Along the avenue

Sunday 8 April 2024

Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye

“What are the odds so long as the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality and the wing of friendship never moults a feather?

What are the odds so long as the spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine and the present moment is the least happiest of our existence?“

(The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens)

Above: The Old Curiosity Shop, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

If you have the time, ıt makes sense to spread your exploration of the neighbourhood of Beyoğlu over a few days.

And so we heed this advice.

After checking into our hotel, The Public, we have a much-needed (albeit forgettable) dinner at the İkinci Bahar inside the Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage).

A covered arcade with rows of historic cafes, winehouses and restaurants, Çiçek Pasajı connects İstiklal Caddesi (avenue) with Sahne Sokak (street) and has a side entrance opening onto the Balık Pazarı (Fish Market).

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, a number of impoverished noble Russian women, including a Baroness, opened flower shops here.

By the 1940s the building was mostly occupied by flower shops, hence the present Turkish name Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage).

The Pasajı goes through an edifice known as the Cité de Pera, a rococo structuree erected in 1876 with a line of shops on the ground floor and luxury apartments above.

Notice the two splendid entrance portals, one on the main avenue (İstiklal Caddesi) and one on the side street (Şahne Şokağı).

The Pasjı is lined with meyhanes – old-fashioned taverns where one can enjoy a tasty snack washed down with draft beer or rakı – the anise-flavoured intellect-deadening national drink.

Above: Çiçek Pasajı, İstanbul

As my wife and I chatter away the time between bites, I find myself wondering what it must have been like to have been a member of the Russian nobility forced to leave behind both status and homeland to start a new life in İstanbul.

I find myself thinking about what it would have been like to be in Russia during the Revolution.

Did the Russian Revolution inspire Atatürk to form his own rebellion against the Ottoman Empire?

My wife has often branded me a Communist for feeling ill at ease with the wealth we have seen in various former palaces, now museums open to the public.

I am not a Communist, though I find myself always resistant to the arrogance inherent I perceive in people with inherited wealth and power.

I lean towards social democracy that allows individuals to excel through hard work and ambition, but not at the cost of others’ rights and dignities.

I want to embrace the Marxist notion that human compassion will one day find us living in a more egalitarian society.

I like to believe that in some parts of the world we have become more humane than our predecessors.

I reject the Leninist idea that this change from greedy capitalism to social Utopia is only possible through violence and bloodshed.

Revolutions are merely a changing of the guard clothed in a uniform of a different ideology.

The inequality and imbalance of power and wealth of one group over everyone remains the same though the cast has switched.

Above: The hammer and sickle symbol of Communism

I think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.

It describes the dictator Joseph Stalin as a big Berkshire boar named, “Napoleon“.

Trotsky is represented by a pig called Snowball who is a brilliant talker and makes magnificent speeches.

However, Napoleon overthrows Snowball as Stalin overthrew Trotsky.

Napoleon takes over the farm the animals live on.

Napoleon becomes a tyrant and uses force and propaganda to oppress the animals, while culturally teaching them that they are free.

I think of Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) by the American journalist and socialist John Reed (1887 – 1920).

Here, Reed presented a firsthand account of the 1917 Russian October Revolution.

Reed followed many of the most prominent Bolsheviks closely during his time in Russia.

I find Reed’s story to be rather fascinating.

Above: American writer John Reed (1887 – 1920)

John Silas Reed was born in his maternal grandparents’ mansion in what is now the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

His grandmother’s household had Chinese servants. 

Reed wrote of paying a nickel to a “Goose Hollowite” (young toughs in a gang in the working-class neighborhood below King’s Hill) to keep from being beaten up.

In 2001 a memorial bench dedicated to Reed was installed in Washington Park, which overlooks the site of Reed’s birthplace.

(The mansion no longer exists.)

Above: Portland, Oregon with Mt. Hood in the background

His mother, Margaret Reed (née Green), was the daughter of Portland industrialist Henry Dodge Green, who had made a fortune founding and operating three businesses: the first gas & light company, the first pig iron smelter on the West Coast, and the Portland water works (he was its second owner).

SW Green Avenue was named in his honour.

John’s father, Charles Jerome Reed, was born in the East and came to Portland as the representative of an agricultural machinery manufacturer.

With his ready wit, he quickly won acceptance in Portland’s business community.

The couple married in 1886.

The family’s wealth came from the Green side, not the Reed side.

A sickly child, young Jack grew up surrounded by nurses and servants.

His mother carefully selected his upper-class playmates.

He had a brother, Harry, who was two years younger. 

Jack and his brother were sent to the recently established Portland Academy, a private school.

Jack was bright enough to pass his courses but could not be bothered to work for top marks, as he found school dry and tedious.

 

In September 1904, he was sent to Morristown, a New Jersey prep school, to prepare for college.

His father, who did not attend college, wanted his sons to go to Harvard.

At Morristown, Jack continued his poor classroom performance, but made the football team and showed some literary promise.

Reed failed his first attempt at Harvard College’s admission exam but passed on his second try, and enrolled in the fall of 1906. 

Above: Beard School, Morristown, New Jersey

Tall, handsome and lighthearted, he threw himself into all manner of student activities.

He was a member of the cheerleading team, the swimming team and the dramatic club.

He served on the editorial boards of the Lampoon and the Harvard Monthly.

Above: Coat of arms, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

He was president of the Harvard Glee Club.

Above: Logo of the Harvard Glee Club

In 1910 he held a position in the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

He also wrote music and lyrics for their show Diana’s Debut.

Above: The Hasty Pudding Lobby, 12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge Massachusetts

(Hasty Pudding Theatricals is a student theatrical society at Harvard University known for its annual burlesque crossdressing musicals as well as its Man and Woman of the Year awards.

The Pudding is the oldest theatrical organization in the United States and the third oldest in the world. 

Its annual production is a musical comedy that often touches on topical social and political issues.)

Reed failed to make the football and crew teams, but excelled in swimming and water polo.

He was also made “Ivy orator and poet” in his senior year.

Above: Harvard rowing crew

Reed attended meetings of the Socialist Club, over which his friend Walter Lippman (1889 – 1974) presided, but never joined.

Above: American writer Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974)

The group introduced legislation into the State Legislature, attacked the University for failing to pay its servants living wages, and petitioned the administration to establish a course on socialism.

Above: The Intercollegiate Socialist Society was the brainchild of left-wing novelist Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968)

Reed later recalled:

“All this made no ostensible difference in the look of Harvard society, and probably the club men and the athletes, who represented us to the world, never even heard of it.

But it made me, and many others, realize that there was something going on in the dull outside world more thrilling than college activities.

We turned our attention to the writings of men like H.G. Wells (1866 – 1946) and Graham Wallas (1858 – 1932), wrenching us away from the Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) dilettantism which had possessed undergraduate litterateurs for generations.”

Above: English writer Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946)

Above: English economist Graham Wallas (1858 – 1932)

Above: Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910.

That summer he set out to see more of the “dull outside world“, visiting England, France and Spain before returning home to America the following spring.

To pay his fare to Europe, Reed worked as a common laborer on a cattle boat.

His travels were encouraged by his favourite professor, Charles Townsend Copeland (“Copey”) (1860 – 1952), who told him he must see life if he wanted to successfully write about it.

Above: Harvard Professor Charles Townsend Copeland (1860 – 1952)

Reed had determined to become a journalist and set out to make his mark in New York.

Reed made use of a valuable contact from Harvard, Lincoln Steffens (1866 – 1936), who was establishing a reputation as a muckraker.

Steffens quickly appreciated Reed’s skills and intellect and landed his young admirer an entry-level position on The American Magazine (1906 – 1956), where Reed read manuscripts, corrected proofs, and helped with the composition.

The editors at The American came to see him as a contributor and began to publish his work.

Reed supplemented his salary by taking an additional job as the business manager of a new short-lived quarterly magazine, Landscape Architecture.

Above: American journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866 – 1936)

Reed made his home in Greenwich Village, a burgeoning hub of poets, writers, activists and artists.

He came to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it.

Above: Aerial view of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City

His formal jobs on the magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Reed sought to establish himself.

He collected rejection slips, circulating an essay and short stories about his six months in Europe, eventually breaking through in the Saturday Evening Post. 

Within a year, Reed had other work accepted by Collier’s (1888 – 1957), The Forum (1886 – 1950) and The Century (1881 – 1930) magazines. 

One of his poems was set to music by composer Arthur Foote (1853 – 1937).

Above: American composer Arthur Foote (1853 – 1937)

Reed’s serious interest in social problems was first aroused about this time by Steffens and Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944).

He moved beyond them to a more radical political position than theirs.

Above: American writer Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944)

In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses (1911 – 1917), edited by Max Eastman (1883 – 1969).

Above: American writer Max Eastman (1883 – 1969)

Reed contributed more than 50 articles, reviews and shorter pieces to this socialist publication.

The first of Reed’s many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of strikers in the New Jersey silk mills.

Above: Great Falls, Passaic River, Paterson, New Jersey

Above: Paterson textile mills, 1906

The harsh treatment meted out by the authorities to the strikers and the short jail term he served further radicalized Reed.

He allied with the general socialist union, the Industrial Workers of the World.

His account of his experiences was published in June as an article, “War in Paterson“.

During the same year, following a suggestion made by IWW leader Bill Haywood (1869 – 1928), Reed put on “The Pageant of the Paterson Strike” in Madison Square Garden as a benefit for the strikers.

Above: Logo of the Industrial Workers of the World

In the autumn of 1913, Reed was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine (1895 – 1925) to report on the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920). 

He shared the perils of Pancho Villa’s (1878 – 1923) army for four months.

Above: Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1878 – 1923)

He was with Villa’s Constitutional (Constitutionalist) Army – whose “Primer Jefe” political chief was Venustiano Carranza (1859 – 1920) – when it defeated Federal forces at Torreon, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City. 

Reed adored Villa, but Carranza left him cold.

Above: Mexican President Venustiano Carranza (1859 – 1920)

Reed’s reporting on the Villistas in a series of outstanding magazine articles gained him a national reputation as a war correspondent. Reed deeply sympathized with the peons and vehemently opposed American intervention.

Reed’s reports were collected and published as the book Insurgent Mexico (1914).

On 30 April 1914, Reed arrived in Colorado, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre, which was part of the Colorado Coalfield War between the John D. Rockefeller Jr.-owned (1874 – 1960) Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (1892 – 2007) and United Mine Workers union supporters.

Above: Ruins of the Ludlow Colony near Trinidad, Colorado, following an attack by the Colorado National Guard, 20 April 1914

(The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War.

Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on 20 April 1914.

Approximately 21 people, including miners’ wives and children, were killed.)

There he spent a little more than a week, during which he investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, and wrote an impassioned article on the subject (“The Colorado War“, published in July).

He came to believe much more deeply in class conflict.

Above: Armed strikers at the Ludlow tent colony during the Colorado Coalfield War (September 1913 – December 1914)

(The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labour uprising in the southern and central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914.

Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay.

The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property.

Fighting was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg.

It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.

Tensions climaxed at the Ludlow Colony, a tent city occupied by about 1,200 striking coal miners and their families, in the Ludlow Massacre on 20 April 1914 when the Colorado National Guard attacked.

In retaliation, armed miners attacked dozens of mines and other targets over the next ten days, killing strikebreakers, destroying property, and engaging in several skirmishes with the National Guard along a 225-mile (362 km) front from Trinidad to Louisville, north of Denver.

Violence largely ended following the arrival of federal soldiers in late April 1914, but the strike did not end until December 1914.

No concessions were made to the strikers. 

An estimated 199 people died during the strike, though the total dead counted in official local government records and contemporary news reports is far lower.

Described as the “bloodiest labor dispute in American history” and “bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War“, the Colorado Coalfield War is notable for the number of company-aligned dead in a period when strikebreaking violence typically saw fatalities exclusively among strikers.)

Above: American businessman John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874 – 1960)

Reed spent the summer of 1914 in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Mabel Dodge and her son, putting together Insurgent Mexico and interviewing President Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924) on the subject.

Above: Aerial view of Provincetown, Massachusetts

Above: American arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879 – 1962)

The resulting report, much watered down at the White House’s insistence, was not a success.

Above: US President Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924)

On 14 August 1914, shortly after Germany declared war on France, Reed set sail for neutral Italy, on assignment for the Metropolitan.

He met his lover Mabel Dodge in Napoli.

The pair made their way to Paris.

Above: Skyline of Napoli (Naples) with Mt. Vesuvius in the background

Reed believed the war was the result of imperialist commercial rivalries and felt little sympathy for any of the parties.

In an unsigned piece titled “The Traders’ War“, published in the September 1914 issue of The Masses, Reed wrote:

“The real War, of which this sudden outburst of death and destruction is only an incident, began long ago.

It has been raging for tens of years, but its battles have been so little advertised that they have been hardly noted.

It is a clash of Traders…

What has democracy to do in alliance with Tsar Nicholas II?

Above: Russian Tsar Nicholas II (1868 – 1918)

Is it Liberalism which is marching from the Petersburg of Father Georgy Apollonovich Gapon from the Odessa of the pogroms?…

No.

Above: Moika River, St. Petersburg, Russia

Above: Russian Orthodox priest Father Georgy Gapon (1870 – 1906)

(Georgy Apollonovich Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest of Ukrainian descent and a popular working-class leader before the 1905 Russian Revolution.

After he was discovered to be a police informant, Gapon was murdered by members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

Father Gapon is mainly remembered as the leader of peaceful crowds of protesters on Bloody Sunday (22 January 1905), when hundreds of them were killed by firing squads of the Imperial Russian Army.)

Above: Crowd of petitioners, led by Father Gapon, near Narva Gate, St. Petersburg, Russia

Above: Images of Odessa, Ukraine

(A series of pogroms against Jews in the city of Odessa took place during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

They occurred in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881 and 1905.

Most historians in the early 21st century agree that the earlier incidents were a result of “frictions unleashed by modernization,” rather than by a resurgence of medieval antisemitism. 

The 1905 pogrom was markedly larger in scale, and antisemitism played a central role.

Odessa had a multi-ethnic population included Greek, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian and other communities.

A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews.

The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire.

Similar attacks against Jews which also occurred at other times and places became known retrospectively as pogroms. 

Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups.

The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.

Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906).

After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amidst the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918) and Kiev pogroms (1919).

Above: Members of the Jewish Bund with bodies of their comrades killed in Odessa during the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The most significant pogrom which occurred in Nazi Germany was the 1938 Kristallnacht.

At least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps, a 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

Above: Interior view of the destroyed Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, burned on Kristallnacht (9 – 10 November 1938)

Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iași pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland.

Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, the 1947 Aleppo pogrom, and the 1955 Istanbul pogrom.

Above: Turkish mob attacking Greek property, İstanbul, (6 – 7 September 1955) – 37 dead, 1,000 injured, 400 Greeks raped, the material damage was estimated at US$500 million, including the burning of churches and the devastation of shops and private homes

In the 1984 Sikh massacre, 3,000 Sikhs were brutally killed in an orderly pogrom.

Above: Sikh man surrounded and beaten by a mob (31 October – 3 November 1984)

In 2008, two attacks in the Occupied West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were labeled as pogroms by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Above: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (r. 2006 – 2009)

The Huwara pogrom was a common name for the 2023 Israeli settler attack on the Palestinian town of Huwara – one death, hundreds injured – in February 2023.

Above: Huwara, Palestine

In 2023, a Wall Street Journal editorial referred to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel as a pogrom.)

There is a falling out among commercial rivals….

We, who are Socialists, must hope — we may even expect — that out of this horror of bloodshed and dire destruction will come far-reaching social changes — and a long step forward towards our goal of Peace among Men.

But we must not be duped by this editorial buncombe about Liberalism going forth to Holy War against Tyranny.

This is not Our War.`

Above: John Reed

In France, Reed was frustrated by wartime censorship and the difficulty of reaching the front.

Reed and Dodge went to London.

Dodge soon left for New York, to Reed’s relief.

The rest of 1914 he spent drinking with French prostitutes and pursuing an affair with a German woman.

Above: London, England, 1914

The pair went to Berlin in early December.

While there, Reed interviewed Karl Liebknecht, one of the few socialists in Germany to vote against war credits.

Above: German socialist Karl Liebknecht (1871 – 1919)

Reed was deeply disappointed by the general collapse in working class solidarity promised by the Second International (1889 – 1916) and by its replacement with militarism and nationalism.

He returned to New York in December and wrote more about the War.

Above: Battle of Verdun, France (21 February – 18 December 1916)

In 1915, he travelled to Central Europe, accompanied by Boardman Robinson, a Canadian artist and frequent Masses contributor.

Above: Canadian-born American artist Boardman Robinson (1876 – 1952)

Travelling from Thessaloniki, they saw scenes of profound devastation in Serbia (including a bombed-out Belgrade), also going through Bulgaria and Romania.

Above: Thessaloniki, Greece

Above: Panorama of Belgrade, Serbia

They passed through the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Bessarabia.

Above: Jews in the governorates of the Pale of Settlement (1791 – 1915)

(The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915) in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden.

Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well.

A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants.

The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.

The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation.

It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line inside the country, westwards to the Imperial Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and Austria-Hungary.

Furthermore, it comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and largely corresponded to historical lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Cossack Hetmanate, the Ottoman Empire (with Yedisan), Crimean Khanate, and eastern Principality of Moldavia (Bessarabia).

Life in the Pale for many was economically bleak.

Most people relied on small service or artisan work that could not support the number of inhabitants, which resulted in emigration, especially in the late 19th century.

Even so, Jewish culture, especially in Yiddish, developed in the shtetls (small towns), and intellectual culture developed in the yeshivot (religious schools) and was also carried abroad.

The Russian Empire during the existence of the Pale was predominantly Orthodox Christian, in contrast to the area included in the Pale with its large minorities of Jewish, Roman Catholic and until mid-19th century Eastern Catholic population (although much of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova are predominantly Eastern Orthodox).

While the religious nature of the edicts creating the Pale is clear (conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, released individuals from the strictures), historians argue that the motivations for its creation and maintenance were primarily economic and nationalist in nature.

The end of the enforcement and formal demarcation of the Pale coincided with the beginning of World War I in 1914, when large numbers of Jews fled into the Russian interior to escape the invading German army, and then ultimately in 1917 with the end of the Russian Empire as a result of the February Revolution.)

In Chelm they were arrested and incarcerated for several weeks.

At risk of being shot for espionage, they were saved by the American ambassador.

Above: Łuczkowski Square, Chelm, Poland

Travelling to Russia, Reed was outraged to learn that the American ambassador in Petrograd was inclined to believe they were spies.

Above: Map of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, later renamed Leningrad and then renamed again St. Petersburg), Russia (1916)

Reed and Robinson were rearrested when they tried to slip into Romania.

This time the British ambassador (Robinson being a British subject) finally secured permission for them to leave, but not until after all their papers were seized in Kiev.

Above: Maidan Nezalezhnosty (Independence Square), Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine

In Bucharest, the duo spent time piecing together more of their journey.

Above: Aerial view of Bucharest, Romania

At one point Reed travelled to Constantinople (İstanbul) in hopes of seeing action at Gallipoli.

Above: Landing at Çanakkale (Gallipoli), Türkiye (24 April 1915)

(New Zealand troops were part of the Allied invasion force that landed at what soon became known as Anzac Cove.

For months New Zealanders, Australians and troops from Britain and France battled harsh conditions and resolute Ottoman opponents who were desperately fighting to protect their homeland.

By the time the Campaign ended, some 125,000 men had died: more than 80,000 Ottoman Turks and 44,000 Allied soldiers, including 8500 Australians and 2721 New Zealanders (about a fifth of those who landed on the peninsula).

In the history of the Great War, the Gallipoli Campaign (19 February 1915 – 9 January 1916) made no large mark.

The number of dead, although horrific, paled in comparison with the casualties in France and Belgium.

But for New Zealand, Australia and Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign left a lasting impression on their national psyches.

The Entente powers, Britain, France and the Russian Empire, sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the Ottoman straits.

This would expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople (İstanbul) to bombardment by Entente battleships and cut it off from the Asian part of the Empire.

With the Ottoman Empire defeated, the Suez Canal would be safe.

Above: Map of the Suez Canal, Egypt (2015)

The Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits would be open to Entente supplies to the Black Sea and warm water ports in Russia.

In February 1915 the Entente fleet failed when it tried to force a passage through the Dardanelles.

Above: Panoramic view of the Entente fleet in the Dardanelles

The naval action was followed by an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915.

In January 1916, after eight months’ fighting, with approximately 250,000 casualties on each side, the land campaign was abandoned and the invasion force was withdrawn.

Above: Images of the Gallipoli Campaign

From top and left to right:

Ottoman commanders including Mustafa Kemal (4th from left), Entente warships, V Beach from the deck of SS River Clyde, Ottoman soldiers in a trench, and Entente positions

It was a costly campaign for the Entente powers and the Ottoman Empire as well as for the sponsors of the expedition, especially the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–1915), Winston Churchill.

Above: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

The campaign was considered a great Ottoman victory.

In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the history of the state, a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire retreated.

The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, as founder and President.

Above: Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 – 1938)

The campaign is often considered to be the beginning of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness.

The anniversary of the landings, 25 April, is known as Anzac Day, the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in the two countries, surpassing Remembrance Day (Armistice Day).)

Above: 2009 ANZAC Day dawn Service, State War Memorial, Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia

From these experiences he wrote the book, The War in Eastern Europe, published in April 1916.

After returning to New York, Reed visited his mother in Portland.

There he met and fell in love with Louise Bryant (1885 – 1936), who joined him on the East Coast in January 1916.

Though happily involved, both also had affairs with others in accordance with their bohemian circle and ideas about sexual liberation.

Above: John Reed (1917)

Above: American journalist Louise Bryant (1885 – 1936)

Early in 1916, Reed met the young playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953).

Beginning that May, the three rented a cottage in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a summer destination on Cape Cod for many artists and writers from Greenwich Village.

Not long after, Bryant and O’Neill began a romance.

Above: American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953)

That summer Reed covered the Presidential nominating conventions.

He endorsed Woodrow Wilson, believing that he would make good on his promise to keep America out of the war. 

Above: Woodrow Wilson accepts the Democratic Party nomination at his summer home in Long Branch, New Jersey, 2 September 1916

In November 1916, Reed married Bryant in Peekskill, New York.

Above: Downtown Peekskill, New York

The same year, he underwent an operation at Johns Hopkins Hospital to remove a kidney.

He was hospitalized until mid-December. 

The operation rendered him ineligible for conscription and saved him from registering as a conscientious objector, as had been his intention.

(A conscientious objector is an “individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service” on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. 

The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. 

In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.

A number of organizations around the world celebrate the principle on May 15 as International Conscientious Objection Day.

On 8 March 1995, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1946 – 2006) Resolution 1995/83 stated that “persons performing military service should not be excluded from the right to have conscientious objections to military service“. 

This was re-affirmed on 22 April 1998, when Resolution 1998/77 recognized that “persons already performing military service may develop conscientious objections“.)

Above: Flag of the United Nations

During 1916, Reed privately published Tamburlaine and Other Verses, in an edition of 500 copies.

As the country raced towards war, Reed was marginalized:

His relationship with the Metropolitan was over.

He pawned his late father’s watch and sold his Cape Cod cottage to the birth control activist and sex educator Margaret Sanger (1879 – 1966).

Above: American activist Margaret Sanger (née Higgins) (1879 – 1966)

Wilson addressed the US Congress, asking for a declaration of war against Germany, saying that Germany was engaged in “nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States.”

He requested a military draft to raise the army, increased taxes to pay for military expenses, loans to Allied governments, and increased industrial and agricultural production. 

He stated:

“We have no selfish ends to serve.

We desire no conquest, no dominion, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.

We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of the nations can make them.“

When Wilson asked for a declaration of war on 2 April 1917, Reed shouted at a hastily convened meeting of the People’s Council in Washington DC:

“This is not my war, and I will not support it.

This is not my war, and I will have nothing to do with it.” 

Above: US Capitol Building, Washington DC

In July and August 1917, Reed continued to write vehement articles against the war for The Masses – which the US Post Office Department refused to mail – and for Seven Arts. 

Due to antiwar articles by Reed and Randolph Bourne (1886 – 1918) , the arts magazine lost its financial backing and ceased publication.

Reed was stunned by the nation’s pro-war fervor.

His career lay in ruins.

Above: American writer Randolph Bourne (1886 – 1918)

On 17 August 1917, Reed and Bryant set sail from New York to Europe, having first provided the State Department with legally sworn assurances that neither would represent the Socialist Party at a forthcoming conference in Stockholm.

The pair were going as working journalists to report on the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia.

Travelling by way of Finland, the pair arrived in the capital city of Petrograd immediately after the failed military coup of monarchist General Lavr Kornilov.

This was an attempt to topple the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky by force of arms.

Reed and Bryant found the Russian economy in shambles.

Above: Russian General Lavr Kornilov (1870 – 1918) greeted by his officers, 1 July 1917

Above: Minister-Chairman of the Russian Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky (1881 – 1970)

Several of the subject nations of the old Empire, such as Finland and Ukraine, had gained autonomy and were seeking separate military accommodations with Germany.

Reed and Bryant were in Petrograd for the October Revolution (November 7, 1917 [Old Style calendar: 25 October]), in which the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, toppled the Kerensky government.

(The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917–1923.

It was the second revolutionary change of government in Russia in 1917.

It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November 1917 [O.S. 25 October].

It was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War.

The October Revolution followed and capitalized on the February Revolution earlier that year, which led to the abdication of Nicholas II and the creation of a provisional government.

The provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, had taken power after Grand Duke Michael, the younger brother of Nicholas II, declined to take power.

Above: Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, sometimes called Emperor Michael II (1878 – 1918)

During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (soviets) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions.

The provisional government remained unpopular, especially because it was continuing to fight in World War I, and had ruled with an iron fist throughout the summer (including killing hundreds of protesters in July)(16 – 20 July [O.S. 3 – 7 July] 1917).

Above: Street demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt, Petrograd, just after troops of the Provisional Government have opened fire with machine guns, 4 July 1917

Events came to a head in the fall as the Directorate, led by the left-wing Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs), controlled the government.

The far-left Bolsheviks were deeply unhappy with the government, and began spreading calls for a military uprising.

On 10 October 1917 (O.S. 23 October, N.S.), the Petrograd Soviet, led by Trotsky, voted to back a military uprising.

Above: Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940)

On 24 October (O.S. 6 November) the government shut down numerous newspapers and closed the city of Petrograd in an attempt to forestall the Revolution.

Minor armed skirmishes broke out.

The next day a full scale uprising erupted as a fleet of Bolshevik sailors entered the harbor and tens of thousands of soldiers rose up in support of the Bolsheviks.

Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military-Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 25 October (O.S.; 7 November, N.S.), 1917.

The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured.

Above: The Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia

As the Revolution was not universally recognized, the country descended into the Russian Civil War, which would last until 1923 and ultimately lead to the creation of the Soviet Union in late 1922.

The historiography of the event has varied.

The victorious Soviet Union viewed it as a validation of their ideology, and the triumph of the worker over capitalism.

During Soviet times, Revolution Day was a national holiday, marking its importance in the country’s founding story.

Above: Flag of the Soviet Union (1922 – 1991)

On the other hand, the Western Allies saw it as a totalitarian coup, which used the democratic Soviet councils only until they were no longer useful.

Above: New York Times, 9 November 1917

The event inspired many cultural works and ignited Communist movements across Europe and globally.

Many Marxist–Leninist parties around the world celebrate October Revolution Day.)

The Bolsheviks believed this was the first blow of a worldwide socialist revolution.

Food shortages made the situation dire in the capital.

Social disorder reigned.

Above: Marxist revolutionary and leader of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)

Reed later recalled:

“The last month of the Kerensky regime was marked first by the falling off of the bread supply from 2 pounds a day to 1 pound, to half a pound, to a quarter of a pound, and, the final week, no bread at all.

Holdups and crime increased to such an extent that you could hardly walk down the streets.

The papers were full of it.

Not only had the government broken down, but the municipal government had absolutely broken down.

The city militia was quite disorganized and up in the air.

The street-cleaning apparatus and all that sort of thing had broken down — milk and everything of that sort.“

Above: After the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia –

(26 October / 7 November 1917)

A mood for radical change was in the air.

The Bolsheviks, seeking an all-socialist government and immediate end to Russian participation in the war, sought the transfer of power from Kerensky to a Congress of Soviets, a gathering of elected workers’ and soldiers’ deputies to be convened in October.

The Kerensky government considered this a kind of coup and moved to shut down the Bolshevik press.

It issued warrants of arrest for the Soviet leaders and prepared to transfer the troops of the Petrograd garrison, believed to be unreliable, back to the front.

A Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik Party, determined to seize power on behalf of the future Congress of Soviets.

At 11 pm on the evening of 7 November 1917, it captured the Winter Palace, the seat of Kerensky’s government.

Reed and Bryant were present during the fall of the Winter Palace, the symbolic event that started the Bolshevik Revolution.

Above: The storming of the Winter Palace – 25 October 1917

Reed was an enthusiastic supporter of the new revolutionary socialist government.

He went to work for the new People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, translating decrees and news of the new government into English.

“I also collaborated in the gathering of material and data and distributing of papers to go into the German trenches.”, Reed later recalled.

Reed was close to the inner circle of the new government.

He met Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940) and was introduced to Lenin during a break of the Constituent Assembly on 18 January 1918.

By December, his funds were nearly exhausted.

Above: The cover of this 1919 British pamphlet emphasizes Reed’s short-lived status as Soviet consul.

He took a job with American Raymond Robins (1873 – 1954) of the International Red Cross.

Robins wanted to set up a newspaper promoting American interests.

Reed complied, but in the dummy issue he prepared, he included a warning beneath the masthead:

“This paper is devoted to promoting the interests of American capital.“

Above: American economist Raymond Robbins (1873 – 1954)

The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly left Reed unmoved.

Two days later, armed with a rifle, he joined a patrol of Red Guards prepared to defend the Foreign Office from counter-revolutionary attack. 

Reed attended the opening of the Third Congress of Soviets, where he gave a short speech promising to bring the news of the revolution to America, saying he hoped it would “call forth an answer from America’s oppressed and exploited masses“.

American journalist Edgar Sisson told Reed that he was being used by the Bolsheviks for their propaganda, a rebuke he accepted.

Above: American journalist Edgar Sisson

In January, Trotsky, responding to Reed’s concern about the safety of his substantial archive, offered Reed the post of Soviet Consul in New York.

As the US did not recognize the Bolshevik government, Reed’s credentials would almost certainly have been rejected and he would have faced prison (which would have given the Bolsheviks some propaganda material).

Most Americans in Petrograd considered Reed’s appointment a massive blunder.

Businessman Alexander Gumberg met with Lenin, showing him a prospectus in which Reed called for massive American capital support for Russia and for setting up a newspaper to express the American viewpoint on the negotiations at Brest – Litovsk.

Above: Photocopy of the first page of Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty between Soviet Russia and Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, March 1918.

From left to right the columns are written in: German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Ottoman Turkish and Russian.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I.

The treaty, which followed months of negotiations after the armistice on the Eastern Front in December 1917, was signed at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus).

Above: Images of Brest, Belarus

Lenin found the proposal unsavory and withdrew Reed’s nomination.

Learning of Gumberg’s intervention, Reed always denigrated him afterward.

Above: Russian American businessman Alexander Gumberg (1887 – 1939) was the model for covert influence operators targeting America.

During the Russian Revolution, Gumberg, a Communist who had blended in to American society as an adolescent refugee, returned to Russia.

His American accent, and understanding of Americans, along with native fluency in Russian, allowed him to penetrate the American community as a “translator / guide.” 

He recruited a variety of Americans in Russia–journalists, Red Cross representatives (who acted as American diplomats), officers in the first American attempt at propaganda, the Committee on Public Information (CPI), American Congressmen, and more.

Reed and Bryant wrote and published books about their Russian experiences.

Bryant’s Six Red Months in Russia appeared first, but Reed’s 10 Days That Shook the World (1919) garnered more notice.

Bryant returned to the US in January 1918, but Reed did not reach New York City until 28 April.

On his way back, Reed travelled from Russia to Finland.

He did not have a visa or passport while crossing to Finland.

In Turku harbour, when Reed was boarding a ship on his way to Stockholm, Finnish police arrested him.

He was held at Kakola Prison in Turku until he was released.

Above: Aerial view of Turku, Finland

From Finland, Reed travelled to Kristiana (Oslo), Norway via Stockholm.

Above: Oslo, Norway

Because he remained under indictment in the Masses case, federal authorities immediately met Reed when his ship reached New York, holding him on board for more than eight hours while they searched his belongings.

Reed’s papers, the material from which he intended to write his book, were seized.

He was released upon his own recognizance after his attorney, Morris Hillquit (1869 – 1933), promised to make him available at the Federal Building the next day. 

His papers were not returned to him until November.

Above: Latvian – American lawyer Morris Hillquit (né Moishe Hillkowitz) (1869 – 1933)

Back in America, Reed and Bryant defended the Bolsheviks and opposed American intervention.

Incensed at Russia’s departure from the war against Germany, the public gave Reed a generally cold reception.

While he was in Russia, his articles in The Masses, particularly one headlined “Knit a straight-jacket for your soldier boy“, had been instrumental in the government gaining an indictment for sedition against the magazine.

(Antiwar agitation was considered sedition and treason.

Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order.

Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority.

Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws.

Seditious words in writing are seditious libel.

A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.

Because sedition is overt, it is typically not considered a subversive act.)

The first Masses trial ended in a hung jury the day before Reed reached New York.

The defendants, including him, were to be retried.

He immediately posted $2,000 bail on 29 April.

The second Masses trial also ended in a hung jury.

In Philadelphia, Reed stood outside a closed hall on 31 May and harangued a crowd of 1,000 about the case and the war until police dragged him away.

He was arrested for inciting a riot, and posted $5,000 bail.

Above: Skyline of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Reed became more aggressively political, intolerant and self-destructive. 

On 14 September, he was arrested for the third time since returning from Russia, charged with violating the Sedition Act and freed on $5,000 bail.

This was a day after possibly the largest demonstration for Bolshevik Russia was held in the United States (in the Bronx).

Reed had passionately defended the Revolution, which he seemed to think was coming to America as well.

He tried to prevent Allied intervention in Russia, arguing that the Russians were contributing to the war effort by checking German ambitions in the Ukraine and Japanese designs on Siberia, but this argument came to naught.

Above: Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, Russia (1918)

(The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions that began in 1918.

The initial impetus behind the interventions was to secure munitions and supply depots from falling into the German Empire’s hands, particularly after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and to rescue the Allied forces that had become trapped within Russia after the 1917 October Revolution.

After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Allied plan changed to helping the White forces in the Russian Civil War.

After the Whites collapsed, the Allies withdrew their forces from Russia by 1925.

Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk (the North Russia intervention of 1918–1919) and in Vladivostok (as part of the Siberian intervention of 1918 – 1922).

The British also intervened in the Baltic theatre (1918 – 1919) and in the Caucasus (1917 – 1919).

French-led Allied forces participated in the Southern Russia intervention (1918 – 1919).

Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness after World War I, and a rising discontent among some troops and sailors who were reluctant to fight the world’s first socialist state.

This reluctance sometimes led to mutiny.

These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion in September 1920, led the western Allied powers to end the North Russia and Siberian interventions in 1920, though the Japanese intervention in Siberia continued until 1922 and the Empire of Japan continued to occupy the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925.)

On 21 – 22 February 1919, Bryant was fiercely grilled before a Senate committee exploring Bolshevik propaganda activities in the US, but emerged resilient.

Reed followed her.

According to Homberger, his testimony was “savagely distorted” by the press. 

Later that day Reed went to Philadelphia to stand trial for his May speech.

Despite a hostile judge, press, and patriotic speech by the prosecutor, Reed’s lawyer convinced the jury the case was about free speech.

He was acquitted. 

Returning to New York, Reed continued speaking widely and participating in the various twists of socialist politics that year.

He served as editor of the New York Communist, the weekly newspaper issued by the Left Wing Section of Greater New York.

The New York Communist was a short-lived weekly newspaper issued by the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of Local Greater New York, encompassing the New York City metro area.

The paper was edited by the radical journalist and war correspondent John Reed.

Only 10 issues of the paper were produced during 1919 before the publication was absorbed by The Revolutionary Age following the Left Wing National Conference of June 1919.

Affiliated with the Left Wing of the Socialist Party, Reed with the other radicals was expelled from the National Socialist Convention in Chicago on 30 August 1919.

Above: Skyline of Chicago, Illinois

The radicals split into two bitterly hostile groups, forming the Communist Labor Party of America (1919 – 1921) (Reed’s group, which he helped create) and, the next day, the Communist Party of America.

Reed was the international delegate of the former, wrote its manifesto and platform, edited its paper, The Voice of Labor, and was denounced as “Jack the Liar” in the Communist Party organ, The Communist.

Above: Emblem of the Communist Party of the United States

Reed’s writings of 1919 displayed doubts about Western-style democracy and defended the dictatorship of the proletariat.

He believed this was a necessary step that would prefigure the true democracy “based upon equality and the liberty of the individual“.

(In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat, or working class, holds control over state power.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional phase from a capitalist and a Communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, mandates the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers’ councils that nationalize ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership.

During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counter-revolution, and to facilitate the transition to a lasting Communist society.)

Above: Cover of Reed’s Voice of Labor, October 1919

Indicted for sedition and hoping to secure Comintern backing for the CLP, Reed fled America with a forged passport in early October 1919 on a Scandinavian frigate.

Above: Communist International logo

He worked his way to Bergen, Norway, as a stoker.

Above: Night panorama of Bergen, Norway

Given shore leave, he disappeared to Kristiania (Oslo), crossed into Sweden on 22 October, passed through Finland with Ivar Lassy’s help and made his way to Moscow by train.

Above: Finnish writer Ivar Lassy (1869 – 1933)

In the cold winter of 1919 – 1920, he travelled in the region around Moscow, observing factories, communes, and villages.

He filled notebooks with his writing.

He had an affair with a Russian woman.

Above: Red Square, Moscow, Russia

Reed’s feelings about the Revolution became ambivalent.

Activist Emma Goldman had recently arrived aboard the Buford, among hundreds of aliens deported by the United States under the Sedition Act.

Above: USAT Buford at Galveston harbor (Texas) in 1915

(US Army Transport USAT Buford was a combination cargo/passenger ship, originally launched in 1890 as the SS Mississippi.

She was purchased by the US Army in 1898 for transport duty in the Spanish–American War.

In 1919, she was briefly transferred to the US Navy, commissioned as the USS Buford, to repatriate troops home after World War I, and then later that year returned to the Army.

In December 1919, nicknamed the Soviet Ark (or the Red Ark) by the press of the day, the Buford was used by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Labor to deport 249 non-citizens to Russia from the United States because of their alleged anarchist or syndicalist political beliefs.

She was sold to private interests in 1923, contracted in mid-1924 to be the set for Buster Keaton’s silent film The Navigator, and finally scrapped in 1929.)

Goldman was especially concerned about the Cheka (Soviet secret police).

Above: HCP (KGB) of the USSR, a badge of honor to the 5th anniversary of the Cheka-GPU

(The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, abbreviated as VChK and commonly known as the Cheka was the first Soviet secret police organization.

It was established in 1917.

By the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921, the Cheka had more 200,000 personnel.

Ostensibly created to protect the October Revolution from “class enemies” such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, the Cheka soon became a tool of repression wielded against all political opponents of the Bolshevik regime.

The organization had responsibility for counterintelligence, oversight of the loyalty of the Red Army, and protection of the country’s borders, as well as the collection of human and technical intelligence.

At the direction of Vladimir Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial in what came to be known as the “Red Terror“.

It policed the Gulag system of labour camps, conducted requisitions of food, and put down rebellions by workers and peasants.

The Cheka was responsible for executing as many as 200,000 people.

The Cheka, the first in a long succession of Soviet secret police agencies, established the security service as a major player in Soviet politics.

It was dissolved in February 1922, and succeeded by the State Political Directorate (GPU).

Throughout the Soviet era, members of the secret police were referred to as “Chekists“.)

Reed told her that the enemies of the Revolution deserved their fate, but suggested that she see Angelica Balabanoff, a critic of the current situation.

Above: Ukrainian – Italian Communist Angelica Balabanoff (1878 – 1965)

He wanted Goldman to hear the other side.

Above: Lithuanian anarchist Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) 

Though facing the threat of arrest in Illinois, Reed tried to return to the United States in February 1920.

At that time, the Soviets organized a convention to establish a United Communist Party of America.

Reed attempted to leave Russia through Latvia, but his train never arrived, forcing him to hitch a ride in the boxcar of an eastbound military train to Petrograd. 

In March, he crossed into Helsinki, where he had radical friends, including Hella Wuolijoki, the future politician and member of Parliament.

Above: Helsinki, Finland

Above: Estonian-born Finnish writer Hella Wuolijoki (1896 – 1954)

With their help, he was hidden in the hold of a freighter.

On 13 March, Finnish customs officials found Reed in a coal bunker on the ship.

He was taken to the police station, where he maintained that he was seaman “Jim Gormley“.

Eventually, the jewels, photographs, letters and fake documents he had in his possession forced him to reveal his true identity.

Although beaten several times and threatened with torture, he refused to surrender the names of his local contacts.

Because of his silence, he could not be tried for treason.

He was charged and convicted of smuggling and having jewels in his possession (102 small diamonds worth $14,000, which were confiscated).

Above: Flag of Finland

The US Secretary of State was satisfied with Reed’s arrest and pressured the Finnish authorities for his papers.

American authorities, however, remained indifferent to Reed’s fate.

Although Reed paid the fine for smuggling, he was still detained.

His physical condition and state of mind deteriorated rapidly.

He suffered from depression and insomnia, wrote alarming letters to Bryant.

On 18 May, he threatened a hunger strike. 

He was finally released in early June.

He sailed for Tallinn, Estonia, on the 5th.

Above: Tallinn, Estonia

Two days later, he travelled to Petrograd, recuperating from malnutrition and scurvy caused by having been fed dried fish almost exclusively.

His spirits were high.

Above: Palace Square, St. Petersburg, Russia

At the end of June, Reed travelled to Moscow.

Above: Skyline of Moscow, Russia

After he discussed with Bryant the possibility of her joining him, she gained passage on a Swedish tramp steamer and arrived in Gothenburg on 10 August. 

At the same time, Reed attended the Second Comintern Congress.

Although his mood was as jovial and boisterous as ever, his physical appearance had deteriorated.

During this Congress, Reed bitterly objected to the deference other revolutionaries showed to the Russians.

The latter believed the tide of revolutionary fervor was ebbing, and that the Communist Party needed to work within the existing institutions — a policy Reed felt would be disastrous. 

Above: Images of Gothenburg, Sweden

He was contemptuous of the bullying tactics displayed during the Congress by Karl Radek and Grigory Zinoviev, who ordered Reed to attend the Congress of the Peoples of the East to be held at Baku on 15 August.

Above: Ukrainian revolutionary Karl Radek (1885 – 1939)

Above: Russian revolutionary Grigory Zinoviev (1883 – 1936)

The journey to Baku was a long one, five days by train through a countryside that was devastated by civil war and typhus.

Reed was reluctant to go.

He asked for permission to travel later, as he wanted to meet Bryant in Petrograd after she arrived from Murmansk.

Zinoviev insisted that Reed take the official train:

“The Comintern has made a decision.

Obey.” 

Reed, needing Soviet goodwill and unprepared for a final break with the Comintern, made the trip with reluctance. 

Years after having abandoned Communism himself, his friend Benjamin Gitlow asserted that Reed became bitterly disillusioned with the Communist movement because of his treatment by Zinoviev.

Above: American socialist Benjamin Gitlow (1891 – 1965)

During his time in Baku, Reed received a telegram announcing Bryant’s arrival in Moscow.

He followed her there, arriving on 15 September.

He was able to tell her of the events of the preceding eight months.

He appeared older and his clothes were in tatters.

Above: Images of Baku, Azerbaijan

While in Moscow, he took Bryant to meet Lenin, Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and other leading Bolsheviks, and also to visit Moscow’s ballet and art galleries.

Above: Russian politician Lev Kamenev (1883 – 1936)

Reed was determined to return to the US, but fell ill on 25 September.

At first thought to have influenza, he was hospitalized five days later and diagnosed with spotted typhus.

Bryant spent all her time with him, but there were no medicines to be obtained because of the Allied blockade.

Reed’s mind started to wander.

Eventually he lost the use of the right side of his body and could no longer speak.

His wife was holding his hand when he died in Moscow on 17 October 1920. 

Above: Reed’s body lying in state in Moscow

After a hero’s funeral, Reed’s body was buried in Mass Grave No. 5 at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis next to Inessa Armand.

Above: Red Square Mass Grave No. 5, inscriptions for: 

• French – Russian politician Inessa Armand (1875 – 1920)
• John Reed (1887–1920)
• I(van) V(asilyevich) Rusakov (1877–1921) 
• S(emyon) M(atveyevich) Pekalov (1890–1918)

Only four Americans have received this honour.

The other three are:

• American-born Australian Communist Paul Freeman (1884 – 1921), who was killed in the Aerowagon disaster 
• C.E. Ruthenberg (1882 – 1927), the founder of Communist Party USA
• Bill Haywood (1869 – 1928), a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World

Above: 1987 Soviet stamp reading, “Work­er of the Amer­i­can labor move­ment, inter­na­tion­al­ist writer, John Reed“

Reed’s interpretation in popular culture has varied.

Some, such as biographer Robert A. Rosenstone, have called him a romantic, while Upton Sinclair derided him as a “playboy of the revolution“. 

For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik Revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin Wall amid solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon. 

Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, claimed that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism toward the end of his life.

They sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-Communist cause.

Above: Graves of famous Soviet people, Kremlin Wall, Moscow, Russia

The tombs of Mikhail Suslov (1902 – 1982), Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953), Mikhail Kalinin (1875 – 1946), Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877 – 1926) and Leonid Brezhnev (1906 – 1982) in front of the Moscow Kremlin Wall.

The tomb of Yuri Andropov (1914 – 1984), which stands between Kalinin’s and Dzerzhinsky’s, is obstructed by trees.

The mausoleum is immediately to the right.

The life of Reed has not only interested me.

Reds is a 1981 American epic historical romantic drama, co-written, produced, and directed by Warren Beatty, about the life and career of John Reed, the journalist and writer who chronicled the October Revolution in Russia in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World.

Beatty stars in the lead role alongside Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson as Eugene O’Neill.

The life of Reed illustrates to me how Communism fails to support those who defend her.

Certainly, there is some sadness in learning that privileged noble Russian women were reduced to managing flower shops in an Istanbul passage, but my sympathy extends only so far.

Above: Çiçek Pasajı, İstanbul, Türkiye

Above: Inside Çiçek Pasajı at İstiklal Caddesi

We find ourselves back on İstiklal Caddesi and see the famous nostalgic streetcar that runs between Taksim Meydanı and the Tünel.

For me, this thoroughfare represents simultaneously what is the best and the worst about Türkiye.

Above: Istiklal Avenue in the Beyoğlu (Pera) district of İstanbul

İstiklal Avenue (İstiklal Caddesi /’Independence Avenue‘), historically known as the Grand Avenue of Pera, in the historic Beyoğlu (Pera) district, is an 1.4 kilometre (0.87 mi) pedestrian street and one of the most famous avenues in İstanbul.

Of which the Austrian historian Josef von Hammer said:

“It is as narrow as the comprehension of its inhabitants and as long as the tapeworm of their intrigues.”

Above: Austrian historian Joseph von Hammer – Purgstall (1774 –

“If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”, wrote Winston.

Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

In reality very little was known about the proles.

It was not necessary to know much.

So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.

Left to themselves they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern.

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work, they married, they died.

Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours,films, football, beer and, above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds.

The Lottery was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellecual stimulant.

To keep them in control was not difficult.

All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism when it was necessary to make them accept.

And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.“

(Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell)

It acquired its modern name after the declaration of the Republic on 29 October 1923, İstiklal (Independence) commemorating Türkiye’s triumph in its War of Independence (1919 – 1923).

Above: Images of the Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1923)

The street starts at the northern end of Galata (the medieval Genoese quarter) at Tünel Square and runs as far as Taksim Square.

Above: The nostalgic tram that operates between Tünel Square (seen in this image, with the Metrohan Building in the background) and Taksim Square at the northern end of Istiklal Avenue.

It is flanked by late Ottoman era buildings (mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries) in a variety of styles.

Above: Nostalgic tram on İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu, Istanbul

There are also a few Art Deco style buildings from the early years of the Turkish Republic, and a number of more recent examples of modern architecture.

Above: Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage), also known by its French name Cité de Péra, is one of the many historic buildings that adorn the Avenue.

Many would once have been apartment blocks but most are now occupied by boutiques, music stores, art galleries, cinemas, theatres, libraries, cafés, pubs, nightclubs with live music, hotels, historical patisseries, chocolateries, restaurants and a steadily growing number of international chain stores, as well as a branch of Madame Tussauds.

Above: Grand Pera building, where Madame Tussauds is located.

Galatasaray Square marks the middle of the Avenue and is home to the oldest secondary school in Turkey:

The Galatasaray Lisesi, originally known as the Galata Sarayı Enderun-u Hümayunu (Galata Palace Imperial School).

Above: Logo of Galatasaray Lisesi

The Lisesi was founded by Sultan Beyazit II around the end of the 15th century as a modern lycée on the French model, with the instruction partly Turkish, partly French.

Above: Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II (1447 – 1512)

It is the oldest Turkish institution of learning in the city with a more or less continuous history and for the past 100 years it has been the best as well as the most famous of Turkish lycées.

Above: Courtyard of Galatasaray High School

A large proportion of the statesmen and intellectuals of Turkey have pursued their studies there and it has undoubtedly played a major role in the modernization of the country.

Above: Galatasaray High School’s main gate

A monument, erected in 1973, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic.

The Avenue forms a spine with narrow side streets running off it like a ribcage.

Many historical and politically significant buildings can be found on or immediately adjacent to Istiklal Avenue.

They include:

• the Çicek Pasajı (Flower Passage) which is full of lively restaurants and taverns
• the Balık Pazarı (The Fish Market) with the Armenian church of Üç Horan to one side

Above: Balık Pazarı, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

Above: The Armenian Church of Üç Horan, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

• the Hüseyin Ağa Mosque

Above: Hüseyin Ağa Camii, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

• the Roman Catholic churches of Santa Maria Draperis and San Antonio di Padova

Above: The entrance of the Church of Santa Maria Draperis in İstanbul

Above: View from inside the Church of Saint Mary Draperis, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

Above: Roman Catholic Church of St. Anthony of Padua in İstanbul

Above: Church of St. Anthony of Padua interior

• the Greek Orthodox Church of Hagia Triada

Above: Greek Orthodox Church of Hagia Triada, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

• several academic institutions established by Austria, France, Germany and Italy in the 19th century

• the consulates (embassies until 1923 when these moved to the new capital of Ankara) of France, Greece, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Sweden  

The old French Consulate is a building with a rather quaint courtyard originally constructed by the French in 1719 as a hospital for those suffering from the Plague.

Above: Former French Embassy, İstanbul

The Consulate of the United Kingdom is just off Istiklal Avenue on Meşrutiyet Sokak.

The old British Embassy is a handsome building in the Italian Renaissance style.

At the rear of the Embassy there is a magnificent and very English garden.

Above: Aerial view of the British Consulate, İstanbul

At the southern end of the avenue, it is possible to board the Tünel (the Tunnel), the world’s 2nd oldest subway, which entered service in 1875 and carries passengers down to Karaköy.

A photogenic red-and-cream tram runs along the street from the Tünel to Taksim Square every 15 minutes.

Above: Karaköy station of the Tünel funicular in İstanbul

During the Ottoman period, the avenue was called Cadde-i Kebir (Grand Avenue) in Turkish or the Grande Rue de Péra in French.

It was a popular gathering place where Ottoman intellectuals rubbed shoulders with Europeans and the local Italian and French Levantines.

When 19th-century travellers referred to Constatinople (today İstanbul) as the Paris of the East, they were usually thinking of the Grande Rue de Péra and its cosmopolitan, half-European, half-Asian culture.

Above: İstiklal Avenue, İstanbul

On 6 – 7 September 1955, an anti-Greek İstanbul pogrom resulted in many shops along the Avenue being pillaged.

Its pavements were covered with broken glass, scattered clothing, smashed white goods, burned automobiles and other items that had belonged to the Greek owners of the wrecked shops.

Above: İstanbul Pogrom, İstiklal Caddesi, İstanbul

Between the 1950s and 1970s the side streets around the Emek Pasajı were home to Yeşilcam, Turkey’s home-grown equivalent of Hollywood, a fact commemorated in the street name Yeşilcam Sokağı.

Cinema of Turkey or Turkish cinema (also formerly known as Yeşilçam, “Green Pine”) or Türk sineması refers to the Turkish film art and industry.

It is an important part of Turkish culture and has flourished over the years, delivering entertainment to audiences in Türkiye, Turkish expatriates across Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, also more recently prospering in the Arab world and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world.

Above: Maxim Night Club, İstanbul 

The first film exhibited in the Ottoman Empire was the Lumière Brothers’ 1895 film, L’Arrivée d’un train en Gare de La Ciotat, which was shown in İstanbul in 1896. 

Above:  L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat

The Weavers (or Grandma Despina)(1905), by the Manaki brothers, was the first film made in the Ottoman Empire.

Above: A scene from The Weavers

The earliest surviving film made in what is present-day Turkey was a documentary entitled Ayastefanos’taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı (Demolition of the Russian Monument at San Stefano), directed and completed in 1914.

The first Turkish movie, Ayastefanos′taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı, a documentary produced by Fuat Uzkınay in 1914, depicted the destruction of a Russian monument erected at the end of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War in Yeşilköy (then known as “San Stefano“) following Turkey’s entry into World War I. 

Above: Screen shots from Ayastefanos’taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı

Above: Turkey’s first filmmaker Fuat Uzkınay (1888 – 1956) and Ayastefanos (San Stefano)

The first thematic Turkish films were The Marriage of Himmet Aga (Himmet Ağa’nin İzdivaci)(1916), started by Weinberg and completed by Uzkinay, and The Paw (1917) and The Spy (1917), both by Sedat Simavi.

The army-affiliated Central Cinema Directorate, a semi-military national defense society, and the Disabled Veterans Society were the producing organizations of that period.

In 1922, a major documentary film, Independence, the İzmir Victory, was made about the Turkish War of Independence.

That same year, the first private movie studio, Kemal Film, commenced operations.

Turkey’s first sound film Bir Millet Uyanıyor (A Nation Awakens), was shown in 1931.

The years between 1939 and 1950 were a period of transition for Turkish cinema, during which it was greatly influenced by theater as well as by World War II.

While there were only two film companies in 1939, the number increased to four between 1946 and 1950.

The years between 1939 and 1950 were a period of transition for Turkish cinema, during which it was greatly influenced by theater as well as by World War II.

While there were only two film companies in 1939, the number increased to four between 1946 and 1950.

After 1949, Turkish cinema was able to develop as a separate art form, with a more professional caliber of talents.

After 1949, Turkish cinema was able to develop as a separate art form, with a more professional caliber of talents.

Yeşilçam (“Green Pine“) is a metonym for the Turkish film industry, similar to Hollywood in the United States.

Yeşilçam is named after Yeşilçam Street in the Beyoğlu district where many actors, directors, crew members and studios were based.

In terms of film production, Turkey shared the same fate with many of the national cinemas of the 20th century. 

Film production wasn’t continuous until around the 1950s and the film market in general was run by a few major import companies that struggled for domination in the most population-dense and profitable cities such as Istanbul and İzmir.

Film theatres rarely ever screened any locally produced films and the majority of the programs consisted of films of the stronger western film industries, especially those of the United States, France, Italy and Germany.

Attempts at film production came primarily from multinational studios, which could rely on their comprehensive distribution networks together with their own theatre chains, thus guaranteeing them a return on their investment.

Between the years 1896 – 1945, the number of locally produced films did not even reach 50 films in total, equal to less than a single year’s annual film production in the 1950s and 1960s.

The first film showing in Turkey was held in the Yıldız Palace, Istanbul in 1896.

Above: Yildiz Palace, Beşiktaş, İstanbul

Public shows by Sigmund Weinberg in the Beyoğlu and Şehzadebaşı districts followed in 1897.

Above: Romanian photographer-filmmaker Sigmund Weinberg (1868 – 195?)

Weinberg was already a prominent figure at that time, especially known as a representative of foreign companies such as Pathé, for whom he sold gramophones before getting into the film business.

Some sources suggest he was also a photographer, again as a result of being one of the representatives of foreign companies such as Kodak.

From 1923 to 1939, Muhsin Ertuğrul was the only active film director in the country.

He directed 29 films during this period, generally incorporating adaptions of plays, operettas, fiction and foreign films.

Above: Turkish actor-director Muhsin Ertuğrul (1892 – 1979)

Most of the Turkish films produced before 1950 were projects initiated by import companies owned by local families, most notably İpek Film, a daughter company of the İpek Merchandise, an import company that was advertising in Ottoman literary journals such as Servet-i Fünun as early as the 19th century.

Another important company in the early era of Turkish cinema was Kemal Film, a company whose continuous presence as a leading import company has been often overlooked for a few local films it produced during the 1920s.

(The founders of Kemal Film bought their first film camera on loan from Ipek Merchandise).

Both companies were the strongest film distributors until the 1950s and the only companies that were financially sound enough to produce films themselves, with low risks for financial failure as they already were in possession of a distribution system and theatre chains that guaranteed a return on investment.

However, the notable developments of these companies must be seen as necessary adaptations to the technological progress of the western film industries whose films they were importing.

One example here being the establishment of the Marmara Dubbing Studio in the early 1930s, when the silent era came to an end in the West and sound films became the standard, prompting the import-dependent companies to adjust themselves to the new technological requirements.

The big distributors in Istanbul, led by İpek Film and Kemal Film, gradually expanded their distribution system throughout the rest of the country during the 1930s, leading to the “regional system” (Bölge İşletmeleri), which consisted of seven distribution areas headquartered in the most significant cities in those regions:

• Istanbul (Marmara Region)
• İzmir (Aegean Region)
• Ankara (Middle Anatolian Region)
• Samsun (Black Sea Region)
• Adana (Mediterranean Region)
• Erzurum (East Anatolian Region)
• Diyarbakır (South East Anatolian Region). 

The Regional System became much more important after the 1950s, when local film production dramatically increased and local films surpassed imported films in both ticket sales and revenues.

Above: Flag of Turkey

This system became the financial foundation of Yeşilçam (“Turkish Hollywood“), which was the heart of Turkish film production between the years 1955 – 1975.

After 1965, a “Combined System” (Kombine Sistem) led by a trust of regional leaders is said to have taken control of almost everything regarding production. 

A leading figure of the trust was producer Türker İnanoğlu, who remained still active in the media business, running Ulusal Film, Turkey’s largest TV production company.

Above: Turkish director-producer Türker İnanoğlu (1936 – 2024)

In the 1930s, some members of Parliament raised the issue of whether films would have a bad impact on children.

This was a popular theme at that time, not just in Turkey, but also in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Later, in the 1960s, a debate around the “Baykam Law” which was proposed by Suphi Baykam became quite famous for the tension it created amongst Parliamentarians and the stakeholders in the industry.

In 1977 and 1978, further discussions for a cinema law were held, but without any result.

Above: Turkish physician-politician Suphi Baykam (1926 – 1996)

Domestically produced films constituted only a small fraction of the total number of films screened in Turkey prior to the 1950s.

Film production in Turkey increased drastically after World War II.

With a total of 49 films produced in 1952, this single year equaled a greater output produced in Turkey than all previous years combined.

Yeşilçam experienced its heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, when it produced 250 to 350 films annually.

Between 1950 and 1966 more than fifty movie directors practiced film arts in Turkey. 

Ömer Lütfi Akad strongly influenced the period, but Osman Fahir Seden, Atıf Yılmaz, and Memduh Ün made the most films.

Above: Turkish film director Lütfi Ömer Akad (1916 – 2011)

Above: Turkish film director Osman Fahir Seden (1924 – 1998)

Above: Turkish film director Atif Yilmaz (1926 – 2006)

Above: Turkish film director Memduh Ün (1920 – 2015)

The film Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer), made by Metin Erksan, won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1964.

(Osman decides to dam the spring on his property because he knows the summer will be too dry to support all the farmers who rely on its waters.

His younger brother Hasan urges him not to dam the spring, but reluctantly goes along with him.

The farmers are furious with Osman.

They initiate a legal dispute.

Osman is ordered to keep the spring open while the dispute is being resolved, but his own lawyer gets that order reversed.

Hasan occasionally opens the dam out of pity for his neighbors, but Osman is quick to close it again.

Meanwhile, Hasan courts and marries a young woman named Bahar.

On their wedding night, Osman bursts into their bedroom and orders Bahar to breed as many as 10 children for the family.

Hasan has to put a dresser in front of the window to block out his drunken brother.

Osman finds a crack in the wall and watches the consummation.

One of the farmers kills Osman’s dog, prompting the brothers to keep watch at night to prevent further violence.

That night, two farmers blow up the dam.

Osman and Hasan chase the saboteurs.

Osman fires several shots into the darkness, killing one of the farmers.

He convinces Hasan to take the blame for the killing by arguing that Hasan is much younger and will get a lighter sentence.

Hasan is sentenced to 24 years, which is reduced to eight because he was provoked.

Osman uses his absence to advance on Bahar.

He destroys Hasan’s letters to make it appear as if he has forgotten Bahar.

When a prisoner named Hasan is killed in the same prison as her husband, Bahar is distraught.

She flees the farm and returns to her mother.

Osman convinces her to return by explaining that, as Hasan’s widow, she owns half of everything.

Hasan is not dead.

He is eventually pardoned.

On his way home from prison, he learns how Osman has tricked Bahar.

He goes straight to confront his brother.

Osman shoots first at Bahar who runs at him with an axe.

He shoots repeatedly at Hasan, but Hasan manages to topple his brother into the spring and drown him.

Osman’s body washes down the sluice towards the farms he had deprived of water.)

Above: Hülya Koçyiğit (Bahar) and Erol Taş (Kocabaş Osman) in Metin Erksan’s 1964 film “Susuz Yaz“

During the 1960s, Turkey became the 5th biggest film producer worldwide as annual film production reached the 300-film benchmark just at the beginning of the 1970s.

Compared to other national cinemas, the achievements of the Turkish film industry after 1950 are still remarkable.

Yeşilçam experienced its heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, when it produced 250 to 350 films annually.

Between 1950 and 1966 more than fifty movie directors practiced film arts in Turkey.

The number of cinemagoers and the number of films made constantly increased, especially after 1958. 

The number of cinemagoers and the number of films made constantly increased, especially after 1958.

In the 1960s the programs of the theater departments in the Language, History and Geography faculties of Ankara University and Istanbul University included cinema courses, as did the Press and Publications High School of Ankara University.

A cinema branch was also established in the Art History Department of the State Fine Arts Academy.

Above: Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University from Galataport, Istanbul

The Union of Turkish Film Producers and the State Film Archives both date from the 1960s.

The State Film Archives became the Turkish Film Archives in 1969.

During the same period, the Cinema-TV Institute was founded and annexed to the State Academy of Fine Arts.

The Turkish State Archives also became part of this organization.

In 1962, the Cinema-TV Institute became a department of Mimar Sinan University.

One of the most interesting studies on the issue of film censorship in Turkey is Alim Şerif Onaran’s Sinematografik Hürriyet (Cinematic Freedom), published in 1968 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but written in 1963 and being the first study in Turkey which received a PhD for a topic related to film.

This study is still the most important – if not only – study on the film evaluation methods applied in Turkey before the 1950s.

Onaran himself being active as a member of the Film Rating Commission in his younger years, was a true expert on the topic, and his research also includes examples of the late Ottoman Period.

Ironically, Onaran became one of the most important intellectuals on film in Turkey, owing his wealth of knowledge on early world film history to the years he spent watching the films he was enrolled to evaluate as a Committee member.

A very interesting example on the level of absurdity that censorship could reach is mentioned in Çetin Yetkin’s book Siyasal Iktidar Sanata Karşı (Political Regime vs Art), published in 1970.

It tells the story of a film which was classified as “inappropriate for export” because the Evaluation Committee decided that the film contains “Communist propaganda“.

The film owner, who applied to the Committee for an export certificate, was surprised to see the decision because he mentioned on his application form that his intention was to sell a copy of the film to a distributor in the Soviet Union, the world’s leading Communist country at that time.

Well-known directors of the 1960–1970 period include:

• Metin Erksan
• Atıf Yılmaz
• Memduh Ün
• Halit Refiğ

Above: Turkish film director Halit Refiğ (1934 – 2009)

• Duygu Sağıroğlu

• Remzi Aydın Jöntürk 

Above: Turkish movie director Remzi Aydın Jöntürk (1936 – 1987)

• Nevzat Pesen (1936 – 1987)

In 1970, the numbers of cinemas and cinemagoers rose spectacularly.

In the 2,424 cinemas around the country, films were viewed by a record number of 247 million viewers.

In 1970, approximately 220 films were made and this figure reached 300 in 1972.

Turkish cinema gave birth to its legendary stars during this period, notable examples being: 

• Kemal Sunal

Above: Kemal Sunal (1944 -2000)

• Kadir İnanır

Above: Turkish actor-film director Kadir İnanır

• Türkan Şoray 

Above: Turkish actress-film director Turkan Soray

• Şener Şen

Above: Turkish actor Şener Şen

After this period, however, the cinema began to lose its audiences, due to nationwide TV broadcasts.

After 1970, a new and younger generation of directors emerged, but they had to cope with an increased demand for video films after 1980.

Yeşilçam movies are known for iconic unforgetable songs.

Soundtrack songs are still widely successful.

The 1970s and 1980s also brought the genre of Turksploitation – low-budget exploitation films that were either remakes of, or used unauthorized footage from popular foreign films (particularly Hollywood movies) and television series.

Yeşilçam suffered due to the spread of television and the widespread political violence at the end of the 1970s.

After this period, however, the cinema began to lose its audiences, due to nationwide TV broadcasts.

After 1970, a new and younger generation of directors emerged, but they had to cope with an increased demand for video films after 1980.

Yeşilçam totally ended after the 1980 Turkish coup d’état.

Above: Daily newspaper Hürriyet‘s headline on 12 September 1980: “The army has seized the government.“

During the 1970s, the impact of TV and video as the new popular forms of media and political turmoil (often hand in hand with deep economic crises) caused a sharp drop in ticket sales, resulting in a steady decline starting around 1980 and continuing until the mid-1990s.

The number of annual ticket sales decreased from a peak of 90 million tickets in 1966 to 56 million tickets in 1984 and only 11 million in 1990. 

Accordingly, the number of film theatres declined from approximately 2,000 in 1966 to 854 in 1984 and 290 in 1990. 

During the 1990s the average number of films produced per year remained between 10-15.

Usually half of them not even making it into the theatres.

Increased production costs and difficulties in the import of raw materials brought about a decrease in the number of films made in the 1970s, but the quality of films improved. 

In the early 90s, there were barely two or three movies released per year.

During this period, most of the 70s’ stars had either moved to TV or were trying to rebuild Yeşilçam‘s former glory.

Some of the notable examples of this era are Eşkıya (The Bandit) and Züğürt Ağa (The Agha), both starring Şener Şen.

Both movies were critically and commercially acclaimed.

(After serving a 35-year jail sentence, Baran (played by Şener Şen), an eşkıya (a bandit), is released from prison in a town in Eastern Turkey.

When returning to his home village he witnesses the fact that the world has changed dramatically during those years, with the village itself underwater after the construction of a dam.

Then he also finds out that the person who masterminded the betrayal that brought him to jail was Berfo (Kamuran Usluer), a friend who had once been closer to him than a brother.

In order to snare Keje (Sermin Şen), Baran’s sweetheart, Berfo seized his best friend’s gold and had Baran arrested by the gendarmes on Mountain Cudi.

Then Berfo purchased Keje from her father against her will, and disappeared.

According to rumour, he is in İstanbul.

While traveling to İstanbul by train, Baran meets Cumali (Uğur Yücel), a young man.

Cumali was raised in the alleys of Beyoğlu, his life revolving around bars, gambling joints, alcohol, dope and women.

Cumali dreams of joining the mafia and making it big.

He takes Baran to a dilapidated hotel in the backstreets of Beyoğlu.

After a while, Cumali and his friends discover that Baran used to be a bandit, but they can’t take him seriously.

Cumali’s dreams of a new life include Emel (Yeşim Salkım), his girlfriend.

Emel has a convict brother, Sedat (Özkan Uğur), who is in trouble with the other prisoners in his jail.

His life is in danger and he needs a high amount of money to get out.

Cumali promises Emel to get the money for her brother as soon as possible.

Thus, when he deals with a transport of drugs for the mafia, he steals a quantity, enough to secure the escaping of Sedat and also later to get him in trouble with Demircan (Melih Çardak), the mafia boss.

Meanwhile, the bandit is going through İstanbul in a daze, lost in a totally alien world, with no idea where to start looking for the woman he loves and the mortal enemy who has stolen her.

After some days he happens to see Berfo on TV, now as a powerful businessman with his name changed.)

(In this movie about the collapse of feudalism in Turkey, Şener Şen is the lord of Haraptar village.

The cunning Kekeç Salman, who came to the village later to work, organizes the village people, who cannot produce enough products due to the drought, to steal the Agha’s goods, sell these goods and immigrate to İstanbul.

Agha, who has very little left, migrates from the village to the city and tries to establish a new life in Istanbul with his good-hearted personality and family.)

Since 1995 the situation has improved.

After the year 2000, annual ticket sales rose to 20 million and since 1995, the number of theatres has steadily increased to approximately 500 nationwide.

The resurgence of Yesilçam didn’t truly take place until the release of Vizontele in 2001.

This movie’s huge commercial success (watched by 2.5 million viewers, which earned the movie the most viewed film for its day) brought attention to the industry.

The film was directed, written, and starred by Yılmaz Erdoğan, who was already well known from his long-running sitcom Bir Demet Tiyatro, and his dedication to theatre.

The movie starred the cast of his usual plays, most notably Demet Akbağ, Altan Erkekli, and Cem Yılmaz.

This movie’s huge commercial success (watched by 2.5 million viewers, which earned the movie the most viewed film for its day) brought attention to the industry.

(The mayor (Altan Erkekli) of a small village in Southeastern Turkey in 1974 bitterly opposes the activities of sleazy opportunist Latif (Cezmi Baskın) who runs open-air film screenings and seeks to break his monopoly over village entertainment with the introduction of the first television (called Vizontele by the locals).

However, the TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) team sent to deliver the television leave in a hurry after the delivery, leaving them clueless as to how to set it up.

The mayor recruits an eccentric electrician called Emin (Yılmaz Erdoğan) and some of his office staff to help him to set up a television transmitter.

While Latif seeks to undermine his efforts by convincing the local imam to decry television as the work of the Devil and a slap in the face of Islamic tradition, the mayor and Emin’s team are initially ridiculed with their initial failures to get a signal until they get it atop the highest peak in town.

However, they are disheartened when the television only receives channels from neighboring Iran.

As they return, one of their companions hits the TV set in frustration, inadvertently switching the channels to Turkish and prompting celebrations.

However, their joy is short-lived as the first news broadcast they watch is about the death of the mayor’s son in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus (20 July – 18 August 1974).

The mayor’s wife, who has been wary of the television, orders Emin to bury the TV set in place of their son.

The story is based on the childhood memories of the writer-director Yılmaz Erdoğan of the arrival of the first television to Hakkâri in the early 1970s.

The movie tries to represent one of the main conflicts in the Turkish society of the late 1970s, continuing well into the 1980s; that of the religious versus secular groups.

“There have always been struggles and contests between secular groups and religious groups over the nature of the political system.” 

This is partly shown through the image of the imam of the town, who stutters a lot, and apparently feels vitriolic toward television, but later on turns out to be a pawn at the hands of Latif.

Children escape his Quran reading class in order to go into the wild and frolic.

An obvious point the movie makes in favor of secular ideas is the character of crazy Emin (played by one of the directors: Yılmaz Erdoğan).

He is pictured as someone who is secluded and one whose only interest is modern technology.

But the movie makers are clever enough not to take sides with either side of the conflict.

As put eloquently by Başkan:

“According to secularization theory, modernization leads to a decline in religion’s role in the public realm, with it turning into a matter for the private sphere.

Instead, however, the contemporary world has witnessed a resurgence of religion with the emergence of religious movements throughout the world.“

The first piece of news that the inhabitants get to hear on the new television – that the Mayor’s son, who was serving in the Army, was killed during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 – is so devastating that a burial of the TV set is in order – an iconic replacement of the burial of the beloved son.

And the man who has to bury the TV set is no other than the technocrat of the town, on allegations that it has brought evil to the small community of the religious people.)

A few years later, Cem Yılmaz released his own film, G.O.R.A., which he both wrote and starred in.

G.O.R.A.: A Space Movie (Turkish: G.O.R.A.: Bir Uzay Filmi) is a 2004 Turkish science fiction comedy film, directed by Ömer Faruk Sorak, which stars Cem Yılmaz as a used carpet salesman who is abducted by aliens from the planet G.O.R.A.

The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on 5 November 2004, was one of the highest grossing Turkish films of 2004 and was followed by the sequels A.R.O.G. (2008) and Arif V 216 (2018).

A spin-off series based on Erşan Kuneri’s character was released in 2022 by Netflix.

Arif (Cem Yılmaz) lives by selling carpets and fake images of UFOs.

One day, he is abducted by aliens disguised as Prince Charles along with other humans.

Above: British King Charles III

This abduction is carried out by planet G.O.R.A’s security chief Logar Trihis as a grudge for the rape of an ancestor’s colleague who visited Earth in 1789.

On the spaceship, Arif comes across a hologram image of Garaval who tells Arif that he can sense the Force within him (a spoof reference to Star Wars) and instructs Arif to look for him.

Upon landing on G.O.R.A, Arif continues to look for opportunities to escape but repeatedly fails.

He builds up a friendship with inmates Faruk and Robot-216.

Robot-216 is a close confidant of Princess Ceku who was demoted to prisons by an angry Logar.

It is revealed that Logar plans to usurp the throne by marrying Princess Ceku despite her stubborn refusal.

To carry out his plan, he sets a fireball towards G.O.R.A and asks for the Princess’s hand as the reward on the condition that he will save G.O.R.A.

The King has to agree as the alternative option of using sacred stone is hindered by the absence of the manual (stolen by Logar).

But when Logar fails to fire off his weapon, Arif comes to the rescue by performing the sacred stone ritual which resembles scene from The Fifth Element film Arif saw.

Logar is furious as it required Arif to kiss Ceku.

So, he blackmails the King into agreeing Ceku’s marriage with him.

However, Ceku learns from her mother that her original father is in fact an Earthling.

She sets off to find him with Arif, Faruk and Robot-216.

But along the way, Logar’s men intercept and take Ceku back.

At the same time, Arif meets Garavel who is an old acquaintance of Ceku’s father, who is revealed to have been a Turkish Air Force pilot who was abducted in 1978.

With his help, Arif gains power-ups and invades the castle to rescue Ceku.

In a move spoofing The Matrix, Arif defeats Logar and exposes his sinister plans to everybody.

Arif and Ceku, very much in love, return to Earth and live as a couple.

The film ends with the couple happily driving on a highway.)

This, and Vizontele‘s sequel Vizontele Tuuba, broke Vizontele‘s records by achieving 3.5 million and 3 million viewers, respectively.

(Five years after the events of the first film, Guner Sernikli is a government official who, with his wife Aysel and their wheelchair-bound daughter Tuba, has been assigned as the head librarian to Crazy Emin’s village, even though there is no library.

The family is welcomed by the Mayor and the other villagers while Emin becomes smitten with Tuba.

However, they have to deal with the political violence engulfing the town’s youth, which they resolve by setting up the library and digging up the TV set from the first film for visitors to use.

After a few months of calm however, the 1980 Turkish coup d’état occurs, with Emin initially mistaking the announcement of the coup as a war movie.

Soldiers arrive and arrest the town’s men for alleged subversion but later release them all except for Guner and a few others.

Guner’s family moves out and Tuba shares a sorrowful parting with Emin.)

Since then, larger-budgeted films have been produced,  including notable examples such as Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq), which was viewed by a record 4 million people, Babam ve Oğlum (My Father and My Son), and Cem Yılmaz’s second movie Hokkabaz (The Magician).

(The film opens with a fictional depiction of a real-life incident, the “Hood event“.

On 4 July 2003, Turkish soldiers believe they are receiving an ordinary visit from their NATO allies, but a sudden change occurs, and 11 allied Turkish special forces soldiers and 13 civilians are arrested by Colonel Sam William Marshall (Billy Zane), in the northern Iraqi town of Sulaymaniyah.

Above: Sulaymaniyah, Iraq

They are forced to wear hoods while in detention and are released some time later.

A Turkish officer named Suleyman Aslan, who was a member of the special forces troops involved in the Hood event, is unable to bear the shame of what happened and commits suicide.

Before doing so, he writes a letter saying goodbye to his friend, Polat Alemdar (Necati Şaşmaz).

Alemdar is a former Turkish intelligence agent who has recently severed links to the government agency for which he worked.

Determined to avenge his friend’s humiliation, Alemdar travels to Iraq along with several of his colleagues, seeking vengeance on the American commander whose actions led to Aslan’s suicide.

At a checkpoint, Alemdar and his team kill three Iraqi Kurdish paramilitary Peshmerga soldiers.

(The Peshmerga (Kurdish: ‘Those Who Face Death‘) comprise the standing military of Kurdistan Region, an autonomous political entity within the Republic of Iraq.

According to the Constitution of Iraq, the Peshmerga and their security subsidiaries are solely responsible for the security of Kurdistan Region, chiefly due to the fact that the Iraqi Armed Forces are forbidden to enter Iraqi Kurdistan.)

Above: Flag of Kurdistan

They attach explosives to the foundation of a hotel, to which they demand Colonel Sam William Marshall, who was responsible for the hooding incident, come.

When Marshall arrives, Polat wants him to put a sack over his head and to publicly leave the hotel with him, allowing journalists to take photos, taking the same insult he committed to Polat’s dead friend.

The group threatens to blow up the hotel unless Marshall and some of his men let themselves be led out of the hotel while hooded. Marshall refuses and brings in a group of Iraqi children as human shields.

Alemdar gives in and leaves.

Marshall raids an Arab wedding on the pretext of hunting “terrorists“.

When the usual celebratory gunfire starts, one soldier states:

“Now they are shooting, now they are terrorists.”

They attack a wedding party, where a small child named Ali sticks a branch up the barrel of one of the soldiers’ guns.

At first, the soldier just hushes the boy away.

The second time, he opens fire and afterwards looks astonished as he sees the little child dead.

The rest of the soldiers panic and open fire on the wedding guests, beat up the bride, shoot the groom, the guests and children.

The survivors are captured and forced into an airtight container truck and sent to Abu Ghraib prison.

En route to Abu Ghraib, an American soldier complains that the prisoners might be suffocating in the truck.

One of Marshall’s men then fires on the truck, spraying the detainees with bullets.

“See, now they won’t suffocate to death.”, he says.

When a soldier threatens to report the incident, he is promptly shot.

Above: Abu Ghraib cell block

In Abu Ghraib, a group of American soldiers, among them the sole female Westerner in the film (a clear reference to Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal), is making naked human pyramids from those arrested in the wedding, aided by an Arab interpreter.

Above: Lynndie England

(Private First Class Lynndie England was convicted on 26 September 2005, of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act.

She was acquitted on a second conspiracy count.

England faced a maximum sentence of ten years.

She was sentenced on 27 September 2005, to three years’ confinement, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, reduction to Private (E-1) and received a dishonorable discharge. 

England served her sentence at Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar, California. 

She was paroled on 1 March 2007, after having served one year and five months.)

The prisoners are washed with high pressure nozzles in what appears to be cattle stalls.

Above: Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, one of the prisoners subjected to torture and abuse by US guards at Abu Ghraib

In a later scene, the execution of a Western journalist by Iraqi rebels is about to take place, but the Sheikh Abdurrahman Halis Karkuki, who is esteemed by the rebels, prevents it, and offers the journalist the opportunity to kill the rebel who was about to kill him.

The rebel does not resist, but the journalist declines the offer.

Above: American journalist Daniel Pearl (1963 – 2002)

(Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who worked for the Wall Street Journal. 

On 23 January 2002, he was kidnapped by Islamist militants while he was on his way to what he had expected would be an interview with Pakistani religious cleric Mubarak Ali Gilani in the city of Karachi.

Pearl had moved to Mumbai, India, upon taking up a regional posting by his newspaper and later entered Pakistan to cover the War on Terror, which was launched by the United States in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001.

At the time of his abduction, he had been investigating the alleged links between British citizen Richard Reid (the “Shoe Bomber“) and Al-Qaeda.

Reid had reportedly completed his training at a facility owned by Gilani, who had been accused by the United States of being affiliated with the Pakistani terrorist organization Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

A few days after his disappearance, Pearl’s captors released a video in which he is recorded condemning American foreign policy and repeatedly telling the camera that he and his family are Jewish and have visited Israel, following which his throat is slit and his head severed from his body. 

Before killing Pearl, the captors had issued an ultimatum to the United States government, namely including the demands that all Pakistani terrorists be freed from American prisons and that the United States move forward with a halted shipment of F-16s for the Pakistani government.

Gilani has refuted allegations of involvement with Jamaat ul-Fuqra and Pearl’s killing. 

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, was arrested by Pakistani authorities and sentenced to death in July 2002 for the execution, but his conviction was overturned by a Pakistani court in 2020.

Sheikh had previously been arrested by Indian authorities for his involvement in the 1994 kidnappings of Western tourists in India, and was also an affiliate of Jaish-e-Mohammed and al-Qaeda, among other armed jihadist organizations.)

Thereafter, the bride who survived the earlier massacre, Leyla, wants revenge by becoming a suicide bomber, but is talked out of it by the Sheikh.

Leyla hurries to a market to stop her brother-in-law Abu Ali, the father of the child killed at the wedding, from blowing himself up in the place where Colonel Marshall is having a meeting, but she arrives too late.

Alemdar and his men, who are there to assassinate Marshall, are led to safety by Leyla.

Alemdar and his team then attempt to kill Marshall again by rigging a bomb in a piano (which once belonged to Saddam Hussein) that is being delivered to Marshall as a gift.

Above: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (1937 – 2006)

The bomb explodes prematurely and Marshall survives.

Alemdar and Leyla then go to a mosque, to meet the Sheikh.

Marshall tracks them down, however, and a big firefight ensues.

The entire village and mosque are destroyed by heavy gunfire.

Together they manage to kill Marshall, but Leyla is also killed by Marshall.)

(In order to study journalism at Istanbul University, Sadık leaves his village on the Aegean coast.

This angers his father, Hüseyin, who wants him to study Agricultural Engineering so he can manage the family farm.

During his years at university Sadık becomes a militant in left wing politics.

Upon learning about Sadık’s behavior, Hüseyin disowns him.

However worse days are ahead for Sadık.

In the early hours of the morning on 12 September 1980, Sadık’s pregnant wife starts having contractions.

The couple runs outside, but they can’t find anyone to take them to the hospital, due to a curfew.

The country has been taken over in a military coup.

Sadık’s wife gives birth in a park and dies, but their son, Deniz, possibly named after leftist youth icon Deniz Gezmiş, survives.

Above: Turkish activist Deniz Gezmiş (1947 – 1972)

Because of his political activities, Sadık is arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for three years during which time he loses his health.

A few years after being released, he finds out that he will die.

Having no other choice, he takes Deniz back to his family farm on the Aegean into the care of his mother and his father, who still does not speak to him.

For Deniz, who is absorbed in the magical world of comic books, meeting his relatives on the farm is a new experience.

There is his grandmother (Hümeyra Akbay) who drives a tractor and speaks on a short wave radio, his aunt Hanife (Binnur Kaya) who wears bracelets from her wrist all the way to her shoulder, and his uncle (Yetkin Dikinciler) who is a little naive.

There is trouble in store, however, for Sadık and Hüseyin who must come to terms with their past and each other.

Sadık also needs to face his first love, now married with two children, and the question of old friends.

However his sickness takes over and Sadık passes away.

His parents take over the responsibility of Deniz who comes into term with his father’s loss.)

(Iskender is a juggler, but to everyone besides himself and his childhood friend, Maradona, he is actually a magician.

The two friends undertake a great deal of risk by including Sait in their tour program while being forced to escape Istanbul.

Moreover, Father Sait had stopped appreciating Iskender years ago.

While the tour brings them much closer, it also results in a magnificent falling-out.

Iskender, Maradona, and Sait keep coming back together and falling out with their fellow traveler, Fatma.)

There was a rise in experimental films in the 2000s.

These include the 2005 feature Türev (Derivative), which was filmed without a prewritten script and even featured candid shots of the actors, and Anlat Istanbul (Istanbul Tales), an ensemble piece divided into five “mini films” that received a strong reception.

(The 2005 film was shot as an adaptation of the “inappropriately curious” story from Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote to today’s Istanbul.)

Above: Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616)

(Istanbul Tales (Turkish: Anlat İstanbul) is a 2005 Turkish drama-anthology film, which tells five interconnected stories set in modern-day İstanbul based on the fairytales Snow White, Cinderella, Pied Piper, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood.

Anlat İstanbul takes the stories of people living in Istanbul and tells them by turning the stories into fairy tales and people (a clarinetist, a prostitute, a crazy woman, etc.) into heroes.

The film, which went on nationwide general release on 11 March 2005, won several awards including Best Film at the 24th International İstanbul Film Festival.)

Körler / Jaluziler İçin is the first internationally awarded Turkish science fiction feature film which is not a comedy, a cult film, a remake or an animation which marks its unique place as a milestone in the history of Turkish cinema.

It was written, directed, produced and edited by Ozan Duru Adam.

The film invents an innovative, unconventional visual language.

Yeşilçam has seen a revival since 2002, having produced critically acclaimed movies such as Uzak (Grand Prix (Cannes Film Festival), 2003), Babam ve Oğlum (My Father and My Son), Cem Yılmaz’s second movie Hokkabaz (The Magician) and Propaganda.

(Yusuf, a young factory worker who recently lost his job, travels to Istanbul to stay with Mahmut, one of his relatives, while looking for a job.

Mahmut is a rather wealthy and intellectual photographer, whereas Yusuf is almost illiterate, uneducated and unsophisticated.

The two do not get along well.

Yusuf assumes that he will easily find work as a sailor but there are no jobs, and he has no sense of direction or energy.

Meanwhile, Mahmut, despite his wealth, is aimless too:

His job, which consists of photographing tiles, is dull and inartistic, he can barely express emotions towards his ex-wife or his lover.

When Yusuf goes to bed during a film, Mahmut switches channels to watch porn the moment he is gone.

Mahmut attempts to bond with Yusuf and recapture his love of art by taking him on a drive to photograph the beautiful Turkish countryside, but the attempt is a failure on both counts.

At the end of the film, Yusuf leaves without telling Mahmut, who is left to sit by the docks, watching the ships on his own.)

(Based on a true story set in 1948, customs officer Mehti is faced with the duty of formally setting up the border between Turkey and Syria, dividing his hometown.

He is unaware of the pain that will imminently unfold, as families, languages, cultures and lovers are both ripped apart and clash head on in a village once united.)

Production numbers also soared in the second half of the 2000s, reaching 40 films in 2007, with the top four box office hits that year claimed by Turkish films, as the film industry became profitable again with improving technical quality corresponding with commercial films’ production costs increasing.

Currently, Turkish films attract audiences of millions of viewers and routinely top the blockbuster lists, often surpassing foreign films at the box office.

Sinemia has published research that Konya has become the city with the most frequent cinema goers.

Above: Konya, Türkiye

However, it is difficult to speak about the existence of an industry, since most films are rather individual projects of directors who otherwise earn their living in television, advertising or theatre.

The distribution of these films are mainly handled by multinational corporations such as Warner Bros. and United International Pictures.

The Avenue fell from grace in the 1970s and 1980s as the old Istanbulite inhabitants moved elsewhere and the side streets (then infamous for bars and night clubs with live music and shows, called pavyon) were repopulated by migrants from rural Anatolia.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a revival took place, spearheaded and executed by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Beyoğlu Municipality.

Historic buildings were restored, the street was pedestrianised, and the old historic trams were reinstated, bringing back much of the avenue’s old charm and popularity.

İstiklal Avenue became the center for fine arts and leisure in Istanbul once again and real estate prices skyrocketed.

Numerous new art galleries, bookstores, cafés, pubs, restaurants, shops and hotels were opened in and around the street, and venues around it became the host to many international art festivals, such as the annual İstanbul Film Festival.

Above: İstiklal Caddesi, İstanbul

The Istanbul Film Festival (İstanbul Film Festivali) is the first and oldest international film festival in Türkiye, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts.

It is held every year in April in movie theaters in Istanbul.

The Festival aims to encourage the development of cinema in Turkey and to promote films of quality in the Turkish cinema market.

Above: 2008 logo of the İstanbul International Film Festival

Until the mid-2010s, İstiklal Avenue was also a popular venue for all sorts of parades, marches and gatherings, such as the İstanbul Pride and International Women’s Day.

Above: İstiklal Caddesi, İstanbul

(Istanbul Pride (İstanbul Onur Yürüyüşü) is a pride parade and LGBT demonstration held annually in Istanbul since 2003.

Participants assemble in Taksim Square before marching the entire length of İstiklal Caddesi.

It has been described as the first and biggest LGBT event in Muslim majority countries.

The event reached roughly 5,000 people by 2010.

In 2013, the Pride Parade, with the attendance of Gezi Park protesters attracted almost 100,000 people.

The 2014 Pride was the biggest LGBT event in Turkey’s history and attracted more than 100,000 people.

Since 2015, Pride Parades in Istanbul were denied permission by the Governorship of Istanbul authorities.

The governors repeatedly stated that the denials were based on security concerns and public order, but critics claimed the bans were taken on a religious and ideological basis.

Despite the refusal, hundreds of people defied the ban each year, which resulted in law enforcement intervention.

Politicians that have joined Istanbul Pride are mainly from the opposition parties Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

However, after the Gezi Park protests of 2013, all such gatherings have been effectively banned, citing security reasons.)

Above: Istanbul LGBT Pride Parade in 2013, İstiklal Avenue, Istanbul

(International Women’s Day (IWD) is a holiday celebrated annually on 8 March as a focal point in the women’s rights movement.

IWD gives focus to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights and violence against women.

Spurred by the universal female suffrage movement, IWD originated from labour movements in North America and Europe during the early 20th century.

Regardless of legal status, in much of the world, it is customary for men and women to give their colleagues and loved ones flowers and gifts and show the equality towards the other gender.

(I have never witnessed the gift-giving of women towards men in this regard.)

Above: German poster for International Women’s Day, 8 March 1914. This poster was banned in the German Empire.

Women got full political participation rights in Turkey, including the right to vote and the right to run for office locally in 1930 (nationwide in 1934).

The Turkish feminist movement began in the 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922) when the Ottoman Welfare Organisation of Women was founded in 1908.

The ideal of gender equality was embraced after the declaration of the Republic of Turkey by the administration of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1899 – 1938), whose modernizing reforms included a ban on polygamy and the provision of full political rights to Turkish women by 1930.

Turkish women continue to be the victims of rape and honour killings.

Research by scholars and government agencies indicate widespread domestic violence among the people of Türkiye, as well as in the Turkish diaspora.

There are many historical examples of Turkish women involved in public life and activism, however.

Women in Turkey face significant discrimination in employment, and, in some regions, education.

The participation of Turkish women in the labour force is less than half of that of the European Union average and while several campaigns have been successfully undertaken to promote female literacy, there is still a gender gap in secondary education.

There is also widespread occurrence of child marriage in Türkiye, the practice being especially widespread in the eastern and central parts of the country.

In 2018, Turkey ranked 130th in the World Economic Forum gender gap index, out of 149 countries.)

(A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Türkiye began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. 

The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan.

Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting against a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, of expression and of assembly, as well as the AKP government’s erosion of Türkiye’s secularism.

With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organised the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy movement and the events of May 1968. 

Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages.

Three and a half million people (out of Turkey’s population of 80 million) are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest.

Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.

The sit-in at Taksim Gezi Park was restored after police withdrew from Taksim Square on 1 June, and developed into a protest camp, with thousands of protesters in tents, organising a library, medical centre, food distribution and their own media.

After the Gezi Park camp was cleared by riot police on 15 June, protesters began to meet in other parks all around Turkey and organised public forums to discuss ways forward for the protests. 

Turkish then-Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dismissed the protesters as “a few looters” on 2 June.

Police suppressed the protests with tear gas and water cannons.

In addition to the 11 deaths and over 8,000 injuries, more than 3,000 arrests were made. 

Police brutality and the overall absence of government dialogue with the protesters was criticised by some foreign governments and international organisations.

The range of the protesters was described as being broad, encompassing both right and left wing individuals. 

Their complaints ranged from the original local environmental concerns to such issues as the authoritarianism of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, curbs on alcohol, a recent row about kissing in public, and the war in Syria (ongoing since 2011).

Protesters called themselves çapulcu (looters), reappropriating Erdoğan’s insult for them (and coined the derivative “chapulling“, given the meaning of “fighting for your rights“).

Many users on Twitter also changed their screenname and used çapulcu instead. 

According to various analysts, the protests were the most challenging events for Erdoğan’s ten-year term and the most significant showing of nationwide disquiet in decades.)

Above: Protests on 6 June 2013, with the slogan “Do not submit“

On 19 March 2016, an Islamic State suicide bombing on İstiklal Avenue, in front of the district governor’s office, killed five people.

The attack occurred at 10:55 at the intersection of Balo Sokak with İstiklal Caddesi, a central shopping street. 

The attack caused at least five deaths, including that of the perpetrator.

Thirty-six people were injured, including seven whose injuries were severe. 

Among those injured were 12 foreign tourists. 

Among those killed, three were of Israeli nationality. 

Above: Demirören Shopping Mall in Istiklal Avenue, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, near which the bombing took place

On 22 March, the Turkish Interior Minister said that the bomber had links with ISIL.

Above. Flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)

The bombing was the 4th suicide bombing in Turkey in 2016 and occurred six days after a bombing in Ankara that left 37 people dead.

(The March 2016 Ankara bombing killed at least 37 people and injured 125.

Of the 125 individuals who suffered injuries, 19 of them were seriously harmed. 

Several buildings were also damaged during the event.

A bus and many cars were reportedly completely destroyed.

The bombing took place on Atatürk Boulevard, near Güvenpark, at a point where several bus stops were located.

A car laden with explosives was used for the attack. 

Buses carrying civilians were targeted. 

The area was subsequently evacuated as a precaution against the possibility of further attacks.)

Above: Scene from the March 2016 Ankara bombing

The US Embassy in Ankara had issued a terrorism warning to its citizens the day before the bombing for İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Adana.

Above: Flag of the United States of America

The German Embassy had also issued a security warning to its citizens three days before the bombing.

Germany had also closed its consulate on the avenue on Thursday and Friday as a security measure.

Above: Flag of Germany

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had called the warnings “normal“.

Above: Turkish politician Ahmet Davutoğlu

According to the BBC, residents of Istanbul had already been vigilant before the attack due to the recent explosion in Ankara and were wary of going out.

Following the bombing, according to Cumhuriyet, the Turkish government received heavy criticism on social media for defects in its security.

Above: Logo for the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet (Republic)

The bombing took place at a time when the Avenue was relatively quiet.

The site of detonation was a few hundred metres away from a place where police buses are usually parked. 

According to an eyewitness, the bomber detonated the bomb whilst passing by a group of tourists.

Hundreds of people reportedly ran away from the site of attack in panic after the explosion. 

Nails and small pieces of metal were reportedly scattered in the area due to the attack. 

Following the bombing, the Avenue was closed off to the public. 

Above: Scene from the March 2016 İstanbul bombing

According to a CNN Türk reporter on the scene, the suicide attacker was on his way to the actual target when the bomb went off in front of a restaurant. 

Another account from a Turkish official (cited by Reuters) states the bomber was “deterred” from his or her actual target by the police and set off the bomb “out of fear“.

Initial findings pointed to Kurdish perpetrators.

Above: The title of this 1995 crime thriller film was inspired by one of Claude Rains’ most memorable lines in the classic 1942 film Casablanca.

Above: Scene from the movie Casablanca

Two of the killed victims were American-Israeli citizens, one was Israeli and one was Iranian. 

One of the victims that died in the explosion was a child.

Two of the tourists injured were also children.

Israeli authorities identified the three Israeli victims as Yonatan Suher (40 years old) from Tel Aviv, Simcha Dimri (60) from Dimona, and Avraham Goldman (69) from Ramat Hasharon.

The Iranian fatalities were identified as Ali Razmkhah (dead) and Zhila Shariat, Azam Razmkhah and a one-year-old, Diana Razmkhah, were injured.

The Başaran family from Adana was among those injured in the blast. The family of four had come to İstanbul as tourists and were shopping and sightseeing in the Istiklal Avenue when the blast occurred.

Two-year-old Asya Başaran was hit by a metal fragment in the head, while her mother, Çilem Başaran, was hit in the shoulder and the groin.

They were both life-threateningly injured.

Above: Scene from the March 2016 İstanbul bombing

While the authorities were quick to blame the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) given the Ankara bombing in February, only upon further investigation in the afternoon, the Turkish authorities changed their initial assessment, now instead holding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) accountable. 

Above: Flag of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)

According to Milliyet, Turkish authorities never ruled out ISIL as suspects early on.

According to the newspaper, the fact that the attack occurred near a group of tourists indeed suggested an ISIL involvement. 

PKK umbrella organization KCK said it opposed targeting civilians and condemned attacks on them.

Above: Logo from the daily newspaper Milliyet (National)

The next day, Turkish authorities announced that Mehmet Öztürk was reliably identified by DNA tests to be the suicide bomber of the Istanbul attack.

Born in 1992 in Gaziantep Province and thought to be affiliated with ISIL, he was one of two Turkish suspects the authorities were investigating.

The day before, Sabah had named Özturk and 33-year-old ISIL militant Savaş Yıldız from Adana, who is also thought to be involved in the October 2015 Ankara bombings killing more than 100 civilians.

Above: Logo for the daily newspaper Sabah (Morning)

(On 10 October 2015 at 10:04 in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, two bombs were detonated outside Ankara Central railway station.

With a death toll of 109 civilians, the attack was the deadliest terror attack in Turkish history. 

Another 500 people were injured. 

The bombs appeared to target a “Labour, Peace and Democracy” rally organised by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (KESK).

The peace march was held to protest against the growing conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The incident occurred 21 days before the scheduled 1 November general election.

The governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) condemned the attack and called it an attempt to cause division within Turkey. 

CHP and MHP leaders heavily criticized the government for the security failure, whereas HDP directly blamed the AK Party government for the bombings.

Various political parties ended up cancelling their election campaigns while three days of national mourning were declared by the Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

No organization has ever claimed responsibility for the attack.)

Above: “Democracy” memorial in front of Ankara Central railway station

On 13 November 2022, a bomb explosion on Istiklal Avenue killed six people and left 81 injured. 

Police detained a Syrian woman, Ahlam Albashir, suspected of being a Kurdish insurgent having planted the bomb, in a sweep of 47 arrests.

No group claimed responsibility.

But Turkish authorities announced that Kurdish separatists were behind the attack, implicating the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Forces (SDF). 

Türkiye’s Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, announced the arrest of the bomber and 46 others.

Above: Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu

The city experienced previous terrorist attacks during the late 20th and early 21st century by Kurdish separatists and Islamist insurgents.

The PKK and SDF denied involvement in the bombing. 

On 20 November, Turkey launched Operation Claw Sword, bombing nearly 500 targets in Syria and Iraq.

Above: Memorial point after the 2022 Istanbul attack

The explosion occurred at 4:13 pm on 13 November 2022, on İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu, in the European part of Istanbul. 

İstiklal Avenue is a popular tourist street and one of the main roads leading to Taksim Square. 

The bomb went off in front of a shopping store.

At the time of the blast, the area was more crowded than normal, as a football club was preparing to play nearby. 

According to Turkish news portal Oda TV, the explosion was caused by an improvised explosive device containing TNT. 

The blast caused windows to break and images circulating on social media showed people bleeding.

Firefighters and ambulances rushed to the scene. 

The police set up a perimeter around the scene around the bombing site and banned people from going to İstiklal Avenue and Taksim Square.

The dead were all Turkish citizens, a man and his nine-year-old daughter, a woman and her teenage daughter, and a married couple. 

Of the 81 treated in hospital, 61 were released.

By 15 November, 20 were still being treated in hospital.

Istanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutors’ Office quickly opened an investigation after the attack.

At least eight prosecutors have been assigned to the case. 

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ said a woman was filmed sitting on a bench for about 40 minutes and that she left shortly before the blast. 

Above: Turkish politician Bekir Bozdağ

The arrest of the main suspect in the attack, Ahlam Albashir, a female Syrian national, was reported a day after the bombing. 

She had been working in the textile industry in Esenler district in Istanbul. 

Several of her co-workers were also detained and questioned. 

Two human traffickers who are suspected to have been trying to bring the suspect to Bulgaria were also detained. 

Since the attack, 49 people were detained and interrogated by 29 prosecutors. 

On 18 November 2022, against 17 people, including the main suspect Ahlam Albashir, arrest warrants were issued. 

One alleged accomplice of Albashir fled to Azaz, which is a Syrian town controlled by Turkey, where he was captured by the Turkish forces.

Above: Alleged perpetrator Ahlam Albashir

The PKK, SDF and the YPG have denied any involvement.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) accused Turkey with having used such attacks as a pretext for invasions in the past.

Above: Flag of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)

The SDF and YPG denounced the attack.

Above: Flag of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militant group in Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) involved in the ongoing Syrian Civil War

Above: The military situation in Syria, 2013 – Syrian Arab Republic (SAA) (pink) / Syrian Interim Government (SNA) and Turkish occupation (light green) / Syrian Free Army and American occupation (dark green) / Syrian Salvation Government (HTS) (white) / Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (SDF) (yellow) / Opposition groups in reconciliation (purple) / Islamic State (grey)

The Turkish police said Albashir confirmed her affiliation with PKK and YPG and that she had been trained by them as a special intelligence officer in Syria, entering Turkey through Afrin District.

During her interrogation she admitted having met her contact in Manbij, a city governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and on his orders travelled to Idlib where she met a man with whom she pretended to be married. 

They crossed the border to Turkey on 27 July 2022, her alleged partner bringing a bomb with him.

They travelled to Istanbul the same day.

On 22 November, SDF top military official Mazloum Abdi claimed the bomber, Albashir, to be related to IS jihadists via her brothers and past husbands, some of whom were killed in battles against Kurdish forces.

More recently, she was inhabiting Turkey-controlled area within Northwestern Syria. 

Above: Photographic “proof” of Albasir’s involvement in the bombing

Abdi called for peace between Turkey and Syrian Kurds, excluding any operation against Turkey in Turkey, and denying responsibility for the bombing.

He vowed however to defend Syrian territories under AANES control. 

He also deplored Erdoğan’s electoral strategy, preferring war and tension over a peace agreement with his forces, which would be an equally winning electoral strategy.

While the intensity of the PKK-Turkey conflict in Turkey has decreased in recent years, since 2015, Turkey lead nearly 12 external military operations resulting in the deaths of an estimated 15,000 neighbouring civilians.

Above: General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces Mazlûm Abdi

Around an hour after the explosion took place, a broadcast ban was issued by the Istanbul Criminal Court for all visual and audio news and social networking sites related to the incident. 

Only interviews with government officials are allowed to be reported about. 

CNN Türk and TRT then stopped reporting on the incident. 

Internet speeds throughout Turkey and access to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube have been significantly decreased since the attack.

Istanbul’s anti-terrorist office decided to suspend the rights of defense of suspects but also of Internet users who have shared “negative information” about the attack on social networks.

Above: Palace of Justice, İstanbul

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

Winston and Julia are captured when Charrington is revealed to be an undercover Thought Police agent.

They are separated and imprisoned at the Ministry of Love.

O’Brien also reveals himself to be a member of the Thought Police and a member of a false flag operation which catches political dissidents of the Party.

Over several months, Winston is starved and relentlessly tortured to bring his beliefs in line with the Party.

“You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline.

You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity.

You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.

Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston.

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right.

You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident.

When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you.

But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes:

Only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.

Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. 

It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. 

That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston.

It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will.

You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

All the confessions that are uttered here are true.

We make them true.

And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us.

You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston.

Posterity will never hear of you.

You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history.

We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere.

Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain.

You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future.

You will never have existed.

When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.

We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us:

So long as he resists us we never destroy him.

We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.

We burn all evil and all illusion out of him.

We bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.

We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.

It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.

Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation.

In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it.

Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. 

But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.

Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us.

No one who has once gone astray is ever spared.

And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us.

What happens to you here is forever.

Understand that in advance.

We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back.

Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years.

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling.

Everything will be dead inside you.

Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity.

You will be hollow. 

We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.“

(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)

O’Brien tells Winston that he will never know whether the Brotherhood actually exists and that Goldstein’s book was written collaboratively by him and other Party members.

Furthermore, O’Brien reveals to Winston that the Party sees power not as a means but as an end.

He knew in advance what O’Brien would say.

That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority.

That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves.

That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.

That the Party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others.

The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O’Brien said this he would believe it.

What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing, and then simply persists in his lunacy?

“You are ruling over us for our own good,” he said feebly.

“You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore —“

He started and almost cried out.

A pang of pain had shot through his body.

O’Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to 35.

“That was stupid, Winston, stupid!” he said.

“You should know better than to say a thing like that.

The ultimate purpose of the Party is seeking power entirely for its own sake.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 

Power is not a means.

It is an end.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution.

One makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

The object of persecution is persecution.

The object of torture is torture.

The object of power is power.

We are the priests of power.

God is power.

But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned.

It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means.

The first thing you must realize is that power is collective.

The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual.

You know the Party slogan:

“Freedom is Slavery“.

Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible?

Slavery is freedom.

Alone —  free —  the human being is always defeated.

It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. 

But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.

We control matter because we control the mind.

Reality is inside the skull.

You will learn by degrees, Winston.

There is nothing that we could not do.

Invisibility, levitation — anything.

I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to.

I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it.

You must get rid of those 19th century ideas about the laws of Nature.

We make the laws of Nature.

The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?

It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.

A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. 

Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice.

Ours is founded upon hatred.

In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.

Everything else we shall destroy — everything.

There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party.

There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.

There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy.

There will be no art, no literature, no science.

When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.

There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness.

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.

All competing pleasures will be destroyed.

But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.

Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.“

(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)

For the final stage of re-education, O’Brien takes Winston to Room 101, which contains each prisoner’s worst fear.

When confronted with rats, Winston denounces Julia and pledges allegiance to the Party.

(George Orwell meant Nineteen Eighty-Four to be a cautionary tale.

Not an instruction manual.)

On 20 November 2022, the Turkish Air Force launched a series of airstrikes against Kurdish separatist positions in Northern Syria and Iraq, dubbed Operation Claw Sword.

Despite dubious links, the Istanbul bombing and alleged link to YPG/PKK was used as justification for massive bombing of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and its infrastructures.

About 500 targets were hit in Syria and Iraq. 

Above: Seal of the Turkish Air Force

Top SDF officials called for resuming peace talks, avoid a deadly conflict, and vowed resistance if attacked.

On 20 November around midnight local time, Turkish aircraft launched a series of airstrikes across northern Syria and Iraq, killing 36 SDF fighters and Syrian soldiers and Hawar News Agency reporter, Essam Abdullah in Syria.

On 21 November, two Turkish civilians were killed in Karkamış, by a rocket attack believed to be conducted by the SDF. 

(Karkemish has always been well known to scholars because of several references to it in the Bible (Jeremiah 46:2, 2 Chronicles 35:20 and Isaiah 10:9) and in Egyptian and Assyrian texts.

However, its location was identified only in 1876.

The site was excavated by the British Museum by Patrick Henderson, D. G. Hogarth and R. C. Thompson, C. L. Woolley, and T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia“). 

Excavations were interrupted in 1914 by World War I, resumed in 1920 with Woolley and then ended with the Turkish War of Independence. 

These expeditions uncovered substantial remains of the Neo-Hittite and Neo-Assyrian periods, including defensive structures, temples, palaces, and numerous basalt statues and reliefs with Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions.)

Also, one Turkish soldier was killed and seven were injured in Bab Al-Salama crossing on the borders with Turkey, after shelling from Kurdish and regime areas in northern Aleppo.

Above: The Bab Al-Salama crossing

On 22–23 November, Turkish Air Force targeted the oil and gas energy infrastructure in al-Hasakah Governorate.

The Turkish Air Force targeted the town of Makman in north west Deir ez-Zor Governorate.

Above: Makman, Syria

On 23 November, clashes broke out between forces of the Manbij Military Council and forces of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army on the Jamousiya and Sayada fronts in the Manbij countryside. 

Eight SDF fighters were killed after Turkish aircraft targeted the vicinity of Al-Hawl refugee camp.

Above: Al-Hawl refugee camp, Syria

On 27 November, the Turkish Air Force resumed bombing SDF and Syrian Army positions in Northern Syria after a three-day halt in airstrikes. 

During these attacks five Syrian soldiers were killed after a Turkish drone struck their military post, near the Kashtar village in the Afrin countryside.

Above: Kashtar village

On 29 – 30 November, Syrian government forces and Iranian backed militias deployed T-90 tanks, troop carriers and hundreds of soldiers to the northern Aleppo countryside. 

Russian forces established a military post south of the village of Ablah, consisting of dozens of soldiers and field artillery.

On 6 December, Al Jazeera reported that Turkey had set a deadline of two weeks for SDF forces to leave the areas of Manbij, Tell Rifat and Kobani and that a failure to do so would result in a new ground offensive.

On 19 December, Turkish forces resumed their joint patrols with Russian forces under the second Northern Syria Buffer Zone, which had been suspended since the start of the operation.

Above: Syrian reconciliation flag

On 24 February 2023, Turkish authorities reported that intelligence services had conducted an operation in northern Syria, killing the alleged mastermind of the attack, reported to be PKK member Halil Menci.

Above. Halil Menci

French writer Patrice Franceschi argues the attack was unlikely to be from Syrian Kurdish forces, who are pragmatically aware of Turkey’s superior force and carefully avoid to provoke it and another Turkish operation in Syria.

Franceschi argues there are both electoral and ideological motives on the part of the AKP government to put the blame on autonomous, socialist, egalitarian AANES, since their social vision and existence is in opposition with autocratic, increasingly Islamist and expansionist nationalism of the AKP government.

Above: French writer Patrice Franceschi

In some ways Julia was far more acute than Winston and far less suspectible to Party propaganda.

Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening.

The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, “just to keep people frightened“.

“Who cares?“, she said impatiently.

“It is always one bloody war after another and one knows that the news is all lies anyway.“

(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)

The Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu argued that the attack was carried out by the PKK in retaliation for the Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria and criticized the US for its support of the Kurdish People’s Units (YPG) in northeastern Syria. 

He had previously blamed the US for the attack in Mersin in September and had said that the US had funded the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) up to $2 billion since 2019.

The condolences offered by the US Embassy in Turkey were rejected by the Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who repeated the claim that the attack was carried out by the US-supported YPG.

Above: Logo of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior

The Left in the European Parliament (GUE / NGL) argued AKP accusations linking the attack to Syrian YPG is an electoral strategy, using war mongering to distract from deepening economic context and to raise nationalist votes.

The frontiers between states are in some places arbitrary and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war.

War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was.

It is warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy each, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference.

The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at.

All disputed territories contain valuable minerals, but above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour.

If wealth became general, it would confer no distinction, for if leisure and security were enjoyed all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupified by poverty would learn to think for themselves and when one they had done this they would eventually realize that the privileged minority had no function and they would sweep it away.

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world.

Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed.

And the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

Comfortable masses become, in the long run, too intelligent.

It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

Technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used.

The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position to wage another war.”

(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)

We stroll on by the Yapı Kredi Müzesi, but its architecture does not strike us as a place we want to visit.

Above: The Yapı Kredi Müzesi, İstanbul

Welcome to the Yapı Kredi Museum.

Kâzım Taşkent, who founded Yapı Kredi Bank in 1944, added culture and art patronage to his efforts to create surplus value in the economy.

Kâzım Taşkent, who adopted Atatürk’s words – “A nation without art means that one of its lifeblood has been cut off.” – as a principle, established the “culture and art consultancy” department within the bank and left this department to the management of Vedat Nedim Tör.

(There is nothing that lends legitimacy to any Turkish endeavour more than to suggest that Atatürk would have approved.)

With the contribution of cultural figures including İbrahim Hakkı Konyalı and Şevket Rado, another important step was taken to preserve Turkey’s cultural heritage.

Above: Turkish historian İbrahim Hakkı Konyalı (1896 – 1984)

Above: North Macedonia-born Turkish writer Şevket Rado (1913 – 1988)

Yapı Kredi collections began to be created starting from 1953.

Yapı Kredi collections, which have enriched over time through purchases from both domestic and international auctions and personal collections, began to be preserved and exhibited in the Yapı Kredi Museum, which was established in 1992 as a private museum affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism within the bank. 

We are proud to present the Yapı Kredi Museum collections, a meticulously prepared selection in our renewed display, to researchers and enthusiasts who want to examine the cultural layers of Turkey.

Yapı Kredi Museum Collections are preserved and exhibited in two separate sections:

• numismatics
• ethnography

The numismatics section, which contains more than 55,000 works including coins, medals and decorations, is among the important private collections in the world in terms of chronological integrity and constitutes the basic collection of the museum.

Although the body of the collection consists of coins of Islamic states, it has a rich structure to establish a monetary history chain, one end of which goes to the coins of Ancient Greece and Rome, and the other end reaches the coins of the early Republic period.

250 electron, gold, silver and copper items selected from the coin collection, from which we can almost uninterruptedly follow the traces of the 2,600-year political, economic and cultural history of the wide geography stretching from Athens to Pergamon, from Rome to Istanbul, from the Arabian Peninsula to Spain.

The historical journey of money is conveyed to visitors through coins.

In the ethnography section, where works of Turkish-Islamic culture are located, there are over a thousand distinguished works dating back to different periods starting from the 16th century.

Tombaks, silver, pocket watches and personal belongings of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which are exhibited in the museum, are kept in this section.”

(A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, is the result of an effort which is made to create an idealized and heroic image of a glorious leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.

Historically, it has developed through techniques of mass media, propaganda, spectacle, the arts, patriotism and government-organized demonstrations and rallies.

A cult of personality is established by modern social engineering techniques, usually by the state or the party in one-party states and dominant-party states.

Cults of personality often accompany the leaders of totalitarian or authoritarian governments.

They can also be seen in some monarchies, theocracies, failed democracies and even in liberal democracies.

Often, a single leader became associated with this revolutionary transformation and came to be treated as a benevolent “guide” for the nation without whom the claimed transformation to a better future could not occur.

Generally, this has been the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies, such as those of: 

• Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany

Above: German Führer Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

• Joseph Stalin of the USSR

Above: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (né Dzhugashvili) (1878 – 1953)

• Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and currently ruling grandson Kim Jong Un, of North Korea

Above: North Korean leader Kim Il Sung (1912 – 1994)

Above: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (1941 – 2011)

Above: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

• Mao Zedong of the People’s Republic of China

Above: Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976)

• Hafez al-Assad of Syria, whose son Bashar al Assad currently rules the country

Above: Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (1930 – 2000)

Above: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

In Turkey, founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is commemorated by a myriad of memorials throughout the country, such as the Atatürk International Airport in İstanbul, the Atatürk Bridge over the Golden Horn (Haliç), the Atatürk Dam and Atatürk Stadium.

His titles include Great Leader (Ulu Önder), Eternal Commander (Ebedî Başkomutan), Head Teacher (Başöğretmen), and Eternal Chief (Ebedî Şef).

Above: Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 – 1938)

Atatürk statues have been erected in all Turkish cities by the Turkish Government.

Most towns have their own memorial to him.

Above: Atatürk Memorial, Kadiköy, İstanbul

His face and name are seen and heard everywhere in Turkey.

His portrait can be seen in all public buildings, in all schools and classrooms, on all school textbooks, on all Turkish lira banknotes, and in the homes of many Turkish families.

At the exact time of Atatürk’s death, on every 10 November, at 09:05, most vehicles and people in the country’s streets pause for one minute in remembrance. 

In 1951, the Turkish Parliament issued a law (5816) outlawing insults to his reminiscence (hatırasına alenen hakaret) or destruction of objects representing him, which is still in force. 

There is a government website that is aimed at denouncing different kinds of crimes found on the Internet, including with the 8th element crimes committed against Atatürk (Atatürk aleyhine işlenen suçlar).

The Turkish government as of 2011 has filters in place to block websites deemed to contain materials insulting to his memory.

The start of Atatürk’s cult of personality is placed in the 1920s when the first statues started being built. 

The idea of Atatürk as the “father of the Turks” is ingrained in Turkish politics and politicians in that country are evaluated in relation to his cult of personality.

The persistence of the phenomenon of Atatürk’s personality cult has become an area of deep interest to scholars.

Atatürk impersonators are also seen around Turkey much after Atatürk’s death to preserve what is called the “world’s longest-running personality cult“.

Ottoman sultans Mehmed the Conqueror and Abdul Hamid II have cults of personality created by religious conservatives and Islamists.

They associate the policies of these statesmen with their “piety“.

Above: Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1432 – 1481)

Above: Ottoman Sultan Abdül Hamid II (1842 – 1918)

In recent years there has been a growing cult of personality in modern Turkey around current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The cults created for the sultans and Erdoğan are kept alive by devout Muslims who oppose secular lifestyle and secularist ideas.)

Above: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

(Let me choose my words carefully here:

I am in no way, shape or form comparing the personalities of these aforementioned leaders, but rather I am merely comparing the strength of the devotion that surrounds them.

I will not and cannot diminish Atatürk nor his legacy.

That being said, I believe we need to go beyond his legacy rather lose ourselves in its shadow.)

Yapı Kredi Museum is temporarily moving a significant part of the archaeological artifacts unearthed during the Alaca Höyük excavations to its museum.

The exhibition “In Pursuit of an Ideal: Atatürk and Alaca Höyük“, prepared specifically for the 100th anniversary of the Republic in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey and Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts Publishing, can be visited free of charge at Yapı Kredi Museum between 13 October 2023 – 10 March 2024. can be done.

(It was extended until 21 April 2024.)

A significant part of the archaeological artifacts unearthed during the Alaca Höyük excavations that started in 1935 and preserved in different museums in Turkey are exhibited together for the first time.

Within the scope of the exhibition, 235 archaeological and ethnographic original works from the Anatolian Civilizations Museum, Alaca Höyük Museum, Çorum Museum and Istanbul Archeology Museums are brought to Istanbul Yapı Kredi Museum and presented under chronological and thematic sections.

Photographs selected from the Turkish Historical Society Archive and some of the original drawings made by Mahmut Akok are also included in the exhibition.

The exhibition “In Pursuit of an Ideal: Atatürk and Alaca Höyük“, curated by Nihat Tekdemir and scientific advisor by Tayfun Yıldırım, is a product of the cooperation of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums and Yapı Kredi Museum.

The exhibition was coordinated by Bülent Gönültaş, Mehtap Ateş and Nilüfer Babacan, and the design was made by the Encounters team.

The public opening date of the exhibition was determined as 13 October, when Ankara was declared the capital of the Republic of Turkey.

The exhibition “In Pursuit of an Ideal: Atatürk and Alaca Höyük” offers an archeology feast to its visitors.

The Alaca Höyük excavations, which were initiated in 1935 by the first archaeologist of the Republic of Turkey, Remzi Oğuz Arık, and ethnologist Hâmit Zübeyr Koşay, have the title of the first major and modern excavation of the national archeology campaign initiated under the leadership of Atatürk.

The exhibition also includes artifacts unearthed from the Alaca Höyük excavations, as well as the Ahlatlıbel, Etiyokuşu, Karaoğlan and Trakya Vize Tumulus excavations, which are considered the first excavations of the Republic of Turkey.

The exhibition “In Pursuit of an Ideal: Atatürk and Alaca Höyük” also discusses the archeology and cultural mobilization initiated under the leadership of Atatürk in the first years of the Republic.

In his opening speech at the Turkish Grand National Assembly on 1 November 1936, Atatürk drew attention to the success achieved by Turkish archaeologists in Alaca Höyük.

The exhibition begins with this speech made by Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Turkish Grand National Assembly:

“The 5,500-year-old material Turkish history documents unearthed by the Turkish Historical Society as a result of the excavations in Alaca Höyük are of a nature that requires a re-examination and deepening of the world’s cultural history.”

(1 November 1936, Atatürk)

Above: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1925

The exhibition also includes Roman period archaeological artifacts unearthed from the Kırklareli Vize tumuli by Arif Müfid Mansel, who carried out the first methodical classical excavations of the Republic of Turkey between 1936 and 1939.

Atatürk wanted to see the works unearthed during Mansel’s excavations in the Vize tombs while he was in his sick bed.

These were brought to Dolmabahçe Palace in the autumn of 1938.

Atatürk examined these works carefully, put the golden ring depicting a stork and a fox in the exhibition on his finger, and turned to Arif Mufid Mansel and said:

“Continue the excavations, you will find more of the cultural riches of our country.”

This event in the last days of Ataturk’s life shows the depth of his interest in archeology and historical research.

Above: Dolmabahçe Palace, İstanbul

The fact that the “In Pursuit of an Ideal: Atatürk and Alaca Höyük” exhibition highlights the visions and competencies of both Atatürk and his accompanying Republican staff in a specific field such as archaeology places the exhibition in a special position.

Exquisitely crafted silver inlaid bronze deer and bull statues, sun discs, idols, gold jewellery, jugs and goblets belonging to the Hatti civilization, unearthed during the Alaca Höyük excavations carried out by Turkish archaeologists using scientific methods, and belonging to the Hittites who came to the stage of history after the Hattians in Anatolia.

The exhibition, which includes archaeological artifacts, spreads over three floors of Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts.

On the first floor of the exhibition, visitors are greeted by a decoville (wagon), which was purchased at Atatürk’s request and used in the first years of the Alaca Höyük excavations.

Additionally, a bronze ingot found in Alaca Höyük, which is considered the ancestor of the coin and placed in the coin collection of Yapı Kredi Museum, can also be seen on this floor.

On the second floor, the development of Turkish archeology in the Republican Period, the archaeological research carried out in Anatolia and Thrace in the Early Republic Period, the cultural layers of the Çorum/Alaca Höyük settlement and the impressive common culture of the Hatti world in the Kızılırmak Arc, the life of the people and the ruling class and the original burial traditions.

It is conveyed to visitors accompanied by artifacts and information panels.

On the 3rd floor, the level of art achieved by the Hittites in the monumental architecture and sculpture of Alaca Höyük, the connection with the natural environment, and findings related to religious, daily and social life are presented in thematic sections.

On this floor, humanity’s habit of residential architecture and use of daily items, which has been going on for about 6,000 years, is compared.

The cultural continuity of Anatolia throughout the ages is emphasized through archaeological and ethnographic objects.”

In the days that follow we find ourselves at both ends of the Avenue.

To the north, Taksim Square.

To the south, the Tünel.

The day before the Big Day, they sent a few animals out on the train as a trial run.

They survived.

That taken care of, the champagne was uncorked on 17 January 1875.

The new Metro was solemnly inaugurated.

The oompah band first blasted out the Aziziye March for Sultan Abdülaziz, then “God Save the Queen“.

After all, it was a British company that financed the project, at a time when the Ottoman Empire was heading straight for state bankruptcy.

Above: Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz (1830 -1876)

There is a valley station in Karaköy and a hill station in Beyoğlu.

Above: Karaköy Tünel Station

Two stations.

No more.

A trip on the funicular lasts only 90 seconds.

Above: Beyoğlu Tünel Station

Still, the official definition of an underground doesn’t take the number of stations, the length of the journey or the technology behind it into account.

A train running under the ground is an underground, so İstanbulites can boast the 2nd oldest underground in the world after London’s “Tube“.

Above: Logo of London’s Underground, the “Tube“

They are proud of their Tünel, line F2 of the İstanbul Metro.

If you have ever walked in the midday heat from Karakoy to Beyoğlu, you will understand why.

The journey from steam engine to electric power, historical and statistical data and more – all of this is detailed in the information panels in both stations.

Their tiled walls make the stations worth a visit.

Above: Karaköy Station

Once you get to the top, wander over to the building across from the entrance to the Tünel system, recognizable by its tall tiled chimney.

This is the former workshop building where steam engines were serviced before the electrification of the Tünel train.

Today, the building is used by the IETT, Istanbul’s transport company, which looks after buses, Metros, trams and the Tünel train.

Above: Logo of the İstanbul Electricity, Tram and Tunnel Establishments (IETT) (İstanbul Elektrik, Tramvay ve Tünel İşletmeleri)

Taksim Square (Taksim Meydanı), situated in Beyoğlu in the European part of Istanbul, is a major tourist and leisure district famed for its restaurants, shops, and hotels.

It is considered the heart of modern Istanbul, with the central station of the Istanbul Metro network.

Above: Taksim Square, İstanbul

Above: Taksim station of Taksim–Kabataş funicular (F1) in Istanbul

Taksim Square is also the location of the Republic Monument (Cumhuriyet Anıtı) which was inaugurated in 1928.

The monument commemorates the 5th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, following the Turkish War of Independence.

Above: Monument of the Republic, Taksim Square

The square is flanked to the south by the Marmara Hotel, to the east by the Atatürk Cultural Centre, to the north by Gezi Park and to the west by Taksim Mosque.

Above: Marmara Hotel İstanbul Taksim

Above: Atatürk Cultural Centre, İstanbul

Above: Taksim Geza Park

Above: Taksim Mosque

Several major roads converge on the square: Gümüşsuyu Caddesi, Cumhuriyet Caddesi, Tarlabaşı Bulvarı, İstiklal Caddesi and Sıraselviler Caddesi.

The word Taksim means “division” or “distribution” in Arabic.

Taksim Square was originally the point where the main water lines from the north of Istanbul were collected and branched off to other parts of the city (hence the name.)

This use for the area was established by Sultan Mahmud I.

Above: Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I (1696 – 1754)

The square takes its name from the Ottoman era stone reservoir which is located along one side of the Square.

Above: Taksim Square, 1880

Another significant building that once stood on the square was the 19th century Taksim Artillery Barracks (Taksim Kışlası, which later became the Taksim Stadium), but which was demolished in 1940 during the construction works for Taksim Square and Taksim Gezi Park.

Above: Taksim Artillery Barracks, which later became the Taksim Stadium, was demolished in 1940 and replaced by the Taksim Gezi Park in 1943.

The Square used to be an important venue for political protests.

• On 16 February 1969, some 150 leftist demonstrators were injured during clashes with right wing groups in what is known as “Bloody Sunday“.

Bloody Sunday (Kanlı Pazar) is the name given to a counter-revolutionary response to a leftist protest that occurred on 16 February 1969, in Istanbul’s Beyazıt Square.

At eleven o’clock ten thousands of left-wing students supported by labour unions and the labour party started gathering in Beyazıt in order to protest against the dropping anchor of the United States Sixth Fleet at the Bosporus.

The route of demonstration began at the Beyazıt Square, went over Karaköy, Tophane and Gümüşsuyu where they paid tribute to death of the student Vedat Demircioğlu at the Istanbul Technical University.

Meanwhile, right-wing students met at the Dolmabahçe Mosque for the suppression of the leftist protest and prayed before they moved on.

The police, the official representative of the state, was already waiting at Taksim for both wings.

Around 4 pm, finally, the clash occurred at Taksim Square and turned the streets into a battlefield.

Batons and knives were pulled.

Molotov cocktails were hurled.

The day resulted in the death of two leftist people and numerous injured.

Above: Coverage in the Hürriyet of the protest. Kanlı Pazar translates as “Bloody Sunday“.

• In the events known as the Taksim Square Massacre, 36 left-wing demonstrators were killed by unidentified and allegedly right-wing gunmen on the square during the Labour Day demonstrations of 1 May 1977.

The Taksim Square massacre (Kanlı 1 Mayıs, or the Bloody First of May) was an attack on leftist demonstrators on 1 May 1977 (International Workers’ Day) in Taksim Square.

Casualty figures vary between 34 and 42 persons killed and 126 and 220 injured.

Over 500 demonstrators were later detained by the security forces.

98 were indicted.

None of the perpetrators were caught, although suspicion soon fell on the Counter-Guerrilla and associated right-wing groups.

The massacre was part of the wave of political violence in Turkey in the late 1970s.

The number of participants in the Labour Day celebrations on Taksim Square in 1977 is usually estimated at 500,000. 

Many participants and in particular the Maoist bloc had not even entered the Square when shots were heard.

Most witnesses stated that they came from the building of the water supply company (Sular İdaresi) and the Sheraton Hotel (re-branded in 1996 as the Intercontinental Hotel and now known as the Marmara Hotel), the tallest building in Istanbul in 1977.

Subsequently, security forces entered with armoured vehicles making much noise with their sirens and explosives.

They also hosed the crowd with pressurized water.

People tried to escape through Kazancı Yokuşu, the nearest exit from the Square, but a police vehicle blocked their escape route.

Most casualties were caused by the panic that the police intervention created.

Above: “Worker raising the world in his hands” logo prepared for 1 May 1977

• On 10 August 1982, Artin Penik, a Turkish Armenian, set himself on fire to protest the Esenboga airport attack by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia.

(The Ankara Esenboğa Airport attack was an attack on Ankara Esenboğa Airport, 28 km (17 miles) northeast of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, on 7 August 1982.

The attack was perpetrated by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). 

Above: Logo of ASALA

Nine people were killed and 72 injured during the attack.)

Penik, a 61-year-old, self-employed tailor, set himself on fire in Taksim Square, after leaving a suicide note in which he wrote:

“I can no longer bear the grief over slayings of innocent people.“

Above: Artin Penik (1921 – 1982)

In the attack which led to Penik’s suicide protest, ASALA directly targeted civilians for the first time, opening fire in a crowded passenger waiting room at the Ankara airport. 

While in hospital, he was visited by the Armenian Patriarch Shnork Kaloustian who described him as “a symbol of Armenian discontent with these brutal murders“.

Penik was interviewed for television in the hospital two days before his death, during which he called for all world governments to unite against terrorism, declaring that those countries which tolerated terror would one day find themselves facing it directed towards them and wished that God give patience to the Turkish people.

He further stated that his original plan had been to self-immolate in front of the French General Consulate, but he changed his mind at the last moment, and decided to die in the “presence of Atatürk” in Taksim.

Penik died in the emergency ward of the Istanbul Cerrahpaşa Hospital five days after his attempted suicide. 

His funeral, held at the Surp Asdvadzadzin Patriarchal Church was attended by Armenians and Turks as well as by government officials.

The funeral procession filled the streets of the Kumkapı district.

Above: Grave of Artin Penik, Balıklı Armenian Cemetery, Istanbul

• Taksim Square was the location of football riots in 2000 when two Leeds United fans were stabbed to death during clashes with Galatasaray fans, the night before the 1999 – 2000 UEFA Cup semi-final first leg match between the two teams.

The 2000 UEFA Cup semi-final violence in Istanbul, between fans of English football team Leeds United and Turkish team Galatasaray on 5 April 2000, the day before the first match of their UEFA Cup semi-final, led to two Leeds fans being stabbed to death by Galatasaray fans.

Galatasaray had a reputation of creating a hostile atmosphere surrounding their home matches.

Leeds travelled there aiming to reach the UEFA Cup Final in order to win in their last chance of silver of their season.

The violence occurred at 21:00 in Istanbul’s Taksim Square during a fight between Leeds fans and Galatasaray fans the day before their UEFA Cup semi-final first leg at Galatasaray’s Ali Sami Yen Stadium in Istanbul on 6 April 2000.

Turkish accounts of the events stated that Leeds fans had been taunting people from local bars, which led to the Turkish police being called in to stop fights from breaking out. 

Above: Leeds United Football Club logo

There were reports that a Galatasaray fan had run to a nearby telephone box to call for support when he saw Leeds fans arriving.

Several Galatasaray fans, reportedly members of a gang called “The Night Watchmen“, entered the area shortly afterwards, precipitating a fight between the two sets of supporters which led to the two Leeds fans, Kevin Speight, 40, and Christopher Loftus, 37, being stabbed to death. 

Police arrested Ali Umit Demir and three other men for the stabbings.

The first moments of the fight are unclear with witness accounts of the brawl either being started by Leeds fans throwing beer glasses at Galatasaray fans and insulting the Turkish flag or being started by Galatasaray fans throwing chairs or ambushing Leeds fans with knives.

The deaths led to an angry reaction in England with Galatasaray fans being banned from attending the second leg in England.

Above: Galatasaray team logo

The day after the violence, flowers, scarves and shirts were laid outside the Elland Road gates (Leeds) in tribute.

The statue of former Leeds United captain Billy Bremner (1942 – 1997) which was outside the stadium also had a black armband placed on it as a symbol of the club mourning. 

Above: Billy Bremner statue outside Elland Road Stadium, Leeds, England

Leeds United installed a brass plaque in Elland Road to remember those who had been killed in the violence.

Above: Ellend Road Stadium, Leeds, England

Before the second leg, there were advertisements in British newspapers calling for calm, with the messages in the adverts also being translated into Turkish.

Despite this, police warned local Turkish businesses to close early.

When Galatasaray officials arrived at Elland Road for the second leg, hundreds of Leeds fans attacked the buses that were carrying them which delayed the kick-off of the second leg. 

During the first minute of the match, Leeds fans turned their backs on the match in protest at what was viewed as a lack of justice. 

Above: A Battle of Nerves. Photo from the critical second leg match between Galatasaray and Leeds United in 2000 UEFA Cup.

Leeds lost the tie 4–2 on aggregate.

On the day of the final in Copenhagen, Denmark, members of Leeds United’s hooligan firm the Leeds United Service Crew, joined members of other British hooligan firms led by Arsenal’s firm.

In Copenhagen, they met up in order to enact revenge attacks on Galatasaray fans in City Hall Square.

The 2000 UEFA Cup Final Riots, also known as the Battle of Copenhagen, were a series of riots in City Hall Square, Copenhagen, Denmark between fans of English football team Arsenal and Turkish team Galatasaray around the 2000 UEFA Cup Final on 17 May 2000.

Four people were stabbed in the scuffles, which also involved fans from other clubs and were viewed by the media as part of a retaliation for the killing of two Leeds United fans by Galatasaray supporters the month before.

The events of the day started early in the morning when skirmishes broke out in a bar, which led to an Arsenal fan being stabbed.

Later in the day, Galatasaray fans occupied City Hall Square before heading towards Arsenal fans in bars nearby.

The Galatasaray fans were later attacked from behind by members of British hooligan firms seeking revenge for the Istanbul stabbings.

The police had prior warning of potential trouble and deployed 2,000 officers to the area, yet they were unable to control the riot until they fired tear gas.

This led to 19 injuries, including four stabbings, and 60 arrests with similar events occurring in England and Turkey in the aftermath of the riots.

Football authorities condemned the riots and threatened to expel national football teams from European competition if such events happened again.

The Danish police were also criticized for their mishandling of the riots.

Above: City Hall Square, Copenhagen, Denmark

In 2002, after an adjournment from 2001 where some of the defendants failed to appear in court, Demir was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment which was reduced from 30 years as it was not clear who was the sole cause of the deaths.

This sentence was negatively received by residents of Istanbul who said that Demir was a “patriot“. 

In 2005, he was released for a retrial after a change in Turkish law and after an appeal in 2003 was successful. 

Eventually one of the Turkish attackers was sentenced to 10 years, while three others were sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison.

• On 31 October 2010, a suicide bomb went off next to a police bus.

The 2010 Istanbul bomb blast was a suicide bombing that took place on Taksim Square on 31 October 2010.

The blast was reportedly a suicide bombing, targeting the riot officers and police vehicles typically stationed in the area. 

Multiple additional explosive devices were reportedly discovered at the scene of the incident after bomb squads examined the area.

Seventeen of the injured were civilians, while fifteen were police.

The bomb resulted in at least 32 injuries, 15 of whom were police officers and was claimed by a Kurdish secessionist group known as the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK).

The bomber, a TAK militant, died, while 15 police officers and 17 civilians were injured.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks or TAK (Kurdish: Teyrêbazên Azadiya Kurdistan), is a Kurdish nationalist militant group in Turkey seeking an independent Kurdish state in Turkish Kurdistan (eastern and southeastern Turkey).

The group also opposes the Turkish government’s policies towards Kurds in Turkey.

The group presents itself as a break-away faction of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in open dissent with the PKK’s readiness to compromise with the Turkish state.

The PKK distances itself from the TAK, stating that the Turkish government uses the TAK to portray the PKK as a terrorist organization in the international arena, that the PKK only targets the Turkish Armed Forces or their proxies, that it always takes responsibility for its attacks, and that there are no links between the PKK and TAK.

Above: TAK flag

Following many other violent incidents, all protests and demonstrations have been banned.

Today police units maintain a round-the-clock presence to prevent any incidents.

It has been many years since either May Day or New Year’s Day events were permitted to take place in the Square, with much of the surrounding area usually fenced off for the day and the Metro station often closed to prevent people gathering.

Taksim Gezi Park is a small green park in the midst of the concrete expanse of central Istanbul.

In 2013, the city municipality, wanting to rebuild the old barracks as a shopping venue on the site of the park, began forcefully removing protesters who had set up camp in the park.

After news spread of the police brutality, thousands of people rallied in the Occupy Taksim movement, to stop the demolition of the Park.

Above: Taksim Gezi Park protests, 8 June 2013

Taksim is a main transportation hub and a popular destination for both tourists and residents of Istanbul. 

İstiklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue), a long pedestrian shopping street, ends at this square, and a nostalgic tram runs from the square along the avenue, ending near the Tünel (1875).

In addition to serving as the main transfer point for the municipal bus system, Taksim Square is also the terminus of the Hacıosman-4.

Levent-Taksim-Yenikapı subway line of the Istanbul Metro.

Taksim’s position was given an extra boost on 29 June 2006, when the new Kabataş-Taksim Funicular line F1 connecting the Taksim Metro station with the Kabataş tramway station and Seabus port was opened, allowing people to ascend to Taksim in just 110 seconds.

The Republic Monument (Cumhuriyet Anıtı) is a notable monument located at Taksim Square to commemorate the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Designed by Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica (1869 – 1959) and built in two and a half years with financial support from the population, it was unveiled on 8 August 1928.

The 11 m (36 ft) high monument portrays the founders of the Turkish Republic, with prominent depictions of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, İsmet İnönü and Fevzi Çakmak.

Above: Turkish President İsmet İnönü (1886 – 1973)

Above: Turkish Prime Minister Fevzi Çakmak (1876 – 1950)

The monument has two sides:

The side facing north depicts Atatürk in military uniform during the Turkish War of Independence, while the side facing south (towards İstiklal Avenue) has Atatürk and his comrades dressed in modern Western clothing.

The former symbolizing his role as military commander-in-chief, and the latter symbolizing his role as statesman.

Above: Monument of the Republic, Taksim Square, İstanbul

Semyon Ivanovich Aralov, Ambassador of the Russian SFSR in Ankara during the Turkish War of Independence, is among the group of people behind Atatürk (his figure wears a cap and stands behind İsmet İnönü, on the southern facade of the monument).

Above: Russian statesman Semyon Aralov (1880 – 1969)

His presence in the Monument, ordered by Atatürk, points out to the financial and military aid sent by Vladimir Lenin in 1920, during the Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1922).

Above: Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)

Cumhuriyet Anıtı is an important site, where official ceremonies on national holidays are being held.

On the southern façade, behind Atatürk, there are two forgotten figures:

• Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, an outstanding figure of the Bolshevik Revolution
• Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, who defended Leningrad against the Nazi invaders.

Lenin had sent Frunze to Ankara as a special ambassador.

In his speeches, he showed strong support for the Turkish nationalist movement during the War of Independence (1920 – 1922) and visited the Sakarya front.

Above: Soviet army officer Mikhail Frunze (1885 – 1925)

Voroshilov, for his part, was sent specifically as a military advisor to the Turkish army.

Above: Soviet statesman Kliment Voroshilov (1881 – 1969)

The advice offered by Frunze and Voroshilov had an undoubted influence on Turkish strategy, to the extent that the Battle of Sakarya (23 August – 13 September 1921) seemed to have been inspired by the “scorched earth” policy beloved of Peter the Great and used against Napoleon and Hitler.

Above: Russian Tsar Peter I (1672 – 1725)

Above: French Emperor Napoleon I (1769 – 1821) retreats from Russia

Above: Germans retreat from Russia

Above: The battle took place along the Sakarya River, around the vicinity of Polatlı, and had a battle line 100 km (62 mi) long.

(The Greek offensive, under King Constantine I as Supreme Commander of the Greek Forces in Asia, was committed on 16 July 1921, and skilfully executed.

Above: Greek King Constantine I (1868 – 1923)

A feint towards the Turkish right flank at Eskişehir distracted Ismet Pasha just as the major assault fell on the left at Afyonkarahisar.

Above: View of Afyonkarahisar Castle

The Greeks then wheeled their axis to the north, swept towards Eskişehir and rolled up the Turkish defence in a series of frontal assaults that was combined with flanking movements.

Above: Sazova Park, Eskişehir

Eskişehir fell on 17 July despite a vigorous counterattack by Ismet Pasha (İnönü), who was determined to fight to the finish.

Above: İsmet İnönü

The saner counsels of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) prevailed, however, and Ismet disengaged with great losses to reach the comparative safety of the Sakarya River, some 30 miles (48 km) to the north and only 50 miles (80 km) from Ankara.

Above: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The determining feature of the terrain was the River itself, which flows eastward across the plateau, suddenly curves south and then turns back westwards.

The great loop described forms a natural barrier.

The river banks are awkward and steep.

Bridges were few with only two on the frontal section of the loop.

East of the loop, the landscape rises before an invader in rocky, barren ridges and hills towards Ankara.

It was in those hills, east of the river that the Turks dug in their defensive positions.

The front followed the hills east of the Sakarya River from a point near Polatlı southwards to the place at which the Gök River joins the Sakarya, and then swung at right angles eastwards, following the line of the Gök River.

The region was excellent defensive ground.

Above: Sakarya River

For the Greeks, the question was one of whether to dig in and rest on their previous gains, or to advance towards Ankara in great effort and destroy the Army of the Grand National Assembly.

Above: Emblem of the Turkish Armed Forces

Either option was difficult to resolve and posed the eternal problems with which the Greek staff had to deal since the beginning of the war.

The dangers of extending their lines of communications still further in an inhospitable terrain that killed horses, caused vehicles to break down and prevented the movement of heavy artillery, were obvious.

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Greece (1863 – 1973)

The present front gave the Greeks control of the essential strategic railway and was tactically most favourable, but the Army of the Grand National Assembly had escaped encirclement at Kütahya, so nothing had been settled.

Above: Kütahya

For the Greeks, that made the temptation of achieving a knockout blow irresistible.

On 10 August, Greek King Constantine I finally committed his forces to an assault against the Sakarya Line.

The Greeks marched hard for nine days before they made contact with the enemy.

The march included an outflanking manoeuvre via the northern part of Anatolia through the Salt Desert, where food and water scarcely existed.

And so the advancing Greek infantry attacked the poor Turkish villages for maize and water, or took meat from the flocks that were pastured on the fringe of the desert.

Above: The Greek 9th infantry Division marches through the Salty Desert in the Central Anatolian Plateau during the August 1921 offensive.

On 23 August, battle was finally joined by the Greeks making contact with the advanced Turkish positions south of the Gök River.

The Turkish General Staff had made its headquarters at Polatlı, on the railway a few miles east of the coast of the Sakarya River, and its troops were prepared to resist.

Above: Çarşı Cami (mosque), Polatlı

On 26 August, the Greeks attacked all along the line.

Crossing the shallow Gök, the infantry fought its way step up onto the heights, where every ridge and hill top had to be stormed against strong entrenchments and withering fire.

By 2 September, the commanding heights of the key Mount Chal were in Greek hands, but once the enveloping movement against the Turkish left flank had failed, the battle descended to a typical head-on confrontation of infantry, machine guns and artillery. 

The Greeks launched their main effort in the centre and pushed forward some 10 miles (16 km) in 10 days through the Turks’ second line of defence.

Some Greek units came as close as 31 miles (50 km) to the city of Ankara. 

For the Greeks, this was the peak of their achievement in the Asia Minor Campaign.

For days during the battle, neither ammunition nor food had reached the front because of successful harassment of the Greek lines of communications and raids behind the Greek lines by Turkish cavalry.

All of the Greek troops were committed to the battle, but fresh Turkish draftees were still arriving throughout the campaign in response to the Turkish National Movement’s mobilization.

(The Turkish National Movement (Millî Hareket), also known as the Anatolian Movement (Anadolu Hareketi), or the Nationalist Movement (Milliyetçi Hareket), included political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries that resulted in the creation and shaping of the modern Republic of Turkey, as a consequence of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the subsequent occupation of Constantinople and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies under the terms of the Armistice of Mudros.

The Turkish revolutionaries rebelled against this partitioning and against the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 by the Ottoman government.

Most revolutionaries were former members of the Committee of Union and Progress.

This establishment of an alliance of Turkish revolutionaries during the partitioning resulted in the Turkish War of Independence, the genocides of the Anatolian native nations, the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate on 1 November 1922 and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923.

The movement organized itself into the Association for the Defence of National Rights of Anatolia and Rumeli, which eventually declared that the only source of governance for the Turkish people would be the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

The movement was created in 1919 through a series of agreements and conferences throughout Anatolia and Thrace.

The process was aimed to unite independent movements around the country to build a common voice and is attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as he was the primary spokesperson, public figure, and military leader of the movement.)

Above: Prominent nationalists at the Sivas Congress, 4 – 11 September 1919 

Left to right: Muzaffer Kılıç (1897 – 1959), Hüseyin Rauf (Orbay)(1881 – 1964), Bekir Sami (Kunduh) (1867 – 1933), Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), Ruşen Eşref (Ünaydın) (1892 – 1959), Cemil Cahit (Toydemir) (1883 – 1956) and Cevat Abbas (Gürer)(1887 – 1943)

All of those causes ended the impetus of the Greek attack.

For a few days, there was a lull in the fighting during which neither of the exhausted armies could press an attack. 

Constantine, who commanded the battle personally, was almost taken prisoner by a Turkish patrol.

Astute as ever at the decisive moment, Mustafa Kemal assumed personal command of the Turkish forces and led a small counterattack against the Greek left, around Mount Chal, on 8 September.

The Greek line held.

The attack itself achieved a limited military success, but the fear that presaged a major Turkish effort to outflank their forces, while the severity of the winter was approaching, made Constantine break off the Greek assault on 14 September 1921.

That made Anastasios Papoulas order a general retreat toward Eskişehir and Afyonkarahisar.

The Greek troops evacuated Mount Chal, which had been taken at such a cost, and they retired unmolested across the Sakarya River to the positions that they had left a month earlier and took their guns and equipment with them.

In the line of the retreating army, nothing was left that could benefit the Turks.

Railways and bridges were blown up and villages were burnt in what developed into a scorched earth policy.

The retreat from Sakarya marked the end of the Greeks’ hopes to impose a settlement on Turkey by force of arms.

In May 1922, Papoulas and his complete staff resigned and was replaced by General Georgios Hatzianestis, who proved much more inept than his predecessor.

Above: Greek General Georgios Hatzianestis (1863 – 1922)

On the other hand, Mustafa Kemal returned to Ankara, where the Grand National Assembly awarded him the rank of Field Marshal of the Army and the title of Gazi to render its honours as the saviour of the Turkish nation.

Above: Seal of the Turkish Parliament

According to the speech that was delivered years later before the same National Assembly at the Second General Conference of the Republican People’s Party, (15 – 20 October 1927), Kemal was said to have ordered that “not an inch of the country should be abandoned until it was drenched with the blood of the citizens” once he realised that the Turkish Army was losing ground rapidly and that virtually no natural defences were left between the battle line and Ankara.

For the Turkish troops, the battle was the turning point of the war, which would develop in a series of important military clashes against the Greeks and drive the invaders out of Asia Minor during the Turkish War of Independence.

The Greeks could do nothing but fight to secure their retreat.)

Above: Scenes from the Turkish War of Independence

Clockwise from top left: Delegation gathered in Sivas Congress to determine the objectives of the Turkish National Movement, Turkish civilians carrying ammunition to the front, Kuva-yi Milliye infantry, Turkish horse cavalry in chase, the Turkish Army’s capture of Smyrna (Izmir), troops in Ankara’s Ulus Square preparing to leave for the front.

The scorched earth tactic consisted, in brief, of allowing the enemy to advance as far as possible, separating it from its base and destroying its supply sources.

Thus weakened and cut off from its main forces, the enemy would be forced to withdraw.

Above: Sherman’s March to the Sea

Sherman’s March to the Sea (also known as the Savannah campaign or simply Sherman’s March) was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from 15 November until 21 December 1864, by William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 – 1891), Major General of the Union Army.

The campaign began on 15 November with Sherman’s troops leaving Atlanta, recently taken by Union forces, and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on 21 December.

His forces followed a “scorched earth” policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property, disrupting the Confederacy’s economy and transportation networks.

The operation debilitated the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender. 

Sherman’s decision to operate deep within enemy territory without supply lines was unusual for its time, and the campaign is regarded by some historians as an early example of modern warfare or total war.)

The Soviet government, which supported the Turkish cause as an anti-imperialist struggle, offered vital economic and military support.

The very first documentary films on the Turkish War of Independence were even shot on Soviet cameras.

Turko-Soviet relations nevertheless deteriorated rapidly, in particular due to the methods used by Frunze to suppress the revolts of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia.

The two Soviet generals of Taksim were thus forgotten and only “rediscovered” after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Above: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 8 November 1989.

The photo shows a part of a public photo documentation wall at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

İstiklal Avenue represents the greed of the West and the mercantilism of the Middle East, the civilized pretense of the West and the direct brutality of the Middle East.

This is a shopper’s Shangri-la, a nightcrawler’s Nirvana.

If you have got money to spend, chances are strong that it is along this Avenue where you will spend it.

The past is prologue, the present is a path of pleasure, the future fraught with frantic fear.

People have died on this street and yet the crowds will always return to this route between the monument and the miniature Metro.

Nationalism is proudly pretended and easily evaded in the name of gain along this Avenue.

I seek solace in bookshops and smile at the tram as it passes by.

I will lighten my wallet and enlarge my library.

The Avenue could be anywhere in any major city in any country.

This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome.

Couples stroll solemnly in crowds like locusts consuming what they can have, coveting what they can’t.

The Western visitor celebrates the disparity between currencies while the Turks dream of the delights of unchecked greed.

This is every man’s excitement and no man’s fulfillment.

We will join the crowds and yet feel isolated amongst them.

This is any main meander found in any major metropolis.

Change the signage and this could be Rue Ste-Catherine in Montréal or Bank Street in Ottawa, Rue St-Jean in Québec or Yonge Street in Toronto.

Above: rue Sainte Catherine, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Above: Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Above: rue Saint Jean, Ville de Québec, Québec, Canada

Above: Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

İstanbul, from the perspective of the Avenue, seems like a conglomeration of engorged suburbs, scrupulously patrolled and income segregated, where motorists manically muster and pedestrians plod the pavement.

The Avenue has had its artists and poets and radicals, but they are tolerated as long as their dissent is silent and unseen.

The sidewalks are lined with shops, bars, stalls, dance halls, movies, booths shadows in day, lamplit at night..

And everywhere are strangers with strange manners.

İstanbul, like any other Turkish town or city, like anywhere else on the planet, is organized around consumption and production.

Public space is merely the crowded void between workplaces, shops and dwellings.

İstiklal is civilization imposed upon the human spirit.

The manners are rough beneath a veneer of courtesy.

The low reach high, the common crave quality, the erotic is dangerous and revolutionary.

Here as anywhere else on Earth.

Women sell their sexuality in fabric and fragrance.

Men toil to slake their insatiable thirst.

The Avenue is a procession of the public, a ceaseless celebration of consumerism, not an oasis of humanity but rather a desert of the spirit.

I pretend a pleasure I do not feel, for a man seeks solace in the company of a woman.

She does not see me, but is distracted by displays in windows and comforted by the cacophony of the community that beckons her beneath doorways to purchase what she can while she can.

She is seduced by the sellers and I am drawn in by her delight.

Here as anywhere else on Earth.

Sources

• Wikipedia
• Google Photos
• Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
• Emre Öktem, Secret Istanbul
• George Orwell, Animal Farm
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Marcus X. Schmid, 111 Places in Istanbul That You Must Not Miss
• Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
• Hilary Sumner – Boyd and John Freely, Strolling Through Istanbul