Digital Tarkan
In Turkey, like in many other countries, the demand for portable music is high. Mobile operators are aware of this demand and offering their customers digital music services.
Turkey’s Avea is one of these operators who has made thousands of tracks available for their subscribers who can download them directly on their mobile phones and computers using the company’s online music store “aveamuzik.com”. And Avea has now launched the Avea Music Awards on their digital platform. Avea subscribers will vote online for their favorite artists whose work has been available on aveamuzik.com.
Avea Müzik is using the ad above in its promotional campaign for the music awards. We believe that TarkanPLUS International readers will enjoy spotting Tarkan’s name in the ad along with other artists such as Ajda Pekkan, Şebnem Ferah, Mustafa Ceceli, Candan Erçetin.
Tarkan and Cut-and-Paste Journalism
Tarkan Waving His Fans After Release Photo: NTVMSNBC
The latest reports of the Turkish newspapers about Tarkan since last Friday have had one thing in common: Tarkan’s blood and urine samples and the details of his conversations on the phone.
It all started with Star Newspaper’s report saying that the Turkish Institute of Forensic Medicine’s report revealed Tarkan consumed drugs. Star also wrote that they discovered the details of Tarkan’s phone conversations revealing his addiction. All this was big news, of course. And soon it was posted on the websites of newspapers.
What is wrong was not for all other websites and the following day’s papers to give this as “breaking news” but for them to have used the same piece of information without verifying or proofreading it. Even the spelling mistake regarding Star newspaper’s title was retained in these articles. This was nothing but “cut-and-paste” journalism – extremely embarrassing for the Turkish press.
Another issue this forces us to consider and reconsider is the confidentiality of information. How can a report by the Turkish Institution of Forensic Medicine become so easily available for the press when Tarkan’s case is still in progress.
Eventually, in response to the information being circulated in the press, Tarkan’s lawyer rejected all accusations, claiming that Tarkan was not even tested while in custody. (His statement was published in Milliyet on Sunday.)
Whatever the truth is, we have no access to it at the moment. We have to wait and see. However, if all that has been written were not facts, then this wouldn’t be considered “responsible journalism”.
Love in Another Language
İlksen Başarır’s award-winning debut film “Love in another language” (Başka Dilde Aşk) invites us to the world of the deaf through its plain but exciting depiction of the romance between Onur, a young deaf and mute man who works as a librarian and Zeynep, a call-center employee. The film shows the difficulties the couple encounter in their relationship with one another and the difficulties they face with the world outside them.
“Love in another language” is a love story. However, it offers more than that. The communication difficulties Onur and Zeynep have is just a microcosm of a malady we suffer from in modern Turkey, at a more universal level, in contemporary world: lack of communication.
“Can we communicate without speaking?” is the thesis of the film declared in its early moments. We all speak with one another in our daily lives. But does this necessarily mean that we communicate? While answering this and demonstrating the difficulties we encounter, İlksen Basarir’s film manages to gain its universal appeal.
The film’s use of locations supports its thesis and themes. The call center where Zeynep works and the library Onur works at are equally important. The former is quite noisy and stressful. The emphasis on Zeynep and her friends’ talk to the customers on the phone is nothing but a metaphorical demonstration of not only how we speak with each other but also how we should do so. In contrast to the call center, the library is quiet; “far from the madding crowd”. However, there are cases which clearly indicate that people still miscommunicate within this setting as well.
Since the film mainly focuses on the themes of communication and miscommunication, there are many images of such communication: mobile phones, computers, headphones, microphones, pen and paper, television, videos, blackboards… there is so much available for us so that we can communicate. But do we? Can we?
İlksen Başarır, the director of the film, wrote the screenplay with Mert Fırat, the leading actor of “Love in another language”. The film is never a cliché and flows successfully. And there is consensus that the performance of its leading cast is remarkable: Mert Fırat has won two awards in Turkey; Ankara International Film Festival’s the best leading actor award and Yeşilçam Awards 2010, both in March 2010. Like Mert Fırat, Saadet Işıl Aksoy has won two awards: Ankara International Film Festival 2010 The Best Leading Actress Award and The 4th International Bursa Silk Road Film Festival National Golden Karagöz Feature Film Competition The Best Leading Actress Award. In the same festival, the director İlksen Basarir also received the National Golden Karagöz Feature Film Competition FIPRESCI Award. In addition, Hayk Kirakosyan received the best cinematography award in Ankara International Film Festival 2010.
TarkanPLUS International Recommends: “Love in another language” is a good example of modern Turkish cinema. Its strength comes from its honesty. It is a good study of how we easily “other” those who are different from us. The film’s DVD has English and Turkish subtitles and a narrative track for the blind and visually impaired.
Interview with the director of the film
Tarkan in the Nil Özalp Interview
Today the Turkish daily Akşam has printed Sibel Özavci’s interview with Nil Özalp, whose debut album “Acıkolik” was released on March 18. The metaphorical title of the interview highligts the support Nil has received from the two pop symbols of Turkey: “Serdar Ortaç opened the door and Tarkan gave the final touch”
In the first part of the interview, Özalp talks about how music “had” her when she was a child: “I was always interested in music when I was a student. My teachers were also telling me that I was a musical child.” Nil Özalp started singing for “Denizaltı Orkestrası” in Silivri, an Anatolian rock orchestra of which her aunt was the singer and her grandfather was the agent. She became the orhestra’s lead vocal when she was only 15 years old: “I learned a lot from them. They were all older than me… and very experienced… Then I moved to İstanbul and got onto the stage on my own. I was comfortable and happy singing Anatolian Rock but I had always wanted to sing pop.” (Later from the interview we find out that Nil Özalp studied public relations at university and has a PR and casting company.)
In the interview, Özalp says. “I really wanted to make an album. I had some demos and talked to some record companies. I was very enthusiastic. And then my friend Sertaç Ortaç said to me, “Why do you do all this on your own? Why don’t you ask for help from us? We will support you. Let’s do it together.” This is how it all started. We first completed “Fotoğraf”, an Ersen Üner song, which boosted my motivation. Serdar was then working on a new song “Kalp Boş”, which I wanted to get. I also wanted to sing Serdar’s old song “Değmez”. Serdar completed the songs and gave them to me on my birthday.” Nil Özalp also emphasizes that she and Serdar Ortaç are very good friends and if Ortaç hadn’t belived in her, he would have stopped her making the album.
Nil also talks about Tarkan in the interview: “While the album was in progress, Tarkan listened to the songs and
wanted to give me a hand. He believed in me, in my work and my songs. “Acıkolik” was a present to me.” As TarkanPLUS International has reported earlier, Tarkan got involved in this album in the last moment. Özalp, in the interview, says: He gave us the last song of the album and gave our work a final touch. “Acıkolik” fits the album so well.”
In the interview Nil Özalp is inevitably asked whether there is any romantic affair between herself and Tarkan and this is her answer: “Those who heard that we would work in the studio together started all these rumors. But I wouldn’t like to talk about this at a time when I’m doing promotional work for my album. I don’t feel comfortable talking about my own private life.”
Tarkan and Identity Formation
Tarkan PLUS International continues familiarizing you with academic articles in which Tarkan’s name has been referred to. In the first part of our series we looked at Tarkan through the lenses of feminism and in the second part we reported about an article examining identity politics of diasporic communities and the transnational media.
This third part of our series aims to tell you about another academic article, Katharina Ernest and Heinz Moser’s “Media and Processes of Identity Formation in the Context of Migration” printed in “Medien Padagogik” in June 2005. Ernest and Moser’s media research conducted in Switzerland looks at the relationship between the following: the cultural background of migrant parents’ children, their use of the media and the media’s role in their identity formation.
In the article Tarkan’s name appears in a section where the respondents were interviewed about their musical habits. The data indicates that Turkish music is something that helps them establish “emotional ties” with their homeland because the musical styles of singers such as Tarkan, Mustafa Sandal and Ebru Gündeş combine mainstream pop elements and traditional Turkish roots.
The study also indicates that what fascinates the girls interviewed is not only the Turkish roots or hybridity inherent in Tarkan, Mustafa Sandal and Ebru Gündeş’s music. These girls, the data indicates, are also fascinated by the biographies of the singers.
At this point in the article, there is more emphasis on Tarkan and how the girls interviewed relate to Tarkan. It appears that Tarkan has created the image of a rebel in their eyes by refusing to do his compulsory military service in 1999. According to Ernest and Moser, this in many ways “mirrors the inherent conflicts of migrant adolescents with the values and expectations of their country of origin”.
By referring to Tarkan’s biography on Stars on Top, Ernest and Moser also argue that as a person who was born in Germany and partly grew up in İstanbul, Tarkan displays hybrid characteristics. They continue: “Tarkan is the perfect representation of a hybrid lifestyle, incorporating all the tensions, fears, and hopes of his mainly Turkish audience. He contests traditional Turkish behavior and at the same time he is a star successful in Turkey and all over Europe.. a perfect mixture of Western originality and Turkish romanticism”.
Identity Politics of Diasporic Communities and Tarkan
Identity Politics of Diasporic Communities and Tarkan
Tarkan’s name has often been referred to in various articles published in academic journals and books over the years. In the first part of our series we looked at Tarkan through the lens of feminism. In this second part, we continue familiarizing our readers with another academic article, Gökçen Karanfil’s “The Message of Transnational Media: Changing Notions of ‘Threat’ and Opportunities for Cultural Diversity” printed in “Global Media Journal: Mediterranean Edition” in Spring 2008.
Karanfil’s article based on her case-study examines the impact of transnational media on identity politics of diasporic communities, more specifically on the cultural transformation of the Turkish diaspora in Australia.
Karanfil argues that “although the cultural products that stem from contemporary Turkish media are popular in Turkey as well, the way they are consumed by subjects of diaspora is unique” and she continues: “While, in Turkey, listening to Turkish popular music may have reference to youth, class, gender and/or cultural taste, in a diasporic context, it has other connotations”.
In order to examine these connotations, Karanfil quotes one of her respondents in her research study. The 23-year old Turkish male respondent describes how he listens to music in his car and in his description, “Tarkan” emerges as a part of the transnational media:
“It’s not just a car. It is my car. It is my ‘space’. Wherever I drive it you can hear loud Turkish music pumping through the stereo, my seat is covered with a T-shirt that has a Turkish flag on it, my girlfriend’s seat [she is Lebanese] is covered with a Tarkan T-shirt, the licence plate reads JEM [the respondent’s name is Cem which is pronounced as ‘Gem’ in English]. My car defines me, and I feel more like myself when I am driving it in Sydney. I feel like a Turkish-Australian, and I feel proud and confident.
Cem’s listening to Turkish music in his car, his “linguistically smart” license plate, his speaking English with his girlfriend, the Tarkan t-shirt covering one of his car seats, etc. all indicate that Cem is “in motion across a diverse range of cultural spaces”. He “moves into and out of Turkishness”. He is neither wholly “Turkish” nor wholly “Australian”, he is Turkish-Australian and he feels confident and proud about his hybrid identity.
We believe that the respondent’s sense of confidence with his identity can also be regarded as a move from the mute and confined migrant image in John Berger’s “A Seventh Man” (1975).
The quotation also clearly indicates the role of transnational media -exemplified by Turkish music and by a popular Turkish singer” Tarkan”- is quite influential in the respondent’s journey through cultural spaces, in other words, in his identity formation.
TarkanPLUS International Recommends: Hybridity and Turkish-German Cinema
Yeşilçam Awards: 2010 Winners
The 3rd Yeşilçam Awards 2010
Here are the winners in full for this year’s Yeşilçam Awards 2010, which were held on 23 March at The Istanbul Convention & Exhibition Centre.
Best film: Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun
Best director: Reha Erdem-Hayat Var (My only sunshine)
Best leading actress: Binnur Kaya-Vavien
Best leading actor: Mert Fırat-Başka Dilde Aşk (Love in another language)
Best supporting actor: Cemal Toktaş-Güneşi Gördüm (I saw the sun)
Best supporting actress: Derya Alabora-Pandora’nın Kutusu (Pandora’s box)
Best cinematography: Soykut Turan-Güneşi Gördüm
Best screenplay: Engin Günaydın-Vavien
Best music: Atilla Özdemiroğlu-Vavien
Best young talent/rising star: Elit İşcan-Hayat Var
Turkcell best first film: Levent Semerci – Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun
Special achievement award: Filiz Akın
The Turkish Foundation for Cinema and Audiovisual Culture (TÜRSAK) organizes the Yeşilçam Awards in order to support Turkey’s film industry. The name comes from a street in İstanbul, Yeşilçam Street, where Turkish film making companies had their offices between the 1950s and 1970s. Yeşilçam is also a symbol of the golden years of Turkey’s filmmaking industry.
Watch the video.
Tarkan On TRT Arabic
TRT, Turkish Radio and Television, has just launched its seventh television channel today. This new channel in Arabic language is yet in its testing stage but will officially start on April 4, 2010. The channel will be offering TV series, films, documentaries, news programs and music to 22 Arab countries.
The trial broadcasting of TRT Arabic started today with the Turkish national anthem, which was followed by a Tarkan music video: “Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım” – a very popular Turkish folk song written by Aşık Veysel (1894-1973), an Anatolian poet of folk literature, songwriter and a “bağlama” and “saz” virtuoso. As our readers would remember, Tarkan’s version of the Veysel song appeared in his 2003 album “Dudu” which also included Ozan Çolakoğlu’s remix of the Veysel song.
Tarkan and Tourists
Two news items in today’s Turkish media have two “things” in common: Tarkan and tourists! Turkish daily Hürriyet reports that a group of Israeli tourists who arrived in Alanya on a ship called “Mirage 1” today were given a warm welcome at the port by a belly dancing group who danced to Tarkan’s worldwide hit “Şımarık”. Hürriyet reports that there were 317 tourists aboard.
The other news item reported by Cihan News Agency is about musical preferences of Iranian tourists who have to come to Turkey for Nevrouz celebrations and is based on the information provided by Meryem Emadi, a tourist guide. Emadi says that Tarkan is the most popular music artist among Iranian teenagers and his dancing style is really special for them. According to CHA’s report, Mustafa Sandal is among the most popular in Iran, too. The same report also says that people in their 40s love İbrahim Tatlıses the most.
Nil Özalp Thanks Tarkan
Turkish singer Nil Özalp, whose debut album “Acıkolik” was released on March 18, 2010, thanks Tarkan and her friends for supporting her. (As our readers would know, the album’s title cut is penned by Tarkan himself.)
In the 20-page booklet of “Acıkolik”, Özalp has a one-page long “thank you” message starting with the following words: “I had a dream and many friends stood by me to make it come true.” And this is the paragraph where Özalp thanks Tarkan: “I wanted to thank you last because this album needed one final touch and you came in at the right time giving it what it needed. Thank you for arriving at the right time, listening to the album, believing in it, and for not giving up but helping make the album more meaningful and my dreams come true.“
Tarkan, Fazıl Say… And Others
Turkish artists’ achievements in the international arena are always a source of pride for Turks. When Tarkan first became successful in Europe and the rest of the world, it made us so happy that we embraced him wholeheartedly. Since then, we have loved him in our own “unique” way.
One can feel nothing but pride after reading, in the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, Zeynep Oral’s commentaries about Fazıl Say’s latest concerts in Germany. What we feel about Fazıl Say’s last four concerts in Dortmund is no different from what we felt when he was first recognized abroad.
What makes us so happy and so proud? Why do Tarkan’s, Fazıl Say’s or any other Turkish artists’ success stories keep making us more than happy? Is it because art is an inevitable part of Turkish people’s lives? Is it because we are simply patriotic?
There may be different answers to these questions. What we would like to put forward as an alternative answer here today is that all these success stories might have something to do with our exhaustion of the never-ending political conflicts and economic problems in Turkey. Maybe artists like Tarkan and Say are simply helping us overcome our exhaustion; maybe they are providing us with the sense of recognition we feel Turkey lacks in the international arena, maybe they are telling us art is the key to the Golden Country.
Well, there is no clear answer we can formulate at the moment. The answer is probably hidden in the works of our artists like Fazıl Say and Tarkan… and many others who manage to keep capturing the real spirit of Turkey and its people.
Fazıl Say’s Four-Day Concert Series in Germany
Acclaimed Turkish pianist, composer and arranger Fazil Say staged a four day series of concerts in the Dortmund Concert Hall between March 10 and March 13, 2010. These concerts were very important in Say’s career because they included the world premiere of Say’s “İstanbul Symphony” and the German premier of his violin concerto “1001 Nights in the Harem”.
Fazil Say has had a contract with the Dortmund Concert Hall since 2006 and these four concerts, also part of the Ruhr 2010 European Capital of Culture festivities, marked the end of Fazıl Say’s residency at the Dortmund Concert Hall. Benedikt Stampa, the Artistic Director of the DCH, explained how he first met Fazıl Say in DW-TV’s “Euromaxx”: “It was love at first sound. My first impression was “That’s Mozart!”… The music flows in him, flows through him. It just doesn’t stop. He is almost a kind of medium. It is so spontaneous. Maybe Mozart was like this, full of music. Maybe Mozart was music. Fazıl is something like music, too.”
On DW-TV, Fazıl Say described his symphony as “a romantic piece of music”: “It embodies that feeling that I get in Istanbul; the nostalgia”.
Symphonies usually have four movements; however, Fazıl Say’s “İstanbul Symphony” has seven moments. This is simply because İstanbul is a city of seven hills. Each movement in the symphony offers a different portrait of İstanbul: “Nostalgia”, ”Religious Order”, ”Blue Mosque”, ”Merrily Clad Young Ladies Aboard the Ferry to the Islands”, ”About the Travellers to Anatolia Departing from the Haydar Pasha Train Station”, ”Carousal Night” and ”Finale”.
WDR Sympohny Orchestra’s violinist Pierre Chamot said on DW-TV, “This symphony is motivated by a completely different idea. It works with recognizable motifs… easy to sing. The rhythms are also extremely catchy. And there is a lot of repetition. You could dance within parts, or at least move along to the rhythm.”
Say scored the symphony for a large orchestra (more than 100 musicians) and used some additional Turkish instruments such as “ney” and “kanun”.
TarkanPLUS International recommends the following albums by Fazıl Say: Black Earth / 1001 Nights in the Harem /Say-Kopatchinskaja – iTunes UK Store / Fazıl Say – Gershwin /
Looking At Tarkan Through Feminist Lenses
Tarkan’s name has often been referred to in various articles published in academic journals and books over the years. TarkanPLUS International would like to start a new series of articles to familiarize its readers with some of these academic sources.
In the first part of this series, we would like to examine Yeşim Arata’s article “Rethinking the Political: A Feminist Journal In Turkey, Pazartesi”, printed in Women’s Studies International Forum (Volume 27, Issue 3, August-September 2004, Pages 281-292).
In her work, Arata mainly focuses on the analysis of the Turkish feminist journal, Pazartesi, to discuss how “feminists expand the confines of the political, rethink political values in the Turkish context and contribute to the democratization of the polity”.
In the article, Arata explains how popular culture can be viewed/re-viewed from a feminist perspective and she demonstrates this through a close analysis of an essay penned by Ayşe Düzkan “I admit, I like Tarkan” as printed in the feminist Turkish journal “Pazartesi” in 1995.
Before looking at Düzkan’s essay and Arata’s interpretation, it would be a good idea to first familiarize ourselves with Laura Mulvey’s canonical work “Visual Pleasure and Narrrative Cinema” (1975) .
According to Mulvey, the mainstream cinema has a patriarchal point of view through which woman in film is reduced to an erotic object. Her appearance is carefully coded for strong visual and erotic impact because she is expected to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Since this is the case, regardless of whether the viewer is male or female, the woman on the screen is viewed from the male perspective. In other words, the classic cinema promotes the male gaze and turns women into prey.
When we read Düzkan’s essay, we can understand how patriarchal hierarchy and traditional, stereotypical gender roles pointed out in Mulvey’s work are challenged: [Below is an excerpt of Arata’s translation of Düzkan’s essay]
“Tarkan does not carry out the job with a God-given attractiveness, he struggles to make himself attractive, handsome and sexy and does not hide this endeavor!.. I like Tarkan because he allows me to feel an emotion I am not accustomed to; to look at a man with a ‘customer’s eye’ and say ‘what a handsome man…”
The quotation above clearly indicates that Düzkan likes Tarkan because Tarkan, in Arata’s words, “is sexy in a way that men in Turkey are not or are not allowed to be”. In other words, Tarkan “possesses a sexiness that people in Turkey are not used to associating with men, because his sexiness seduces the onlookers and being seductive is associated with being female”.
Yeşim Arata’s analysis of “I admit I like Tarkan” clearly indicates that Tarkan challenges gender roles and “offers an opportunity for women to experience a feeling of sexual liberation [and] a code of sexual conduct where men as well as women can choose to seduce and be seduced.”
Tarkan To Revive Turkish Classical Music
Aykut Işıklar has written about Tarkan today in his column in the Turkish daily Bugün (Today). Işıklar’s article focuses on Günay’s efforts to revive Turkish classical music and “gazino” culture in Turkey and their interest in Tarkan who is very good at performing Turkish classical music.
Günay is İstanbul’s widely-known restaurant where famous Turkish musicians have appeared on stage over the years and it now wants to make Turkish classical music as popular as it was in the past. According to Aykut Işıklar, Günay wants Tarkan’s help in making this come true. He writes that Günay’s management is prepared not to make a profit; all they want is to promote “gazino” culture. Apparently, they have said this to Işıklar: “We know how much you love Turkish classical music and we know how well you perform it. If you accept our offer, young people will familiarize themsevels with Turkish classical music and our elderly customers will come back to “gazinos” like in the old days. And those who make a living in the entertainment biz, from the musicians on the stage to the janitors and the fish sellers, will be thankful to you. Your interpretation of the songs of Saadettin Kaynak, Münir Nurettin Selçuk and Selahattin Pınar [legendary composers of Turkish classical music] will change Turkey.”
According to Işıklar, all this is not “business” but “a mission”; a duty to revive Turkish classical music: “If Tarkan says “yes” and performs at Günay even only for a few days, this will be the beginning of a new era, the arrival of the second “Zeki Müren” [known as “The Sun of Turkish Classical Music].
Who is Zeki Müren?
Zeki Müren was Turkey’s most respected classical singer famous for his beautiful diction, musical expertise, contributions to Turkish music and his camp style. After living in seclusion for years, he died in 1996 at the age of 65 shortly after he attended a televised awards ceremony where he was presented with the microphone he used in 1951. When he died, Billboard’s Stajic Aleksander called him and his music “both conventional and revolutionary” and wrote that Müren was “a consummate singer who extended the music’s reach into new areas while remaining true to its centuries-old roots.”
Tarkan As “An Exemplary Popular Text”
In his famous book “Understanding Popular Culture” (1989), John Fiske examines Madonna as “an exemplary popular text” and says that she is not “an adequate text in herself”. However, her being an inadequate text in herself is not to be taken negatively. Here Fiske wants to emphasize that Madonna is “a provoker of meanings whose cultural effects can be studied only in her multiple and often contradictory circulations”.
Let’s try to understand Fiske’s argument by exploring Tarkan as a popular text. Tarkan as a text is used by different people in different ways. For example, there are bloggers who use Tarkan as a text because they adore him. There may be some who blog about Tarkan simply to improve or display their journalistic skills. Another example is the Turkish deputy who said he would love Tarkan if Tarkan were not gay (the claim Tarkan has never accepted). What makes him say so? Any cultural implications when you read between the lines? And journalists who constantly and harshly criticizeTarkan? What makes them write in such a manner? Do any personal histories get involved in their comments? And fans who love Tarkan for his honesty and kindness? Could these qualities be the ones we have lost in Turkey in our relationships with one another?
The examples are infinite in number. However, what Fiske wants to say is this: Tarkan is an exemplary popular text but not adequate in himself. Tarkan’s meaning, we can say, becomes complete when he as a text is interpreted by those who read him. This interpretation, of course, depends on so many different variables such as sex, race, ethnicity, political agenda, religion, education.
Therefore, “Tarkan” means different to different people. What would “us who read him as a text” mean to Tarkan? This can be the topic for another article.
Classroom activity:
Examine some web sites, blogs and newspapers and see how they cover and explore “Tarkan”. In what ways are they the same or different in their coverage of Tarkan?
Choose a celebrity figure other than Tarkan and do some research into what meanings she/he conveys and in which contexts.
Tarkan the Phoenix
Turkish daily Habertürk’s Esin Övet gives Tarkan fans the good news that in Ozan Çolakoğlu’s recording studio in Kavacık, İstanbul, Tarkan is working hard on his new album, which will be ready in April 2010. In her article entitled “Mother and Son Give a Hand to Tarkan”, Övet points out that Sezen Aksu is with Tarkan in the studio, supporting him. Övet also notes that Sezen Aksu and her son Mithat Can Özer have written the lyrics for a Tarkan song. [Tarkan's worldwide hit, "Şimarik" was written by Aksu for Tarkan in 1997 and released in Europe in 1999. The song was later covered as "Kiss Kiss" by Holly Valance and became the singer's international number one-hit in 2002]
“After his release from custody, I always prayed that Tarkan would not disappear but work hard to give us the songs we have missed for so long. Eventually Tarkan preferred to stay in Turkey with his friends who love him instead of leaving Turkey. This was the right decision,” Esin Övet writes in her column “Unisex” in Habertürk.
At the end of her article, Övet says that this is the right time for Tarkan to release his new album: “Sometimes bad experiences do not ruin some people but help them rise instead… I believe this coming summer will be Tarkan’s summer”.
Tarkan in Newsweek Turkey: Celebrity-ness
Newsweek Turkey’s latest issue dated March 14, 2010 has just come out with a Bahar Kader article about Tarkan.
Kader’s article starts with an analogy, “The bigger a star is, the more quickly it burns out because in the core of a big star pressure is higher and hydrogen burns faster” and then asks the readers the following question: “Who could guess such a unique star of Turkey [Tarkan] would have the same destiny as those who had fallen from grace before him?”
Turning into a critique of the culture industry, the Newsweek article continues with an account of Tarkan’s past in a dark and biting tone: “Tarkan always had the opportunity to “renew” his story in the past…. However, he then preferred clichés, producing copy-cat songs and offering copy-cat stage performances. He chose leading a safe life in seclusion away from the press… If there is no new song and no scandal, there is, then, no “celebrity-ness” either.”
At the end of the Newsweek Turkey’s article, Tarkan’s four-day custody is described as “wrapped in cotton wool” and the the following claim is made: “For a celebrity who has been unable to produce anything worthy, a drug-related incident can be a second springboard”.
When Tarkan Felt Blue
In a very short article that has appeared in today’s Turkish daily Sabah, Özlem Avcı reports that Tarkan wrote two songs while he was in custody; one telling about the singer’s feelings and the other inspired by a story Tarkan heard from a female police officer.
The Citrus Promotion Group Says “Tarkan”
As our readers would remember, Tarkan is collaborating with the Citrus Promotion Group in an advertising campaign to boost the sales of the Turkish citrus in the Russian market. The Group earlier announced, according to Hurriyet Daily News, that Turkey’s citrus exports to Russia increased 33-39 percent when compared to the citrus exports of the previous year.
However, while Tarkan was in custody, there were rumors that the advertising campaign with him would be cancelled. However, Milliyet today reports that the Group keeps monitoring whether Tarkan’s recent drug-related incident has had any negative effect on the perception of Russian people about the singer and wants the campaign to continue because there is a demand from the market for its continuation.
The Citrus Promotion Group says that their contract with Tarkan expires at the end of 2010. If the demand continues then, they say, the duration of the campaign will be extended. According to Milliyet, the Citrus Promotion Group believes that singers like Tarkan are rare and therefore have to be treated in a constructive manner.
“A Jolly Life” Has A Tarkan Song
The plain and honest depiction of simple people is what makes Yılmaz Erdoğan’s film “A Jolly Life/Neşeli Hayat” a good film. It is a comedy-drama but gets its main strength from its dramatic life story of Turkish people who have moved into İstanbul from Anatolia but are struggling in a merciless giant city.
Erdoğan’s film is centered on Rıza’s struggle to survive. Rıza loses his job, and then becomes part of a Ponzy scheme (a pyramid scheme) by selling some health products and encouraging his friends in his neighbourhood to do the same believing that they will be able to buy their own villas in the end; however, he hits rock bottom and loses everything, including his friends, when the Health Ministry bans the import of these products into Turkey. Rıza ends up working as Santa Claus in a big shopping mall for a month just to entertain children of a toy shop.
“A Jolly Life/Neşeli Hayat” can be interesting for the foreign audience who would like to find something about contemporary Turkey.
The gigantic shopping mall where Rıza works as Santa Claus appears as the right setting to emphasize how lonely, desperate and isolated individuals can be in the urban space. However, it also shows how an individual like Rıza has to fight to survive. The shopping mall includes people from all walks of life but it may also increase the distance between them, minimizing the real interaction; people just come, do their work and go. The huge columns and the huge windows of the mall intensify the “smallness” of people like Rıza in a city like İstanbul.
Rıza’s neighborhood forms a contrast to the shopping mall imagery used in the film. It encourages us to get into the lives of people – probably most have migrated from rural Turkey. Yılmaz Erdoğan is a good observer of people and life so the details in the depiction of these people’s lives are very rich. Each of the characters in the neighbourhood depicted is indeed real, each revealing something about contemporary Turkey.
Many Turkish film critics have positive reviews of the film and say that “A Jolly Life/Neşeli Hayat” is the most plain but the best film in Erdogan’s filmography. They also compare the film to Frank Capra’s “It’s a wonderful life” (1946) in that it shows however insignificant an individual (Rıza, in this case) can be, he can still make a difference.
“A Jolly Life/Neşeli Hayat” is a warm and sentimental film. Its richness is in its details and the performances. It is also a film that uses a Tarkan hit “Şımarık” in two different scenes.
“A Jolly Life/Neşeli Hayat” has English, German and Dutch titles and offers lots of extra features on a separate DVD.
Loving Tarkan and His Songs
Nazan Öncel, Turkish singer and song writer, has just made a statement about Tarkan to Medyatava, a Turkish media portal.
“Recently I have been asked by many friends about the Tarkan incident so I decided to express my thoughts and feelings. Like any conscientious person, when I try to look at the latest incident objectively, here is what I think: People have always loved Tarkan and his wonderful songs, and thus I don’t think they judge him on what he does. What has happened has saddened his fans as much as it has Tarkan himself. Tarkan is Turkey’s pride and an artist who has promoted Turkey successfully in the international arena. We should know his value… at least as much as his fans do.
All this is what I sincerely shared with Tarkan, too. “
Tarkan and Nazan Öncel worked together on Tarkan’s “Karma” in 2001, and “Dudu” in 2003 and Oncel’s album 2004 “Yan Yana Fotoğraf Çektirelim”.
And more about Tarkan
Turkish daily Vatan reports that Tarkan’s concert scheduled for the 9th of April for the anniversary of The Turkish Police has been cancelled. According to Zehra Çengil’s report that has appeared in Vatan today, the main reason for the cancellation of the concert appears to be Tarkan’s recent drug-related incident. The report also says that Tarkan will be replaced by Gülben Ergen.
Culture in Turkey-DVD Reviews:Head-On
The end of the 1990s saw the emergence of a young generation of Turkish-German filmmakers in Germany. Unlike their predecessors who depicted the lives of Turkish immigrants in confinement and represented immigrants as victims or outsiders, these young directors created characters with mobility in the German urban space. Some of the problems of Turkish immigrants depicted by the first generation Turkish-German filmmakers may still be visible in these young directors’ films. However, these films avoid reducing their protagonists to the status of mute victims.
The most popular of these Turkish-German directors is, of course, Fatih Akin who has made remarkable films such as Short Sharp Shock (1998), In July (200), The Edge of Heaven (2007). It may not be wrong to say that Akin’s most powerful film is Head-on (Gegen die wand), which he made in 2004 and which earned him the Golden Bear in Berlin.
Head-On depicts the passionate love between two Germany-born protagonists. These protagonists do not have fixed identities. They are neither fully Turkish nor German; they exist in “the third space”. And their quest for identity is what the film reflects very successfully.
In Fatih Akin’s film, the hybrid characters’ quest for their own selves is accompanied by carefully and intelligently chosen music and locations. In a similar manner, roads, airports, cars and planes are often used in Head-On, highlighting the protagonists’ search and their crossing borders in their search.
Head-On is an important film you want to add to your film list. It will familiarize you with a very good example of Turkish-German cinema and provide you with a remarkable depiction of love and characters with multiple identities.
Rating: 5/5
Culture in Turkey-DVD Reviews: Wrong Rosary
The International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009 Tiger Award Winner “Wrong Rosary” directed by Mahmut Fazil Coskun tells the story of three people in Istanbul: Musa, a young and timid muezzin who has just been appointed to a small mosque in Tophane, İstanbul; Clara, an orphan girl who will soon become a nun and Yakup, an old secondhand book seller. Coskun’s film brings these three characters in the perfect setting of Istanbul, which is an intersection of various cultures and religions and tells us an honest and plain story of impossibilities, secrets and choices.
Musa and Clara live in opposite flats in the same building and develops a strong attraction between the two. The depiction of such an attraction would have been full of clichés in a popular film. However, this is where the strength of “Wrong Rosary” lies. Without being a melodrama, the film honestly depicts the complex choices their protagonists have to make and the communication difficulties they suffer from without manipulating its audience.
Although this character-based film’s director Coskun says in an interview in Turkish daily Cumhuriyet that their film is not about religious divides and clashes, viewers, we believe, will not be able to help thinking about the impact of religious differences on Musa and Clara’s ultimate decisions.
“Wrong Rosary” (2009) is Mehmet Fazil Coskun’s debut film not to be missed. The recently released DVD of the film has English and French subtitles which would create an opportunity to discover Turkish cinema.
Deeds Talk Louder Than Words
In her column in Turkish daily Vatan’s Sunday Supplement, famous journalist Leyla Umar has written about Tarkan today.
Umar’s sincerely written article entitled “Don’t give up on Tarkan” starts with an account of how Umar first heard about Tarkan’s name when her granddaughter used to sing “Şıkıdım”. Umar, then, remembers the days when her friend Ahmet Ertegun [Founding Chairman of Atlantic Records in the States] used to visit all the jazz clubs in Turkey when he was in Turkey to spend his holidays. Then one day, Umar writes, Ertegun heard a young talent in a “gazino” in Yesilkoy and they went there to listen to him.
Umar continues: “This young gentleman was, of course, nobody but Tarkan. Towards the end of the program, Ertegun told us that this young man would be popular all around the world. He invited Tarkan first to our table and then to his mansion in Bodrum. After a fantastic dinner, he soon made an agreement with Tarkan: Tarkan would go to New York and sign with Atlantic Records. This was big news in Turkey and I was sent by Zafer Mutlu to accompany Tarkan and a cameraman Mutlu hired in New York was always with us for two weeks.”
In the second part of the article, Leyla Umar’s tone changes; it is bitter sweet. While Tarkan gained more and more popularity, Umar claims, his lack of communication with her started to increase. Umar explains this in the following manner: “Tarkan used to tell me “whenever I am back in Turkey, I will first visit my mother and then you”. I used to wait for Tarkan to visit me whenever he was back from the States. Initially I accepted his apologies because he could have been very busy but then I got hurt; he could have at least called me.”
And “only a few days ago, while reading about the latest news about Tarkan” Leyla Umar says, “I realized that my love for Takan has never disappeared. I can’t give up loving Tarkan despite all his mistakes… I just would like to say that I would be happy to hear good news about himself from him.”
The last sentence in Umar’s article is elegantly written and within this last sentence there seems to be a message not only to Tarkan’s fans but to Tarkan himself as well: “All I would ask his fans is that they should never give up loving Tarkan. And they should show their love and support not with words but with their deeds.”
“This is not an opportunity to hit Tarkan!”
By placing Tarkan into the heart of their columns, Turkish commentators continue their debate over media ethics and the legal procedures used for people under detention.
In today’s Turkish daily Vatan, Can Atakli puts his magnifying glass over the latest drug-related Tarkan incident. Atakli criticizes those who have been asking for equal treatment for everybody regardless of their status because these people, according to Ataklı, did not show the same reaction to similar incidents in the past. Atakli yet finds this debate over the legal system useful. He says, however, Turkey needs to question what equality means in legal or constitutional perspective not after someone is taken into custody but before it is too late.
In his commentary, underlining that Turkey is unfortunately not very good at creating big international stars such as Tarkan, he gives advice to those harshly criticizing him: “Don’t take this as an opportunity to hit Tarkan, whom you would never be able to attack at other times” .
Pointing out that everybody is innocent until proven guilty, Can Atakli concludes his commentary stating that the police have managed the recent Tarkan case very well and are, therefore, not to be criticized for not handcuffing Tarkan, nor for not keeping him in a cell, etc. until questioned by the prosecutors.
