decades now, and not retire into a fantasy-world of her own creation. I interviewed Türkan ùoray at her home in Etiler, østanbul on May 16, 2010, and began by asking her how she began her career in films: Tù: I began in the late 1950s, at a time when cinema was developing in Turkey.12 At that time the theatre of Muhsin Ertu÷rul was more popular, but gradually directors such as Atıf Yılmaz, Metin Erksan, Lütfi Akad, and Memduh Ün were coming through.13 At that time no one was quite sure what kind of films to make for audiences: many of them were imitations of 11

Before her long-term liaison with Rüchan Adlı, ùoray had had a series of casual affairs, most of which were discreetly reported in the fan magazines. 12 This interview was conducted in Turkish. What appears here is an adapted version of the originaI translation. I am grateful to Baran Germen for help in transcribing and translating it. 13 Atıf Yılmaz (1925-2006), director of over 100 films from 1951-2005, including several with ùoray; Metin Erksan (1929-) director, columnist and politician, later teacher at Mimar Sinan University in østanbul; Memduh Ün (1920-), writer and film director, partner of Fatma Girik.

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Hollywood models. However people soon tired of these; they preferred weepies or melodramas. It wasn’t easy to make films then: the government didn’t give any subsidies, and so each film had to be self-financing on a small budget. Hence we tended to shoot films within two or three weeks, using similar plots over and over again. The audiences liked them; and so we produced as many films as we could. I don’t know exactly how I became a star. This might seem rather farfetched, but you know the old stereotype of a director finding as girl in the street and offering her a part? Well, this is exactly what happened to me. I didn’t really want to be a film star; quite literally I was walking in an østanbul street in my school uniform with my hair plaited, and the director Nevzat Pesen noticed me.14 He wanted a girl with a Circassian face-with black eyes and eyebrows–for the film Aúk Rüzgarı. They chose me for the role of a village girl, but had to ask my parents for permission first. LR: Did you have any particular role-models at that time? Tù: As I was a schoolgirl when I started, I didn’t really have time to watch too many other actresses on screen, either Turkish or non-Turkish. You have to understand that in my first years I was really an innocent; I didn’t know what cinema meant, and I didn’t know its potential to affect audiences.15 I was only fifteen, you know. I didn’t know anything about the filmmaking process; I just did as I was told and acted instinctively in front of the camera. There was no acting-school to go to learn my craft; nor had I ever been to drama school. Everything was completely improvised. However this did mean that I always seemed spontaneous in front of the camera–especially as budgets prevented us from making many takes. I played the village girl role many times in my career, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that I understood how much my audiences liked me in that role. Early on in my career I met the director Metin Erksan, who played a major part in shaping my career as a star. He directed me in Acı Hayat (Bitter Life) (1962), the first film for which I won an award.16 This film also increased my public profile; people began to look at me as a 14

Nevzat Pesen (1924-1973), filmmaker and producer. At this time ùoray was being advised by film director and producer Türker ønano÷lu. 16 Also starring Ayhan Iúık, this romance won a Golden Orange at the Antalya Film Festival in 1964. The film was remade in 1969 and 1987 and transformed into a serial melodrama for television in 2005. This last version ran for 41 episodes between December 2005 and February 2007. 15

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star rather than a schoolgirl. I really liked that film: I empathized with the girl who had fallen in love and yet was also the victim of the vendetta existing between her family and her boyfriend’s family. LR: So in a sense your early career was very different from that of a Hollywood actress such as Marilyn Monroe, who wanted to be a serious actress from the mid 1950s onwards. She worked with acting coach Lee Strasberg and underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Tù: Oh no, my career was nothing like that. You don’t necessarily have to learn film acting at school or by employing an expert. Acting completely depends on feeling; to work from the inside and put oneself into the place of the person you’re playing. You have to think about their physical conditions, their spiritual responses and how they might react in a particular situation. I used to do this instinctively, but as I got older I began to think more about my characters. I still don’t think I’ve got it completely right yet; I am still trying to discover things about the job of acting, even after fifty years. There are many things to learn in life, and I have to bring them into my performances. My education has been the education of life, don’t you think? LR: This is extremely interesting; it shows how different Yeúilçam cinema is from Hollywood, particularly in the 1960s. Yeúilçam seems so much more spontaneous, less planned, trying to discover itself. The films might have been simple, primitive even, but they have a freshness that communicates itself to audiences, don’t you think? Tù: Yes, viewers feel that. LR: Given the fact that films were made so quickly, how could you cope with the demands of learning the script and preparing for a role? Tù: Yes, I am proud of that. I’ve made nearly two hundred films, you know. I think I managed it because I did most of my roles spontaneously, without preparing and thinking too much and relying on directors to get a performance out of me. Audiences didn’t seem to mind: the only entertainment was cinema, there was no television and they came week after week to see me. I was known as the daughter of the Turkish cinema; when a film of mine was due to open, queues used to form early in the morning outside the theatres.

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Every film was an adventure in the mid-1960s: for three weeks I was a village girl, for the next three weeks I’d be someone else–a beauty queen, perhaps. I got to wear nice close, film sets were friendly places where everyone knew everyone else, and ate together in the commissary. There were so many good things in those films–wholesome themes such as love, altruism and loyalty. No one got killed, truthful characters were rewarded and the endings were generally happy. It wasn’t till I made Ana [Mother], Vesikalı Yarım and Senine Ölmek østiyorum [I Want to Die with You] between 1967 and 1969 for Lütfi Akad that I began to take care over my roles. He was a great director–a realist film set in rural Turkey like Irmak (1972) really affected me.17 When I did Ana I played a village woman once again, but I didn’t have any make-up. My dialogue was kept to a minimum–as he recalled in his book, he thought I acted better with my eyes.18 I was really excited, as I could now learn to develop my skills in front of the camera. Vesikalı Yarim became one of my best films, based on a story by Sait Faik Abasıyanık.19 It was shown as part of a week devoted to my films in Italy; the audience’s reaction was incredible. They actually burst into tears as the action unfolded. LR: You also branched out into writing ... Tù: Yes. I did Buruk Acı [Sad Suffering] (1969), as writer as well as an actor.20 I felt I could now write about my society and the ways in which women were treated in Turkish society. I felt I was fulfilling my responsibility as a cinema practitioner: we should know what is happening in the environment, as women we should be sensitive to our audience’s feelings. My film Mahpus [The Prisoner] (1973), based on a woman in prison, was based on an event in real life.21 Several years later I read Chingiz Aitmatov’s famous novel Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım about a woman marrying for love, then suffering from her husband’s indifference, and discovering a new peace in life from a sympathetic father-figure. I 17

Written and directed by Lütfi Akad, with Serdar Gökhan and Aysun Güven in leading roles. 18 Lütfi Ö. Akad, Iúıkla Karanlık Arasında [Between Darkness and Light], (østanbul: Türkiye øú Bankası Yayınları, 2004). 19 Sait Faik Abasıyanık (1906-1954) short story writer and poet. 20 Directed by Nejat Saydam with Tanjü Gürsu and Muzaffer Tema in supporting roles. 21 Written by Safa Önal and directed by Nejat Saydam with ùoray in the lead, this film won third prize at the 1972 Adana Film Festival (Lütfi Ö. Akad’s Gelin [The Bride] took first prize).

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thought this was particularly relevant to my audience, so I filmed it in 1978.22 LR: Did you have a particular favorite film director? For example, it is often said that Marilyn Monroe liked George Cukor best of all. Tù: I learned many things from Lütfi Akad, Metin Erksan and Atıf Yılmaz. I particularly remember working on Mine (1982), based on the play by Necati Cumalı.23 This was the turning point in my acting life, as I played a woman who gradually became aware of her identity, as well as her sexuality, and challenged the rules of society. Marriage was no longer the desire of all women; they preferred to experiment with relationships and try to discover their own paths through life. This was the subject of my later film Hayallerim, Aúkım ve Sen [My Dreams, My Love and You] (1987). In another film Ada [The Island] (1988), the main character divorced her husband and discovered new ways of self-expression. About this time I also started to redefine my own identity as well. LR: Why do you think this was the case? Tù: During the 1980s I became aware of many of the developments in the western world, which had started to be discussed in Turkey–especially women’s rights and sexuality. They had become hot topics in the media and the newspapers; they were no longer taboo (which they had been in the past). I was not encouraged to change by anyone, but I adjusted myself to the changes taking place in Turkish society, as well as in the cinema. Think of the film Mine, for instance, where I played a woman who began the film by being dominated by her husband. As the action unfolds she cannot be tolerant anymore and rebels against her husband. She runs away with a lover and refuses to return to her husband. In my own life I underwent the same experiences. I made Ada just at the time I was divorcing my husband and branching out on my own. This is what I meant by putting something of yourself in every role you play. By this time I felt I’d changed as an actress. Until that time [the 1970s and 1980s] I’d played passive women who seldom searched for their own rights, and acknowledged the dominance of men. No one ever questioned 22

Directed by Atıf Yılmaz with Kadir Inanır. The film won Best Cinematography and Best Director awards at the Antalya Golden Orange Festival of 1978, and came second in the Best Film category. 23 Necati Cumalı (1921-2001) was a writer of short stories, novels and poetry.

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this social structure; but by the 1980s people came to believe that woman and man are equal. LR: You have had a long and distinguished career in the cinema. Do you think that over the years you have served as a role-model for audiences? Tù: I’m not sure I can answer that. You’d have to ask them. I believe I possess the characters of a Turkish woman, and I like to point the ways in which women could ideally live in society. I try to sustain this both on and off the screen; hence I take care of my private life. Cinema is an educative medium; it teaches people how to behave. As I said before, I grew up with cinema; it gave me my life-education. Hopefully my audiences feel the same. In a colloquy in Ankara I attended, some members of the audience told me that I had never let them down in my films. This is something really important for me; if they identify with my characters, then I feel that I have done my job properly. It’s a mutual thing; the audience makes me love life and I hope I make them love me. Perhaps you’re right; maybe I am a role model, in the sense that the roles I play are those experienced by my audiences. Maybe by playing such roles I can show people what their lives are like, and suggest possible solutions to particular problems–for example, women’s relationship to men, and how it has changed over the years.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE TURK ABROAD: OTOBÜS (1974)1

The actor/director Tunç Okan’s Otobüs [The Bus] (1974) was one of the most applauded films to emerge from Turkey in the 1970s. It won the Golden Charybde Award at the Taormina Film Festival, the Don Quixote Award given by the Film Club Federation, the Human Rights Film Festival Award in Strasbourg, and the Best Film Award at the Santatem Film Festival. Released in two versions (84 minutes and 69 minutes), the film concerns a group of Turks from rural areas who are driven to Stockholm, illegally enter the country, and hope to find a job in the Swedish capital. They are deceived by the Turkish driver and left all alone trapped in the bus in a busy city square. The remainder of the story focuses on how the men in the bus (there are nine of them) cope with trying to find food and encountering a largely unfriendly local population whose main desire seems to be to exploit them. The film looks at the experience of emigration, focusing in particular on how Europeans often view the stranger as an inferior person someone lacking their particular veneer of civilization. This chapter is divided into two. I situate the film in context by focusing on the actual experiences of Turks in Sweden in the 1970s-how they coped with life in a new country, what particular pressures they encountered, and whether they managed to acculturate themselves to the European way of life. The second part focuses on important scenes in Okan’s film, showing how he utilizes the real-life experiences of Turks abroad into a more general statement on the all-pervasive existence of orientalism in the supposedly civilized European world. The film might 1

This chapter was first published in Günseli Sönmez øúçi, Dilek Direnç and Gülden Hatipo÷lu (eds.), When Away Becomes Home: Cultural Consequences of Migration: Proceedings of the 10th Ege University International Cultural Studies Symposium (øzmir: Ege University Press, 2007): 295-300. Reprinted with revisions.

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have been made over three decades ago; its message still holds true today, particularly at a time when the Turkish Republic seeks to join the European Union, yet still encounters opposition-for whatever reason-from several nations on the grounds that it has not yet sufficiently “civilized” itself (especially in areas such as human rights). Okan asks us to question exactly what constitutes civilized behavior. In a 1978 study on Turkish migrants from two villages to Sweden, published by a Swedish researcher, offered some interesting conclusions about their experiences. Their main reason for leaving Turkey was economic-the desire to earn more money and return home to establish a new business. None of the migrants sought to associate much with the local community-except for the younger men, who sought solace for their loneliness with Swedish women. If the migrants brought their families with them, they tended to keep themselves to themselves, observing traditional patterns of behavior that they might have observed had they chosen to stay in their own country. Thus women were kept in a subservient position, while association between locals and migrant families was discouraged. However the most important aspects of the migrant ideology was that “the stay in Sweden is only a temporary break from life in Turkey. They (the migrants) did not come to Sweden with the purpose of becoming integrated into the Swedish society but merely with the purpose of earning money to elevate their social and financial positions in their country of origin” (Engelbrektsson 1978, 294). However, despite their intentions to return, many of the migrants felt cut off from their families back in Turkey, as well as being isolated in Sweden. Hence the belief-shared by many of them-that they could not trust in others to help them with their own lives, but had to be “architects of their own destinies” (Engelbrektsson 1978, 286). These issues have been extensively explored in Turkish literature with reference to communities in nations other than Sweden. Talât Halman’s 1985 article “Big Town Blues” (Halman 2007c, 191-211) suggests that many authors focusing on workers in Germany explore “the plight of the migrant is described in terms of indignity and loss of national pride” (194). He likens this to the plight of the Southern African-Americans who migrated to the northern cities in the USA, who were reduced to the status of “untouchables.” However many authors are also interested in “the migrant's dilemmas [which] are further compounded by his [sic] own misconceptions concerning the big city and the people who live in it” (196). Halman's view at that time was that despite many useful contributions to the canon of migrant Turkish literature, very little had been done on “the

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migrant's inner life” something that he believed would only emerge when the children of the immigrants ad grown up and started writing about their experiences for themselves (205-6). Thankfully this has now begun to happen-ever since the beginning of the 1990s a large corpus of work has emerged, both in literature and film that focuses about the experience of growing up within two cultures. Halman’s essay suggests that the plight of the Turkish worker abroad is a ripe topic for exploration-which is probably why Tunç Okan (who had established himself in the previous decade as a leading screen actor in Yeúilçam melodramas)2 chose it for his film Otobüs. What I think distinguishes the film, however, is that while it explores some familiar themes of Turkish migrants referred to above-the fact that they are badly treated, and that they experience problems of acculturation–Okan’s concern is not to evoke pity or sympathy for their plight, but rather to explore the psychological effects of emigration on the characters’ lives. This is done not through dialogue (very little of this occurs in the film) but through clever editing and shot-composition. The significance of emigration for Okan’s characters emerges early on in the film, when the workers are still in Turkey and taking a break from their long bus journey. Okan cuts to a close-up of a bag of simple foodbread and cheese-and a disembodied hand taking it out of a paper bag and spreading it across a piece of newspaper. The action shifts to a medium close-up of the bus driver (an experienced man who has obviously been abroad before) putting his hands round the other workers in a gesture of friendship. He remarks in a hearty tone of voice that within ten days all of them will be eating like pigs, which prompts one of the workers to respond “tövbe! tövbe!” [repentance, repentance]-an exhortation to penitence, not to repeat an offence-but more colloquially used as an expression of disgust. The fact that the workers are so offended by such terms is in a sense, an expression of their fears of an unknown country; it will be very different from what they have hitherto experienced. Okan subsequently cuts to the workers performing a folk dance by the fire, which is intercut with a shot of one of them squatting alone beside a lake. Both shots sum up the feelings of these migrants-to-be; they will try to hold on to their traditions, but at the same time they will experience feelings of great loneliness-or nostalgia for a past that can never be recovered. This is further emphasized through the deliberate inclusion of a black-and-white shot of women working in the fields (that contrasts with the color of the rest of the film). 2 Born in 1942, Okan worked with several major stars including Türkân ùoray in Veda Busesi [Farewell Kiss] (1965).

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The strangeness of the Swedish experience is emphasized through the repeated use of shots of the workers looking at particular aspects of urban life in Stockholm.3 It is a commonplace in film studies to identify the male gaze as symbolic of the unequal power relationships between men and women, as men seek to possess the object (particularly the female) they are looking at. Otobüs employs a similar logic by showing the workers gazing through shop-windows at dummies modeling ladies' underwear. Another sequence begins with a shot of a naked backside; then the camera zooms outwards to show the shadow of a man on the right of the frame. Okan subsequently lets us have a full view of the scene, as one of the workers, his back turned towards the camera, is shown gazing at a nude woman in a poster. In a third sequence the workers gaze in repulsion and fascination at a man and a woman copulating in a phone booth; the woman’s orgasmic moans of pleasure punctuate the soundtrack. All these moments draw attention to the workers’ ambivalent feelings at this moment; on the one hand their gazes suggest that they would like to possess the women, if they had the opportunity to do so; on the other hand the experience of such sexual openness is so alien to them that they would cringe at the idea of becoming involved. However the gaze does not always have to be directed by men towards women. Okan also shows the Swedish citizens gazing at the Turks in similar fashion; clearly they would like to possess them-chiefly for sexual purposes. This is suggested in one sequence in the bathroom, when one of the workers and a Swedish man are shown standing side by side while relieving themselves. The Swede looks down at the Turk’s penis, then up at his face; and smiles. Later on the same man takes another Turk to a local club full of well-to-do middle class people watching a sex film. Okan cuts to a shot of the people looking direct to camera, followed by a black-andwhite shot of the porn star on the screen moaning in simulated ecstasy. Clearly this is a place where respectable people like to act out their fantasies. However such (invariably male) fantasies are clearly achieved at the expense of the other–either a woman or, as in this case, the unfortunate oriental. Having been bribed to come into the club by the promise of food, the Turk is treated as a sex-object; the Swedish man tries to fondle him, while the other guests stare at him lasciviously, as if expecting him to perform a striptease. In such an environment it is not surprising that the Turk should react by leaping up off his chair and howling like a wild 3

In an interview, Okan claimed that the film was about the clash of cultures-the materialist European society/ the Third World; underdeveloped/ developed countries (Dönmez-Colin 2008, 71)

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animal, a half-eaten chicken leg still in his right hand. The implication is clear; the Swedes do not regard him as a person, but as a plaything providing as much sexual satisfaction for them as the sex film. They believe in possession–both literal and through the male gaze-as they gaze enraptured at the Turk with his bushy mustache and jet-black hair is in this case equivalent to dehumanization.4 The same is also true of the other workers, who leave the bus in a desperate search for food and find themselves lost on the Stockholm subway. They are surrounded by a group of drunken Swedish revelers who are clearly out to celebrate Christmas-ostensibly the season of goodwill to all men. Okan clearly suggests that the festive spirit clearly does not extend to the Turkish migrants. In a series of point of view shots the faces of the revelers are shown laughing mercilessly; on the soundtrack their laughter mounts to a crescendo of noise. Like caged animals the Turks crouch down, trying to protect themselves from the verbal assault; but eventually they are forced to run away, with the sound of the Swedes’ hoarse laughter ringing in their ears. Such sequences clearly reveal the fear expressed by the host country for many migrants-a fear that is often expressed through outright sadism or (as in this case) treating them as subhuman. The migrants’ sense of alienation from the host society is further emphasized in one of the film's most poignant sequences, as another Turkish worker gets lost in the Stockholm shopping center and cannot find his way back to the bus (which in this film represents “home” to the migrants, in the sense that it is the only thing symbolic of their homeland that they left). In a series of hand-held camera shots, rendered deliberately jerky so as to emphasize the unnaturalness of the situation, we see the worker running round the deserted center in an ever more desperate attempt to find his friends. Okan cuts to an aerial shot, showing the worker as a black speck, resembling an ant desperately trying to crawl back into the wall. This is followed by a series of point of view shots of the camera swirling round the buildings; on the soundtrack his despairing cries for help can be heard. Suddenly a man walking a dog appears; in terror the Turkish man asks him where the bus is. The Swede, unable to understand what he says, picks up the dog and runs away into the rear of the frame. Okan repeats the sequence before dissolving to a shot of people's legs, as they walk to work. Clearly the Turk has had to stay out all night in a world where people take absolutely no notice of him; and even when they do, 4

Gönül Dönmez-Colin points out rightly that the portrayal of the Swedes is caricatured, but viewed from the Turks’ point of view they are realistic first impressions of a western European nation (71).

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they treat him as something to be feared, not as the pitiful wreck that he actually is. Okan subsequently cuts to a shot of the man crouching in a fetal position on a ledge by the river; he suddenly falls backwards into the icy water, never to emerge-the victim of a combination of exposure and hunger. Yet still no one lifts a finger to help him; all we see are two passers-by crossing the frame, followed by a shot of a bystander looking at the river in disgust and murmuring “you dirty man!” in Swedish, as if he should be blamed for polluting the water. The irony of the situation is made perfectly explicit; while the townspeople of Stockholm are quite ready to enjoy the Christmas spirit and sing carols in praise of God, they refuse to help the Turks. A road-sweeper encircles the bus in his truck, clearing up the mess around them; to him they are nothing more than dirty foreigners. Yet the film is not without its humorous moments-emphasizing the fact that the workers’ alienation from Swedish society is not entirely attributable to the indifference of the locals. Halman points out that one of the chief difficulties facing any migrant (especially from rural areas) is the mechanized life of the city (Halman 2007c, 203). Okan emphasizes this shortcoming in a comic sequence where the workers are shown using an escalator leading down the Stockholm subway, and finding it extremely difficult to keep their balance as they go down. They hold on to both handrails for dear life. When using the escalators to go back up to ground level (in a desperate attempt to escape the revelers) they actually run up the down escalators. Okan’s film ends with a sequence that dramatizes the experiences of these unfortunate workers in a nutshell. It begins with a series of tracking shots, showing the bus being towed away from the square through the streets to the crusher. One shot, which shows the bus and the tow truck through the bars of an iron railing, perfectly sums up the Turks’ pitiful existence; they are imprisoned in the bus, and about to be taken into custody by the Swedish police. They are subsequently shown in long shot being dragged away to the police station, charged with being illegal immigrants. This is intercut with close-ups of the workers huddled together at the back of the bus, their faces pale and drawn with fright. Okan introduces a third level of action, which shows the bus being destroyed by a crusher, followed by several close-ups of the workers as they are taken one by one to the police station. None of them makes any attempt to escape; there is nowhere for them to run to, in a world that reduces them to sub-human beings. On the soundtrack the sound of metal being crushed becomes louder and louder. The film ends with a close-up of one Turk’s

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eyes, looking to the right of the camera, which is followed by an aerial shot, held for some eight seconds or so, showing him being dragged away by the police. None of these unfortunate wretches have anything to look forward to, other than to be interrogated in an alien land, in an alien language, and subsequently face deportation. Otobüs is not a long film-sixty-two minutes in the recent DVD releaseshot on a minimal budget, entirely on location. In fact, it was not filmed in Turkey at all, but in Sweden by Okan, who found that he could not raise the finance for the film at home and had to approach foreign companies for funding.5 The film suggests that for most Turks in the early 1970s Europe represented an alien land of impersonal-looking buildings and indifferent people–in stark contrast to the rural communities back home. Even the bus cannot provide them with any protection as it is destined for the crusher, just like the hopes and dreams of the workers themselves. Otobüs is not just about Turks; it concerns anyone who feels ostracized for any reason within society. If strategies can be found to overcome that alienation, then perhaps people from different nations might understand one another better.

5

Okan talks briefly about the film in a newspaper interview with Cumhur Canbazo÷lu (Cumhuriyet Dergi, March 7, 1993: 18-19.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX DERVIù ZAIM: “TO RETURN TO THE PAST MEANS EMBARKING ON A NEW JOURNEY”

In a recent book New Turkish Cinema Asuman Suner includes Derviú Zaim among a group of directors (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Zeki Demirkubuz, Handan øpekçi and U÷ur Yücel are others) who since the mid-1990s have instigated a “new art cinema,” focusing in particular on issues of belonging, identity and memory, set against the backdrop of radical social transformation in the Turkish Republic. Zaim’s Tavutta Rövaúata [Somersault in a Coffin] (1996) was one of the earliest examples of this kind of film–although shot on a minuscule budget, its representation of life in østanbul from the perspective of Mahsun, a homeless person (Ahmet U÷urlu), reinvigorates a familiar landmark–the view of the city from the Bosphorus–and transforms it into something “disturbing and alien [….] an agoraphobic space” (Suner 2010, 148). While Suner is certainly right in identifying a rapid expansion in art-house films during the 1990s–due in no small part to increased funding opportunities through sources such as Eurimages1-I am not sure that there is anything especially new about the themes of belonging, identity and memory in Turkish film. Such concerns have underpinned Türkân ùoray’s fifty-year career, as she has consistently reshaped her star image to accommodate different constructions of female identity. Zaim himself has implied that the directors of the 1990s are exploring issues first raised by their predecessors in the 1970s and 1980s. He proposes instead that contemporary independent filmmakers’ might best be described as “alluvionic” in approach; they conduct their activities independently but parallel to one another, similar to the sediments of 1

See Derviú Zaim, “Your Focus in Your Truth: Turkish Cinema, ‘Alluvionic’ Filmmakers and International Acceptance,” in Miyase Christensen and Nezih Erdo÷an (eds.), Shifting Landscapes: Film and Media in European Context (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008): 91-6.

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alluvium that together form an alluvion. At times they share particular concerns, while on other occasions they pursue their own aims (Zaim 2008, 90). With this idea in mind, perhaps we might best approach Zaim’s films on their own terms, and not as examples of a particular movement in Turkish cinema history. The director has regularly characterized himself as a “guerrilla” filmmaker in the sense that some of his work has been shot on a low budget, using skeleton crews and simple props–whatever is available at the time of filming (Zaim 2004, 46). This is certainly true of his first two features, Tavutta Rövaúata and Filler ve Çimen [Elephants and Grass] (2000), and (to a lesser extent) his latest film Nokta [Dot] (2008), but might not seem an appropriate description of his bigger-budget efforts such as Cenneti Beklerken [Waiting for Heaven] (2007). However guerrilla filmmaking is not just about budgets; it also embodies a particular worldview must aptly summarized in a recent article “How to be a Guerrilla Filmmaker:” [It] has to do with freedom, with experimentation, with courage, and with creativity. It has to do with stepping over the bounds of what’s considered the status quo in filmmaking in order to create something fresh, new and unique [….] Without the right attitude, nothing good will ultimately come of your efforts (“How to,” 2010).

This determination to create something “fresh, new and unique” is clearly visible in Tavutta Rövaúata. While Zaim’s screenplay offers a penetrating critique of contemporary østanbul society and its underclass, it cannot be reduced into a series of discrete themes–for example, stubbornness, loss and loneliness (Pösteki 2005, 29-30). Nor does the film fit into the tradition of realist cinema exemplified by Yılmaz Güney, which focuses on issues of inequality and social deprivation (Atam 2010, 57-9). Instead Zaim consciously introduces leitmotifs into the mise-en-scène that encourage multiple responses. At one level, the peacock’s presence in Tavutta Rövaúata shows history repeating itself, as we discover that Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, after having built Rumeli Hisarı [The Rumeli Fortress] on the banks of the Bosphorus,2 decorated it with peacocks imported from Iran. To commemorate this event, the then President of the Turkish Republic, Süleyman Demirel, presents fifty peacocks to be placed in the fortress. At another level, the peacocks represent a source of food 2

Built between 1451 and 1452 by Sultan Mehmet II just before he conquered Constantinople.

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for Mahsun, as he is shown chasing one of them round and round the fortress’ turret until he catches it and roasts it. However the peacock also carries historical associations, often being identified with openness and acceptance. In Christianity the bird is associated with immortality; in Buddhism it symbolizes wisdom; while in Mesopotamia two of them are portrayed in an image flanking a free. This is believed to represent the dualistic mind and the absolute unity. Zaim deliberately evokes these associations to remind us of the extent to which the past informs the present and vice versa. For all the talk of the “new” Republic which emerged during the 1980s during Prime Minister Turgut Özal’s government, the country cannot divorce itself from its past–a past stretching far beyond the creation of the Republic in 1923 into ancient times. Zaim employs another leitmotif in Nokta –a thirteenth century Qu’ran that the central character Ahmet (Mehmet Ali Nuro÷lu) has helped to steal in collaboration with his friend Selim (Serhat Kılıç) on the promise of a payment of one million euros. However this act proves his undoing, as he falls deeper and deeper into trouble despite his best efforts to make amends. It is particularly significant that Ahmet, a calligrapher by profession, should have committed such a crime, as calligraphy grew out of a study of the Qu’ran. By patiently transcribing each word of a text, a writer was duty bound to contemplate its meaning. Ahmet’s principal aim is to acquire ihcam–the ability to write a motif or word in one attempt without mistakes and in perfect form. The stolen Qu’ran represents Ahmet’s inability to achieve this–i.e. to eliminate errors from both his personal and professional lives. Like the peacocks in Tavutta Rövaúata, the Qu’ran in Nokta emphasizes the inseparability of past and present. By stealing it Ahmet blasphemes both the calligrapher’s art and the deity that inspires it. Whatever he will do in the future will be affected by his past transgression. Hilmi Yavuz describes Zaim’s preoccupation as Bergsonian, as he offers images of temporal multiplicity–unified, mobile yet continuously shifting (Yavuz 2010, 192). Zaim’s oeuvre includes some recurring leitmotifs–for example water. In Tavutta Rövaúata the regular shots of the Bosphorus sum up østanbul’s long and checkered history, while reminding us of how they were regularly used to establish plot and situation in Yeúilçam films from the 1950s onwards. The Bosphorus is also portrayed in Zaim’s film as something threatening, as the police boats glide across the water in search of Mahsun and his fellow-vagrants. Mahsun himself sets out in a boar with his drugaddict acquaintance (Ayúen Aydemir); the boat sinks and the girl drowns, recalling the Greek myth of the River Styx that separated the world of the

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living from the world of the dead. In Filler ve Çimen Zaim includes long shots of the central character Maratona Havva Adem (Sanem Çelik) indulging in the ancient Ottoman art of marbling–creating designs with oilbased paint on water. She works outdoors, even when it is raining hard. Zaim cuts between a medium close-up of Havva traveling on the Bosphorus in a boat, and another shot of her working on her designs. Later on we see her walking next to a pile of shipwrecks. The marbling images connote fluidity and connection, once again linking past with present, while the shipwrecks suggest the futility of trying to tame the primordial ocean from which every living thing originates. Çamur [Mud] (2005) includes several sequences where Temel (Taner Birsel) is shown in his boat, throwing several marble statues into a lake. These recently-made statues of his friend Ali (Ahmet U÷urlu), as well as some of the Greek inhabitants of Cyprus represent a past that Temel would like to forget, a time during the mid-1970s when he butchered some innocent Greeks to death in retribution for what the Greek soldiers did to his fellow-Turks. However the lake does not swallow up the statues; they remain in pristine condition at the bottom. Zaim suggests that the lake is the source of ultimate wisdom: as the film unfolds Temel realizes that the only way he can deal with the past is to confront it. Hence he dives in and hauls the statues ashore once again. Throughout his oeuvre Zaim consciously evokes myths from a variety of religions and historical periods: Ancient Greek, Mesopotamian, Christian, Islamic, Byzantine and Ottoman.3 He resembles the Ottoman marbling artist, creating idiosyncratic works that merge past, present and future by means of polysemic leitmotifs. Zaim is also interested in representation-its limitations as well as its potentialities. Several of his films include images of news programs, the majority of which are deliberately distorted for political or ideological purposes. In Filler ve Çimen the government minister Aziz Bebek (Bülen Karabaú) is consistently shown seeking photo-opportunities to announce fresh anti-terrorism campaigns or open state-of-the-art circumcision clinics. In his private life he engages in several criminal activities including drug-smuggling, enlisting the help of østanbul mobster Sabit Üzücü (Haluk Bilginer) in return for numerous favors both financial and political. The minister meets an appropriately gruesome end – being shot to death on one of his boats–but the news media deliberately represents him as a victim of a corrupt system that deprives individuals of power and their basic human 3

Suner describes this type of filmmaking technique as ebruesque, a term drawn from marbling that suggests “movement, permeability and contingency” (Suner 2010, 162).

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freedoms. The fact that the minister is directly responsible for perpetuating that system is conveniently overlooked (Aksoy 2009, 28-9). Tavutta Rövaúata includes several media-related sequences including one newsitem broadcast over the radio that piped music will soon become available in Hagia Sophia to attract more tourist, although no decision has been reached as to whether it will be Islamic or Christian music. This announcement, designed to increase tourism revenues, throws Mahsun’s plight into sharper focus–as a member of the underclass he does not warrant any media attention. His death at the end of the film is reported in an off-hand manner, making it seem as if things like this happen almost every day. No one really bothers about him; he remains an alien in his home city. By contrast the media seem much more preoccupied with foreign policy–especially in Cyprus. Çamur includes numerous shots of the Turkish troops listening to news reports of sporadic skirmishes between Greek and Turkish troops at the border separating the two sides of the island. These reports are designed to vindicate the government’s policy of maintaining a substantial military presence in Cyprus (in the interests of national security), while at the same time undermining any attempts at a peaceful settlement by encouraging members of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities to share their memories of displacement.4 In all three films Zaim suggests that the broadcast media’s representation of events invokes binary oppositions (rich/ poor, order/ disorder, Greek/ Turk) to create a simplified version of events that support government policies both at home and abroad. If we want to explore alternative approaches to representation, we should adopt a more pluralist stance, 4 Zaim explores this aspect of the conflict in his 2004 documentary Parallel Trips, made in collaboration with Greek Cypriot filmmaker Panikos Chrissanthou, which contained a series of oral recollections of the conflict. The ideas of this documentary have been explored by Peter Loizos in his unpublished talk “Resilience and Trauma as Responses to FM,” given at the Refugee Studies Center, Oxford University, on October 29, 2008 (http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/PDFs/Seminar%20Peter%20Loizos%2029-10-08.pdf (accessed August 7, 2010)). Parallel Trips interweaves two narratives: Zaim concentrates on the slaughter of Turkish Cypriot men, women and children in three villages on the central Cypriot plain; Chrissanthou examines the killings of Greek Cypriots by their neighbors in Palykythio. Zaim explained the film’s purpose: “Our film is about trying to find why – why we [Greek and Turkish Cypriots] did this to one another [….] we did live together well. Put two Cypriots together and we will eat, drink and dance. The problem is when you bring Greeks and Turks to the table” (Fiachra Gibbons, “We Know we Can Live Together,” The Guardian Review, May 1, 2004, 19).

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which is precisely what Zaim suggests in Cenneti Beklerken. Set in the seventeenth century, the film explores the career of Eflâtun (Serhat Tutumluer), a miniaturist who is summoned to the vizier’s palace in østanbul and ordered to travel into Anatolia to make a portrait of the rebel prince Danyal (Nihat øleri), so that the Ottoman authorities can verify the prince’s identity. The film speculates on the process of artistic creation (Eflatun repeatedly insists that he can draw Danyal’s miniature from memory, rather than having to meet him), while focusing specifically on the intricacies of the minaturist’s art. Danyal captures Eflâtun and ordered him to make a miniature by deliberately distorting a western-style painting–a pastiche of Velazquez’s Les Meninas [The Maids of Honor] (1656). By this means Danyal will fulfill his dream of being recognized as the new Muslim Messiah. Zaim uses this sequence to show how representations can simultaneously embody “different realms, times, and spaces” (in Danyal’s phrase). On the level we are invited to compare our knowledge of the Velazquez original–which continues to provoke heated debate amongst critics5–with the version in the film. Both contain the image of the artist reflected in the mirror working on the image we see before us. On another level we see that Daniyel’s request has been fulfilled–Eflâtun and his female companion Leyla (Melisa Sözen) paste an Ottoman image of a ruler (cut out from one of Eflatun’s other miniatures) over the artist at the back of the painting, to produce a palimpsestic work combining western and eastern motifs. On a third level we are invited to reflect on who actually owns the new painting: does it still belong to the artist or has it now become public property? Danyal is in no doubt that it can be appropriated by artist and viewer alike. When Eflatun returns to østanbul, his Ottoman masters pose a similar question: “Do you belong to your paintings or do they belong to you?” This question cannot be satisfactorily answered: as W. J. T. Mitchell observed in 1990, representation in both art and film not only “‘mediates’ knowledge of a particular culture and its preoccupations, but also extends, obstructs, fragments and negates that knowledge” (Mitchell 1990, 17). Zaim tries to enlarge viewers’ perspectives by inviting them to reflect on the complex ways in which representations work, despite the best efforts of the media to simplify them.6 This notion is further reinforced throughout Cenneti

5

See Mary Tompkins Lewis, “The Alluring Enigmas of Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas,’” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2008, W11. 6 For more on Zaim’s borrowings from artistic traditions, see Yavuz, “Derviú Zaim Filmlerinde …,” 190-1.

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Beklerken by the leitmotif of the mirror, which both reflects yet distorts the miniaturist’s–as well as the filmmaker’s–work. Zaim’s approach to filmmaking–in terms of both content and form– might be best expressed through the metaphor of layering. This is most obvious in Çamur, where the layers of mud outside the Turkish soldiers’ encampment are thought to have restorative qualities–a belief traceable back to ancient times. By smearing their faces with mud, cripples and invalids like the soldier Ali (Ahmet U÷urlu) believe they can create a new beginning for themselves. Eflatun’s observation in Cenneti Beklerken (which forms the title to this chapter) is pertinent here: “To return to the past [as represented by the layers of mud] is to embark on a new journey.” However the mud also conceals less palatable truths, as Ali discovers and ancient statue, which his friend Halil (Bülent Yarar) tries to sell to some crooked buyers in return for a substantial fee. However the act of disinterring this statue is tantamount to desecration: both Halil and Ali pay for this transgressive act with their lives. In the meantime Temel confronts once again the sordid aspects of his past, as he digs into the mud to reveal the remains of those innocent Greek citizens he killed during the 1974 conflict. Çamur uses the metaphor of layering to demonstrate how one object–in this case, the mud–possesses complex, often contradictory meanings for different people at different points in time. The same metaphor emerges in Nokta, the bulk of which takes place on the wide expanses of the Tuz Gölu (Salt Lake) near Konya. At one point towards the end Ahmet tries to run away from his past–and the murders he has committed–by fleeing across the lake. Unfortunately his progress is interrupted by what he thinks is a corpse of a young man buried in the salt. He digs desperately into the layers of salt, and finds that the man is actually not dead; hence Ahmet makes frantic attempts to revive him. By doing so, however, he has to face similar consequences to those experienced by Temel in Çamur: the past cannot be buried, but will emerge beneath the layers of falsehood and delusion to torment him. The final shot in Nokta shows Ahmet moving away from the camera and collapsing to the ground–although not actually dead, he has no further prospects left in his life. Zaim’s films are likewise artfully layered in terms of structure. In Filler ve Çimen a tale of political corruption is juxtaposed with a meditation on the power of marbling to reveal intimate connections between past and present. Tavutta Rövaúata criticizes the free-market policies that dominated østanbul during the mid-1990s, while offering some complex thoughts on the symbolic power of history as represented by the peacocks.

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Çamur offers an interpretation of the Cyprus from the point of view of someone who lived and grew up with it (Zaim was born in 1964 and was only ten years old when the conflict reached its height in the mid-1970s), showing how it continues to blight the lives of Greeks and Turks alike. However Zaim also suggests that statues–whether ancient or modern– continually remind people of the intimate connections between past and present. This is particularly significant in a country like the Turkish Republic, where successive governments since 1923 have made strenuous efforts to obliterate the country’s ancient or Ottoman past through educational and/or political reforms. Zaim takes up the issue once again in Cenneti Beklerken – although set in the distant past, the film shows how both the miniaturist and the filmmaker are preoccupied with the multilayered nature of representation. In an essay published in 2008, Zaim asks whether it is possible for contemporary Turkish filmmakers to create a work of art “that places neither ourselves, nor others into the position of ‘other’” (Zaim 2008, 105). Based on his work to date, the answer is definitely yes–as a self-styled guerrilla filmmaker Zaim has created a series of complex works that neither reproduce nor repudiate long-established binary oppositions (east/ west, Orient/ Occident) but rather set them aside in favor of complex narratives that need to be looked at pluralistically.7 It is through this method that I believe he has endeavored to promote “attitudes [amongst his audiences, whether in the Turkish Republic or elsewhere], that prefer dialogue rather than monologue” (Zaim 2008, 107). I interviewed Zaim in østanbul on 29 May 2010, and began by asking him about his early career, and how he became a film director: DZ: I went from an undergraduate course in management at Bo÷aziçi University into doing a Master’s program in business administration, but soon realized that this was not what I wanted to do. I was reading a lot of literature in my spare time … LR: Did you have any favorite authors? DZ: Dostoyevsky. I began to write short stories–something I had begun in high school–and became interested in character, plot and sub-plot. I also

7

Nagihan Komukcu claims that Zaim’s films have an existential dimension, focusing on ontological issues similar to those of Sartre (“Yonetmen: Zaim’i Beklerken” [Directors: Waiting for Zaim], Sekans 2 (2010): 93-6.

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enjoyed going to watch movies, and gradually I became more and more attracted to the idea of movie-making. LR: Did you have any favorite directors? DZ: Like every other wannabee Turkish director, I was a fan of Bergman and Tarkovsky. They seemed to create more innovative kinds of cinema; an alternative to the domestic product which was nothing more than Yeúilçam. Thanks to video, as well as to the influence of major events such as the østanbul Film Festival,8 I was able to see a lot of their work. In 1983 I saw the Tarkovsky retrospective season, and I was struck by the visual elements. He evoked contradictory responses: the Turkish intelligentsia either loved or hated him! I’ve always been one of his supporters. But I can’t say he’s always been my favorite director: all directors have different role-models at different times of their lives. When I encounter new challenges in my life, my models change. LR: Did you always want to be a filmmaker rather than a film critic? DZ: Yes. From my earliest days as an undergraduate I tried to make short films, as well as a feature film in the university cinema club: luckily that film did not see the light of day! My first film was Kamerayı As [Hang the Camera] (1991), a short that was never screened. I then made a short film about the history of Turkish rockers, Rock Around the Mosque (1993).9 At that time I was working for a local television station, trying to make cultural programs about famous landmarks as well as hobbies. I was hired as a writer, but quickly graduated to the producer/director’s role. This gave me the perfect chance to experiment with filmmaking techniques. I used the television company’s editing facilities to make Rock Around the Mosque. 8 The østanbul Film Festival is the oldest event of its kind in Turkey, having begun in 1982 as a ‘Film Week,’ consisting of six films. In 1989 it was recognized as a “competitive specialized festival” by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). 9 I have to declare a personal interest here. Zaim enrolled for a course in British Cultural Studies run by the British Council østanbul in the 1992-3 season, from which he obtained a scholarship to study at the University of Warwick. I taught most of that course in collaboration with the late Cem Taylan of Bo÷aziçi University. Rock Around the Mosque was Zaim’s term project for that certificate course. It is now available for viewing at http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5389663/14199148.

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LR: How do you think going to Warwick University to complete your M.A. helped you in your future career? DZ: I have always been interested in history and culture. When I went to England, I studied Cultural Studies, and had the chance to attend film courses given by Richard Dyer and José Arroyo. It was Arroyo who helped me with my thesis on the films of Alan Parker,10 focusing in particular on the representation of Turks in Midnight Express (1978).11 I wrote one script–Muz E÷risi [Banana Curve] but failed to get it filmed; so I wrote the script for Tavutta Rövaúata instead. As there was no producer willing to finance my projects, I decided to do them myself in guerrilla fashion on a minimal budget. LR: Have you always thought of yourself as somehow “different,” on account of your Turkish-Cypriot identity? DZ: Yes. Even though I had graduated from one of østanbul’s best universities, it was still difficult for me to find a job. I needed a special permit to work in Turkey at that time, and Turkish Cypriots were not always encouraged to stay.12 If I did choose to stay, I had to do two years’ compulsory military service; and even when this had been completed, I still needed a work permit from Ankara. For these reasons, I was unable to find a regular job. However I did have a stroke of luck; I won the 1995 Yunus Nadi novel prize for Ares Harikalar Diyarında [Ares in Wonderland], one of Turkey’s leading literary awards. This award gave me the chance to do more film work. LR: Let’s go on to Tavutta Rövaúata. It was obviously a low-budget film–a guerrilla film as you put it. What do you think were your main aims in producing it? 10

José Arroyo, lecturer in Film at the University of Warwick, regularly reviews for the British periodical Sight and Sound. 11 See Dilek Kaya Mutlu, [The] Midnight Express Phenomenon: The International Reception on [sic] the Film Midnight Express 1978-2004 (østanbul: The Isis Press, 2005) for more on this subject. 12 The issue of Turkish Cypriot emigration to Turkey and elsewhere has been discussed by Christoph Ramm in “Construction of Identity Beyond Recognized Borders: The Turkish Cypriot Community Between Cyprus, Turkey and the European Union.” http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/esc/esc-lectures/ramm.pdf (accessed July 31, 2010).

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DZ: I wanted to create a wintry atmosphere. I managed to get the last sixty cans of Agfa film that were available. I had a camera for two weeks, loaned to me by one of my old teachers. I had sponsorship [from østisnai Filmler ve Reklamlar], but nothing else. My mother lent me the money for the film stock. When the film was released I had access to more money but I had nothing to begin with. The film’s style is very much influenced by Italian neo-realism, especially in the non-linear editing structure. I was also very interested in the soul of my central character Mahsun, so I kept the camera focused on him in long close-ups. LR: Where did the idea for the film originate? DZ: I knew a person living in Rumeli Hisarı who made a living by stealing cars as well as cleaning them. The peacocks’ appearance was also based on a real event: ex-President Kenan Evren received a gift of Peking ducks while on a visit to China, and he gave them to a park in Antalya. However the Kurdish workers who were employed there were extremely hungry and they decided to eat them! I was inspired by this story in a newspaper and changed it slightly to create the leitmotiv of the peacocks in the film. LR: What did they represent? DZ: They summed up in allegorical form the plight of my characters; the peacocks were imprisoned in the castle, just like Mahsun, unable to escape, even if they wanted to. Normally they are a simple of openness and acceptance; in my film they lived in an artificially enclosed world. There are other significances that could be read into their presence in the film … I didn’t want to attach one meaning alone to them. Once the film was finished, it wasn’t mine any more, and others could find new meanings in it that I didn’t think about while I was writing it. LR: Do you think the film makes social criticisms of the Turkish Republic at that time? DZ: Yes. I was trying to do much the same thing in Filler ve Çimen. There is so much poverty we cannot see in this city [of østanbul]: this is what I was trying to show. østanbul has always tried to market itself as a tourist, economic and cultural center, but on many occasions it takes little or no notice of its poorest citizens. I tried to portray the hidden face of the city.

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LR: Did you empathize with your characters? DZ: I think so, yes. LR: What was the inspiration for Filler ve Çimen? DZ: Corruption. I have always been fascinated by the relationship between chance and necessity: the extent to which one can plan one’s life or whether one is the victim of destiny. I used the corruption debate–which was very current during the mid-1990s–as a framework for exploring this issue.13 In the film the innocent marathon runner is unexpectedly caught up in a web of corruption not of her own making. I believe that freedom only occurs when you can control your destiny. LR: So by that logic none of the characters in Filler ve Çimen are free? DZ: Yes and no. Because if you look at the final scene, although the girl cannot do marble work in the open air, while it is snowing, at least she is trying to do something–in other words, fighting against her destiny. LR: Do you think the film has any particular structural idiosyncrasies? DZ: I put some elements of classical narrative in the film, and combined them with neo-realistic and surrealistic elements. Why? Because I believe that this combination of narrative strategies can give a more accurate portrait of society. This kind of eclecticism is the most suitable way to make audiences aware of what they are seeing. LR: Do you describe yourself as postmodern in approach? DZ: Not really. I try to be honest by incorporating a variety of perspectives and drawing on a variety of sources. I try to combine them into a coherent whole; to emphasize the message rather than the medium. There should be 13

The corruption at that time was summed up in the Susurluk scandal, which surfaced in November 1996, when it emerged that the then Prime Minister Tansu Çiller had tasked the police force, under the leadership of Mehmet A÷ar, to cripple the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its leader Abdullah Öcalan. This caused consternation in the Turkish National Intelligence Service (MøT), whose leader Mehmet Eymür had irreconcilable differences with A÷ar. Although A÷ar and Çiller resigned after the scandal broke, no one received any punitive sentences.

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a justification for what I do. I construct my narratives in such a way as to sustain attention–hence the combination of different elements–and invite audiences to reflect on what they are seeing. Both factors determine the ways I construct my screenplays. LR: How did people react to Filler ve Çimen when it was released in 2000? DZ: It was fascinating: some denounced it for being too political, other criticized it for not being political enough; others considered it violent, while some thought it not violent enough! This variety of opinions made me feel I’m on the right track.14 Some people thought I was a political filmmaker, which is a reductive judgment. I’m not really happy with this label. LR: So you would not consider yourself a disciple of Yılmaz Güney? DZ: No. Although I have tremendous respect for his work, I cannot say I carry the flag for him. He is a hard-core neo-realist; my films are quite different. LR: Let’s go on to Çamur. In this film you returned to your Turkish Cypriot roots. Why? DZ: After Tavutta Rövaúata I tried to make a film Via Beyrut [Via Beirut] with a Turkish Cypriot theme, but I could not find sufficient resources, so I wrote Filler ve Çimen instead. When I came to write Çamur I found the money from different sources–from Eurimages, from RAI Television in Italy among others. LR: What do you think encouraged them to back it? DZ: I think they liked the script, which did not attempt to be didactic about Cyprus. It has a human dimension; it tries to look at the ways in which politics have affected individual people’s lives. I tried to show that in order 14 See, for example, the wide variety of opinions on the Internet Movie Database entry for the film. One viewer considered the film a “missed opportunity” to depict the corruption inherent in Turkey at that time, another criticized it for its exaggeration, while a third considered it the best film of the 2000-1 season (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252437/usercomments (accessed August 1, 2010)).

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to create the future you should confront your past. This was something quite new-particularly for a Turkish filmmaker–and I think the financiers did not expect it. Even though I’m a Turkish Cypriot, I’m working under the aegis of the Turkish film industry here in østanbul. I wear different hats in different situations! However as a Turkish Cypriot I feel a responsibility to make films both for my people and my descendants, especially early on in my career. Otherwise I’d not have been able to move on to historical films such as Cenneti Beklerken or Nokta. This is unlike Elia Kazan, who only remembered his roots once he had won his Oscars on Hollywood. I don’t know whether I’d have the chance in the future to talk about Turkish Cypriot issues, which is why I did it then. I focus on the themes and arias which I believe need to be discussed. LR: Why are you so interested in the relationship between past, present and future? DZ: I’m a fan of history. When I was in university I had teachers who gave me a series of insights into the meaning and purpose of history and its importance to contemporary societies. More importantly I experienced recent Cypriot history at first hand; I believe I understand how social and political turmoil can affect human beings. However I’m not just interested in contemporary history; I’m a great fan of broader experience, which is why I draw upon ancient history in Çamur. LR: Where was it filmed: in Cyprus? DZ: Unfortunately not. It was filmed at a salt lake in Konya and in østanbul. LR: Why? DZ: It was risky at that time. My film adopted a different view of Cypriot history, so to ensure its continued production I stayed in Turkey. There were not only political but production risks; I could have problems with customs. Remember that this film was made in collaboration with my Greek Cypriot producer Panikos Chrissanthou;15 this was the first time a Greek and a Turkish Cypriot had collaborated on a major film project. 15

Other works by Chrissanthou include Leptomereia Stin Kypro [A Detail in Cyprus] (1987) and Akamas (2006).

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This all took place before the borders were opened in Cyprus in 2003, and as such was quite a daring thing to do at that time. I made the documentary Parallel Trips with him; on that occasion I went to Cyprus for twenty days to make that documentary with two other people–a camera operator and a sound recordist. However I decided against taking a feature film crew of seventy plus there. LR: It’s about that time that critics describe you as a representative of “New Turkish Cinema.” What is “New Turkish Cinema?” DZ: In terms of content and style there was a different approach in terms of narrative strategies, mode of production and content. We all work on low budgets, while experimenting with different forms of narrative to comment on what we think is important to today’s world. I like to call myself and others alluvionic filmmakers: we are not really part of a “New Wave” like the British filmmakers of the late 1950s or their French counterparts. LR: How would you define an alluvionic filmmaker? DZ: All recent Turkish filmmakers adopt different approaches: Nuri Bilge Ceylan likes minimalism, for instance. Although there are minimalist elements in my films, I use other elements, as I’ve said before. Alluvionic filmmakers are idiosyncratic in style, even though they sometimes resemble each another, similar to the sediments of alluvium that coagulate to form an alluvion. At times they come together, at times they spread apart, as do alluvia. This is a good way of describing a group of filmmakers whose work has been filmed, finances and distributed differently. LR: Do you think this specifically a movement characteristic of Turkish film in the 1990s? DZ: I think so, because the mode of production has changed. A decade earlier directors made films in more or less the same way. Now filmmakers are developing their own idiosyncratic styles–something that was hardly ever available to them At the same time we are all using the same funding sources: the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Eurimages. LR: Let’s go on to Cenneti Beklerken. It’s the first film where you choose an explicitly historical subject. Why?

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DZ: I wanted to look at the past as a way of commenting on the present, so I tried to create a problematic realism. The costumes were obviously based on historical models, but they could not and would not be identified as explicitly realistic. They were the production of a present-day filmmaker looking back on the past. I tried to find the answers to today’s issues through the past. However I do claim that my film is one of the rare attempts in Turkish cinema to look at the seventeenth century. I tried hard to provide as comprehensive a representation as I could of the styles and social mores of the time. However what makes the film interesting for me is the use of different approaches to realism; to show that the past can be represented in different ways. This is why I used animation as well as liveaction. I think it goes back to the way I grew up in a world of cultural relativity, where it was difficult to pin things down. LR: I agree with you. I remember when you did the Warwick course, you were someone who brought different elements from different traditions together to see how they would work! DZ: I can agree with that. This is the reason why I try to find different links between events in different periods. LR: Why are you fascinated with Ottoman miniatures? DZ: I reflect on them a lot, especially in the ways in which they problematize fundamental issues of space and time. For example: I am talking to you now in a café; a miniature painter of this scene might include elements that took place twenty years ago in his picture of us, or images of what might take place thirty years later. He can play with issues of time and space to create a more comprehensive representation of what he identifies as “reality.” LR: So you could say that the miniaturist’s work is similar to a filmmaker’s in the sense that they are creating their own visual representations? DZ: I believe so. In my forthcoming film I am looking at the power of shadows, and you can parallel that with the experience of cinema. LR: Do you believe that religion has an important role to play in your later work?

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DZ: Religion is obviously a defining factor in this culture. If you do not look at it, you cannot understand the purpose of traditional Ottoman art. I obviously do a lot of research into it and think about it, and how it has influenced arts like painting, shadow-plays, marbling. In order to create what I perceive as an accurate representation of this country and its cultures, I have to take religion into account. LR: It seems to be that to be a guerrilla filmmaker, you have to include different elements from different disciplines–politics, religion, history, art, and others … DZ: I agree. I think my reading of cultural studies critics such as Said helped me to find my own way. I grew up in a postcolonial world and came here to østanbul, which has never been colonized. This led me to reflect critically on the relationship between history, politics and colonialism. I think my work cannot be accused either of being orientalist or not sufficiently thought through. Some Turks abroad have accused me of not being contemporary enough; they ask me why I’m looking at history and not focusing on modern østanbul, for instance. Or they ask me why I am showing all this poverty, or focusing on political problems, and thereby confirming the image of our country amongst westerners that Turkey is a backward country. But there are a lot of crazy people around, and I simply don’t have time to respond to them. I need to devote my energies to new projects. LR: Let’s go on to Nokta. Where did the idea come from? DZ: I tried to focus on indigenous cultures and indigenous arts–focusing in particular on ihcam (a word used to define a motif or a word without any mistakes and in perfect form). The central character Ahmet becomes unwittingly involved in a crime involving the theft of a valuable Qu’ran. Like in my other films, Ahmet tries in vain to make amends, to overcome what he has done and thereby free himself from his past. LR: The film has lots of long shots in it, more so than in your earlier work. Was this something deliberate? DZ: Yes, I believed that this style was suitable for the material; the references to calligraphy.

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LR: So you’re a historian as well as a filmmaker? DZ: Historians wouldn’t like me to say that! LR: But isn’t this always the case? DZ: Of course. I am a historian in the sense that I offer different interpretations of the past. I try to be a guerrilla–offering new views of history and culture, combining Velazquez with Ottoman miniature painting. I make radical selections, I know, but I always try to justify them in my films. LR: Where would you like to be in ten years time? DZ: Doing what I want to do. I wouldn’t mind making a film somewhere else other than Turkey, if it was possible sometime. LR: If there could be something you would like to be remembered for during your career, what would it be? DZ: I’m an honest filmmaker.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN TELLING IT LIKE IT IS: RECENT TURKISH DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILMS

The documentary tradition in Turkey dates back to the late nineteenth century; but perhaps the earliest notable example was Kurtuluú, øzmir Zafer [Independence: The øzmir Victory] (1922), a chronicle of the War of Independence and the expulsion of foreign powers from Turkish soil.1 In the 1930s onwards this tradition was continued as the Republican government chronicled their westernizing policies in a series of documentaries (Türk ønkilâbında Terakki Hamleleri). Oppositional documentaries were rare; however in 1933 a biography of the poet Nâzım Hikmet (1933) was released. In the next decade several independently made documentaries chronicled Turkey’s involvement in global conflicts such as the Korean War. From 1956 onwards the østanbul University Film Center, located within the Faculty of Letters, produced a series of films including Hitit Güneúi [The Hittite Sun] (1956) and Siyah Kalem [Black Pen] (1957), both of which were released in Turkish and English for domestic as well as overseas consumption. Many of them involved the distinguished writer, poet and translator Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu.2 Some feature filmmakers turned out documentaries–for example Metin Erksan (Dünya Havacıları Türkiye’de [World Aviation in Turkey] (1957) 1

Most of the following account is based on Bilgin Adalı, Belgesel Sinema [Documentary Cinema] (østanbul: Hil Yayın, 1986), and “Türkiye’de Belgesel Film [Documentary Film in Turkey]. Accessed August 11, 2010). http://belgeselokulu.tr.gg/T-Ue-RK&%23304%3BYE&%238217%3BDEBELGESEL-F&%23304%3BLM.htm. 2 For more on this series of documentaries, see Berrin Avcı, Belgesel Sinemacı Yönüyle Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu [Aspects of the Documentary Filmmaker Sabahattin Eyübo÷lu] (Eskiúehir: Anadolu Üniversitesi Kütüphane ve Dokumentasyon Merkezi, 1999).

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produced for the Ordu Foto Film Center), and Lütfi Ö, Akad (Tanrının Ba÷ıúı Orman [The Gift of the Forest of God] (1964)). During this period the state and the commercial sectors produced material to be exhibited in various locations–schools, offices, and trade shows–but seldom in the cinema. The Ministry of Education and the General Directorate of Press and Tourism commissioned a series of informational films, while Yapı Kredi Bankası showed one of their works at the 1968 Milan Fair. The Turkish Touring and Automobile Association produced a series of informational works, as did the Eczacibaúı group of companies. The state-owned Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) was a major commissioner of documentaries chronicling the history of the country, both past and present.3 By the late 1990s things had changed somewhat. TRT was still the principal commissioner–as well as producer–of documentaries for its channel TRT2 (now the TRT Turizm ve Belgesel (Tourism and Documentary) Channel). They were also responsible for the big-budget drama-documentary Cumhuriyet [The Republic] (1998)–released in cinemas as well as on television–produced to celebrate seventy-five years of the Turkish Republic. However TRT no longer enjoyed a broadcasting (or a financial) monopoly; there were numerous other television companies willing to put money into documentaries (destined for cinema exhibition as well as being broadcast) on a variety of subjects. Several independently made documentaries entered the national competition, organized as part of the Golden Orange Film Festival, held annually in the seaside resort of Antalya. Although the financial rewards were modest, to say the least, the Golden Orange prize did at least ensure that documentaries had more potential to make money. In a review essay published in 1999, Michael Renov stresses that documentary filmmaking, as well as documentary studies, has becomes less interested in “history, aesthetics, and ideological criticism” and more concerned with “a kind of situated knowledge in which cultural representation is linked to larger social and historical forces [….] responsive to the best of cultural studies’ attention both to the micro level of social phenomena and to the broader contextual map” (Renov 1999, 321). With this in mind, Turkish independent filmmakers have become increasingly ambitious in their choice of subjects: Necati Sönmez’s øhret 3

The manifold strands of the documentary tradition have been discussed at length on the Belgesel Film/ Documentary Film website (http://www.belgeselfilm.com/main/belgesel/makaleler.html (accessed 11 August 2010)).

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Olsun Diye [To Make an Example Of] (2007) recounts the stories of the victims of the death penalty since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Çayan Demirel’s 38 (2006) focuses on a group of Kurds, who were massacred in eastern Turkey in 1937-38.4 Bahriye Kabadayı’s Gençlik Köprüsü [A Bridge at the Edge of the World] (2007), moves forward three decades to tell the story of young idealists in the 1960s building a bridge in the east of the country to protest at the lack of development there. Can Dündar’s Mustafa (2008), offers a revisionist interpretation of Atatürk, portraying him as a lonely womanizer with a weakness for alcohol and cigarettes, who was detached from his people. The reaction was predictable: the mobile telephone operator Türkcell withdrew its sponsorship of the film prior to its release, in the belief that they might lose customers. Several newspaper columnists told their readers to boycott it, while two university professors opened against the director for insulting Atatürk’s memory (it was quietly dropped soon afterwards).5 However the film proved exceptionally popular with mainstream cinema audiences, attracting 43,000 patrons in østanbul on its first week of release. The next film in the box-office charts was the James Bond epic Quantum of Solace with only 20,000 people (Jaafar, “Turkish Auds” 2008, 11).6 4

At this time the Kurds were known as Mountain Turks. They had risen up against the Turkish government in the previous decade in the Ararat Revolt, which was finally suppressed in 1930. The government responded by forcibly relocating the Kurdish population; by 1938 over one million people had been relocated, and Kurdish language, dress, folklore and names had been banned. This is what provoked the 1938 revolt. Once again the rebellion was brutally crushed: as a result, Kurdish-inhabited areas were placed under martial law, which was only lifted in 1946. Demirel’s film can be viewed in its entirety on Google Video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7893147585919394185#, accessed August 11, 2010)) 5 “Do not watch the documentary, prevent people from watching it and most important of all, do not allow your children to see it and prevent the seeds that belittle Ataturk from being sowed into their subconscious minds” (Yi÷it Bulut, Vatan, translated in Suzan Frazer, “Atatürk Film Draws Crowds and Controversy,” The Associated Press, November 13, 2008), http://www.candundar.com.tr/index.php?Did=8272 (accessed August 18, 2010). Despite his achievements, Atatürk’s arrogance and self-interest were well-known– see for example, Andrew Mango’s exhaustively researched biography Atatürk (New York: Overlook Hardcover, 2000). 6 For a useful summary of current (i.e. late 1990s) trends in documentary filmmaking in Turkey, see Belgesel Sinema Üzerine: Belgesel Sinemacılar Birli÷i, 1 Ulusal Konferansı Bildirileri, Mart 1997 (Concerning Documentary Cinema: 1st International Conference Proceedings of the Documentary Filmmakers

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The popularity of documentaries in Turkey has a lot to do with a change in attitudes, as the boundaries separating fiction from nonfiction films have gradually dissolved. As discussed in the previous chapter, directors such as Derviú Zaim have used both the documentary and the feature film to explore important political questions, such as the Cyprus issue (in Parallel Trips (2004) and Çamur [Mud] (2005)). Meanwhile other filmmakers have created historical feature films with Kemal Atatürk as the main character, which have proved as popular with audiences as Mustafa–for example Veda [The Farewell] (2010) and Dersimiz: Atatürk [Atatürk is our Lesson] (also 2010), both of which present more favorable, idealized portraits of the leader. The challenge to the fiction/ non-fiction binary can also be seen in other media–for example, in television docu-soaps or reality shows such as Çırak [The Apprentice], hosted by Tuncay Özihan and based on the American format. New methods for representing the self in everyday life (FileTube)7 offer unlimited opportunities for anyone make documentaries about their lives and/or interests and put them on public view, and thereby participate in a “performative” mode of production (Renov 1999, 316). Such developments might be viewed in negative terms (what is now left of the so-called “documentary tradition” in the cinema and television, that once championed the concrete and the historical?), but several contemporary filmmakers have proved how alternative forms of representation can prompt reflection on issues of fundamental concern to contemporary Turkey-gender construction, the importance of local (as well as national) identities, and the future of education. In this chapter I will look at three recent examples of the documentary genre, all of which have been released in the cinema–Pelin Esmer’s Oyun [The Play] (2005), a study of a group of women in the south of Turkey who stage a play on Zafer Bayramı [Victory Holiday]; 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep (2005), British director Ben Hopkins’ retelling of the lives of the Kirghiz, now living in eastern Turkey; and Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Do÷an’s øki Dil Bir Bavul [On the Way to School] (2009), an account of a young teacher’s experiences in a primary school in the east of the country. Hopkins’ documentary was actually made by the BBC in association with Association), (østanbul: Belgesel Sinemacılar Birli÷i, 1998). The association also publishes a journal and pursues other activities – see their website (in Turkish and English) at http://www.bsb.org.tr/index.html (accessed August 12, 2010). 7 But not YouTube (at least until October 22, 2010), access to which was blocked in Turkey by court order, because of some video clips-filmed in Greece-which were perceived to be insulting Atatürk’s memory.

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smaller European networks: I have included it as an example of how some filmmakers adopt a plurivocal perspective to show how memory and desire are historically situated and subjectively motivated (Nichols 180). I have been fortunate enough to interview all three directors about their experiences, concentrating in particular on the ways in which they address the issue of plural identities in contemporary Turkey.

Oyun Oyun consciously manipulates the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. For the majority of men portrayed in the documentary the act of rehearsing and performing a play might be nothing more than a distraction from the “real business” of rural life in the farming village of Arslanköy near Mersin. However the women involved in acting and performing the play ”Kadının Feryadı” [The Outcries of Women] understand that while reality is constructed through fictitious discourse, it is also lived in a way that needs to change for many of them. Their experiences resemble those of a consciousness-raising group, as they draw upon their individual experience to form a collective agenda. bell hooks likens this process to “radical postmodernism”–in which diverse groups reflect on identity construction as a means of inventing, articulating and debating who they are, what they know, and what they should be (hooks 1990, 20). With the help of Esmer’s camera the nine women in Oyun recount their struggle for self-determination to viewers who will never experience them; and by doing so demonstrate just how complicated the notions of “femaleness” and “femininity” actually are.8 The film offers us the privilege of seeing ideas, communities and information that are rarely represented in mainstream Turkish cinema (whether fictional or non-fictional). The women have spent all their lives serving their husbands at home and on the land; and for the first time they are given the opportunity to tell their stories to a wider audience. We learn about Zeynep Fatih, who recalls the harrowing experience of taking her child to the hospital alone, while being heavily pregnant with another child. With no money to pay for any medical treatment, she eventually gives birth alone, her husband nowhere to be seen. Ümmüye Kocak (Fatma 8

“I wanted to shoot a fiction-like documentary rather than a documentary-like fiction film, without trying to be invisible, but quietly integrating myself [in the women’s lives]” (Pelin Esmer, interviewed in Turkish Cinema Newsletter, May 8, 2006, http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/2006/05/play-oyun-by-pelin-esmer.html (accessed August 19, 2010).

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Fatih) badly wanted to complete high school and qualify as a teacher, but her father insisted that farm-work (“teaching the goats,” as he put it) was much more suitable for a woman. Nesime Kahraman grew up in a village, but her father sent her to Ankara to acquire an education; although her ambition was to become a teacher, she was forced to return to her community and now works as a hairdresser, where she feels very much the outsider with her city mannerisms. In “Kadının Feryadı” Nesime achieves her ambition by playing a teacher who is so concerned for Aytül (one of her learners) that she is prepared to risk a beating by confronting Aytül’s brutal father Recep. Despite her age (47) Ümmüye Kocak takes the role of Aytül as she understands quite keenly the difficulties faced by adolescent girls in rural patriarchal societies. Ümmü Kurt plays Recep by drawing on her own experiences of living with a partner who acts according to patriarchal logic. As the play “Kadının Feryadı” unfolds, so distinctions between past, present and future are collapsed into a continuous present, giving the women the chance–perhaps for the first time–to confront their pasts and forge new meanings out of them for their collective future.9 Esmer shows the women constructing alternative meanings for themselves through writing, rehearsing and performing the play. Playing Recep’s abused wife Emine, Zeynep Fatih understands the power of silence; in a significant exchange with her real-life husband, she vows loyalty to him but refuses to admits whether she loves him or not. Unable to discern the meaning of her words, her husband emphasizes the fact that “She [Zeynep] really loves me but she can’t show it […] As much as she loves me, I love her that much too.”10 At the same time Esmer makes no judgment on the two of them; it is clear from their body language that husband and wife are very much in love with one another. This is one of the film’s paradoxes: just as we think we have made a judgment on the characters (in this case, the wife challenging her husband’s authority), Esmer invites us to question that judgment. 9

This technique is characteristic of documentary filmmakers such as Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental work Shoah (1987) about the Holocaust shows everything as literally present. Lanzmann himself emphasizes that he did not “make a historical film,” qtd in “The Being of Nothingness: An Interview with Claude Lanzmann,” in Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins (eds.), Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of the Documentary (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996), 325. 10 For ease of comprehension, I am using the English subtitles given in the DVD version of the film (østanbul: Kanal D Video, 2006) B697782802939.

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The same applies to other women in the film. Ümmü and her friend Cennet Güneú are well aware of the socially produced aspects of gender: when they were younger they were expected to do men’s work on the land, even though their fathers treated them as the inferior sex. Hence the two of them experience little difficulty assuming male roles. Esmer emphasizes this by including a sequence where Ümmü (Fatma Fatih) welcomes the idea of having her hair cut short by her husband. On the other hand, both women are not frightened about expressing themselves; they possess a selfassertiveness and honesty that belies their subordinate role in rural society. As one of them points out, the experience of rehearsing and performing it as “a matter of life and death.”11 This paradoxical strain–where the women fulfill their roles as wives and mothers, yet also progress towards self-discovery–runs throughout the film. Fatma Kahraman admits that she has limited opportunities to learn her lines, as she has to entertain guests at her family home. At the same time she relishes the experience of being involved in rehearsals and performance; this is emphasized through frequent close-ups of her face wreathed in smiles as she tries to create her character. Several of the women admit that their husbands oppress them: family secrets (for example, domestic abuse) are not to be disclosed in public. On the other hand, they are perfectly willing to tell their secrets to their director Hüseyin Arslanköylu (the high school principal) to be included in a performance in front of the entire village. More importantly, the women are perfectly willing to question Hüseyin’s suggestions, and follow their own instincts instead. Behiye Yanık has a happy marriage, but talks candidly about being abused by her mother. The women’s strength of will is well summed up in the final lines of “Kadının Feryadı:” “We suffered it [oppression], our

11

What makes the experience of the play so significant is that it is the product of the women’s own initiative. Thus it is very different from the programs offered in the past to rural women, the majority of which have originated either in central government or other NGOs. In the past the Village Institutes (Köy Enstitutleri) would have assumed responsibility for this task–that is, until the government dissolved them in the early 1950s. See Zerrin Yalçıntepe Esmer, “Rural Women and Women-Oriented Programmes,” in Status of the [sic] Rural Women in Turkey: Problems and Proposals for Action (Ankara: International Labor Organization, 1991): 30-1. For a more comprehensive analysis of village women, and the schemes instituted–in both public and private sectors–to help them, see Nurettin Yıldırak, Köy Kadınların Sosyo-Ekonomik ve Kültürel Konumları [Village Women’s Socio-Economic and Cultural Position] (østanbul: Friedrich Ebert Vakfı, 1992).

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children won’t. We will work, we will succeed. We are human beings, humans.” Through the film Esmer challenges the dualistic, oppositional nature by which gender is traditionally framed–particularly in rural societies– showing instead that there are multiple and often paradoxical constructions of “femininity.” As we witness the vigor with which Ümmü undertakes her role as Recep, we understand that in many ways her attitudes are more “masculine” (i.e. aggressive) than those of her husband. At the end of “Kadının Feryadı,” another woman appears disguised as a police officer, pronouncing that theatre as an illegal activity.12 When no one listens, s/he suggests that theatre is not appropriate for women, emphasizing his point by beating one of the performers with his baton. By this time, however, we have learned so much about the women and their attitudes that such phrases seem irrelevant. Nesime (Zeynep Fatih) sums up the women’s experiences by quoting a song by the Turkish folk-singer Mahsun Kırmızıgül (which describes life as a matter of dressing well) and demanding that they should be accepted as individuals on their own terms. The existence of these multiple identities alerts us to the flaws of binary gender conceptualizations, focusing instead on the ways in which different constructions of femaleness qualitatively change the nature of human experience. I interviewed Pelin Esmer, the director of Oyun, in østanbul in August 2010, and asked her first about how she became a filmmaker: PE: I was studying sociology at Bo÷aziçi University, which I think helped me–albeit indirectly. I’ve had to forget much of the theoretical work, but I think the experience gave me a social conscience. I liked going to films, especially those shown at the østanbul Film Festival but I didn’t think I’d ever become a filmmaker. As I did my undergraduate course, however, I realized I was better in looking at people’s lives visually, rather than writing about them. I looked at many documentaries during my

12

Censorship in the Turkish theatre has not really been an issue since the early twentieth century, when all performances had to be approved by the Security Dictatorship. However since 1908 most companies have had a free hand in determining which plays they want to perform. For a good summary of early theatre history in Turkey, see Dikmen Gürün, “An Excursion in the Turkish Theater,” Turkish Cultural Foundation, http://www.turkishculture.org/performingarts/theatre/traditional-theatre/the-turkish-theater-590.htm (accessed August 19, 2010).

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anthropology courses with Leyla Neyzi,13 most of them foreign, and they inspired me to become a documentary filmmaker myself. I worked with Jeanne A. Finley,14 an American experimental filmmaker as her assistant, helping her to make a film called Conversations Across the Bosphorus (1995) while I was still an undergraduate.15 We spent one year with only one camera, and I was introduced to aspects of my trade-sound, photography, editing, and the rest. I learned above all that it’s possible to make a film if you really want to. I did a year’s workshop in cinema, and then started to work in films as a first Assistant Director, while making my own films with one camera. LR: Who did you work with? PE: I worked with a Danish director, Elisabeth Rygård, who made a film here [in østanbul].16 My first documentary Koleksiyoncu [The Collector] (2002) which I made at the same time, a subject I explored later in my film 11’e 10 Kala [10 Till Eleven] (2009). I shot it on a digital camera. I looked at my uncle’s passion for collecting things.17 The short film won some awards, which I wasn’t expecting, as it was in truth a very personal film. And then I made Oyun [The Play]… LR: Where did the idea for the film come from? PE: I read about the women in a newspaper, and how they were making a performance in their village. I was so intrigued that I traveled to meet them–first to congratulate them and then to investigate the possibilities of making a film. I explained who I was, and that I really wanted to make a documentary about them. 13

Leyla Neyzi (1961-), now Professor of Anthropology at Sabancı University, østanbul. 14 Jeanne A. Finley, media artist based at the California College of the Arts. 15 Conversations Across the Bosphorus depicts two women, and how their relationship to their faith shaped and determined their personal lives.. The film questions the possibility of continued peaceful coexistence between groups of opposing ideologies–Christian and Muslin-in a relentless urban landscape. While focusing on ordinary people’s lives, it still rehearses the binary oppositions that still tend to restrict rather than broaden understanding of contemporary Turkish politics and religion. 16 The film was Gönlümdeki Köúk Olmasa [House of Hearts] (2002), which was shown at the 2003 østanbul Film Festival. 17 Mithat Esmer, also the star of 11’e 10 Kala.

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LR: How did they react? PE: They were really enthusiastic. They had performed a play once before, but it had been written by someone else about a subject they could identify with; now they wanted to go it alone and depict their own lives. Once I’d heard about this, the prospect of making a film became much more exciting. I suggested that they continue their rehearsals, and if possible let me be a part of their team. They liked the idea, but didn’t believe that I’d actually come back to do it! After three weeks I returned with a little financial capital, raised by my co-producer Nida Karabol Akdeniz, and a camera I’d borrowed from the university. I had a sound man, Emrah Yıldırım, Peri Johnson as the production manager and me as the camera operator and director. That was it: the three of us were making the film. LR: How did the women react to your presence, while they were rehearsing? PE: They knew I was there all the time. Remember that they were used to television and/or film camera, having been invited to speak on television beforehand. Of course this was something different: we were filming intimate aspects of their lives. I think there was trust between us from the very beginning. I think my three-day visit beforehand was important; I got to know them, and they came to understand that I was not going to exploit them. Anyway, the play was the most important thing in their lives, not the film.18 LR: The film concentrates on the women’s private lives, as well as their work on rehearsing and performing the play. Had you already decided before filming to do this? PE: It was something obvious, as the line separating their lives from the action of the play was very blurred. I wasn’t only interested in the play; it was a means for the women to express themselves. Hence you never know whether they are acting or simply recording their real feelings. 18

One British reviewer felt that she was “watching a staged enactment off-stage where the women have been coached to say what they say. The documentation lacks the feel of an impromptu reaction. The whole film seems to have been planned meticulously and then recorded.” (Jugu Abraham, “A Strange ‘Documentary’” (December 28, 2005) Accessed October 10, 2010. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466916/usercomments.

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LR: I think that comes through very tangibly in the film. However, to what extent are the discussions between the women included in the film a faithful record of what they actually said? Were there parts that you had to edit out? PE: Of course I did. I left out some dialogue that the women might find uncomfortable (if they were to view it on screen). But for the most part what you see is what they said. They just wanted to express themselves, irrespective of whether or not the camera was there. Everything they said was their own words; there was no written dialogue. LR: So the disputes between the women over casting just came about spontaneously? PE: Yes. They were always talking about the play. Also, as I had already become part of the group, I contributed to the discussions myself. LR: That’s very interesting. Let me ask another question: you’re going down to the south from østanbul–a city-dweller visiting a rural area. Were there any issues of conflict there? PE: They dealt with this quite easily. Of course there’s a big social conflict between villagers and city-dwellers that dominates the Turkish social agenda. But I was filming in their home, where they felt secure and confident. I was on first-name terms with them; they were my friends, and I’d like to think I was their friend as well. We went through a process of growth throughout the filming; we didn’t let social differences get in the way. I was quite happy to wear the shalvar that they sewed for me, just like the village women, and I think they liked me doing so. By the way, they were extremely comfortable! LR: What was the role of the male director? Was he there to direct the women, or rather take down what they wanted him to say?19 PE: The second one. Remember that the women initiated the whole project and went to him with it. He was the school principal, and therefore perhaps in the best position to help them. He had staged plays before, and he was 19

An issue also raised by the British reviewer: “it is not the women who write the script, but a male educationalist who puts the play together (“A ‘Strange’ Documentary.”)

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an accomplished writer and listener. The women told their stories to him; he wrote down what they said. Everyone discussed the play together and had the right to comment and suggest whatever changes they wished. LR: Was there any conflict of interest between yourself as director of the film, and the principal as director of the play? PE: Not at all. They acted solely for the director; I was simply the witness recording their efforts. We just asked the director what he was going to do each day, and planned our daily schedule round him. I spent at least one or two days with each woman in turn either filming them alone or having them talk direct to the camera. However I could only work with them if they were not required at rehearsals. LR: Let’s go back to the women themselves. How do you think they coped with the stresses of their daily lives? PE: It was difficult for them, for sure. But I’m not sure they were repressed; if they were, they’d not have the energy to get up and mount the production for themselves. More importantly, they were different from other women in other parts of Turkey; if they were living in another village and coming from different social backgrounds, they might not have been able to act in a play like this. These women are Yörük women and that is important.20 LR: Do you think the nomadic temperament gives them a kind of freedom? PE: Absolutely. They might not be nomads any more, but they have that temperament. The fact that they’ve not settled in one place makes them more anti-authoritarian. LR: Do you think that freedom influences their lives? After all, they have also experienced suffering at their husbands’ hands?

20 The yörüks are a tribe of nomadic Turks with origins in Central Asia. Until the early 19th century, there were hundreds of thousands of families living in the Balkans as well as in western Anatolia. Their main source of income is their flocks. The women in Oyun are no longer nomadic, but they still depend on their animals for their survival.

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PE: That’s what I call the conflict in their existence. They are caught within contradictory forces; some of them might have tragic lives, but at the same time they can set positive examples–really amazing, in some cases. Each of the women’s stories was equally important for me. Sometimes their relationships with their husbands were quite complicated: when Zeynep’s husband told me that his wife couldn’t really say that she loved him, I nonetheless got the sense that the two of them were really close. Her life was a contradiction; her husband loved her yet still mistreated her. LR: So what you’re saying is that the relationships between the women and their husbands are complex? PE: I always got the sense of positive and negative feelings existing together. You might want to hate some of the men, but you also understand that their relationships with their spouses are not that simple. I don’t think we should judge them, just as I wouldn’t like them to judge me. The women might be oppressed, but I always identify a power within them. Otherwise how would they dare to perform a play in front of their fellowvillagers? LR: Do you think the experience of performing the play actually changed the women’s lives? PE: I don’t think it changed their way of life. They’re still working in the fields. But more importantly they’ve learned how to pursue their lives with much more self-confidence. LR: What was the reaction when the film opened in østanbul? PE: Very enthusiastic. All the women came to the city, after having seen the premiere in their own village. But what was more important was that the women went to other villages to perform their play: many people found out about them through the film, and invited the women to give performances. Only two months ago they packed themselves into a truck and toured small villages around østanbul. That’s what I was really hoping for … They got money from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and then worked for themselves. I believe that if change is going to occur, audiences need to see real people and identify with them. I don’t want to make a film

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with the object of changing things in mind; I’m more interested in looking at people’s lives.

37 Uses for a Dead Sheep Like Oyun, Ben Hopkins’ documentary 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep (2005), focusing on the Pamir Kirghiz tribe, now living in Ulupamir, eastern Turkey, gives the local inhabitants the chance to become involved in a drama; in this case, a series of filmed reconstructions of their own history.21 This reflexive mode of filmmaking, according to John Corner, is perfectly acceptable to the (western) viewing audience’s “understandings and expectations concerning political modernism and the reconfigurations of Postmodernism.” Hopkins employs familiar techniques such as “intertitles marking one scene off from another […] [and] the calculated breaking-up into parts of scenes which might have conventionally been constructed in ‘narrative continuity’ form” (Corner 1996, 25). From the Pamir Kirgiz perspective, however, Hopkins’ reconstructions give them the opportunity to reflect on their past and how it played a fundamental part in shaping their present experience. In one sequence Arif, a younger member of the tribe, gets the chance to play his own father, and thereby empathize with some of the sufferings his parents experienced – the fight for food and water as they moved to Afghanistan from Chinese Turkistan, their attempts to forge a new life for themselves in freezing and unforgiving terrain, and their resourceful attempts to cope with high infant mortality and a lack of suitable medicines. Hopkins’ staged reenactments (shot on Super 8 and 16 mm film) are complemented by interviews with some of the tribal elders who recall further instances of migration from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Through such experiences the tribe understands the significance of belonging to a nomadic culture that has never settled in any particular location, either in the past or the present.22 Even though the Turkish government generously offered them a home in the east of the country, they have never subscribed to Kemalist ideology; their spiritual 21

The Pamir Kirghiz history has been discussed in detail by Hermann Kreutzmann in “Ethnic Minorities and Marginality in the Pamirian Knot: Survival of Wakhi and Kirghiz in a Harsh Environment and Global Contexts,” Geographical Journal 169, no.3 (September 2003): 215-35. They were also the subjects of “Afghan Exodus,” a 52-minute documentary made in the Disappearing World series (1980) by Granada Television in Britain. 22 For more on this subject, see Rada Dyson-Hudson and Neville Dyson-Hudson, “Nomadic Pastoralism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 9 (1980): 15-61.

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father is not Atatürk but Rahman Qul, the last Kirghiz Khan, who died in Turkey in 1990. In some ways 37 Uses adopts a more pessimistic tone than Oyun, as it suggests that the Pamir Kirghiz way of life is under threat–not from the Turkish central government, but from changing times. Hopkins interviews several younger members of the tribe who have migrated westwards to the big cities such as østanbul in search of work. Although their lives might be hard (as they fend for themselves rather than relying on their families), they do not regret their decisions: one girl Özlem points out that twentyfive years ago her family lived “without electricity, without medicine, without roads.” Now she enjoys a “civilized” existence in østanbul. However this prosperity has been achieved at a price: the younger family members miss the tribal sense of community while back home the entire tribe is in danger of extinction, with no one left to carry on the centuriesold rural ways of life.23 With no real prospects for the future, it is hardly surprising that one of the elders should play a doleful song yearning for a return to their homeland (wherever that might be). On the other hand 37 Uses allows a hitherto marginalized community to speak for themselves; to tell the world about their traditions and how they have helped sustain their way of life for centuries. When the film opened in the United States in 2006, the Variety reviewer flippantly remarked that most of the thirty-seven uses for a dead sheep seemed to be for foodstuffs or ceremonies (for example, the Feast of the Sacrifice ritual, where a sheep is killed and eaten) (“Genre-Tweaking Pic” 2006, 37). Hopkins shows that such rituals are “the way of the world” for the Pamir Kirghiz, and have remained unchanged despite centuries of migration and interference from colonizing powers. However archaic they might seem– especially to western viewers–they express the tribal identity. As a non-Kirghiz director filming their way of life, Hopkins remains aware of his relationship to his subjects. Hence 37 Uses includes several sequences that focus on the filmmaking process; we learn, for instance, that relationships between Hopkins’ crew and the tribe were largely cordial, except for one occasion when a woman refuses to take part in a reconstruction depicting the problems caused by opium in the 1970s. As her father was an addict, she feels that her involvement might dishonor his 23

Most migrants from rural areas to the city “consider themselves villagers or someone with rural origins because they grew up inside the rural community” (Tahire Erman, “Becoming ‘Urban’ or Becoming ‘Rural:’ The Views of Turkish Rural-to-Urban Migrants on the ‘Integration’ Question,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, no.4 (1998), 559 (541-61).

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memory. In the film Hopkins allows her to voice her misgivings about the filming of the scene. Elsewhere Hopkins films himself asking the tribe to reenact a scene taking place in 1978 when the Pamir Kirghiz left Afghanistan. In voiceover he tells us that one hundred costumes had been specially made for the sequence, but it was proving difficult to persuade the tribespeople to “get up early on a Sunday morning and drag themselves out on to the mountain to shoot the scene.” Matters had been exacerbated by the fact that “the last hour of film had been lost; the camera had chewed up our film.” This film’s self-reflexive style recalls the work of Hopkins’ fellow-British director Nick Broomfield, which consciously shares any filming difficulties with the audience.24 However Hopkins is only interested in himself as a presence in the film insofar as it challenges the orientalist position of a western director/ author living amongst their nonwestern subjects and trying to speak for them. An example of this might be seen in Joyce Roper’s observations in the foreword to her book The Women of Nar, where she admits her passionate interest “in the rich and deep [Turkish] village culture,” and feels privileged that “because I am a woman it was possible for me to get to know the village women who cannot usually read or write […] The women accepted me into their sisterhood” (Roper 1974, 13). Hopkins appreciates that he can neither get to know the Pamir Kirghiz nor be accepted into their world; he will always remain an outsider.25 Bearing this in mind, he shows how the filmmaking process involves a complex series of negotiations between people of different cultures. Pelin Esmer employs this strategy in Oyun, as the nine women frequently argue with one another about their rehearsals, casting and performances (one of them threatens to quit the entire production), and yet forge a compromise to enable the project to continue. Through this multivocal approach to documentary filmmaking, involving a selection, combination and equal weighing of different voices and viewpoints, Esmer and Hopkins ensure that their subjects express themselves in their own words. 24

See Allison Pearson, “Nick Broomfield: The Fly in the Ointment,” in Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins (eds.), Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of the Documentary (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996): 343-50. 25 Nonetheless Hopkins does have an affinity with Turkish cultures: Pazar explores the bargaining culture in the Turkish Republic during the mid-1990s, while two of his unfinished screenplays Herkes Ölmemi østiyor [Everyone Wants Me to Die] and Firariler [The Fugitives] both have Turkish themes. See also “British Ben Hopkins Plans to Remain a ‘Turkish Filmmaker’ for a While,” Today’s Zaman, April 8, 2009: 5.

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I interviewed Hopkins about the film in June 2010, and asked how he got the idea in the first place: LR: How did the idea for the film originate? BH: I’ve given the answer to this question for convenience’s sake, but I’m not sure how true it is. However I’ll start by giving it, and then I’ll tell you why it might not be true. I was in Afghanistan making Footprints, a film about cluster bombs in the war there,26 and I met an anthropologist called Akhtarjan Kohistani.27 He told me the story of the Pamir Kirghiz (or Kyrgyz) tribe, who had migrated from Afghanistan to eastern Turkey, and I realized that there was the subject for a great documentary there. I had been to Turkey twice before to show Simon Magus (1999) and The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz (2000),28 and I loved the experience. I also liked the films of Yılmaz Güney, who wasn’t very well known in Britain at that time; probably still isn’t, except for Yol [The Road] (1982). I had this idea for a screenplay, which eventually became Pazar [The Market] (2008), which could have been set in Africa, but it seemed to make more sense with a Turkish setting. This was pretty much inspired by what I had seen in the films of Yılmaz Güney. LR: So Pazar was in your mind at the same time as 37 Uses? BH: Pretty much so. I’d already decided that Pazar should be a Turkish film before I went to Afghanistan and met Kohistani. However I now had two projects set in the same part of the world, which was economically quite good; I ended up researching both at the same time. LR: Where did the funding for 37 Uses come from? BH: Mostly from the BBC. LR: Why do you think they liked the idea? 26

Made for the BBC television series Storyville, Footprints (2003) explores the impact of cluster bombs on the people and landscape in Afghanistan. 27 Akhtarjan Kohistani, anthropologist and co-editor of Your First 100 Words in Pashto (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003). 28 Simon Magus (1999), with Noah Taylor, Stuart Townsend, Sean McGinley; and The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz (2000), with Tom Fisher, Ian McNeice, Tony Maudsley, were Hopkins’ first two feature films.

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BH: They got it immediately: well, I should say that the producer Nick Fraser got it.29 I have to say that it was difficult to convince other companies, who wanted to know whether it was an anthropological film or not. Actually it’s more than this; it’s a comic, historical anthropological film about me trying to make a film! It took a long time to put together. LR: How long was the shoot? BH: Three weeks. It wasn’t hard to persuade the Kirghiz to become involved in it; they are very proud of their history, and they were happy to tell it to others so long as they were treated with respect. Everyone was quite good about it, really; we were shooting in a sensitive area of eastern Turkey, in which the PKK were quite influential, but nothing really happened. We did have to get permission from the local gendarmerie to do the battle scenes, but all the soldiers were incredibly helpful. The Kirghiz actually support the army, and I think the generals, or those in power, were well aware of this. LR: The film is very much about local traditions, isn’t it? BH: I was lucky in the sense that I could draw upon Nazif Shahrani’s work on the Kirghiz,30 which told me a lot about their ways of life both past and present, and the rest of the information I obtained through interviews. I went there three times before filming started so as to get to know them. The older generation seems intent on sustaining their traditions–for example, yogurt-making–while the younger generation wants something else. Towards the end of the film we show how those traditions are being lost as more and more of the younger Kirghiz move away to Ankara and østanbul in search of better lives. This is inevitable: the Kirghiz live in a village surrounded by Kurds, where there is no real work for them; hence their communities are rapidly becoming depopulated. Economically speaking it is impossible to support new generations for much longer. But

29

Nick Fraser, series editor of the Storyville series, describes the film as “eloquent, touching and funny” as the Kirghiz chronicle their own past and look forward to an uncertain future (“Storyville: 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/dead-sheep.shtml (accessed August 9, 2010). 30 The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), originally published in 1979.

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traditions don’t just disappear overnight; there are sufficient conservative youngsters to keep them alive for a few more generations yet. LR: Why did you decided to make it a film about a director making a film? BH: For me it was the only meaningful way of going it. I’d watched anthropological documentaries when I was young, and while there were some really great examples, I came to distrust the so-called “objectivity” of their narratives. I also distrust the “fly-on-the-wall” approach: the arrival of a film crew immediately changes the environment you’re working in, what with the lights and other equipment. I find something slightly exoticizing, not to say patronizing, about going there and just observing Kirghiz and their daily rituals. By putting myself and my crew in the film, I wanted to show that we were just engaged in our daily business. It’s the interaction between the filmmakers and the Kirghiz which proves interesting.31 LR: Where did the idea for having the tribes-people reenact their own history come from? BH: It was there right at the beginning, because they had such an amazing story of migration and endurance to tell. Reconstructing is a dirty word as far as documentaries are concerned, as many of them are so poorly directed. However I am a trained drama director, with experience of working on action sequences, so I felt happy doing it. Moreover by showing the process of reconstruction taking place, I think we made the film interesting. This became particularly apparent in the story about opium, which was something rather shameful for the present-day tribespeople. Some of them didn’t want to appear in the sequence, while the surviving relatives of the people actually involved in that incident found the filming of it rather distasteful. I put all of this in the film; the Kirghiz was actually confronting their own past as a way of defining themselves in the present. It was an amazing journey they had over the past hundred years, and despite everything they have managed to retain a kind of tribal unity, even in the face of considerable social and political upheaval. It’s a 31

“We shot maybe 30 hours of ‘making-of’ material: you know, the usual stuff like us setting up shots and people making tea and two people arguing about something on the edges of the shoot, and in the end I think we used about five minutes of that. It's incredibly distilled” (“Director Interview: Ben Hopkins,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/ben-hopkins.shtml (accessed August 9, 2010)).

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sad irony that although they retained that unity against communism, as embodied by the Soviets, they will probably be destroyed in the future by capitalism, in a country like Turkey, where they are actually free to practice their traditions. When a community is oppressed, it gains a kind of inner strength; when it’s free to move, it often dissipates. LR: What the response of the younger people in the tribe towards such changes? BH: Maybe we didn’t find the right subjects; sadly most of them didn’t have too much to say. The only good talker was the nurse Özlem, who claimed that she might marry a foreigner, a Turk, or someone outside the tribe. I now know that she married a Kirghiz; even if she wanted to think differently, she was persuaded to observe tradition by her father or grandfather. LR: Do you think the younger generation see themselves as Kirghiz first and Turkish second, or what? BH: Maybe they did, but they wouldn’t tell me about it. They might like to free themselves from family influence, but they didn’t say anything. Those who moved to østanbul I think were torn between two cultures; they feel duty-bound to maintain their traditions, even in a completely urbanized world. However I don’t think this will last for many more generations. LR: Do you think the film was as much about your own self-discovery as that of the Kirghiz? BH: Interesting question. I’ve never thought of that before. Perhaps you can answer that question better! I have to say that I didn’t immerse myself in their culture; at the end of each day I went off and wrote up my notes for the next day. LR: But you don’t seem like the outsider–the anthropologist, for example– just coming in to observe … BH: I think I make friends easily. I had a good partner in Ekber Kutlu, the Kirghiz scholar and artist, who helped me get to know the tribes-people.32 32

Muhammet Ekber Kutlu also teaches at Yüzüncü Yıl University in Van, eastern Turkey.

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But I’ve never had difficulty breaking the ice wherever I’ve filmed – Afghanistan, Laos. LR: How was the film received when it opened? BH: It opened at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Caligari Prize, and won several further awards before it premiered on television.33 Critical reaction was extremely good, both from the film and anthropological communities: the film won an award from the Royal Anthropological Society that year.34

øki Dil Bir Bavul If Oyun and 37 Uses celebrate multivocal perspectives, øki Dil Bir Bavul lays bare the potential dangers of imposing a univocal view on a community. Set in the remote eastern village of Demirci, Orhan Eskiköy and Öznur Do÷an’s film recounts a year in the life of Emre Aydın, a newly-qualified teacher from the western city of Denizli, as he works with a mixed ability group of learners ranging from first to fifth grade (7-11year-olds). As with 37 Uses, øki Dil tells us a lot about daily life in a barren, unforgiving landscape. Most houses are built of stone and simply furnished with rugs on the floor and giant braziers in the center of the communal living area. The village has its own chief, and most inhabitants are in some way related to him. They spend their lives farming–working in the tomato fields and cutting wheat with a hand-scythe–but sometimes it seems they are content enough just to survive in a climate with hot summers and bitterly cold winters. In a world far removed from the metropolitan centers of Ankara and østanbul, the concept of time depends on the rhythms of the seasons; Eskiköy and Do÷an stress this point by contrasting a shot of a duck quacking on a cold winter’s day with a shot of the same duck in springtime, happily waddling towards the water with a 33

The first broadcast of the program was on BBC Four on December 11, 2006. However Hopkins does not consider himself too much of an anthropologist: “[A] lot of anthropological filmmaking started from an academic base. It was first and foremost a record, a field recording of a way of life – a document more than a work of cinema. My film is maybe the opposite as I am a film-maker and not an anthropologist or an ethnographer – it’s a film first, and an ethnographic document second” (interview with Tom Hamilton for DocumentaryFilms.Net (January 14, 2007), http://www.documentaryfilms.net/index.php/37-uses-for-a-dead-sheep/ (accessed August 9, 2010).

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batch of new-born ducklings. By contrast time as defined by the 24-hour clock has little or no meaning in Demirci; the women are quite surprised, not to say disturbed when they learn that their children should be in school by 7.30 a.m. each day. The principal language of communication in this community is Kurdish; the only people who are fluent in Turkish are those who have been away and come back. Emre Aydın is pitch-forked into this community for his first posting as a state school teacher.35 From the outset he is determined that any communication between himself and his learners, whether inside or outside the classroom, should be solely in Turkish. Even if some of the learners can neither read nor write their own language, he makes little attempt to empathize with them.36 Consequently little concrete learning takes place in school: Eskiköy and Do÷an incorporate several panning shots of the learners staring blankly at their teacher, or laughing nervously so as not to hurt his feelings. As time passes, Emre becomes more and more frustrated with his learners’ lack of linguistic progress; in one sequence he stands outside the school block and repeatedly berates a group of first-graders for their inability to understand him. On another occasion he becomes so exasperated at a learner’s inability to distinguish between the “le” and “la” sounds that he sends everyone out for a break, clasping his head in his hands as he does so. When three learners use Kurdish in their written homework, he makes them stand on one foot in front of the class as a punishment. While such reactions might be attributed to experience, they also reveal Emre’s basic lack of cross-cultural sensibility. At the beginning of the film he remarks in a phone call to his mother that all the learners “look the same,” and he ”can’t tell them apart.” Although he eventually learns their names, he makes little effort to get to know them; as they happily play childish games in the school-yard, he sits on the fence in the distance–an aloof, lonely figure ignored by everyone. Emre cannot grasp the 35 In the Turkish system it is the Ministry of Education (Milli E÷itim Bakanlı÷i) who is responsible for assigning teachers in state schools. See the EuroEducation website http://www.euroeducation.net/prof/turkco.htm (accessed August 21, 2010). 36 This is not always true of state school education: øsa Korkmaz claims that from 2003 onwards the Ministry of National Education “took a radical decision to shape curriculums rooted in constructivism and active learning.” However some teachers, according to his research, “have doubts about students’ intellectual development through the new curriculum” (“Evaluation of Teachers for Restructured Elementary Curriculum (Grades 1 to 5).” Education 129, no.2 (Winter 2008): 251, 255 (250-8).

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importance of nonverbal communication–for example, the high-fives that all the learners give him as they leave school or the soulful expressions on their faces as he scolds them yet again for forgetting or mispronouncing Turkish words. In one affecting sequence one learner comes up to Emre’s desk and reads a text out loud; try as he might, the learner keeps rendering the word walnut (ceviz) as “malnut.” Emre’s frustration increases as he makes the learner repeat the phrase over and over again, completely oblivious to the learner’s increasing discomfiture. When Emre has an opportunity to communicate with his learners, he makes a complete hash of it. As spring approaches, he decides to plant a tree with their help; they dig a hole and plant the tree, taking care to place the soil over it. One learner expresses his happiness in Kurdish; Emre’s immediate response is to remind the class sharply that Turkish should be spoken at all times. The sense of pleasure in a shared activity is abruptly dispelled–although Emre asks everyone to congratulate each other, one learner stubbornly refuses to comply. She is palpably upset by his attitude. øki Dil Bir Bavul shows what happens if learners are expected to attain linguistic or behavioral standards that are not part of the indigenous culture.37 Eventually the learners lose confidence in their abilities and hence fail to make progress, either academically or personally. In time they might end up like the women in Oyun–semi-educated with little sense of self-worth. This is why it is so important to sustain a multivocal perspective, especially in the classroom, enabling everyone to communicate by whatever means they wish, whether verbal or nonverbal. Eskiköy and Do÷an underline the point by showing the learners regularly at play in the schoolyard, on waste ground or the river. They might not talk much to each other but they can communicate. But Emre should not be entirely blamed for his want of cultural sensitivity; he has been brought up in a culture which until recently banned the use of Kurdish in the public sphere (on television, in school or wherever). In one sequence øbrahim Huz, one of the villagers, recalls an incident in 1992 when he applied to become a guest worker in Germany 37 This was not always the case: during the Village Institutes experiment in the late 1940s, one of the main achievements was to create “a new type of intellectual by promoting awareness among primary school teachers who were of peasant origin but did not on that account aspire to be upwardly mobile.” Rather than leaving their villages for the cities, they preferred to stay in their communities as educators, promoting a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to learning (Ali Arayiçi, “Village Institutes in Turkey,” Prospects 29 no.2 (June 1999), 278 (26780).

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(Gastarbeiter). He informed the government official, whose name was Özlem, that he spoke two languages–Turkish and Kurdish. Kurdish was his native language, but he had learned Turkish to increase his chances of better employment. Özlem mockingly asked him: “Do you count Kurdish as a language?” In this kind of situation, where pluralism and diversity are actively discouraged, there can be little future prospect of success for the chief’s children Heca and Samet, who will leave school with a minimal knowledge of Turkish, much of it acquired from television rather than the classroom.38 Eskiköy and Do÷an use these experiences to mount a cogent critique of an education system that fails to meet most learners’ needs, particularly in rural areas. Emre’s classroom is bedecked with national symbols–behind the blackboard hangs a garland of Turkish flags, while another flag flutters outside the building come rain or shine. Each day the learners recite a poem celebrating Atatürk’s achievements and ending with the phrase “Ne Mutlu Türkum Diyene” (Happy is he who is a Turk). There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this ritual, but it has little significance for Emre’s learners, who know little of the country’s history, whether ancient or modern. We see them trying to recite the poem on at least two occasions: the first time they simply mumble the words, but on the second occasion Rojda–a little girl who experiences numerous learning difficulties–recites it virtually word-perfect. She looks up and beams with pleasure, but we sense that she has learned the poem parrot-fashion with little concern for its meaning. Emre writes it on the blackboard and asks the fourth-graders to copy it down: one of them comes up and chews his pencil, as if at a loss to understand why he should be doing this. In a later sequence the class is shown celebrating Cocuk Bayramı (Children’s Day), an annual holiday taking place on April 23, which was introduced by Atatürk to celebrate the creation of the Turkish Republic. Once again the classroom is awash with flags and balloons: meanwhile Emre and his learners gather outside to mark the occasion by singing a celebratory song referring to the Republic’s “rescue” from the Ottoman 38 This is an important issue–a recent report on education and development in the Turkish Republic concluded that in rural areas, as well as in the gecekondu (slum) areas of the cities, where many rural migrants congregate, “teachers attributed the physiological, psycho-social and academic shortcomings of children mainly to their poor language skills, the low socio-economic status of families and household poverty” (“Studies from Middle East Technical University Yield New Information about Education and Development,” Education Business Weekly, May 5, 2010, 137).

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sultans. Emre asks the learners to tell him which is the only country to celebrate Children’s Day, and receives the answer “Ankara” (the Turkish capital) in reply. The significance of the occasion is lost on them; their families experienced a very different history from that propounded by the Turkish government. The only pleasure the learners derive from the occasion is to participate in a sack race after the ceremony has concluded. Eskiköy and Do÷an follow this sequence with a shot of Atatürk’s portrait hanging in the classroom (as in every class in the Turkish Republic), and subsequently cut to another shot of the learners wrestling with the difficulties of learning the Turkish language. Nationalist symbols have no significance for these children; they are nothing more than decorations. Are there any possible ways to overcome this? In a film like øki Dil Bir Bavul the solutions are implicitly rather than explicitly suggested. Teachers require cultural as well as pedagogical education to help them engage with their learners’ lived experience, as well as their diverse linguistic and cultural requirements. The centralizing tendency of the education system needs to be replaced with more flexible models, giving learners and parents a say in what should be learned.39 Teachers, learners and parents should be encouraged to negotiate with one another to help determine a more enlightened educational agenda–in other words, engage in the same kind of discussions as the women in Oyun, and the director and the Pamir Kirghiz in 37 Uses. If this could be achieved, then perhaps the perfunctory ending to Emre’s year in Demirci–where he departs to minimal farewells from his learners, suggesting that they have little further need of him–could be avoided. I interviewed Özgür Do÷an, co-director of the film, in østanbul in August 2010, and asked him first about how he and Eskiköy acquired a social conscience in their approach to filmmaking: ÖD: I had to make a film for my graduation during my final year as an undergraduate, so I talked to Orhan [Eskiköy], and we decided to make a film about prisoners. In 2000 there was a hunger strike,40 and we found a 39

This contradicts Chris Hann’s somewhat ambitious claim that strong centralized states achieve transformations in the direction of “Western-style modernity” (“Strong States: The Dialectics of Social Engineering in Hungary and Turkey,” Daedalus 124, no. 2 (Spring 1995), 151 (133-53). 40 These hunger strikes protested against F-type prisons, which were designed for efficient segregation of political prisoners. They began on October 20, 2000, demanding F-type prisons not to be opened, and involved many prisoners from different groups, including the PKK. The result was tragic. On December 19,

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family whose four children had been involved in it. They were willing to make a film at first, but later withdrew. So we decided instead to do a film about my brother, who had also been jailed at that time. He wasn’t on hunger strike, but had been in prison for nine and a half years. We decided to go to my village, and interview my family members, as well as my brother, focusing in particular on what they had done during that time. LR: Where are you from? ÖD: From Muú in eastern Turkey. Anyway, we interviewed everyone, including my brother Coúkun: the end result, Hayaller Birer Kırık Ayna [Each Dream is a Shattered Mirror] (2001) won several awards, as well as being exhibited at the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA).41 LR: In making the documentary, did you have any particular guiding principles? ÖD: We like to be close to reality. We want our films to address contemporary social and political problems, and offer some solutions. However we’re also interested in ordinary people–for example, in øki Dil Bir Bavul, the subjects are teachers and their students. LR: Did the experience of making Hayaller Birer Kırık Ayna inspire you to become interested in socio-political filmmaking? ÖD: For sure. I met many, many fathers and mothers, brothers of prisoners, and we thought that their stories should be told. Otherwise people would not understand the sufferings such people experienced. But we’re not making propaganda films; they can be taken simply as representations of certain aspects of life in Turkey. øki Dil Bir Bavul is about a teacher and his students; you can approach it as a human story. This kind of filmmaking is not common; it’s very new. We want to create a new cinematic language; as in Oyun, we want to tell simple stories with 2000, the government decided to break the strike using force in an operation codenamed “Back to Life.” The operation was faced by well-organized resistance, and led to the death of 28 prisoners and 2 soldiers. Since then, both F-type prisons and related hunger strikes have become commonplace. 41 The film is available for viewing at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3474078699683020660#. The festival has been held annually in Amsterdam since 1988; it is the world’s largest.

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effective messages. There’s no interviews, talking heads or voiceovers; people can talk direct to camera about their concerns. Most people don’t consider documentaries as “true” cinema; they are thought of as only effective for television. LR: Where did the funding for Hayaller Birer Kırık Ayna come from? ÖD: From nowhere! The faculty gave us the filming equipment, and we did the rest on our own money. In 2003 we were doing another film on the hunger strike, again on our own money. No one provided us with anything. LR: Where did the idea for øki Dil Bir Bavul come from? ÖD: One of our friends, who had graduated from Ankara University Communication Faculty, had become a teacher in an eastern village near Bingöl. He told us of the difficulties his students experienced in understanding him, which gave us the idea for the film. Precisely the same thing had happened during my childhood; when I started school, I didn’t know Turkish. LR: So your native language is Kurdish? ÖD: That’s right. I started to reflect on my own experiences. Orhan remembered his experiences at university with a student called ørfan Aktan–now a well-known journalist–who was also Kurdish.42 When ørfan started to talk in class, the other Turkish students laughed at him. Orhan believed that we should do something about this, as many Kurdish students lack the confidence to stand up for themselves. LR: Did you have similar experiences? ÖD: I could only speak Turkish in class. We were also ordered to talk Turkish at home. LR: Why?

42

Aktan has also authored several books of biography and poetry (http://www.iletisim.com.tr/ki%C5%9Fi/irfan-aktan-2119.aspx, accessed October 11, 2010)

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ÖD: It was a school rule. On many occasions, the teacher sent spies to listen in on us at home, to make sure we were speaking Turkish. If we went into our native language, we were beaten. So the children in the film were quite lucky. My grandmother and grandfather don’t know Turkish, which made things quite difficult when I was forced to speak it at home. It was a difficult life; very few of us even went to high school, let alone complete a university education, as there was no high school in our village. I went to Trabzon and stayed with my uncle for one year; then I moved to Konya and stayed with another uncle. I moved to Ankara and stayed with another uncle. Once I finished high school, I began university life in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, but discovered it was not for me, and transferred to the Faculty of Communication. LR: Did you feel alienated from your roots, once you started traveling round the country? ÖD: Not at school, but in university, yes. During high school, I forgot my native language; I became Turkish. At university I rediscovered my Kurdish roots, and I should relearn my language once again. LR: Do you think of yourself as Kurdish and Turkish? ÖD: No–Kurdish. I have little loyalty towards Turkey, because of the bad experiences of my childhood, things that were imposed upon me. Remember that in my childhood, and in my university days, I was always reminded that I’m not a Turk. I’ve always been told I’m different, even though I speak really good Turkish. LR: For the film, where did you find Emre the teacher, who took the main role? ÖD: Originally we’d decided to shoot the film in my hometown area of Muú, but the government allowed at least some Kurdish to be spoken there. So we went to the Urfa area, but could not find any suitable teachers. Eventually we went to the Ö÷retmen Evi [Teacher’s Lodging] in the Demirci area. We had a list of new teachers, and talked with them–nearly forty in all, until we found Emre. LR: Which department did he graduate from?

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ÖD: From a Faculty of Education. The main difficulty in planning the film was that we wanted to tell the teacher’s as well as the students’ stories. Both are victims of the education system. During his four years at university, Emre was not prepared for this experience; no one told him he would be sent to a village where the children don’t speak Turkish. LR: Is everything we see in the film a faithful record of his experiences? ÖD: Except for his coming to the village by bus. When he agreed to do the film, we hadn’t actually got any equipment, so we had to return to Ankara to fetch it. When we came back to the village, Emre had already arrived, but not started school yet. But we were there to film his first day meeting the children. However we had to restage his arrival in the village for the benefit of the cameras. LR: Were you there all the time, or did you only film for limited periods? ÖD: For limited periods. We went there eight times, and stayed for two to three weeks at a time, depending on what finances were available. Most of the film was made with our own money, supported by one of our friends from the Netherlands, who lent us €5000, as well as providing us with sound equipment. LR: How did the local authority react to your presence in the school? ÖD: They had no idea. All we needed was permission from the Ministry of Education. LR: Were all the events that happened spontaneous, or had you prepared some kind of a script in advance? ÖD: We knew precisely what was going to happen. Partly this was because of my childhood experiences, and partly because we had worked on the project for four years. So we understood how a teacher might react in a village with no cellphone facilities, no electricity, and far away from major cities. In my hometown, for instance, if you want to talk on the cellphone, you had to climb a mountain to find a signal. But there were some surprises; we hoped that Emre might learn to live with the villagers, but instead he closed himself off. This was unexpected:

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normally Kurds are very hospitable towards foreigners, as well as outsiders, and Emre refused their hospitality. LR: Why do you think he did that? ÖD: He was disappointed. The experience of working there made him more and more depressed. He became disillusioned with the idea of teaching; in the middle of the academic year, he severed relationships with us. Maybe he wanted to quit altogether, but couldn’t tell us. But the problem for him was that he was very poor; his family needed the money from his job. LR: How did the children react to your presence in their classroom? ÖD: They had no idea they were being filmed. As they were first-graders, they thought we were part of the school; extra teachers, you might say. When the classes were going on, their attention focused on Emre, and they forgot we were there. LR: And what about their parents? ÖD: First it was very difficult for us. When they saw the camera, they thought we were from the government, and demanded electricity, better roads, and other improvements. But after two weeks or so, they got used to us. We spent so much time with them–drinking tea and talking, gaining their confidence. The important thing is that they had to trust us; then they could open up and speak. Most of the conversations we recorded were spontaneous–for example, when øbrahim recalled his experiences of being a guest worker in Germany. LR: Did you find that the experience of making the film was somehow cathartic for you? ÖD: Yes. Sometimes I hated Emre, because I saw myself in the children he was teaching. I felt this in particular during the second semester, when he began to cut himself off from his Kurdish hosts. I couldn’t understand his behavior, and why he reacted as he did. Orhan felt the same: when we looked at all the film we had shot, we sympathized with the children rather than the teacher. The first rough cut lasted three hours, and we realized we had to recut the film in order to arrive at a more balanced point of view.

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LR: It’s a shame, isn’t it, because Emre is not fundamentally a bad person … ÖD: Yes, you can understand his reactions, but still you side with the children. It’s not their fault they could not follow him, and when he started to insult them, you realized his inadequacies. LR: Did Emre make any effort to learn Kurdish? ÖD: Yes, a few words, but only for daily purposes. We were expecting him to learn Kurdish so that he could communicate with the children, or with the village elders. But he closed all these avenues down. LR: Yes, that’s interesting. ÖD: The final image shows the children playing happily in the landscape, while Emre leaves. Clearly he has failed in his task. But the children are really happy. You know, often in the west of Turkey people look at villagers in the east, and say what a poor life they lead. This is not the case here. They are not poor; they have their own life and want nothing else. LR: What did Emre do after you finished filming him? ÖD: He had to stay there for two years; this was part of his responsibility as a government-sponsored teacher. I haven’t called him for three months or so, so don’t know where he is. LR: Was his second year any better? ÖD: He said yes, but I’m not sure! LR: What was the reaction like, when the film opened? ÖD: Very varied. We organized special screenings for different groups– students, members of political parties, and other non-governmental organizations. Many people just pitied the teacher and the children, without relating what they saw to the problems in our education system. Others identified with Emre rather than the children. The Kurds realized that the children’s experiences were like their own; they had all been through such problems of communication. I was slightly disappointed; I

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wanted to make people empathize with the children and the teacher, but couldn’t manage it. LR: Why? ÖD: Because people responded to it on a superficial level. It’s difficult for them to reflect on the issues raised by the film, because they’re not used to this type of work–especially where education is concerned. LR: Did it make any money? ÖD: It made a profit! We got around 90,000 admissions, which is very large for a documentary in Turkey. We can make another film on the proceeds. LR: What will it be about? ÖD: It will focus on what the children in øki Dil Bir Bavul will become, once they are adults. We’re talking to Kurd and Alevi families in østanbul and Kahramanmaraú, and seeing what opportunities they might have to improve themselves. We’re looking back into family histories–looking at where people came from, and what experiences they had in Turkey in the past. Sometimes they had to go abroad for work, leaving their families behind. We’re looking at the present, but always with the past in mind. Most of the film will be in Kurdish with Turkish subtitles. I’ve actually given up directing; I will only produce the film. LR: Do you consider yourself a political filmmaker? ÖD: Yes. I am a political person first, and a filmmaker second. I have some problems in this country; I want a better life, and I want to use film to try and help create that life.

Conclusion Since the creation of the Turkish Republic the state has promoted “citizenship from above,” encompassing modernist, secularist and nationalist ideals, and in doing so maintaining a process of Turkification. Consistent with this objective, rights have been conceived of as those granted by the state in return for the citizens maintaining duties and

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obligations towards the Republic. Within this conception of citizenship, minority groups such as the Pamir Kirghiz, the eastern Turks and rural women, like other cultural or linguistic groups, have been expected to assimilate into the state framework to enjoy its polity. However recent years have seen a fundamental paradigm shift from top-down to bottom-up, as minority groups have affirmed the importance of difference for their exercise of rights. This has given rise to new concepts of citizenship characterized by cosmopolitanism and diversity (Secor 2004, 355-6). Many recently released documentaries take note of this paradigm shift as they deal with issues of identity and belonging. The Turkish-German director Fatih Akın summarizes the prevailing spirit thus: “A race of Turkish people doesn’t exist […] The Turkish nation is a mixture of Persian, Arabic, Bosnian, Greek and Albanian, people from the Caucasus, from China, the Kurds, Gypsies” (qtd Jaafar 2006, 5). To this list we can add Pamir Kirghiz people and rural women–all possessing their own constructions of culture and demanding to voice their concerns. Oyun, 37 Uses and øki Dil Bir Bavul give them the opportunity to do so. Structurally speaking, all three documentaries rehearse the fundamental paradigm shift. In place of the omniscient filmmaker or narrator commenting in top-down fashion on their subjects, the respective directors give their subjects the freedom to express themselves, to negotiate and to compromise. Even in 37 Uses, where Ben Hopkins is involved in front of as well as behind the camera, the action shows the director negotiating his filmmaking agenda with the Pamir Kirghiz. This strategy confers a new flexibility on the documentary genre, as we learn through the narrative how past, present and future are inextricable for all the communities featured in Oyun, 37 Uses and øki Dil. This is particularly important as a basis for establishing alternative models of citizenship to those propounded by the Turkish state–through the education system, for example. The three films are but three examples of a movement–evident in many areas of the public sphere–to deconstruct the center-periphery opposition that has dominated mainstream politics for several decades. ùerif Mardin wrote as long ago as 1973 that the periphery has historically represented a “counter-official culture” to that of the center–i.e. government circles. This proved an irritation both to the Young Turks and the early Kemlaists, particularly when they tried to introduce modernizing reforms. On the other hand the periphery–because of its unity against the government– “produced a national unity in the sense of provincial unification around common themes” (Mardin 1973, 187). If any government wanted to survive, they had to obtain the periphery’s support. Such geographical and

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ideological conflicts no longer seem as important as recent governments have introduced new initiatives to accommodate the interests of minority groups. In June 2004 TRT began broadcasting programs in Kurdish; two years later some new legislation allowed for five hours of radio and one hour of television per week in the language. Despite this, Turkish is still the only official language to be used in schools or other municipal institutions; even though the government has introduced reforms in different areas of the constitution, the use of other languages is perceived as an offense against the constitution.43 The state’s reaction to the paradigm shift resembles that of the husbands in Oyun witnessing their spouses rehearsing and performing their play: they will permit freedom of expression as long as it is contained within limits–spatial, temporal, mediatic–laid down by the dominant culture. Any further concessions might disrupt the social status quo. Yet the fact that so many documentaries have appeared in recent years giving voice to hitherto marginalized communities suggests that the paradigm shift is slowly but surely taking root in the Turkish public sphere. The next few years should prove highly interesting.

43 In June 2007 the Interior Ministry removed Abdullah Demirbaú from his post as elected mayor of the Sur district of the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır, on charges of using Kurdish to provide information to the people on culture, art, environment, city cleaning and health. This was in spite of the fact that over 70% of citizens in that region use Kurdish as their first language.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT TOLGA ÖRNEK: A FRESH LOOK AT OLD STORIES

To date Tolga Örnek has made six major documentary films both in English and Turkish, plus one award-winning feature film. His first film, Atatürk, on the founder of modern Turkey, won two awards and has been screened in forty-five different countries. His next film was a forty-five minute documentary on the østanbul soccer team Fenerbahçe, followed by an interactive CD-Rom on Topkapı Palace. In 2000 he directed a 52minute film on Mount Nemrut, tracing the story of the famous ancient monument in the east of Turkey. This received an RAI Television award in Italy. Two years later he followed this with a short documentary on Ere÷li, the small port on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. In 2003 Örnek’s The Hittites became the first documentary to be released commercially in the Turkish cinema; the film has subsequently been broadcast all over the world on television. Two years later his retelling of the Gallipoli story broke boxoffice records for a documentary on commercial release in Turkey; it remained the number one attraction for five weeks in a row. Örnek’s first feature film, Devrim Arabaları [Cars of the Revolution] was released in 2008; an historical tale of the first Turkish car to be produced in 1961, it has won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. Örnek’s oeuvre to date as a writer-producer-director has been marked by certain thematic and stylistic preoccupations. His films deal with historical subjects, both ancient and modern; however, he is only interested in history insofar as it affects the present. In The Hittites, for example, he tells the story of the ancient inhabitants of Anatolia, now part of the Turkish Republic; and shows quite clearly how the Hittite civilization established peace with other nations in the Middle East–for example, the Egyptians. Their example offers an object lesson for contemporary politicians trying to forge similar alliances between warring nations in the region. In contrast to other films on the subject–notably Çanakkale Aslanları [The Lions of Çanakkale], a flag-waving 1964 film celebrating

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the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli–with Cüneyt Gökçer playing Mustafa Kemal–Örnek’s retelling of the conflict conveys an anti-war message. The Ottomans may have emerged victorious, but the cost–in terms of lives lost– was catastrophic. A quotation included in the film from the British liaison officer and diplomat Aubrey Herbert (who knew Turkish) sums up the mood. Herbert talked to an Ottoman soldier who pointed bitterly to the piles of corpses on both sides and remarked: “That’s politics … That’s diplomacy … God pity us poor soldiers.” Örnek himself remarked in an interview that Gallipoli was an indictment of “the horrors of war; how it destroyed lives, families and how it did this with indifference to race, religion, nationality or the motivation for being there” (Phillips 2005). The film is not just an historical account of a particular battle, but rather demonstrates the sheer futility of armed conflict–particularly when lack of planning on the Allied side led to so much carnage. The London Sunday Telegraph reviewer commented: “the horror of many of the occasions is explored with simple savagery. A soldier writes of pieces of human flesh raining from the sky. The stupidity of the commanders, the bravery and pain of the soldiers are laid bare here” (“Alive” 2005, 8). Gallipoli shows with brutal clarity what happens when political leaders disregard the kind of peaceful negotiation characteristic of the Hittites and try to resolve conflicts by force. While Atatürk and Devrim Arabaları focus on more Turkey-centered subjects, they are likewise preoccupied with how the past affects the present. While Atatürk celebrates the leader’s achievements in creating the modern Turkish Republic, it does not shy away from showing his foibles, his complicated love life and his fundamental loneliness. As long ago as 1934 the former American ambassador to Turkey, Charles H. Sherrill, noted Atatürk’s “frequent change in expression,” which often revealed contradictory emotions, “due chiefly to the eloquent eyes so constantly reflecting, revealing, and sometimes concealing the thought going on behind his unusually broad brow” (Sherrill 1934, 90). Such apparent weaknesses did not detract from Atatürk’s image as a great leader; on the contrary, they emphasized that he was truly a man of the people. Donald Everett Webster, who worked in the Republic during the 1930s as a teacher (and who appears in Örnek’s documentary, wrote in 1939 that this was the most important factor in “winning minds and hearts–the allegiance of the Turkish people to faith in themselves and their new leaders” (Webster 1939, 102). Atatürk makes a similar point: once we know more about him, we can understand why his significance as a political leader remains undiminished, over seventy years after his death.

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Would that the Ankara civil servants in the Ministries of Planning and Transportation in Devrim Arabaları had followed his example. Throughout the film they try to prevent the group of engineers from completing their project to create the first Turkish car, the Devrim (or Revolution). The official reason given is one of cost: over 1.4m Turkish lira ($500,000) has been spent in creating a prototype, at a time of economic crisis. In truth, however, the bureaucrats are riddled with jealousy, as their position as chief advisors to President Cemal Gürsel (Saît Genay) is put under threat. If the project proves successful–and thereby vindicates the President’s dream of instilling a new sense of national pride among the people–then the bureaucrats will no longer have the power to control the country’s purse-strings (while simultaneously feathering their own nests). They employ several strategies, including cutting the budget allocated to the project by one-third, and using the classic spoiling technique of persuading friendly journalists to print critical articles. As the grizzled old engineer Latif (Selçuk Yöntem) tells his idealistic junior colleague Necip (Onur Ünsal): “Those who can’t oppose him [the President] go around and attack us … Anyone who can’t criticize his revolution is coming down on ours.” This is not the first time this has happened: Latif recalls a time in the notso-distant past when the Republic had its own aircraft factory. Although very successful at the time, it was shut down by the bureaucrats, who were reluctant to try anything new in case it affected their position within the social structure. Latif observes somewhat cynically: “In Turkey no success goes unpunished, son.”1 In his view history has a habit of repeating itself. In such situations, where those in power seem so utterly bereft of inspiration, it is not surprising that Örnek should be interested in the lives of ordinary people and how they manage to survive. In The Hittites we learn much about the ancient ways, both through scholarly commentaries and re-enactments. Örnek himself recalled in an interview that: “we built five interior and six exterior sets with props, based on historical research and archaeological finds. Our art department also built a 300-square-foot model of the Hittite capital city of Hattusa based on topographical studies, historical remains and archaeological sketches. We later composited CGI people and scenery into the model plate shots” (Örnek 2003, 31). The finished film has an epic quality: we are given an insight into the lives not just of the Hittite leaders, but the people who served them. By contrast Gallipoli derives much of its force from the testimonies of ordinary soldiers’ letters and diaries recording their responses to the conflict. We 1

I use the English translation as written in the subtitles to the DVD version of the film for convenience.

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can see how their opinions changed as the battle grew more intense and the conditions worsened: Guy Nightingale, a 23-year-old British soldier relished the thought of killing the Ottoman foe, but eventually wrote to his mother wishing that “this beastly war was over.” His compatriot Joe Murray likened the soldiers to “walking ghosts,” while the British émigré Ellis Silas understood the true horror of battle as he described the remains of human beings in the trenches. The film ends with a letter written by Mehmet Tevfik on May 31, 1915; the longest single surviving document written by an Ottoman soldier. In it he bids farewell to his family and friends, admits that he is only doing his duty to God, while believing in his heart of hearts that he will not return. His fears were justified, as he was killed in mid-June. From his simple yet poignant words we understand the sacrifices that ordinary soldiers made out of loyalty to their countries. They might not have agreed with their leaders’ policies, but they were determined to continue the fight-whatever the cost might be. Örnek makes this point in the introduction to the book based on the film: “To read of their [the soldiers’] suffering, fears, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to see their faces in the thousands of photographs taken during the battle, made us realize that war takes everything and gives us back nothing” (Örnek and Toker 2006, 1). Sandra Hall in the Sydney Morning Herald recorded her experience of the film thus: “It’s the manner of the telling that will shake you [….] the storytellers are not trying to mount an argument or teach anybody a lesson. They are writing of what they saw and experienced [….] the futility of what they suffered resounds in every word” (Hall 2005, 14). The engineers in Devrim Arabaları discover to their cost that their efforts are equally futile, as the President goes for a test-drive outside the Parliament building in Ankara on October 29, 1961 (the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic), but finds to his cost that the Devrim car has run out of gas. From then on the project is doomed: the newspapers have a field-day with headlines like “The Revolution Didn’t Run,” referring both to the car and to the President’s much-vaunted project to create a Turkish automobile industry. Yet Örnek makes us care for the group of idealists who have striven to create the car by showing the sacrifices they make; project leader Gündüz (Taner Birsel) sets aside personal difficulties in a childless marriage to his wife Suna (Vahide Gördüm), while Necip tries his best to juggle work commitments with looking after his pregnant wife Nilüfer (Seçil Mutlu). Necip’s selflessness is well demonstrated in a sequence where he risks arrest during a curfew (imposed in the wake of the 1960 military takeover) to find apples for Nilüfer. At one point the President talks of the need to instigate a “real revelation in [the Turkish]

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people’s minds;” Devrim Arabaları suggests that this will only come about when ordinary people dedicate themselves to a cause, whether successful or not. Mr. Kline, a representative of the American Embassy (Charles Carroll) observes–in English–that while the engineers might not be able to accomplish their project, “they believe they’ll do it, and that’s more important.” While Örnek is preoccupied with group ethics, he nonetheless understands the importance of negotiating cultural differences. In one interview he suggested that the Hittites were particularly adept at using their diplomatic skills “to negotiate a treaty [with the Egyptians] so they could live in peace. As I learned more, I realized the Hittites were very much like us, dealing with the same problems” (“The Hittites,” 2003, 2). Gallipoli makes much of the fact that, as the conflict unfolded, the Anzacs in particular developed considerable respect for “Johnny Turk.” This contrasts starkly with Peter Weir’s 1981 account of the battle, where the Ottomans are peripheral figures in a story of comradeship involving Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) and Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson). Örnek makes several references to the ways in which the two sides made efforts to get to know another–for example, during the 8-hour armistice on May 24, 1915, where soldiers exchanged comments in various languages while burying their dead. As the conflict developed, so the warring sides became accustomed to taking a short pause around noon; during that time the Anzacs played soccer matches while the Ottomans placed bets on the likely result. The book of the film includes an eyewitness account by Kenan Çelik (former head of the Department of English Language and Literature at the local university) of one of the Gallipoli memorial services held annually on March 18 in Çanakkale, where war veterans from all sides overcame their differences and talked to one another: “Australian, New Zealander, and British war veterans came here once. There were also a few Turkish veterans […] When I looked at the faces of the allied veterans I realized that these were good and decent people” (Örnek and Toker 2006, 118). In Devrim Arabaları the engineers remain largely committed to their cause–except for one occasion when they hear a radio broadcasting the National Unity Committee’s decision to hang former President Celal Bayar, former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and other members of the ruling Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti) for violating the constitution. Gündüz instantly understands that members of his team will respond differently to the news; but rather than imposing his will on them, he invites them to negotiate among themselves and come to a collective decision. This proves to be a winning strategy, as the group celebrates their

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decision to continue the project by eating börek prepared by Suna and Nilüfer. The image of people from different backgrounds working together is characteristic of Örnek’s work, as he has regularly called upon the services of scholars and filmmakers from different cultures to contribute to his films. I began the interview with Örnek, conducted in østanbul on May 14, 2010, by trying to find out where this spirit came from, and whether it due to his own experiences of working in different cultures: LR: How did you become a filmmaker? TÖ: I went to the United States after I finished at østanbul Technical University. I was accepted to a graduate program in engineering at the University of Florida. However I’ve always been interested in films and filmmaking; I used to translate films here from English into Turkish. However when I entered college the film industry in Turkey was not as developed as it is today, and the only television channels available were TRT and Star Television. So to choose a career in film and television was considered suicidal, so I opted to do engineering as an undergraduate degree. However I became so excited that I decided to give filmmaking a shot. If I tried and failed, it would be a big ‘if’ out of my life, and I could just concentrate on my engineering. I applied to six film schools in the States and got accepted to three. I chose to go to the American University in Washington DC. As I got there, I had this whole library on campus, with books and articles on Orson Welles, Eisenstein, so I started to read a lot of material on filmmakers and films. I finished my degree, got back here and decided to do films. LR: Did you have any particular favorite directors? TÖ: Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons were really interesting movies. I also admire Welles’ tenacity to get his films finished. His genius and his tenacity were what attracted me towards him. I admired Kubrick’s technical expertise, his perfection. If Welles was the pure artist, Kubrick was the artist/engineer. His way of making films was the epitome of an engineer at work: in other words, to make something at the cheapest price in the shortest possible time for the best results. Engineering values the cheapest, the best and the most usable, manufactured in the shortest possible time. I firmly believe that filmmaking

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entails a lot of technical expertise, preparation and discipline, combined with a lot of paperwork. LR: That’s an interesting point, particularly in this country, where engineers and artists tend to be pigeonholed into different categories … Tė: When I went to my graduate school, my father asked me what the hell I was doing.2 I was giving up six years of engineering studies to do something completely different. When I started film school, I was the only one with an engineering background; everyone else came from humanities, art and literature. This might have caused me concern at the beginning, but I’ve always considered my engineering background an advantage. Filmmaking is basically problem-solving; you are always adjusting your plans according to your budget, time, permits, conditions. You basically come up with a plan for each day. I believe that my background helps me create the maximum amount of flexibility to do my work. LR: Why did you decide to start your filmmaking career with documentaries? Tė: Before I went to film school I watched a lot of documentaries. I watched this nine and a half hour work Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, plus works by Errol Morris.3 Both showed me how fact is stranger than fiction. I believed I could use documentaries both to educate myself, and explore aspects of Turkey and the world for the common good. LR: Did you ever want to do shorts? TÖ: Never. I wanted to do full-length documentaries as a way of exploring the technical aspects of filmmaking. To do feature films, you have to work with actors as well as write fictitious screenplays. However in documentaries you can rely to a large extent on facts; you have an outline of the story ready-made. Before going into feature films, I felt I needed more experience of filmmaking, as well as educating myself in the technical aspects of the profession. LR: So documentaries were a kind of apprenticeship for you? 2

Örnek’s father Özden Örnek was chief of the naval forces in Turkey from 2003 to 2005. 3 Errol Morris (1948-), American documentary filmmaker.

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TÖ: Exactly. As soon as I got to film school I mapped out a career path for myself. I’ll start with documentaries-which would be good for Turkey as well as for myself–and learn the filmmaker’s craft. As I became more accustomed to the form, I decided I would slowly move into feature films, and focus more on dramatic structure, actors and characterization. LR: Why did you choose Atatürk as the subject for your debut feature? TÖ: Ignorance is bliss, probably! I lived out of Turkey for a long time, and always had discussions with people about him. A lot of people in America don’t know about Atatürk, and those who know him, don’t know his career very well. This was the same for me; I knew what had been taught about him in school, but I knew very little about the man. At film school I had to do a thesis project, and at that time I knew that there was no Englishlanguage feature about Atatürk, told from the foreign scholars’ perspective. I believed that this might appeal more to non-Turkish audiences. LR: This throws up some interesting questions: first, that you had to cut through the myths built up about Atatürk; and second, that you might invite criticism from within Turkey about your choice of foreign scholars? TÖ: I certainly did get criticism, but I tried to balance it out by interviewing Turks as well. However I wanted to talk to those Turks who knew Atatürk personally, or who were members of his closest family circle. They told me what he was like as a person.4 As far as myths were concerned, I found the facts about Atatürk’s life more fascinating. By relying on them, I could help to understand why he acted as he did. LR: Who financed the documentary? TÖ: Initially I didn’t have any money, then TEB (Türkiye Ekonomi Bankası) gave me a $10,000 sponsorship. Then I started to interview several top-rate American and British historians and scholars, which gave 4

Those interviewed included Ayúe Cebesoy Sarıalp, former Director-General of the Turkish-American University Association and niece of Ali Fuad Cebesoy (1882-1968); Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001), adopted daughter of Atatürk and Turkey’s first female pilot; Altemur Kılıç (1924-), son of Kılıç Ali, Atatürk’s bodyguard; and Özden Töker (1930-), daughter of øsmet ønönü, as well as Donald Everett Webster. See Judy Perez, “Turkish Delights,” Claremont Courier, March 13, 1999, 9.

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the film some respectability. This encouraged other companies such as Türkiye øú Bankası to put money in. It was a sort of snowball effect. As a result I managed to get Sir Donald Sinden to narrate the documentary.5 LR: Why did you choose him? TÖ: We had an associate producer who handled these affairs in London. I didn’t know him personally. We were shooting the film on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Republic [1998], and I was presently surprised to find that Sir Donald was also the same age as the Republic, having been born in 1923! LR: How was the film received in Turkey? TÖ: A lot of people were pleasantly surprised. We premiered it at the Military Museum here in østanbul, and it played on a couple of television channels. It’s still selling really well on DVD.6 I didn’t get much criticism about it, except from a couple of people who objected to my use of foreign rather than Turkish scholars, as well as others who said I should not have shown that Atatürk drank sometimes, or explored his relationship with Fikriye.7 LR: How do you think your film compares with more recent treatments of Atatürk’s life, for example, Can Dündar’s Mustafa (2008)? Do you think your film initiated a vogue for other films, either factual or fictional? TÖ: I like mine more!! Our film had everything in it–his achievements as a president, his personal struggles–and tried to give a fuller picture of the man through serious both political and personal. LR: It’s a very tightly-constructed film – only 81 minutes … 5

Sir Donald Sinden (1923-), British film and theater actor, a matinee idol of British films in the 1950s who later took on major stage roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company. 6 The film was one of the finalists at the 1999 San Diego Film Festival, and won third prize in the Chicago International Film and Video Festival in the same year. For a recent comment on the film, see Tuba Akyol, “Aydınlandık” [We have been Enlightened], Milliyet, November 16, 2008, 7. 7 Atatürk began a relationship with Fikriye, a niece of his late stepfather, after her divorce from her Egyptian husband in 1917.

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TÖ: Yes. I had an idea of how long I wanted it to be, and the points I historical research. To this end I focused on his time in Syria as a way of finding out what shaped his views,8 as well as looking at his role in the Balkan conflicts.9 I think my film initiated the idea of doing a featurelength documentary on Atatürk, covering his whole life, wanted to include. But the film got tighter when I edited it: the scholars gave me so much information in a concise form. In one sentence they gave me the essence of what I wrote in a whole page. LR: It’s also very strong in showing how the past influences the present and vice versa. This theme seems to run throughout your work, both factual and fictional … TÖ: I think that’s a fantastically accurate observation. If you can’t understand where you came from, you can’t understand the journey you’re about to make. This is particularly true with actors; if they are shooting a scene, they have to know how they got there; and when the scene has finished, if they are going some place else. To evaluate the present, you’ve got to understand the past, as well as having an idea about the future. I try to explain it to actors as much as I can; the sense of history and how it impacts on them. LR: It’s this sense that I think influences your Hittite film, which to me seems one of the most comprehensive portraits of that culture ever produced. In 126 minutes you try to explain why it’s so important for an understanding of the Turkish Republic… TÖ: Exactly. To simplify the point even more, I think the film resembles all the films I have made in the sense that it’s about people. I’m interested 8 Atatürk graduated as a lieutenant in the army in 1905 and was posted to the 5th army based in Damascus. There he joined a small group of officers called “Motherland and Liberty” [Vatan ve Hürriyet], and became a vociferous opponent of Sultan Abdülhamid II. The Syrian years helped him to form his vision for a new republic. 9 During the First Balkan War Atatürk fought against the Bulgarian army at Gallipoli and Bolayır on the Thracian coast. In 1913 he was appointed military attaché in Sofia, in part because he was regarded as a potential threat to the government in østanbul. A year later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenantcolonel. Such experiences helped Atatürk acquire the kind of military acumen that proved invaluable during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

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in the people who lived in Bo÷azköy; those who lived behind those ruined walls of the ancient site that doesn’t have much meaning for us now.10 LR: That view seems to question the way in which history is viewed in many quarters as a self-contained series of events. The Hittites makes a statement about east-west diplomacy that is as important today as it was then. TÖ: Let me tell you a story about that. I sold both The Hittites and Gallipoli to the Smithsonian television channel in the United States. I had so much material left over from The Hittites that I proposed to make another one-hour film on the Battle of Kadesh.11 I wanted to look at the Middle East situation before the battle, focus on the conflicts and examine the diplomatic maneuvers that happened after the conflict had finished. When the executives asked me how that material might appeal to contemporary viewers, I asked them to reflect on the fact that it involved two great powers fighting for control of the Middle East and establishing peace afterwards. How is that not contemporary? Do things always have to be spelt out to people? For me the Battle of Kadesh shows how peace can be achieved between two warring powers. LR: Absolutely. It seems that what you’re trying to do in The Hittites is to challenge established views of the Middle East as a place of perpetual conflict, and make people think that new possibilities can be achieved … TÖ: I also use the films as a means of exploring my own personal responses. As I talked to more scholars, my ideas about the Middle East gradually changed. LR: Why do you think the film did so well at the Turkish box-office?12

10

Now known as Bo÷azkale, this small town in central Anatolia is best known as the site of the ancient Hittite city of Hattusa. 11 The Battle of Kadesh (also Qadesh) took place between the forces of the Egyptian empire under Rameses II and the Hittite empire under Muwatali II at the city of Kadesh on the Orontes River, now in the Republic of Syria. It is generally dated to 1274 BC. Rameses claimed victory, but in reality all he managed to do was to rescue his army, as he was unable to capture Kadesh. 12 The film held the record for the highest-grossing documentary in Turkey with 70,000 admissions until Gallipoli was released two years later.

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TÖ: I think a lot of people thought it was a feature film like Ridley Scott’s Gladiator! The trailer encouraged this view, with its emphasis on the reenactments and the battle scenes. The Hittites are always mentioned as Atatürk’s favorite civilization, but not a lot of people know about them. LR: The Hittites seems to be shot very differently from Atatürk: there seems much more emphasis on visual imagery and the power of light and/or color to create a mood. Was this a conscious decision on your part? TÖ: Yes. Between the two films I did two other documentaries – one on Fenerbahçe soccer club, and one on Mount Nemrut.13 On the latter film I really started to experiment with framing and lighting. In every film I try to do something I haven’t done before; it becomes a challenge for me. The Hittites was the first time I had shot on film rather than video; I wanted to give the film an epic quality, using lots of locations in Egypt and Turkey as well as drawing on lots of archival material. I did a lot of research on film stock, lenses, cameras; I talked to lots of directors of photography before shooting. LR: Were you influenced by the photography of any particular epics while shooting the film? TÖ: I watched a lot of historical films such as Braveheart and Gladiator; I loved Ridley Scott’s photography and editing. I also watched older films such as Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments [1956] and Ben Hur [1959]. I wanted to infuse the epic spirit of these films into my documentary. In a sense the subject-matter dictated the visual style of The Hittites, as well as the way I prepared for it. This is true of all my films– sometimes I storyboard everything, make shot-lists and the like, while in others I don’t do as much. Nonetheless in The Hittites I had this mass of written material, on tablets, for example, so I also decided to concentrate on the personal stories. The people who wrote them became characters in the film, so that the audience could relate to them and their civilization. LR: Structurally the film has different movements, rather like a symphony. It seems to comprise a series of parallel narratives … 13

Kurulútan Kurtuluúta Fenerbahçe [Fenerbahçe: From Foundation to Independence] (1999); Tanrıların Tahtı Nemrut [Nemrut: The Throne of the Gods] (2000).

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TÖ: Structuring the film was the most difficult part, as there are over twenty Hittite monarchs. Therefore I chose six kings whose lives shaped the growth and development of the empire, as well as helping to create the Hittite culture we know today. The film had separate segments, each one ending on a high or a low, as I told the story of the empire; it was rather like a series of six short movies. LR: The theme of good government emerges quite tangibly throughout the film; this is something that also permeates Atatürk. Did you seek to make the connection between the two? Tė: Yes. What I really found interesting was the changes that each Hittite king made; the reforms they made to adapt to changing socio-political situations. This is precisely what Atatürk did; he wanted to prepare Turkey for the long road ahead. The Hittites unites past and present; it deals with Turkey’s situation in the world in ancient times. Every civilization is in a sense the gatekeeper of its land. Since 1923 Anatolia has been part of the Turkish Republic; before that it was the Ottomans, the Seljuks and other cultures. LR: It’s interesting to hear you talk once again of present and past, because I got the strong sense that many of the scholars you interviewed in the film knew a great deal about ancient Anatolian history, but were less erudite about the ways in which it impacts on the present … TÖ: Some were aware; others were completely clueless. They viewed the Turkish Republic as a laboratory for their researches. Sometimes I end up in conflict with scholars who make little effort to learn about the present– for example, those who study Islamic history but do not understand much about the current situation in the Middle East. They haven’t lived here, they haven’t talked to the people, experienced anything in this region, but they tell us we should pursue a particular course of action. This isn’t always the case; a lot of scholars go out of their way to find out about contemporary Turkey and try to look at it in relation to the past. Their views are so revelatory that my jaw drops sometimes. LR: Let’s move on to Gallipoli. Did you see the other films made about the subject–not only Peter Weir’s 1981 Australian film, but also the 1964 Turkish film Çanakkale Aslanları [The Lions of Çanakkale]?

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TÖ: It’s good for its time, but it’s dated now. My film was a joy to make, but it provoked considerable comment in Turkey. I think it challenged a lot of people’s preconceptions about the event.14 I know it’s a sensitive subject, shrouded in mythology, both for the Turks and the Anzacs, but I don’t like the idea that these people’s deaths are just treated as statistics from the past. It’s only the English who look at the subject coolly–except, of course, for All the King’s Men (1999), which really is not a very good film at all.15 I wanted to produce a film that encompassed all points of view, as well as viewing the conflict through the eyes of the common soldier. As a result it became an anti-war film. I understand the sacrifices that people made–both Turks and Anzacs alike–but I don’t like the idea that it’s acceptable for them to die for their country. We have this great story, this epic battle, but let’s look at how and whether it became an epic through the eyes of those who fought there. They had to fight the opposition, but also battle with dysentery, flies, constant shelling, and bad judgments from their commanders. No one actually knew how they felt. LR: Do you think that it wasn’t an epic, then? TÖ: No, no. Of course it was an epic; for Turkey it was a turning point in our history. It gave us Atatürk for a start. What I wanted to look at was how it became an epic; what was the story behind the battle. I believe it was an epic because of the soldiers and the sacrifices they made. LR: So you’re not necessarily interested in who won, but in the personal stories of those involved? TÖ: Exactly. We should celebrate these soldiers and their efforts. We visit Gallipoli today and see the beautiful cemeteries, white stones, fields full of flowers, but then it resembled a hell on earth. 14

The director Ahmet Okur released his own version Son Kale: Çanakkale [Çanakkale: The Last Castle] (2004), now accessible on YouTube, which reinforced the prevailing view of the conflict as a great victory for the Republic in which soldiers died for their country. 15 All the King’s Men (1999), is a BBC television film starring David Jason about the Sandringham Company which was enveloped in a strange mist and never seen again during the Gallipoli conflict. Predictably it blames the Turkish army for the tragedy; the Sandringham Company push the Turkish troops out of a farm but the Turks regroup and retake the farm. The forty or so survivors out of the 150-strong company are frogmarched out the farm and shot in the back of the head.

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LR: Remembering your fondness for Kubrick, do you think that Paths of Glory [1957] had an influence on the way you shot Gallipoli? TÖ: Oh, yes. However I didn’t become aware of that until near the end of the shoot. I really didn’t want any romanticism, either in the imagery or the re-enactments. I didn’t want to glorify war in any way. I felt like this while I was shooting explosions in a trench and saw the debris falling around me; the experience was so claustrophobic, as I couldn’t see the daylight, or the other side of the field. Only then did I realize how the soldiers felt, as they stayed in the trenches for days on end. When the film was released, no one disputed the facts. The battle gave us Atatürk; he won because he was a genius. But as in The Hittites, I was also interested in people’s lives, people’s stories. Some critics believed I portrayed the Anzacs in a sympathetic light; obviously I don’t condone what they did, but I tried to show the suffering and the sacrifices that individual soldiers made in the service of their respective countries. These guys weren’t the ones who were planning big military strategies; they were simply there to fight the day-to-day battles, whether rightfully or wrongly. They fought, they died and they suffered. LR: Do you ever feel like invoking Hitchcock by saying “It’s only a movie?” TÖ: Oh, yes. People sometimes expect me to speak like an historian. I am a filmmaker who makes esthetic choices. I select facts and present them in a story, like an historian, but I don’t have the background of an historian; I am not out to present evidence in such detail. Of course I do my research, but my aim is to present the basic outline of a story in an effective and emotional way to the audience. I am interested in people within history, not so much the historical event in itself. I think that’s why Gallipoli was so successful. LR: In a sense you reject the idea of history as simply cause-and-effect? TÖ: I don’t like history as simply a series of dates and events. I want to explore the motivation; the aims of specific characters and the choices they make, or have to make. History is always human. What I found was that a lot of young people enjoyed the film, because they had no preconceived ideas about the conflict. They were kind of receptive to my purpose, which was to make audiences empathize for both sides; the sufferings of the

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Turks and their families back home were identical to those of the Anzacs. I wanted to tell the Turkish side of the story for audiences abroad, but to do this I had to tell the stories of the other side as well. LR: This is really true, because I think the film explicitly suggests that to understand your own culture more deeply, you must understand other cultures as well … TÖ: This is the film’s main thesis. It’s really important for me that people from different backgrounds should listen to each other. Sometimes people are too quick to label members of different races as ‘the other’ and keep them at arm’s length. LR: This is exactly what you said earlier – as an engineering graduate you’re expected to follow a certain path, and if you don’t, people tend to treat you as “the other” … TÖ: Exactly. If only people did some research, they’d find that many successful filmmakers come from an engineering background–Hitchcock being one example. LR: Turning now to Devrim Arabaları [The Cars of the Revolution]. It not only seemed to recapture the innocence of the early 1960s when the engineers tried to produce a Turkish-made car, but it also had a strong contemporary resonance in its focus on the ways in which individual enterprise is often frustrated by bureaucratic inertia. Where did the idea come from? TÖ: My dad. I was editing Gallipoli at the time, and he gave me a booklet. It was a real page-turner. It was originally written for Cumhuriyet newspaper in 1994 by Aydın Engin, and it proved great material for a film.16 It had its own climax, its tensions, and it was very cinematic. I was working on a screenplay for Sarıkamiú, another First World War story, and was about to shoot it, but the project got canceled.17 So I had a window of about a year to shoot Devrim Arabaları. 16

Aydın Engin (1945-), author, director and newspaper columnist. Actually the subject was first raised in his column on August 28, 1994. 17 The Sarıkamiú battle was fought between Russians and the Ottoman forces between December 22, 1914 and January 17, 1915, leading to a Russian victory. The Ottomans hoped to initiate a Caucasus campaign to retake the eastern cities of

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LR: Where did the money come from? TÖ: We had a few sponsors, bank credits, and put up our own money earned from Gallipoli. LR: Where were the locations? TÖ: The actual car factory is in the central Anatolian city of Eskiúehir. The exterior views of the building are the same, but it has been modernized. On the Asian side of østanbul in Beykoz there is an old shoe factory dating back to Atatürk’s time that was decommissioned some time ago.18 A private company bought it with the intention of turning it into a resort hotel, but they could not get government permission. So they are renting the site to film crews. Eighty per cent of our scenes were shot there, as they had a lot of old tool shops and machinery that we could put in the background. LR: What about the climactic scene in the Parliament building in Ankara? Where was it shot? TÖ: We initially had permission from Parliament, but for some reason it was rescinded, so we shot against a green screen. We had a miniature model of the building, which we put on a plate. LR: Is it true there is only one of the Devrim cars left? TÖ: Yes. Actually we made two cars, because the one remaining car is in Eskiúehir and is an historical artefact. We could shoot it, but not use it in our production. We went to the scrap yard, bought two old Anadol cars, cut them in half and covered them with plastic casts based on the original model.19

Artvin, Ardahan and the port of Batum. The campaign formed the basis for ėzhan Eren and Murat Saraço÷lu’s film 120 (2008). 18 Beykoz Kundura Fabrikası [Beykoz Shoe Factory] was first established as a tannery in 1810. In 1933 ownership passed to Sümerbank from the Ottoman Navy. It finally closed its doors in 1999 and is now owned by Yıldırım Holding Inc. 19 The Anadolu car was made by Çelik Motors, a company founded in 1960. The company now imports and markets Kia and Lada cars, while Anadolu Isuzu, a Turco-Japanese venture, manufactures trucks and buses.

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LR: Is the timing of the story significant, in that it takes place only a year after the 1960 military coup? TÖ: With the onset of the coup, there was a feeling of nationalism: the Turkish economy had been entirely dominated by the American economy, while the military had American advisers within its ranks. The point of Atatürk’s reforms, four decades earlier, had been lost. After the intervention the government wanted to boost Turkish self-confidence; and this project was instituted as a result. Turks could do anything, if they put their minds to it. LR: But your film seems more interested in the experiences of those commissioned to manufacture the car, and how their efforts are ultimately wasted at the end … TÖ: Yes, this happens a lot in Turkey. It seems that the leaders–whether in government or business-start projects with a lot of enthusiasm, but when these projects encounter obstacles, the enthusiasm wanes. By the time the projects come to an end, no one wants to take responsibility for them. LR: Why did the government lose interest in the Devrim project? TÖ: The bureaucrats kept criticizing it on the grounds that they believed there were so many more important things to do than to produce an automobile. Even if a prototype was created, no one had the resources to put it into mass production. So it was considered a waste of time. Remember the political climate was also changing; the military were preparing for elections, and there was a lot of disagreement among them about how and when to hand over power to a civilian government. By the time the car was finished, everyone was so preoccupied with other things that it was no longer a real priority. As soon as the finished car stopped [on its maiden journey due to an empty petrol-tank, with President Celal Bayar as a passenger], the project was doomed. LR: Isn’t that what happens to a lot of projects here? TÖ: I can’t tell you the number of times this issue has been raised when I go to speak in universities and/or other places. The film evokes so many people’s experiences. Even today I have difficulties sometimes trying to implement certain projects. One thing I miss in Turkey today is the

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idealism, the selflessness of the generation who made those cars. They went to school during Atatürk’s time; a lot of them were sent abroad to study engineering, and on their return they wanted to pay back their debt to the state. They were educated to pursue impossible projects like making a car, and they just went ahead and pursued them. Just witnessing their idealism was wonderful to watch; they weren’t going to earn extra money, and they were putting their careers on the line, but they believed in what they were doing. That kind of enthusiasm is something we’re missing in Turkey now. Everything now revolves around money. Idealists still exist, but they have to come together once again, as they did in the early 1960s, and make opportunities for themselves. LR: What keeps you going? TÖ: Dedication. I always wanted to be a filmmaker; I don’t know how to do anything else. Many people think that the ending of Devrim Arabaları is pessimistic, as the whole project failed. I don’t believe it; the ones who failed are those bureaucrats who didn’t take the project to the next level. The engineers succeeded; they actually built the car. If any project comes on to people’s desks, it’s always easier and safer to say so. But this will always lead to the same products, the same conformist views, everyone thinking the same. I want to focus on people’s different experiences, which is what encourages me to make films. It’s not easy; I do get attacked from time to time for not being Turkish enough, which can be hurtful sometimes–perhaps because I was educated in the States, and have dealt with subjects from a foreign as well as a Turkish perspective. LR: That’s very interesting, because Turkish cinema has always borrowed from Hollywood. Even in Yeúilçam, which might be said to be the national cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, there was always a considerable amount of thematic and stylistic imitation of American models … TÖ: I agree. However Turkish subjects do interest me, so long as I can tell personal stories. Maybe it’s my passion that keeps me going: the idea that I can carry an idea through from the planning stage to watching the finished product with an audience is really stimulating. LR: Maybe one of the reasons why you enjoy films and filming so much is your determination to reject essentialist categories, and focus instead on

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the interpenetration of cultures, whether transnationally (as in Gallipoli), or transhistorically (as in The Hittites or Devrim Arabaları)? TÖ: I think I’d agree with that. Isn’t that the best way to keep yourself aware of alternative possibilities? I don’t want to label myself as a Turkish, American or European filmmaker; I’m just interested in telling stories about people. So a Turkish film can easily appeal to an American audience if the subject-matter is appealing enough. Nowadays the trend in Turkish films is for comedies designed mostly for the domestic filmgoer; some have made over $6m. each, and it seems that people don’t watch anything else.20 However a film like Gallipoli can pull in 700,000 punters, so it seems as if this inwardness is not always true. I don’t see why you can’t make a universal film on a national subject.

20

This includes the Recep øvedik franchise, a series of comic misadventures involving the man-in-the-street with a Carry-On film like penchant for toilet humor. Three films, released annually from 2008 to 2010, have regularly pulled in massive profits.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE SECULAR POPULISM IN RECENT TURKISH HISTORICAL FILMS

In recent years the history of T. E. Lawrence’s encounters with the Ottomans has proved popular with Turkish filmmakers. In Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali [Knockout Ali: The Last Ottoman] (2007), based on a successful comic strip, the eponymous hero (Kenan Mirzalıo÷lu) tells of his adventures in various theaters of war, including the Palestine campaign where he received a scar from “that bastard Lawrence.”1 In Eve Giden Yol 1914 [1914: The Way Home] (2008), Lawrence (Christopher Ian Brown) makes his first appearance in full military uniform–a firm yet fair figure as he talks to his Ottoman adversaries. On assuming Arab attire (his long white robes directly recalling David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia), his true nature is revealed, as he permits an Arab officer to cut off the ear of one of his colleagues for allowing the Ottoman prisoners to roam free. Lawrence smiles faintly and moves out of the frame, completely oblivious to the maimed officer’s plight. This representation of Lawrence as both anti-Ottoman and anti-Islamic is a good example of a recent trend in mainstream Turkish cinema that emerged in response to recent political events taking place outside and inside the country. These include the so-called “War on Terror” taking place in the Near East; the Republic’s struggles to become a member of the European Union and its attempts to reorganize the state structure in accordance with European norms; the reforms introduced by the current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an in an attempt to establish a new social contract based on democracy, human rights and freedoms and pluralistic values (Ciddi 2009, 144); and the increasingly acrimonious conflict between secular and Islamic values in the public sphere–as witnessed, for instance, in the debate between the government and the 1 All quotations from the films discussed in this chapter are from the English translations in the DVD releases.

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Higher Education Council (YÖK) about whether to allow prayer school graduates (ømam ve Hatip Okulları) to enter universities on an equal footing as normal high school graduates. In an attempt to deal with these issues, many filmmakers reject the notions of difference altogether (believing that any alternative constructions of identity, whether ethnic (Kurdish) or religious (Islam) or political (the Republic as a future European Union member) poses a threat to national stability (Yavuz 2000, 23-42)). Instead they advocate a return to the topdown principles on which the Republic was established–namely a strong centralized leadership guiding the people out of the dark ages and putting them on the road to modernity. While modernity might be understood as a collective commitment to the national future, many filmmakers have believed that the best way to ensure this future is to learn from the past. This explains their preference for the historical film, reminding audiences of the Republic’s achievements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a survey of six recent examples-Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali, Eve Giden Yol 1914, Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti [The Ottoman Republic], plus three 2010 films Yahúi Batı [The Mild West], Veda [The Farewell] and Dersimiz: Atatürk [Atatürk Our Lesson]–this chapter will argue that one of the respective directors’ main concerns has been to celebrate Mustafa Kemal’s achievements as a military tactician, particularly his meticulous planning that led to the expulsion of the occupying powers from Turkish territory by 1923. These films also recognize his work as a peacetime leader in accomplishing the seemingly insurmountable task of creating a modern, secular republic based on social and political unity. By contrast all western powers (Britain, France and the United States) are treated as neo-colonialists whose sole objective–in the early twentieth century as well as today–consists of destroying Turkey and appropriating its land and its people. The best means to resist them is to appeal to the national interest: in the past most Turks would have preferred death rather than captivity (as a character in Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti reminds us). In adverse circumstances the people fought tooth and nail to preserve their homeland as a modern, independent state. Such issues have been explored in earlier periods of Turkish history, but this chapter will argue that these historical films are different, as they capture a mood of what might be described as secular populism–something not associated with any particular ideology or political movement, but rather with an expression of public anxieties about the future of the Republic, which since 1990 has found its expression in the form of large public demonstrations. By appealing to this spirit of secular populism,

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these historical films try to re-evoke this sense of shared purpose as a means of dealing with contemporary issues of identity and religion. The significance of Mustafa Kemal as a military leader is emphasized in Gani Müjde’s Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti, a comic retelling of the last days of the Ottoman Empire with a contemporary twist. In this version it is the Americans who occupy østanbul, while the pashas try to escape their colonial masters by joining the European Union. However the Turkish people will not accept such compromises; they yearn instead for a strong leader who in the words of the servant Yadigar (Sümer Tilmaç) can “show them the way” out of colonial rule. Sultan Osman VII (Ata Demirer)2 understands these sentiments as he tells his people that: “[F]reedom is the character of a great nation, therefore martyrdom is preferred than [sic] captivity.” There is no need for martyrdom: the film ends with a flashback to a scene set in Selanik (Thessaloniki) in 1881, where a little boy falls out of a tree with a bird in a cage. He picks himself up and sets the bird free; on the soundtrack we hear a recording of Atatürk’s original speech praising the Turkish people for their abilities to “overcome all difficulties in alliance and unity.” The little boy is obviously Mustafa Kemal (given the surname Atatürk by the Grand National Assembly in 1934 onwards), who will liberate the Turkish people, just as he liberated the bird. Mustafa Kemal’s qualities as a military leader are further explored in Zülfü Livaneli’s Veda.3 As portrayed by Sinan Tuzcu, he comes across as a doughty fighter and strategist who, after a brush with death during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, acquired “such will power that he will be better than he used to be.” He unites the Turkish forces with a series of passionate speeches designed to provoke resistance against those “invader enemies” threatening their homeland. Although “all war is a crime,” he insists that “you have to do what you believe”–which in his opinion means sustaining the integrity of his nation. He issues an ultimatum to the British army occupying øzmir in 1921, telling them to withdraw or face the consequences. Confronted by a resurgent Turkish army, they comply with his request. No one doubts Mustafa Kemal’s judgment; he is a charismatic leads who inspires loyalty. Hamdi Alkan’s Dersimiz: Atatürk (scripted by the novelist Turgut Özakman),4 communicates a similar message. Mustafa Kemal’s (Halit 2

Ata Demirer (1972-), comic actor, television personality and musician. Zülfü Livaneli (1946-), writer, musician and film director, elected Member of Parliament in 2002 (see his website www.livaneli.gen.tr). 4 Turgut Özakman (1930-), novelist, scenarist and playwright, the author of numerous historical dramas set in the early twentieth century. 3

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Ergenç’s) life-story is recounted by Tarihçi Dede [Grandad the Historian] (Çetin Tekindor)5 in the form of an illustrated lecture given to school students in search of innovative ways to celebrate Children’s Day on April 23. He recalls Mustafa Kemal’s skill in marshaling his forces during the Gallipoli campaign, as well as his cheerleading speeches. Despite apparently overwhelming odds, “he was brave enough to challenge the entire world! He wanted his homeland back!” Inspired by these stirring words, the students resemble football supporters as they chant “Red and white! Turks are right! Go, Turkey go!” while listening to Dede’s account of the last days of the War of Independence and the defeat of the so-called “invincible enemy.” Mustafa Kemal did not achieve everything alone, but relied on the support of fearless warriors immortalized in comic strips like Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali. In Mustafa ùevki Do÷an’s film version the hero dedicates his life to outwitting the foreign colonists and protecting Mustafa Kemal (Alican Yücesoy) from harm. In one sequence Mustafa congratulates Yandım Ali for his dedication to the nationalist cause: “Maybe [by protecting me] you just changed the fate of a nation […] This country will be freed by brave men like you.” As well as outlining his military career, these historical films recognize Mustafa Kemal’s achievements as a peacetime leader. Veda includes a long sequence where he outlines his future plans to create a republic in which “the women won’t wear chadors any more,” and “the National Assembly will be above us all.” His second wife Latife (Ezgi Mola), an accomplished translator as well as his secretary, represents the secular future of the nation, in which men and women enjoy equal rights before the law. Mustafa Kemal’s success in “building a civilization” is duly recognized in a letter sent by the (unnamed) British Prime Minister.6 Dersimiz: Atatürk stresses the importance of education in the new republic: Mustafa Kemal understood that “if a nation cannot read and develop, there is no way it can save itself from slavery.” Hence he made strenuous efforts to create new generations of qualified teachers–for, as Dede Tarihçi points out “a teacher is a person that makes the future of a nation,” helping to mold people possessed of free wills and free minds. Yet Mustafa Kemal 5

Çetin Tekindor (1945-), respected stage, film and television actor and director. This is probably a reference to David Lloyd George, who in the television series Kurtuluú [Independence] (1994) is quoted as saying: “The centuries rarely produce a genius. It is our bad luck that the great genius of our era was granted to the Turkish nation. We could not beat Mustafa Kemal.” This statement is most likely made up: no prior source for it has been found. 6

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also expected learners to assume some of the work themselves: the film includes a comment made direct to camera by the academic and theater critic Sevda ùener,7 who believes that success can only be obtained “by working very hard, thinking a lot, [employing] a lot of patience, [understanding] the support of the nation and […] [its] patriotism.” The archeologist Muazzez ølmiye Çı÷ concurs: “Always study by thinking, interrogating and questioning. This is the way to success.”8 Such efforts bring their own rewards: the film includes a montage of successes from the Turkish Republic, including Turkish Airlines (Türk Hava Yolları) jet aircraft and Eurovision Song Contest winner Sertab Erener.9 Although set in the late nineteenth century, Ömer Faruk Sorak’s Yahúi Batı alludes to Mustafa Kemal’s achievements in creating a society where religion and the state are kept separate–a good idea in the opinion of Turkish emissary Aziz Vefa (Cem Yılmaz),10 as it cuts down the government’s workload while eliminating any possibility of corruption. In Turkey Aziz learns how to show “respect for everyone” from different cultures, in the belief that there is only one world with equal rights for all– unlike Sheriff Lloyd (Zafer Ergöz) of the fictional American town Cannonball, who is prejudiced against anyone–especially non-Americans intruding into his little fiefdom.11 While celebrating Mustafa Kemal’s achievements, these historical films reinforce the nationalist message by demonizing foreigners–whether British, 7

Sevda ùener (1928-) longtime professor of drama at the University of Ankara, as well as an authority on the Turjish theatre both in Turkish and English. 8 Muazzez ølmiye Çı÷ (1914-), archeologist and long-time supporter of secular values. In 2006 she was put on trial for allegedly insulting Muslim women and inciting religious hatred. The issue arose over a book she wrote in which she allegedly linked the wearing of headscarves with ancient Sumerian sexual rites. She was cleared at the first hearing. See “Turkey Court Clears Archaeologist,” BBC News, 1 November 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6106098.stm (accessed September 1, 2010)). 9 She won in 2003 with a song “Every Way That I Can.” 10 Cem Yılmaz (1973-), stand-up comic and latterly film actor, whose successes include the sci-fi spoofs G.O.R.A. (2004) and its sequel A.R.O.G. (2008) 11 The film’s website jokily describes the Sheriff as “the pride of the white men.” (www.yahsibati.com). has the Sheriff’s son Johnnie (Ferdi Sancar), going over to the Ottoman side and quoting from Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924), the Turkish thinker and poet, whose ideas had considerable influence during the Republican period, especially in the area of language reform. No one understand Johnnie’s quotation (“This sorry mind is unequal to such wit for the balance cannot bear the weight”), but the fact that Gökalp has been cited at all suggests that foreigners are at last taking note of Turkish philosophers.

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French or American. Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali has the hero telling the British occupation force that “You’re on Ottoman soil. Is it right that you speak English here?” The Turkish owner of a café insults them more directly: “You bastards! How dare you try and enter without gaining permission!” However his anger seems perfectly justified, as the troops behave with breathtaking arrogance towards the local people. In another sequence a group of British officers come into a fish restaurant demanding “Hey, Turk! Give us some fish, rakı, [and] meze!” One of them notices a Turkish flag hanging at the back of the room, a symbol of local resistance, and tries to tear it down, exclaiming: “Osmanlı is finished!” Immediately Yandım Ali is spurred into action by this insult against the Turkish nation, as he takes on the entire British squadron with the battle cry: “No one has the strength to bring that down!” The British not only lack cultural sensitivity, they also take pleasure in attacking innocent people; this is apparently an act of revenge “because of [the] Armenians”–a direct reference to the events of 1919, when the Ottoman government promised the British that they would round up and punish the alleged perpetrators of the atrocities taking place four years earlier. In April of that year, a local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and hanged in Ankara. The situation was only defused two years later, as the British realized that their control over østanbul was waning, and they forged a deal with the government whereby they would release a group of Turkish prisoners held in Malta on suspicion of crimes against the Armenians, in return for the release of Britons being held by the Ottoman Turks. This incident proves that no serious evidence against the Turkish captives ever existed.12 Eve Giden Yol 1914 takes a similarly dim view of the British; in one sequence a sergeant enters a mosque, puts his foot on a pasha’s tomb and proclaims that, as the Ottoman army has now been defeated, “we can say the Crusades have ended.” Such acts of blatant disrespect only increase the Turkish rebels’ desire to expel the occupying forces from their homeland and recover their freedom. It is not only the British who are culturally insensitive; in the southern town of Antakya (Antioch), which is currently under French protection, a French teacher remarks despairingly that her learners are “all stupid,” as they refuse to learn the words of “La Marseillaise.” Reúat Aga (Metin Akpınar) observes that such incidents show the depth of local resistance to colonial rule: “the dog is wagging its

12 See “Turkey’s Armenian Dilemma,” BBC News, February 27, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6386625.stm (accessed September 1, 2010)).

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tail at the French.”13 Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti suggests that resistance is perfectly justified, as the foreign occupiers are solely preoccupied with dividing up Turkish territory so as to deprive the nation of any real power. In one sequence we see the Ottoman government offering to give Heybeli Island (the second largest of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara off østanbul) to the Greeks, so as to strengthen Turco-American relations, as well as increase their chances of joining the European Union.14 When the Sultan objects to his decision, a European Union representative admonishes him that “You can’t enter the EU with this barbarity and aggressive behavior.” Although set in the immediate aftermath of World War One, this sequence directly refers to present issues–particularly the negotiations between the Republic and the European Union, which by the end of 2006 had stalled and have advanced little since then. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo÷an commented in 2006 that he would rather see the suspension of EU accession talks rather than bow to what he considered “unreasonable” demands over Cyprus. Meanwhile former Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel observed that the EU’s demands to grant certain rights to the Kurdish minority would threaten the unity of the Turkish state, which the Republic could and would not accept (“Turks Cool” 2006) Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti also criticizes current American policy in the Near East by presenting their army as trigger-happy imperialists who declare martial law and kill innocent children for no apparent reason. It is hardly surprising that they are described in the film as “not cowboys but cows.” Yahúi Batı continues this theme, as Sheriff Lloyd’s son Chuck (Kaan Öztop) taunts Aziz with the prospect of Ottoman Turkey being “under American rule in twenty years.” Aziz responds with an insult of his own: “he [Sheriff Lloyd] was talking about your mum when he said ‘American rule.’” In Aziz and his sidekick Lemi Galip’s (Ozan Güven’s) opinion the majority of Americans are “redneck assholes,” whose rapacious desire for profit prevents the two Ottomans from doing “an honest day’s work.” Aziz admits that his misfortunes in America have given him a cynical view of so-called “enlightened” western culture. He 13 France occupied Antakya in 1918 and subsequently incorporated it as part of the French mandate on the grounds that its population was largely Arab Christian and Armenian rather than Turkish. The Republic contested this decision, and for many years the towns of Antakya and Alexandretta (now known as øskenderun) were a source of dispute in Franco-Turkish relations. In 1939 France ceded Antakya to Turkey, a move that prompted most of the local Armenian population to leave. 14 The island does contain the main Greek orthodox seminary in Turkey, as well as the Theological Seminary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

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recounts a tall tale claiming that the Palace of Versailles in France had no bathrooms, so the people excreted straight on the floor. The only way they could avoid stepping in it was to practice the waltz. The film ends with a ceremonial exchange of gifts between Aziz and Lemi (as representatives of Ottoman Turkey), and American President Garfield (Tevfik Yapıcı). The Ottomans present a diamond necklace and receive a pair of wellington boots in return, together with the familiar orientalist jibe: “Are there camels where you come from?” Aziz responds with a jibe of his own (“Yes there are, but not your size”) and tells the President precisely what he thinks of him in verse: “Bare of foot and bald of head, we toured the Western realm,/ Some was wild, some was mild, some was fine of pen,/ You merit the name jackass but let’s keep it at jack,/ Hand over your shit boots, at least they’re a gift back.” The film emphasizes the extent to which Turco-American relations have been damaged as a result of America’s Near East policy–especially in terms of popular opinion. Action films such as Kurtlar Vadisi–Irak [Valley of the Wolves: Iraq] (2006) captured this mood: Yahúiu Batı shows that attitudes have scarcely changed in the intervening three years. In a survey published by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press in Washington DC, only nine per cent of Turks interviewed held a favorable view of the United States (down from fiftytwo per cent in 2000). This placed the Republic at the bottom of the list of the forty-six countries surveyed (Schliefer 2007, 6). Such views on Mustafa Kemal, the Republic and the potentially destructive influence of foreign powers are part of what Kabir Tambar describes as secular populism, which claims to defend an ideology usually associated with the state, but actually taking the form of popular protest independent of state control (Tambar 2009, 517-8). This kind of expression emerged in the spring of 2007, when demonstrations were held in most major cities. In the capital, Ankara, for instance, the meeting took place in front of Anıtkabir (Atatürk’s Mausoleum), and was advertised with slogans such as “Cumhuriyet Mitingi” (a Rally for the Republic) and “Cumhuriyetine Sahip Çık” (Lay Claim To Your Republic). The rally comprised members of civil society groups, university professors, politicians as well as others supporting the secular republic, who chanted slogans insisting that “Turkey is secular, and will remain secular,” and “The path to the Presidential Palace is closed to Sharia,” while underlining the importance of Atatürk’s beliefs. In a little more than a month, six other rallies were organized, all of them attracting vast crowds. Tanbar argues that such demonstrations are indicative of a new movement in Turkish politics dating from the early 1990s that is “no longer restricted to

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popularizing traditional state holidays, such crowds have grown responsive to political itineraries that do not follow a ritual calendar. In the [political] process, the secular crowd has emerged as a new actor, making populist claims in public debates about political appointments and legislative reform” (Tanbar 2009, 534). The principal concerns of this movement focus on the future of the Republic in a fast-changing world, in which national, regional and local identities are subject to continual revaluation. I suggest that the respective directors of the films covered in this chapter are well aware of the strength of secular populism, and construct their narratives accordingly. This is especially true, for instance, of Osmanlı Cumhuriyeti and Yahúi Batı, whose stars (Ata Demirer and Cem Yılmaz) have drawn on their reputations as comedians–established on television and stand-up as well the cinema–to create populist films designed to make audiences feel good about themselves and their country, while criticizing western colonialism.15 Yahúi Batı proved equally successful in this task; it grossed over $13m. at the box-office within three months of its release on December 31, 2009.16 The publicity for Veda and Dersimiz: Atatürk emphasizes the secular populist purpose: both films hope to make filmgoers more aware of Atatürk’s life and work both in the Republic and elsewhere.17 This means focusing more on his achievements and suppressing more negative images of his life and times that appeared in earlier film biographies (such as Tolga Örnek’s Atatürk, discussed in the previous chapter).18 The fact that secular populism has been so readily embraced, both on the streets and on screen, reflects the genuine anxieties held by many people about the future of the nation: whether it will reconstitute itself along more pluralist lines, allowing greater freedom of expression for 15 Yılmaz enjoys particular popularity with his audiences: the daily newspaper Hürriyet reported in 2003 that patrons were willing to pay up to 250 YTL (about $165) to watch one of his stand-up shows “Cem Yılmaz’in Biletleri 250 Milyona Satılıyor” [Cem Yılmaz Tickets on Sale at 250 Million Turkish Lira], Hürriyet, February 18, 2003, 8. 16 “Yahúi Batı,” Box Office Mojo (March 19-21, 2010), http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/intl/?id=_fYAHSIBATI02&country=TR&wk=2 010W2&id=_fYAHSIBATI02&p=.htm (accessed September 2, 2010). 17 “Veda: Film Hakkında” [Veda: About the Film], http://kicir.org/veda-filmiataturkzulfu-livaneli.html (accessed September 2, 2010); Dersimiz Atatürk: Resimli Öykü: Tarih Kitabı [Dersimiz Atatürk: Photo Album and History Book] (østanbul: Örümcek Yapım, 2010), 3. 18 Dersimiz: Atatürk informs us that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk drank moderately; he was far more interested in sustaining intellectual conversations at his dinner-table.

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minority groups, or whether it will gravitate towards the one-nation ideal. Hakan Yavuz and Nihat Ali Özcan associate these two “diametrically opposing visions” with the AKP (which seeks to promote the multicultural ideal in the interests of European integration, while allowing greater freedom for Islamic thought) and the secular elite, which “fears the shadow of the multiethnic and multireligious Ottoman legacy and the possibility of the fragmentation of the nation” (Yavuz and Özcan 2007, 135). On this view, it might be assumed that secular populism identifies with the views of the secular elite. Films like Dersimiz Atatürk and Veda emphasize the importance of strong central government based on unity of purpose. However things aren’t quite that simple: Jenny White convincingly argued in 2007 that many of the old secular institutions–the military, the law, as well as in civil sectors such as education–have lost credibility recently, as the AKP government has gradually moved towards the political center while introducing a host of reforms designed to allow hitherto marginalized groups (e.g. Kurds) freedom of speech (White 2007, 433). This helps to explain why they were re-elected in 2007 with a vastly increased majority. With this in mind, there has been a move towards creating new forms of expression involving ordinary people rather than the secular elite, which is why so many people came to the demonstrations held all over the Republic in Spring 2007. The six films covered in this chapter are specifically aimed at this kind of audience, which still believes in Atatürk’s reforms but does not necessarily support the institutions that have implemented (or not implemented) them since his death in 1938. Dersimiz: Atatürk reiterates the importance of educating every student to become self-reliant yet loyal to the Republic, so as to create the need to produce future generations who can make an active contribution to the nation’s intellectual and political future. Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali and Veda celebrate the achievements of those who selflessly devote themselves to their country with little thought of personal gain (an implied criticism of corruption within the current state bureaucracy). Those directors in favor of secular populism might even support some of the initiatives promoting equality of opportunity for minorities brought in by AKP–as Aziz in Yahúi Batı implies, such policies were also commonplace during the Ottoman period. These films focus on issues of national integrity, and how each member of the Turkish nation (rather than state institutions) can work to sustain it. Audiences have to understand the contribution they can make towards ensuring that the country looks after all its citizens-irrespective of ethnicity, gender or religious persuasion-while resisting foreign intervention. If this process involves stepping back into the past to understand Atatürk’s contribution

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more fully, then perhaps the lessons of history and their implications for the future might be better appreciated.

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INDEX

A Ada, Serhan 86 Adıvar, Halide Edip 5, 26, 145, 162 Ahıska, Meltem 80 Akad, Lütfi Ö. , 267, 272, 274-5 øngiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı (1952) 7, 237-8, 243-6, 256-7, 264, 267, 271-2, 300 Akcan, Esra 78 Akdeniz, Nida Karabol 308 Akın, Fatih 331 Aksoy, Asu 87 Akúit, ølhan 114 All the King’s Men (1999) 346 Altınay, Ayúe Gül 73 Ambler, Eric 241-2 Amelang, James 111-2 American Dream 200-9, 210-21 And, Metin 147-8, 175, 250 Anday, Melih Cevdet 76, 121, 177 Andrews, Roger 154, 156-7 Arnold, Matthew 213 Atasü, Erendiz 68-9 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 3-5, 8, 14, 22, 58, 60-1, 65, 73, 76-7, 79, 87, 100, 108, 115, 121, 144-5, 198, 211, 238, 243, 301-2, 313, 322-3, 334-5, 340-2, 344-5, 347, 349-51, 354-6, 360-2 Ay, Lütfi 163, 165 Aymaz, Göksel 77 Aytür, Necla 27, 210

Bennett, Tony 101 Bentley, Eric 182 Berger, John 16 Bhabha, Homi K. 14-16, 96 Binark, Mutlu, and Kılıçbay, Barıú 66-7 Binyazar, Adnan 77 Bolt, Robert 237-9, 248 Boratav, Pertev Naili 86 Bozdo÷an, Sibel, and Kasaba, Reúit 31-2, 66 Bozkurt, Bülent 30, 149-50, 160-1 Brah, Avtar 18-19 Brecht, Bertolt 7, 182, 188, 190-3, 227-8 Broomfield, Nick 314 Burian, Orhan 139, 142-3, 146-7, 149-51, 210, 213-4 Burton, Sir Richard 237-8, 241 Byram, Michael 14-15

B Baú, Iúıl, 31 Bean, George E. 113 Beard, Mary, 57-8

Ç Ça÷lar, Ayúe 71-2 Çanakkale Arslanları (1964) 333-4, 345-6

C Cengiz, Orhan Kemal 2 Cezzar, Engin 148, 191 Chekhov, Anton 161, 173, 178, 224, 226 Uncle Vanya 179, 222, 224-6 Chrissanthou, Panikos 283, 294 Clurman, Harold 200-1, 214-5 Coleman, Basil ix, 154, 156-61 Corner, John 312 Cumalı, Necati 163, 272

398 D Da÷taú, Erdal 62, 70 Demirel, Süleyman 15, 127, 282-3, 301, 338 Deniztekin, Osman 75-8 Dersimiz: Atatürk (2010) 302, 3546, 361-2 Dickinson, Emily 48-50 Dikerdem, Mehmet Ali 82-3 Dilmen, Güngör 162, 179 Dink, Hrant 6, 73, 75-6, 78, 80 Do÷an, Öznur 3, 72, 319 øki Dil Bir Bavul (2009) 3, 8, 72, 302, 319-31 Hayaller Bir Kırık Ayna (2001) 324-5 Do÷ramacı, Emel 28-9 Dostlar Tiyatrosu 181-3, 190, 192-5 Durrell, Lawrence 108-10 Dündar, Can 267, 301, 341 E Easthope, Antony 21 Ebert, Carl 86, 153, 169, 305 Erdo÷an, Recep Tayyip, 19, 30, 35, 66, 77, 85, 87, 353, 359 Erhat, Azra 136 Erksan, Metin 268-9, 272, 299-300 Erim, Nihat 128 Erkal, Genco 7, 181-199 Hakkari’de Bir Mevsim (1983) 187, 192 Kerem Gibi 181-6, 190, 193, 196-7 Pazar: Bir Ticaret Masalı (2008) 187-8 Sivas 93 185-7, 197-8 Ertu÷rul, Muhsin 145, 148, 153, 175, 178, 268 Eskiköy, Orhan 3, 302, 319-23 Esmer, Pelin 8, 302, 303-12, 314 Koleksiyoncu (2002) 307 11’e 10 Kala (2009), 307 Oyun (2005) 8, 302, 303-12, 319, 321, 323, 324. 331-2

Index Eve Giden Yol 1914 (2007) 7-8, 353-4, 358 Evin, Ahmet 28, 134 Eyübo÷lu, Sabahattin 3, 6, 75, 77-8, 136, 139, 149, 299 F Farhi, Moris 57, 60-2 Fellows, Charles 107-8 Ferrer, Jose 240-2 Finley, Jeanne A. 307 Fleming, Joan 242 Foucault, Michel 70, 76, 110-1 Fowles, John 64 Fraser, Nick 316 Freely, Maureen ix, 52, 61-2, 82-4 Friere, Paolo 44 G Gella, Yaro T. 90 Gallipoli (1981) 337, 343 Gibson, Margaret Brennan 200, 207 Gielgud, John 154, 156, 190 Giroux, Henry A. 44 Gladstone, William Ewart 97 Glazebrook, Philip 241 Goetz, Ruth and Augustus 163 The Heiress 163, 176 Goodwin, Jason 59-61, 63 Göktürk, Akúit 65-6 Gökçer, Ayten 153, 161 Gökçer, Cüneyt viii, 7, 153-61, 176, 227, 334 Göle, Nilüfer 5, 71 Guerrilla Filmmaking 8, 282, 288, 290, 297-8 Günay, øzzet 261, 263-4 Güney, Yılmaz 160, 254, 282, 293, 315 Güngör, ùükran 165-6, 168, 175 Güntekin, Reúat Nuri 153 Günyol, Vedat 117, 136 Gürça÷lar, ùehnaz Tahir 117-19 Gürkan, Rezzan 70-1

Exploring Turkish Cultures: Essays, Interviews and Reviews Güvenç, Bozkurt 38, 65 Güzey, Gülistan 245, 252, 257 H Habermas, Jürgen, 40 Hakan, Fikret 261, 265 Hall, Stuart 39 Halman, Talât Saït viii, 6, 37, 40, 76, 120-41, 147, 149, 162, 165, 178, 275-6, 279 Herbert, Aubrey 334 Hikmet, Nâzım 79-81, 121-2, 1825, 190, 299 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean 106 hooks, bel 303 Hopkins, Ben viii, 187-8, 302, 31219 Footprints (2003) 315 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep (2005) 302, 312-9, 323, 331 Pazar: Bir Ticaret Masalı (2008) 187, 314-5 Howard, Douglas A. 216 Humphreys, A. R. 143, 146 Hun, Ediz 262-3 Huzun 58, 60-3 ø ølhan, Attilâ 69, 76 ønalcık, Halil 101 ønanır, Kadir 265, 267, 272 ønce, H. Ayça 86-7 ønönü, Erdal 83-4 øpekçi, Abdi 127-8 I Ihcam 283, 297 Ilicak, Nazlı 83 Intercultural Competence 12-20, 33, 36 Iúık, Ayhan 3, 7-8, 244-5, 246, 2509, 269 Aslan Pencesi (1966) 256 Aúktan Da Üstün (1962) 257-8

399

Ingiliz Kemal Lavrens’e Karúı (1952), 7, 237-9, 251 Kanun Namına (1952) 252-3 Katılın Kızı (1964) 254 Yaralı Aslan (1963) 253-4 J Jordanova, Ludmila 116 K Kahraman, Hasan Bülent 4, 38, 40, 76 Karagöz 250-1, 254, 258 Karantay, Suat 218 Karaosmano÷lu, Atillâ 128 Karaosmano÷lu, Yakup Kadri 77 Kato÷lu, Murat 86 Kavala, Osman 88 Kaya, Ayhan, 67-8 Kazankaya, Nesrin 7, 222-33 Kaybolma 229 Tam Rolünde 230 Kemal, Orhan 76, 79-81 Kemalism/ Kemalists 2, 4, 8, 19, 22-3, 43, 58-9, 62, 79, 87-8, 216, 312 Kent Oyuncuları 162-5, 175-6, 178, 181 Kenter (Tepedelen), Leylâ 164, 166, 167, 175 Kenter, Müúfik 121, 138-9, 162-3, 165, 175, 177-8, 191 Kenter, Yıldız viii, 7, 138, 140, 162-80, 181, 191 Beyaz Melek (2007) 163, 168-9 Derya Gülü 165 Fatma Bacı (1972) 163, 165, 167 Hanım (1988) 163, 167-8 Hep Aúk Vardı 164, 170 Kızım Ayúe (1974) 167 Kraliçe Lear [Queen Lear] 1678, 178 The Night Season 168-9 Pembe Kadın 163-5

400 Kırmızıgül, Mahsun 306 Koçaú, Sadi 136 Kongar, Emre, 68 Kohistani, Akhtarjan 315 König, Güray 28 Kutlu, Ekber 318-9 Kutlu, Gülgün 155, 157 Küçükcan, Talip, and Güngör, Velis, 66-7 Kültür Bakanlı÷ı [Ministry of Culture] 3-5, 38, 39, 115, 128, 130-2, 163, 185, 295, 311 L Lawrence, T. E. 7, 236-49, 251, 257, 353-4 Seven Pillars of Wisdom 237-8, 240, 244, 247 Lean, David 7, 237, 353 Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 7, 237-9, 241-3, 248-9, 353 Leavis, F. R. 25, 28-9, 31-3, 44, 47, 213 Leveaux, David 142, 150-1, 225 Lewes, George Henry 112 Lewis, Geoffrey 170, 244 M Mardin, ùerif 331 Martin, Paul 106, 110-1 Masefield, John 95 McGough, Roger 48 Menteúe, Oya Batum viii, 30, 68 Meredith, George 112 Midnight Express (1978) 237, 290 Mill, John Stuart 108 Miller, Arthur 7, 82-5, 130, 210-21 Death of a Salesman 7, 210-21 Miller, Gabriel 201, 204 Milli E÷itim Bakanlı÷ı [Ministry of Education] 5, 15, 25, 39, 44, 52, 55, 72, 78, 130, 144, 151, 187, 210, 300, 320 Mitchell, W. J. T. 286 Mohanty, S. P. 102

Index Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 97 Moore, Kevin 105-6 N Neyzi, Leylâ 218-9, 307 Nemet-Nejat, Murat 123 New Turkish Cinema 281, 295 Nutting, Anthony 239, 248 O Odets, Clifford 7 Waiting for Lefty 7, 200-9 Okan, Tunç 3, 274-80 Otobüs (1974), 274-80 Oktay, Ahmet 69 Onur, Bekir 90, 95-6, 102-3, 107 Oral, Zeynep 164 Osmanlı Cumhuiyeti (2008) 354-5, 359-61, 362-3 Ö Öncü, Ayúe 65-7 Örnek, Tolga viii, 8, 333-52 Atatürk (1998) 8, 333-4, 340-2, 344-7 Devrim Arabaları (2008) 8, 333-7, 348-50 Gelibolu (2005) 8, 333-5, 337, 342, 343, 345-8, 349, 352 The Hittites (2003), 333, 334, 335, 337, 343-4, 347 Kurulútan Kurtuluúta Fenerbahçe (1999) 333, 344 Tanrılan Tahtı Nemrut (2000), 333, 344 Özal, Turgut 19, 35, 68, 84, 137, 215, 283 Özer, Özcan 150-1 P Paker, Saliha 27, 145 Palmer, Stephanie 213 Pamir Kirghiz Tribe 312-5, 323, 331 Pamuk, Orhan 61, 63, 73, 82

Exploring Turkish Cultures: Essays, Interviews and Reviews Parla, Jâle 78 Paxman, Jeremy 21, 22, 32 PEN 135-6 Peristiany, J. G. 112 Pinter, Harold 82-5, 164 Postmodernism ix, 5, 62-3, 64-74, 292-3, 303, 312 Pulhan, Gül 88 Pultar, Gönül ix, 2, 36-7, 45, 215 Q Qul, Rahman 313 R Rattigan, Terence 12 Separate Tables 12, 19 Refi÷, Halit 163-4, 167 Renov, Michael 300, 302 Robert College 123, 139, 188-9, 190 Roper, Joyce 314 Roudané, Matthew C. 221 Rumford, Chris 30, 215 Rumi, Mevlâna Celaleddin-I 3, 121, 131, 140, 153, 251, 253, 256-7, 259 Rygård, Elizabeth 307 S Sabancı University 34, 36, 40, 45, 46, 47, 307 St. Clair, G. B., and Brophy, Charles A. 97 Say, Fâzıl 184, 186 Sayın, Hidayet 164-5 Scherpereel. John A. 1 Scognamillo, Giovanni 242, 253, 257 Seçkin, Aylin 88 Secular Populism 354-62 Seden, Osman F. 244, 245, 263 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet 101 Shahrani, Nazif 316

401

Shakespeare, William 7, 24-6, 121, 138-40, 144-52, 153-61, 172, 178, 188, 222-4, 230-1, 341 As You Like It 144-52 Hamlet 26, 139, 145-6, 148-9, 153-4, 161, 178 Henry IV Part 1 153-4 Julius Caesar 148 King Lear 7, 25, 153-61 Measure for Measure 230-1 Merchant of Venice 189, 222-4 Merry Wives of Windsor 227 Othello 139, 191 Richard III 149 Romeo and Juliet 139, 227, 263 Twelfth Night 145, 172, 231 Shelley, Mary 112 Shemilt, D. 202 Sinano÷lu, Oktay 70 Sinden, Sir Donald 341 Smith, Susan Harris, 211-2 Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali (2007) 7, 353-4, 358, 362 Stanley, Arthur 109 Stojanov, Dimitur 100 Stokes, Martin 105 Strickland, Eugene 163, 167, 178 Suner, Asuman 281 Süalp, Zeynep Tül Akbal 72 Süreya, Cemal 122 ù ùafak, Elif 57-8, 63 ùahinbaú, ørfan 25, 155-6, 160 ùimúir, Bilâl N. 100 ùoray, Türkân viii, ix, 3, 8, 260-73 Akúam Güneúi (1967) 263 Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur? (1973) 266 Bodrum Hakimi (1978) 265 Ekmekçi Kadın (1965) 263-4 Elveda Sevgilim (1965) 263 Gençlik Rüzgarı (1964) 262 Gönderilmemiú Mektuplar (2003) 267

402

Index Hayatımın Kadınsın (2006) 267 On Kadın (1987) 266 Sana Layik De÷ilim (1964) 262 Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (1978) 261, 265, 268, 271, 275 Seven Kadın Unutmaz (1965) 263 Vesikalı Yarım (1967) 264

T Tahir, Kemal 118 Tarhan, Belkıs Ayhan 71 Tarman, Bülent 54-6 Taygun, Ali 85, 141 Taylan, Orhan 83 Taylor, Isaac 109 Tema, Muzaffer 7, 243-4, 252, 271 Tercüme 23-4, 144 Tiyatro Pera 222, 225, 228, 231-2 Tomruk, Ahmet Esat 243, 245, 257 Tonguç, øsmail Hakkı, 5-6, 42-53 Tökin, øsmail Hüsrev 77 Translation Office 6, 23, 39, 117-9, 144-5, 147 Trilling, Ossia 144 Turhan, Vahit 25-6, 145, 148 Turkish Language Society 23 Türkmen, ølter 133 U Umunç, Himmet viii, 29 Urgan, Minâ 147, 195 Uzmen, Audrey x, 156-7 Uzmen, Engin ix, 25, 149-50 Ü Ünsal, Deniz 88 V Veda (2010) 302, 354-6, 361-2

Village Institutes 3, 5, 24, 42, 76, 78-9, 117, 305, 321 W Weales, Gerald 201, 203 Weber, Max 22 Wolfit, Sir Donald 156, 160 Y Yahúi Batı (2010), 354, 357, 35960, 361, 362 Yapp. M. E. 1 Yavuz, Hilmi 76, 283 Yeúilçam Cinema 3, 8, 204, 276, 351 Yıldız, Olga Cynthia (mother of Yıldız Kenter) 162, 169-70 Yılmaz, Atıf 163, 261, 265, 268, 272 Yılmaz, Cem 357, 361 Yılmaz, Leman 216 Yöntem, Selçuk 168, 225, 335 Yörük Tribe 310 Yücel, Can 161 Yücel, Hasan-Ali 24, 42 Yüksel, Ayúegül 160, 214 Z Zaim, Derviú viii, 8-9, 281-98, 302 Cenneti Beklerken (2007) 9, 282, 286-8, 294-5, 300-2 Çamur (2005) 9, 284-5, 287-8, 292-4 Filler ve Çimen (2000), 282, 284, 287, 291-3 Kemerayı As (1991) 289 Nokta (2009) 9, 282-3, 287, 294, 297 Rock Around the Mosque (1993) 289 Tavutta Rövaúata (1996) 281-3, 285, 287, 290-2