Turkish TV show Ethos (Bir Başkadır)

A Netflix original series

Coming down with a bout of COVID-19 gave me a perfect excuse to binge an entire Netflix series in the space of a weekend.

Turkish drama series are popular exports, particularly in Latin America, and also in Pakistan and elsewhere. Turkey comes second only to the USA in terms of global TV distribution – but little Turkish TV has made it onto UK and US screens.

I started out watching big budget Turkish supernatural thriller The Protector, but it was just too silly (not in a good way – it was big-budget implausible and hammy without being enjoyably camp). So I moved onto eight-parter Ethos or Bir Başkadır (2020), which had received a rave review in the BFI’s Sight & Sound.

Bir Başkadır literally seems to translate as something like It’s Something Else (generally with a positive rather than negative slant), which is perhaps a more meaningful title than the one chosen for the English version. The series is a Netflix original, with high production values and an emotionally intelligent script. Ethos is both written and directed by Berkun Oya, and I watched it with English subtitles (though I think there’s an option to watch a dubbed version).

The storyline is set largely in Istanbul and involves a group of people from very different economic and cultural backgrounds, whose lives overlap and intersect in unexpected ways. As a result of these connections and sometimes unlikely (but not totally credulity-stretching) encounters, the disparate characters are forced to confront their repressed emotions and challenge their prejudices in order to move on in their lives.

The main characters include Western-educated, middle-class psychologist Peri (Defne Kayalar) and her patient, Meryem (the very striking Öykü Karayel), an uneducated young woman who is deeply religious and covers her hair, and consults a local Hodja (a sort of teacher/wise man/scholar, played by Settar Tanriogen). Meryem is referred to Peri after suffering a number of fainting episodes.

Meryem is fascinated and intimidated by the lifestyle of the man she cleans for, Sinan, who lives in an ultra-modern, impersonal, high-rise city flat – and who, it turns out, is also sleeping with two of Peri’s acquaintances. In contrast, Meryem lives in a rural location outside the city in a simply furnished home, with her brother’s family.

Peri’s cosmopolitan, super-secular pre-conceptions mean that she vastly under-estimates Meryem, who is resourceful and resilient, even as she is also obfuscating and naive. It is Meryem who provides the emotional scaffolding that supports the family of her uptight, angry brother Yasin (Fatih Artman) and her beautiful sister-in-law Ruhiye (Funda Eryigit), who is deeply mentally unwell.

The characters are nuanced and involving, and the series is very accessible for viewers from non-Turkish-speaking countries and non-Muslim countries.

A Paris Review critic noted that she “could tell the dialogue in Ethos leaned heavily on the fanciful ‘gossip tense’ in Turkish (mish-mush) — a grammar used to describe anything that is only known allegedly, or secondhand … [revealing] the thickly layered social and psychological underpinnings of this grammar” — this then is that tense also spoken of by Orhan Pamuk in his book on Istanbul that I referred to earlier.

The lingering shots of grotty nightclub interiors, impersonal skyscrapers and family washing flapping in a country breeze, together with the retro closing credits that play archive footage of Turkish performers and TV shows from decades gone by also seem to capture that sense of hüzün or collective melancholy of which Pamuk writes.

Again we have that clash between east and west, patriarchal traditions and modernity, and secular life and a stricter adherence to Islam that I pretty much dismissed in an earlier post as clichéd, but which I see more and more is a cliché for a reason: these issues are deeply embedded at the heart of modern Turkey, now perhaps more than ever, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling conservative Justice and Development Party, which attracts strong support from orthodox Muslims, having been in power since 2003.

Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

Translated by Maureen Freely

I set out intending to read the massive My Name is Red by Nobel Prize for literature winner Orhan Pamuk, but gave up on it 145 pages in. I know it has been raved over, and in my defence I gave it longer than most books that I’m not enjoying. However, I knew I couldn’t dedicate a month of reading to Turkish writers and not read any Pamuk.

On my shelves I found another of his books, Istanbul: Memories of a City, first published in 2003, and published in English in 2005 by Faber & Faber. I have no idea where this book came from. It’s clearly been bought secondhand, as it’s evidently been read before, and not by me. My daughter’s RDA riding centre raises extra money by selling off donated books for 50p each, and it’s possible I picked it up there at some point. Anyway, I’m glad I did.

I wasn’t particularly expecting to enjoy the book, given I’d found My Name is Red pretty tedious (sorry!). I’m a sucker for life writing and memoir though, and already in its first pages this book raised some interesting questions about identity and memory (Pamuk is a psychoanalyst’s delight!), as well as about the history and status of the city of Istanbul. Pamuk is very open to Western influence and culture, but remains strongly attached to Istanbul, the city of his birth, the city to which he has always returned, and which, for him, is also “a city of ruins and end-of-empire melancholy“.

Pamuk repeatedly uses the term hüzün to refer to this specifically Turkish form of collective melancholy, which, for Pamuk, in many ways came to define the culture of Istanbul after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, he dedicates an entire chapter to this concept.

“The hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry; it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state, but a state of mind that is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating.”

“I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early; … of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speaking to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; … of the broken seesaws in empty parks; …. of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; …”

The narrative is a something of a hodgepodge, partly a mosaic social history and in part a childhood memoir, but always interesting. When reflecting on his early childhood Pamuk notes that:

“I feel compelled to add ‘or so I’ve been told’‘. In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we’ve seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense.”

Interspersed with his reflections and recollections are Sebaldian photographs of historic Istanbul and those taken from family albums.

There are bits of linguistic and historical miscellany and entertaining digressions on virtually every page:

“I now present a random sampling of some of the most amusing advice, warnings, pearls of wisdom and invective I’ve culled from the hundreds of thousands of pages written by columnists of various persuasions over the past 130 years:

…

‘It has been suggested that to beautify the city, all horse-drawn carriage drivers should wear the same outfit; how chic it would be if this idea were to become a reaity.’ (1897)”.

The book was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize in 2005 (now the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction) and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in life writing, literary non-fiction and European cultural history. I’ll wrap things up with a quote from Pamuk, which highlights his single-mindedness when writing (and his ability to compartmentalise!):

“I thought I would write Memories of a City in six months, but it took me one year to complete. And I was working twelve hours a day, just reading and working. My life, because of so many things, was in crisis; I don’t want to go into those details: divorce, father dying, professional problems, problems with this, problems with that, everything was bad. I thought if I were to be weak I would have a depression. But every day I would wake up and have a cold shower and sit down and remember and write, always paying attention to the beauty of the book. Honestly, I may have hurt my mother, my family. My father was dead, but my mother is still alive. But I can’t care about that; I must care about the beauty of the book.”

Turkish music

Review no 193

In my quest to experience a variety of Turkish music I’ve been listening to a number of different artists. First up, Sezen Aksu, the “uncontested Queen of Turkish Pop”, a varied singer who has been performing for decades, and still, at the time of writing, has two albums in the Turkish top 40. I really like her track Sarı Odalar, although it’s far from her most recent, having been released in 2012. It does look though as if she’s been unable to resist the lure of a bit of dodgy plastic surgery.

Next came a classic by Özdemir Erdoğan, active since the 1960s, and still recording now, into his 80s. This track, Gurbet, is one of his most well-known songs, which was released in 1972 and has been used in countless Turkish movies. I just love it.

Omar Faruk Tekbilek is another artist with a long career, who weaves hypnotic, mesmeric, contemplative melodies, and who I like a lot. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, and has mastered many intriguing instruments including the ney (a sort of bamboo flute), the zurna (a double-reed oboe-thing) and the baglama (a long-necked flute).

I also listened to Ferdi Ozbegen, an appealingly (some may say appalingly) cheesy crooner.

I then played something a bit more up to date: an atmospheric indie-folk tune by Gaye Su Akyol, who seems to be channelling Freddie Mercury in Zandra Rhodes circa 1974.

I also coaxed Spotify into churning out catchy, upbeat pop by Yalın, danceable saxophonetastic jazz by İlhan Erşahin, instrumental pieces by the Taksim Trio and rich, melodramatic belters by Sıla (who is also hugely popular, with three albums in the top 40).

Then I listened to a somewhat dodgy cover of Bob Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee by ex-opera singer Sertab Erener, continuing a loose theme of tracking down Bob Dylan covers from around the world that I first started in my overview review of the work of Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo.

Top of the album charts in Turkey, however, according to Apple, is currently Adele’s 30. There’s no getting away from her. And, bizarrely, number 3 in the album charts was the soundtrack to the 1997 film Titanic (“paint me like one of your French girls!”). There’s no accounting for taste. But also, does anyone actually use iTunes anymore, and could this unlikely statistic be a bit misleading?

So I moved onto Spotify, and found some online info for the most listened to genres, artists and songs in 2020 (although not yet 2021). Rap is popular: rapper Ezhel was the most listened-to artist in Turkey in 2020. It was interesting to listen to rap with a distinctly Turkish feel, and with a video featuring some textiles very evocative of Turkey:

And although the afore-mentioned Sezen Aksu was second-placed, rappers also made up the remainder of the top 5, with Murda, Sagopa Kajmer and Patron being among the most listened-to Turkish artists on Spotify.

Among the most listened-to bands in 2020 were Indie rockers Yüzyüzeyken Konuşuruz, Dolu Kadehi Ters Tut, Duman, Pinhâni and Adamlar.

My whizz through Turkish musical culture can hardly be described as comprehensive, but it did give me a least a brief introduction to the wide variety of music popular in Turkey, aside from foreign imports (like the ubiquitous Adele).

I’m rounding things off here with a bit of 1960s Turkish psychedelia, with Erkut Taçkın and Okan Dinçer ve Kontrastları and Özlem (1967).

‘Istanbul Istanbul: A Novel’ by Burhan Sönmez (Turkey)

Translated by Ümit Hussein

Burhan Sönmez is a Kurdish novelist and lawyer from Turkey who is a winner of the equivalent there of the Booker Prize, and he is the recently elected President of PEN International. Notably, he was seriously injured after being assaulted by Turkish police in 1996, and received treatment in the UK, where he lived in exile for several years. He now lives and works in Istanbul and Ankara.

I read his novel Istanbul, Istanbul, published in English in 2016. The back cover of the book announces that “Istanbul is a city of a million cells, and every cell is an Istanbul unto itself”. The story focuses on four political prisoners in detention in a shared underground cell, where they are left to languish while waiting to be taken off for interrogation and torture. The prisoners come from different walks of life: Demirtay is a student; the Doctor is a medical doctor; Kamo is a barber; and, finally, there is an old man, Uncle Küheylan.

Most of the scenes of torture take place off-screen, as it were, but the novel remains harrowing, and the author takes some inspiration from his own experiences of imprisonment. However, the fictional prisoners are sustained and saved from total despair by a web of stories, jokes, fables, oral folk tales reminiscent of The Arabian Nights and memories of their lives above ground, as they share a fantasy world with each other. They even share imaginary meals with each other:

“We played out the scene before us: the Doctor spread a white tablecloth over the table. He fetched cheese, melon, fresh borlotti bean salad, hummus, and haydari yogurt dip. He added toasted bread, salad and cacik. He then made room for dishes of rice-stuffed vine leaves and spicy ezme salad. Finally, he placed a vase of yellow roses in the center. … As he poured Raki into the glasses he checked to see he had put the same amount in each.”

Speaking on Radio 4, the novelist said that he had wanted to divide the city, not in terms of its rather cliched role as a bridge torn between – or linking – East and West, but in terms of the disparity between those unmoored from the normal passage of time and from society, in their underground cells, and those living in the light and bustle of Istanbul. Scenes of horror are juxtaposed with evocations of beauty.

“The odd thing about Istanbul was the way she preferred questions to answers. She could turn happiness into nightmare, or the other way round, make a joyous morning dawn after a night devoid of all hope. She gained strength from uncertainty. They called this the city’s destiny. The heaven in one street and the hell in another could suddenly change places.”

The book’s sub-heading ‘A Novel’ suggests that the fact that it is a work of fiction might be in need of underlining. Of course, the political climate in Turkey has become increasingly repressive under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, particularly following constitutional reforms after a failed coup attempt in 2016.

Perhaps due to its reliance on fable, the novel, though vividly imagined, somehow didn’t emotionally involve me and I found it dragged a bit, although I did really want to love it. Right, onto the next book…

Turkish film Kedi (Cat)

A month of Turkish culture wouldn’t work without a film. In his book Istanbul: Memories of a City the celebrated writer Orhan Pamuk notes that the Turkish film industry peaked in the late 1950s, when it came second in the world only to India, and released around 700 films every year. However, from the 1970s it went into decline, although it has experienced something of a resurgence since the late 1990s.

We’ve had a close family bereavement this month, plus my daughter’s had covid and my husband has broken his hand, so amid all the stress a serious, critically acclaimed, emotionally raw film was not what I was after. That meant not watching 2008 film Three Monkeys (shortlisted for an Oscar) or 2015 film Mustang, and it meant not seeking out a documentary on femicide that is a new UK-Turkish Oscar submission. So I settled on 2016 documentary film Kedi (Cat), directed by Ceyda Torun, which focuses on the stray street cats of Istanbul.

We were introduced one by one to a number of cats, all with very different natures, which had been semi-adopted by various traders in the city. At times it steered perilously close to sentimentality, but overall I loved the film, which was entertaining – and kind of calming.

Often the presumably Go Pro-type camera was at cats-eye level, as we followed the various animals on their jaunts around the city, and observed their interactions with the locals. Gamsiz (Carefree) had a sometime-home at a local bakery, and was always getting into scrapes and ending up at the vet, but was very happy-natured, while Durnan (Smoky) was rather aristocratic and well-mannered, never scrounging for titbits directly, but biding his time politely outside a local restaurant.

I was particularly amused by one particular (bad-natured) cat, Psikopat (Psycho), and her “husband” Osman Pasha (named after a famous Ottoman field general). There was a fair bit of anthropomorphising going on in this film.

We were introduced too to a few quite vulnerable people who found that feeding the streets cats helped with their mental health – one woman announced that her therapist believed she was trying to heal her own emotional wounds by tending to the cats so carefully, as she went on her daily rounds with bags of freshly cooked chicken; one man even read a kind of divine intervention into his encounter with the street cats of Istanbul, feeling that he had been somehow saved by caring for them.

Elsewhere people alluded to the cats’ alien and mesmeric qualities, that nevertheless do not prevent people from forming close bonds with them.

Our cat Mog died a couple of years ago now – maybe it’s time to think about a new kitty. If you’re not an animal lover, this film probably won’t appeal. But if you’re someone who is quite fond of cats, it’s definitely worth a look.

Elif Shafak’s novel ’10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World’ (Turkey)

NORTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA

This is a bit of a throwback post, as some of it was first posted by me in 2019, and was in fact my fifth ever review on the blog. I’m re-posting with some additional discussion of publication prospects in the West for Turkish authors, as part of my month of Turkish cultural appreciation.

Translator from the Turkish Nicholas Glastonbury, writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books in May 2021, noted that “In various conversations with translators, agents, and colleagues, publishers often articulate that they have informal quotas for writers beyond Europe (e.g., ‘We already have a Turkish author’)”. Elif Shafak of course is “the” Turkish female writer read most widely in the UK and other Western nations, fairly or not.

Shafak is living effectively in exile from her homeland: by writing about controversial topics, such as the Armenian genocide, she came into conflict with the authorities, which also apparently see her engagement in her fiction with topics such as the abuse of children as tantamount to their promotion.

Since settling in the UK and starting to write novels in English (which are then translated into Turkish for readers from her home country), she has appeared on a number of prestigious UK-based prize lists, including the Booker shortlist, and she has made it onto the recently announced 2021 Costa longlist for best novel for her latest release, The Island of Missing Trees. Her mastery of English is impressive.

I went to see Elif Shafak speak at an event at the British Library in London in mid-2019, and was impressed. A political scientist and champion of minority rights as well as an author, she’s extremely personable and spoke intelligently of the need for engagement between cultures in order to challenge and break down populist stereotypes and prejudices. She also spoke thought-provokingly about our expectations of literature from other places: for example, our preconceptions mean that we might not expect, say, an Afghan woman to write a work of sci-fi.

Interestingly, in light of this remark, Glastonbury pointed out in his 2021 article that UK and US publishers often have unstated criteria in mind when considering whether to publish a Turkish novelist: a reason for rejection might often be down to the fact that a manuscript “did not play into the predominant scripts that the World Literary Market has set for Turkish writing: if there’s no ‘East meets West’, no ‘tradition meets modernity'”, then it doesn’t fit the mould. 

Shafak’s Booker-shortlisted 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, published in 2019 by Viking, follows the life of a murdered prostitute, Tequila Leila, through a series of vignettes. These are experienced in time-bending flashback as her mind is shutting down in the 10 minutes and 38 seconds after her killing.

There is certainly a “tradition vs modernity” storyline here. The daughter of successful tailor Haroun, Leila rapidly finds that her life is hugely restricted, and largely predetermined by traditional and familial codes. The book traces her path from child to sex worker, and doesn’t shy away from tackling the various prejudices and abuses suffered by both Tequila Leila and other characters in the novel. Indeed, the book is polemical in preaching a worthwhile message of equality and tolerance, and in challenging patriarchal societal norms. Sometimes, to a liberal Western reader, these points can feel a bit claw-hammered in.

Shafak writes in sensuous, evocative prose, even when describing scenes that are far from beautiful:

“The curtains, tattered and faded from the sun, were the colour of sliced watermelon – and those black dots that resembled seeds were, in fact, cigarette burns.”

The book is also a celebration of friendship, as despite her hardships, Tequila Leila has been surrounded in her life by a diverse circle of supportive companions. These friends, like Leila, live on the margins of society: Sabotage Sinan is her childhood best friend; Jameelah is a Somali victim of human trafficking; Zaynab122 is a Lebanese Muslim refugee with dwarfism; singer Humeyra has fled marital abuse; while Nostalgia Nalan is a trans woman.

Amid the often difficult subject matter is also humour, and even slapstick. This is particularly the case during the latter part of the novel, when her friends determine to ensure that Tequila Leila receives an appropriate burial. Although I enjoyed the book overall, I could imagine this part might work best as a film. I’m also not wholly convinced that the concept of the book, based on the neurological processes surrounding death, entirely works.

10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World is often something of a love letter to Istanbul, which is beautifully and vividly described, although we’re not getting away from that “East meets West” cliche beloved of UK/US publishers.

“Imperial Istanbul versus plebeian Istanbul; global Istanbul versus parochial Istanbul; cosmopolitan Istanbul versus philistine Istanbul; heretical Istanbul versus pious Istanbul; macho Istanbul versus feminine Istanbul … then there was the Istanbul of those who had left long ago, sailing to faraway ports…”

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (1907-48, Turkey)

Translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe

Madonna in a Fur Coat is a Turkish novella (168 pages in my Penguin Modern Classics edition) that was written in 1940 and first published in Turkey in 1943. I’ve just managed to fit it in before the end of Novellas in November hosted by Cathy and Rebecca.

The book, Sabahattin Ali’s third and final novel, was more or less ignored in the 40s, but on being re-published in Turkey in 1998 its status went from cult classic to bestseller, and it has sold even more copies since the publication of the 2016 English translation.

On the opening page, the unnamed narrator – a struggling writer in 1930s Ankara, who is provided with an office job and much-needed income by a former school friend, Hamdi – describes his deceased colleague, Raif Efendi:

“He was in the end the sort of man who causes us to ask ourselves: ‘What do they live for? What do they find in life? What logic compels them to keep breathing? What philosophy drives them as they wander the earth?’ But we ask in vain, if we fail to look beyond the surface – if we forget that beneath each surface lurks another realm, in which a caged mind whirls alone. It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.”

Raif is a long-serving clerk and translator of bureaucratic paperwork who is virtually invisible to others. Although his German translations are excellent, his upstart boss, Hamdi, revels in spotting minor mistakes, and Raif’s health is unpredictable and often poor. His extended family take him for granted, taking advantage of both his money and his humble nature.

The only inkling that some residual spirit lies within him are the slightly edgy sketches he occasionally produces, which effortlessly represent and parody whole personalities in just a few strokes. Our narrator succeeds in forging something of a fledgling friendship with Raif, with whom he shares an office.

As Raif’s illness progresses, from his sick-bed he begs the narrator to retrieve and destroy a secret, black notebook, which he has stashed away at their place of work. Inevitably, the narrator reads this notebook, which reveals a vivid account of Raif’s youthful adventures in Weimar Berlin.

After dropping out of art school in Turkey, Raif escapes his patriarchal home environment when he is sent to Berlin by his father in order to learn the soap manufacturing trade (the family have a couple of soap-making factories in Ankara). Teased for his lack of manliness at home (“I can well remember how my mother and – even more – my father would throw up their hands and say: ‘Honestly, you should have been born a girl!’“), he applies himself to learning fluent German and immerses himself in the cultural milieu of 1920s Berlin and eventually explores “its every avenue and cul de sac … every museum, gallery, botanical garden, forest, lake and zoo“. While flaneuring around Berlin he finds himself captivated by a melancholy and poised self-portrait by Jewish artist and disenchanted cabaret performer Maria Puder, who is exhibiting her work for the first time:

“Dressed in the pelt of a wildcat, she was mostly in shadow, but for a sliver of a pale white neck, and an oval face was turned slightly to the left. Her dark eyes were lost in thought, absently staring into the distance, drawing on a last wisp of hope as she searched for something that she was almost certain she would never find. Yet mixed with the sadness was a sort of challenge. It was as if she was saying, ‘Yes, I know. I won’t find what I’m looking for … and what of it?’“

Day after day Raif returns to the gallery to contemplate the picture, and eventually he and Maria meet in person. The outwardly confident and opinionated Maria lets naive Muslim Raif into her confidence, keeping him physically at arms’ length for months, while being casually cruel about her reasons for rejecting his romantic overtures, although she enjoys his company.

I read a review by Elif Shafak that describes Maria as “rational, wilful, unsentimental and pragmatic”. I have to say the rational and pragmatic side of Maria’s character did not come across to me at all. She quite understandably distrusts men’s typical immediate physical response to her, but underneath is a manipulative romantic and fantasist who needs to be convinced of a lover’s utter devotion before allowing herself to experience a modicum of the desire Raif has for her:

“I believe I definitely need to love a man … but a real man … a man who could sweep me off my feet without resorting to brute strength … without asking anything of me, without controlling me, or degrading me, a man who could love me and walk by my side … In other words, a truly powerful man, a real man … Now do you see why I can’t love you?“

So Raif pants around after her all over Berlin, utterly wrapped round her little finger, while she pouts and has histrionics, finally getting drunk and allowing Raif to make love to her, before collapsing with a guilt-tripping chill and sulkily ordering him home. I guess it was the 1920s…

What plays out is a melodramatic, doomed love affair that, like classics such as Emily Bronte’s breathless and basically insane Wuthering Heights (which also uses a ‘story-within-a-story’ structure), could only have been written by someone significantly younger than me.

“Placing his black notebook before me, I turned back to the first page.”

Turkish Art Week @ The Saatchi Gallery, London

In late October 2021 Turkish Art Week’s inaugural exhibition was held over a period of five days at the Saatchi Gallery in London’s fancy Chelsea. The show was organized by online art gallery and arts consultancy Renko London, which was founded by the (rather glamorous) London-based Turkish artist Renk Erbil: “now it’s Turkish art’s time to become the next global buzz”. The timing seemed aImost spooky, since I was planning my own little Turkey month, so I went to check it out.

I can’t cover all the artists whose work was on display at the Saatchi show, but work I particularly loved included these two pictures of Istanbul (giclée metal prints) by Devrim Erbil, Turkey’s principal contemporary artist, who has been dubbed the “Poet of Art” for his vibrant representations of Turkish culture. Erbil is also interested in the interplay between human activity and the natural world. He is well known for the “birds’ eye views” of his cityscapes, looking over the city from above and including flocks of birds, the undulating density of which reflects the rhythm of movement of both people and waterways, whether that is the Bosphorus or the Thames.

The work “London Like a Dream” (2021) was painted to commemorate the London exhibition:

Other work I loved included portraits by Bahri Genc, who is among Turkey’s principal portraitists, and whose expressive work uses bold brush strokes and a fresh use of colour to create a distinctly modern, semi-abstract feel:

I was totally captivated by these bright and beautiful hot air balloon pictures by Barış Sarıbaş – my photo really doesn’t do them justice:

Cengiz Yatağan showed abstract work using epoxy resin and canvas – this is Untitled (2019), a large work (200 x 140 cm):

I also really liked slightly surreal, abstract paintings by Çiğdem Erbil:

Close up I found the use of paint just incredible:

Finally, I also loved bright, expressive work by Sina Mirel:

Turkey month

In the summer, feeling wistful for a holiday abroad and wanting to think of something to interest the kids now they’re not little, I signed up for a subscription service called Snack Surprise. Every month they send me a box of snacks from a mystery country.

The box that we received in September was full of Turkish treats, including Turkish delight, of course, but also a new (to us) version of Doritos, a can of mysterious fizzy drink, some chocolate, sweets. It was actually genuinely quite exciting to open up the box and found out what was inside, and what country everything was from.

There was a little booklet with interesting, possibly dubious facts about Turkey (“Camel wrestling tournaments, held throughout the Aegean region in the winter, and bull wrestling near the Black Sea, are also popular”), and a list of all the items in the box, with the option to rate them out of 3. On the whole, the taste were more subtle than UK snacks – the sweets were less sweet, as was the chocolate. I’m looking forward to sampling future boxes.

This experience got me thinking, and I decided that instead of roaming the world piecemeal on the blog, gradually making a patchwork of countries and reviews of culture from those nations (you can see where I’ve “been” in my index here), I’d start to dedicate a month to a particular nation.

Inspired by my Snack Box, Turkey seemed a good place to start, so from Thanksgiving to Christmas this year I’ll be posting every week a selection of Turkey themed posts: I’ll be looking at Turkish telly, Turkish film, Turkish music, Turkish art, reading books by Turkish writers, talking about Turkish food and remembering trips to Turkey that I’ve taken in the past. I’ll probably try to avoid politicking, though I might read a travelogue, a history book or a cook book.

If you have written any reviews of Turkish books and other elements of Turkish culture, then feel free to add a link in the comments throughout the next month, as I’d be really interested to get your take on things, and to get inspiration for my reading and watching.

Next year I’ll be moving even further afield, with January dedicated to Japan, February to Afghanistan, March to Greece, April to Portugal, May to Nigeria and June to Trinidad. I’ll also be continuing to post reviews of culture from other places around the globe every now and then.

In Youth is Pleasure by Denton Welch (UK)

In Youth is Pleasure was first published in 1945, and has recently been re-published by Penguin Classics. It is an autobiographical novella (originally sub-titled ‘A Fragment of Life Story with Changed Names‘) about a skinny, awkward, upper-middle-class teenage boy named Orvil Pym. Orvil has a dreadful family, comprising two macho older brothers and a neglectful, permanently slightly drunk, opium-using father (who refers to Orvil as ‘Microbe’, due to his short stature) and who spends most of his time in China on business. Orvil’s mother has been dead for three years, but he is not permitted to mention her to his father, and his repressed grief permeates the text. Orvil passes the summer with his family at a country hotel, and dreads with a sort of existential horror the return to boarding school at the end of the holidays. Welch’s own biographical details match Orvil’s.

There’s something destabilizing, hallucinatory and surreal about Orvil’s escapades and encounters during his holidays. He has a vivid fantasy life and has over-excited and faintly inappropriate responses to all of his experiences, while a hum of inchoate eroticism underlies everything: Orvil derives intense pleasure from wearing a secondhand, heavily sweat-stained cricketers box over his genitals, even though he’s not intent on playing cricket, and on another occasion surreptitiously paints his face and nipples with stolen lipstick, which he has to hastily remove when his brother returns to their shared room. The book can be very funny at times.

Orvil, then, has a feminine side, which contrasts with his brothers’ aggressive heteronormativity. The Happy Reader‘s monthly newsletter (a copy of which sent me off to seek out a copy of In Youth is Pleasure in the first place) notes that Winston Churchill’s private secretary wrote of Welch’s memoir Maiden Voyage: ‘I have been told that it reeks of homosexuality … I think I must get it,’ suggesting the closeted appeal of Welch’s writing at a time when homosexuality was still illegal.

Orvil forms an uncomfortable bond with a man who is staying in a nearby hut, some kind of definitely-a-bit-pervy youth leader/schoolmaster, who asks Orvil to remove his soaked outdoor clothes before briefly tying him up (“I want to show you these knots”), and then encourages Orvil to return the favour – which he does. Orvil buys random antiques, goes out on a rowing boat before stripping naked in the summer air, and sneaks into a church and sniffs the cassocks and examines the crypt.

‘He stood, looking down at the lady in her fantastic horned headdress. Kneeling on the stone, he tried to read her name and the date…

…Suddenly, without knowing why, he lay down at full length on the cold slab and put his lips to the brass lady’s face. He kissed her juicily. When he lifted his head, the smell and taste of the brass still hung about his nose and mouth. He looked down from a few inches away and saw the wet imprint of his lips planted in the dulled, frosted area his breath had made.

“You haven’t been kissed for five hundred years, I bet”, he droned in a low chanting voice.’

Orvil is like no character I have ever come across before in fiction or elsewhere. Sensitive, sensuous, impetuous and a bit creepy, I was gripped by his episodic narrative, even though the book is pretty much devoid of any semblance of plot. But who needs plot when the writing is so compelling.

After boarding school, Denton Welch attended Goldsmith’s School of Art, during which time a cycling accident resulted in temporary paralysis, permanent injury and his subsequent early death in 1948 at the age of 33. However, being bedridden for long periods seems to have provided an impetus for his writing, although he had largely dropped off the radar until this re-issue. The book’s title comes from a 16th-century poem of the same name by Robert Wever.