EVET versus HAYIR [YES versus NO] Resistance art within the public space of Istanbul after the failed coup d’état in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016, in Turkey, until the Turkish presidential referendum of April 16, 2017. Master thesis Supervisor: dr. Marga van Mechelen Marianne de Zeeuw Second reader: dr. Jeroen Boomgaard July 8, 2017 Master Thesis Master Art History Faculty of Humanities University of Amsterdam Student: Marianne de Zeeuw Student ID: 10211241 Supervisor: dr. Marga van Mechelen Second reader: dr. Jeroen Boomgaard Amsterdam July 8, 2017 Number of words: 24.531 2 Acknowledgments -- As Claire Bishop remarks in her book Artificial Hells – Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), a student or scholar who researches theatre and performance art and everything that is in between, cannot rely on books, essays and documentary photographs only. This statement is also valid for this master thesis. In this research I had the help of Turkish artists, art historians, and friends, who informed me through conversations, invited me for performances and guided me through Istanbul while translating potential political statements. On this account, I would like to thank Ismail Ata Doğruel (Performistanbul), Gülhatun Yıldırım (Performistanbul), Batu Bozoğlu (Performistanbul), Ebru Sargın (Performistanbul), Asena Günal (DEPO), Gökhan Tun (Istructor Bilgi Media), Bedri Baykam (visual artist and activist), Ferda Çağlayan (art historian – sculptures in public space) and Bulut Eydoğdu (my dear flatmate and translator). Marianne de Zeeuw Amsterdam July 8, 2017 3 4 Abstract -- Within this master thesis, a research is done on the field of art, power, and resistance, by tracing resistance art in the past turbulent decade in Turkey. I asked myself the question if, and how, we can recognize resistance art in the public space of Istanbul during the turbulent months after the failed coup d’état in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016, in Turkey, until the Turkish presidential referendum of April 16, 2017. By explaining in my first chapter the presence of two dominant political ideologies in Turkey, namely the ideology of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the relation between art and power in Turkey, a context is created in which the place of contemporary Turkish art can be understood. Although contemporary emerged as an autonomous form of art, which sparked little interest from Islamic regime, this autonomy seem to became less. The government, enforced by the artistic outburst during the Gezi Park Protests in 2013, recognized the mobilizing ability of the language of resistance. In order to trace and recognize resistance art as such, I looked into the theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière and Mieke, and many other researchers on the field of art and resistance. What becomes clear, is that resistance art can be recognized as such if it performs in a critical way. This art form, which I consider as a subgenre of contemporary art, can in this way actively form a language of resistance. Within Turkey, a lot of these art can be connected to the popular ideology of Atatürk, placing him against Erdoğan. After tracing the language of resistance and its embodied and disembodied translations during the Gezi Park Protests, I used this language in trying to recognize a resistance in Turkey under a state of emergency. Although I expected there to be a vivid artistic resistance, the strict and violent government of Erdoğan causes a fear within the art field. Except for several works of graffiti and the emulation of the Turkish word ‘no’(referring to the referendum) as a visual display of resistance, there is little resistance art to be found in the public space of Istanbul. 5 6 Contents -- Introduction 9 1. Istanbul, the Turkish capital of (contemporary) art 12 1.1. The arts as a tool in the quest of president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 13 1.2. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ideals for a ‘New Turkey’ 18 1.3. The rise of contemporary art in Istanbul 24 2. Art and its political potential in public space 31 2.1. Philosophies and theories on art, power, and resistance 32 2.1.1. Michel Foucault: power calls for resistance, resistance calls for art 33 2.1.2. The representative art regime of Jacques Rancière 35 2.2. Recognizing the critical political potential in art 37 2.2.1. Performativity according to Mieke Bal 38 2.3. Tracing resistance art 40 2.3.1. Disembodied resistance art 41 2.3.2. Embodied resistance art 45 3. The Gezi Park Protests, Istanbul of (2013) 49 3.1. Occupying monumental public space 49 3.2. Tracing the language of resistance during the Gezi Park Protests 52 3.3. The aftermath of the Gezi Park Protests 58 4. (Self-)censorship in the art scene of Istanbul after the failed coup d’état in Turkey in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016, until the presidential referendum of April 16, 2017 62 4.1. The potential threat of contemporary art 63 4.2. The failed coup d’état in Turkey in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016 66 4.3. Contemporary art under a state of emergency 67 4.3.1. The withdrawal of (performance) art from public space 67 4.3.2. Disembodied traces of resistance 69 4.3.3. EVET versus HAYIR 71 Conclusion 75 Bibliography 78 Literature 78 Video 84 7 Conversations 84 Images 85 Attachment 1: Map of the centre of Istanbul 87 Attachment 2: Artistic barricades during the Gezi Park Protests 88 Attachment 3: The Lady in the Red Dress 90 Attachment 4: The Atatürk Cultural Centre as the billboard of the Gezi Park Protests 93 Attachment 5: The face of Atatürk on Turkish flags during the Gezi Park Protests 94 Attachment 6: The political potential of graffiti in public space, Istanbul 97 Attachment 7: An ode to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Istiklal Street, March 2017, 101 Istanbul. Attachment 8: EVET versus HAYIR 107 8 Introduction -- The Republic of Turkey is sometimes described as the nation of coups:1 from the second half of the twentieth century until 2016, there has been five military coups d’état in the history of the relatively young nation. The first coup d’état was carried out in 1960, followed by similar events in 1971, 1980, and 1997.2 The fifth coup d’état took place about one year ago, namely in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016, in which forces of the military tried to seize the power from the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954-). In contrast to the previous four coups, this attack on the ruling government failed. After the deadly outcome of the night, a witch-hunt was opened by the government against anyone who could be connected with the Turkish religious leader Fethullah Gülen (1941-), who was immediately blamed by Erdoğan as the leader of the coup d’état. Also, Erdoğan declared the nation to be in a state of emergency for the following three months.3 Today, Turkey is still in this state of emergency, which brings a lot of uncertainty because of the no-nonsense government that is less restricted by laws, rights, and criminal justice. The arrests of hundreds of thousands potential Gülen-followers and enemies of the Republic of Turkey were the result. The state of uncertainty lasted at least until the presidential referendum on April 16, 2017. On this date, the Turkish civilians were given the opportunity to vote whether president Erdoğan should gain total (executive) power and there should be a change in the Turkish constitution (evet: the yes-vote) or whether the presidential system should remain in its current form (hayır: the no-vote). The outcome of the referendum, was a victory on the side of evet-vote with 51,2 %. The political turbulent period between the coup d’état and the referendum functioned as a period in which a resistance against the power of Erdoğan emerged, as did happen during turbulent times of the Gezi Park Protests of 2013. With the presence of a resistance, potential political art can be analysed as resistance art: art that is part of the visual language of resistance. The relation between art and its 1 Balci, 2007: p. 131. 2 Idem. 3 See: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36852080> Date of visit: February 26, 2017. 9 political potential has become a popular subject for art historians. But the interdisciplinary relation between art and politics is also being studied by theatre scholars, sociologists, political historians, anthropologists, and philosophers such as Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jacques Rancière (1940-). Especially within the field of contemporary art, political art have emerged as a subgenre of its own, described in terms of activist art, oppressed art, protest art, participatory art, or, as I will use, resistance art. With the artistic resistance of the publicly outburst of the Gezi Park Protests in mind, the question I want to answer in this research is if, and how, we can recognize resistance art in the public space of Istanbul during the turbulent months after the failed coup d’état in the night of July 15 to 16, 2016, in Turkey, until the Turkish presidential referendum of April 16, 2017? In this thesis on resistance art in the public space of Istanbul, I firstly rely on the theories of the philosopher Michel Foucault on the relations between art, power, and resistance. I will define resistance art in accordance with the Foucault’s concepts of power and resistance. Also, I shall briefly discuss the ideas of Jacques Rancière on representative art, in order to answer the question when an artwork performs as a representation of, in this case, the resistance.