Darkening clouds over Istanbul: Turkish theatre in a changing climate

New Theatre Quarterly

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 334-350

  Diamond, Catherine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950451539     PISSN: 0266464X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0266464x00012410     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. With the appointment of Refah leader Necmettin Erbakan to the post of Prime Minister, Islamists were likely to gain their biggest share of power in Turkey's modern history. But Turkey's secularist elite, led by the military, opposed Erbakan, whom they feared would replace constitutional law with Koranic law after more than seventy years of secularism, and steer NATO-member Turkey away from the western camp. Though they were able to oust him in 1997, other Refah members throughout the country have held on to their posts. The court decision to outlaw the entire party has incurred a negative response from the United States which suggested that Turkey needed more democratic expression, not less. The political impasse has also impaired Turkey's ability to deal with the thirteen-year-long Kurdish rebel insurgency, its tense relations with Greece over Cyprus, and its deep economic woes. See 'Erbakan Tells Yilmaz: Don't Repeat Mistakes', Turkish Daily News, 9 June 1996.
2. See Desmond Stewart, Turkey (New York: Time, 1965), p. 107.
3. The last major exodus of writers and dramatists from Turkey occurred in 1980 at the time of the military takeover, demonstrating that it is not the Islamists that pose the only threat to freedom of expression. See Petra de Bruijn, Turkish Theatre: Autonomous Entity to Multicultural Compound', Theatre Intercontinental: Forms, Functions, Correspondences, ed. C. C. Barfoot and Cobi Boredewijk (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1993), p. 192.
4. Observers of Turkish politics suggest that the success of Islamic candidates does not necessarily threaten to turn Turkey into another Iran or Afghanistan. Polls show that most of Erbakan's supporters simply wanted good and populist government. In her article covering the International Istanbul Theatre Festival in 1997, Elinor Fuchs makes the common American mistake of equating 'Islamist' with 'fundamentalist'. Moreover, she says the Festival was 'facing West' -but modern Turkish theatre and the International Festival have always 'faced West'. See Elinor Fuchs, 'Istanbul Looking West: Art or Politics?', American Theatre, XIV, No. 10, p. 40.
5. Yasar Kemal, 'Feldzug der Lugen', Der Spiegel, 9 January 1995, p. 134-8.
6. See 'Kemal Sentence Underlines Double Standards in Turkey', an editorial by the Turkish Daily News publisher Ilnur Cevik, in Turkish Daily News, 21 March 1996. In 1997 Kemal received a peace prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and his sentence has been postponed unless within five years he commits the same crime.
7. David O'Byrne, 'Taking Kafka to Court', Turkish Daily News, 25 March 1996.
8. Emre Koyuncuoglu, 'Diyarbakir Belediye iyatrosu Kapatildi' ('The Mayor Closed Down the Municipal Theatre of Diyarbakir'), Tiyatrosu, November 1995, p. 8-9.
9. Interview with author, 4 April 1996. See Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros, trans. Donald Watson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), p. 124.
10. Erdinc Ergenc, 'Cultural, Artistic Changes Subtle but Present', Turkish Daily News, 1 April 1996.
11. Both Egypt and Iran had lively developing theatres which were directly affected by the change in the political climate: 'The years following the 1967 war with Israel and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 were not good for the development of Egyptian theatre. Difficult economic conditions during the war years were followed by an upsurge in Islamic religious fundamentalism which made stage productions difficult. 'In Iran, the revolution of 1978-79 stopped much of the theatrical activity that had taken place under the Pahlavi regime, making the future of theatre much less certain. Theatrical training schools and regular performances in public virtually ceased in Iran. National Iranian Radio-Television, its name changed to "The Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran", produced dramas on revolutionary themes for television, but stage drama was viewed with great suspicion.' Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, ed. Martin Banham (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 673-5.
12. Metin And, A History of Theatre and Popular Entertainment in Turkey (Ankara: Forum Yayinlari, 1964), p. 11.
13. See also Nicholas N. Martinovitch, Turkish Theatre (New York: Theatre Arts, 1933), p. 35-6.
14. Talat Sait Halman, Modern Turkish Drama (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976), p. 18.
15. Rengin Uz, 'Feleck Bir Gun Salakken' ('One Day When Fate Was Stupid'), Tiyatrosu, March 1996, p. 22.
16. Programme, Seventh International Istanbul Theatre Festival, p. 61-3.
17. In the Turkish Constitution of 1961, wider freedoms were enacted, enabling playwrights to deal with social and economic problems in less guarded or allegorical terms, bringing to the stage a whole spectrum of political themes and tensions. By the end of the decade over thirty plays were being offered on any given day in Istanbul and Ankara. (See Halman, op. cit., p. 38-40.) Macgowan and de Bruijn, too, expressed astonishment at the breadth of theatrical offerings in Istanbul during the 1960s. The quantity and range is still impressive in the 1990s, with up to twenty different productions a week.
18. The introduction and growing popularity of European theatre occurred in the mid-nineteenth century. Concerned that western troupes would dominate, the mayor of Istanbul, Cemil Pasha, started a conservatory of music and theatre in 1914. Called Darulbedayi i Osmani, this was headed first by André Antoine, who returned to France at the outbreak of war, the conservatory then being directed by Muhsin Ertugrul. Darulbedayi gave its first performance - Rotten Foundations by Emile Fabre, adapted by Huseyin Suat - in 1916, and became the Istanbul City Theatre in 1931. With both the City Theatre and the foundation of state theatres in Ankara and Istanbul in 1940, the promotion and production of Turkish plays was guaranteed. See Deniz Taskan, Theatre in Turkey (Ankara: Directorate General of Press and Information, 1993), p. 4-5.
19. Turkey never developed a specific style of court theatre. The court interest in western theatre helped to promote it in the city for the general public. The small theatre in the Yildiz Palace, Istanbul, is the only extant court theatre in Turkey. Built by Sultan Abdulhamit II in 1889, it hosted many European luminaries such as Sarah Bernhardt - whom, however, the Sultan refused to watch, because she acted death scenes too effectively. See Halman, op. cit., p. 36.
20. Kenneth Macgowan, 'Notes on Turkish Theatre', Drama Survey, No. 3 (Winter 1962), p. 322.
21. Stewart, op. cit., p. 119. In addition to the municipal and state theatre system, Ataturk created Halkevleri, or 'people's houses' for community cultural projects and education. Five hundred were established in the 1930s, and inspired the formation of many theatre companies, but President Menderes dismantled the Halkevleri in the 1950s.
22. Rengin Uz, 'Ciddi Bir Komedi Oynuyoruz' ('It's a Serious Comedy'), Tiyatrosu, December 1995, p. 52-6.
23. Athol Fugard, Road to Mecca (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985), p. 60-1.
24. Fuchs correctly intuits that Renter's performance of Maria Callas in The Master Class was a vehicle to express a 'political statement about the transcendent role of art in human culture', similar to the actress's own view. See Fuchs, op. cit., p. 42.
25. Stewart,Road to Mecca op. cit., p. 120.
26. Halman, op. cit., p. 38.