11 Jul 14 | Awards, News and features, Turkey
Meltem Arikan
Three months have passed since the 2014 Index Awards and we caught up with arts nominee, Meltem Arikan. The Turkish playwright and author told Index she has finished the script of a new play, Sheep Republic. She hoped it would be staged in Turkey, but the political situation in the country prevents this from happening. She looks forward to hopefully having it staged in the UK with the team who brought her previous play, “Mi Minor” to life.
Index: What projects have you been working on since the Index Awards?
Arikan: I wrote a performance piece for The International Performance Festival Cardiff called “Recalling love: And woman and man” and it was performed in June by Memet Ali Alabora and Pinar Ogun, whom I created Mi Minor with. Then I finished writing the script of my new play “Sheep Republic” which is about oppression and how easily it’s accepted by people.
The play was written to be staged in Turkey originally, however it doesn’t look like it is going to be possible because of political reasons. So we want to stage it here with the creative team of “Mi Minor”.
Nowadays I am working on another theatre piece where I’m questioning the concept of “belonging” through my own experiences, feelings and observations of nationalities, races, languages and communities; this time to be performed in Welsh language, and quite unusually English language will be the foreign language. It will be previewed in Eisteddfod Festival as part of Theatr Genedlaethol’s Cwt Drama on 7 August.
Index: What do you hope for the future of these projects and your life in the next coming months?
Arikan: I always find questions about hope quite difficult to answer. So much that I have even named one of my novels “Hope is a curse.” My agent Meg Davis has introduced my banned book “Stop hurting my flesh” to publishers in the UK. It’s an ongoing process but the idea of my novel being published, excites me very much, just like the thought of “Mi Minor” to be staged in the UK.
Index: Before the awards, did you feel you had less recognition?
Arikan: After being nominated by Index, in February 2014, I was invited to PEN Ethiopia 3rd congress with Julia Farrington from Index, where I met the President of German PEN, Josef Haslinger, who has recently invited us to Frankfurt Book Fair in October to introduce my story and my work.
It was great to be nominated by Index and it surely gave me more recognition. Moreover, being a part of the Index family and to be able to write articles about freedom of speech and expression is just as important for me.
Last year during Gezi Park demonstrations it was hard enough to deal with the false allegations made in various media about my play and the “Mi Minor” creative team. We were accused of rehearsing Gezi park demonstrations with our play. We were completely exhausted, and didn’t feel safe to leave our houses in Istanbul. They were making a lot of TV shows about “Mi Minor” which included an edited version of one of my speeches that I made six years ago about secularism. As a result of these accusations I have received thousands of death and rape threats. The fear I witnessed in my son’s eyes and the anxiety that my partner was living through was what upset me the most. I still feel fragile when I recall the moments I had to leave them behind and come to the UK to stay alive. Because of the notorious recognition, I was even being cautious while walking on the streets of London in the first couple of months of coming here.
Index: How has your life changed since being nominated for an Index Award?
Arikan: I came to the UK with one piece of luggage, leaving everything behind, then I met Julia Farrington and she offered to do an interview with me. So we archived my story with three interviews which was very difficult and encouraging for me at the time.
Later I was nominated for an Index Award, and I met Index staff through the Index Awards and when they asked me to write for the website, I was delighted. Writing is what keeps me sane. I don’t know how to survive without writing so I am thankful to be supported as a writer by Index On Censorship.
This article was posted on July 10, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 May 14 | News and features, Palestine, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
Three days ago a picture appeared on my Twitter timeline. A Palestinian woman was watering flowers inside dozens of hand grenades lined up in her little garden, surrounded by barbed-wire fences.
I froze. For minutes the picture and I looked at each other. No picture had affected me this way for a long time.
Creating life with the tools of death, in the middle of a war, in a place where every day children, women and men of all ages are being killed mercilessly, where the sound of the bombs has drowned out the songs of the birds, where pain is as intense as the oxygen in the air.
While discussions go on about where freedom of speech and expression start and end, or where you draw the line… a single picture transfixes me.
I’ve always asserted in my articles that we are in a transition from the analogue to digital world and during this transition of transformation, women will have an important role and we will not be free unless we transcend the thought patterns forcibly imposed upon us. And now, this picture in front of me, as if it was silently saying everything my words fail to express.
Planting new life in spite of ideologies, religions, borders, emotions, pain, violence, death, hatred, ruthlessness…
Silently responding by creating life from death to the sound of bombs, cries of pain, screams of fossilized politics.
At the centre of violence having the wisdom to grow flowers. At the centre of violence being able to protect the love, compassion and creativity within her. At the centre of violence, could there be any greater freedom than responding to death with life?
While thoughts and feelings are manipulated everyday with the words, concepts, ideals and hatred forcibly imposed on us, where do freedom of speech and freedom of expression start and where do they end?
I believe, in the analogue world in accordance with the traditions of patriarchy, either you become a supporter or opponent of the dominant ideology of the society we live in. And yet, in the end, isn’t it obvious that both supporters and opponents are trapped in the same loop and are forced to accept that power is only gained through violence?
To become “Man”, men are obliged not only to find their power but prove it too while women are obliged to watch them fighting it out, forced to obey their rules stuck in their endless power games. As a result, women can never protect themselves or their children. Violence continues to give birth to violence… the life given by women is brutally destroyed.
No matter how much societies have developed economically, in general, women believe that the more they can be in compliance with the patriarchal system the more they can succeed. However, they cannot stop the violence, war and hatred.
On the other hand, in this picture, one Palestinian woman expresses herself clearly even though nobody hears her thoughts, even though she is not screaming or fighting… freedom of speech grows amongst the hand grenades.
During the transition period to the digital world, those who express themselves free from the coding of the dominant system and those who defend the freedom of speech, come together through social media… in the flower garden of the Palestinian woman.
This article was published on May 12, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 Mar 14 | Awards, News and features, Turkey
Turkey’s Gezi Park protests of 2013 saw a venting of frustration by many against what they saw as the increasingly authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK party.
The protests were preceded by the run of Meltem Arikan’s play ‘Mi Minor’ in Istanbul from December 2012 to April 2013. Mi Minor used role play and social media to tell the story of a pianist using technology and social media to struggle against the regime in a fictional land called Pimina. In the month after the play ended, protests erupted in Istanbul, with social media playing a key role.
Arikan, already a prominent writer, found herself accused of fomenting rebellion and faced a co-ordinated campaign of abuse online from government supporters. She recently told Index on Censorship:
“When I was researching for Mi Minor [in 2011] I did everything I could so that the play wasn’t associated with Turkey, or the particular situation of Turkish politics, or any other actual country. It was a fictional dystopia. Mi Minor is an absurd play and it is too worrying to see how absurdity can be accused of being responsible for the reality of what happened in Gezi Park.”
“And the most worrying thing is that these accusations are still on-going. I wrote an absurd play and now my life has become more absurd than my play.”
Forced to flee because of the resulting pressures, Meltem Arikan now lives in the United Kingdom. She spoke with Index on Censorship about her nomination and the future of her work.
10 Mar 14 | Awards, Events
International Freedom of Expression 2014 Arts Award Nominee and renowned Turkish playwright and novelist Meltem Arikan will answer your questions via @MeltemArikan on Wednesday 12th March from 14:00 – 14:30 GMT – follow the whole conversation at @IndexCensorship.
In 2013, the Gezi Park protests saw a venting of frustration by many against what they see as the increasingly authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Erdogan’s AK party.
The protests were preceded by the run of Meltem Arikan’s play ‘Mi Minor’ in Istanbul from December 2012 to April 2013. Mi Minor used role play and social media to tell the story of a pianist using technology to struggle against the regime in a fictional land called Pimina. In the month after the play ended, protests erupted in Gezi Park with social media playing a key role.
Arikan, already a prominent writer, found herself accused of fomenting rebellion and faced a co-ordinated campaign of abuse online from government supporters. She told Index on Censorship: “When I was researching for Mi Minor [in 2011] I did everything I could so that the play wasn’t associated with Turkey, or the particular situation of Turkish politics, or any other actual country. It was a fictional dystopia. Mi Minor is an absurd play and it is too worrying to see how absurdity can be accused of being responsible for the reality of what happened in Gezi Park.”
Forced to flee because of the resulting pressures, Meltem Arikan now lives in the United Kingdom.
This event takes place on Wednesday 7 March at 2pm GMT. Tweet your questions @MeltemArikan, join the conversation @IndexCensorship and have your say with the hashtags #MeltemArikan and #IndexAwards2014.
