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independent publishing istanbul

As the Istanbul art scene expands, so too does the necessity of publishers, printers, retailers and exhibitors of books, zines, manifestos, pamphlets and so on.

THAT Magazine is proud to feature a selection of a few oustanding members of this vital scene: Torna, BAS, Bandrols端z and FAI.

torna

Torna is a small contemporary art space, a modest bookshop for artists’ printed materials, and a letterpress printing studio in KadĹkÜy, Istanbul. It shares its 14 sqm area with an engineering workshop - enesk - whose owner has a heartbreaking attachment to lathes. The workshop is run by David Unwin and everything else is run and taken advantage of by Merve Kaptan under the name of Torna.

The projects that happen in Torna rely on the limitations of working within/alongside another running production space.

Torna encourages the possibilties of exhibiting in a non white cube gallery space. tornaistanbul.com

Sanatçı kitapları ve basılı malzeme Artists’ books and printed matter Necati Bey Caddesi No 32/2 Karaköy İstanbul TR www.b-a-s.info

Since 2006 artist Banu Cennetoğlu has been running the space BAS in Istanbul where artists’ books and publications are collected, displayed and produced.

BAS is building a collection of artists’ books by local and international artists. It hosts talks and exhibitions that explore the historical and critical context of artists’ books and printed matter and has a permanent display in its Karaköy HQ.

BAS is currently working on a new title by Daniel Knorr.

BAS’ first production project was Bent, a partnership between BAS and artist Philippine Hoegen. 10 Bent Books by 5 different Turkish artists / art collectives have been produced since it began in May 2006 such as An Interrupted History of Punk and Underground Resources in Turkey 1978-1999. Edited by Sezgin Boynik and Tolga Güldallı, published and released by BAS in November 2007, which traces the development of the Punk and underground movement in Turkey. Other books of note in the Bent series include SSS-Shore Scene Soundtrack / Themes and Variations for Carpet by artist/musician Cevdet Erek and Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s TakipPoursuite a crime story constructed entirely with sentences or parts of sentences from Turkish, Japanese and French language phrase books.

Erek’s SSS – Shore Scene Soundtrack is a manual connected to an installation/performance piece (pictured) about mimicking the sea, or more generally about imitating a common natural phenomenon by using two hands and a piece of carpet Erek recently won the Nam June Paik Award in 2012 with this very installation.

For more information about publications and upcoming events: www.b-a-s.info

Bandrolsüz - meaning without a tax certificate - is a collective of 5 independent publication houses Bakkal Press, folio, Onagöre, REC Collective and Too Many Books who got together in February 2011. It is a very promising fresh DIY initiative that bodes well for the future of independent artistic publishing in Istanbul. They organize pop-up events, parties and lectures. Their self proclaimed mission is: “To create possibilities for sale and distribution of artists’ books and reproductions. During the times when electronic publications and magazines start to take over the printed medium, Bandrolsuz creates a space, away from large distribution companies and chain bookstores, where the book is considered as a location and a channel.” www.bandrolsuz.org

Future Anecdotes Istanbul (FAI) is a graphic design studio based in Istanbul, working closely with artists, architects, curators, publishers and cultural institutions. The studio has been operating from Istanbul since 2011 as a continuation of Future Anecdotes, which was established in London in 2009 by Asli Altay and Mary Ikoniadou.

FAI operates in a limited range of formats, these are; artists’ books and catalogues, exhibition graphics and identity systems.

FAI is run by Asli Altay who has an MA from Graphic Design and Communication, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Her book ‘Future Anecdotes’; which gave the name of the studio, is in the Tate Modern Artist’s Book Collection, amongst some other private and public collections.

FAI’s new studio space in the Galata neighborhood of Istanbul is a shop-front with ground level access. The space, referred to as ‘Apendiks’, operates as a pop up gallery space to showcase contemporary publishing practices from around the world. Every two months an exhibition is organised devoted to showing publications from a single publisher, aiming to look closer into the character and methodologies of their publishing practice. Apendiks is interested in inviting independent institutions that are proposing new forms and activities in the publishing field. For more information: futureanecdotes.com

extract from

Translated from the Turkish by Alexander Dawe

“Everything in the house was old; the furniture, curtains, birdcages, each had its own story, its own horrible and amusing origin. Open a trunk and a list of names, titles and events falls out one after the other, the ornithologist of some forgotten Sultan, the Table Napkin Agha before him, and the wife of whoknows-which Pasha. Doors were no different. In the twinkling of an eye, half of Istanbul and nearly the entire Bosphorus swelled into whatever room we happened to be in. Then something would happen, the topic changed, and we were all alone again.

Grandmother always wore old-fashioned clothes, the clothes they gave her following her appointment to the Sultan’s palace. The Sultan loved her very much and within three years she was promoted to imperial kutucubaşı. She was in charge of the imperial attire and make-up. She even had a ceremonial ivory cane, but her position forbade her to carry it in the palace. So she wandered about the house with her cane dressed in these strange dresses layered with lace.

Early in the morning, the maid would help her put on her tulle bonnet before she brought in her breakfast.

Then grandfather would visit her in her room. Life was nothing more than a series of visits for them. They never really seemed married.

They were childhood neighbors. When grandmother went into the palace, she fell in love with a young man, a close friend of my grandfather and a relative of Damat Pasha, and though such a union wasn’t entirely appropriate, they were allowed to marry. But days before the wedding, the young man was murdered while he was boarding a caique in Beşiktaş. People said that grandfather was there, too. He was also stabbed and had to stay in bed for six months. He married my grandmother some time after he recovered, but she was always a young woman forever dreaming of her lost fiancé. I suppose grandfather never could ignore all the rumors that needled their marriage. Though they loved each other, the memory of grandmother’s murdered fiancé stayed with them for the rest of their lives.

The house was filled with furniture. Things from another time. People were so strange back then. Did they really make all those toys for grown-ups? All the little boxes and clocks played music and little puppets popped out and danced before they scrambled back inside. I adored those boxes and I always dreamed about the puppets inside. I was sure they led very different lives inside.”

As she went deeper into her stories Sabri felt more and more like he was on a dig, and in the wake of a moment of silence, a small object, a well-wrought stone or pottery shard,

suddenly emerged, a forgotten world coming to life around it.

“Grandmother was in Yemen with her father before she was brought to the palace. She had so many stories from her time there. Once on a family excursion she saw the execution of an African slave. The head fell to the ground, rolled over to the man sitting across from her and stuck to his bare leg. The man barely trembled before he died of fright.

I don’t know how old I was when I heard that story. I must have been quite young. Grandmother never forgot the experience. The entire scene was etched in her mind. Whenever she told that story, she would describe how the man opened his mouth, lifted his hand as if to speak, and then fell to the ground, the slave’s head still stuck to his leg as he lay there.

Frightful, isn’t it? I would always think of the story at night in bed falling asleep with my knees up against my chest thinking someone might come and bite my toes! Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night and clasp them even more tightly to my chest. But I suppose I sort of enjoyed the feeling.”

Looking him directly in the eyes, she asked:

“Do you like to feel afraid? It changes everything, deepens the experience. I don’t mean the fears we have today. But the fear of another time, the fear our ancestors slowly infused in us from one night to the next, embellishing our worlds, giving shape to our dreams.

These come from stories, and from the objects themselves. Take the shadow of a tree on a dark night. When I was young, it felt like all the garden trees were marching towards me at night. The cedar, the magnolia next to it, and the chestnut in the neighbor’s garden; they were all coming for me.”

Her bleary eyes set on Sabri’s face and her face twisted a little by the fear she felt those nights, she was anxious, as if the world she evoked was marching towards her, deepening with so many secrets still unveiled.

“Grandmother had other stories. She never forgot the sound of that old woman whose voice echoed down in the basement. I think she was a slave. She had been locked down in the basement for years for who knows what offense

and she died there. But grandmother always heard her voice.

‘I’m hungry, I’m thirsty,’ she would cry. ‘Bring me some rice, a little meat.’ Grandmother would recount all this in Arabic, her hands on her knees, swaying to the rhythm of her words.

Imagine her in her tulle bonnet, and all her jewels and her satin dress with lace, rocking in her seat… The door to the stairwell that twisted down to the basement was always kept locked. But one day she and her maid managed to open it, and they went down and saw the woman beating herself against the stone floor. Then suddenly she stood up and walked right through the wall and disappeared, but they could still hear her cries.

One day a man came to visit us at home. He talked to grandfather in the garden, but it wasn’t long before he was chased away. But he came back three days later, and from then on he made regular visits. He was a scruffy man who loved to talk, the kind who wheezed out a bit more of his life wherever he was. He called grandmother his ‘honorable hanimefendi’ and he always tried to kiss the hem of grandfather’s robe.

He’d never sit where he was asked to, because he wanted to sit in the lowest spot in the room. Everyone suffered him like he was a bad cold, praying for him to leave as soon as possible.

Shuffling about and soaked in sweat, he would mop his brow with his handkerchief and wring his hands.

He knew the house well, and everyone there. He flattered them to no end and even asked after our birds. He called grandfather ‘Lion Pasha’ and grief-stricken he would say, ‘Lion Pasha, I swear to God I do give a penny more. Business is slow. So many people have already left the country, and all their furniture is being sold in the street markets, furniture from the palace, too. Is all this really happening, Lion Pasha?’

On his second visit he left with the Indian harem set.

The set had all these strange objects: bizarre animals, dragons and figurines that looked nothing like people. Who knows who’d given grandfather such a thing? When I had nothing to do I would spend hours looking over the gravures, inventing all kinds of stories. Then there were the chandeliers, and the gilded sets, the vases, the mirrors, the folding screens and

table sets. And the diamonds. One by one, they all left the house, and every time something was removed grandmother was reminded of someone who was no longer with us and she’d tell that person’s story. But she thought of my aunt most of all. She died before I was born.

‘Fatma really loved this table set. We bought this garland for her, too, but she never wore it, not even once. She was saving it for her wedding,’ she said.

‘Suhpi Pasha gave father the folding screen. Poor Fatma would always cry, mother, but isn’t this one mine? And they teased her only so she would beg more. She was incredibly charming when she begged for something.’

Grandmother would tell me about her:

‘Fatma wanted everything to be hers. She was obsessed. She couldn’t bear to see anyone possess something beautiful. She used to wander the house checking on everything that was hers.’ But grandmother only said so much. She could never tell me more. The rest of my aunt’s story was obscure, dangling off the edge of a cliff. She left everything behind and then died the same day.

One night she left in one of the caiques and was gone. They came back with her body three days later. No one knew why she did it. She was going to get married that week.

Certain objects always reminded them of her. But they sold them all. Mother and father agonized over it and father protested, but in vain.

‘It’s going for next to nothing, he used to cry. We should at least sell these things ourselves. We’re practically giving them to the pawnbroker. How can they do this to the birds? The house is a forest without their cages.’

Mother agreed with him but neither of them had the courage to say anything to grandfather. It was like they were all in mourning. It wasn’t a matter of money or property.

For me especially, I had no concept of property at that age.

The others didn’t either. We were just sad to see everything go. It was like something else vanished with the physical object. I could see it on the faces of the older members of the

house. But the maid was the saddest of them all. She never stopped crying. ‘Ah my little lady,’ she’d wail, ‘They’re selling off your trousseau. You’ll have to get married on a dry wood.

You’ll have nothing left.’ She was always lamenting. She really loved me, but not because of who I was. She loved me because I looked like her. She was convinced I looked like my aunt and I think she even believed I was her. And eventually she made me believe it, too. She talked to me about her all the time, taught me the words she would say, and her gestures, and the way she held herself. ‘Not like that,’ she’d say. ‘You have it all wrong. Not at all like that! Look as if you’re thinking of something else,’ she went go on and on.

When I was a little older, she started to secretly dress me up in her clothes. Just imagine a young girl wandering about the house in a grown woman’s dress. I looked like a pheasant in all that satin and lace. The dresses were too long and baggy and the maid was always fussing with it. It was dreadful. Late at night, when everyone had gone to sleep, I would wander through this enormous house like a ghost dressed in a dead woman’s clothes, with a half-crazed old woman beside me, wandering from one room to the next, doing my best to imitate the way she walked, the way she moved.

When I was a little older, she even made me wear the wedding dress that my aunt had never worn. I was willing to do it at first because it seemed like a game. After she dressed me, the strangest look would fall over her face, a mixture of ecstasy and fear. She never kept her thoughts to herself: ‘You’re her. You’re definitely her. Fatma…’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘Why did you leave if you were going to come back all along?’ she said. ‘They’re all blind. They can’t see, they don’t know, but I knew on the night you were born…’

She had raised my aunt. She raised all the children who were born in the house. My mother, my uncle, me, my older brother, all of us. She would come and claim the new-born the day after it was born, and keep her tucked away, like the dogs in fairy-tales that run off with new-born babies. That’s why grandmother, mom, father, all of them,

begrudged her. Some complained, ‘that woman won’t even let me to see my own child. I haven’t enjoyed a single day of motherhood. She’ll bring me the child to breastfeed, but then she whisks her away.’ But they loved the maid all the same.

But her bond with my aunt was special. She had breastfed her, and they say that she even divorced her husband, who had found work somewhere else, just to stay with her.”

She looked up at Sabri, who realized she was cold and brought a shawl from the other room, and she continued speaking as if she had never stopped:

“Of course I didn’t really understand what was happening. I only knew that I was someone else. They even called me by her name. I was both a little girl and I was her.

And this other person permeated every moment of my life, changing my inner world, commanding me. She was with me every moment of the day. It was scary really, and like all scary things there was something compelling about it. I had heard so many stories about her life that I eventually became her.

My memory of her life was my own, and her death, too. When I crawled into bed at night I died with her, and when I heard the maid, Fatma would get up and we would get dressed together and wander through the house.

One night wandering through the house I saw grandfather watching us through a crack in the door. There he was peering out from behind the door, with a face I had never seen before.

It was a horrible experience. I fell sick that night.

Later I slept in my mother’s room, and father slept in mine.

Then everyone was angry with the maid. At one point they were even talking about sending her to the nursing home in Darulaceze. Of course that wasn’t really going to happen, and from then on they never talked about her and all her things were put away.

But then something else started happening: at night I imagined myself in my old room and I was my aunt.

I was both in my bed and somewhere else at the same time.

I was more there than anywhere else. When I closed my eyes

I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was living in another time. And I was afraid of grandfather. I was afraid of him and I pitied him, too. I never forgot that night and the way he peered at us through the crack in the door, and that look in his eye. It nearly brought me to despair.

It went on like this until the house burned down.

Everyone blamed the maid. But I knew that grandfather wanted it to happen. I knew that every night he watched us from a dark corner of the house. But I couldn’t tell mother or father. It was my only secret. Mother still doesn’t know about it. The house burned down a year after grandfather died.

He was a strange man. They say he was handsome in his youth, and he was handsome in his old age, too. But he was ill-tempered. And he never stopped washing. He changed his underwear two or three times a day; when no one was looking, he would bend over and sniff.

Grandfather never reconciled himself with death.

When the doctor told him he was sick and that he needed rest, he brought his cane down over the man’s head with a terrible ferocity and chased him down to the ground floor.

But he loved that doctor, the youngest man at the weekly musical evenings, a man who put up with all of grandfather’s idiosyncrasies. We ran when we heard the scuffle. There was grandfather leaning on the door in the outer room to the harem, struggling to stay on his feet, his face as white as ash, screaming, ‘get out, you silly fool!’ and mumbling over and over, ‘I’ve never been sick in my life.’ It was difficult getting him upstairs and we couldn’t get him into bed. He collapsed on the sofa in his clothes and waited, clutching his cane, ready to pounce on anyone who mentioned his condition.

An hour later the doctor sent over medicine. But he threw all the pills out the window. ‘Throw this one out, and the bottle, and that one, too. Now you can all leave.’ Medicine kept coming from the pharmacy, but it was all tossed out the window.

He was even worse the next day, and still not taking his medicine. And he wouldn’t see the doctor. The poor man came often, waiting in the guest room while grandfather stayed in

bed, his cane under the covers. ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to die. But I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of her,’ he wailed, staring into a corner of the room, his eyes wide-open. ‘Death is vile,’ he said. ‘People smell, they rot…’ Then he leapt to his feet. ‘But I’ve reeked all my life,’ he moaned. ‘I smell, don’t I? I reek. Open the windows. You have no idea. Only one person knows. Fatma knew it. I asked her the morning she died.

I asked her if I smelled and she said, ‘Yes, father, you do.’

Then he collapsed and forgot all about the doctor, his medicine, my aunt, everything, and thought only of his birds: ‘Has the ornithologist Sinan come yet?’ And as if Sinan was standing there before him, he said, ‘Come now, Sinan, my peacocks too? Look at me, I’m all alone. Sinan Bey, my daughter’s died and I’m all alone. Fatma died because she knew I reeked.

That’s why she died,’ he said before he slipped into gibberish, confusing my aunt with the fear of death and the names of all his birds. It was truly horrible.

We all cried as he thrashed about in bed. But grandmother didn’t cry. She waited beside him, the look of a young fiancée on her face, serene but tormented by a deep sadness.

Was she really tormented? Or was she just behaving like she felt she should? No one there could tell. Grandmother only ever said what she wanted to say. She just stood there at his bedside, leaning on his every word. She tried to raise his spirits:

‘How is that possible, Fahri Bey,’ she said. ‘You’re a pious, saintly man. How can you deny death? That’s a sin.

And taking medicine doesn’t mean you’re dying.’ But he wasn’t listening.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to. She’s there. I don’t want to see her. How can I look at her face?’

None of us really knew what he meant, but grandmother knew and she consoled him.

‘God is great, Fahri Bey. God is great,’ she said, holding his hand and mopping his brow. He was even worse on the third day. He could hardly move. He’d forgotten all about his cane, only making a faint gesture with his hand as if driving away a ghost. Only then were we able to give him his medicine.

Had he really come to peace with death? Did he really want to take his medicine? Could he still remember the past? Was he afraid of meeting that man?”

She reminisced relentlessly, her hands pressed against her temples, as if shrunken in her chair. Sabri thought she might suddenly disappear like the world she was describing. As she spoke he kept returning to that image which occurred to him not long ago: ‘the image of a woman outside a newly shattered mirror.’ That’s exactly what she was.

“The fire started all of a sudden, and in the middle of the night. It’s not possible to describe the way it engulfed that enormous house. When father woke up, the entire first floor was in flames. They wrapped me in a blanket and took me outside. There was a two-room pavilion on the hillside built many years ago for an old woman who was a good friend of my grandmother. They took us there. Everybody made it out. They all said it was a miracle. I kept thinking of my aunt.

She had lived in my old room. She didn’t make it out, and neither did the birds. Most of them burned or suffocated in the smoke. And there was our enormous house cat, the one grandfather called Sergeant, inspired by the cat in the fairy tales. He was also lost in the fire.”

The following extract from Tanpınar’s Summer Rain was translated by Alexander Dawe who lives and works in Istanbul.

Dawe received a PEN translation fund to translate short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. He has translated several contemporary Turkish novels and co-translated The Time Regulation Institute with Maureen Freely. They are currently working on a translation of collected short stories by Sait Faik Abasıyanık.

Many thanks to the Kalem Literary Agency represent Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and we thank them for their continual, kind permission to print extracts of the writers in their portfolio.

Growing Up

by Muge İplikçi when Yıldız was a little girl, big letters were always a problem for her. so were the big ideas written in big letters. from the very beginning, some people said that it was a disorder. when she was in elementary school—she must have been about five and a half years old at that time—her teacher asked her mother about this problem one monday morning. it was a gray, rainy morning, after they raised the flag and a nasty, grumpy anger could be felt in the voice of the old teacher, who was waiting to retire. the teacher asked, “does this child have family problems? what’s this reaction against big letters? and besides, why in the world did you send her to school at such an early age?” her mother was a widow; she blushed all the way to her ears at these remarks and couldn’t even get a word out sideways. then they were supposed to go to the optometrist suggested by the teacher. the optometrist said, “actually the problem is certainly psychological but still had better be looked into.” yıldız would grow up a bit. for the big

T

that the optometrist randomly selected, yıldız would say it was an acrobat walking on a rope between the poles of a circus tent, and the letters would go on like this. the optometrist would realize that there wasn’t anything wrong with her eyes. after a thorough examination, the optometrist had said that there was no physical problem except for a slight dryness in the pupils. the optometrist also commented, “I think the problem is psychological.” then, with a crackling in his voice, he had asked, “does this child have family problems?” to be on the safe side, the optometrist would then prescribe an ointment to prevent dryness in the pupils. yıldız grew up a bit more. that meant she had started to attach herself to the outside world.

an extract from her novel Harbinger

Photograph

by Mehmet Yaşin ‘See,’ he said, on his way out with all the indications.

Doubtful, were you loved or not?

How he had held your hand as you drove to the mountain, the image of that moment in your minds’ eye…

You still drive on in automatic gear, within time whose heart has stopped from love and you cannot go up and down the mountain path in search of him.

This poem has no other witness. He did not leave a photograph behind, one with you or alone.

No one saw him except this mirror, the one he gifted you saying ‘remember me when you look at it.’

translated by Fatma Müge Göçek

Wartime

by Mehmet Yaşin I used to talk within myself so that no one could hear me, and they all suspected wisdom in my silence!

Turkish was dangerous, must not be spoken, and Greek was absolutely forbidden...

My elders who wanted to save me, were waiting, each one trigger-ready before a machine-gun.

Anyway, everyone was then a willing soldier.

English remained right in the middle, a slender paper-knife for cutting schoolbooks, a tongue to be spoken at certain times especially with the Greeks!

I was often unsure in which language to shed tears, the life I lived wasn’t foreign, but one of translation – my mother-tongue one thing, my motherland another, and I, again, altogether different...

Even in those days of blackouts it became obvious I could never be the poet of any country, because I belonged to a minority. And ‘Freedom’s still a little word uneasy in any nation’s lexicon...

Then in my poems, the three languages got into a wild tangle : Neither the Turks nor the Greeks could hear my inner voice, nor the Others...

But I don’t blame them, it was wartime.

translated by Taner Baybars

This design is a collaboration between the author Ece Temelkuran and the artist Edwin Pickstone. The British Council has brought together artists and writers from the UK and Turkey to share ideas and inspirations across artforms, resulting in the creation of new work. These seven designs celebrate Turkey Market Focus at The London Book Fair in April 2013.

Born 1973 in Turkey, Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s bestknown journalists and political commentators. She graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Law. She has been a journalist since 1993 and writing political columns since 2000. Her articles have been published on international media outlets such as

Nawaat, New Left Review, Le Monde Diplomatique, Global Voices Advocacy, Al Akhbar, New Statesman and the Guardian.

Her journalism has won numerous awards including the Pen for Peace Award and Turkish Journalist of the Year.

She has published 12 books, with two currently available in English: Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide and Book of the Edge. Her first novel “Muz Sesleri” (Banana Sounds) has recently been published in Arabic and is presently being translated to be published in 2013 in seven countries including the Netherlands. She is now working on her latest novel “Düğümlere Üfleyen Kadınlar” (The Women Who Blow on the Knots).

Edwin Pickstone was born in Manchester in 1982. He became Artist in Residence and Typography Technician at The Glasgow School of Art in 2005, where he cares for the school’s collection of letterpress printing equipment. Focusing on the material nature of print Pickstone uses letterpress equipment in his own artwork as well as collaborating with artists and designers on a wide range of projects. His work spans academic, artistic and design worlds, with particular interest in the history of typography, print and the nature of the book. He has spoken and exhibited internationally.

www.arts.britishcouncil.org.tr

“We were looking at the city from the sea. At a sonnet written by nature and at a monstrosity created by man… At the skyscrapers, at those stone and concrete daggers shamelessly stabbing the heart of the city… At the bridges straddling the waterways like fetters shackling the city…

At the open spaces, dwindling in size by the hour, by the minute… At the woods, each tree, each shrub, each flower, being slowly gobbled up… At the people, their joy crushed, their compassion stretched to the limit, their tenderness vanishing, their hopes dashed, their sense of worth teetering…

A broken, pitiful tribe mistaking acquisition and exploitation for happiness…”

This design is a collaboration between the author Ahmet Ümit and the artist Edwin Pickstone. The British Council has brought together artists and writers from the UK and Turkey to share ideas and inspirations across artforms, resulting in the creation of new work. These seven designs celebrate Turkey Market Focus at The London Book Fair in April 2013.

Ahmet Ümit (Gaziantep, 1960) graduated from the School of Public Administration at Marmara University and then studied at the Moscow Social Science Academy until 1986. His earlier poems and short stories were published in various literary journals and his first collected poems Sokağın Zulası / The Cache of the

Street was published in 1989. Ümit was awarded the Ferit Oğuz Bayır “Thought and Art Award” for his collection of short stories entitled Çıplak Ayaklıydı Gece / The Night was Barefoot. He was credited as a renowned author and a leading figure of Turkish crime fiction on the back of the success of two further novels, entitled Beyoğlu Rapsodisi/Rhapsody of Beyoglu and Kavim / The Tribe and Patasana respectively. His novels have been adapted for the screen and used as plots for television drama series.

Edwin Pickstone was born in Manchester in 1982. He became Artist in Residence and Typography Technician at The Glasgow School of Art in 2005, where he cares for the school’s collection

of letterpress printing equipment. Focusing on the material nature of print Pickstone uses letterpress equipment in his own artwork as well as collaborating with artists and designers on a wide range of projects. His work spans academic, artistic and design worlds, with particular interest in the history of typography, print and the nature of the book. He has spoken and exhibited internationally.

www.arts.britishcouncil.org.tr

photo: Mihnea Popescu

WHAT is THERE REALITY vs. FICTION

by Benjamin Wood

As part of the British Council’s literature program and in collaboration with SALT, UK author Benjamin Wood took up a writer’s residency based in Istanbul, the setting of his next novel.

Here Wood reflects on the art of composition tracing the transformation of a part of the city as experienced in the real world to the page: from the thing itself to its representation.

More reality: The reality: It is an unassuming second-hand furniture shop in Örtaköy with a red street sign on its flank partly obscured by guttering, and on the narrow pavement outside there are items for sale: two beige chairs and another in rosewood, two small side-tables, a child’s keyboard and a strange pink clock.

Three knee-height iron bollards (two of which are slightly crooked) demarcate the dog-messed kerb from the grey cobbles of the road. The building is multi-coloured: at street level the walls are ochre, but the first floor is burgundy, and the upper storeys are wild salmon pink. The shop-front reveals a landscape painting of boats in a quiet harbour, ceramic dishes, glass goblets. It is overhung by a bulk of rendered bricks and small white windows, forming the apartments upstairs.

Across the road, there is another second-hand store offering an antique chair, an ironing board, a gilded Ottoman table, four potato sacks of what look like baubles, scrolled-up rugs, statuettes. This off-magnolia building is lower, flatter than the others; its yellow awning is broken and an oval sign on its corner reads, in green-and-white capitals: ESKİCİ EVAŞYASI ALINIR SATILIR. The taller building beside it has a long silver flue like a periscope and the wing of it, facing you, is scorched with the sooty exhaust of a neighbour’s chimney vent. You count six satellite dishes on the nearby apartments and can just about make out the taut wires of the Bosphorous Bridge above the outlying rooftops, like a ruled pencil line across the sky. A man in a black leather jacket carries a tray of empty çay glasses to some place you can only guess at. Another man in a striped jumper browses a table of trinkets. The lampposts are a generic battleship grey and a generic streetlamp shape.

photo: Martin Hinze

Now the fiction: This is the shop your made-up protagonist is going to work in and live above. You don’t quite know who this person is yet, because you are still working him out on the page, but you think he has been in this neighbourhood for some time. Except, when you describe the furniture shop and the surrounding streets, you will leave out most of what is there. The other buildings and their sooty scars will fail to be significant. The man with his çay glasses will be lifted out.

Those potato sacks: gone from the picture. The child’s keyboard: an extraneous detail. That landscape painting of the boats, those bollards? All of them will go. But you will keep the multi-coloured paintwork to lend the setting some curiosity, and retain the shadow of the bridge’s cables to create a gloomy, poetic atmosphere.

You will reinvent this reality, heighten it, stylise it, make it suit your purposes. Executive decisions about composition will have to be made. What is relevant for your characters to observe in this scene?

How much of what is there is necessary to report? Details and description are important, yes, but not at the expense of forward momentum. The prose-flow cannot lag and nor can the drama. Still, you must respect the truth, because authenticity is crucial. So, you make judicious cuts as you type. Control what is there. Make this true world fit the false one you are creating, but do not contrive it, do not force it. A sense of reality should permeate the scene, so that when the readers eventually see this little shop in their mind’s eye they can believe it is a real place. Even if you know it cannot be, because you have altered its image.

This is the methodology that fiction requires. Appropriation. Curation. Slanting and shading. You must take what is there and translate it into something replete with narrative, plot, dramatic purpose and tension; to truncate the fullness of the real world like a hulk of döner meat, or sometimes to explode it like a telescope lens. The used furniture shop of your story world might resemble the real one in the picture, but it is not the same thing. It is a stylised rendition of it, made new under the studio lights of narrative. Your job is to make what is not there plausible as fact, recognisable as truth, not in the disingenuous way a worthless rock is polished and sold as some precious stone, but in the way that the deepest aquaria can appear to give a view into the ocean.

This sensitivity is particularly important when you are writing about Istanbul, a city that doesn’t belong to you, even when you feel, after six weeks wandering its streets and getting to know its people and its ways, that part of you belongs in it. Even then, you can only take what is there and do your best to represent it honestly, with good intentions, and hope that your readers are convinced it is something actual. Your duty to what is there remains as vital as your duty to what isn’t.

Take A Walk on

Literati Triumvirate Sait Faik, Orhan Veli and Mücap Ofluoğlu

the

Wild Side

In their latest and yet to be published in English book on Beyoglu and Galata, Brendan and John Freely bring back to life Istanbul’s backstreet haunts of latterday literati, Kanto singers, murderers, streetwalkers, the odd Italian national hero and, of course, French teachers in Beyoğlu’s Galatasaray area of the 1900s.

(Enquiries from publishers welcomed!)

The following text is comprised of two extracts and is printed with the kind permission of the authors.

by Brendan and John Freely

Eski Çiçekkci Street

Nevidzade

When Giuseppe Garibaldi lived here as a lodger with the French teacher Madame Sauvagio during his first stay in Istanbul in the 1830’s, it was still a street of genteel and respectable poverty on what would then have been the fringe of the developed part of Pera. However, after the Crimean War, when the newly established Beyoğlu Municipality hired British policemen to clean up Galata, the displaced prostitutes, pimps and brothel owners moved here, and remained until about the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Still remembered from this period is a koltuk meyhane on the corner of Eski Çiçekçi and Yeni Çarşı Caddesi called Çiçek, a hangout for streetwalkers and their pimps run by one Stelios, known as the Doctor. This establishment was closed down in about 1900 when the Doctor was deported after being investigated for murder.

Though murders seem to have been fairly common on this street at that time, one murder in particular, the ‘Çiçekçi Sk. Murder’, has remained a part of Beyoğlu folklore for over a hundred years. There are, of course, several versions of the story, but the gist of it seems to be as follows.

A ‘pretty’ 17 year-old boy named Yanni and his partner, a kayikçi named Pericles with whom he shared a room, went to one of the brothels on the street. Yanni was entertained by a prostitute twice his age named Violeta (better known on the street as Despoina the Mermaid), and during the course of the night they fell passionately in love with each other. It was not until three months later, however, when they began telling each other their life stories, that they discovered they were in fact brother and sister (Violeta having left their family home in Arnavutköy in shame either before Yanni was born or when he was still an infant). Violeta also realized that Yanni’s ‘friend’ Pericles had been the cause of her shame and her descent into prostitution. So one night Yanni and Violeta got Pericles drunk, and after he passed out they strangled him with his own cummerbund. After a two year investigation, Yanni was charged with the murder and sentenced to seven years in prison. Violeta’s name was not even mentioned during the trial.

Hakkı Sabacanalı informs us that from about 1910 until the mid 1920’s, the street was home to a number of actors, variety artists, Kanto singers and composers and musicians, the best known of these being the Kanto singer Şamran Hanım. Though most of the brothels were gone by this time, there were still a number of Randevu Evi, or houses of assignation, an institution in Beyoğlu throughout the nineteenth and part of the twentieth centuries, where rooms could be rented in which to conduct illicit affairs.

In the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, when the street had a mixed population of poor Italians, Greeks, Russians and Turks, it continued to have an unsavory reputation. Even though it was the quickest route between Yeni Çarşı Caddesi and Istıklal Caddesi, most people preferred to take the longer and steeper Nur-i Ziya Sk., because the youths of Eski Çiçekçi were rumored to threaten passersby with razors and relieve them of their wallets and watches. During this period a gang operating from this street used to buy up all of the cinema and theater tickets in Beyoğlu and then scalp them. Former residents remember a back door of St. Anthony’s church through which the priests would distribute food to the poorest families and take delivery of the grapes from which they made their own Communion wine.

Some of the better remembered characters of this time were Madame Shura, the widow of a Tsarist general, who manufactured cosmetics at home and sold them from door to door in wealthier neighborhoods, Arap Zehra and her husband Selahattin, who used to share their wine with the rooster who lived with them (the neighbors could always tell when the rooster was drunk from the way it crowed), and the accordionist Takis Gennarini, who began by playing for coins on the avenue, moved up to a gig at a classy gazino, and later gave live performances with his musical group on Radio Istanbul.

Today Eski Çiçekçi Sk. is home to a school for those who wish to become professional DJs, a profession much in demand in Beyoğlu now.

In the 1940’s two legendary meyhanes opened on Nevidzade street.

The first of these, on the left near the corner of Kameriye Sk., was Lambo’s, a hangout for literary figures such as Orhan Veli, Sait Faik, Mina Urgan, Peyami Safa and Cahit Irgat (Mücap Ofluoğlu describes it as ‘a laboratory in which a generation of bohemian artists was schooled.’) It was a tiny place (Ilhan Berk describes it as ‘perhaps the smallest meyhane in the world; no bigger than a tram car’), with room for only two people to sit on stools by the window, with the rest of the customers having to lean against the zinc counter.

Lambo’s offered little in the way of food, and the customers generally drank Marmara wine.

Lambo himself is described as a well-mannered, refined and educated man, an ethnic Greek from Russia who had been studying medicine in Moscow when he and his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution. Many have spoken of the famous notebook in which he recorded his customers’ debts. Mücap Ofluoğlu recalls that once, when he asked that his bill be recorded in this notebook, Lambo turned to him and said, ‘Mücap Bey, please don’t place too heavy a load on these fragile shoulders.’ There is a legend that this notebook was seized by the police when they were investigating a suspected communist plot, and that ever since then people have been searching for it as a memorial to an era of Turkish literature and art. The site of his meyhane was occupied for many years by a small grocery store (the Şen Bufe), and recently a café-bar called Lambo (different in every sense from the original, quite large, occupying several floors, and catering to young urban professionals) opened in its place.

A little further along was Lefter’s meyhane, also a favorite hangout for self-destructive writers, which was known for the quality and variety of its mezes, and where Lefter’s brother Panayoti would play his laterna. This meyhane closed in 1964 when Lefter and his brother moved to Athens. Lefter’s daughter Zöe, now a physics professor in Athens, tells the story of a certain Thanassi who used to annoy her father by hanging out in the kitchen and nibbling at dishes before they were served. One day, to teach Thanasi a lesson, Lefter caught and killed a rat and asked the chef to prepare it in the most attractive possible manner. When it was ready, the kitchen staff was instructed to tell Thanassi that he was under no circumstances to taste it. Of course Thanassi couldn’t resist, and ate the whole thing. Then, when he was told what he’d eaten he fainted. They dressed him in a shroud and lay him out on a table surrounded by candles, and when he came to he thought he was at his own funeral.

Through the 1980’s, as more meyhanes began to open on the street, it began to gain popularity( though it still had a decaying air, and was also the site of several rooming houses for young men who had come the city seeking work), and by the mid 1990’s had become ‘the meyhane street’. At about this time a small placed called the Mini Meyhane (in which the denizens of the old Lambo’s may have felt at home) opened at the far end of the street. An inexpensive place offering little in the way of food and with only a few low stools, it soon became popular with students. This popularity led to it becoming a ‘concept’, and dozens of similar places began opening on Nevizade and surrounding streets, gradually becoming larger, occupying multiple floors, and more expensive, with more elaborate menus.

In the late 1990’s the owners of establishments on Nevizade Sk. and Kameriye Sk. formed an association, hiring security guards to keep out the rif-raf (among them the very types who had made these meyhanes famous in the first place) and redecorated their establishments and the street itself to attract a more well-heeled clientele.

The meyhanes here gradually became less distinguishable from each other, and the quality of the food and the service declined. At the beginning of 2012 the association announced that, with the support of the municipality, the street and its establishments would be refurbished and redesigned to attract package tourism. Some fear that this will rob the street of its charm and character, while others feel that it has no charm or character left to lose.

Maryam Ĺžahinyan & Foto Galatasary

The Foto Galatasaray project is based on the re-visualization of the complete professional archive of Maryam Şahinyan (Sivas, 1911 – İstanbul, 1996), who worked as a photographer at her modest studio in Galatasaray, Beyoğlu uninterruptedly from 1935 until 1985. The archive is a unique inventory of the demographic transformations occurring on the socio-cultural map of İstanbul after the declaration of the Republic and the historical period it witnessed; it is also a chronological record of a female İstanbulite studio photographer’s professional career.

Consisting entirely of black-and-white and glass negatives, the physical archive of Foto Galatasaray is a rare surviving example of the classical photography studios of İstanbul’s recent past. Changing hands after Şahinyan left the studio in 1985, the archive was transferred to a storehouse belonging to Yetvart Tomasyan, owner of Aras Publishing. Twenty-five years later, approximately 200,000 negatives in the archive were, over the course of two years, sorted, cleaned, digitized, digitally restored, categorized and protected by a team under the direction of artist/researcher Tayfun Serttaş.

Who was Maryam Şahinyan?

By Tayfun Serttaş

Foto Galatasaray was never as visible as some of the elite photography studios, famous since the 19th century, like Phebus, Andriomenos or Sabah. Nonetheless, it played an important role in representing the middle and lower classes that ensured the continuity of the studio. Şahinyan was a devout Armenian woman, and her identity created a closely-knit circle that determined the sociological basis of Foto Galatasaray’s clientele, setting it apart from İstanbul’s other studios.

Maryam Şahinyan was born in 1911 at Şahinyan Konağı (Camlı Köşk), one of the most impressive civil structures in Sivas. Her grandfather, Agop Şahinyan Paşa, represented Sivas in the first Ottoman Parliament (Meclis-i Mebusan), established in 1877. Born with the social privilege inherent to a grandchild of a member of parliament, Şahinyan’s life took an unexpected turn when, as a child, she witnessed the historical events of 1915. Her family left behind the considerable real estate it owned in the region, including nearly 30 villages, five flour mills and Şahinyan Konağı, which was located in Sivas’ city center.

Relocating to İstanbul via Samsun, the Şahinyans adjusted to the circumstances brought about by the Republican era, resettling in a modest apartment in Harbiye.

In 1933, Maryam’s father, Mihran Şahinyan, became a partner at the Foto Galatasaray studio in Beyoğlu - at the time managed by two Yugoslavian brothers. Typical to bourgeois children of the Imperial era, photography had been a hobby for Mihran growing up. Now, his childhood pastime would determine his family’s future, as Mihran worked at the studio to support them. At the time of Maryam’s mother, Dikranuhi Şahinyan’s, sudden death in 1936, the family’s limited finances were strained. While her brothers continued to pursue their educations, after completing primary studies at Esayan Armenian School, Maryam dropped out of Lycée Français Privé SaintePulchérie during middle school to help her father at the studio. Learning the intricacies of studio photography over a couple of years, the young woman, in contrast to her siblings, developed a passion for her father’s work. By 1937, she decided to shoulder the financial burden of the family and manage the studio independently. As a woman studio photographer, Maryam was preferred by many female clients.

With the exception of four passport photos, no photographs exist of Şahinyan herself, who throughout life remained behind the camera, scrupulously taking hundreds of thousands of photographs, retouching them, and painstakingly numbering and dating each film she developed. Spanning half a century, her work impartially traces the ethnic, social, cultural, religious and economic transformations taking place at the center of the city. When she retired from the studio in 1985, Şahinyan left behind a unique visual archive made up of approximately 200,000 images. She passed away at her home on Hanımefendi Sokak in Şişli in 1996 and is buried in Şişli Armenian Cemetery.

“The Archive Cannot Wait” (on SALT’s involvement with Foto Galatasaray)

By Vasif Kortun Institutions tend to open archives only when the pertinent issues they could divulge have lost vitality and their potential transformative energy. Nostalgia is a victor mourning for the vanquished, and those who offer archival material as nostalgia acquire immense cultural prestige. But, it is not merely enough to watch, or be a witness to a moment, a person, or a time disappearing. In a particularly biting scene in “Sweet Movie” the director Dusan Makveyev inserts abruptly a scene of documentary footage taken by the Nazis in 1943. It is of the exhumation of bodies in the Katyn Forest; the 10,000 Polish officers massacred in 1939 by Soviet soldiers, an event blamed on the Nazis. The footage ends with a text: “Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never.” These words were written on February 11, 1944 to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign minister, by Sir Owen O’Malley, British Ambassador to Poland.

Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided never to speak of this mass murder. But, the corpse is a protagonist, and history does not hold much meaning unless its story is also recast to the future. It is often the Institution’s very own agenda, the way it broadcasts, the way it performs the archive that we watch so attentively. Many a good institution along with the rise of an online Cultural Commons are putting a dent into what used to be this smooth, unquestioned space occupied by self-appointed gate-keepers.

In Istanbul, the Maryam Şahinyan Archive had been asleep, waiting to be surfaced and made meaning of for nearly a quarter of a century under the custodianship of Yetvart Tomasyan who rescued hundreds of boxes of photographs from being dumped in the alleyway garbage in front of Şahinyan’s studio Foto Galatasaray. This opening tale is an all too common story of a time when liquidation by financialization was not yet an option. Nostalgia-tourism had not yet hit its high-time in auctions, supported by hordes of dealers and archive peddlers who could see no harm tearing whole archives apart with the knowledge that divestiture produces a more profitable competitive market. Dealers also know that it is easier to sell under the radar to many individuals and many places rather than selling a whole archive to a major institutional caretaker. Fortunately, the Maryam Şahinyan Archive was in good hands and it remained complete. Here is a moment when patrimony does matter and excels as a good thing!

The next phase of the story sees the archive move on to Tayfun Serttaş, an artist, activist and a researcher. Serttaş had proven more than his worth with his meticulous research and publication project on the photographer Osep Minasoğlu [Stüdyo Osep] even if the practice and positioning of Maryam Şahinyan and Osep were worlds apart.

Little was known about Şahinyan, she looked like a diligent, no frills studio photographer with a methodological use of props and sets, poses and gestures that she employed with the rigor and precision of a conceptual artist. It was not possible to extract her presence from anecdotes, memories, or photographs. There were no stories to be retold, no sharp edges to be unearthed. She was a loner, who worked, and lived a quiet life in her own way. She was in essence indiscernible.

Maryam Şahinyan’s Foto Galatasaray was not as well known as other studios such as Foto Sabah or Foto Süreyya not to mention their 19th Century predecessors like Sebah et Joallier or Abdullah frères. Other than four ID card photographs of herself, Şahinyan

was invisible, hidden behind a camera for a good fifty years processing over 200,000 images during this time. Her position appears neutral and yet how will the archive speak to the ethnic, social and economic transformation of her subjects? How will it tell the story of the shift from the commemorative, painterly, democratic group portrait to the un-ordained passport photograph? How did her customer base shift? Can the archive be read as a map as it traces certain voids of communities such as those that are known to have occurred with the introduction of the property tax law in 1942 aimed at obliterating business that was not ethnically Turkish; the formation of the State of Israel in 1948; the government provocation triggering the lynches and lootings of 6 - 7 September, 1955; the military intervention in North Cyprus in 1974; or the opposite - a surplus of peoples from the unwavering exodus that moved from Anatolia into Istanbul? In the future, will dancers and performance artists produce work that mimics the body language and postures of the subjects Şahinyan shot? Will designers learn from the provincial creativity of the dresses and suits worn by her sitters? Will friends and kin or even the subjects themselves recognize themselves in their first communion, graduation or wedding? Will the onlookers be left speechless, angry, humiliated, joyful, or humored?

Early on in this process, Serttaş approached SALT to participate in the research of the archive and act as the partner institution for the development of the project. Initially and instinctively, SALT entrusted Serttas with the composition of the archive and positioned itself only as a support structure, allowing the process to unfold and pursue its own natural course without an overly controlling position taking hold. SALT did not want to “own” the archive, far from it, the archive should neither be propertied nor completed. In fact, for all its worth, the only true value of an archive lies is in its future use. Nothing more, nothing less. In effect all those involved wanted to learn the archive, learn from the archive and for the archive to learn itself again. SALT chose to participate in a more speculative, open-ended, gay, passionate and post-academic research that was at the same time deadly serious and resolute.

There are several roles that Serttaş as the interlocutor took on: the scientific restorer who cleaned, stabilized, digitized and digitally restored with his assistants many thousands of images for nearly two years; a researcher of the life and times of Maryam Şahinyan; an artist who has for the exhibition inventoried novel scenes of looking at the images and invented new narratives; and an activist who has mobilized the power of these images to tell a devastating tale of the lost communities of Istanbul.

After the publication of this book, and the realization of the Maryam Şahinyan Archive exhibition, the protagonists will not solely remain Maryam Şahinyan, Tayfun Serttaş or SALT, and the archive will not solely remain in the care of fact-obsessed academics. Instead, it will be opened online to the tagging and identifying of the photographed subjects by relatives and acquantainces, researchers and users. *Kortun, Vasıf “FOTO GALATASARAY Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan”, Tayfun Serttaş (ed.), Aras Yayıncılık, Istanbul, November 2011, p. 12-14

By Tayfun Serttaş Aras Publishing SALT

tayfunserttas.com arasyayincilik.com saltonline.org

at 0 us 53 sit L vi and st

turkey Books from i.B.tauris

OttOmania The Romantics and the Myth of the Islamic Orient

Sherbet and Spice The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts

a ShOrt hiStOry Of the byzantine empire NeW

Roderick Cavaliero

Mary Isin

192 pages 216 x 134mm september 2013

272 pages 228 x 155mm available 9781780764825 paperback £12.99

336 pages 228 x 155mm available 9781848858985 hardback £20.00

SOuth frOm epheSuS Travels through Aegean Turkey

the yOung atatürk NeW From Ottoman Soldier to Statesman of Turkey

Brian Sewell 288 pages 216 x 134mm available 9781780761206 paperback £11.99

George W. Gawrych 288 pages 228 x 155mm april 2013 9781780763224 hardback £25.00

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Dionysios Stathakopoulos 9781780761947 paperback £12.99

the Lycian ShOre A Turkish Odyssey Freya Stark 240 pages 198 x 126mm available 9781848853126 paperback £9.99

?

Life

Inbetween

by Martin Hinze

www.thegreatpicnic.com

Every Reader Will One Day Experience

BOOKSTORE

Taksim Square Bookshop Bosphorus University North Campus Bookshop Bosphorus University South Campus Bookshop Koc University Campus Bookshop www.pandora.com.tr To Be Continued ...

EVEN BL ANK NOTEBOOKS M AY BE FILLED WITH IDEAS.

Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations

The RCAC Library

Founded in 2005, the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC), is an international cultural institution of Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. The Center supports research on Turkey’s history, art history, archaeology and other related disciplines from prehistory to the end of the Ottoman Empire as well as developing and promoting cultural heritage management and museum studies.

The RCAC library, a division of Koç University’s Suna Kıraç Library, collects publications, DVDs, CD-ROMs, videos and audio cassettes and houses an archive of documents, photographs, slides and digital documents that are all available to researchers. The collection is mostly comprised of publications that cover the history, art, architecture and archaeology of the Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman past as well as all Anatolian civilizations.

Among the primary activities of the Center are granting of fellowships to researchers specializing in Turkey’s cultural heritage, providing library services, organizing public meetings such as symposia, conferences and workshops, hosting exhibitions and publishing scholarly works related to Anatolian civilizations.

The Center grants fellowships to approximately twenty five researchers each year, supporting the work of doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars from Turkey and other countries. In addition to an annual symposium, the Center organizes the triennial International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium with the support of the Vehbi Koç Foundation. Moreover, the RCAC publishes books in collaboration with the Koç University Press to produce permanent records of symposia and exhibitions. “Bathing Culture of Anatolian Civilizations: Architecture, History and Imagination” and “Perceptions of the Past in The Turkish Republic” are among the books published by the Center.

Special Collections Held by the RCAC Library

The RCAC consists of three connected buildings which houses a gallery where exhibitions related to the Center’s fields of study take place. In 2012, the Center hosted exhibitions entitled “Waters for a Capital, The Water Supply Systems of Byzantine Istanbul/Constantinople: New Approaches and Methodologies” and “What Josephine Saw, 20th Century Photographic Visions of Rural Anatolia”. Currently, the exhibition on display “(In) Site Sagalassos, The Archaeology of Excavation Photography” draws the attention of archaeology and art enthusiasts.

The Sir Steven Runciman Collection is comprised of approximately 3,000 publications in disciplines such as art, archaeology and architecture and covers the Seljuk, Byzantine and Ottoman periods; The Esin Atıl Collection is comprised of 2,000 books, journals and 18,000 slides relating to Islamic art history and history; The Josephine Powell Collection is comprised of over 33,000 field notes, slides, negatives, photographs and books on Anatolian villages and the lives and cultures of nomads; The Muhibbe Darga Collection of books on the history of the Hittites, the Ömer Diler Collection of books on Islamic numismatics and the Prof. Slobodan Ćurčić Collection of books on medieval Balkan art history and history are also available to researchers studyingthese fields.

Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations İstiklal Caddesi No:181 Merkez Han 34433 Be yoğlu Istanbul, Turkey

T: +90 (0)212 393 6000 F: +90 (0)212 245 1761 E: rcac_info@ku.edu.tr www.rcac.ku.edu.tr

A love letter to Adahan It was around 2pm on a sunny end-of-august day when I landed at the Ataturk International Airport. After an a lready hectic summer, it seemed as if this would be just the beginning. As the inauguration of the first Istanbul Design Biennial was getting closer, each day became invaluable, and the best way to deal with the vast complexity of it all was to be on the field, alongside the production team.

The taxi drove hastily for a while until we reached an instance of the ubiquitous Istanbul traffic jam. Phone ringing, meetings postponed, chaos and heat... We’re in for a great ride... But as we’re nearing more familiar territory, and the Galata Tower started peaking out from the densely urbanized hills which characterize Beyoglu.

I was reaching what would become my home for the next couple of months.

Upon entering the Adahan, I was warmly greeted by Lale, who has been managing the transformation of the building with her husband, from the 1874 grand apartment building of the famous Jewish trader family of Cammondo, to the charmingly comfortable 40 quarter hotel, providing a peaceful oasis in the middle of one of the most vivid areas of Istanbul, between Asmali, Galata, and Istiklal. She gave me a quick tour of the building which they had recently renovated by themselves with strong consideration for the context and their guests.

The concept that was guiding this transformation became apparent with each section of the hotel we visited. While the presentation aims to be almost mute and humble, it is based on an extraordinary attention to detail. Wood is the predominant element in Adahan, with custom designed and built furniture in airy rooms with rustic floors and high ceilings. Ecologically sound and traditional materials have been used throughout and the building has been respected with minimal interventions to the structure and original divisions.

One of my favorite memories from istanbul was also my morning routine of having breakfast on the rooftop restaurant every morning... Coffee, eggs, orange juice and poacha, while saying good morning to the rolling hills of Istanbul and the minarets of Sultanahmet -- what better way to start the day. The restaurant was a favorite place of mine also for group meetings, writing, or simply just gazing and thinking.

So this is just a note to say thank you, for the warmth of your hotel, the friendliness and respectfulness of your staff and for so personally taking care of me as i’m sure you do with all your guests, going above and beyond to make me feel part of your family. In this way Adahan was directly responsible for the quality of the exhibition, and will remain my home in Istanbul whenever I return.

With my best regards, Elian Stefa

www.adahanistanbul.com

Elian Stefa visited Istanbul as the Associate Curator and General Co-ordinator of Adhocracy in the first Istanbul Design Biennial 2012. Adhocracy explored the impact of digital networks and open-source thinking on the design world.

Dear Istanbul,

Yours sincerely, myphilosofia.com

For those of you who prefer the privacy, independence, authenticity and designer home feel that are characteristic of the best “apart hotels” homage.istanbul will not disappoint.

Tucked away on a quiet street (yet literally only 5 minutes from the ever pulsating, vibrant carnival of life that is Istiklal Caddesi) the newly renovated 1930s building is perfectly situated providing both easy-access and escape from the non-stop parading and night life of Beyoğlu. The neighbourhood of “Aynalı Çeşme” which means, “the Water Fountain with a Mirror” is really the heart of the original “Pera” and has thus always been the home of international travellers and merchants. In the immediate vicinity you will find Armenian and German churches as well as an Emin mosque and a French hospital that tell the colourful story of this neighbourhood’s past.

Need a place to Stay in Istanbul?

The building has been lovingly restored by reputed conservation architect Prof. Dr. Çigdem Eren (Istanbul Technical University) and complemented with contemporary interior design by Serhan Gurkan of GMG Inex and Kay Ngee Tan Architect. Borrowing from distinctly Ottoman era and modern design aesthetics all the flats are designed for both style and comfort and not only come equipped with all mod-cons but there are also concierge services available to boot.

On top of all this, homage.istanbul was created by the same team behind the now almost legendary, ÇokÇok Thai restaurant located nearby, so table booking will be guaranteed when required.

www.homageistanbul.com

Imagining The Museum of Innocence

In partnership with the British Council, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence will have it’s very first international exhibition at the Design Museum in London between March and July this year.

the story o last ottoma The idea for my museum came to me when I met His Imperial Highness Prince Ali Vâsib for the first time in 1982 at a family reunion in Istanbul. The prince, who was Sultan Murad V’s great-grandson, would have been sitting on the throne at that time had the sultanate still existed and the Ottoman Dynasty been in power. But this octogenarian had just obtained leave to return to Turkey as a tourist after being forced to leave in 1924 following the collapse of the Ottoman state and the foundation of the Turkish Republic, and that too on a foreign passport. He cared neither for the throne nor for political power; he wished only to be able to remain permanently in the country that his ancestors had ruled for more than six centuries. He lived in Alexandria, spending his summers in Portugal, where he had made friends and killed time with the dethroned and retired kings and princes of Europe and the Middle East.

(He was able to tell me why the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, had separated from his first wife, Fawzia.) His memoirs, published posthumously in 2004 as Memoirs of a Prince: What I Saw and Heard at Home and in Exile and edited by his son Osman Selaheddin Osmanoglu, reveal that the prince’s

constant worry in life was indigence. For many years he made a living by working as a ticket taker and then as director of the Antoniadis Palace and Museum in Alexandria.

“I was charged with the administration and cleaning of the palace, and with the conservation of its objects. The silverware, crystal, and furniture were my responsibility,” he proudly recounts. I had written about one of the last Ottoman princes in The Black Book; the topic was of interest. My curiosity at the family table prompted the elderly prince to share some stories. Among them was King Farouk’s kleptomania. During a visit to the Antoniadis Palace and Museum, Farouk had, unbeknownst to anyone, opened a cabinet and taken away an antique plate he’d set his sights on for his own palace in Cairo. The prince spoke of the time before the royal family left Istanbul, when he had lived in Ihlamur Palace. After graduating from Galatasaray High School, he had attended the military academy in Harbiye where Atatürk had also studied.

These were the places where I had spent my own childhood, forty or so years after his. In my mind’s eye, I could see the dilapidated palaces and mansions and the old streets of Nisantası where I’d grown up and a prince taking math lessons.

Text: Translation: Photography:

Orhan Pamuk (from The Innocence of Objects Abrams, New York) Ekin Oklap Innocence Foundation and Refik Anadol

of the man prince

The prince was looking for a job that would provide him with an income and enable him to settle down in Turkey permanently after a fifty-year exile; but, he complained, nobody seemed willing to help. We realized that the main reason for this was that the Turkish secret services wanted to keep the man who could have been the last Ottoman sultan from becoming a political symbol. We all knew that the aged prince had no such ambitions, so someone at the table suggested that Ali Vâsib Efendi might find employment as a museum guide at Ihlamur Palace, where he had spent so much time as a child. He was very familiar with life at the palace and knew how to manage a museum; would this not be an ideal solution to his problems?

Upon this suggestion, the prince and all those at the table began to imagine, in complete seriousness and without a trace of irony, how Ali Vâsib Efendi might show visitors around the rooms where he had rested and studied as a child.

I remember that I later built on these imaginings with the zeal of a young novelist looking for new perspectives: “And here, sirs,” the prince would say in his usual and inordinately polite manner, “is where I sat seventy years ago studying math-

ematics with my aide-de-camp!” He would walk away from the ticket-toting crowd, step over the line that visitors are not allowed to cross—marked by those old-style velvet cords that hang between brass stands, just like in the penthouse of our museum—and sit once again at the desk he used in his youth.

With the same pencil, rulers, eraser, and books, he’d reenact how he had studied in those days, and from his seat he would call to the museumgoers: “Esteemed guests, this is how I used to study mathematics.” With this in mind, I first imagined the joy of being the guide to a museum and one of its artifacts at the same time, just like Kemal—and the thrill of explaining to visitors a life, with all its paraphernalia, many years after it was lived. This was the very first seed of the Museum of Innocence, both as a novel—whose protagonist, Kemal, experienced this joy—and a place. I conceived of the novel and the museum simultaneously from the very beginning.

Turkey Market Focus at The London Book Fair British Council Cultural Programme: Trading Ideas and Opportunities

This month sees the most comprehensive ever celebration of literature from Turkey in the UK. Turkey is the Market Focus country at The London Book Fair, one of the global publishing industry’s most important annual events and the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels.

The British Council works in partnership with The London Book Fair to curate and deliver a Cultural Programme for the Market Focus collaborating with partners and reaching audiences across both countries.

Words and literature create opportunities for dialogue, for breaking down barriers and exploring difficult and controversial issues. Literature provides unique access to other cultures: their identity, heritage and the challenges they face. Most of Turkey’s great contemporary writers are unknown in the English-speaking world. Our Cultural Programme will open doors, create connections and promote greater understanding between Turkey and the UK.

The Story So Far Writer exchanges between the UK and Turkey began over a year ago.

Writers came together to meet their international counterparts and readers at festivals including Hay-on-Wye and Istanbul Tanpınar Literature Festival; at universities in Konya, Istanbul and Norwich; and via digital platforms to assist with English-language learning. Participating writers included: Guy Bass, Ned Beauman, Louis de Bernieres, Maggie Gee, Çiler İlhan, Anjali Joseph, Asli E Perker, Çiğdem Y Mirol, Ian Rankin, Elif Shafak, Ece Temekulran and Evie Wyld.

Sema Kaygusuz and Bejan Matur took part in residencies at Writers’ Centre Norwich and Benjamin Wood at SALT Galata, Istanbul. The residencies created opportunities for writers to be inspired by and respond to each other’s countries and build connections with the local literature and education sectors.

Edinburgh World Writers Conference came to Yaşar University in Izmir featuring Inci Aral, Şebnem İşigüzel, Panos Karnezis Denise Mina, Murat Uyurkulak. The writers from Turkey and the UK contributed to the global conversation on writing and its relationship to contemporary life.

During Istanbul TUYAP Book Fair, we organised a programme for commissioning editors from the UK and English PEN to meet with publishers and writers from Turkey to better understand each country’s publishing industry and establish business connections ahead of The London Book Fair.

In partnership with the British Centre for Literary Translation, we launched a new prize for young translators of Turkish literature into English to identify promising literary translators at the start of their careers and provide the support for them to launch themselves in the profession. Winners John Angliss in Prose and Derick Mattern in

Poetry were selected by a panel of experts and were announced at the end of a skills development day led by translation experts and publishing professionals, including Maureen Freely and Murat Belge. The winners are receiving tailored mentoring from distinguished literary translators Maureen Freely and Sasha Dugdale.

We are working with Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence to bring the Museum’s very first international exhibition to the Design Museum in London. The cabinet will be on display between March and July.

We brought together writers and designers from the UK and Turkey to share ideas and inspirations across art forms and understand each other’s practices resulting in the creation of new art work. Quotes from Kamila Shamsie, Hakan Günday, Gillian Slovo and Ahmet Ümit inspired designers Mehmet Gözetlik, Edwin Pickstone and Geray Gencer in the creation of seven designs, celebrating Turkey Market Focus at The London Book Fair.

The Cultural Programme culminates this month at The London Book Fair. We’re bringing a delegation of 20 writers from Turkey to the UK to participate in a series of high-profile events and discussions across London and the rest of the UK. The programme will showcase the diversity and quality of contemporary literature from Turkey and will give UK audiences and publishers a rare opportunity to engage with writers and cultural commentators from Turkey.

Working with 30 partners, the programme has now reached 9 cities across Turkey and the UK and included almost 60 writers. It doesn’t stop here. As a result of this programme, connections between the UK and Turkey will continue to develop.

Louis de Bernieres - Tan Pınar Festival photo by Düşten İşler

Maureen Freely - Translation Day photo by Utku Topal

The Silent University is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by and for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. Working together, participants have developed course topics connected to their qualifications, professional life and academic training that they are now unable to use professionally due to a variety of reasons related to their immigrant status. The Silent University aims to address and reactivate the knowledge of the participants and make the exchange process mutually beneficial by inventing alternative currencies.

Want to become a Silent University student and ready to loan your time and skills? Register online right now: www.thesilentuniversity.org/register

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