“It is the media that shapes the way we think,” Yunus Tilen, a recent graduate from the faculty of arts at Batman University, in the southeastern city of Batman, said with strong determination. “It is due to the media that we think of Batman as a dark city of violence and trouble. They are the viziers, the kingmakers.”
He pointed at his painting, oil on a canvas that is shaped like an hourglass. It shows rooftops with nothing on them but old-fashioned antennas and a single figure on top of one of the roofs. The painting is called “City of the Media” — an unmistakable reference to his hometown, Batman, which is often in the news because of the clashes between Kurdistan Workers Party rebels and security forces.The bright rooftops, the clear sky and the simple lines of the painting show a happy place, unlike the photos of the city seen in Turkish newspapers.
