France’s Foreign Minister should have used a trip to Uzbekistan this weekend to demand an artist be allowed the right to travel abroad, an international group of artists urged last week.
In January, Vyacheslav Akhunov was barred from leaving Uzbekistan. He has been invited to perform at the prestigious Venice Biennale this June.
In an open letter last week to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who visited Uzbekistan on March 2 to talk trade and development with President Islam Karimov, artists from the United States, Russia and other countries called on France’s top diplomat to "urge the government of Uzbekistan to honor the rights and freedoms of artist Akhunov, who represents the modern independent art of Uzbekistan abroad."
There is no indication Fabius responded to the request or discussed Akhunov’s situation with Karimov during his visit.
Akhunov has taken part in approximately 200 international exhibitions. But in January "authorities banned him from going abroad, explaining that his creative tours are 'inadvisable.' This response points to a political motive in the decision," the artists said in their letter, which was posted on February 27.
It may not be as famous as the Elgin marbles, which were taken from Greece by an Ottoman-era British diplomat, but a marble head sitting in storage in a London museum could create friction between England and Turkey. From the Independent:
Turkey is demanding the return of an ancient marble head, now languishing in the stores of a London museum, which was taken from Anatolia more than a century ago.
The Turkish culture ministry has asked the Victoria and Albert Museum to return a 1,700-year-old life-sized marble carving of a child's head, described as bearing a likeness to Eros, the Greek god of love.
Tolga Tuyluoglu, the director of Turkey's culture and tourism office in London, said: "The Turkish ministry of culture thinks this item belongs to Turkey. We believe if an item has been removed from a country then it should be returned to the original place."
In 1882, the archaeologist Sir Charles Wilson, then Britain's consul-general in Anatolia, removed the head from the Sidamara Sarcophagus, a huge tomb dating from the third century, which he had excavated. The sarcophagus, which now sits in Istanbul's Museum of Archaeology, is one of the finest and most widely known of its type and period.
Sir Charles, who served in the Royal Engineers, conducted archaeological surveys in Palestine and Lebanon before moving to Anatolia, which corresponds to most of present-day Turkey, in 1879. He removed the head from the Sidamara Sarcophagus, which he then re-covered in the hope of acquiring the whole object. The head is that of a child with curly hair looking over his shoulder. Sir Charles's family later donated the head to the V&A, where it is held in the museum's stores.
"It's a complicated issue," said Mr Tuyluoglu. "There are many agreements between the two countries. We are discussing the matter."
Although the hit song "Namag," which sounds like many other Turkish pop songs, doesn't break any new artistic ground, it certainly has broken political ground in Turkey. The video to the song, sung by Armenian Turk Sibil Pektorosoglu, is the first ever Armenian-language music video to be aired on Turkish television. From the Hurriyet Daily News:
“Namag” (Letter) by Sibil Pektorosoğlu, an Istanbul Armenian, has been gaining mainstream popularity and can now be heard echoing from shops along the city’s iconic İstiklal Avenue. The lyrics were written by master Armenian poet Hovhannes Şiraz while the singer’s music video was produced by one of Turkey’s most famous directors in the field, Özkan Aksular.
Pektorosoğlu said it was like a dream to release her album and broadcast her music video on Turkish television. “When I hear my songs on İstiklal Avenue, I cry,” she recently told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
The showing of Sibil's video seems to follow an interesting pattern in Turkey where various political efforts to reconcile with historic problems (Armenian and Kurdish, in particular) have faltered, while interesting new ground is being broken on the cultural front. More on that here.
The beat-era author William S. Burroughs may be dead, but that's not stopping an Istanbul prosecutor from investigating whether a Turkish translation of one of his books is corrupting the youth of Turkey (and it's not even "The Naked Lunch").
According to a recent report, the investigation was started after a report by the Turkish Prime Ministry’s "Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications" charged the newly translated version of Burroughs's 1961 experimental novel "The Soft Machine" with “incompliance with moral norms” and “hurting people’s moral feelings.” The council also accused the novel of “lacking unity in its subject matter,” “incompliance with narrative unity,” for “using slang and colloquial terms” and “the application of a fragmented narrative style.” Ultimately, the report decided the book, written in a kind of cut-and-paste method “does not constitute a literary piece of work in its current condition.”
Lawyers for the book's Turkish-language publishers have said in their clients' defense that it's not up to the state to decide what is literature, particularly since "The Soft Machine" is not being marketed as a book for children. More details here.
This blog reported a few weeks ago about the controversy surrounding a "peace" statue built in eastern Turkey, near the border with Armenia, particularly in regards to the opinion of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called the large artwork "freakish."
Soon after Erdogan voiced his objection, local authorities decided to demolish the 35-meter high statue. But now a court in eastern Turkey has put a stop order on the demolition until a lawsuit by the statue's creator can be heard. Full details here.
As Eurasianet's Nicholas Birch reported a few months ago, a large sculpture near the Turkish-Armenian border called "The Monument to Humanity" was causing quite a stir in Kars, the city where it is being erected. Although the monument is supposed to serve as a symbol for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, it has run into strong local opposition, much of it based on nationalist sentiments.
But now the issue has gone national, with Turkey's leading art critic -- i.e. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- stepping into the fray. During a visit to Kars, Erdogan called the 35-meter high statue a "monstrosity" and said he hoped it would soon be torn down.
Erdogan's words have unleashed a flood of criticism, most of it aimed at the Prime Minister, rather than the (admittedly, not so great) work of art in question. From a column in Today's Zaman by Yavuz Baydar:
No matter how much “damage control” Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay does, Erdoğan’s latest remarks irked those who had expected a further enhancement of freedom and tolerance. They fall in sharp contrast to the diagnosis that Turkey suffers deeply from disrespect of diversity of opinion, but it also reveals inherent intolerance for artists. Erdoğan, who was sentenced to prison in a clear breach of respect for free speech after reciting a poem, should know better, is the judgment.
