As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.*
* Constantine P. Cavafy
(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard,
C.P. Cavafy Collected Poems, Princeton Press)
In June of 2001, accompanied by this poem that had been
presented to me as a departing gift, and the words “May your path
be open and bright!” ringing in my ears, I set off from New York
to begin what would turn out to be five years of fieldwork for Ebru.
The official story of Ebru had begun a year and a half earlier, at the
beginning of 2000. Looking back now, however, I think that the
roots of this journey run much deeper, extending all the way back
to the early days of my youth.
The years of early youth are years when everyone, without
exception, fosters at least one, if not many, dreams. And so they
are years full of hope. They are the years during which our own
view of life and the world begin to take shape, years when we first
begin to discover and become familiar with ourselves and others;
hence they are also years of questioning, and of “protest.”
During my years as a student at the Middle East Technical
University (METU), it became imperative that I increase my grade
point average (I thought long and hard about the easiest way to
achieve this), and I decided to take a photography course. I scraped
together the money to buy a camera. I can’t really say that this
effort on my part did much to increase my grade point average,
but it certainly did achieve something, for that year I did nothing
but take photographs, and I had no desire to do anything else. By
the end of the academic year, a life without photography was
simply unfathomable to me. During that same period, I took the
overland route to Egypt and stayed there for about a month. That
particular journey led me to discover something about myself: I
liked, and actually preferred, going to different countries and
photographing people that I found to be different.
When I graduated from METU, I knew that I didn’t want to work
as an economist, and so I sought temporary refuge from my
dilemma in the military. Because my trip to Egypt had left a certain
taste in my mouth, I spent the duration of my military service
dreaming of going to India and making plans to make that dream
come true. Once my service was completed, and with four
hundred dollars in my pocket, I headed to India. During the course
of my three-month venture, something that I had already begun
to sense about myself and my life crystallized into a new
awareness: the dazzling array of colors fostered by cultural
diversity fascinated me. I simply could not get enough “color” in
my photographs. As I was crossing the border when leaving India,
all of the photos that I had taken during those three months were
stolen. Whenever I attempt to summarize that journey in just a
single photograph, it is always the same one, the same image
from among all of those lost slides that I retrieve from the archive
of my memory: stark naked Jains, Muslims fasting during
Ramadan, and Hindus celebrating a religious holiday, all in a single
frame. It was in India that I first began to question the attitudes
toward cultural diversity that were prevalent in Turkey, my own
country. I began to ponder and envisage Ebru. I was 24 years old.
I began working as an economist. During the holidays I would
travel around Turkey and take photographs. I neither knew how
to convey via photographs the story that was taking shape in my
mind, nor did I possess the self-confidence to tell it.
In 1996, I immigrated to New York, a city of eight million people
from different lands and cultures, speaking more than 100
different languages and believing—or not believing—in hundreds
of different religions and denominations, and all living together.
One third of this population is comprised of first-generation
immigrants from approximately 200 countries. In the City’s
restaurants you can taste the cuisines of every country of the
world, and in its arts centers, parks, subway stations, and streets,
you can listen to the music and watch the dances of the most
unexpected regions and peoples. As Henry David Thoreau said,
everyone “hears a different drummer” in New York. Yet it can
hardly be said that they remain indifferent to the beats of other
drums in the process. It is also common to find that different beats
have mixed together to create entirely new sounds. While
Americans often employ the “melting pot” metaphor in describing
the cultural diversity in the United States, this “melting” aspiration
hasn’t had much of an impact upon New Yorkers. There, if it’s
meant to be, time gets the job done; and if it doesn’t, nobody
could care less. That’s why New Yorkers prefer the “mosaic”
metaphor to describe the culturally diverse fabric of their city. This
particular metaphor is their way of explaining that the many and
varied peoples who co-exist here may, if they like, maintain their
own constant, invariable colors without having to mix and mingle
their hues with those of others.
My impressions regarding the multitude of colors and voices in
New York ignited my desire to explain the cultural diversity of
Turkey via photographs, transforming what had thus far been
cultivated only as a “dream” into a passion. At the same time, I
began to contemplate whether “mosaic” was truly the best means
of describing the diversity not only of New York, but also of the
cities in Turkey where I had grown up. Ebru had yet to be named.
In 2000, Echoes of the Street (works of Polaroid manipulation
depicting the street artists that I had photographed in New York)
was exhibited at the Duggal Underground Gallery in Soho. When
the exhibition drew to an end (after being extended an additional
two months), I was both certain that I could tell the story of Ebru
via my photographs, and I knew just how I would do it. Finally, I
was ready. It had taken me eight years to acquire my self-confidence as a photographer.
I presented Ebru to the Moon and Stars Project, an organization
that sponsors Turkey-related artistic and cultural events in New
York and provides support for artists from Turkey. The project was
accepted, making the Moon and Stars Project the first institution
to honor Ebru with a project grant. Thus
did a dream going back so many years finally start to materialize
into a project.
It didn’t take long to finalize the planning phase of what was to
become Ebru. Within a few months, we knew that we had a costly
project that would take around six or seven years to finish. By
optimistic estimates Ebru could have been described as a “highly
challenging project,” whereas a more pessimistic viewpoint might
have deemed it an “impossible feat.”
It took one year to complete the research phase for Ebru. During
that time, we conducted research to get a sense of which ethnic
groups presently existed in Turkey; in which cities, towns, and
villages these groups were concentrated; which books needed to
be read; and who my initial contacts in the different fieldwork
regions would be. Our first source as we embarked upon this task
was anthropologist Peter Alford Andrews’ Ethnic Groups in theRepublic of Turkey. In order to select which of the cataloged 47
supra-groups to photograph, we determined several criteria, such
as the current size of the group, whether its population was
increasing or decreasing, and the group’s effects on historical and
cultural change. Taking into consideration our tight budget, we
decided that, if necessary, we could leave some of the very small
groups out, such as the Estonians and the Osetin. While the populations
of some groups, such as the Rum (Greeks), Yezidis, and
Assyrians, had decreased considerably, we felt that based on their
historical and cultural significance they should also be included.
We thought that the “new immigrants” arriving from Asia and
Eastern Europe were also important with respect to documenting
the changing appearance of the “ebru” in Turkey. The extent of the
project had been determined; I was to photograph at least 45 groups.
We knew very well that the reality on the ground would not be a
perfect match to what was written in academic books and that
people would have different ways of defining themselves. Indeed,
as I interacted with and photographed different groups around
Turkey, I recognized the limitations of our “research” and realized
that cultural or ethnic categorization might be an impossible task.
One of my precious conclusions from the long journey of Ebru is
that people’s self-definitions are much more complex and varied
than one would imagine. Nevertheless, the research we did on
ethnic groups in Turkey was extremely valuable in giving me a
sense of direction.
As we were winding down to the final days of the research phase,
I was informed that a second institution had agreed to
provide funding for Ebru, and asked when I would begin my fieldwork.
I needed two weeks to start. For some time thereafter,
I wondered why I had failed to ask the questions that I really
should have asked at that moment: “How can we secure the
remainder of the money we need? And what will happen if we
don’t?” It seems to me that it is in such situations and at such
times as these that the differences between people who plan their
lives and those who dream them become apparent. The realization
of this project depended much more upon the number of
people who would, over time, come to share with us a passion to
breathe life into it, than it did upon the bottom line of the budget.
This belief was proven correct at every phase of the project, as Ebru
accumulated an ever-growing number of sponsors and crew. Ebru
is therefore first and foremost a project of passion. Its second most
important characteristic is that it is the product of a collective
effort. Shared passions, especially if the number of those sharing
them steadily increases, provide the strength that enables one to
commence and continue the journey. You become imbued with
this odd feeling of confidence that problems will undoubtedly be
solved just as long as you happen to encounter the “right” people
along the way. And so, over time, the objective gradually loses its
importance, giving way to a concept of “the journey.”
When I set off for Turkey in 2001, I was aware that Ebru would be
a long “journey.” My goal was to continue a personal journey of
discovery and change, while documenting the present state of Turkey’s “ebru” as its colors flowed from the past to the future.
Thus did the project’s fieldwork begin. We had compiled a list of
cities, towns, and villages that were inhabited by the ethnic groups
that I would photograph. Taking into consideration our budget,
we discussed whether to limit the amount of time for fieldwork
in each region and decided, despite all of the obstacles facing us,
not to do so. I didn’t believe that I would be able to tell my story
without the participation of the subjects themselves. It would
therefore only be right for me to take part in the daily lives of
those people with whom I would collaborate to tell this story. I
waited one month for the fogs to lift before I could commence
work in the Black Sea Region. I spent 20 days in Viranþehir in quest
of a single photograph. But I did not leave once, not one place,
without having captured the images I desired. I slept in the houses
of those who opened their doors to me; I bathed where I found
water; and I slept in my car when I failed to find a bed. In each
village and at each home, I shared daily meals with generous
households. I took part in weddings, funerals, celebrations,
religious ceremonies, and migrations. And each and every day of
this journey I thought, I learned, and I changed.
My first stop was the Marmara Region. Among the reasons for this
decision were the multitude of micro groups in the region, the
convenient layout of the land, and the fact that we had thought
the groups to be photographed in this part of the country would
perhaps look more kindly upon a project of this sort than those in
other regions. In other words, I was looking to commence my
fieldwork in an “easy” region, leaving those that we predicted
would be “more difficult” for later. It only took a few weeks, however,
for me to find out just how far off the mark we were in that
respect. In Thrace, the struggle to capture the diversity in many
spheres of daily life, which I later encountered in various parts of
Anatolia, would stand out as one of the greatest difficulties that
I faced during my fieldwork.
My initial reaction to this situation was one of anger. On the one
hand, everywhere I went I saw groups that were either on the
verge of extinction due to migration and assimilation, or who had
become more and more similar to one another. On the other hand,
I hopelessly sought out a unique color, a different layer within the
monotony born from the standardization that comes with globalization.
Within a few weeks, my anger was replaced by a deep
sense of sorrow for those lives, colors, and stories now lost, never
to return. These feelings were compounded by a sense of helplessness:
many people who heard that our endeavor was a book and
exhibition project about cultural diversity did not want to have
their picture taken. Those who I did photograph requested that
their ethnic identities not be revealed. Everywhere I saw people
who were self-conscious because of their cultural identities, and
because their particular identity was different from the other
groups that they lived among. They were frightened that their
differences might be publicly disclosed. This attitude, encountered
at every educational and socio-economic level, as well as every
lifestyle and ethnic identity, would also prove to be the harbinger
of things to come.
In August of 2001, I spent a week in the Sarýkýz area of the Kaz
Mountains in order to document the “Sarýkýz Celebrations” and
photograph the Tahtacý who, although Alevi Turkomans, exhibit
some distinguishing differences from this supra-group. During
my conversations with the Tahtacý, the topic of the difficulties of
living in Turkey as Tahtacý inevitably came up. They claimed that it
is the ignorant and intolerant attitudes directed for generations
toward their identity and religious beliefs, which underlie their
decision to remain isolated from societies other than their own.
It was due to this particular attitude that they thought the people
of the village that I wanted to visit would refuse to let me
photograph them. I was met with a cold reception when I reached
the village; however, I was allowed to watch the religious ceremony
held around a large bonfire on the condition that I did not
take any photographs. I can’t say that I was much surprised by the
existence, still today, of groups reluctant to speak of their religious
beliefs, secretly carrying out their worshipping practices, and even
seeking to conceal their religious identities. I was expecting that.
However, if worship is indeed a form of expression of the human
soul, then it seemed to me that the silence and secrecy surrounding
this fundamental aspect of life served to restrict the freedom
that we claimed to have. In subsequent days, though I was allowed
to photograph a Tahtacý wedding (thanks in part to the camaraderie
that had developed between the village folk and myself), I was
refused my request to photograph a semah (ritualistic dance of
the Alevi) ceremony held on the night of the wedding. It would be
another four years before I would finally be able to take photographs
of the semah, as performed by a very different group of
Alevi at a festival in Tunceli.
I experienced similar difficulties not only with those groups known
to be more “reclusive,” but also with just about every group I
worked with. The Jews of Ýstanbul, whom I assumed would be a
quick, easy photo shoot, ultimately proved to be the most difficult
and reclusive group that I encountered during this project. I met
with similar resistance during my attempts to photograph the last
living representatives of the Jewish community in Edirne. It was
with great difficulty that I was finally able to achieve this goal.
(The area in question had a large Jewish population prior to a
wave of oppression and attacks that began in 1934 in Kýrklareli and
Edirne, and then spread to the other Thracian provinces and districts where Jews lived.)
With these challenges, I began to change. These were the beginnings
of an interactive process that would continue throughout
my journey. As my thoughts and feelings changed, so did my
approach and perspective with regard to the project. While
Turkey’s “ebru” reflected the exuberance of a society made up of
so many different hues, it also bore a sense of sorrowfulness for
that which has been lost, as well as the painful acknowledgements
of a history of violence and the pangs of difference.
Although these thoughts and feelings that had begun to take
shape in Thrace were reaffirmed over and over again in the stories
shared with me throughout Anatolia, I would encounter the most
painful example in the story of a Yezidi that I photographed in
Viranþehir. “Did you know that they used to strike a line through or
write ‘no religion’ in the ‘religion’ category on our identification
cards?” asked a man in his sixties, who slaughtered his last lamb
to welcome me. “In more recent years, they’ve been writing ‘unknown.’”
Seeing my disbelief, he retrieved his identification card
and flung it at me: “For 60 years they called me an infidel in my
own homeland.” As I searched for something to say, silent from
the shame and shock of reading the word “unknown,” the sound
of his rebellion rang in my ears: “I wish I’d never been born, not as
a Yezidi!”
I’d begun to experience a deep sense of “suffocation” in the
Marmara Region. I wanted to watch the Kakava festivities (spring
festival) of the Kýrklareli Roma, and thought that this characteristically
spontaneous celebration would give me a respite. The
Kakava festivities were adopted by the non-Roma population of
Kýrklareli, and became an eagerly awaited day for everyone in the
region. The Municipality of Kýrklareli stepped in to lay its claim to
the festival in 1990, transforming it into an official celebration
called “The Karagöz Culture, Art, and Kakava Festival of Kýrklareli,”
in reference to the supposed Kýrklareli origins of Karagöz (a main
character in the traditional Turkish shadow theater). Around this
time, the Municipality banned the pitching of tents and picnicking
along the Þeytan Brook, where the festivities were held, claiming
that it was a “disorderly” event and source of environmental
pollution. Thus the Kakava was transformed into a new kind of
festival with a veritable fairground, which featured concerts of
famous soloists who performed on an open-air stage. The Kakava
(which is ultimately a Roma celebration) that I attended had only
one Roma-related event: a shoe shining contest. The Roma shoe
shiners dipped their brushes into their colorful paint boxes,
rhythmically and joyfully shining shoes, at times making their
brushes do acrobatic stunts in the air. At the end, a jury announced
the winner. It certainly gave me pause that, despite the
fact that some of the most important musical masters from
Turkey have been Roma originating from Kýrklareli, not one of the
artists to perform on stage was Roma. A similar phenomenon
occurred in the Black Sea Region. Festivities used to take place on
pastures shared by a half dozen or so villages and would feature
entertainment with local music, musicians, and dances; today
such festivals have become standardized events with concerts
that feature artists imported from outside the region.
In the Marmara Region, I photographed people who identified
themselves as Tahtacý, Gajal, Dagestani, Pomak, Albanian, Bosnian,
Roma, Cossack, Tajik, Uyghur, Polish, and as immigrants from
Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Some of the photographs
of Cretans, Rum (Greeks), and Armenians were taken on
the islands of Büyükada, Heybeliada, Gökçeada, Bozcaada, and
Cunda.
The Marmara Region not only left me with so many unanswered
questions, but also came to occupy a unique place in my
memories of this journey as the sole region where I was taken into
police custody and questioned about what it was that I was photographing.
I continued with my fieldwork in eastern and southeastern
Anatolia. In those regions I photographed Sunni, Alevi and Christian
Arabs; Yezidis; Assyrians; Sunni and Alevi Zaza; Armenians; Jews;
Sunni and Alevi Kurds; Uzbeks; Kyrgyz; Azeris; and Molokans.
When I set out for a region, I would listen to the music of the
groups I was to live with, and photograph. I immersed myself in
the songs, which helped me pass the time on the endless road and
further appreciate the beauty of the “ebru” that manifested itself
the many and varied sounds of Turkey. When I asked to listen to
Kurdish songs in eastern Anatolia, I was told that they were
“forbidden,” and then given a cassette of Ciwan Haco, a musician
who performs pop-rock in Kurdish, accompanied by a cautionary
remark not to listen to it in public. About two years after this
incident, the press would be debating whether 50,000 or 300,000
people had attended a concert performance by Ciwan Haco at a
festival in Batman. The popularity of Ciwan Haco’s concerts and
albums was no longer confined to eastern and southeastern Anatolia,
but had spread to Ýstanbul as well. The fact that numerous
bans that existed at the outset of my journey had been lifted
before the conclusion of Ebru’s fieldwork, and Turkey’s resolute
attitude regarding recognition of cultural identities and associated
rights, as well as the swift pace of the progress being made in this
regard were all developments that served to buoy my spirits
throughout my journey. I knew that the “Roma Society for Cultural
and Social Solidarity and Assistance” founded in Ýzmir in 1996 had
been shut down by the Department of Internal Affairs the
following year for being “an organization based on ethnicity.”
Through the newspapers I kept tabs on developments related to
this society, which a few years later would be re-established as
the “Cultural and Social Assistance and Solidarity Society for
Immigrants from India,” thanks to the efforts of Roma activist
Yakup Çardak. Then, as the end of my journey drew near, newspapers
were reporting that the Roma were organizing for the first
time ever in Turkey, in the city of Ýzmir, and that the official name
of their organization was the “Society for Roma Culture and Social
Assistance” (Milliyet, May 8, 2005). Toward the end of the same
year, I read that Turkey, for the first time, would be represented
in the Roma Parliament (which had been an active organ of the
European Council since 1971) by two people. One of them was
Yakup Çardak (Radikal, November 11, 2005). Upon reading this bit
of news, I was overcome by an odd feeling that the course of my
Ebru journey had somehow crossed paths with the journey of this
person whom I had never actually met.
It’s impossible to go to eastern and southeastern Anatolia and not
to see the profound marks of trauma, caused by the painful events
of recent history, and not to think that it will take a long time for
those wounds to heal. Even in the cities, one witnesses the variegated
colors of Turkey in their most pronounced and vivid hues.
The rich variety of different cultural practices that continue to
endure in these regions are easily recognized. Conversely, the
shared folk music sung in Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian;
decorative elements, like the deq (the art of adorning the body
with tattoos as practiced by the Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrians of
eastern Anatolia); the pushi (a head cloth) used by various groups,
and so many other similar elements shed light upon those areas in
which different colors have blended and fused, impelling one to take notice of the cultural transitivity that characterizes the region.
Mardin is a city with a large Assyrian population, where the people
speak Arabic, Kurdish, and Assyrian more than Turkish, and which
has become famous for the originality of its stone residential
architecture. Here you can see Islamic monuments and Christian
structures of various periods side by side. The mosques and their
complexes, tombs, and madrassahs together with churches
belonging to Catholic and Orthodox Assyrians, Catholic and
Gregorian Armenians, and Chaldeans, help us imagine the now
lost synergy that once thrived in this city and others, too.
In Mardin, I met the last living person who knows how to make
the icon-decorated cloth prints that are used in Assyrian churches.
Just a few months earlier as she was lamenting the imminent
death of this ancient handicraft, she received news that instilled in
her a renewed sense of hope and gave her cause for celebration.
She had been presented with an offer to teach the younger generation
this printing technique in a course to be opened through
government funding. I certainly hope this project was actually
implemented and that those beautiful prints continue to
embellish the churches of Mardin, and other buildings, too. It has
never been my wish to take the last photograph of any color, any
marvel, and I trust that this is not the case with this Assyrian craft;
for it is my hope that those same colors of “ebru” will inspire the
work of photographers who will come after me.
One of the most important developments in recent years has been
the gradual return of the Assyrians, and other groups who had
migrated abroad, to their villages. I have seen, and in some cases
photographed, villages that have been invigorated by the return
home of so many migrants, made possible by numerous positive
developments, the most significant of which has been the Turkish
government’s support.
However, in Mardin I saw not only examples of co-existence, but
also of the huge gulf that is sometimes felt to separate us from
those nearest to us. While I was working in Midyat, a district of
Mardin, that is home to Muslims, Christians, and Yezidis, a
particular individual was pointed out to me. I was informed that
this person was often the butt of jokes told by the Muslim people
of Midyat. So I got ready to listen to the outrageous adventures
of this individual, the selected subject of humorous anecdotes;
the story that I heard, however, made my blood freeze. The Yezidis
hold the belief that if someone draws a circle on the ground
around where they are standing, they should not step outside of
the circle until someone else erases it. This youngster’s long hours
of pleading, under the sizzling sun, for the circle he was
imprisoned in to be erased, had become a source of howling
laughter for the locals. It was only later that I learned that this
practice was a common source of entertainment for Christian and
Muslim groups living together with Yezidis in various parts of the
world. The ability to attack different beliefs, to insult and ridicule
them, all the while holding one’s own beliefs sacred and inviolable,
was the manifestation of a widespread tendency that I
encountered throughout the duration of my journey. I can
honestly say that I observed intolerant, disrespectful, insulting,
and even aggressive attitudes toward the “other” in every region
of Turkey. The relative effectiveness and scathing impact of
intolerance is of course closely related to who is in the majority or
who possesses the most power. However, with respect to
individual and neighborly relations, this intolerance and prejudice
existed to a certain degree in almost every group. I had many
opportunities to consider those expressions that we all heard
while growing up—words that easily become a part of our
vocabulary, sometimes purposefully, sometimes haphazardly. Just
as there are expressions, which certainly must number in the
hundreds, such as “Never eat meat butchered by a Yezidi”;
“coward like a Jew”; “Armenian seed”; “seventy two and a half
nations” (the half being the Roma), which are known and used
throughout the country, there are also a plethora of similar
expressions unique to different regions. It was such phenomena
that prompted me to pose the following questions: how does one
deal with being the “other”? Is it possible to feel utterly displaced,
even in one’s own homeland, inside one’s very own home? Finding
the answers to these questions would prove to be extremely
challenging.
Though “us” and “them” may mean different things to different
people, for all of us there is always an “other.” The Nusairis in
Antakya complain that they are put in the same category as
Anatolian Alevi by the Sunnis, whereas they themselves maintain
that their culture has been shaped more by Arabic influence than
Anatolian, and that therefore they are actually “more Muslim”
than the Sunnis. Some Circassians insist that the Abkhazians
aren’t Circassian, while some derisively refer to the Abkhazians as
the “Gypsies of Circassia” and, in a condescending tone, call all
groups other than Circassian, “Turks.” A wise and sociable Alevi
dede (religious leader), whom I had the opportunity to meet while
in the Edremit area, complained about the aggressive attitude
that Sunnis exhibited toward Alevis, and then responded to a
question by saying that it would be impossible for his daughter
to marry a Sunni because “birds of a feather should flock together.”
Meanwhile, claiming that “oil and water don’t mix,” a Jew from
Ýstanbul stated that she did not look favorably upon “mixed”
marriages between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews because they
are “so very different.”
Of course such distressing stories alone did not define every
moment of my fieldwork. I both worked and played at the
weddings, festivals, and celebrations that I attended. I was
overcome with excitement as I watched various dances, races, and
games. As I listened to the people I had met, the humor that they
infused into their stories made me laugh until I cried. On any given
day or night, I enjoyed the pleasure derived from long, captivating
conversation. My journey, like the lives that I witnessed, was shaped by the spiral dance of joy and pain.
One place where I witnessed such a dance of joy and pain was in
a small Kyrgyz village in Van. Originally from Afghanistan, the
people living in this village had been settled there in the early
1980s, as political refugees escaping the war in Afghanistan.
Beginning a new life in a new country—a new climate—was a
serious challenge during their first years of settlement in the Van
area. The concrete two-story houses provided to them by the
Turkish government were not only very different from their
dwellings in Afghanistan, but were not suitable for animal
husbandry, their main source of living. In time, they had modified
these properties (for instance, by converting the first stories of
their houses into barns), and had also started modifying their life
style to adapt to their new surroundings. In 1999, when a major
earthquake hit the Marmara Region, Kyrgyzstan sent large tents
that the Kyrgyz call yurt to be used in earthquake relief. The tents
were so large, cumbersome, and difficult to set up that the Red
Crescent was unable to distribute them to the earthquake victims
and decided to put them in storage. While cleaning out the
storage facilities a few years later, a worker at the Red Crescent
suggested that they give the yurt to the Kyrgyz living in the Van
area. The Kyrgyz I photographed use these tents, which are kept
spotlessly clean and beautifully decorated with cultural
ornaments, as classrooms for teaching the Koran and as community
spaces. It was the trauma of war that had brought the Kyrgyz to
this region, and it was another trauma, the earthquake, that had
brought the yurt all the way from Kyrgyzstan. As I participated in
a joyful wedding where the men played a traditional game called
kök börü on top of horses, I was also thinking about the ironical
twists of history behind the stories of these people and their yurt.
Throughout the journey, I was often left with impressions that
made me think that the people of Turkey and the cultures to
which they belonged were much more reminiscent of an “ebru”
than they were of a “mosaic.” Groups that viewed one another as
the “other” shared traditional clothes, songs, musical instruments,
cuisine, and decorative elements such as henna, as well as festivals
and celebrations. The Laz and the Hemþinli of the Black Sea
Region argue over which group is the rightful owner of the tulum
bagpipe, an instrument traditional to both groups. The “Vartavar
Festival” is held in July and celebrated by both the Armenians in
different parts of Turkey and the Hemþinli. I celebrated Vartavar
with the Hemþinli on Çamlýhemþin’s Amlakit upland meadow, and
then took part in celebrations, with Patriarch Mesrob II in
attendance as well, for the same festival in Vakýflýköy, Antakya’s
only village with a solely Armenian population. The fact that some
festivities known to be in existence since pagan times are
celebrated under different names by just about every group in
Anatolia is another fine example to illustrate this situation.
Although the aforementioned Kakava, as well as other holidays
that take place in the spring—Easter, the Egg Celebration, Newroz,
and the Celebration of the Forty—may reflect different religious
mythologies; however, they all share common elements and
symbols relating to the revival of nature and rebirth. Other beliefs
and practices also fit perfectly with the “ebru” metaphor. Among
the thousands who walk to the Hagia Yorgi Church on Büyükada
Island twice a year to make their wishes are Muslims, Greeks,
Armenians, and Jews. Making models of desired wishes and
leaving them in certain places as well as tying colorful pieces of
cloth onto trees are practices common to every group living in
Turkey. In every region of Turkey I saw carpets with depictions of
the Peacock Angel, the most important religious symbol of the
Yezidis. When I looked at these shared characteristics, I had the
impression that the certitude and rigidity of the division between
“self” and “other” that I saw within that mixture of interwoven
colors, each tone impacting another, was but an unnatural element within an otherwise naturally flowing “ebru.”
In the Black Sea Region I photographed people who identified
themselves as Laz, Georgians, Hemþinli, and Çepni. An interesting
group was the Greek (Rumca)-speaking Muslims, who were reluctant
to place themselves under any given category. One should
also note that many people I met among those groups, as well as
others around Turkey, simply chose to identify themselves as
“Turks,” refusing any further ethnic identification. Still, one of the
most common complaints put forth by the people in this region
has to do with the renaming of villages to Turkish names. Many
people didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked for
directions using the new names of villages (because they themselves
continued to refer to the villages by their old names), and I
recalled that the names of many villages in Gümüþhane, my
birthplace, had also been changed when I was a child. I read the
following item in a daily newspaper: “The people of Germir Village
in Kayseri have successfully petitioned to restore the original name
of their village, 40 years after it was changed to Konaklar by
government decree.” According to the article, the people of this
village, in which Muslim and Christian groups had co-existed until
the early 20th century, and which is known to be the birthplace
of the famous film director Elia Kazan, took as their example the
villagers of Avlus (Aydýnlar), who had also successfully endeavored
to restore their village’s former name. The same news item
reported that committees like “The Name Changing Committee”
and “The Committee for Changing Foreign Names” had been
established within the Department of Internal Affairs since the
1940s (Hürriyet, July 14, 2002). The anger evident in the complaints
of the Black Sea people and the passion with which they held onto
the names of their villages were so great that I wouldn’t be
surprised at all if in the near future I will see news reports about
villages in that region getting their former names back, too.
I was mesmerized by the natural beauty of Maçaheli in the Black
Sea Region, where I photographed a group of Georgians. This
region on the Turkish-Georgian border, with six villages inside
Turkey under the jurisdiction of Artvin’s Borçka district and 12
villages that ended up in Georgia, is famous for its chestnut flower
and rhododendron honey. Its roads completely impassable
throughout the winter months, Maçaheli is also famous for its
“Seniors Choir.” This polyphonic choir sings old Georgian songs
that have been passed down orally for generations and which
touch upon almost every aspect of social life, including the daily
toil of production. The choir took part in the “International
Polyphonic Songs Symposium” held in Tbilisi, Georgia, where they
represented Turkey and were massively successful. The choir
members believe that this success was due to the fact that the
songs they sing—two and three centuries old—have already been forgotten even in Georgia itself.
Of the approximately 15,000 photographs that I took for this
project, perhaps the most challenging were those of the five Laz
men with five hawks. Training hawks has been a popular hobby
in this region. The masters of this trade are well known by locals
and command a great amount of respect in their communities.
When raising hawks was banned due to the “European Union
Accession Criteria” and the efforts of several animal rights
organizations, people took to the streets with the slogan “We will
not give up our hawks!” to carry out the largest protest in Arhavi’s
history. The government retreated, saying that permission to keep
hawks would be granted to those individuals who received
certificates upon completion of a relevant course. Thus it was
made viable for some people to continue this popular local
practice. Perhaps it had to do with the imposed regulations, or
maybe it was because it wasn’t the right season, but my various
attempts at photographing the hawks during my three-month
stay in the Arhavi-Hopa-Ardeþen region all failed. My quest had
become such popular knowledge that one evening somebody
came to deliver a message: “If the long-haired guy’s still looking,
we’ll take him to see some hawks tomorrow!” Just as I was getting
ready to depart from the region, here they were, five men petting
five hawks on the shore of a brook, telling one another hawk
stories… This unexpected company was the final gift of this region to “the long-haired” photographer.
The next stage of my fieldwork took me to central Anatolia. There,
I photographed Tartars, Alevi Turks, and Circassians.
Among the Circassians, it is a common custom to hang photographs
of family elders on the walls. The photographs included
ornate daggers, stunningly beautiful clothing, and silver belts.
Unfortunately, all the daggers and the cartridge belts that
decorated the men’s traditional clothes had been seized during
the weapon confiscation operations following the coup d’état of
1980. They told me, “Whether it was because we’d come from
Russia, we don’t really know.” Although some people tried to save
these keepsakes of their forefathers by burying them, most ended
up disappearing, decomposing, or confiscated. One Circassian man
added a pinch of humor to this story when he explained that it
wasn’t just the State that was to blame for the fact that Circassian
costumes and daggers were the most difficult things to find in
Uzunyayla, but that some of the blame belonged to Circassian
women and the “melamine” fad that swept through the region
in those years. “We handed over many a silver belt in exchange
for a couple of plastic plates,” he told me, indicating that
sometimes change can derive from ephemeral “fads,” too.
I’ve witnessed this kind of humorous approach to storytelling in
every region of Anatolia. Hacýbektaþ is a region populated by Alevi
Turks. Because I knew that only Sunni Muslims worshipped in
mosques, I was intrigued by the sight of mosques in the Alevi
villages of Hacýbektaþ. Unable to suppress my curiosity, I asked
why there were mosques in these Alevi villages. “It’s a part of the
aid that the State gave to the region,” they told me with a smile.
It seems that at one point, the State deliberately constructed
mosques in the Alevi villages in the region. And then, uncomfortable
with their apparent identity discrepancy, the residents of
some villages that were left out of the “mosque campaign” built
their own mosques in order to “conform to the majority.” The
tragicomedy of this story doesn’t end there. The mosques were
built, but of course that didn’t mean that the Alevi changed their
methods of worship. These mosques didn’t have imams or
congregations. One day, a colonel in official uniform stopped by
the village, saying that he was passing through and wanted to do
his Friday prayers at the mosque. “But of course, sir,” responded
the villagers. The great effort put forth to open the mosque’s
locked door, the energy exerted to track down a non-existent
imam, and the colonel’s response to the entire incident was told
with such a fine humorous touch, it made the story almost seem
like a scripted joke. I still can’t help but laugh when I think about
the conversation.
The Mediterranean Region and the Aegean Region were my last
stops. I took part in the migrations of Sunni Yörüks in the Taurus
Mountains. I photographed the Sunni Turks in Uþak, Ýzmir,
Menemen, Milas and a number of villages in the Aegean Region.
The changes brought about by the increased speed of communication
between villages, towns, cities, and countries, as well as
the increased ease of transportation and new economic conditions
are apparent in every corner of Anatolia. Though it took years for
television to be part of every home, the fact that cell phones have
so quickly spread throughout the country to become an indispensable
part of daily life is evidence of the unstoppable transformation
heralded by technology. When observed among more
secluded groups, which have been relatively untouched by the
magnitude of such developments for extended periods of time, it is even more striking.
The Yörüks living in the Mediterranean Region generally spend
the winter months along the seashore and toward the end of
spring, begin their migration into the Taurus Mountains’ upland
pastures, which have an elevation of up to 3,000 meters. The
Sarýkeçili tribe of the Yörüks is among the last of the nomadic
groups that still migrate on camel back. Today, most nomads use
trucks instead of camels. Goat-hair tents have given way to nylon
or canvas tents, rawhide sandals have given way to plastic shoes,
and the economy of bartering has given way to the economy of
currency. The Sarýkeçili believe that the reason why many Yörük
groups now use trucks instead of camels has to do with the
urbanization of Anamur. Previously, there was plenty of room to
water, feed, and shelter dozens of camels until the migration
season; in recent years the Municipality has instituted bans on
such practices as the keeping of camels. Because there’s no place
for a large number of camels and tents within the new urban
areas, some Yörüks have had no choice but to turn to trucks for
transport during migration. This development has had a profound
impact upon many fundamental elements of Yörük life. Whereas
camels can climb all the way up to the mountain summits, trucks
can make it only as far as the roads allow. And that means less
ground for grazing. Some Yörüks bemoan the outcome of this
chain reaction triggered by the change in means of transportation,
claiming that because of the now limited grazing areas, “even the milk tastes different.”
The Sarýkeçili carry out production by “traditional” means and they
rarely use watches, since dividing the day into hours doesn’t hold
much meaning for them. So the sight of these same people using
mobile phones was one of the most interesting images I
witnessed in Anatolia. After I had finished my work in the Taurus
Mountains and was back in Ýstanbul, my cell phone rang. It was
my Yörük friend who had hosted me in his goat-hair tent throughout
the duration of the migration. “Attila, we’re so far from the
city you know. Can you send me some prepaid minutes?” he said,
wasting no time in getting to the point. “Son,” I said, “You’re a
Yörük; you’re on who-knows-what mountain top. You don’t have
a home or an address; how am I supposed to send you prepaid
minutes?” He laughed. “Brother, don’t they have these things in
that America of yours? If you just do as I say, you’re going to send
the prepaid minutes to my phone from your phone.” Try as he may
to explain the simple process, I just couldn’t manage to tap out
the right combination on the keypad. I finally succeeded with
some assistance from a cell phone sales clerk. And so, as a person
who had spent many long years living in America, I ended up
learning the fine points of cell phone technology from my nomad
pal. Which reminds me of yet something else this journey taught
me: the meaninglessness of those often-employed descriptions,
“backwards” and “advanced.”
While traveling around Anatolia, it’s impossible not to get lost in
thought about “time.” In some regions, the age of each stone you
step on is measured in millennia. Frequently encountered historical
remains inspire contemplation of the dozens of civilizations that
have flourished and died on these lands, and of the stories and
lives of the peoples who have found themselves here over the
ages. Some live on in the marks they have left behind, or the
impact they have had, while others are utterly lost to us now… In
Anatolia, one simultaneously experiences the swift acceleration
of our age as it courses through time, bringing with it so much
change, and a sense that time is standing still, frozen in the
seemingly timelessness of these lands. And you can’t help but
think about the stories that you leave behind for those who
thousands of years from now will walk in exactly the same place
where your feet currently wander. Stories of war and peace, love and hate, mortality and immortality…
Just as I was lost in these thoughts, I found myself most unexpectedly
confronted with a plow—an instrument said to have
been invented in these Anatolian lands thousands of years ago.
Upon seeing that tractors were being used in agriculture in even
the remotest parts of eastern and southeastern Turkey, I asked
the villagers how long it had been since they had used plows. “Is
there anybody left over there in your America who still uses a
plow?” was their jovial response. But then I saw a woman using
an actual plow on a field in the Aegean Region. She let me take
some shots as she plowed. “How many days does it take you to
plow this field?” I asked. “Four days,” she said. “With a tractor it’d
take four hours,” a friend sitting next to me chimed in. The
woman’s response reflected the sense of surrender and the
serenity of resignation to a pre-ordained fate that I think still exists
among the people of Anatolia: “There’s no spirit in a tractor like
there is in a plow.” In a single moment this unexpected image
transported me to this sensation that Anatolia wakens within
you—a feeling of infinite past and eternity, the illusion that time
stands still in that endless flow, despite all of the changes it
undergoes. Before leaving the field, I asked the woman, “So
where’s your family from originally?” “It’s only Turks in these parts,” she responded, “and they’ve never mixed with any others.”
Here, I have spoken about more than one journey. I have shared
the memories of a journey that I embarked upon just as Turkey’s
“ebru” was in the process of flowing, from yesterday into
tomorrow. I have also tried to convey the feelings, thoughts, and
changes that the people and stories that I encountered awakened
within me. I hope that as you read the texts of Ebru and look at its
photographs, you, too, will embark on a mental journey, whether
in solitude or with the people in your life and memories.
I neither wish to conclude my story by simply stating that my
journey ends with a book and several exhibitions, nor do I want
my photographs to be perceived and assessed as some kind of
“last word” on the cultural diversity of Turkey. That which has
been said, what has and has not been done, what I have written
here, and the photographs I have taken—none of these represent
a “last word.” I don’t believe that there can be a “last word”
regarding the “ebru” of Turkey, or of this world. I know that what
I speak of is a story that continues to be written over time—
history—and that can be rewritten (that we can rewrite) each and
every day.
In parting, I would therefore like to conclude not with closing
words, but with words that will more appropriately leave this story
open for all of us—the same words that were given to me as a
parting gift on the first day of my journey:
