During a discussion on the mosque soon to be built on the Çamlıca Hill and the future of Taksim Square, some of the participants and the audience constantly mention these two opposing groups that differentiate in their use of the public space with regard to religious practices. Participants of the talk are two leading architects: Nevzat Sayın and Can Çinici and author and public intellectual Dücane Cündioğlu. “Kalebodurla Mimarlar Konuşuyor,” conferance organized by Arkitera Centre of Architecture, 12 Jan. 2013 available at YouYube
Mavi Boncuk |
Pelin Derviş and Gökhan Karakuş SALT exhibition
The Performance of Modernity: Ataturk Cultural Center, 1946-1977
"...Located in Taksim, Istanbul, AKM (Ataturk Cultural Centre) or “the Opera” as the regulars called it, is a symbol that represents attempts of Modernization in Turkey, which, on the political and cultural sphere, equalled Westernization. Curated by Pelin Derviş and Gökhan Karakuş and realized by SALT, the exhibition The Performance of Modernity: Ataturk Cultural Center, 1946-1977, aims to historically contextualize political conditions, choices, and technological developments that defined AKM’s destiny in a period of time from the Ottoman period to our day with an emphasis on the selected period.
The exhibition displays rich archival material that ranges from architectural plans, photographs, state documents, and newspaper columns to sound recordings of the interviews with architects, designers, and artists who played prominent roles in the execution of this building. This allows the extraordinary effort, devotion, and labour demanded by the construction of the building, which took more than 20 years to be recognized. However, the exhibition does not fully contextualize the meaning of the building from a political and cultural perspective since it is not possible to trace—in the exhibition—Turkey’s crises of modernization, a history of ideological clashes centered on the issue of Westernization and how to combine Islamic and Western values. The current discussions on AKM, as part of a larger discourse on the politics of the public space, reveal the continuity of a binary opposition that attempts to modernization gave rise to: the secular and the religious.[1] While the secularists feel threatened, thinking “their” public space is invaded by the policies of the conservative government currently in power; the religious who felt excluded from the public space due to the exclusive policies of the former since the early years of the republic, wants to leave its own mark on it. A prominent, religious, public intellectual, Dücane Cündioğlu, even argues that AKM is a “secularist temple.”[2]
Under these circumstances it is no wonder, the future of the building had been the center of a long battle between the conservative government that once declared its wish to demolish the building and several professional associations that want to preserve it.
From a different perspective, however, the distance that the exhibition keeps with the political (despite its aim) allows the visitor to concentrate on the material reality of the building; its aesthetic coherence, and the creativity witnessed in its design, the visitor is given the opportunity to appraise the building as an artwork and see it not as a symbol that represents any political ideology or group but as a part of Istanbul’s cultural heritage. The building is now under restoration with the support of the private sector."
—Elif Gül Tirben