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Rescuing the Bears, Silencing the Bear Leaders: Bear Dancing in Historical Context and Its Abolition in Turkey

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Rescuing the Bears, Silencing the Bear Leaders: Bear Dancing in Historical Context and Its Abolition in Turkey RESCUING THE BEARS, SILENCING THE BEAR LEADERS: BEAR DANCING IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND ITS ABOLITION IN TURKEY by PELİN TÜNAYDIN Submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Cultural Studies Sabancı University February 2014 © Pelin Tünaydın 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RESCUING THE BEARS, SILENCING THE BEAR LEADERS: BEAR DANCING IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND ITS ABOLITION IN TURKEY PELİN TÜNAYDIN Cultural Studies, MA Thesis, 2014 Thesis Supervisor: Ayşe Parla Keywords: Gypsies/Roma, animal performance, animal protection, tourism, ethnic discrimination ABSTRACT The history of bear dancing seems to have accompanied the earliest encounters between humans and bears. As a form of public entertainment, the practice of bear dancing was professed by the Gypsies/Roma in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, as well as in many other countries. In recent decades, however, it became a site of contestation in more than one respect: animal protection, but more primarily ethnic discrimination and visions of urbanism and tourism. In the early 1990s, Turkey witnessed a bear rescue campaign pioneered by an international animal protection organization, with various Turkish governmental, municipal and non-governmental bodies acting in concert. From the animal protectionist view, the campaign was a long overdue intervention to free the bears from pain and enslavement for the sake of human entertainment. On the other hand, the abolition seems to have been a welcome opportunity in the eyes of the Turkish state to purify the streets of İstanbul and other cities from the sight that visiting tourists first encountered and thus complicated the image of the country that officials wished foreign tourists to take back home. The demise of bear dancing owes more to the latter than to a well-informed concern for the welfare of animals, both revealing and reproducing lasting prejudices against the Roma. Based on interviews with former bear leaders, this thesis explores the multi- faceted dynamics underlying the abolition of bear dancing in Turkey. iv AYILARI KURTARIP AYICILARI SUSTURMAK: TARİHSEL BAĞLAMDA AYI OYNATICILIĞI VE TÜRKİYE’DE YASAKLANIŞI PELİN TÜNAYDIN Kültürel Çalışmalar, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, 2014 Tez Danışmanı: Ayşe Parla Anahtar Kelimeler: Çingeneler/Romanlar, hayvan gösterileri, hayvanları koruma, turizm, etnik ayrımcılık ÖZET Ayı oynatıcılığının tarihçesi insanlar ile ayılar arasında ilk etkileşimlere kadar uzanmaktadır. Osmanlı ve Türkiye’nin yanı sıra diğer pek çok ülkede de bir Çingene/Roman mesleği olan ayı oynatıcılığı son onyıllar içerisinde hayvanları koruma, ama daha öncelikli olarak etnik ayrımcılık ile şehircilik ve turizm tasavvuru bakımından ihtilaflı bir alan haline geldi. Türkiye 1990’ların başında, uluslararası bir hayvanları koruma örgütünün öncülüğünde hükümet, yerel yönetimler ve sivil toplum kuruluşlarının işbirliği yaptığı bir ayıları kurtarma kampanyasına tanık oldu. Bu kampanya hayvan korumacılar açısından ayıların eğlence uğruna alıkonulup acı çekmesine gecikmiş bir müdahaleydi. Öte yandan Türk devletinin gözünde ayıcılığın yasaklanması, İstanbul ile diğer şehirlerin sokaklarını, ülkeye gelen yabancı turistlerin ilk karşılaştığı ve yetkililere göre ülkenin imajını zedeleyen bir manzaradan kurtarmak için bir fırsattı. Ayı oynatıcılığının kaldırılışı devletin hayvanların refahına dair duyduğu endişeden ziyade bu ikinci etmenden kaynaklanmış, Romanlara yönelik süregelen önyargıları açığa çıkarıp yeniden üretmiştir. Bu tez eski ayıcılarla yapılan görüşmelere dayanarak Türkiye’de ayı oynatıcılığının yasaklanışının çokyönlü dinamiklerini incelemektedir. v Babama... O hayattayken tencerem kaynar idi, maymunum oynar idi... vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my interlocutors in Thrace and İstanbul, who welcomed me into their homes or workplaces, and moreover into a part of their personal histories. Were it not for Ali Mezarcıoğlu, this thesis could not have been realized; I am indebted to him for his expressed faith in my subject and for the indispensable guidance he provided in my fieldwork. I am also thankful to Adrian Marsh for not turning me down when I sought his advice, as well as Nesli Çölgeçen and Reha Arın who provided me a copy of their feature film and related ephemera, in addition to sparing their time to meet me and telling the story of their production. For her encouragement, insight, and incisive advice, I am grateful to my thesis supervisor, Ayşe Parla. I also wish to extend my great thanks and appreciation to the members of my thesis committee, Selin Önen and İrvin Cemil Schick, not only for their support, but also for their valuable constructive criticism. I especially owe greatly to Schick for kindly making himself available when I turned to him for his help with some translations and many other questions. For his treasured friendship, our stimulating discussions and shared academic interests, not to mention his assistance with the texts in German, I am obliged to Stephan Steiner. I am grateful to those who have contributed to my research and broadened my view at various stages of this thesis in different ways. Many thanks to Ingvar Svanberg, Gonca Tohumcu, Sema Balaman, Witold Szabłowski, Ilsen About, Elena Marushiakova, Danielle van Dobben, Amy Nelson, Klaus Barthelmeß, Ludvig Wiklander, Ece Zerman, Heidi Morrison, Sonay Ban, Chalak Kaveh, Behçet Çelik, Maria Vasenkari, Mikołaj Machowski, Michal Schuster, Sophia Brothers, Katy Hooper, Bettina Mosler, Cecilia Novero, Pamela Banting, Rachel Swinkin, Kári Driscoll, Pierce and Heather Locke, and Sigrid Zederbauer. Parts of this thesis were presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society in İstanbul and at the Non-Human in Social Sciences III Conference in Prague the same year, and published in the November 2012 issue of Toplumsal Tarih and the October 2013 issue of Frühneuzeit-Info. I consider myself lucky to have made the vii acquaintance of numerous colleagues at these conferences and I am thankful to the encouraging and enlightening audiences of both of them, from whose questions and suggestions I benefited. Last but not least, I would like to remember dearest Zeynep Doğukan, whose irreplaceable friendship and passionate protest against all manner of injustice, towards humans and other animals alike, have always been an immense inspiration, even after her poignant departure from this utterly unjust world. She does rest in peace now, that is my only consolation... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. Outline of the Contents 2 1.2. Methodological Considerations 6 1.3. Significance of the Study 11 1.4. “Gypsy” (Çingene) vs. “Roma” (Roman): What’s in a Name? 12 CHAPTER 2. OF BEARS AND MEN 16 2.1. Performing Bears in Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire 20 2.2. Performing Bears in Europe 23 2.3. “Four-Legged Pupils” 40 2.4. Performing Bears in the United States 46 CHAPTER 3. BEAR LEADING AND GYPSIES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 49 3.1. Coexistence Interrupted 57 3.2. All Muslims are Equal, but Some are More Equal than Others 58 3.3. Towards the Republic 67 CHAPTER 4. LOOKS LIKE A BEAR, WALKS LIKE A BEAR, DANCES LIKE A HUMAN: BEAR LEADING IN TURKEY 71 4.1. The Town Previously Known for its Bear Leaders 73 4.2. Revival of Bear Leading in the Republic 77 4.2.1. Schooling Bears 78 4.2.2. Leading the Bears to the Big City 83 4.3. İmdat ile Zarife 92 CHAPTER 5. ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AND CLASS DISCRIMINATION AMONG THE ROMA 97 5.1. Ethnic Discrimination against the Roma 98 ix 5.2. “Les Tch[ingianés] de la pire espèce”: Class Discrimination against the Bear-Leading Roma 108 CHAPTER 6. “FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD”: THE LIBERATION OF BEARS 113 6.1. The Development of Animal Protection in Turkey 118 6.2. Attitudes towards and Earlier Attempts against Bear Leading 124 6.3. Ethnicization of Cruelty to Animals 129 6.4. Leading the Bear Leaders a Dance: The Intervention of Animal Protection Societies 138 CHAPTER 7. THE IMPACT OF VISIONS OF URBANISM AND TOURISM ON THE ABOLITION OF BEAR DANCING 149 7.1. The Transformation of Urban Public Space 152 7.2. The Ethnopolitics of Tourism 156 7.3. Bears in, Bear Leaders out 163 CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION 166 BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Bear drawings in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in Southern France. (Photo. Jean Clottes, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Fate-of-the- Cave-Bear.html) 17 Figure 2. The bear skull found in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in Southern France, placed on what seems to be an altar. (Photo. Jean Clottes, http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/page4.php) 18 Figure 3. Detail of the Zliten mozaic depicting Roman entertainments, second century AD, The Archaeological Museum of Tripoli, Libya. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Bestiarii.jpg) 21 Figure 4. Bear dancing in early England: A bear made to lie down from a tenth-century manuscript (top), and three dancing bears and their leaders from the fourteenth. (Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, pl. 25) 24 Figure 5. A dancing bear on the streets of London, date unknown. (Photo. Getty Images, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/2565404/U nseen-London.html?image=2) 25 Figure 6. A Gypsy holding on to a muzzled bear by a chain, as a young woman looks on, UK, c. 1920. (NMPFT / Kodak Collection / Science & Society Picture Library, no. 10309944) 26 Figure 7. Amateur stereoview of a dancing bear in Nenndorf, south of Hamburg, Germany, 1900. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/15693951@N00/4655984765/) 29 Figure 8. Bear leader resting under a tree, c. 1930. (Photo. Friedrich Seidenstücker [1882–1966], in Friedrich Seidenstücker, Von Tieren und von Menschen [Berlin: Dirk Nischen Verlag, 1986], 148) 31 Figure 9. Russian troops in France posing with a dancing bear, “the mascot of the regiment,” in a postcard postmarked 1916. 34 Figure 10. Mural from the Oltenia region of Romania.
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