Places to go, Things to do

I’m in my last weeks now here in Istanbul (well last, i’m coming back for sure;) and just before I leave amongst other things there will be a few event’s I’ll be involved in. So get you’re agenda’s ready, and hop by if you like.

#1

First I’m proud to annouce that Difüzyon will rock Istanbul with another dörtyüzsaniye. This second edition comes after the -above expectations- successful first edition at SekSek. The first one was such a succes, that SekSek was to small to house the audience. So sadely we had to send people home. That chance won’t be so big this time cause we’ll be hosting dörtyüzsaniye numero 2 in Studio Live. The please is big enough to house, let’s say 1000 people. Check out there pics on the website it’s a great venue just off Istiklal. Keep checking the Difüzyon site for updates and also if you (still) don’t have a clue what this dörtyüzsaniye thing is.

#2

We’ll I think I don’t need to say much about this one. I’ll be screening it at my School, the Architecture Faculty of ITU a.k.a Taşkışla together with Sleep[less] Taşkışla, check their website for more info.

#3

We’ll this is the most scary one 1st of February, Art Fag (a.k.a me with mi compadre Caglar) we’ll play back2back @ Babylon, before and after Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot)
We’ll play some Dirty Electro, Minimal Italo Disco, 8-bit Polkadot and other weird shit from our digital archives.

So see you around, ciao!

The New Turkey (review)

I finally finished ‘The New Turkey’ by Chris Morris a book I bought at the start of my stay here in Turkey in an effort to grasp what Turkey is about. Although it’s still hard to exactally put your finger on it, Morris gives to the western outsider quite some handles to get a good start. Without taking position in favor of the Kemmalist point of view (as one might easily expect from a foreigner).

I finished the book a month ago or so (2006), but last weekend my ‘quest’ for understanding Turkey has been crowned with a visit to Anitkabir, the grave of Ataturk in Ankara. A visit to this monument makes you deeply realize what Turkey as a nation state means and how it’s people relate to it. A friend of mine putted it like this; Where Western Europe experienced evolution followed by revolution, in Turkey it was the other way around. First revolution and after that, up to today and tomorrow, Turkey is experiencing an evolutionary process of coming to terms with this. In that sense Ataturk really is pivotal in what Turkey is. When the Ottoman empire demised and was defeated in the First World War, and the Turkish Republic (founded in 1923) in the Second. The European Alied forces where all to eager to devide the lands of the former Ottoman empire among themselves. Through the Turkish Independence wars, Turkey re-conquered much of it’s land up unto it’s current borders. After that Ataturk ruled as an Enlightened (in the French meaning of the word) dictator and put through so many reforms in such a staggering pace that, even if people would want to resist to one form legistlation put through the other one was already in the making. Ataturk founded a republic and a people and left an enormous legacy.This is everywhere, from simply encountering his portret at a local restaurant to the language Turks speak, write and the names they have. What it means te be Turk is pratically founded by one man. You won’t realize it fully untill you go to Anitkabir. As a western European you’ll probably feel uneasy, walking through an architecture strongly resembaling Albert Speer’s, wandering by panoramic battle scenes of the Independence War, accompanied with sounds of gunshots and screams, this all carried on the proud pulse of pompous classical music themes. All this is bordering to the best national socialist propaganda. But this is different, although the legacy of Ataturk is maybe not shared by everyone, as Turk you also need to ‘believe’ in what this man represents, because he practically constitutes identity of the Turkish people (this is important because there is really no such thing as a Turkish ethnic group, practically everyone is of mixed blood and background).

Anitkabir, Ankara

Turkish history maybe starts at Ataturk, but it certainly doesn’t end there. This is also what Morris quite effectively shows. The recent reforms in the perspective of joining the European Union (one day…) and how Turkey will deal with Islam mixed with a western republican democracy is now being put to the test with Tayip Erdogan at the helm. Where the sacred unity of Turks under the flag of the republic has also been a argument much used for violently crushing any sounds countering this (of course reffering to the Kurdish issue) concept, Turkey now is opening up slowly to other sounds, also the ones in a Kurdish tongue.

Now that entering the European Union seems further away than ever since negotiations started. Turkey finds itself (as always) in between, a Europe that has to decide if Turkey really matches with their European ambitions and a Middle East that is in turmoil. Turkey is presented with her final challenges of making the Turkish project a succes if it joins the union or not. It mostly depends on how the hybrid political system will evolve from a democratic-authoritarian-tribal amalgamtion to something close to a republican democracy and how Tukey can make the differences between the “relatively rich progressive west” and “traditional conservative poor east” smaller in terms of education, governance, business and living conditions. If anything is sure, than it is that Turkey is still a nation in the making, a work in progress. In any case I which them all the best with this project, because it’s a beautiful country with wonderfull people…. I know