22 Jan 2014 | News, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, Turkey
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Istanbul on 1 June in the capital’s Taksim Square during demonstrations over plans to turn Gezi Park into a shopping mall. (Photo: Akin Aydinli / Demotix)
Author and playwright Meltem Arikan was amongst a small group of people who was accused by senior Turkish politicians and government sponsored media of being the architects of the May-June 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations. This was no idle threat, but a TV, newspaper and Twitter campaign designed to convince the Turkish people that the accused were responsible for the largest anti-government protest ever witnessed in Turkey. Forced to leave Turkey, she, and those closest to her, have come to live in UK and only now is she beginning to feel safe enough to tell her story.
What follows is Arikan’s personal account of the events.
For me everything starts on 27 May 2013.
Together with Memet Ali Alabora the director of my play Mi Minor, Pinar Ogun the lead actress and the play’s graphic designer Melin Edomwonyi, I went to KARVAK Awards Ceremony to receive our award for Best Play 2013 given by the Black Sea education, culture and environment protection foundation. As we made our way there, it didn’t seem possible that our lives were about to change completely. The ceremony started and the first award to be announced was a lifetime achievement award for the governor of Istanbul. The moment we heard this we stood up and left the venue, refusing to receive our award.
In Turkey, the governor is the highest state representative in the city, and has responsibility for and control over the police. At the time in Istanbul the frequent and excessive use of tear gas and heavy-handed police tactics to even the smallest gatherings — especially around Taksim — were causing real concern for us and many people. For example on 7 April, a peaceful demonstration of artists and cinema goers — including Greek film director Costa-Gavras — against the demolition of the Emek Theatre was dispersed with water cannons and tear gas.
We could not have accepted an award from an organisation that honoured the governor after all that was happening in the heart of our city.
We went straight home and read on Twitter that the trees at the Gezi Park, the only park in the area of the city called Taksim, were being destroyed to make way for a shopping mall. We started tweeting to make people aware of what was going on, that the trees needed protection. A small group of around 50 people went to the park to keep watch over the trees and stop them from being uprooted in the middle of the night. When the workmen drove into the park during the night ready to destroy the trees, the protesters asked if they had an official permit. They had no papers, so the workmen left the park. I followed everything on Twitter, retweeting the tweets and pictures that were coming out of the park. Looking at those pictures I was worried that, as with so many demonstrations, only a handful of people would turn up. So I kept retweeting moment by moment what was happening there all night.
Next Morning – 28 May
The digger came back in the morning at 8 am. By then there were 200 people in the park and, because of the growing numbers, the riot police used pepper spray and tear gas to clear it. At noon, pictures from Gezi Park were being shared on Twitter again, but this time they showed riot police using tear gas against peaceful protestors. The picture of the pepper-gassed woman in a red dress, that would later become an icon, was taken during this first police attack.
The attack had triggered more people to come to the park. We decided to join the protesters, to give our support to the trees and say “enough!” to the crazy number of shopping malls, which are poisoning our cities.
After the pepper gas attack the works in the park were restarted. This time the Istanbul MP, Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who is also a screenwriter and film director, stood with his arms wide open in front of a digger and asked for their permit. This stalled the destruction for the time being and the workmen left.
When we got to the park we could still smell the gas even though it was hours after the attack. Despite the stench, the joy and determination of the young protesters remained. By sunset nearly a thousand people had gathered. There were tents everywhere. It was clear that people living around Gezi Park supported the protests and they, too, wanted to save the trees, the treasured heart and lungs of Taksim Square. People were treating the damaged trees, and planting saplings in the holes left by the diggers. Women, men, strangers to one another, straight, gay, transsexual, young, old, little kids with their parents came together for the sake of the trees. Regardless of their differences they shared their feelings with one another. A table became a simple stage for people to speak from, prejudice gave way to the attempt to understand each other, music and dance took over from frustration. We wrote our thoughts on pieces of paper and hung them on the branches of the trees. Perhaps, in our country, where everyone had become “the other” to one another, for the first time, in that park, no one was “the other” anymore.
As the writer of the novel Hope is a Curse, it was wonderful for me to feel hope for the first time in years. Hope that, helped by new ways to exchange and share information, women and men can come together to lay claim to public space and freedom of speech, leaving the barriers of race, religion, sexual choices, language, ethnic roots and ideologies behind. Although we only planned to go to the park for an hour, after feeling the atmosphere there, I couldn’t leave. We all tweeted to spread the word that night. We chanted, danced, protested. It was as if something I had written years ago, was actually beginning to happen in front of me…
“Women!
We do not have to surrender to the beliefs that are imposed upon us.
The time has come for us to reclaim our stolen spirit.
We can sing the song of another culture without knowing its language.
Without knowing the steps, we can keep up with the rhythm.
The time has come for us to tune in to the music and the rhythm within ourselves.
Patriarchy will be scared, Patriarchy will resist. Patriarchy will accuse…
The time has come for us to reclaim our stolen spirit…
We will cover our ears and will burst out laughing at the accusations,
Women will dance and sing songs and laugh aloud.
In spite of everything, we will rise up in protest, propelled by our irrepressible laughter.
The new digital world will be shaped WITH women, not IN SPITE OF us”
29 May
The next day Prime Minister Recep Erdogan gave a speech and said that they will build a shopping mall no matter what the people say. After the prime minister’s speech more people came to Gezi Park.
I was there around 4 pm. This time there were thousands of people present, including supporter groups, political activists, environmentalists and even Turkish Airlines staff who were out on strike. People were coming to the park to give voice to the issues they were concerned about as well as to protect the trees.
It was like a festival. Even though it was much more crowded than the previous night, the atmosphere generated by such a large and diverse group of people was absolutely amazing. Could things change for real? This time, could we change things by singing songs, by dancing, by freely expressing ourselves all together? Could we actually protect this precious corner of nature from mad-made destruction? The leader of the opposition party visited the park that night. He promised to have two MPs stay there at all times. I left the park after midnight.
30 May
In the morning we heard that, at dawn around 5 am, the police had attacked people and the tents had been set on fire.
I was following everything on Twitter. Again, police had surrounded the park. Again, the Istanbul MP, Sırrı Süreyya, went to the park and again he stood up against the digger to stop the demolition. Again the police left the park. Once more, the protestors occupied the park. The tree watch went on.
Pinar and I didn’t get to the park until that night, because we had been in the studio all day shooting our TV programme Witch’s Cauldron. The early morning police raid had prompted crowds of people to come to the park. By the time we got there, there were more than 10,000 people gathered.
Some young people were tying pieces of colourful cloth to the branches of the trees to make wish trees just like in the old Shaman tradition. I was very moved to see young people picking up on this old tradition. More young trees were planted, more people were trying to heal the wounded trees. People were holding up banners and they were not just about Gezi Park. There were a lot of different issues addressed: protecting the environment, the demolition of the Emek Theatre, recent bombing and deaths in Antakya.
Speeches were made, poems were read and songs were sung on the small stage in the middle of the park. Yet again we chanted and danced until dawn.
31 May
We saw the riot police getting ready just as we were heading out of the square at 4 am. There were two MPs on duty from opposition party. We spoke to them. They said they could do nothing to stop the police attack.
As the sun rose, pressure in the park was rising. Protesters who were already awake warned those still sleeping in tents.
At 4:30 am, as we were on our way to a café down the road, the riot police moved in. At this point there were about 3,000 people in the park. Police used massive quantities of gas against the peaceful protestors. Trying to escape the storm of tear gas people got trapped on an old stone staircase in the park, which collapsed crushing dozens of protestors. Many people were badly affected by the excessive amount of gas, and many others were injured by tear gas capsules thrown directly at them.
It was, and still is, very difficult for me to tell the story of what happened that morning. Inside a café, on the first floor, even though the doors were shut, none of us was able to breathe without choking. I couldn’t make sense of the scene I was witnessing. What was this place? Where was I? What had happened to the songs, tents, banners and dances? The hope I had seen in the eyes of the young people, the wish notes on the trees, the voices of people united? What had triggered the violence? What had happened to turn all this into a war zone?
By 7 am Gezi Park was empty; everybody had fled. The police closed the park. Small numbers of people started to regroup in neighbourhoods around Taksim. We walked to Cihangir Street nearby. Sitting in a café it was hard to breathe and hard to believe how we had been abused. During the gas attack we had been separated from our friends, and now we were trying to get news about them. Had they been injured, arrested? Everyone was following the Twitter feeds, reading them out loud so that all of us could hear as reports coming out of Taksim Square told of the growing number of injured. The roads were closed, the police were everywhere and we were not able to leave the café. There was no media coverage of this brutality. Twitter was the only source of information and I was trying to follow every second of the feeds. I was furious and also felt completely disillusioned. A voice inside me was screaming “HOPE IS A CURSE! I TOLD YOU!”
At 10 am protesters who had now gathered outside Gezi Park made a statement to the press condemning the police brutality. After the press statement people tried to enter the park, and police once again fired tear gas. A couple of protestors, including the well-known journalist Ahmet Şık, were shot in the head with tear gas capsules. The police started to chase people in the streets but they were met with passive resistance – protesters stood still, some with their arms held up, some sitting on the ground. At 1 pm another statement was made — this time at Taksim Square. Then we heard that police once again had attacked.
We ran to help, but people had already dispersed. On the way back police were firing tear gas everywhere. A gas capsule fell next to my feet, I felt like I would never be able to breathe again. We washed our faces immediately with a mixture of water and Rennie tablets to neutralise the burning of the gas, and hid in an apartment building. I tried to come to grips with the reality of what was happening in front of my burning eyes. I could hear the sirens from outside and the screams of the people running. The same words going around in my head: Why all this violence and brutality? Why this hatred – who was it for? Once again I was witnessing how brutal male domination can be when people come together and say NO!
A young woman was hit by a capsule on her head, which left her in a coma for 30 days. She is still fighting for her life.
That day “Taksim Dayanışması” (Taksim Solidarity) the platform of nearly a hundred NGOs, political parties, and trade unions, that started the campaign against the planned shopping mall in Gezi Park called people to come together at Gezi Park at 7 pm. That day millions of tweets called for a gathering at Gezi Park.
All the time that Taksim was in chaos, there was nothing about what was happening in the mainstream media. Even more absurdly, one of the main news channels was showing a documentary about penguins while thousands of people were being attacked in the centre of Istanbul. This inspired a wave of satirical graffiti around the city – penguins in gas masks with slogans of defiance. We couldn’t go home because all the roads were closed and every minute more and more people appeared on the streets with goggles, helmets and plastic bottles filled with Rennie and water to protect each other from the effects of the gas.
Hearing the sounds of helicopters mixing with the sirens of the ambulances I felt completely disorientated. I closed my eyes and opened them… People falling on the ground in pain barely visible through the gas… I closed my eyes and opened them again to look for the helicopters I could only hear… I closed my eyes and opened them… A street dog lying on the ground… I closed my eyes and tears flowed in to my mouth tasting of pepper. My lips formed the word ENOUGH!
“I have seen how violence was created, when Patriarchy became merciless.
It was so cruel that I was frightened…
When the lives of those given by women were slaughtered by Patriarchy …
I saw nothingness…
The lives of those given by women were turning into fear and violence…
When we silently screamed ‘enough’, the cruelty of violence is so dense…
Enough, I feel shame.
Enough, I am a woman, violence was not born of me…”
On the night of 31st of May hundreds of thousands of people tried to reach Taksim Square on foot. We spent an hour on the street and then went to our friend’s home nearby. We could smell the gas inside the house and hear the ambulances, helicopters and people banging pots and pans in support of the protests from the windows of their houses. Then the first clashes between police and the protestors started; they carried on all night. We didn’t sleep at all.
1 June
In the morning Taksim was like a battlefield. The square was still surrounded by the police, and the protestors were still in the streets. Any one attempting to enter the square was forced back by the police.
Around 5:20 am, thousands of people started to march from the Asian side of Istanbul and crossed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to reach Taksim. They were joined by a big rally which had been planned months before to take place on 1 June on the Asian side. The government gave them permission and the police blockade was lifted. Hundreds of thousands of people entered Taksim Square. It was peaceful there but we heard about outbreaks of violence elsewhere because protests had spread to many parts of Istanbul and all around Turkey.
A group of high-profile artists, actors, directors, writers came together to appeal directly to the governor to stop the excessive use of police force, which they felt was responsible for the escalating violence. They couldn’t contact him so they sent out a call to fellow artists to join them in Cihangir Park to make a filmed appeal from the demonstration. I was there, too. When we entered the square there were nearly a million people and it was almost impossible to move through the crowds. Memet Ali Alabora, president of the actors union, spoke for the artists, addressing the governor and calling for peace; his speech was filmed and broadcast live as part of the first TV coverage of the demonstration.
Soon after the statement was made, I managed to get back to my house. I had no idea that I was to become a prisoner in my own home. From that moment until the day, two months later, when I decided to leave the country for good, I would only go outside once, for an hour, to the local shops.
At night clashes between police and protestors became increasingly brutal. That was when everything started to be broadcast internationally.
After the broadcasts went out all around the world the government, in an attempt to explain away what was happening, claimed that it was a conspiracy, a plot sponsored by foreign countries designed to bring us down. The only way the government could make sense of it was to find to someone to blame it on and to punish those responsible.
4 June
As the police violence increased more and more people left their houses and went out onto the streets. The more police brutality there was, the more people gathered in solidarity. The more thuggish the behavior of the police the more protestors responded with humour and satire – graffiti started to appear on the walls.
During the demonstrations the government had tried to control the flow of information, but they had failed to understand the significance of social media. They learned a valuable lesson — censoring the media had not prevented the people from finding out what was going on. In fact it had the opposite effect. It spawned thousands of new social media users, who understood — some for the first time — what young people have known all their lives, that new media has transformed the way we share and access information and ideas.
This change in perception was more threatening to the authorities than any weapon and signals the transition from the analogue to digital world order. In Gezi Park there was no leader, everything started and developed spontaneously. The majority of the protesters were from the new digital generation, who connect with the world, using technological tools to access the free flow of information and to express themselves freely.
As the Turkish prime minister said: Twitter has become a troublemaker.
Instead of listening to us — to the citizens — the prime minister, like an authoritarian father, tried to silence us, gave orders to the police to attack and harm us — seven young people and a police officer died, 4,329 people were injured some lost their eyes, others their arms, a few still in hospital — all because of the excessive police violence.
Instead of trying to understand what we were feeling, he told us he didn’t care. For thousands of years patriarchy has perpetrated violence by ignoring its conscience. Our prime minister said Obey Me. Arrogant, ignorant, oppressive, persistent and irreconcilable as always. Here were the age-old violent tactics of male domination used against men and women whose crime was to come together to protect nature from needless destruction.
The world thinks Turkey is a third world country, but in Gezi Park the demonstrators supported modern secular universal values. They didn’t say we are hungry or we want a job. Instead they said, “We respect nature and defend the lives of the trees. We want to exist as who we are, we want religious, sexual and cultural freedom. We don’t want racial, ethnic or political discrimination. We want free flow of information, we want free expression.”
Read Index’s interview with Arikan: A conversation with Meltem Arikan, Turkish playwright and author (7 January 2014)
This article was posted on 22 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Jan 2014 | Digital Freedom, News, Turkey
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Philip Janek / Demotix)
Turkish authorities have this week come under severe criticism for their proposed amendments to the country’s internet law, which among other things, would effectively allow the government to block websites.
The changes, tabled by the Family and Social Policy Ministry of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, “would give the transport and communication minister the power to block websites deemed to infringe privacy, as well as compelling internet service providers to retain information of their customers’ movements on the net,” reports The Financial Times. “The measure, attached to an omnibus bill, increasing its chances of passage, would also require ISPs to restrict access to proxy sites, which can allow users to circumvent censorship,” it added.
DW reports that “the director of Turkey’s internet regulatory agency would be allowed to act immediately and unilaterally “in case of emergency”. After 48 hours, those decisions would theoretically have to be approved by a judge.” It also states that “under the new law, the government would also be allowed to block individual URLs instead of entire websites” — meaning they could technically block individual social media profiles — and that ISPs would be forced “to join a state-controlled association in order to continue doing business”.
The move comes after a high-profile corruption scandal which has implicated parts of the country’s political elite, and as the government is also trying to increase its power over the judicial branch. However, it is also believed to be part of an ongoing crackdown on internet freedom, and connected to the widespread use of social media during the anti-government Gezi Park protests last summer.
“According to Google’s most recent transparency report, the Turkish government requested the removal of 9,610 items from the internet in the first half of 2013, the most in the world and about three times as many as the United States, which had the second-most,” writes Slate. “Google complied with only 13 percent of Turkey’s requests, which included “a court order to remove any search results linking to information about a political official and sex scandal,” “a Google+ profile picture showing a map of Kurdistan,” and “17 YouTube videos and 109 blog posts that contained content critical of Ataturk.” YouTube was blocked entirely over videos deemed insulting to Ataturk in March.”
Only last Friday, video sharing site Vimeo was blocked. “The blocking of Vimeo came after protesters frequently used the website to share videos covering the nation-wide anti-government demonstrations during month-long Gezi protests in last summer,” writes Cihan. “The move is seen by many people as silencing internet tools to prevent dissidents and citizen journalists from sharing video footage regarding any social and political activity,” they add.
The proposal has been met with high-level opposition.
“The law, which results in limiting the individual’s fundamental rights and freedoms, has also been subject to a ‘rights violation’ ruling of the European Court of Human Rights,”the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD) said in a statement, reported by Hurriyet Daily News. “In such a situation, the planned amendments to the law are concerning and will increase censorship on the internet. The draft should be cleared of articles that could harm the fundamental rights and freedoms and the internet economy that is growing every day.”
The head of the Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV), Faruk Eczacibasi has also spoken out: “We have been saying since 2007, when this law came into force, that it would harm our country’s chances of becoming a society based on knowledge. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights also ruled that this law violated the freedom of expression as well as other human rights,” reports Al-Monitor, adding that “at a time when we continue to call for these mistakes to be corrected, and for human rights to be respect while monitoring the internet, we regret to see the exact opposite happening”.
However, the government has hit back. “With the new legal arrangement, we intend to protect individual rights. Let’s say one of our citizens has become a victim [of a privacy breach]. He won’t have to wait for an answer from the provider of the content. He can directly apply to the court for it,” said Transport and Communication Minister Lütfi Elvan, reports Turkish Weekly.
“This legal arrangement is by no means a regulation that brings censorship. It is one that helps [Turkey] to reach the standards of developed countries and makes the present law more functional.”
But lawyer Serhat Koç, a spokesperson for the Pirate Party of Turkey told bianet: “If the draft will be implemented, the life will harder for internet users in Turkey. Censors on citizen journalism, scientific research and social media will be a routine.”
8 Jan 2014 | News, Politics and Society, Turkey
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Philip Janek / Demotix)
“What happened in Turkey during the last ten years?” When the storm is over and if we wake up to a bright morning after it’s all over, we will end up with that question at hand which could take another ten years to answer.
One answer could commence as such: A leader came upon and he taught his people a template to think by repeating it over and over again. (The frequency and length of Prime Minister’s speeches are not without cause. Their purpose is not to leave a space to think, therefore a chance to doubt for the people.)
Around the leader an alignment was formed as it happens with all leaders. That working alliance matured, deepened and ornamented leader’s modus operandi. That educated alliance, members of which were not worse than the average in society, wore the oppugning, vindictive, ambushing style and worked hard to provide an intellectual legitimation for the leader’s template. (Those who wrote headlines such as “they were not arrested for their journalistic activities,” journalists providing testimonials for KCK and Ergenekon cases for the judiciary which was already politicized, academicians feasting for “civil governance,” attorneys dancing with jackals, artists using all forms of art, from poetry to music, to be included in the photo shot of good fortune. I’m talking about a huge crowd.)
Since the rest of the people who were not included in the leader’s definition of “my citizens” meaning “the real citizens,” are considered non-human – therefore expelled from human status-, unlawful cruelty against those was accepted in the beginning, later totally ignored. Leader told “his citizens” not to consider the others, nor to feel remorse or feel for them, time and again.
Leader told to “his people” that they were the ones who were done injustice in fact, he told that many times. He told that so many times that they finally believed in him. They wanted to believe, for humanity cannot accept harm for malfeasance. Malfeasance must have a “good” reason, having something to do with benefaction, and grievance is always a good reason. At the end, party member “citizens” started to see the killing of kids by ambition for power, that are as poor as themselves, as a conspiracy against them. (A nation who does not feel remorse after seeing the face of Ali Ismail Korkmaz, a youngster beaten to death by the police during Occupy Gezi, is seriously ill, is insane.)
Leader did not only destroy justice but also the feeling of one. No one in this country can no longer relate a court of justice to jurisprudence, nobody can. Leader replaced the justice, which is supposed to be the basis of the estate with the love the masses felt for him. The behavior of the people in leader’s rallies/rites wearing shrouds and going crazy were not without reason; they sacrificed their physical and spiritual beings for the being of the leader. Leader was justice itself. As the concept of justice is related to God in ancient man’s mind.
For the length of ten years, organized ignorance, in the form of crazy and colossal crowds, mounted over freedom of opinion, human values, conscience and common denominators of humanity. They had their leader shouting “Ahead!” Numerous and grave human rights violations were experienced. It would take at least another ten years to account for those.
When the current ten years are over and a new ten years period would start, it would be more difficult for us. We would ask “what had happened?” We would like to find out by thinking over. Whilst looking for a historical reason we would end up at September 12 coup d’état. As we scratch the surface of history we would arrive at a point when “Deniz and his friends” were hanged, when in fact “kindness” was dangling on the gallows, in fact all were silent back then as well.
Maybe we would go further back to the Dersim Massacre. Maybe further back. To 1915. Maybe further back in history to the time of Ottoman sultans who slayed their brothers… We would search for “the seed of malfeasance” on this land, the first sin, the first womb of mercilessness. But it would still be very difficult to account for the last ten years. Because it is almost impossible to find a rational reason for organized ignorance, organized desire to not to think, organized unscrupulousness. If we finally decide to try those in the court of humanity, if we would have the power to do that, we then have the chore to find a courthouse big enough for all who started that system, for all who supported it and made it possible. That crowd is for sure very crowded.
*The book Radical Malfeasance Problem in Hannah Arendt” by Berrak Coskun, published by Ayrinti Publishers, inspires this article. With gratitude.
The original article in Turkish is published in Birgün Daily on January 6th, 2014. Translated to English by Stratos Moraitis. The translation was originally published at The Globe Times and is posted here with permission of the author.
7 Jan 2014 | News, Religion and Culture, Turkey
Meltem Arikan
In the days after the Gezi Park protests, Turkish playwright and author Meltem Arikan found herself at the centre of a government-led hate campaign that left her fearing for her life.
Arikan, now living in the United Kingdom, left Turkey because of the vicious and sustained campaign against her on social media and TV. She was subjected to a continuous barrage of brutal verbal abuse and rape and death threats. The attacks were fronted by Turkish politicians who accused her, and the people behind the production of her play Mi Minor, of being the architects of the Gezi Park demonstrations. The campaign was targeted and persecutory, “like a witch hunt in the 15th century” and members of the public were encouraged by politicians to create Twitter accounts and join the action against her.
This was not the first time that the government had tried to silence her. Arikan’s 2004 novel Stop Hurting my Flesh tells the story of women’s lives that have been left devastated by experiences of sexual abuse and incest. The novel was banned by the government accusing it of “destroying the Turkish family order, offending the Namus (honour) of the society, arousing sexual desire in the readers and disturbing the order of society by inducing fear within women, by using a feminist approach.”
Arikan was interviewed by Index on Censorship Head of Arts Julia Farrington.
Index: How did censorship of your novel affect you?
Arikan: When you experience censorship or a ban you don’t feel fully comfortable about the things you produce. You always have the feeling of “what’s going to come out of this now?” I have already discovered that when my work connects with real lives, I get into trouble.
When they banned my novel, I felt so furious, pure fury. Really. And after that I started a lot of campaigns. Before my novel if you said the word “incest” on TV you would be fined. But the act of incest itself was not punished at all. And you couldn’t open a case on incest because there was no law against incest. They only had child abuse but they are totally different things. My campaigns contributed to the word being accepted, and the law has changed as a result of these campaigns. Later I was awarded the ‘Freedom of Thought and Speech Award’ by the Turkish Publishers Association. But none of this stopped my fury. And then I understood that people are actually comfortable with the way things are. And that when I try to talk about something uncomfortable, people think that I am paranoid, or exaggerating so I stopped. And I started to focus on the world as a whole through social media.
Index: What started your interest in social media?
Arikan: When Wikileaks published the data cables, it shook the male dominated world order. Seeing that world leaders were powerless to stop Wikileaks from fearlessly publishing data cables, excited me very much. Turkish press did not pay enough attention to what was happening around the world. That’s why I started to follow the developments from world press and social media. I started using my Facebook and Twitter accounts more, to inform the people in my country about the happenings. I was not interested in social media as much before, but afterwards I spent most of my time sharing information. I got quite obsessed. People even wrote tweets to me to say ‘have some sleep, you need to sleep’ because I wanted to be awake when people started tweeting in US due to the time difference.
Index: How did this time spent on social media influence the writing of Mi Minor?
Arikan: For two years in social media around the time of Arab revolutions, and the Occupy movement, I felt, received and perceived what was happening around the world. I witnessed how social media gave a platform for people to share their personal stories or give information by using Twitter, broadcasting with their mobile phones using Ustream, live-stream when traditional media was silent. After I got involved in social media I didn’t care about individual countries anymore because I came to realize that interactions on social media happen regardless of the borders of distances, languages, nations, religions or ideologies, and this inspired me to create a play. It was all about the situations and events happening all around the world. Later I shared the script of Mi Minor with people from various countries. A friend from US read my play and said, this is just like US. Then during the rehearsals a friend said that it resembles Korea and another said that it was just like Turkmenistan. This was exactly what I wanted, that it was perceived by people from different countries as their own country.
As a writer it was important to be able to understand what kind of a change was happening and seeing the free flow of information and how people’s perception was changing. During that time I realised we are in a transition period from analogue to the digital world. And I was interested to see how the perception was changing, especially to see where young people’s perception was heading and how it affected the relationship between people and government.
As a woman and writer not just using the social media, but becoming aware of the kind of impact it has had, and using it to develop an art piece to make others aware of the transition we are in – all this has changed my life completely.
Index: In what ways is Mi Minor a ‘social media’ play?
Arikan: Mi Minor was a play that was set in a country called Pinima: freedom in a box deMOCKracy. During the play the audience could choose to play the President’s deMOCKracy game of the or support the Pianist’s rebellion against the system. The Pianist starts reporting all the things that are happening in Pinima through Twitter, which starts a Role Playing Game (RPG) with the audience. Mi Minor was staged as a play where an actual and social media oriented RPG was integrated with the actual performance. It was the first play of its kind in the world.
It was written to be located and performed anywhere in the world and everywhere the show would be live streamed online through Ustream and online audience would influence the action as much as the real live audience.
The actual audience could stand along side the actors, they could use their smart phones during the play to tweet, take photos and share them online in order to show the world what was happening in the fictional country Pinima. At the same time the online audience would do the same by following everything from the Pianist’s Ustream in English, which she starts from the beginning of the play. This created another platform for the actual audience and the online audience to interact with the hashtag #miminor on Twitter. In every performance there were digital actors who would be ready in front of their computers as well as the actual actors. Together they would make the play happen. On every level, the audience was made to make a choice as to which side they were going to be in Mi Minor?
We created a promotional website for Pinima that introduces you to the politics, geography and culture of this small fantasy state. I chose a lot of silly rules from other countries. I researched ridiculous laws around the world, and selected some of them, exaggerated and changed them and put them in the play.
Examples of laws and regulations from Mi Minor: There will no longer be treble sounds and the key of E on the pianos. A masterpiece of design, these brand new pianos will be down to a size that they could be carried in the pockets; President hasn’t slept for 48 hours and he listened to the telephones of people whom he randomly chose. The President declared that this shall be done by him once a week. In his declaration, he underlined that in every country; the telephones are being listened to, however they do it behind closed doors. It’s never announced to the public whose telephones are listened to. Whereas in our country what the President is doing, in the name of democracy and transparency, should be set as an example to the whole world; The president has decided that only two parties will participate in the elections. He is the presidential candidate for both parties; To protect the solidarity and morality of the family, all curtains in homes must be kept closed while having sex at home. Having sex in cars and other conveyances will be a criminal act. Also from today, bar owners are obliged to provide soup to their customers. Bars that fail to provide soup are hereby prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages; From now on, peacocks will have priority on the roads. To awaken a sleeping polar bear to take its photograph is strictly forbidden, plus, those who disturb frogs and rabbits will be fined.
Index: The play has been translated into English but not yet published. Can you give us an idea of the story?
Arikan: I really didn’t want to tell a story. With Mi Minor I wanted to create a situation in which people, anywhere in the world, could see what they do when they were given the opportunity to change something – do they get involved or do they keep quiet?
Index: And when you performed it in Istanbul what did the audience do?
Arikan: At the beginning, during the first couple of performances the audience mainly kept back. Later, there were some very active women and young people, high school and university students, who would be against the system in Pinima during the performances. In each play there were also those who chose to support the system and showed their respect and love to the President of Pinima. Audience who are used to conventional theatre chose to sit in the stalls and watch the action. They didn’t get so involved as the others. I must say, that those who are not aware of the digital world couldn’t get properly involved with the play but those who are aware of it enjoyed every minute of the play and took action using their imaginations.
Index: How did the online audience behave, interact? Did the anonymity and separation made the online audience more or less radical?
Arikan: Using the digital media tools gave the both digital and actual audience another platform to express themselves about what they perceive or experience in the Pinima world during the play. And as far as I observed, the anonymity and separations made them more radical all around the world.
Index: Some pro-government media have claimed that the play was designed as a rehearsal for the demonstrations in Gezi Park.
Arikan: When I read the accusations on some pro-government newspapers and later watched how it was taken to an extreme level on TV programs, I was shocked. In my play my intention was to criticise the patriarchy and perception of the analogue world all around the world. Even though all the countries in the world are being ruled by different leaders, even though it seems like every country has a different system of its own, I believe there is only one domination that exists and that is the Patriarchy.
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 interestingly worrying is that these accusations are still on-going. I wrote an absurd play and now my life has become more absurd then my play.
Index: One of the icons of the Gezi Park demonstrations was a woman in a red dress and the pianist in the Mi Minor wears a red dress. And someone took a piano into the Taksim Square. Is this a coincidence?
Arikan: One of the icons of Gezi Park demonstrations being the woman in red dress and the revolutionary pianist with red dress in my play Mi Minor is a coincidence. When I was writing the play, I was criticized by many for choosing to put a piano at the Pinima square. When they said it would be ridiculous to have a piano at the square, an instrument such as guitar or violin would be much better; I strongly stood against it and refused to change it. During the Gezi Park demonstrations I was surprised to see a piano being brought to the Taksim Square on TV. But then months later I was literally shocked when I saw the picture of another piano in the middle of the protests in Ukraine.
On the other hand Oscar Wilde says, “…life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
As a woman writer, for three years I tried to understand the transition period from analogue to the digital world and I wrote many articles about this subject. After writing articles about this transition period to digital world, I decided to write a play to convey my vision to society as well. Today I’m seeing how one after the other my predictions in my articles and in my play are coming to life.
When I was writing Mi Minor, I have recognised that the younger generation who are widely perceived to be wasting their time in front of their computers and therefore apolitical, could, if given a platform to express themselves, become political and resist a the oppressions of the analogue system together as women and men. That’s why I created the characters in the play called The Teenagers who joined the pianist in the revolution. During the performances I have witnessed that young people, high school and university students were the most active members of the audience. When I look at what happened during the Gezi Park demonstrations I can clearly see how right I was. Unlike everyone else, I had no difficulty understanding the behaviour of these digital teenagers and young adults who were peacefully resisting the authorities out on the streets and parks as well as social media without any attempt of violence, without any leadership.
Even before writing my play in one of my articles I said,
“…We are in a transition from analogue to the digital world. During this transition the common problematic of all sides of the world, from East to the West, from South to the North, is the concept and perception of freedom in societies.
The West is still being dominated with the data and foundations of the analogue world. The transition from analogue to the digital world does not just involve the technological developments but also involves the change in the perception of people. Even though, the West says, “yes” to this transition on technological developments, -just like the East- it says “no” in terms of social and psychological developments of this transition…”
Also, at the time I wrote this article, the news about Snowden hadn’t been leaked and the global debates about surveillance hadn’t started yet.
So my question that I would like to see debated: Would you be potentially guilty if you can foresee what could happen in the world?
This article was posted on 7 Jan 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
