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In Search of a New Performativity after Gezi: On Symbolic Politics and New Dramaturgies in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2019

PIETER VERSTRAETE
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Abstract

This article is an adapted version of a text originally published in Turkish in the historical materialist journal PRAKSIS in 2016, and translated into English by the author.1 It focuses on performative protest acts and the role of the performing artist in Turkey in the context of the Gezi Park uprisings of 2013. The article examines how some of Gezi's performative protest actions evidence a larger cultural transformation, of which we can see a continuation in new theatre playtexts.

Type
Dossier: Contemporary Theatre and Performance in Turkey
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , October 2019 , pp. 273 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2019 

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Footnotes

This article is an adapted version of a text originally published in Turkish in the historical materialist journal PRAKSIS in 2016 and translated into English by the author. It focuses on performative protest acts and the role of the performing artist in Turkey in the context of the Gezi Park uprisings of 2013. The article examines how some of Gezi's performative protest actions evidence a larger cultural transformation, of which we can see a continuation in new theatre playtexts. Pieter Verstraete, ‘Türkiye'de Sembolik Siyaset ve Protesto Kültürü: Gezi'den Sonra Yeni Bir Performativite mi?’, PRAKSIS, 42, 3 (November 2016), pp. 657–81. Permission to republish parts has been retrieved from the publisher. I sincerely thank my partner, Dr Görkem Akgöz, for proofreading this article.

References

Notes

2 Zeynep Gambetti, ‘Occupy Gezi as Politics of the Body’, jadaliyya, 9 July 2013, at www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29026/Occupy-Gezi-as-Politics-of-the-Body, accessed 30 June 2018.

3 See Meyda Yeğenoğlu, ‘Radical Philosophy: Smells like Gezi Spirit – Democratic Sensibilities and Carnivalesque Politics in Turkey’, Radicalphilosophy.com, Essays, 182 (29 October 2013), at http://everywheretaksim.net/radical-philosophy-smells-like-gezi-spirit-democratic-sensibilities-and-carnivalesque-politics-in-turkey-melda-yegenoglu, accessed 25 June 2016; and Arzu Öztürkmen, ‘The Park, the Penguin, and the Gas: Performance in Progress in Gezi Park’, TDR: The Drama Review, 58, 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 39–68.

4 The reference was later reclaimed to organize the ‘Gazdan Adam Festival’ on 7 July 2013 in Istanbul's Kadiköy neighbourhood, which was an actual festival organized by cultural associations and foundations in collaboration with newspapers and local television channels. It was a strongly Kemalist event, which to many was not in line with the overall ethos at Gezi Park to avoid political claiming. This strengthens Kershaw's argument that taking the festivalization as a theoretical lens may diffuse the possibility to differentiate events that are subversive from those that are actually recuperating and reinforcing existing social orders. See Güneş Koç and Harun Aksu, eds., Another Brick in the Barricade: The Gezi Resistance and Its Aftermath (Bremen: Wiener Verlag für Sozialforschung in EHV Academicpress GmbH, 2015).

5 Elzbieta Matynia, Performative Democracy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), p. 9; quoted in Gurur Ertem, ‘Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body in an Extended Space of Appearance’, in Susanne Foellmer, Margreth Lünenborg and Christoph Raetzsch, eds., Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity: Transdisciplinary Approaches (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 81–99, here p. 95.

6 Ertem, ‘Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body’, p. 96.

7 Ibid.

8 Baz Kershaw, ‘Fighting in the Streets: Dramaturgies of Popular Protest, 1986–1989’, New Theatre Quarterly, 13, 51 (1997), p. 266, at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X0001126X, accessed 10 March 2019.

9 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993); Butler, ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, Transversal Texts, #occupy and assembly (September 2011), at http://eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en, accessed 25 June 2016; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press); Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

10 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of Performance (New York and London: Routledge, 1997).

11 Butler, Bodies that Matter.

12 Arendt, The Human Condition.

13 Phelan, Unmarked.

14 See ‘Talk Turkey Conference: Art, Artist, Cultural Production and Gezi Uprising’ (4 October 2013), at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs_vfTfCASQ, accessed 24 September 2015.

15 The project was part of a larger, government-backed project known as the Taksim Pedestrianization Project (Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi) that would redevelop the whole Taksim area. It included the construction of a tunnel under the park area, the construction of one of the largest mosques and the destruction of the Atatürk Cultural Centre (which fate was still uncertain at the time). These three have now all been executed. With these works, the AKP is believed to have redefined one of Turkey's most contentious political spaces that served as a site of competing ideological narratives and myths since the latter days of the Ottoman Empire. It has been a site for social protests, particularly since the Labor Day massacre on 1 May 1977.

16 Kezban Bülbül, “Bu ne tesadüf”, Yeni Şafak, 10 June 2013, at www.yenisafak.com/gundem-haber/bu-ne-tesaduf-10.06.2013-530647, accessed 25 June 2016. The play was staged between 1 December 2012 and 14 April 2013 at a concert venue called KüçükÇiftlik Park in Istanbul, Maçka.

17 ‘Mehmet Ali Alabora Mi Minör ile ilgili iddialara yanit verdi’ (Mehmet Ali Alabora Answered the Assertions on Mi Minör), Milliyet, Sanat, 10 June 2013, at http://sanat.milliyet.com.tr/mehmet-ali-alabora-mi-minor-ile/sahnesanatlari/detay/1721049/default.htm, accessed 23 December 2014; ‘Turkey: Playwright and Author Exiled after Death Threats’, Arts Freedom, 20 January 2014, at http://artsfreedom.org/?p=6710, accessed 25 June 2016.

18 Bilge Seçkin, ‘Staging the Revolution: The Theatre of the Revolution in the Ottoman Empire 1908–1909’, unpublished MA thesis, Boğaziçi University (2017), p. 110; Deniz Başar, ‘Mi Minör: A Theatrical Foreshadowing That Led to Exile’, unpublished paper (26 February 2015), https://www.academia.edu/11128008/Mi_Min%C3%B6r_A_Theatrical_Foreshadowing_That_Lead_to_Exile, p. 27, accessed 25 June 2016.

19 Recently, on 20 February 2019, the heat rekindled when a weighty indictment was issued together with arrest warrants, implicating again Alabora and Arıkan, who are currently in exile in Cardiff, where they have been running a theatre company, Be Aware Productions, since 2015.

20 Alabora and Arıkan's case is, however, not unique. Islamic newspaper Yeni Akit published also a list of names of artists and intellectuals who supported the anti-government protests with the aim of exposing them. These incidents, dubbed by critics ‘artivism’, demonstrate the highly discursive nature of the role of performances and artists in Gezi's constitutive narratives.

21 See ‘Genco Erkal Blames Turkey's Theater Circles for Censorship’, Cihan/Today's Zaman, 19 October 2014, at www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_genco-erkal-blames-turkeys-theater-circles-for-censorship_364802.html, accessed 25 June 2016; and Siyah Bant Research Reports, Report I: Developments in Cultural Policy and Their Effects on Artistic Freedom of Expression in the Arts, Ankara & Report II: Freedom of Expression in the Arts and Censorship in Kurdish Region Diyarbakir, Batman (Istanbul: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2013), at www.siyahbant.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/SiyahBant_Research_Reports-1.pdf, accessed 25 June 2016.

22 Menekse Tokyay, ‘Censorship of the Arts Remains a National Concern’, SES Türkiye, 2 April 2014, at http://turkey.setimes.com/en_GB/articles/ses/articles/features/departments/national/2014/04/02/feature-01, accessed 27 July 2015.

23 ‘Interior Minister Defines Terror in Turkey’, Hürriyet Daily News, 26 December 2011, at www.hurriyetdailynews.com/interior-minister-defines-terror-in-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=10068&NewsCatID=338, accessed 25 June 2016.

24 Erdem Güdüz is a dance performer and choreographer at Çağdaş Dans Sanatçıları Derneği (Contemporary Dance Artists’ Association/ÇATI).

25 Erdem Gündüz, ‘Case Study: Standing Man’, Beautiful Trouble, 17 June 2013, at http://beautifultrouble.org/case/standing-man, accessed 25 June 2016.

26 David Banks, ‘#Standingman: The Meme for the Masses’, Civic Beat, 25 June 2013, at http://reader.thecivicbeat.com/2013/06/standingman-the-meme-for-the-masses, accessed 25 June 2016.

27 ‘Performance Art Becomes a Vehicle for Protest’, Hürriyet Daily News, 30 July 2013, at www.hurriyetdailynews.com/performance-art-becomes-a-vehicle-for-protest-51633, accessed 14 May 2019. Earlier forms can be found in the 1980s. There was a pop-up experiment by film director Ezer Akay at Sultan Ahmet Square, where he talked into a microphone and ordered pedestrians to perform certain actions, like standing still, lying down, crawling on their knees, standing up again and so on, and they just followed his orders without question. In another performance on Istanbul's busiest commercial Istiklal Sokak, entitled kimlik bitte (November 1986), ortayuncu theatre actor Ferhan Sensoy dressed up like an SS soldier and asked people for their IDs. Such interactive initiatives show us a performativity of protest actions much earlier than Standing Man.

28 See Jasmin İhraç, ‘Protest May Be Performance: Der #duranadam im Kontext des Projekts “re.act.feminism #2 – A Performing Archive”’, MAP, 5 (July 2014), pp. 1–11, at www.perfomap.de.

29 See Rick Salutin, ‘Turkey's “Standing Man” and the Iconography of Non-violence’, Toronto Star, Opinion/Commentary, 21 June 2013, at www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/06/21/turkeys_standing_man_and_the_iconography_of_nonviolence.html, accessed 24 September 2013; Ayrin Ersöz, ‘Dancer's Stillness in Public Space Resists the Choreography of the Authoritarian Mobility’, in PERFORMART 2014: Performing Arts and Public Space Conference, 20–21 December 2014 (Istanbul: DAKAM, 2014), pp. 101–10, at https://researchsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/proceeding-book-of-performart14-performing-arts-and-public-space-conference-is-published/; Susanne Foellmer, ‘Choreography as a Medium of Protest’, DRJ, 48, 3 (December 2016), pp. 58–69; Gurur Ertem, ‘Gezi Uprising and Corporeal Politics: Watch Out History When a Dancer Goes Still!’, iDANS Blog (1 February 2014), at http://idansblog.org/2014/02/01/gezi-uprising-and-corporeal-politics-dancers-still-acts1, modified German version in Theater der Zeit, November 2013, at www.tqw.at/sites/default/files/TQW-Scores_Supplement1113_TdZ-Web.pdf, accessed 25 June 2016. Ertem, ‘Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body’, even draws a direct link with Jérôme Bel's Show Must Go On, in which Gündüz was one of the performers of the Turkish cast version that was co-produced and presented by iDANS Festival in Istanbul (October 2011). In one part of the performance, the performers stand still and stare at the audience; in another, Gündüz was heard singing the lyrics based on a Nâzım Hikmet's poem: ‘Ben bir ceviz ağacıyım Gülhane Parkı’nda, ne sen bunun farkındasın ne de polis farkında’ (‘I am a walnut tree at Gülhane Park, neither you are aware of this, nor the police’), p. 94.

30 Eren Buğlalilar, ‘Theatre and Struggle: A Sociological Analysis of the Political Theatre in Turkey between 1960–1971’, unpublished MA thesis, the Graduate School of Social Sciences of Middle East Technical University, March 2012, p. 95.

31 Porta, Donatella della and Mattoni, Alice, eds., Spreading Protest: Social Movements in Times of Crisis (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014), p. 15Google Scholar.

32 This would include most of Gezi's protestors, including alevites, Kurds, Laz, Cherkess, feminists, the LGBTQ and religious people other than Sunni Muslims, but also anticapitalist Muslims and so on.

33 Read Gündüz's response in Pieter Verstraete, ‘Still Standing? A Contextual Interview with “Standing Man” Erdem Gündüz’, Jahrbuch Türkisch-Deutsche Studien 2014, In der Welt der Proteste und Umwälzungen: Deutschland und die Türkei, 5 (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015), pp. 121–36.

34 Friedberg, Anne, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1993), p. 17Google Scholar.

35 Öztürkmen, ‘The Park, the Penguin, and the Gas’, p. 41. It was Erdoğan himself again who provided provocative commentary against Standing Man by saying and tweeting: ‘“Some people produced standing men. You may all stand still … But us, we say, no stopping on that road, we say go on. They may continue to stand meanwhile. Towards the goal of 2023, we run, we run with firm steps” – referring to the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic (Iyigünler.net 2013)’. Ibid., p. 58.

36 Della Porta and Mattoni, Spreading Protest, p. 15.

37 Kershaw, ‘Fighting in the Streets’, p. 261, italics in the original.

38 Butler, ‘Bodies in Alliance’.

39 Potuoğlu-Cook, Öykü, ‘Hope with Qualms: A Feminist Analysis of the 2013 Gezi Protests’, Feminist Review, 109 (2015), pp. 96–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 114.

40 Butler, ‘Bodies in Alliance’.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 I thank Zeynep Günsür Yüceil (Kadir Has University) for bringing this term to my attention. For a more historical relationship between ‘active vanishing’ and a theory of perspectivism in Ottoman miniature see her chapter on ‘Transgression of Public Space’ in PERFORMART 2014: Performing Arts and Public Space (Istanbul: DAKAM, 2014), pp. 110–16.

44 Phelan, Unmarked, p. 19.

45 Ibid., p. 6.

46 Giorgio Agamben, ‘For a Theory of Destituent Power’, public lecture delivered in Athens (2014), at www.chronosmag.eu/index.php/g-agamben-for-a-theory-of-destituent-power.html, accessed 26 March 2019.

47 Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

48 During the Gezi Park protests, we already saw some theatre performances in and outside the parks, such as a Forum Theatre workshop by Jale Karabekir (Tiyatro Boyalı Kuş) in one of the park forums, a new four-part play on the main stage at Gezi Park, a dance workshop by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at Beşiktaş’ Abasağa Park (as part of iDANS festival, which showed her Rosas Danst Rosas for free in solidarity) and a dance theatre video mainly recorded around the Galata area, which surfaced on social media.

49 Some private theatre companies were ‘punished’ in 2014 for the support they gave during the anti-government Gezi protests, including Genco Erkal and Dostlar Tiyatrosu, Ferhan Şensoy's Ortaoyuncular, Destar Tiyatro, Altıdan Sonra Tiyatro, Maskara Tiyatro, Tiyatro Hal and Kumbaracı50. An administrative court in Ankara later ruled, however, that the ministry's refusal to offer funding to Dostlar Tiyatrosu was ‘against the principles of justice and equality’. See ‘Government Accused of Bias in Theater Funding’, Cihan/Today's Zaman, 13 December 2013, at www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail.action;jsessionid=czoOzN+GgWQg2qHfHlPxlUPo?newsId=333942&columnistId=0, accessed 25 June 2016; and ‘Ministry of Culture and Tourism Loses Theater Fund Lawsuit’, Cihan/Today's Zaman, 18 July 2014, at www.cihan.com.tr/en/ministry-of-culture-and-tourism-loses-theater-fund-lawsuit-1507496.htm, accessed 25 June 2016.

50 See Pieter Verstraete, ‘The Standing Man Effect’, Mercator-IPC Policy Brief, Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University, Stiftung Mercator Initiative 2013, at http://ipc.sabanciuniv.edu/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/IPC_standingman_SON.pdf.

51 For example, the play Karabatak by tiyatro D22 in Istanbul (written and directed by Berkay Ateş) is said to reference also the Gezi Park protests. Most recently, the monologue Yol by Murat Akdağ for Tiyatro Tek Ağaç takes the Gezi uprising as its departure point and takes its audience to more recent situations in Diyarbakır, Suruç and Rojava.

52 Meneske Tokyay, ‘Censorship of the Arts Remains a National Concern’, SES Türkiye, 2 April 2014, at http://turkey.setimes.com/en_GB/articles/ses/articles/features/departments/national/2014/04/02/feature-01, accessed 25 June 2015.

53 One such young aspiring author who would fall below the radar is Erdem Avsar, who wrote a very promising play inspired by the Gezi Park protests, entitled #Occupy Love.

54 Kadri Gursel, ‘Gezi Resistance Anniversary Recalls Impact on Turkey’, trans. Sibel Utku Bila, Al-Monitor, Turkey Pulse, 29 May 2014, at www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/taksim-turkey-gezi-park-protest-police-crackdown.html, accessed 25 June 2016.

55 This slogan was used as the title of an op-ed about the Istanbul-based independent DOT Tiyatrosu, written by Zeynep Oral and published on 28 March 2014 in the (previously Kemalist) Cumhürriyet newspaper. The phrase was modelled after the more popular ‘Her Yer Taksim, Her Yer Direniş!’, which was Gezi's most famous slogan of resistance. I believe the modified phrase above can illustrate how the arts – through the independent, non-commercial theatres – have claimed a central place in Turkey's protest culture, particularly in the post-Gezi period, which saw increasingly more performative protest actions.