New tool for female empowerment: Turkish soap operas

By Harry van Versendaal

When the Turkish soap opera “Noor” revealed to Samar that marriage can be an equal partnership between two loving people rather than a state of misery and repression, she switched off her TV and got herself a divorce lawyer.

“I liked using the subject of soap operas to speak of the important issue of women’s rights. Doing so cast a different light on the story; it was also a happier way to tell the story,” says Nina Maria Paschalidou. Her latest film, “Kismet,” is screening at this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TDF) after making a well-reviewed debut at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November where it was nominated for the IDFA Best Mid-Length Documentary Award.

Fifty-four-year-old Samar, a Lebanese woman living for years in the United Arab Emirates, is not alone in finding inspiration in Turkish TV dramas. Samira, a victim of sexual harassment in Cairo during the recent Egyptian revolution, tells the camera how she found the courage, despite being pressured by her family to keep quiet, to take the perpetrators – army officers – to court after watching Fatmagul, a gang-rape victim in another Turkish drama series, fight for justice. She not only won her case, but also helped to stop the until-then mandatory “virginity tests” given to all females in police custody.

Paschalidou, a 40-year-old filmmaker, journalist and producer from Veria, a small town in northern Greece with a strong Ottoman imprint, became fascinated by how a medium that provokes much derision in the West has become a successful tool for female empowerment in the East.

“I was staying in Washington when a friend, who is from Turkey, showed me a Washington Post article on Turkish soap operas. I was intrigued and began to look into the subject,” says Paschalidou, founder of independent documentary and multimedia group Forest Troop.

Millions of viewers across the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans are hooked on TV dramas such as “Gumus,” which is broadcast across the Arab world as “Noor,” “What Is Fatmagul’s Fault?” “The Magnificent Century,” “Life Goes On,” and “Forbidden Love.” During a recent survey carried out in 16 Middle East countries, three out of four said they had seen at least one of about 70 Turkish shows that have been sold abroad since 2001.

“The impact went beyond all expectations. People started to name their children after the main characters, women started to divorce their husbands because of what they saw on TV, tourist operators offered site-specific tours,” Paschalidou says.

Bad signal

The success of these shows naturally did not go down well with conservatives in the Middle East. In Iran, where shows are watched via smuggled satellite dishes hidden on balconies, authorities said soaps were “destabilizing the institution of the family.” Saudi clerics went as far as to issue fatwas against people watching the shows.

Apart from being an unintended cultural export and a unique brand of soft power, Turkish dramas also raked in cash – tons of it. The value of soap opera exports skyrocketed from a million dollars in 2007 to 130 million in 2012 as the country sold 13,000 hours of programming, according to data from the country’s Tourism and Culture Ministry.

Part of their appeal, the director says, was thanks to the good-old American recipe. “It’s the drama, the passionate love affairs, the nasty vendettas – a recipe first sold by the Americans with ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ in the 1980s,” says Paschalidou.

But, like most observers, Paschalidou also sees culture-specific factors at play. “It was no coincidence that these shows struck a chord with audiences in the areas of the former Ottoman Empire. There was something exotic, yet at the same time quite familiar, to them. People in this part of the world have many shared memories, a common past, similar food,” she says.

They also have similar ambitions.

“Viewers in the Middle East see the Turkish woman as a model of the modern Muslim female. This is a bit who they would like to be, who they struggle to become,” Paschalidou says. They want greater freedom and more rights. And more wealth. “What all these shows have in common is their penchant to show off designer clothes, nice homes and luxury villas,” she says.

Interestingly, while women in Arab countries appear in the documentary to be inspired by the modern, feminist narrative, their Greek counterparts are looking in the other direction as Turkish series have triggered in many a nostalgia for pre-modern values and ideals such as tradition and family ties. “I like these shows because they have morals and the girls don’t take off their underwear all the time like they do here,” says one elderly Greek fan.

Greece’s stubborn recession, now in its seventh year, has hit most people hard and at the same time influenced Greeks’ collective self-understanding. “The crisis has been widely associated with the West and many things modern. As a result, we have dug out old memories and turned to the Eastern part of our identity,” Paschalidou says.

“Perhaps there is also this longing for true love, for the type of man who stands by his wife and looks after her needs – even if he is a bit of on the macho side,” she says.

To be continued

Closer to home, these programs have inflicted some collateral damage by exposing Turkey’s internal contradictions: The narrative of a modern, prosperous Turkey is being challenged by a conservative, intolerant backlash. Once the darling of liberal reformists, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has criticized a historical soap based on the life of Suleiman the Magnificent, which depicts the sultan as a man in thrall to his favorite wife, as “an attempt to insult our past, to treat our history with disrespect” – has fed concerns among secularists about his increasingly authoritarian style of government.

“Turkey’s efforts to promote a modern, Western face cannot disguise its huge shortcomings in the area of women’s rights,” Paschalidou says.

Despite a series of legal reforms over the past few years, Turkey did poorly in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Gender Gap Index. A recent survey found that a third of marriages in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces involved very young brides, many of them under the age of 15. In “Life Goes On” a young girl from Anatolia is married off to an abusive 70-year-old. The girl escapes her yoke, but in reality such happy endings are less common.

“Reality is not always like in the series. A girl who has been forced into marrying at an early age in Turkey will not have the support of her family if she decides to break up,” the director says.

“These series present an idealized image that Turkish society is mature enough to solve its problems, which is not always the case,” she says.

But the effort is there, and it is a genuine effort Paschalidou believes. The shows are mainly written by female scriptwriters who nudge the narratives into more feminist paths, and even attempt to involve their audience. When the final court scene of “What Is Fatmagul’s Fault? was filmed, the extras cast to carry banners and shout slogans in support of Fatmagul were real-life victims of sexual abuse.

“What really impressed me was that Turkish actresses are fully conscious of what it is that they are doing,” she says. Many of them have taken the effort outside the TV studio by participating in a campaign to stop domestic violence against women.

“It’s not just a marketing strategy. Some of them genuinely believe they can help.”

Unwanted masses on the move

 

Photo by Natalia Tsoukala

 

By Harry van Versendaal

Unwanted: There is no better word to describe European attitudes toward Roma communities. As France began to flatten some 400 camps hosting Roma migrants and to deport more than 8,000 back to Central Europe, President Nicolas Sarkozy became the latest prominent European figure to personify the continent’s prejudices against those forcibly nomadic people, also known as gypsies.

With his ratings shredded by unpopular pension reforms and budget cuts – a recent poll found that 62 percent of French voters do not want Sarkozy to seek reelection in 2012 – the French president is after a scapegoat. He has done it before. Unrest five years ago in the Parisian banlieues, the troubled suburban housing projects, shook the nation’s perception of itself. Sarkozy’s tough response as interior minister was hailed by conservative voters and was crucial in propelling him to power. Therefore, it was no surprise when after the July riots on the outskirts of Grenoble, Sarkozy replayed the law-and-order card that won him the 2007 election.

“The recent acceleration of expulsions and the fact that expulsions have been made more visible is part of a refocus of French policies on security, and probably an attempt to win votes from the extreme right,” Sophie Kammerer, policy officer for the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), told Athens Plus.

Because the Roma people are widely associated with petty crime, pickpocketing and aggressive begging, a police clampdown has been mostly welcomed by urbanites increasingly worried about public safety.

Also, gypsies are poor. The large number of 86 percent of Europe’s Roma live below the poverty line. Ivan Ivanov, of the Brussels-based European Roma Information Office, thinks the Roma are being targeted because the French government does not want them to be a burden on the welfare system. Their lifestyle makes them particularly vulnerable. “As Roma come in large groups and tend to live together in barracks, under bridges and in parks, they are more visible and easier to target,” Ivanov, a human rights lawyer, told Athens Plus.

Numbering some 12 million, the dark-skinned Roma are the largest minority group in the European Union. Until the EU’s eastward expansion, most lived outside the contours of the bloc – mostly in Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Seen as originating from northwest India, their European history has been one of slavery and persecution. About half a million Roma are estimated to have perished in the Nazi Holocaust.

Despite European laws on free movement, the expulsions were, technically speaking, legal. Most of the Roma who have been deported are citizens of Romania. As an EU newcomer, Romania  is subject to an interim deal that limits their nationals stay in France to three months, unless they have a work or residence permit.

However, group deportations are restricted by EU law. European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding originally attacked the Roma expulsions as an act of ethnic profiling and discrimination. “You cannot put a group of people out of a country except if each individual has misbehaved,” she said, drawing parallels to Vichy France’s treatment of Jews in the Second World War that made the French cry foul. Brussels, however, eventually decided to take legal action against France’s perceived failure to incorporate EU rules on free movement across the bloc – not on discrimination. Reding’s admission that there was “no legal proof” probably raised some malign smiles in the corridors of the Elysee.

Do as I do

The truth is France is not alone on this one. Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Belgium and, to a larger scale, Italy have also been deporting Roma immigrants. Apart from working toward stripping racism of any guilt in France – the proud home of liberte, egalite and fraternite – as well as in other nations, the clampdown by Sarkozy threatens to make the expulsion of unloved minorities official policy across the continent. “After France, other countries will try to deport Roma as well, citing all sorts of reasons but mainly the security issue,” Ivanov said. The campaign spells trouble for other minorities as well – if only for tactical reasons. “They might adopt such policies toward other minorities as well to avoid criticism that they are only targeting Roma,” Ivanov said.

Some critics say that there can be little progress unless it is first acknowledged that Roma not only suffer from but also cause problems. Writing for the Guardian, Ivo Petkovski said that higher crime rates among Roma may indeed be due to institutional as well as societal factors, such as poor education but integration into the mainstream “may mean letting go of some historical and cultural practices” – an issue often lost in the haze of political correctness.

It’s hard to disagree that a rigid patriarchal structure and controversial cultural habits, such as early or forced marriages and child labor, are out of tune with modern Western life. But the stereotype of the lawless nomads who want to keep themselves on the fringes of modern society is exaggerated.

“Let’s face it,” Ivanov said. “If the Roma have failed to integrate it is not because they do not want to. Who would choose to live in a miserable ghetto with no running water and infrastructure, such as normal roads, regular transport, shops, pharmacies and schools,” he said.

Integration is a two-way process. “Society should not wait for the Roma to integrate themselves and the Roma should not wait for society to integrate them,” Ivanov said. But although the Roma should follow the rules of mainstream society, he said, this should not take place at the price of their own culture, traditions, lifestyle and language. “Integration should not be confused with forced integration and assimilation. If they have to respect the culture and ethnic specificities of the mainstream society, theirs should be respected as well,” he said.

Kammerer agrees that, like every citizen, Roma have both rights and responsibilities. But the first step, she said, is to ensure that these people are able to fulfill these responsibilities. “If you argue that Roma parents should take responsibility for sending their children to school, you should first ensure that their children have access to school,” she said.

Blackboard politics

Empowerment is key. Roma hardly vote in elections. Education and training is the only way to offset centuries of abuse and exclusion and make sure that the Roma can integrate into the surrounding community and play a meaningful part in local life. “Without proper housing, healthcare or education, it is unsurprising that many people are forced to live a marginal lifestyle,” Nele Meyer, a Roma expert at Amnesty International, told Athens Plus.

Roma are often placed in schools for the mentally challenged – and many are not allowed to attend classes at all. Three primary schools in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, were recently shut down by parents protesting the presence of gypsy pupils in the classroom.

France has tried to persuade its eastern peers to do more to tackle the problem at home before it becomes a French problem. But it has found it hard to motivate their governments, particularly in a Europe without borders. Most rights activists, like Ivanov, are calling for a European Roma strategy. But Roma issues do not win elections – so it’s hard to see how national politicians will be persuaded.

Ivanov does not despair. He says it would be great to one day see Roma travel across the continent not as luckless nomads searching for a better life “but for pleasure, like any other European citizen.”

The end of the affair?

By Harry van Versendaal

After the “golden era” of the 1990s, a number of incidents in the past few years have left Turkish-Israeli ties seriously impaired, but these appear to be the symptoms of a deeper geopolitical trend rather than the cause.

Driven by a yen to consolidate its place in the Western camp in a cold war security environment and its poor relations with Arab states like Iran and Syria, Turkey became one of the first states to recognize the state of Israel in the late 1940s. Bilateral relations peaked in the 1990s with the signing of a number of business, intelligence and military agreements. Ankara gave Israeli fighter jets permission to use Turkish air space as training ground and, in turn, gained access to Israeli military technology – including unmanned drones that could be used in the fight against Kurdish militia in the southeast. Meanwhile, Turkish resorts were packed with Israeli tourists.

However, relations have deteriorated rapidly over the past decade. Israel’s 2008 raid on Gaza sparked a fuming reaction from the Islamic-rooted administration of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After dressing down Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Turkish premier went as far as to brand the Jewish state as “the principal threat to peace” in the region.

Relations reached a new low in late May after Israeli commandos raided a Turkish ship leading a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine Turkish civilians. The two sides, both close American allies, have sought to repair at least some of the damage and Israel earlier this month agreed to cooperate with a UN investigation into the fatal operation. But, though Israel has taken most of the flack for the bloodshed, there are ample signs that the Turkish Justice and Development (AKP) government, which is reportedly close to the NGO that sponsored the flotilla, could have done more to prevent the disaster.

Both incidents however seem to fit into the pattern of Turkey’s “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy realignment. Propelled by growing self-confidence and frustration with EU stonewalling over Turkish membership in the 27-member club, Ankara is increasingly pulling its weight in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, expanding trade and assuming mediator status in chronic regional disputes. It has impressively fixed most of the damage in its ties with Iraq and Syria, but this diplomatic turnaround has not always sat well with Ankara’s friends in the West. A report in the Financial Times this week said that Washington has warned Ankara that its veto of UN sanctions against Iran, a nuclear wannabe power but also a chief energy provider for Turkey, could cost it its chance to obtain US-made drone aircraft to quell Kurdish guerrillas after the US withdrawal from Iraq at the end of next year.

Erdogan’s Israel-bashing may find a sympathetic ear on the Arab street, but he should know that turning his back on Israel and the West is a non-starter. If Turkey is putting on a regional show to impress the US and the EU, it is certainly using the wrong tricks. Breaking ranks with the West over Iran and escalating tensions with Israel will not make Turkey more European.

Turkey veers into the East, clumsily

By Harry van Versendaal

Ankara is increasingly asserting itself in the Middle East but a series of clumsy moves threaten to damage its relationship with the West, the cornerstone of Turkey’s security policy over the past 90 years, analysts warn.

The dramatic deterioration in ties with Israel, a long-time economic and military ally, is seen as emblematic of this trend. Last month Israeli commandos raided a Turkish ship leading an aid flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza. Nine Turks died in the operation. Ankara has threatened to sever diplomatic ties altogether unless Israel offers a public apology and agrees to a UN-led investigation into the incident.

Although Israel has taken most of the flack for the carnage, many analysts agree that Turkey did not do enough to prevent the disaster. “There are indications that the Turkish government rather than stopping the flotilla, had actually – and privately – encouraged it,” Burak Bekdil, an Istanbul-based commentator, told Athens Plus.

“The Turkish government saw in the flotilla a convenient tool to embarrass the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government and bring international attention to the embargo on Gaza,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist for the Turkish Milliyet daily, adding that neither side predicted the magnitude and violence of events.

Can Turkey-Israel ties recover from the latest shock? “Not in the foreseeable future,” said Bekdil, who expects even more tension and confrontation in the near future. “As long as either or both governments stay in power, things can only further deteriorate,” he said.

Muscle flexing

Israel’s attack on Gaza in late 2008 was a major blow to ties with Turkey but, at the same time, it presented Ankara with an opportunity to flex its muscle in the Mideast region. Propelled by its visionary Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey has sought to establish itself as a regional soft-power broker in the lands of the one-time Ottoman empire. It has mended ties with Iraq and Syria ending years of tension over water management in the Tigris-Euphrates river system and over alleged protection of Kurdish militia. Diplomatic fervor has come with impressive economic overtures. Over the past 10 years, Turkish trade with the Middle East has outgrown that with Europe.

Critics however have slammed Ankara’s alleged cynicism, knowing that slapping Israel is the safest way to make friends in the Arab world. It is in this light that Bekdil sees the flotilla incident as a sign of Ankara’s determination “to go forward with neo-Ottoman ambitions,” a common reference to Davutoglu’s strategic vision.

On top of distancing itself from Israel, Turkey has been cozying up with the Jewish state’s nemesis in the region, Iran. Earlier this month Ankara, which depends on Iran for a big chunk of its energy, voted against UN sanctions on Tehran, raising eyebrows among its western allies who are wary of Iran’s nuclear program.

“There is nothing wrong with Turkey being more active in the Arab world, delving into frozen conflicts there or boosting trade and other ties with our Arab neighbors,” Aydintasbas said. “But there is everything wrong with re-entering the Middle East hand in hand with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Hamas. On that we need to do some fine tuning and, yes, we are deviating from the West,” she added.

Some say Turkey, a NATO member, is already paying a price for it. Military analysts have warned that Turkey’s shift undermines its fight on PKK rebels. Turkey has depended on US intelligence and Israeli drones to track down Kurdish guerrillas. As nine Turkish soldiers died in an attack on a military outpost last weekend, speculation grew whether the US withheld intelligence.

Lost cause?

Meanwhile, Turkey will find it hard to convince European leaders about its loyalty to the EU cause. Breaking ranks with the western powers in the Security Council and escalating tension with Israel “does not make Turkey more European,” Aydintasbas explained. “It makes us look like we are trying to be the leader of another camp – not the EU.”

But is Turkey’s Mideast activism really compatible with its European ambitions? Aydintasbas believes there is no necessary connection between the two. “It should not technically jeopardize our EU status. But it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a place in the EU either,” she said, rejecting the view that Turkey should try to impress the West, as it were, by becoming a big player in the Middle East.

EU membership, she says, is about fulfilling EU criteria, raising democratic standards and internalizing core European values. “We cannot enter the EU just by being able to mediate between troubled Arab states. That is a fantasy,” she said.

Turkey’s nascent engagement in the Middle East is not troubling the West alone. Turkish flags can be seen waving in the Arab cities (a recent survey found that 43 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank see Turkey as the strongest champion of their cause) and Erdogan, a devout Sunni, is even drawing comparisons to the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. But despite Erdogan’s popularity on the Arab streets, it is also true that certain Arab elites are watching the emergence of an unofficial Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas-Turkey axis with great concern, said Aydintasbas.

But it is not all grim. A positive side-effect of Turkey’s growing influence is that leaders in Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and some Gulf states is that it challenges their authoritarian style of government. “Arab leaders are not quite happy with the emergence of public movements be they in favor of Erdogan or any other political cause,” Bekdil said. “Any public movement is usually viewed by leaders as a potential uprising and risk to their autocratic rule.”

Turkey rediscovers the Middle East, but at what cost?

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis

By Harry van Versendaal

Driven by growing self-confidence and a yen to impress the West, Turkey is increasingly engaging itself with the Arab world but analysts warn that too much Middle East activism could backfire.

Under the stewardship of its mercurial Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and its mold-breaking foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey has over the past several years sought a more prominent role in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, assuming mediator status in chronic regional disputes and – somewhat paradoxically – taking a more assertive posture toward one-time ally Israel.

The true motives behind Turkey’s shift are not always easy to pin down. EU coldness over the prospect of full membership has certainly pushed the predominantly Muslim nation eastward, but analysts are not sure whether the reorientation signifies contempt about the snub or rather a desire to render itself more significant in Western eyes.

“The activism is both partly a reaction to the EU cold shower and partly an attempt to make itself more important,” said Hugh Pope, an Istanbul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent think tank that recently published a report on Turkey and the Middle East.

“Turkey has always been opportunistic in search of greater exports at times of high buying power in the Middle East, and Turkey has always been less outgoing to Israel when the Arab-Israel peace process has been stalled,” he said.

‘Zero problems’

Inspired by Davutoglu, Erdogan’s longtime foreign policy guru often dubbed the “Turkish Kissinger,” Ankara has pursued a soft-power policy of “zero problems with neighbors.” Over the past 10 years, Turkish trade with the Middle East has outgrown that with Europe. According to the ICG report, while Turkey’s total exports rose fourfold between 1996-2009, exports to the 57 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) increased by seven times, reaching 28 percent of total exports in 2009.

In a major diplomatic turnaround, Turkey has made stunning improvement in ties with Syria and Iraq, long strained over water management of the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the alleged backing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militia.

The realignment has come at a price. Relations with Israel have deteriorated. Following decades of close military and intelligence cooperation, Turkey’s public language is now more in tune with pro-Palestinian man-on-the-street sentiment. Israel’s raid on Gaza last year drew the ire of Turkish officials – most infamously Erdogan’s broadside against Israel President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. During a recent visit to Paris, Erdogan branded Israel “the principal threat to peace” in the region.

There’s more that Western powers have found hard to swallow. In a gesture prompted more by dogged pragmatism than Islamic solidarity, Turkish officials have resisted US-backed sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Turkey, a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council buys a third of is gas exports from Iran and seeks to further reduce imports from Russia, currently at 65 percent. Recently Erdogan dismissed allegations that Tehran wants to develop nuclear weapons as “mere rumors.”

In one of his most controversial gestures up until now, the Turkish premier defended Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, on the grounds that “no Muslim could perpetrate a genocide.”

Loyalty

Is Turkey drifting away from the West? Analysts are reassuring of Ankara’s loyalty.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that Turkey is turning its back on the West,” said RAND global policy think tank analyst Stephen Larrabee. He said the switch is all about change in the post cold-war security environment as the Middle East has replaced the Soviet Union as the Number One hot spot.

“What you’re seeing is a process of diversification and broadening of Turkey’s foreign policy, which, during the cold war period, was oriented almost solely toward the West. It still wants strong ties with the West but it’s not solely reliant on those ties,” Larrabee said.

Pope agrees that Ankara’s realignment does not signify any chill toward the West. “The twin pillars of Turkey’s foreign policy remain the same: its EU convergence process and the political/military alliance with the USA,” he said. “There has been a tendency by some in Turkey to overstate the ability of its Middle East policy to take the place of these fundamental pillars. This is unrealistic. Good relations with the world’s superpower are obviously vital,” Pope said, adding that it is precisely Turkey’s ties to the West that make the county attractive to the Arab world.

The same goes for Europe. The Middle East has never taken more than a quarter of Turkey’s exports and supplies only 10 percent of its tourists, while Turkey does half its trade with Europe and gets 90 percent of its foreign investment from EU states, said the ICG expert.

Too big for its boots?

However, experts warn that an overstretched Turkey risks losing sight of its priorities, spending precious diplomatic energy and capital in the Mideast when it should be working to solve problems closer to home.

“It is certainly a risk. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is badly overstretched in terms of its capabilities, plus the record is clear: limited progress on thorny issues such as Cyprus and Armenia,” said Wolfango Piccoli, a Turkey expert based in London.

A settlement on the Cyprus issue, made less likely following the victory of hardliner Dervis Eroglu in leadership elections in the Turkish-occupied north on Sunday, is a prerequisite if Turkey wishes to keep EU convergence on track. Meanwhile, smoothing relations with Washington means that Ankara must find a way to implement the recently signed protocols with Yerevan, long at loggerheads with Turkey over the killing of Armenians in the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Ankara has scrambled to prevent the full US House of Representatives from passing a resolution approved by a US congressional committee that has called the 1915 massacres of Armenians genocide.

EU unimpressed

Experts disagree over the extent to which Turkey’s Middle East activism could bolster its chances of joining the EU. For Piccoli, an analyst for the Eurasia Group, there is “a basic misunderstanding from the Turkish side: the belief that the EU can appreciate Turkey’s growing importance in the region and thus decide that it is an indispensable partner,” he said.

The problem is the EU has no coherent foreign policy and is not a credible actor in the international arena, especially in the Middle East. “The risk for Ankara is that those EU countries that are opposing Turkey’s bid for membership will exploit the issue to strengthen their anti-Turkey positions,” Piccoli said. EU heavyweights Germany and France have both grown allergic to the idea of full Turkish membership, offering vague talk of a “special partnership” instead.

Pope too sees a threat from skeptical European politicians playing to popular fears. “Some are exaggerating Turkey’s improved relations with the Middle East as a sign that Turkey is somehow not European. The reality is quite the other way round,” he said drawing parallels between Turkey’s policies in the Middle East – like visa-free travel and free trade – and postwar European peace-building measures.

“Turkey is trying to introduce EU-style ideas into the region like those that brought peace to Europe after the Second World War,” he said.

Western blues

By Harry van Versendaal

It’s hard not to feel a wee bit jealous of Nysos Vasilopoulos. The 34-year-old photographer has already had a number of solo exhibitions in Berlin, which he calls home for the past seven years, collaborated with dance and theater troupes there and in Athens, even worked on a short film that has been screened at the International Short Film Festival in Drama. So it comes a bit as a surprise that, when it comes to taking pictures, his main passion and craft, this independent and talented young man has chosen to focus on the more poignant aspects of the human psyche. Melancholy, loneliness and introversion are the words mostly associated with the work of Patra-born Vasilopoulos, whose work has already drawn comparisons to that of Michael Ackerman. “Street Sonnets,” an exhibition of 57 black-and-white photographs shot in Berlin and other European capitals between 2002 and 2009, is currently on show at the Photography Museum of Thessaloniki. Athens Plus met with Vasilopoulos at the premises of this seaside, cozy industrial building.

As a photographer you bear the label of “melancholy” and “loneliness.” Is it something that has been imposed on you, or is it something that you’ve tried to bring out with your work?

No, it’s not something that has been imposed on me. Rather, it’s a statement that I myself have used. In recent years, I have been searching for man’s loneliness, introversion and isolation. Whether I found myself in Athens, Berlin, London or Paris I was searching for man. Not in fancy parties, colors and lights but rather in places where we all exist in our daily lives. In some way, it was a reflection of my own thoughts and feelings about modern man, the modern Western man.

Was it man’s loneliness or solitude? Or, perhaps, both?

Both, yes.

Does art thrive on melancholy?

Yes. I believe art, art at its core, is tough. It won’t pet you, it won’t lie to you. Art is not some big party but something esoteric that we all share. It’s all about who people and how much they work on it.

Do these rough urbanscapes give you what you are looking for? After all, shooting in Athens or Berlin is one thing, while shooting in postcard-pretty Paris or Amsterdam is quite another.

I see what you mean but if you are looking for man you will find man regardless where you may be. A lonely setting can be found in any city. In any western city you’ll always find a coffee-place with a man sitting in a moment of silence, just like my photograph at the El Prado foyer. Funny thing is, this man was joined by three ladies right after I clicked. In a way, that is the illusion of photography. The photographer captures the moment. What happens before or after that moment is a whole different story.

Is photography melancholy by nature? I mean the way it captures the moment that is forever lost.

I think so. You freeze time and you pass it into the future; it’s an illusion. But there is also something melancholy about trying to freeze reality.

Some of your photos appear to have been staged.

Yes, I do stage some of them. When I was younger, I used to say: “Yes, this is a very beautiful photograph but it is staged, so I don’t like it.” With time you realize that this does not matter, because you can stage something or you can have something completely spontaneous and still get the same power. The point is to transcend form and create something that will stand in time.

Are there any photographers who have influenced your work?

Yes, I have delved into the work of [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and [Andre] Kertesz.

You have shot thousands of pictures. How can you tell a really good photograph from a not-so-good one?

My criterion is if a photograph that I shot in 2002 still does it for me today. A good photograph is one that can stand the test of time. But it’s also about you, what you want to say. Sometimes you may use a photograph to test your own doubt toward it. I am not so sure about all these photographs [on display here]. I still have doubts about some of them.

What is your favorite photo in this exhibition?

I really like the one at the Louvre statues. It gives me a melancholic feeling. These statues were made to stand under the sun and we wrapped them in plastic and placed them one next to the other; they look haunted. It’s like people who have lost their freedom.

You have lived in Berlin for the past seven years. Have you ever thought of coming back?

I don’t feel like a migrant. I mean, I can be here and be in Berlin or anywhere else at the same time. I love Berlin; it’s my base, my daily life. That does not mean to stay I plan to live there forever. Just like I got on a plane and left, the same could one day happen again, this time to another destination.

PROFILE

Nysos Vasilopoulos studied photography, journalism and history of European civilization in Athens before moving to Berlin, where he studied film direction at the Berlin Kaskeline Filmakademie. He has experienced with other art forms and collaborated with sculptor Clavie Duson, musician Chris Jarrett and poet Ernesto Estrella.