My Sense of Belonging to Istanbul, IMAGES

Veronika Bernard (Ed.) 1MAGES (IV) Images of the Other Istanbul - Vienna - Venice The Conference Proceedings INHALT zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Editors' Note 5 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO Introductory Section Veronika Bernard (Innsbruck and Kufstein/ Austria): The IMAGES project Veronika Bernard (Innsbruck and Kufstein/ Austria): Introduction 17 Testing the Scope — Of Tourists, Selfıes', and Children of the Metropolis 23 Steve Merrell (Oxford/ UK): Feeling Moved — Points of Connection and Separation between Those Who Work to Travel and Those Who Travel to Work 25 Nerma Cridge (London/ UK): Excess Water. On Floods, Architectural ` Selfie' and being inside the Rain 39 Yusuf Eradam (Istanbul, Turkey): My sense of belonging to Istanbul 49 Istanbul — The Relativity of a Myth 61 Aytül Papila (Istanbul/ Turkey): From the City of Tales to the Industrial Metropolis: The Changing Irnages of Istanbul in the Turkish Visual Arts 63 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Johannes Marent (Vienna/ Austria): Depicted Walks: An Exploradon of Istanbul's Imaginary TABLE OF CONTENTS 71 Venice — Another Myth and Its Destrııction? 9 165 Serenella Sessini (London/ UK): Portraits as Testimonies of Cultu85 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA ral Interconnection between Venice and the East in the Renaissance • 167 Sercan Şengün (Istanbul, Turkey): Gaze of the Local versus the Other — Images of Istanbul in Video Games 95 Wibke Joswig (Berlin/ Germany): Cultural 'In-betweeness' in Venetian Images: Gentile and Giovanni Bellini's Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria 175 Hatice Övgü Tüzün (Istanbul/ Turkey): Orientalism Revisited — Istanbul as a Character in Barbara Nadel's Çetin ikmen Series 105 Tanja Habrle (Pula, Pula/ Croatia): The Fire in Venice. Gabriele D'Annunzio's Experience of the Lagoon 183 Vienna — A Myth and Its Destruction? 115 193 Nata§a Ivanovi (Ljubljana/ Slovenia): The Imaginary Istanbul and the Realistic View of Vienna as Presented by Landscape Painter Lorenz Janscha/ Lovro Janb 117 Gönül Bakay (Istanbul/ Turkey): Venice as a `Sinister City' in Two Contemporary Novels: Jeanette Winterson's The Passion and Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers Peter Volgger (Innsbruck/ Austria): Venice — Archipelago of the 21st Century? 203 Veronika Bernard (Innsbruck and Kufstein, Austria): Shadows Larger than Life — The Re-Presentation of Vienna in the Film Version of Gerhard Roth's Reise in das Innere von Wien 125 Rear Matter 213 Mathias Windelberg (Offenbach/ Germany): A Supplementary Map to the Video Installation "Climbing Crag (Klettergarten)" 135 The Editor 215 The Contributors 217 Istanbul, Vienna and Venice — The Diversity of Perception 145 Talitha Schepers (London/ UK): Images of Istanbul, Vienna and Venice as Seen through the Eyes of Diplomata and Artists Belonging to Early European Embassies (1400-1600) 147 Roberta Matkovic (Pula/ Croatia): Visions of Other Urban Dimensions. Written Travellers' Experiences 155 Theresa Frank (Innsbnick/ Austria): Making and Remaking of the alla Franca versus alla Turca-Myth in Narratives of Istanbul MY SENSE OF BELONGING TO ISTANBUL Yusuf Eradam zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Istanbul Kültür University, Istanbul/ Turkey [email protected] ABSTRACT My song "Hayat Ağacı" (Tree of LifezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA l ) starts this autobiographically inspired (and non-academic) essay. An Anatolian boy is subjected to violence in Istanbul when he joins the resistance in Taksim in 2013. The mythified metropolis Istanbul embraces all lost children, who search for what they have lost. The essay describes Istanbul as a proud prostitute who is stili walking and standing tall, unaware of zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA the fact that there is a ladder in one of her stockings. The created images of the city are built on aspirations, hopes and extravagant expectations. Istanbul, in the mother's womb metaphor, has to provide the lost child with a home, as in my song "Patiska"2, which ends this essay. Mein Lied "Hayat Ağacı" (Baum des Lebens)3 eröffnet diesen autobiografisch inspirierten Essay. Ein Junge aus Anatolien ist in Istanbul Gewalt ausgesetzt, als er sich (im Jahr 2013) der Protestbewegung am Taksim-Platz anschliel3t. Die mythisierte Metropole Istanbul nimmt alle verlorenen Kinder auf, die auf der Suche sind nach dem, was sie verloren haben. Der Essay beschreibt Istanbul als eine stolze Prostituierte, die noch immer erhobenen Hauptes schreitet und sich der Tatsache verschlieSt, dass eines ihrer Beine eine Prothese ist. Die Bilder der Stadt bauen auf Aspirationen, Hoffnungen und extravaganten Erwartungen. Istanbul, in der Metapher des Mutterschosses, muss den verlorenen Kindern cin Heim bieten, so wie in meinem Lied "Patiska"4, mit dem der Essay schlieSt. 50 YUSUF ERADAM There is no great desire, the price of which you will not have to pay; the highest price you will pay for your great desire is but its coming true. Elias Canetti This is an essay on how Istanbul, which I claim to be original and apoctyphal, became the city of my life, me being a little boy coming from a small central-Anatolian town. It is a story which I consider to be my personal myth. I describe Istanbul as a proud prostitute, who is stili walking and standing tall, unaware that there is a ladder in one of her stacking. This image of a resisting woman is that of a powerful mother, we build our aspirations, hopes, and extravagant expectations on, and which is stili there because millions want to see that image there as part of the survival instinct. If it is to be seen through a realistic pair of spectacles, this created image is nothing but an illusion. The myth, just like a trauma, has to survive as long as we want to believe in it; othervvise one of the main veins of existence, the sense of belonging, will stop running. This has provided me with the support for my personification of the city with a femme-fatal mother. I know I am antagonizing the city to reaffırm my own status, values and expectations, as if Istanbul, or any city we feel we belong to, is a beloved enemy or a hostile lover, without whom we would feel we are nothing. My need to generalize is part of the need to belong. MY SENSE OF BELONGING TO ISTANBUL 51 zyxwvutsrqponmlk The first song I am referring to in my essay is titled "The Tree of Life" because it summarizes my personal story of migrating from a small town of Central Anatolia to Ankara first, then to Istanbul, Taksim-Beyoğlu, the center of alt centers of Turkey. Identification of my very being with the Gezi Resistance Spirit against an apocryphal or crypto-fascistic Islamic State veiling behind mild Islam may seem too much of a self-promotion to some of us. Starting from a personal history, loss of family (especially the love of parents) and childhood for the sake of some good education at a boarding school in Istanbul, the child's need is to transfer that lack of the love of parents to the love of a metropolis. After eight years of good education, I had to live and work in Ankara for 33 years missing Istanbul, my first beloved. It is also about how I looked forvvard to retirement from Ankara University in 2004, when I quickly signed the papers and flew to my `woman' (my polis), to my lands of creativity and freedom, a landscape that opened when I arrived in Istanbul at the age of eleyen. 52 YusuF ERADAM MY BENSE OF BELONGING TO IsTANBut. 53 This is the make-believe reality I created for myself so that I feel I belong • sometimes fil/ us with joy, sometimes with disillusionment, and become the sources of the feelings and myths we live with or by. We are like fısh in eveto Istanbul. This is trying to step into the same river twice. Therefore, the laryday life, living in an ocean of images. bel at the beginning of my essay `originals fails to be true. Like the Austrian • are ubiguituous, consulate building I read this paper in, which is on Istanbul grounds but does not belong to Istanbul, or like zero, the building as a text is the threshold, the and because they are everywhere at one moment in time, however we do not circumference of my experiential world, an open stage of quest now. During always see them, images such a search to be able to hold on to life, I grabbed love and the process of • are conspicuously invisible. mythification to create realities out of the illusions I have been exposed to. I stili believe literature and music and also rituals that bring us human beings There lies the power of images, metaphors, symbols, and finally icons, which together in goodness and beauty, and thus make us share some humane parts are the worked on, moulded forms of images for various causes. left in us, will bring peace to all. In my case, I found out in my forties, that they When I used my own photographic inıages of Istanbul in the song I made • are always related emotionally go a sense of loss and value, and Istanbul cofor the Gezi Resistance in 2013, I was sure I was giving the message that the mes in with that very diagnosis. young rebel victims died due to the police violence, the police force of the • provide remedy as well as seemingly standing as the cause. It is now a fact present government. The message in the song is that the victims have provithat we are estranged to the pain and suffering of people of other languages. ded us with life and dignity; and that zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA images If we do not know their languages, we may fınd it difficult to empathize • are related 10 beginnings and ends, and are therefore suggestive of concepts like birth and death, love, family, loyalty, and many more others. Therefore images, together with the metaphors they make and symbols they flirt with defınitely ignite, feed, and bring meanings from personal, societal or collective memory, though at times ironically. with their ways of suffering. It is these common images, symbolic uses of irnages and icons that bring us together sa that we share the same joy, pain, and humanity we belong to. The most commonly shared images are those of nature and some of the bodily responses like a smile, which act like an international language, though in other contexts, may also be misunderstood by the receiver. • help us to get out of this depressing mood as well as thrusting us deep into rnore. They distract us, too. Procrastination and distraction also underlines one other fact, namely that due to our character we select images, either when we are cornmunicating verbally, or expressing ourselves artistically. This is an outcome of what we have leamt to see, rather than where we look or what we look at. In my works, I am making a simple statement: This is me, here and now and I keep changing. The sense of belonging to a place is the very present time; i. e. some kind of trauxna, some pleasant woe I enjoy living because I fınd it creative, though it is connected to or emotionally attached, for some past reason, to the past, no matter how anxious we might be for the future. This is my image, the created image of mine, which 1 present as real, similar to the younger looking avatar pictures on facebook etc.). In other words, images • help mythift the se<f; a process that brings the fear of demythification with itself as I will be sending signifiers to your receivers, meanings you might not like. For instance, there is always that halmting possibility that this 'intemational or world premiere' of my songs may not be well-received. which, indirectly, gives away what we are. We see • are also what we in a city what we truly are. In other words, via the images we choose to see 54 YUSUF ERADAM MY SENSE OF BELONG1NG TO ISTANBUL 55 around us, we can tell what we are capable of seeing by means of our eyes, as some artistic zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA -work, and which should also show that this work deserves as well as our hearts and minds or our wisdom. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA • and icons of Istanbul reveal the city as utopic. In TurIcish idiom and proverbial cultural reference, Istanbul whose streets, whose "stones and soil are made of gold", is like an allusion to the American dream of success and pursuit of happiness; similar to the Biblical Promised Land or the myth of the City upon the Hill. • are covert manifestations of oxymorons, paradoxes and vicious circles and have taken a leading role in defining and describing this metropolis, and in rny state of existence in it; e. g. I started seeing a slow speed in the change of life style towards corrııption, towards what I believe made me addicted to this 'polis', so slow, indeed, that by the time I realized the change, it was too late to get out of it. It is that state of awareness which juxtaposes me between the outside and the inside, on the threshold, in other words, on the circumference of the circle, where I believe I live tangent to experience, almost similar to that of Emily Dickinson's: the fly that buzzes in Emily Dickinson's ear telling her that she is dying is also a reminder of that sense of belonging to a life. We feel we are not at home when we `notice' that a detail of home is not there. The mosquito, which tires us all during summer, sounded very sad and poignant yesterday moming in the first day of autumn. It might mean to say: "I am stili here," like that shameless rose I noticed at the age of forty, which I took as the reminder of that solar joy, the joy of life (joie de vivre) we find in Camus, Hemingway or Pastemak, and of the strife, the very fact that we are despite and thanks to the very presence of some other. Hence the fly becomes conspicuously visible and audible. So, images • the time and energy spared to it; both ways, the artist's and the audience's. I stay away from absolutes (i. e. I am a circle which has lost all its sharp corners and edges), from being judgmental while celebrating imagination, the ambiguities of human behavior, and emotional complexity; implying all sorts of longing, anything peculiar to man being no stranger to me, and definitely bringing them all together with some necessary humor or irony. My photographs, my poems always imply some narrative; hiding or implying some mystery veiled by some myth. This is sornetimes to unveil the absolutes that create tensions between people caused by social and political power stnıctures. Therefore, in rny works, I have now realized, real people and real life experiences tum into allegorical representations of concepts; contradictions and realities like poverty, betrayal, discrimination of all kinds, racism, prejudice and violence. My love for oxymorons, paradoxes and vicious circles gives away this need of mine to bring dichotomies or diversities together in order to get rid of any kind of injustice, inequity and the ills we tend to attach to intangible concepts or institutions like civilization, capitalism, imperialism, society, country or life, which we all hold on to at times to avoid personal feeling of guilt in vain. help us remember; they are entities from our collective memory, and they feed and are also the products of the myths we live by. The mythification of some happy ınoment leaves an image in the mind or memory, as a result of which, years later we nostalgically remember as an `iconic representation' of that very moment in the past in the form of an image: a grev sky (as in the story of Emest J. Gaines), an old necrophiIiac lady (as in Willianı Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily") or a `wet black bough' as in Ezra Pound's famous 'metro' poem, or the dead body of a nineteen-year old youth lying in the middle of Beyazıt Square in Istanbul in a poem by Nazım Hikmet Ran. I produce, probably like many artists, to keep myself from being overwhelmed by the world while reflecting upon what I am just about to be, ready to, expecting eagerly to be overwhelmed by. My poems, stories, even photographs, which seem to be momentary shots anyone can take, are selected images of some contemplation, as alt artists do and carefully produce while picking words, images, sounds, colors to make a whole which should appear My methods of teaching are also geared to these obsessions of mine which I can summarize in one goal, and this is standing up, doing something against 56 YUSUF ERADAM MY SENSE OF BELONGING TO ISTANBUL 57 zyxwvutsrqponm othering; for a better world of freedom and peace, fighting antagonism and know I am part of some transcendental big whole when I am here, in Istananything that feeds and is enhanced by it. That `perhaps hand' in E. E. Cumbul. It is some instinct, some incurably, hopelessly romantic feeling that I mings' poem "Spring is like a perhaps hand" is the slender but strong peram; that I know I exist when I know I will die, as Edward Albee also underlison's hand in James Dean's adage. This is what the iconic cult figure said: "I nes. I want to die bere, in Istanbul, which means it is beautiful enough to die am trying to find the courage to be kind. I know that wild people are weak in. This is why I kept coming back to Istanbul, though I had the chance to people; it is people who are gentle who have in the real sense become spend the rest of my life and die in Las Vegas, Michigan, New York of the strong." USA; London or Edinburgh of the UK; Rorne, Venice of Italy, and Vienna of To me, the best reason that attracts me to Istanbul is not the history, the Austria. majesticity of the empires that have passed by (the ladder in her stocking), I started jotting down the first notes for this essay in Bangkok at three a.m. but a season in which I believe I find my rebirth. Istanbul is the spring, when I realized that the main conflict rises from the misconception that cities, like life blooms again. Acacias and quinces are in full bloom but we notice them us human beings, also have souls and that they live and die, breathe and feed when they are out; they are also images of something that fills the gap of the like other living creatures, which refers to the cities' subjectivity. We charge loss, which is an intrinsic, innate feeling, the blight we are bom with/ to: the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA them with our emotions, aspirations and extravagant expectations due to our loss of the womb of the mother. That awareness of the loss of the secure losses. 1f those places are cities with great history or past, we then believe womb is also a reason of welcoming the city with its pleasant and unpleasant that we belong to that city even more; because only then would the void creasurprises. ted after being left to that city by the mother be fılled with another image of the mother to be able to live in solitude, which is recently defined by a new term: white noise. Only then can this child fıght with the odds of life all by himself/ herself because he/ she has learnt at an early age to take the/ a mother for granted as a savior whenever he/ she is in trouble and when he/ she realizes she is never to come back; no matter how much hetshe falls in love with another city like Vienna, he/ she rushes back to the very city that represents that void. By birth the rnother's 'womb is a memory of loss; which is an idea also worked on by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas as he claims that his mother opened her legs and bore him into his grave. Therefore, belonging to a city, is just like love; the maker unknown. This state has got nothing to do with 'Oedipus' and cannot only be related to the lack of a father fıgııre, as I claim that we are bom with this intrinsic knowledge of nothingness, and we live happily until we realize it. Unconditional love of a mother, the great provider, only postpones the realization. In these images of cities I search for, or I prefer to see, 'polis' is the womb of mom, and not, as it ironically suggests in its Turkish, the cops' cub (Turkish "polis" = English "police", the editor). Cities are like us human beings in that they bear, they preserve, they devour and kill; and also they die, or raThe sense of belonging for a person who has chosen to live there does not ther, they die away before a child bom to loss taking refuge in creative actimean to go to the touristic attractions like the highlights of the historic peninvities. sula, the Topkapı Palace, or Hagia Sophia, or the Covered Bazaar, the Blue I discovered in the late 1990s that when I go to a new city, I let myself to Mosque. I made another song in which I express my wish to die in one of the it, loiter in its streets all alone and enjoy, paradoxically, my solitude with that bays of this beautiful city, a wish as an outcome of the fact that 1 think 1 very city. Paris or Mardin, Rome or New York, Stockholm or Bangkok, 1 58 YUSUF ERADAM MY SENSE OF BELONGING TO ISTANBUL 59 found myself within and with it. Awareness of the loss at the beginning, Istanbul was a new beginning, which I could only tell not when I arrived then, becomes the only company that keeps us alive and that says "Go on!" in the city for the first time but years later when I thought I have become soThis company is at the very center of my quest, I found myself in search of mebody/ something thanks to that journey. Now this discovery of my youth what I believe I lost in all these cities, a vain effort. What was ultimate was is sad at my age today because I know every beginning has an end like life that search; not believing in that I found what I lost. All I believe I found itself. That must have been the main reason why I made a song years ago, saying in the chorus part "I wish I died in your bays". was, of course, an illusion, as what was lost was irretrievable like time; my childhood ilmocence and happiness long gone after having lost the sense of a family. I do not mean my biological family. I rather mean the sense of a family; i. e., the sense of some sense of belonging to some space; in theatrical terms, in Peter Brook's terrns, for instance, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA space that covers experience including literature and music and sharing our body with another. Therefore, icons and images • are like magnets we put on our refrigerator doors. The tradition is that we usually put the magnets of the places there we have been to but not the image of the city we call hoıne; nor do we give to a friend magnets for their fridges as gifts if they haven't been there. Among the images of Istanbul, I have picked some so that I can defıne from my own altitude the way I see Istanbul, by which I also mean, and I repeat, what we see is what we are. The images I see through my camera are images that become the metaphors of my very being, my existence and my character, which is my destiny. The images left on my mind are of pure innocence. In this haiku I wrote on August 30, 2014, there is the definition of kindness, as Blanche DuBois pronounces it, while she is being taken to the asylum at the end of Tennessee Williams's masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire. She was like an adult playing the wishbone game with her kid, knowing, since having already decided, that she is going to lose in the game. Like Blanche, or Yank in The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill, or Jerry in The Zoo Stoıy by Edward Albee, we give in to this fate, purposely, intentionally, designedly, in cold blood to make their final breakthrough for meaning, for magic, for value. I know, this makes me a modernist: I seem to be saying, "In my beginning is my end" and also "In my end is my beginning", as T.S. Eliot does in The Four Quartets. The sense of belonging to a goup or a place is good for spiritual health but it is also a threat to our innate need to evaluate or assess beauty from many perspectives. Due to this sense of belonging we can easily develop prejudices about the myths we ourselves create about the place we chose to belong to. Therefore, my claim that Istanbul is apocıyphal is stili credible in this essay as its authenticity comes with all this infested meanings and assigned values to the metropolis. We must have faith in our center because, as Yeats says in "The Second Coming": "If we don't have that faith, things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... There is only one true journey: the retrospective one." I have here also expressed that Istanbul is the vehicle for me to get on to take to that road. While pretending to be mythfying my personal story, I have also demythified it. I turned out to be the `Patiska' in the song which closed my talk at the conference IMAGES (IV) — Images of the Other: Istanbul, Vienna, Venice at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Istanbul on 02 September 2014; the child that the persona adclresses; the lost soul who should be giyen a home and fed, as I am like the shameless calways' child of the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas; the child in his poem "My Lover the Sea", who dares to steal our wallet if we tap him on the head `insincerely'. in Venice, tourists stick their chewing gums to the poles to which boats are roped, revealing a superstitious belief that whoever does so, will come 60 Yt.istıF ERADAM zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX back to Venice. When I am leaving Istanbul and life for good, I will have a chewing gum in my mouth. Take it and stick it to a stake on the Bosphorus. Notes 'http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=geYDP5ı*V68 http://www.youtube.com/watchTv=e4TS0J947Y 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geYDP5rkV68 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TS0J947Y 2 AH photos in this essay O Yusuf Eradaın www.yusuferadam.com . Images ot the Other offers readers a IMAGES (IV) — zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHG cross-section of current research on the concepts of the Self and the Other as documented in the contemporary and historical perception and representation of the three cities Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice. The contributors to this volume are from the UK, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Turkey, and Austria, and they are writing from very different culturai, ideological, scientific, academic and non-acadernic perspectives and backgrounds. Veronika Bernard (PhD) is an Associate Prof essor with the Department of German Language and Literature at the University of Innsbruck, innsbruck/ Austria, and a member of the research area Cultural Encounters — Cultural Conflicts. 978-3-643-90658-8 zyxwvutsrqpo LIT www.lit-veriag.ch 588