In a problem of Phrase&Picture Ülkü Holago explores Istanbul’s city heritage and revisits Gezi Park – one of many final inexperienced areas within the metropolis. Within the early 2000s, as a part of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s city renewal challenge, the park was to be transformed into a shopping mall with a freeway beneath, adapting Istanbul “to the dynamics of the worldwide system and the EU course of.”
In June 2022, Erdoğan known as the tens of millions of people that participated within the Gezi protests “rotten” and “sluts”: “They drank beer and dirty themselves within the Dolmabahç Mosque, as a result of that is what they’re.”
What began as efforts to protect Gezi by architects, city planners, attorneys and cultural staff grew into Turkey’s largest ever protest in opposition to the regime. Holago writes about an increasing motion, a resistance in Istanbul that brings collectively the 2 principal opposition events: the pro-Kurdish left-wing Peace and Democracy Occasion and the Republican Individuals’s Occasion.
Opinions surrounding the Gezi protests range. However they are often seen as a milestone on the nation’s path towards authoritarianism. The resentment in the direction of Erdoğan continues to be alive in Istanbul and could possibly be confirmed by the native elections within the spring of 2024. ‘And amid all of the turbulence and polarization, it nonetheless exists. Gezi Park. Lastly.
A rustic that’s continuously in battle
There’s an company in Galatasaray the place the telephone by no means stops ringing. Helin Sahin has taken a seat within the ready room. She is invited to satisfy with a lawyer who has devoted her life to serving to ladies who are usually not protected by the state.
A younger lady enters who is known as ‘the lady with the initials’ by the others ready. She was the sufferer of gang rape by troopers and cops, males in energy. The company is her final hope: ‘All the company was ready for the lawyer who would assist them. She needed to, there was no different means. She all the time discovered an answer.’
Helin Sahin leaves the workplace constructing, goes for a stroll and continues to inform tales about oppressors and oppressed, who’re generally one and the identical. She writes about her political hopes and expectations as she displays on a metropolis and a rustic in fixed battle.
A gaggle of girls gathers on Galatasaray Sq., all recognizable from the station’s ready room. They’re known as the ‘Saturday moms’.
“Seeking their lacking family… they demand that the state return their family, dwelling or lifeless. One brother was tortured to loss of life in jail. A sibling holds her mom’s arm as she sits in protest together with her son’s picture in her hand. Generally the Saturday moms obtain the stays of their family again. In a plastic bag, the state delivers what’s left of what was as soon as an individual with reminiscences.’
Diaspora and again
‘Sweden and Turkey. Our tales have been intertwined for a very long time.’ Simon Sorgenfrei crosses the Galata Bridge and interviews Kerim Arhan, who has simply moved to Istanbul.
Kerim’s household, the Arhans, have been the primary Turkish household in Sweden. When Kerim’s father Mustafa and his brothers arrived in Malmö in 1928, they have been handled pretty by the Swedish authorities. Maybe it was simpler to be a Turk in Sweden within the Nineteen Thirties or Nineteen Forties, Sorgenfrei asks. ‘The East had, and maybe nonetheless has for some, an air of spirituality and mysticism about it {that a} meals dealer from Istanbul may capitalize on to draw clients.’
The Arhans have been an vital household for the Turks who adopted them: ‘The brothers’ carpet retailers functioned as Turkish mini-consulates, subsequent to the actual consulate within the capital, and generally as a spot of worship for Muslim immigrants in Sweden. Kemal Atatürk oversaw operations from framed pictures on the partitions.”
Rising up within the 80s, Kerim had a distinct expertise. He remembers the racist graffiti that was painted on their home after his father was photographed within the newspaper. At college he was merely known as ‘the Turk’. His Turkish heritage had all the time been there, even when it was troublesome to know. Kerim had a Turkish father and a Swedish mom. His identification has a sure otherness: he’s completely different from each Swedes and Turks.
Now Kerim walks the streets of Istanbul and works to ascertain a tradition home close to the Swedish consulate. He writes to Sorgenfrei: ‘If there’s one factor I like about my ancestors, it is sitting in a carpet home and listening to the rustling and smelling the carpets and simply being there… So it was solely pure to have some to promote carpets. I’ll promote carpets ten minutes from the place my grandfather introduced his first carpets to Sweden.’
