Kenan Behzat Sharpe

kenanbsharpe@gmail.com
ALL ARTICLES
Is Turkey living its MeToo moment? Ece Ronay, a 22-year-old musician, has been sexually harassed by an older, powerful man in the entertainment industry. Ronay is now clearly exhausted from the defamation, but she is not backing down. Will this case finally show harassers in Turkey that there are consequences for their actions? Is Turkey’s #MeToo moment of reckoning finally here? Likely not, but what Ronay’s struggle for justice shows is a serious generational difference when it comes to social awareness.
Beyoğlu is dead, long live Beyoğlu In the last decade or so, the opinions every İstanbullu has about Beyoğlu have become, like everything else in Turkey, intensely polarized. From one group of more secular, middle-class citizens, the most common refrain you will hear is “Beyoğlu is dead.” A fight for housing and joy Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for university students in Turkey, they do. After almost two years of a deadly pandemic that made it impossible for them to attend in-person classes or socialize with their peers, now many students are facing an intractable housing problem. And the housing crisis in Turkey is not disconnected from the culture war.
Celebrating Hrant Dink’s birthday with music This Sept. 15 marked the 13th annual Hrant Dink Award Ceremony. Despite the high-minded purpose of the event, each year it truly does feel like a celebration, or even a concert, rather than a somber ceremony or a dry NGO event. While the people who want us to despair are incredibly organized and united, it is important to have days of the year in which those on the side of life and peace come together just to celebrate and sing.  'Ah Asuman!' and Demirtaş’s beguiling stories Do you remember Selahattin Demirtaş? If not for projects like “Ah Asuman!”, director Ümit Kıvanç’s short film adaptation of one of Demirtaş’s wittiest short stories, we truly might be in danger of forgetting him. The story of the gullible young lawyer and the crafty old bus driver reminds us Demirtaş’s humane and humorous vision of the world.  What Theodorakis means for Turkey One reason Theodorakis remains so popular in Turkey is the way his life was entangled with a history of war, dictatorship, and revolution that resembles the experiences of 20th-century Turkey. In fact, the last century of Greek history was in some ways even more traumatic than Turkey’s. Eden: a post-apocalyptic film Turkey’s famously tattooed MP Barış Atay has released a post-apocalyptic film: With its focus on refugees, Eden maintains its relevance at a time when the fall of Afghanistan has again made immigration the most fiercely debated topic in Turkey. Netflix’s Last Summer, our disastrous summer “Last Summer” is set in the 1990s. This pre-AKP period often gets coded as the “old secular days.” Gen-Z is jealous of Gen-X for what appears, compared to the present, to have been a pretty normal and relatively liberated adolescence. Alcohol was cheap, the music was good, and political Islam had yet to seize the reins of power. The economy was turbulent but a solid middle-class life was still possible. Social media on fire The argument that asking for help makes Turkey look weak is absurd. When Australia had massive wildfires last year, the entire world sought to draw attention to the tragedy. What truly looks pitiful is needing help but refusing it out of some kind of misguided pride. Those who are sincerely afraid of the state looking weak should make sure the state is doing its job in the first place. Istanbul: hip for tourists, hell for locals Turkish Tourism and Culture Ministry’s new promotional video, which includes the slogan “Istanbul is the new cool,” has caused an outrage. What’s strange is that the city appears completely empty except for the tourists. It is an Istanbul cleansed of crowds, trash, and traffic. Even more offensive is that everything the video promotes (nightlife, creativity, youth culture, revelry, drinking) is precisely what the government has been trying to restrict with its conservative agenda. Turkish music on the world market According to music scholar Orhan Tekelioğlu, top-down projects that consisted in synthesizing Turkish music into Western music largely failed. Yet in its place came something more grassroots and long-lasting: a “spontaneous synthesis” that incorporated styles of Western music into Turkish music. The conqueror became the conquered. And something “more interesting” was born.  Bars, memory, and the city For those of us who live in this crazy city, it is important to remember exactly how central a role the spaces we frequent play in our perception of urban space. You seek the comfort that comes from repetition and the sense of personal history wrapped up in a long relationship with a single place. Social media activism Last week, Turkey was rocked by appalling news about a case of child abuse in the province of Antalya. The case involves a mother and stepfather abusing and “selling” their children, two young siblings, so others can sexually abuse them. The thought of these abusers walking free outraged millions in the country. Many shared their thoughts on social media. Digital activism certainly has an effect, but we are repeatedly caught in the same cycle of atrocity-outrage-response. Music fans, unite under the rainbow flag! The front line of this conservative culture war in Turkey is  LGBTI+ issues. For the last 6 years, the government has been taking an increasingly belligerent stance against the LGBTI+ community. It hurts to see thousands of regular citizens and high-profile bands quickly and unambiguously come out against the music restrictions while LGBTI+ people are once again left without sufficient public support.  Sexism and militarism from soccer to tuna fish Nationalist fervor in Turkey has been high since June 11, when Turkey’s National Team played against Italy at the 2020 European Championship. As the Crescent-Stars geared up for the big match, unbeknownst to them that an aging rocker and a tuna fish company were also in a competition—to see who could use the most offensive language possible while celebrating the National Team. Can we still love Istanbul despite its destruction?   Like many other residents of this city, I have been watching the ecological and architectural destruction of Istanbul with deep sorrow. Every generation likes to claim that “Istanbul no longer has its old flavor” or that “They’ve destroyed the city.” Yet since the 20th century, the destruction has been rapidly increasing in speed and scope. They want to kill the music Since COVID-19 began to impact Turkey in March 2020, concerts have been banned in the name of social distancing measures. For nearly a year and a half now, with the exception of a brief relaxation last summer, tens of thousands of music industry workers have been unemployed. Many musicians interpret Erdoğan government’s recent renewal of the ban on live music as an active desire to bring the industry to its knees. A stolen youth: Eurovision, spring festivals, and concerts For many in Turkey, especially young people, Turkey’s withdrawal from Eurovision, the cancellation of the METU Spring Festival, and the disappearance of music festivals are seen as directly political. As young people in the country know, it is impossible to separate arts and culture from politics. The situation feels so hopeless that they believe they’ll regain their lost youth only with a change in government. Turkish rap scene's bridge-builder For several years now, it has been clear that Turkish rap has gone fully mainstream. Şanışer (born Sarp Palaur) is a paradoxical figure in Turkey's rap scene. What makes Şanışer interesting is the wide appeal he has among so many sectors of Turkish society. He has many conservative fans and is also widely listened to among those who don’t normally follow rap. Women get revenge in Netflix’s latest Turkish series Male violence and impunity have reached such a level in Turkey that one would have to be completely insensitive to the severity of the issue to begin hand-wringing about whether or not violent self-defense is warranted. In the midst of this political, systematic, and utterly preventable violence against women, what Netflix’s latest Turkish series “Fatma” offers is a merely individual solution. Turkish Kaleidoscope: A graphic novel on the turbulent 1970s  German-born American academic Jenny White’s latest book, “Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence,” is a powerful attempt to grapple with the violent period of the 1970s in Turkish history, one which she witnessed first-hand. It dives deep into the social conditions and personal choices that caused so many young people to take up arms or join rival political factions in this period.  Turkey's musicians challenge alcohol ban The ban on alcohol sales during the current COVID-19 lockdown is just one example of the increasing restrictions on personal liberties in Turkey. Musicians were also quick to express their outrage at the unconstitutional banning of alcohol sales. Maybe a single lyric or a single tweet cannot challenge power, but music plays an important role in keeping cultural memory alive. Nostalgia for old Istanbul: BluTV’s 'Yeşilçam' Exploiting nostalgia is easy. Giving a turbulent historical period its due while still entertaining viewers--this is harder. At this point, “Yeşilçam” could go either direction. Either way, it’s good to see platforms like BluTV trying something new in their treatment of the old. Turkish musician Erkan Oğur and so-called 'cancel culture' Politicians in Turkey, as elsewhere, sometimes dabble in music. So it was no big surprise when İbrahim Kalın, presidential spokesperson, released a song this week. The surprise was not Kalın’s song, it was that famous musician Erkan Oğur, who is associated with left-wing causes and has an oppositional persona, collaborated on the song. here was an immediate backlash as long-time fans of Oğur took to social media to express their disappointment and regret. Aegean off-season Thanks to the generosity of a colleague, since mid-March I’ve been staying in the İzmir peninsula of Çeşme. Here I have enjoyed the picturesque coasts and olive groves of the Aegean. Don’t let the intoxicating blues of the sea and the blinding white sand fool you, though: it’s still freezing here. At a dark time for women, pop music shows vulnerable rage Turkey has a vibrant cultural scene that deserves greater recognition. Even when it is not directly political, it shows the spirit of resistance that pushes artists to continue creating even when everything seems hopeless. Recent singles by musicians Nova Norda, Ekin Beril, Lara Di Lara, and Sedef Sebüktekin show once again that women are at the heart of this cultural resilience. “Hey There!” turns pandemic into dark comedy gold It was only a matter of time before COVID-19 made its way into cinema. Turkish director Reha Erdem’s latest film “Seni Buldum Ya!” (released in English as “Hey There!”) deals with the pandemic in the best of ways: by letting it shape the film’s form rather than dominating its content. Digital echoes of International Women’s Day International Women's Day was celebrated under the shadow of the pandemic, but this didn’t stop tens of thousands of people from gathering in Istanbul and elsewhere. At the same time, with many hesitant or unwilling to join the crowds, digital activism gained particular importance. Navigating heartbreak with Aleyna Tilki and Melike Şahin What connects the folk song, dance hit, and even indie singer-songwriter ballad is emotion, not genre. Despite the difference in sound, what new music recently released in Turkey by pop diva Aleyna Tilki and indie favorite Melike Şahin show is that music is fundamentally about managing suffering, particularly when it comes to matters of the heart. Turkey’s 'avokado tost' millennials on TV Turkey too has its fantasy of millennial avocado-eaters. It’s not often that a TV series in Turkey addresses the particular economic and social challenges that millennials face, but Bonkis is here to change that. Available on the streaming platform BluTV, it follows a cast of hipster millennials and narrates their everyday struggles.