By Sam Thorne
Image courtesy: Tayfun Serttaş
We invited eight Istanbul-based artists, writers and curators to reflect on the events of the last month.
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Filiz Avunduk
After we were raided from Gezi Park, we hid helplessly on the top floor of a commercial building nearby. Sound bombs were used to frighten us, arrests had begun and suffocating gas bombs were thrown left and right leaving us no choice but to take refuge. From the hundreds of thousands of people who were occupying the two lanes of Harbiye Boulevard, there was now only a small group left. They were bravely chanting slogans like ‘Throw your helmet / Become a simit (a Turkish bagel) vendor / Live with your honour.’ Waiting for the police to leave, we hid until 6:30am, watching what was left of the attacks from a fifth-floor office overlooking the boulevard. The police were attacking a small group of civilians while they resisted until the end.
I couldn’t shake off the images I had just seen and went to calm down in the back when a friend sent me a poem by Wallace Stevens. It put a faint smile on my face, but, more importantly, it reminded me, despite everything that happened, we were all united for the first time to imagine a better future together.
Filiz Avunduk is programmes director of 5533 and co-director of NON-Stage in Istanbul.
Aslı Çavuşoğlu
Image from the press conference that took place after the Gezi Park protestors were forced out of the park for the second time in the same week at dawn. The police attacked without waiting for the statement to end with teargas and water cannon. 31 May 2013. Photo: Aslı Çavuşoğlu
After the attack, when I was able to finally make it home safe, I listened to Erdoğan giving an anti-smoking talk at a hotel nearby, defending a smoke-free environment. And later, a JDP member of the parliament joked on Twitter that the protestors ‘felt like gas.’ I couldn’t handle these ‘jokes’ any more and I stepped out of door.
Courage is contagious. It diffuses deeper than the aimed teargas and the chemical waters of riot control.
Aslı Çavuşoğlu is an artist based in Istanbul.
Duygu Demir
‘A pefectly average’ çapulcu’s perspective:
I was in Venice with colleagues for the opening of the biennale when, through our limited Internet access, we started getting bits and pieces of information about what had been happening in Istanbul in the previous 24 hours: the first demonstrations against the destruction of the park; the brutal police response; the lack of media coverage. We joined the demonstration first at the Arsenale and continued to the Giardini, holding handmade signs under the sun, shouting ‘Stop the violence in Istanbul.’ We were anxious, but didn’t really grasp the gravity of the situation.
Back home, the physicality of what was happening caused both gradual and immediate mental shifts. Right away, the night of my return, I witnessed temporary barricades being constructed a few streets down from where I live and got a first whiff of tear gas, and the next day read the spray-painted slogans around Beyoğlu on the way to work. Over the course of the week, I made a habit of stopping by the park at every lunch break and on the way home, before finally experiencing tear gas canisters and sounds bombs falling near me in and around Gezi Park as I put on my gas mask and goggles, trying not to panic and run. By then I felt a change in gears.
I usually don’t feel inclined to make pronouncements about politics, and until now had felt nothing I thought or did would make a difference. But my dormant political vein was awakened and for the first time I felt like I could participate as well, and that in the end it would mean something. The independent research and consultancy firm Konda held a survey in Gezi Park on 6–7 June, which was approximately a week after the police first entered the park. The results of the polling was a personal first for me – not only was I in the majority in multiple categories, but the average profile you could infer from the poll was quite definitive. I am 28, the average age of those at the park, I don’t have any memberships to political parties, NGOs or other organizations (like 79 percent) and I went to the park as a simple citizen (93.6 percent).
I go back and forth between being very hopeful and getting very depressed, thinking the problems are too big and too deeply rooted to be fixed. The biggest gain for me throughout this process has been the realization that there are many other people like me who haven’t found their political expression in ‘politics’ as it is practiced in the parliament, but somewhere else – pre-Gezi, just in the imaginary, though now in actuality – in the Athenian-style forums that now take place in parks in the evenings.
Duygu Demir is a curator at SALT, Istanbul.
Köken Ergun
Köken Ergun (standing to the right) holding a placard that translates as ‘Love’
The Gezi movement is like a set of shifting tectonic plates. After this, things will be different in Turkey: jobs and positions will be lost, replaced by new ones; social interactions will be redefined; the arts will be confused before it can meaningfully react; mum and dad (the ancien régime) might become even more worried and self-destructive; some people will just have to pull the blanket over their head and hide in bed. The ‘angry new’ are not always sensible, but they are the ones who will define this new era. Now we must join their energy, be part of a collective consciousness that is difficult to explain with any image or word. Fear yourself and join the crowd!
Köken Ergun is an artist based in Istanbul. A version of this text was posted on Facebook on 9 June 2013.
Annika Eriksson
Exterior of the Atatürk Cultural Center, Istanbul
I am following the situation through the eyes of someone coming from outside. But what is happening is something that is affecting us all, wherever we come from; I can’t and don’t want to stay out of it. The solidarity and the wish to create something better is amazing; I have never experienced anything as strong outside my private life. There is hope after all. That is the positive side of what is going on. The violence and abuse is absolutely shocking, though I am certain that this will change the situation in Turkey and beyond. But as a guest I can only understand parts of this very complex political situation.
I arrived in Istanbul last October and learned about the Gezi Park resistance from the people that assisted me with research for a project, people involved in animal rights and also in the resistance against the neoliberal plans for this city. Though I share their views, what made me join the protests in the park was the photo of the girl in red dress being attacked with teargas, right in her face. It seems to me that the images in social media and the news showing police attacking peaceful protesters really brought people to the park and into the streets. And the movement wasn’t anymore just about the plans for the city but also about the whole political situation. It is amazing to see that for every act of violence towards the protesters more and more people reacted and took to the streets. And it is continuing…
While preparing for my project here, I continued to look at the time of transition that the city is in – here as elsewhere. It should happen through the eyes of a street dog, one who was always here and will always be here, who saw uprising and the changes of the city over and over again. He will be here living the future as well. The project consists of a video titled I am the dog that was always here (loop), which was finished in April.
Still from Annika Eriksson, I am the dog that was always here (loop) (2013)
The street animals, and how humans interact and respect them, is for me very much representing this city. That’s why I chose the voice of the dog. They get fewer and fewer; the city is being ‘cleaned’. Still here are informal structures; still not all are areas that are free and not commercialized. Here are still possibilities for the non-defined, the areas and situations where function is allowed to be multi-layered, spaces that also exist for pleasure. That also means that there is space for people to raise their voices. That is what the Gezi Park and Taksim resistance started with – these areas and pockets where people have expressed their opinions. But when Gezi Park and Taksim have been redeveloped there will no possibility for this kind of coming together, due to how the new projected commercial structures use and layout, an approach to planning that we must not forget is deeply ideological.
Some useful links
Landscape Architecture Magazine: Istanbul’s Awful Plans
Lecture by Orhan Esen at SALT
RoarMag.org: A Lesson in Democracy
What Can I Do for Turkey?
Carnegie Europe: Urban Transformation in Turkey
Postvirtual Revolution: Gezi 2.0
Center for a Stateless Society: The Stigmergic Revolution
Imgur: images from the resistance movement
BBC: statement regarding BBC reporters in Turkey
Annika Eriksson is a Swedish artist based in Istanbul.
Lara Fresko
It’s important to note that, though unexpected, this movement didn’t appear out of thin air. It’s the cumulative outburst of many little movements in many aspects and geographies of life. Its roots extend from struggles against urban transformation and displacement to rural grassroots movements against small-scale hydroelectric dams, nuclear plants and other projects that indiscriminately consume and which obliterate our common resources. It incorporates experiences from the workers’ movement that extend from the avant la lettre Occupy-style TEKEL strike which lasted 78 days in Ankara’s cold winter months to the still ongoing Turkish Airlines strike (see video below) as well as the 30-year Kurdish freedom movement which has recently evolved into a peace process. The Gezi Park events have grown to embrace all of these deeply rooted issues and movements. Even if it was at some point most directly about urban tranformation, the underlying neoliberal policies have connected these movements.
It’s possible to trace these issues in the sphere of contemporary art, in works as well as the conversations among the community. Many artists as well as institutions have been engaged, some very closely, with the effects of urban transformation. Histories of the urban cultural landscape, architecture and the idea of a public sphere have all been central issues. Yet the active responses to and protests against, especially institutional attempts at tackling these issues, have also played a role in shaping what is now become a new political movement.
These protests are perhaps also in concert with the questioning of the economy of art and how it relates to capitalism. This has been an issue around the globe for a while now, and yet we saw a tendency at Gezi Park to embrace artistic practices that were outside of the institutional network and the gallery circuit – which seems to me to be a more serious dent to the system than any critique made from within.
At the end of the day we saw that the public sphere had its own ‘general intellect’, a common sense that guided it through negotiation and deliberation – and thus could not be controlled by persons, institutions or singular causes. This is fascinating to watch at a time when the İstanbul Biennial has committed itself to a project on the public sphere, and it will be interesting to see, as my friend and colleague Seda Yörüker says, how the biennial will transform itself, perhaps even by turning itself upside down and inside out.
It’s necessary to acknowledge this depth of history and engagement, if only to counter the defeatism that may seep into our hearts from time to time. Looking ahead, it seems our small actions will keep on accumulating. It’s not fair to expect for a revolutionary moment to change things all at once. We must keep working at it, as we have been for so long.
Lara Fresko is a writer based in Istanbul.
H.G. Masters
As a foreigner living in Istanbul, it’s been clear to me from the beginning of the Gezi Park resistance that I cannot – and should not – actively participate in the demonstrations. Not only have foreigners been detained and deported for their involvement, but the word of non-Turkish citizens’ participation threatens to play into the government’s specious, paranoid claims that the movement is a foreign-backed conspiracy that is trying to engineer the overthrow of a democratically elected government. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been compelled to support my Turkish friends and colleagues in their demands for the universal rights of free expression and the right to assembly – as well as their advocacy for the democratic ideals of a free press, an independent judiciary, and a government that protects individual liberties (which includes not being wrongfully detained or harmed in the exercise of their rights as citizens).
In my case that has meant assuming the largely passive roles of observing the peaceful encampments at Gezi Park, as well as sharing information on the much demonized social-media outlets about what is happening to the people whom I know. It’s not my place to chant ‘Tayyip istifa’ (Tayyip resign) in the streets – he’s not my elected leader, though if Barack Obama were doing the same kinds of things I would demand his resignation – but I have banged on pots at 9pm out of the windows of apartment in my neighbourhood to show solidarity with the protesters. Even before all of this started, it was widely known that women, minorities (both ethnic and religious), leftist political organizations, the LGBT community and the rural poor did not live in a country whose government treated them equally, or very well. At the end of the day, the protest movement is demanding basic human rights (not to mention humane treatment from their own government) and the asking for same democratic rights I enjoy as a US citizen. I would like my Turkish friends and colleagues, and Turkish citizens all across the country, to have those same privileges: they make for a better life for all.
H.G. Masters is editor-at-large for ArtAsiaPacific magazine.
Tayfun Serttaş
My house is only 300 metres away from Gezi Park. As a member of the neighbourhood, I was part of the resistance from the very first day. During the first three days, the police burned down our tents in morning raids and tried to block the resistance, which started with a very small group of people. As a result of our calls through social media, the protest quickly spread to the whole country and more than 2.5 million people took place in the resistance in Turkey.
When I look back at this month, the most dynamic month I have ever experienced, I realize that I saw changes take place that I had always believed were impossible. In truth, I had grown bored with Turkey. In a place where everything was linked to the economy and development, it looked like civilian initiatives were going to be much harder. We couldn’t see the economic success of the AK Party in the social and cultural spheres. But now Istanbul is once again the best place for me to live. I’m so proud of the city that I’m living in. In a way, this resistance helped me make peace with Istanbul and refreshed my trust in this city. Above all else, this resistance showed millions of Istanbulites who they were sharing their city with. This was the real thing that gives a city its honor back, a secret negotiation among its residents.
I believe we reached this ground, we can sit at the same table from now on for any common problems we encounter. This is the most important gain because the communication among the urban population was almost non-existent previously. Right now, on the other hand, in order to listen to each other’s problems we are organizing neighbourhood forums and hosting people from other neighborhoods to solve our problems together. We will gain many things from this process, but I believe the most important one will be social negotiation.
Tayfun Serttaş is an artist based in Istanbul.
Mari Spirito
We lost a month and gained a voice.
Out of horrible police brutality came vast amounts of expression, comraderie and empowerment. I am eager to see where it takes us.
Mari Spirito is the founding director of Protocinema, based in Istanbul and New York.