Living in Taksim, Daily Report June 5, 2013

First off: Do not believe the reports in the media saying that Deputy PM Arınç has apologized. His words were directed to a very small group (the activists attacked in the park on the first night of the events), completely disregarding those killed and the thousands injured by police violence since the beginning; and his “apology” sounded more like a f*** you. Some people have a way of making anything sound that way… (Here’s a Turkish video of the “apology”)

For me, it was an exciting day as I was fully out and about for the first time since my cold. After doing some work in the morning, a few colleagues and I joined the tens of thousands with the unions walking from the Golden Horn up to Taksim Square (pic below). It was all peaceful, with a lot of chants. Sorry to say, socialist chants are not as much fun, or not nearly as energetic as those by the young crowds in the park. Another group, probably as large, had come in from the direction of Şişli. Remember how the police didn’t let the unions march to Taksim on May Day, and blocked the entire city to prevent them from doing so because it wasn’t “safe”? Well, apparently it’s perfectly safe when the police is not around.

I went on and off to the park, but when I arrived at 9 PM, it was more crowded than it had ever been. More crowded than a football game, a rock concert, a rush hour train… Today was a Muslim holiday, so there were calls to avoid alcohol, and it seemed that all abided by this. Prayers were held for believers, and this is important to show the 50% that does vote for AKP that it’s not a bunch of infidels in the park with no respect for any religion… There are now representative tents in the park, in addition to the developed kitchen and field hospital. I hung out around the tent of the cinema crowd, handing out free “simit” special for the holiday. All kinds of people, old and young, were walking by, again, everyone friendly and excited. Fireworks. Literally.

So the news from Taksim are as joyous as the last few days. They even managed to build an outdoor movie theater to show some films. But the police attacked the people again in Ankara with full force, and there were other incidents in Rize. So it’s impossible to say that all is well; and the screenings were cancelled because of this. As I write these, police is watering people in Ankara – now for a change, CNN Turk is showing it live. If anyone is wondering how strong this water is, here is a video of an old friend of mine, who is literally blown away by the force of the water; thankfully, he’s safe.

Representatives from Taksim have visited Deputy PM Arınç today. From what I can gather, nothing really came out of it. RTE comes back from his trip tomorrow. I am somewhat worried. I feel like we’re the children of an abusive father, and he’s about to come back home to beat the hell out of us. It wouldn’t make sense, but nothing he does makes sense. I saw an old friend today (all these old friends I see around the protests!), and when I admitted I was a little worried, he said that only people who are abroad or over 50 are worrying. Granted, I just recently came back, and I spent most of the day with my mother, but that doesn’t make the source of our fears any less real. We are not dealing with a rational man here. Taksim makes me think of the Paris Commune, let’s just leave it at that…

P.S.: I came across this video just after I finished this post. Apparently, I'm not the only one...

Living in Taksim - Daily Report June 4, 2013

Spent most of the day indoors again, my cold is receding though. When I went out to the park at around 20:30, it was even more crowded than the previous days. people are celebrating, singing. There's a field hospital, the kitchen is running, and now there's a small library as well. Everyone is kind towards one another - apparently even on the subway. We went to eat something at Kitchenette on the square, the service, which is usually polite but slow, was kind, fast, and as odd as it sounds, gentle. They let people (and there are tens of thousands on the square) use their bathrooms, let them charge their phones and access free wifi.

The facade of Ataturk Cultural Center is now covered with banners (see pic), which is a little worrying because this movement started from no particular political position, and I think it's important to keep it that way. With the PM out of the country, the media is now discussing the events, but they are still not reporting the ongoing violence in other towns such as Antakya and Dersim. A young man was killed in Antakya the other day, and following his funeral today, the protestors were attacked again. More recent and also very troubling news is that people have been detained for what they have written on Twitter – for “inciting crowds to violence.” 

Another important issue is that the parliament was supposed to discuss the new Law on Nature, which was postponed. This law allows vast forest areas to be opened to construction – if it passes, the damage will grossly surpass the damage planned in the park. Granted, the park has a symbolic position, but this would be a disaster. You may know of the existing plans to destroy the environment in Turkey: 3^rd bridge over Bosphorus, 3^rd airport (to be the largest in the world), a channel parallel to Bosphorus, Hydro-electric centrals in ecologically sensitive areas, a nuclear plant on a fault line… Needless to say, public opinion is being absolutely disregarded in any of these projects.

That’s it for now, we’re hoping some kind of agreement can be reached before the PM comes back, his speeches do not help the situation at all…

Living in Taksim - Daily Report June 3, 2013

I've been away from my blog for far too long. This may be a good time to come back, to post my daily experiences during the most unusual times Istanbul has seen in my lifetime. These are just brief notes, nothing too exciting possibly, but as a resident of Taksim, I have a closer view on the park than most people...

 

I spent most of the day at home, trying to recover from the cold. The good thing about being at home is that I can give support by connecting people, posting news and translating when necessary. Internet/phone connection at the park is almost impossible.

But I really wanted to go out, so I went to the square for a bit in the evening. I walked around the park - some friends were going to bring supplies for the makeshift soup kitchen in the park, but the kitchen was so overloaded with everything, they asked me not to send anything. It was truly beautiful: everyone helping each other, not even a crowd, despite free food and beverages!

As I slowly made my way back home, we were hit by teargas. It was either the wind that brought it, or it was thrown from a helicopter as there was no cloud. I was wearing swim goggles and a scarf around my face, but it still burned. people were still chanting, each time a little more determined after being gassed... a young woman standing in the middle of the street sprayed my eyes with talcid and water, warned me against rubbing my face, and moved on to the next person. I was surrounded by "marginal extremists," among them a young man who was pissed off because he had come to have fun, and it was his luck to be gassed. Also an 8-year-old boy wearing a soccer jersey, with his mom (who was, incidentally, wearing a headscarf).

For those of you who don't know, the prime minister left for a 4-day trip to North Africa today. As soon as he left, all other politicians started making reasonable statements, and the mainstream media is reporting from the square. So we hope he'll never come back. I was worried last night, not sure what today would bring. I thought people might go back to work and not support the park anymore. But today I hear songs and chants from my window, people are happy and hopeful. We’ll see what tomorrow brings – I have more faith now.

Kindle and Me

I love books. I’ve loved books for as long as I can remember. Novels, especially. I’ve loved looking at them, smelling them, flipping through them, and eventually, reading them. I have also believed in reading books as books, and while the whole notion of e-books seemed attractive for practical as well as geeky purposes, I thought it would take me a while to make the (ultimately unavoidable) transition. Until, that is, right before my summer vacation, when I realized that half my suitcase was filled with books and there was no room for any clothing or toiletries (nerds like to dress up too, you know).

So, I decided to take along the Kindle my brother had generously lent me (and by lent, I mean pretty much given away). It’s a Kindle Keyboard 3G (I believe this one), very compact and light (and those will be the keywords for this review).  I found some sites to download the books I had in mind for my vacation. Let’s leave it at that. Then I found a pouch to use as a cover, and voila! I was set.

To keep things from getting overly long: I loved it. Kindle was light, it was easy to navigate, it told me how much of the book I’ve read so far (I used to calculate that as I went along with ‘regular’ books). My concern about dropping it in the sand and/or water proved to be ungrounded with only the slightest amount of attention. Visibility was extremely clear, and the E-ink felt like it was printed on paper. But I experienced the benefits only when I started reading a paperback after my return: it was difficult to keep the pages open, I couldn’t prop it up anywhere, I constantly needed at least one hand to be able to read... It was clear that I had been converted.

After having read two books on Kindle, and with the comparison I was able to make; there are only two possible drawbacks I could think of. One is about the actual physical feel of a book: the content of a book is etched in my memory along with its size and cover, it’s a rounded experience. Maybe I can say more about this when I read a few more books on Kindle, but this may prove to be another unnecessary concern. The second weakness, I realized when I forgot a paperback I was reading in a friend’s bag. If you leave your Kindle somewhere, or lose it, or break it, etc., you lose all your books. So maybe it’s safe to still keep a paperback with you, just in case...

Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being was the first book I read on Kindle - a book from a time when books came only on paper! (and I still haven't seen the movie...)

The Iron Lady

Long time, no blog...

If I were young enough to know 1980s only through films, Phyllida Lloyd's portrait of Thatcher would probably convince me that 'Maggie' was a sweet, if on occasion tough -for the right reasons of course- lady. The film stands at a very conservative point, takes forever to get into action, and swiftly avoids any political commentary over the entire Thatcher era. But all of that is easy to miss, thanks to Meryl Streep's amazing performance. She is indeed likely to receive her third Oscar next month.

For a Turkish summary of all this, let it suffice to boil the film down to one sentence: "Ne güzel başbakanımızdın sen Maggie Abla..."

Outrage

There is nothing outrageous in Takeshi Kitano’s return to Yakuza territory. In fact, it’s surprisingly straight-forward and verging on boring. Several major and minor players scheme to get rid of one another, and nearly everyone dies by the end.

One thing to possibly note is an odd choice of editing. The first third of the film connects different locations through editing and sound bridges. The second third continually uses fade-outs, I’m not really sure to which end. The last third is fairly straight-forward invisible editing, except for maybe one conversation. I’d love to have the old Kitano back, but alas, this is not it.

On a different note, Tetta Sugimoto and Nuri Bilge Ceylan look eerily alike.

Ljubljana report

I have been way too busy to update the blog lately. But I promise to feature a whole new batch of notes, fresh from Rotterdam. Really, really soon!

In the meantime, here's a brief report I wrote after the FIPRESCI Jury duty. It should also appear on the FIPRESCI web site at some point.

Of Children and Parents

The Perspectives section at the 21st Ljubljana International Film Festival offered eleven films of different styles, on different themes. Initially, one would think that the only common denominator is that all of these are the first or second feature films of their directors, according to the festival guidelines. But watching all eleven, I noticed another thread that appeared to be dominant among this year’s crop: children and parents. I think what struck me the most was the neat parallel that appeared among four of the films in particular. Two were about boys, two were about girls. Boys’ films were all about father and son bonding, and the girls… Well, the less father, the better.

Vlado Škafar’s Oča (Dad) from the host country and Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s Alamar (To the Sea) from Mexico were little stories of divorced fathers spending time with their sons. Both films shared a strong atmosphere and a lingering camera that appeared to be simply witnessing the warm relationship these men were trying to preserve. The girls were having a much tougher time. Samantha Morton’s The Unloved from Great Britain (the winner of the FIPRESCI Prize) tells the story of Lucy, an eleven-year-old who is placed in a care home after being beaten by her father. She is unwanted (and unloved) by either parent, but finds a way to survive among all the chaos that reigns not only in the care home, but also in the British social system. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone from the US has a slightly older female character at its core – at seventeen, Ree Dolly takes care of her younger siblings and her mentally ill mother, who is all but absent from their lives. She is searching for her father, who has put up their house for his jail bond and promptly disappeared. It is telling that both of these films are directed by women.

Among the other films in the competition, the theme of children kept recurring. Hector Galvez’s Paraiso (Paradise) was about five teenager friends who strive for a better life in Peru. Los Viajes del Viento (The Wind Journeys) by Ciro Guerra from Colombia followed a troubadour across the country, joined by a young man who saw him as a father figure. In Rigoberto Perezcano’s Norteado (Northless) from Mexico, the children are absent – leaving them behind is the greatest sacrifice the film’s protagonist Andres has to make as he is trying to go north across the border, into the US. But the ultimate children-parent relationship among the festival films belonged to the winner of the main prize. In Yorgos Lathimos’ Kynodontas (Dogtooth) from Greece (now a -very- surprising Oscar nominee), we witness a family where the parents desperately try to “protect” their three children from external influences – even if it means potentially destroying their lives.