Extremely Provocative Graffiti

Last week in Pera, behind this street in Istiklal Avenue, I saw a series of striking graffiti that punched straight to the heart of the ethnic, religious and social tensions that exist in Turkey. I couldn't resist the opportunity to take pictures of the entire collection.

Here are the shocking pieces, complete with English translations. I don't know who did them, but a local anarcho-art collective called Ic Mıhrak might be behind the scenes. Anyways, here we go:

(Ps: Wow! This post attracted a huge number of visitors, some of whom are beyond reading and understanding English. Just to be safe so that this site doesn't get banned in Turkey, here we go with the big, red and bold Obligatory Turkish Disclaimer:)

Bu sayfadaki duvar yazılarının hiç biri tarafımca yazılmamıştır ve görüşlerimi yansıtmamaktadır. Burada görülen duvar yazıları, meçhul sokak sanatçılarının eserleridir. Tepkilerinizi buna göre vermenizi rica ederim.

"I am a gypsy and proud! So what?"
This one seems to refer to the social stigma that is attached to Gypsies ("Roma", to be politiclaly correct,) everywhere.

"I (smoke weed) on the streets without fear! So what?"
Wow, you're like, so cool and fearless! Wanna hang out sometime? (Thanks to Eksisozluk user Ehoyyy for the correct transliteration!)

"I am a gay soccer player! So what?"
This particular piece seems to refer to certain homophobic arguments that took place in the Turkish soccer scene a few years ago.

"I live in Tarlabashi and I want to stay there! So what?"
This is the only bit in the whole bunch that I actually find pretentious. Tarlabashi is a nearby district that used to belong to the Greeks of Pera. After they "left", it became a no-go area of drug dealers, Kurdish gangs and illegal immigrants. Now, there are plans to wipe it clean and restore it to its former splendor. Many local "artists" are protesting this move with the predictable knee-jerk reactions, but I'm sure they'll be the first ones to show up in the new bars and galleries once Tarlabashi is gentrified.

"I am a Kurd and I speak! So what?"
This one is about the ridiculous ban on the Kurdish language that was enforced during the harsh conflict between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish army in the 80s and the 90s. Yes, they actually banned a whole language, or tried to.

"I want to read in Kurdish! So what?"
More protests about the improbable language ban.

"I am a Turk but not a Fascist! So what?"
Some of you might know of the argumentative quirk called Godwin's law. Along similar lines, I propose a new "Memo's Law", which states that; "As an artsy-fartsy discussion rages on about politics, the probability of someone evoking Fascism approaches one." It's so true!

"I am an Armenian and I live here! So what?"
I guess the meaning behind this one is quite obvious.

"I am a transvestite and I'm in a school! So what?"
In Turkey, being a transvestite automatically means you are a shameless piece of wasted skin, out on the prowl for cheap sex.

"I'm an imam and I smoke weed! So what?"

"I'm gay and in the parliament! So what?"
Sadly, it will be a long time before we see such confessions made for real in the Turkish parliament.

"I'm not a Kemalist! So what?"
Oh yeah, a recent artsy-fartsy trend in Turkey is the relentless criticism of Kemalism in the name of "cultural relativism"...

"I'm a lesbian and I wear the hijab! So what?"
The headscarf, also a highly politicized issue in Turkish politics, has not escaped criticism either.

"I grew up and I don't want a car! So what?"
Then I guess you can take the bus for the rest of your green, carbon-neutral, boring life.

"I wear a hijab and love anal sex. So what?"
A common stereotype of hijabi ragheads in Turkey portrays them as experts of premarital back-door action, in order to preserve their vaunted virginity. Come to think of it, this "myth" may have a large amount of truth behind it. Once again, it's great to see this written out on the streets, where everyone can read it.

"I am a woman and I don't want a husband! So what?"
Sadly, most Turkish people's views on marriage are still similar to 50s America.

"I am neither active nor passive! So what?"
I guess everyone is entitled to their own choice...

I personally loved this series for sticking it to every single dogma in Turkish society. Ok, the Tarlabashi and the anti-Kemalist ones were a bit daft, but that's just me. I wonder how long will these burning questions remain on the walls before someone paints them over again?

The Lost Works of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

Two weeks ago, me and my friend John Conway visited London's Natural History museum for a peek into the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, probably the world's first artist to make a career out of illustrating extinct organisms. His achievements were not just on paper; Hawkins also made the famous models in Crystal Palace and cast numerous skeletons of extinct large mammals and dinosaurs.

I took some snapshots of the material we were shown, and you can see them here as well. These pictures are extra-large and detailed, so make sure you click on them to zoom in.

Above, you can see one of the famous "creatures of the past" lithographs, from a limited edition of six plates. An Ichthyosaur, some Plesiosaurs and a skinny Teleosaurus (marine crocodile) are enjoying the midday sun and chatting on a rocky beach, as marine reptiles usually did.

Jokes aside, I really wonder if such "beached" compositions were a result of artistic traditions, or were ancient marine reptiles really imagined to have lived like sea lions or otters back then? Look closely at the Ichthyosaur's paddles. These creatures had numerous finger bones, stacked like a row of Mentos. Currently we know that they were buried in a rigid, fin-like paddle, but in this picture the finger bones are all skewed and are showing through like suction discs or traction pads. Possibly, their weird structure was interpreted as an adaptation for crawling on land.

This was probably the best image in the entire collection. Although painfully inaccurate by now, it shows the meat-eating dinosaur Megalosaurus. Although we now know that Megalosaurus was a bipedal runner, back then people "knew" it as a bear-like quadrupedal prowler. All of these images are huge (about A0 sized,) and seeing them up close is an exhilarating experience, whether they are accurate or not.

With Megalosaurus, of course, comes the iconic Iguanodon, the second dinosaur to be officially described and named. Here, the complacent herbivore is pictured as an overgrown iguana with proportions and poses that weirdly recall other artists' ideas of oriental beauties. Am I the only person who has noticed this unnerving parallelism?

The parade of chubby giants continues in Hawkins' poster series with Megatherium, the giant ground sloth. He has depicted this creature as a pinhead with a strange pig-cum-tapir kind of snout and slipper-like feet with dagger-like toe claws. Needless to say, with our current knowledge, we can paint a completely different (but still bizarre) portrait for these creatures.

Imagine what would happen if one of these farted in your face. Furthermore, look at this Megatherium's pose and try not to think about Ingres' painting of the Grand Odalisque you saw earlier.

He's not retarded, he's just different: As I was looking at the pictures, I kept reminding myself how it was so easy to poke fun at such images, how science was at its infancy back then and how Hawkins was doing something no one had done before. Still, this image of a neck-less, pinheaded mammoth with no toes really got me. He just wants to play and be friends, but all the nasty prehistoric hippopotami and bears are avoiding him and calling him names.

Besides the series of six posters, (I only showed you details of five of them above,) we also got to see some "minor work" of Hawkins. One of the most fascinating was this "Comparative Sizes of Extinct Animals" diagram. If you click on the image and enlarge it, you can see that there is a 50-foot scale at the bottom. All of the other animals figure out nicely, but what the heck wrong with that 200-foot-long, dragon-like Iguanodon?!?

Also worthy of notice is the Deinotherium in the middle row. This creature looked more-or-less like an elephant with inverted jaws, but Hawkins has drawn it like a frog, or a desmostylian.

We also got to see a lot of Hawkins's sketches and preliminary drawings. Here is a paint sketch, perhaps done in preparation for the Ichthyosaur scene you saw in the beginning of this post.

Just a cheerful Jurassic meadow, Ichthyosaurs and sea crocodiles and Plesiosaurs all taking a pleasant walk in the sun, saying "hi" and "cheerio" to their Megalosaur and Iguanodont neighbors as they pass each other by... Vertebrates used to know each other back then. And didn't even lock their doors at night!

Out of everything we saw, this was perhaps the most interesting one; a faded sketch of some antique, giant, frog-like amphibian. Funny as it sometimes was, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' artwork was a fascinating glimpse of the palaeoart of yesterday.

We had our laughs at the spastic mammoth, the eerily sexual giant herbivores and the 60-meter-long Iguanodon, but our own palaeoart will doubtlessly look as strange and comical to tomorrow's critics come a hundred-or-so years.

Toilet King

Deep in the crowded streets and squalid arcades of Besiktas, lies one of the most amazing toilets in all of Istanbul, if not the world.

Owned and run by a half-crazy Alevi gentleman, this place is so loaded with unusual details and eye-straining kitsch that in these artsy-fartsy days, one cannot help but suspect if it is actually an art installation. But of course, no band of limp-wristed "modern" artists can ever hope to match the real thing. This is all real.

All over the toilet are signs and marble engravings, written in the grammar-and punctuation-free style that is the signature of madness. I will try to translate the best as I can. If they sound strange to you, that is because they sound weird in Turkish as well...

"THIS IS A PLACE OPEN TO ALL PEOPLE - HUNGRY OR SATISFIED THIS DOOR IS OPEN TO ALL THOSE WHO ARE HUMAN."

"DON'T BELITTLE YOURSELF TO THOSE WHO COME AFTER YOU WE MAINTAIN THIS PLACE WITH SERVICE AND MONEY."

"THIS SCHOOL IS SUCH A SCHOOL IN ISTANBUL THAT I BEGAN FOR MORE LIKE IT TO REPRODUCE! OTHER TEACHERS USED TO FACE ME. IT WOULD SUIT ME TO PROTECT THIS SCHOOL UNTIL I DIE LET SOME BLIND PEOPLE SEE IT I HAVE GIVEN 27 YEARS OF MY LIFE TO OPEN THIS PATHWAY TO CLEANLINESS.

I SPENT MUCH MUCH EFFORT MY NAME IS MUSTAFA BUT NOT KEMAL ATATURK BUT I WORK LIKE MY LEADER LET SOME PEOPLE TAKE SHAME AND OPEN THEIR EYES AND LEARN FROM MY EXAMPLE. THE KING DOES NOT DIE, EVEN IF HE DOES, HIS NAME LIVES ON."

"I WAS LEFT IN MUCH CURIOSITY, MY DAD USED TO TELL US WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, IF YOU TAKE A CURSE FROM YOUR FATHER THAT CURSE WILL SURELY HOLD. MY FATHER'S UNCLE'S SON TOOK A CURSE HERE IS THE CURSE: MAY YOUR BELLY FILL UP AND YOUR LAP REMAIN EMPTY. THIS LEFT ME IN CURIOSITY THERE WAS AN UNCLE'S SON. HIS NAME WAS SOYDULLAH. HE REALLY DID HAVE NO KIDS. HE DIED WHEN HE WAS 70 OR 80 YEARS OLD. I WONDER IF IT IS TRUE? SAGDULLAH."

"DEAR GUESTS, KEEP MODERN AND LUXURIOUS TOILETS ALIVE THINK ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN."

"MAKE THIS PLACE LIVE KING"

"THOSE WHO ARE NOT TIDY OR DON'T LIKE CLEANLINESS PLEASE DON'T COME HERE"

"MY FRIENDS, WAKE UP IF I DIE DON'T FORGET FOR THIRTY YEARS I GAVE THIS SERVICE TO MY PEOPLE, BUT THESE PEOPLE MOSTLY DON,T UNDERSTAND I CARVE MY LAST WORDS TO THE ENTRY AND EXIT OF THIS TOILET: IF I WAS TO DIE AND FIFTY YEARS WERE TO PASS NO ONE WOULD EVER DELIVER SUCH A SERVICE I SACRIFICED MYSELF I GAVE THIRTY YEARS OF MY LIFE IF I SURVIVE MY GRAVE WILL BE CLEANER THAN HERE MY WORDS AND I ARE ONE AND THE SAME OF THE PERSON"

"WAIT OUTSIDE, ENTRY IS CHARGED 0.000"

Here is the guy, "the King" as he calls himself. I don't know if he is still alive, but if he is, he has my unending respect. Notice his eyes, gleaming with visions that we cannot comprehend.

If you are ever around in Besiktas... Don't forget to visit the King. You certainly won't regret it!

A Giant Moth

This huge moth plopped onto our dinner table one night in Bodrum. It was quite large, (this picture would look about natural size on a 1680 x 1050 display,) and I had never seen anything like it before in this region. It looks like a large hawk moth, perhaps of the genus Deilephila... But as always with insects, I can never be sure.

Architectural Cancer

What looks like a set photo from an unlikely sequel to Blade Runner is actually the mess of gangrenous urbanism that plagues most cities in the Balkans and the Middle East. This example, of course, is from Istanbul.

Here, you have a garage entrance with a weird, hallway-like room overhanging its ceiling. Also note the strange windows at the back, and the ubiquitous, wart-like clusters of air conditioners.

Just in this photo alone, you can see a food kiosk, a stationery and photocopy shop, a luggage vendor's stall, a hairdresser for men, an ad agency for big newspapers and a sports club all mashed up together.

As more money enters Istanbul and her residents begin to understand the meaning of city planning, such unplanned mistakes will take years, if not decades to correct.

Pontos

In the Plaka bazaar in Athens last year, I saw this interesting poster about Pontos, the Black-Sea coast of Anatolia.

Here are the Pontic towns and cities that used to have significant Greek populations: Pafri, Amisos, Oinoi, Kotiori, Kerazonta, Tripoli, Trapezonta, Rizaion. Today, they are known as Bafra, Samsun, Ünye, Ordu, Giresun, Tirebolu, Trabzon and Rize.

Besides the names of the cities, the Greeks also left many important landmarks in the region. Perhaps the most important of all of these is the Sumela Monastery, perched high above the mountains near Trabzon. Once a Mount Athos-like citadel for priests, it is one of the region's greatest tourist attractions today.

Even though almost no Greeks live there now, a regional language, closely related to Greek, is still spoken by a few Turkish inhabitants of the region. Like many places in Anatolia where Muslims and Christians lived together, the lines between who is Greek and who is Turkish is blurry; some of these people have converted from Christianity only in the last century-and-a-half. Despite their differences, both the Greeks and Turks of Pontos still share a common heritage of weapons, macho attitudes and music played with the regional kemenche instrument.

But not all memories of Pontos are nice ones, especially not after the horrendous population exchange of Turkish Christians and Greek Moslems in 1923.

A few years earlier in Salonika, I had visited a commemorative event in the name of the so-called Pontic Genocide that took place in 1919, which was supposedly as nasty as the Armenian one. Although I have different views on the plight of the Armenians, I think what happened in Pontos was more like what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s than what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s.

Despite the strong sentiments people on each side have for Pontiac culture and history, I don't think anyone except a minority of die-hard nationalists on each side still has dreams, or nightmares about Pontic Greece establishing itself as an independent country.