Athena is a band from Istanbul founded by twin brothers Hakan and Gökhan Özoğuz in 1987. They started off in ’87 as a trash metal band, but turned to rock/punk/ska with time.
In 2014, they released the album Altüst, featuring a song Ses Etme, which caused a lot of controversy, since the music video for it was following one day in the life of a transgender person.
This whole album is definitely worth your time, but the song I would love to emphasize and just can’t stop listening to is Adımız Miskindir Bizim. Beauty for the ears, beauty for the soul.
Aynur (Doğan) is a Kurdish singer from Turkey. She was born in Çemişgezek, a small mountain town in Dersim Province and fled to İstanbul in the 90’s.
Her album Keçe Kurdan (released in 2004) was banned by the provincial court in Diyarbakır on the grounds that the lyrics contained propaganda for an illegal organization (the court ruling said the album “incites women to take to the hills and promotes division”). The ban was later lifted.
You can listen to the beautiful song Dar Hejiroke (from the above mentioned album), here.
Anatolian Rock Revival Projectis a project dedicated to bringing the non-mainstream pieces from the Turkish rock history (60s&70s) into light with unique art works.
The following is a song from the 1970, by the band Grup Bunalim, called Taş Var Köpek Yok. Enjoy the song and be sure to check out the rest of the songs included in the Anatolian Rock Revival Project.
A wonderful story on Mashallah News. A boss-free textile collective rose from the ashes of a failed company where workers were not paid for months.
Following years of struggles with former bosses and co-workers, Özgür Kazova collective strives to create a new and equitable labour model in a country where the word worker is often synonymous with poverty and exploitation.
“Jumpers without masters” is the group’s triumphant slogan. Only three members remain from the initial 94 Kazova workers, many of whom quickly scrambled to find jobs elsewhere after they were laid off. They are few, but retain the satisfaction of getting to use the machines impounded from their old factory, after Özgür Kazova legally acquired the weaving apparatus last year.
The long legal battle, internal strife and heavy costs associated with establishing the new factory only deepened the resolve of the trio to establish a collective-based labour model, one which rests on the pillars of gender equality and mutual solidarity.
Selda is a legendary Turkish folk singer-songwriter, known in the West for her 70s recordings (her music has been sampled by many artists outside Turkey, including Mos Def and Dr. Dre). She continued a mysterious career in the past decades.
Considering all what’s happening in Turkey right now, a little bit of Selda music is very much welcome. So I decided to dig up this happy story…
After weeks of negotiations, couple of years ago Selda was convinced to play live and solo for the first time in ten years. It’s all captured in this lovely video, filmed by Vincent Moon. Here’s this little wander on the magnificent Bodrum Peninsula.
If I write that Turkish cinema is on the rise, that it is original and compelling, often beautiful and poetic – I wouldn’t be saying anything new. The truth is already out there.
Still, I felt the need to write about a couple of really great Turkish films made during the last ten years (2006 – 2016). These films are maybe not the most famous ones, and maybe not even the best ones – but I think they show diversity, originality, and each one of them is a special experience, rich in layers and nuanced.
Also, I noticed that Five For Fridaycategory has been neglected for last couple of months – I am sorry about that and will do my best to bring a little something different to Fridays more often. It’s Friday, I am in love kind of a thing, but Middle East Revised way.
1. Sonbahar(2008)
Sonbahar (Autumn) could easily be one of my favourite films of all time. If favourite means films that stay with you, somewhere inside, films you can watch many times and still enjoy every little detail, films you remember and connect with your everyday life many years later – then Sonbahar is one of my favourite films.
It is a story about a man who struggles after his release from ten years as a political prisoner (story painfully familiar to many people in Turkey).
Sonbahar is Özcan Alper’s debut film, full of meaningful silence, obervations on life and change. It takes you inside the soul and mind of the prisoner (Yusuf) – where his troubles hide, where sorrow finds its nest, where disappointment and doubts have permanent residence.
And all of that happnes in the beautiful snowy mountains of northern Turkey, or by the raging sea. Memory confronts reality the same way waves hit the shore relentlessly. Yusuf meets his old mother, his childhood friend, and a new girl – who shares his solitude.
Slowly, he grasps the impact his ten years in prison had on his mother, he sees the way his friend’s life changed, and finds comfort (atleast for a while) in the arms of the girl who understands him without talking.
The movie is not slow, it has perfect pace for all of those who want to really get into the story, who wish to feel what Yusuf feels, who want to take it one step at a time. For it is a big story, it is one’s life.
Onur Saylak and Nino Lejava’s performances as disillusioned individuals embittered with life are beyond great – they make you believe and let under their skin.
I will not write more – I will leave it to you to discover all the beauty of Sonbahar, to explore it in your own way. Just one more thing – an amazing song from the film, which needs to be shared here.
2. Takva (2006)
Takva (A Man’s Fear of God) is something very different from Sonbahar. It is a story about a humble and introvert Muharrem who lives in a solitary and meager existence of a prayer and sexual abstinence adhering strictly to the most severe Islamic doctrines.
His devotion attracts the attention of the leader of a rich and powerful Istanbul religious group and he offers him an administrative post as a rent collector for their numerous properties.
Muharrem’s new job throws him into the modern outside world he has successfully avoided for so long. He used to live without deep thoughts about practical life and religion, and it all changes. That’s when the doubt starts playing an important role in his life. And religious fanatics – well, they don’t appreciate doubt very much.
Muharrem notices that he himself has become proud, domineering and dishonest. And he has a special new peoblem – a tormenting image of seductive woman who tempts him in his dreams. With the balance of his devotion now upset, his fear of God begins to eat away at his senses.
The plot for this lovely film is based on an old folk tale from Turkey about a man who refuses to marry the daughter of his spiritual master although he clearly loves her. In Onder Cakar and Omer Kiziltan’s adaptation, it exposes the inner mechanisms of puritan and extreme religious orders and throws light on the mental set-up of its loyal members.
There’s so much great irony in this film, do watch it.
3. Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most famous Turkish directors, earning praise wherever he goes and whatever he does. All of that is, of course, with a good reason – his immense talent.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a story about a group of men who set out in search of a dead body in the Anatolian steppes (yes, there’s some amazing scenery in this film).
A local prosecutor, police commissar, and a doctor lead the search for a victim of a murder to whom a suspect named Kenan and his mentally challenged brother confessed. The search is proves to be more difficult than expected as Kenan is fuzzy and can’t remember the body’s exact location.
We spend the whole night with the group searching for the body. The film really feels like that – like you’re out there with them – you feel the boredom, exhaustion, anger, all of it. The film is long, it provides enough space to feel all of that.
You pass throught the beautiful countryside, and enjoy small frames and moments that wonderfully shed light on the different characters. It shows how a simple task can get complicated, it show how much can fit in just one moment, in one night.
It allows the viewers to see the details, to dig below the surface of events and characters. There’s just so much of life in it – in its honesty, in the reality of it. It’s bold and it’s a lot (it’s definitely not escape cinema), but I think we can take it – and love it.
4. Times And Winds (2006)
Well, it’s called Times and Winds. It sounded promising right away. I grew up in a small village, and this film just hits home for me. In the film, it’s all about this small, poor village, leaning over high rocky mountains, facing the immense sea, flanked by olive yards.
It’s about they way life is made there – and how it is different in so many ways. Villagers are simple people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living, on a daily survival basis, out of the earth and of a few animals they feed.
Just like the animals and trees around them, they have the knowledge of their temporary existence – they feel the present in a way physicists could never understand. They are the ones who know what it means – it’s their time mode.
Villagers live according to the rhythm of the earth, air and water, day and night and seasons. The daily time is divided into five parts by the sound of the call to prayer (Night, Evening, Afternoon, Noon and Morning).
Children study in the village school consisting of only one classroom. Families show their gratitude to the young teacher by giving her presents – the bread they cook themselves, the milk of their own sheep.
It’s the way my grandma used to do it (and still does it) – wine for the teacher, eggs for the doctor. You give what you have, you give what you make.
Children grow up slowly in the village, you can feel it. We can feel their stories, their little torments – being in love with the teacher, being angry at your parents, discovering secrets of the adult life. Omer, Yakup and Yildiz are on the path of discovery, on their way to greater responsibility, transcending from childhood to an entirely new world.
They yearn for an escape, and gather in the wilderness around the village to play and dream. Images show the young children lying prone – dead or asleep – out in the wilderness.
As one viewer observed – it might be a sad reflection of a world where they already feel like a disappointment. But, I would add, it might also be what saves them in the end.
Also – Arvo Part’s music just makes it perfect, it completes the circle.
5. Winter Sleep(2014)
Another slow, life-contemplating film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel (named Othello) in central Anatolia (again, amazing scenery) with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce.
Snow everywhere and love (and ego) will tear us apart – kind of times. As the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities. So, in a way, it is a shelter turned into a battlefield. It also goes to show that there’s no shelter from ourselves.
Aydin apparently enjoys a prosperous life, but that is just the surface – his world is one where people talk a lot but say very little, where people make up and cover up with words the lack of action and emotion. Ceylan shows how his protagonists substitute talk for action.
There is lots of dialogue in this film, unlike most of the other films on this list, but all the talk in it shows how talking can be empty, how it can be means of self deception, an ego trip, a false charade.
The film deals with the universal human experience, and puts it into a kind of a moralistic tale (but not a preaching one). It just opens many philosophical discussions, but discussions we can all partake in. It makes us relate, rethink, and feel – over and over again.
This is a film I plan on watching again in the future – as I (hopefully) get older and my experiences in life change – I want to see how my perception of the film (and life) will change, what will I understand better, what rewards this film still has to give me.
Winter Sleep just might make you more awake than ever. Watch it.
Mathias Depardon is a documentary photographer based in Istanbul. One of his important and still very relevant projects is Gold Rivers. In Gold Rivers, Depardon presents the story of Hasankeyf, a village located in the province of Batman in Southeast Turkey.
It is an ancient town and district alongside the Tigris river, and the only place in the world that gathers nine of the ten criteria to be considered worldwide heritage by the UNESCO.
/A herd of cattle are walking back towards the village by the banks of the Tigris river. The river is predominant in the life of the inhabitants of the region of Hasankeyf/
However the Turkish government has accomplished no efforts these last years to offer its inclusion to the organization or to promote tourism in the region. The key reason for this lack of initiative, as Depardon explains in the project, is that the efforts hired by the state would harm the Ilisu Dam project that is supposed to entirely flood Hasankeyf along with 52 other villages and 15 small towns until the end of 2016.
Construction of the dam began in 2006 and is expected to be finished this year. The dam has drawn international controversy, because it will flood portions of Hasankeyf and necessitate the relocation of people living in the region.
/A tourist boat tour is visiting the former Savaçan Village flooded by the reservoir lake of the Birecik Dam on the Euphrates river/
This hydroelectric dam is part of the GAP (The Anatolia Project of southeast Turkey), which is one of the most important territory planning project in Turkey: it concerns eight provinces and will irrigate 1,7 million dry hectares of earth from 22 dams fed by waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
With all the environmental and social risks, there are additional political risks. The dam was severely criticized in effect by the neighboring countries of Iraq and Syria who accuse Turkey of appropriating waters of two rivers running to the south of their territories, hit by dryness.
/The Ilisu dam project will destroy 400 kilometers of the Tigris ecosystem and force the relocation of about 60,000 people. Local girls from the village of Hasankeyf are meeting over a çay together/
“Water levels are at a record low because Turkey is taking more than a fair share”, Shorooq al-Abayachi, deputy head of the Iraqi parliament’s agriculture and water committee, said at the time.
In the absence of definite agreement with Iraq and Syria, the building of Ilisu dam constitutes a violation of international law.
/Kids playing in the Devegeçidi reservoir dam. The Dam is one of the 22 dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project of Turkey/
If it will be finished, the dam will flood 80% of the ancient monuments of Hasankeyf and destroy a unique historical site where a mix of Assyrian, Roman and Ottoman monuments belong.
The Turkish government still sticks to the argument that it will bring means to the poor region – to develop its economy, notably by allowing the creation of 10,000 jobs.
/View on the reservoir lake of the Birecik Dam on the Euphrates river. As part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, aka GAP, several dams were constructed in the area and surrounding regions as part of a larger agricultural and economic initiative by the Turkish Government/
The construction of the dam is continued in a violent and unsecure environment. Early in 2015, the PKK guerilla (the workers’ party of Kurdistan) destroyed machines and a pipe from the construction site.
The governmental response was an increase of the militarization of the site, adding 600 soldiers to the 1,000 soldiers already located at the site.
/Local tourists visiting the village of Halfeti partly flooded by the reservoir lake of the Birecik Dam on the Euphrates river.The dam was built on top of the ruins of the ancient city of Zeugma. The inhabitants of Halfeti and Savaçan were displaced to the city of Karaotlak (also called New Halfeti) built by the Housing Development Administration of Turkey/
The intensified opposition to the project by the local population forced the companies to hire non-local workers. On 20th of October last year, a Global Hasankeyf Action Day against the Ilisu Dam was held.
It was also the a beginning of a new campaign that aims to declare Hasankeyf a UNESCO world heritage site, together with the Iraqi marshes.
Yet the construction of the dam is about to be completed. Civil society and activists worries are very high regarding the threats on peace the dam is going to represent.
Once effective, it will be forcing thousands of Kurdistan villagers to move to the cities while there is a high risk it will provoke water shortages for irrigation in the Iraqi valleys.
The result may be a vicious circle where water shortages exacerbate the conflict, in turn blunting resource management.
Conflicts over water have long haunted the Middle East. Yet in the current fighting in Iraq and Syria, the major dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are seen not just as strategic targets but also as powerful weapons of war.
• • •
For more on Mathias Depardon and his photography, visit his official website. To read more about Gold Rivers project, visit The Story Institute. To find out more about Ilisu Dam and the current state of it, visit EJ Atlas.
Middle East Revised marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide until the end of this year – with various reports, books recommendations, articles, testimonials.
At night, elderly Turkish women patrolled up and down the rows of beds, trying their best to make sure we were all asleep. Some of us slept four to a bed, others eight to a bed, covered by one single blanket, breathing into each other’s faces. On cold nights, boys sometimes pulled the blanket off the others, starting an argument. The commotion would wake up everyone in the dormitory, and the women would do their best to restore order.
Often, the boys cried out in their sleep, or they woke up from a nightmare. When that happened, the Turkish women took their hands, escorted them to the lavatories, washed away their tears, and brought them back to the beds.
I often dreamed of my mother. During these dreams, we had long conversations. I was told that I often whimpered and repeated the word “mother” in my sleep. Her nightly visits were essential to my sanity and survival.
When morning came, we couldn’t help but feel a little bit cheerful. The days were often bright, and out the windows we could see the peaks of mountains in the distance to the east. To the west, in the distance, was the glittering Mediterranean Sea. Around the orphanage were scenic greenery and the beautiful songs of the birds. Despite everything, we had not given up on life yet.
Another thing that lifted our spirits was the set of statues of saints located high on the roofs of the buildings; they seemed to be constantly blessing us. The orphanage had been Turkified, but this place had been a religious school for decades, and even the Turks could not erase every trace of its past. We felt like those statues had successfully fought off any attempts by the Turks to change their identities, and thus, every time we went out to the courtyard, our eyes were drawn to them.
One morning, we heard a terrible noise, and we saw that the Turks were finally destroying the statues. The saints had lost their battle against the orphanage administration.
It was difficult to destroy the statues. By the second day only a few of them had been removed. We saw two of them crash down into the courtyard and shatter into a million pieces. That day, every time the bell rang, we poured out of the classrooms and ran to the shattered pieces, picking them up and fretting about them as if they were true relics of the saints.
“I’ll miss them,” murmured one of the boys.
“They were so lifelike,” added another.
“One of them looked exactly like my grandfather—same height, same mustache,” said a third, picking up some of the rubble.
The boys kept circling the smashed statues. Nobody played in the courtyard that day. We found noses and ears, arms and legs, scattered all over the place. Mindless destruction. The orphanage staff didn’t even bother cleaning up the rubble—the orphans had to collect it all into pails and dispose of it outside the orphanage walls.
Only one statue survived. It was a heavy one, made of bronze, and stood on the altar of the small chapel. But the door of the chapel was always kept locked, so we had no chance of seeing it.
In the first days of our stay in Antoura, the chapel had been a consolation. In the winter it was warm, and in the summer it was cool and breezy. The stained glass windows, decorated with biblical scenes and likenesses of saints, kindled memories of home in our minds.
But the project of Turkification was reaching a new level of intensity. On a daily basis, we heard lectures about Islam, its victories, and the virtue it imparted to the faithful who followed the way of Allah. Some of the boys had succumbed to the pressure already, while the others were under constant assault from the staff and the headmaster.
The administration started locking the chapel doors. It saw the building as a threat to its mission to convert us to Islam.
✍
The orphans cast furtive glances toward the locked doors. “When will they let us back into the chapel?” asked one boy.
“To pray? We can pray anywhere,” answered another. “Remember, boys, we can pray in our beds, in our rooms, or even here in the courtyard.”
“I know that, but I wish I could see the statues inside one more time,” a third added.
“We can’t break down the door, but there are other ways to get in,” insisted a boy named Murad. “I’ll find a way and I’ll let you in, just follow me!”
The bell rang. It was the end of recess, and we had to return to the classrooms. We formed rows and walked into class under the watchful gaze of the teachers. During history class, the teacher asked whether Muhammad traveled on the back of a camel or on the back of a donkey. One of the more daring boys stood up and replied: “Miss, we all know Muhammad traveled on the back of a camel, and he must have really struck a sorry figure. As for those statues, they were beautiful. What was the point of smashing them to pieces?”
The entire class burst into laughter.
“How dare you? What blasphemy!” cried out the teacher, and struck her desk with her ruler.
For the crime of insulting the prophet, the boy had to face the wall and stand on one leg until the end of the class. But the classroom was now out of control, with all the students making a terrible amount of noise.
That night, Murad, as promised, led a group toward the back of the chapel. There we found a tiny door that was unlocked. Once through it, we found ourselves in a secondary room full of drawers, closets, and other furniture, covered by a thick layer of dust. But that didn’t interest us. We crept into the main nave. It was completely dark, save for a glimmer of light peeking through the window. As we approached the altar, we spotted the statue—it was lying on the ground, on its back.
The Turks had managed to dislodge it from its plinth, but they had failed to destroy it. It had only a few nicks here and there. The metallic statue had been too strong for their hammers and anvils. The serene expression on the statue’s face was still the same. In the visage of this statue we found more beauty and dignity than ever.
We all sat solemnly around the fallen statue. There was a silent, holy conversation going on between it and us. We weren’t even quite sure who the statue was supposed to depict. But we knew it was another link to our pasts, another key to our memories.
• • •
This excerpt was first published on Jadaliyya. For more on the centenary of the Armenian genocide, see:
On 24th of April 1915, Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested and executed, some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. The date is held to be the beginning of the Armenian genocide – Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of Armenian people, inside their historic homeland. Starting from today, Middle East Revised marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide until the end of this year – with various reports, books recommendations, articles, testimonials, etc.
This first article is written by Zdravko Budimir, Croatian political scientist who wrote his master thesis on Armenian genocide and knows the subject very well. I am really happy to be able to publish it on Middle East Revised.
• • •
Even though ethnic violence played a large role in history of mankind, there is one distinctive reason why 20th century is considered a dark century. Genocide as a phenomena is a decadency of, not a certain nation, but entire civilization. Violence of the 20th century was prepared. It derived its origins from the imperialistic fashion, where new racist theory justified bloody colonial expansionism and brought in a modern concept of administrative massacres. Genocide is not a single and discrete act but a process. Diagnostically perceived, it is a syndrome developed by simultaneous grouping of various signs and symptoms.
When altogether these symptoms produce abnormal state. Armenian genocide started in April 1915, as an escalation of a prolonged process of ethnic violence towards the Armenian population, started in 19th century. Ethnic violence escalated into a genocide because ethnic violence became a political tool for achieving political goals.
/Armenian intellectuals jailed and later executed on April 24th. Image is from the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia, Yerevan: 1981, p. 423./
Twentieth century introduced new political ideas and redefinition of older political concepts. Historically, democracy stands for a rule of the people, and there are two definitions of the people and one of them is responsible for turning a genocide into a political weapon.
Conception of people as demos is not a problematic one, as it assumes the differences between people can be set out by compromise. On the other hand conception of people as ethnos overrides compromise as a political tool, and defines nation in ethnic terms. Armenian genocide is the first modern genocide because ethnic violence had exceptional political purpose – removal of others in an already ethnically defined territory.
At the turn of the century Armenian question was integral part of a broader Eastern question and secondary stage for confrontation between European powers. As a political system an empire could no longer cope with its minorities and their rising political and national aspirations.
/Caption of the photograph reads: The Above Photograph Shows Eight Armenian Professors Massacred by the Turks. Found on Wikipedia/
Hamidian massacres 1894.-1896. were series of mass murders, led by Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Red Sultan. Violence was focused on Armenian society and estimated number of Armenian casualties vary from 80,000 to 300,000. The massacres themselves were, considering reasons and execution, pre-modern (feudal) type of violence and contain pre-genocidal character.
Hamidian massacres opened up for a further process of violence, thus creating a continuity of violence. During and after the massacres a certain type of culture was welcomed. Crimes were forgotten and it’s perpetuers were unpunished. Armenians turned into a safety valve of the system. Safety valve could be opened and tightened at any given time, without making political or moral risks. Hamidian massacres were crucial moment in incubation phase of genocide because vulnerability of Armenian people was detected and recognised (there was no address for Armenians to appeal to), and combined with Turkish invulnerability within the empire it made genocide a possible option.
In 20th century Ottoman empire faced crisis caused by territory loss. For the first time in history Turks made a majority within their own empire, an empire which was about to collapse.
/Armenian woman kneeling beside dead child in a field “within sight of help and safety at Aleppo“. Sometime between 1915 and 1919. Photo source: Wikipedia/
Armenians as a minority faced a historically progressive hatred on an ethnic, religious, economic and political level. Armenians were used to violence. World War I provided a safe curtain for the most brutal act of violence in human history because it intensified nationalism, geopolitical destabilization, and made combining ethnos and demos far more dangerous. Context of total war redefined civilians as potential targets and enabled the use of terror as a supression of potentially cooperating parts of society. Armenian society was suspected for cooperation with the enemy and percieved as a direct threat to the Ottoman state in the same manner.
Extermination of the Armenians begun as elitocide, focused on Armenian leaders, soldiers, fortifications, strategically valuable cities and villages. Elitocide was justified as war necessity and preemptive strike, as Armenians were flagged as enemies. Leaderless Armenian population was helpless, stateless and without any political representation. Genocide was executed using top-down principle, with a developed administrative system used for the coordination of murderings.
/Armenian orphans in Merzifon, 1918. Photo by Tsolag Dildilian/
Deportation was introduced as a specific method of genocide (removal of the others from a heartland) and it was enforced as a law. Deportation and pillage were legal acts and covered for extermination which happened in their sake.
Armenian genocide was perpetuated by Young Turks, a force within a society driven by modern and nationalistic ideal of an ethnically defined nation state. Young Turks’ desired society was bound by same language, education, religion, moral and aesthetic norms. They aspired towards the Jacobin model, ruled by centralised state, ruthless homogenizer, egalitarian nationalism within national natural limits. Young Turks’ political rule in war era was an usurpation of a system and radicalization of the political sphere.
Armenian genocide is essentially a modern crime. It was initiated because Young Turks were devoted to the organic nationalism ideology which combined dark side of democracy with dark side of multiethnic empire. Later on, the Turkish nation-state was founded on genocide and it was maintained on its denial. Turkish people as a collective are not responsible for the massacre, but they take their part in culpability by constructing a national myth based on a denial of the other nation.
/An Armenian mother and the corpses of her five children. Photo by Maria Jacobsen, Diary 1907-1919, Kharput-Turkey/
Armenian genocide can be described as a successful crime because it fulfilled its given purpose: final goal, the creation of homogeneous state, was accomplished, crime was forgotten and Turkey unpunished. And even one hundred years later, denying the obvious, historically proven and argumented facts is de facto acceptance of their outcome as favorable. Denial of the genocide means prolonging its effects and the Armenian genocidal process now exists for one hundred years.
Rena Effendiis a photographer who keeps on bringing great stories for a decade now. In Pipe Dreams, she followed an oil pipeline from her native Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey. Along the way she met scores of people and unfulfilled dreams. She spent years taking photos and following the story, and Pipe Dreams developed into a book later on:
A pipe dream is a fantastic hope that is regarded as being impossible to achieve. This book is dedicated to the people of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, linked by the oil pipeline and their fading hopes for a better future. Besides corporate public relations campaigns, little photographic evidence exists about the impact the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline had had on Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. This book portrays life as it is lived, with no commercial or public relations agenda. It ‘un-smiles’ the calendar smiles of corporate propaganda and sheds fresh journalistic light on this geopolitically important region.
/illustration: Emre Önol/
/Ilustration by Eva Bee/
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