Concerning the closure of DTP, the only Kurdish nationalist socialist party in Turkey

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:58 Written by Mehmet Ali ANIL Friday, 11 December 2009 22:35

This is directly copied from my journal in dA , I would be glad to take your ideas about the event from the comment section below: 

(I came into a conclusion that banishment of a major political party in Turkey would be an issue worth spreading word of, and would be a good reason to update an fossilized journal.) 

DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, en : Democratic Society Party) is closed and its 35 party members are banned from politics for five years, with the final decision of the Constitutional Court. DTP, is dominantly Kurdish, and is the representative of Kurdish community and their will in the Turkish parliament. The party is found to be affiliated with PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, en: Kurdistan Workers Party), which is a guerrilla organization on Turkish-Iraqian border.

Sadly, the ongoing trend towards dialogue has came to a halt by this decision. DTP was one of the few success stories of Kurdish criticism to be implemented into a so-found-legal Turkish parliamentary system, incrementally getting attention and becoming a political force, getting the focal point from armed solutions, to itself; and was just becoming to be the one in the position of concern when Kurdish issues are to be addressed. Gathering more votes than former Kurdish parties from South Eastern region, people in the region had seen the glimpse of well settled and strong representation in the parliament.

By the time of its electoral success till its closure, DTP was a major figure of criticism in media and politics. Ultra-nationalist parties secured their state of both denial and annihilation of DTP authority, whereas elitist-leftist parties succeeded to be in favor of closure, because of its main source of trust while conserving the so-called secular state is the Turkish Army, which is fighting with PKK guerrillas indefinitely (yeah, very leftist indeed)

In short, today the Constitutional Court has undertaken revocation of a couple of million votes of Kurdish people. Many would call it to be an inevitable consequence of the attitude the party had towards PKK, whose blindfoldedness towards not-taken chances would be the reasons for prolonged and deepened indifference, othering and more armed conflicts.

Photographs from "Şimdiki Zamanın Rivayeti" by İTÜ Sahnesi

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:55 Written by Mehmet Ali ANIL Friday, 30 October 2009 12:50

    Although this is a late exposal, I would still like to share these pictures, taken during the rehearsal of "Şimdiki Zamanın Rivayeti", a pun - ish   (not punish, but pun-like) name for a play from İTU Sahnesi. The name of the play is a well known grammar term, indicating that though a verb has a tense of present continuous tense, it is expressing an action is being told right now, but has told to occur beforehand. The term has a story-like tune to it, is generally used when a story was told to be happened. The script is focused upon themes like war, is especially exemplifying the ongoing war and social struggle in Southeastern Turkey, has built its theme upon the methodical preparation of the individual into the person that has been stripped down from empathy, and a cliché supporter of social Darwinism, has a strong sense of cynicism. Though whether the play will be put on stage for some more time, or not is ambiguous; but I definitely recommend people in Turkey to have a go with this theater company. 

   And I also recommend "On Identitiy" by Amin Maalouf as a book, despite of the fact that this recommendation seems to be -but is not- awkward and out of point. The Turkish title is "Ölümcül Kimlikler" , which is a far better translation of the title in French: "Les Identités meurtrières" 

The following is taken with Ilford PAN 400; some with long exposure. For your pleasure:

Aslı Işıltan 

Atılım Şahin

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Workshop Session

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:56 Written by Mehmet Ali ANIL Thursday, 04 June 2009 22:54

This is about a video session that me and Dilşad did a while ago. We were in an art studio, and did a couple of shots that we never managed to edit to make a whole short film. The main point was about communication, and we tried to invent abstractions during the process but we ended up shooting more photos than videos for her film class project.

Painted in acrylic during the course of the shootings,  Dilşad went to closet and started to wash her white acyrlic skin off. Covered with circular mirrors, the toilet was a cubicle of reflections, being small, they didn't result in an infinite number of reflections, but created more subtle, interesting  feeling, making one forgot the existence of mirrors up there. Rather, one is easily fooled that a circular contour, or a window is present, evidently fooling one that reflections does not exist.

 So, spotting this weird moment, with some hard times (it was hard to avoid a reflection of my own, and hard for her to remain at that posture) this is the result:

 It was very dark inside, so I had to use a 400 speed film (Couldn't fool my body to force it to a 800 speed film or so), Ilford PAN 400 (I don't know whether this amount of grain is because of that, T-Max has a finer grain I guess. ), with  50mm f1.4.

 I used a polygrade paper with filter 5 (My intention was to give the image as much contrast as It can have, have that 'out of this world' feeling and I wanted the circles to remain floating up in the air.), I guess for other prints, I will use fibre rather than resin coated papers, and stick with T-Max 400 for interior photography.

 I try to avoid overwhelmingly dark-utopic images where rust, cable and images about human metabolism meeting with disgusting machinery is overused. A photograph standing out with its prejudged images and meanings would have just created a"wow how distopic" effect. I also fall into that trap of it quite a lot. Trying to get qualified with that taste also.

What I like about this photo is its circular borders, floating within the composition. They create sleek corpuscles of imagery, maybe I could've experimented by putting other compositions in those circles, though It may have been distracting also.  I also like the hose guiding the eye to the mouth, I guess it is a bit hard to notice the face at first, If there is a certain delay between these two moments of recognition, I guess it *could* stretch the space of this photo to an extra dimension.
 
I don't like my technical work here.I guess I have too much of the whites, and a dirty negative.  Maybe with more light, I could've shot with a deeper field of depth, that would give the face a little more texture. Though I liked the obscurity of the face, I would like the white paint visible on the skin also.

Just thought that making this site bilingual would be unendurable pain.

Cheers.

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