Turkey's artists face growing government pressure
Freedom of expression in the arts and entertainment have been under mounting government pressure to toe the AKP's conservative line or face sanctions.
At a graduation ceremony in June, students of Istanbul’s Bilgi University unfurled a banner targeting the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). It read, “They hate arts and science, but say nothing to rape and theft.”
Why the AKP’s approaches to arts and rape have come to be compared is a long story, going back 22 years, when Melih Gokcek was narrowly elected Ankara's mayor on the ticket of the Islamist Welfare Party. Today, Gokcek belongs to the AKP and is still the capital’s mayor. Following his election in 1994, Gokcek, irritated by “nudity,” launched a war on sculptures in Ankara’s streets and parks, having many of them removed. One particular sculptures led him to utter words that have gone down in Turkish political history: “I spit on this kind of art,” he said of the piece, which depicted two women dancing and had been created by Mehmet Aksoy, a leading Turkish sculptor. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mayor of Istanbul at the time, said he “fully agreed” with his counterpart in Ankara.
In 2011, Erdogan, then prime minister, made headlines for calling a sculpture a “monstrosity.” The massive piece, dedicated to Turkish-Armenian friendship and in the process of being erected near the border between the two troubled neighbors, was dismantled and removed. Of note, the offending sculpture was, again, a work by Aksoy, who eventually won a libel suit against Erdogan but could do nothing to stop the demolition of the work. These two cases embody the AKP’s approach to arts, the impact of which has become increasingly tangible across Turkey.
In May, the AKP youth branch in Izmir — one of the rare cities where the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) holds the local administration — staged protests demanding the removal of a statue by a Spanish artist on the ground that it was obscene. “The nude male sculpture openly exposes children to sexual exhibitionism and disturbs citizens,” said the AKP’s deputy provincial chairman, Onur Selbi, of the statue, which had been on display for four years at a subway station. Several days later, another AKP member wrapped a cloth around the effigy’s crotch and later repeated his protest, but that time padlocking the cloth in place. Finally, on May 27, the statue was attacked and damaged with a sledgehammer in broad daylight.
