'Türkan' conquers pop culture with a biopic

Having devoted her life to battling leprosy and promoting girls’ education in Turkey, the late Türkan Saylan’s final days were a trying affair following a much-publicized police raid on her home. Now, following a short-lived TV series on her life, a feature film about the activist’s unflinching persona as a fighter is set to hit screens across the country

It sounds quite far-fetched to see a girl who was about to fall victim to an honor killing in southeastern Turkey turn up years later as a representative of UNICEF, or someone suffering from leprosy become a nurse. But perhaps it is even more far-fetched to see that one woman was responsible for these and hundreds of similar stories.

That woman is Türkan Saylan, the leading character in a short-lived TV series, and now, a feature film. That woman, however, is not a fictitious character; instead, she is arguably the equivalent of Mother Theresa for modern Turkey.

A university professor and a doctor specializing in leprosy, Saylan battled the disease for decades. She was also the founder of a secularist association devoted to educational grants for girls from the poorer areas of Turkey. Throughout the years, her name became synonymous with the Association for the Support for Contemporary Living Association, or ÇYDD.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)

Tollbooth clerk on the verge of a nervous breakdown

In ‘Gişe Memuru’ (Toll Booth), director Tolga Karaçelik sends his protagonist, a tollbooth clerk, to a remote highway, making his humdrum existence even more pronounced. Serkan Ercan’s award-winning performance breathes life into a character on the verge of insanity

With thousands of jobs being just variations on the assembly lines of the Industrial Revolution, Kenan’s job might top the list with its painfully boring repetitive nature and lack of breathing space. Kenan, the leading character in Tolga Karaçelik’s debut feature Gişe Memuru (Toll Booth), is a clerk in a tollbooth connecting the endless highways spread throughout Turkey. Day in and day out, his job is to collect the money from the vehicles and raise the guard fence, letting cars and trucks continue along their route.

Serkan Ercan’s Kenan is a character who keeps his frustration under a composed expression and a poised attitude. With a permanent frown upon his face, he never smiles. But what tollbooth worker smiles? As he drops in the tollbooth plaza at the start and end of his shift, he has minimal exchanges with his colleagues.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)

KÜF Project brings subversive street art to Ankara

A urinal over the ugly tiles of one of Ankara's underpasses, 'No Parking' signs turned into peace signs, sidewalk barriers transformed into Pac-Man's 'pac-dots' - all are the work of Ankara's street art collective, the KÜF Project. The Hürriyet Daily News talks to members of the movement that makes Turkey's capital city a little more colorful each day

There were more smiles than usual in Ankara when the round sidewalk barriers on Cinnah Street, one of the capital’s main roads, turned into yellow “pac-dots” from the Pac-Man video game. Cut outs of Pac-Man and his nemesis Blinky face off over a line of dots that Pac-Man surely would like to gobble right up.

The guerilla installation was the work of Ankara’s collective street art movement, the KÜF Project, which has also turned “No Parking” signs into peace signs and “No Entry” street signs into the jerseys of the Turkish national football team, replicating the 4-4-2 formation of the team in the match against Bosnia in 2009, which led Turkey to be disqualified from the World Cup.

The idea, the group says in its manifesto, is “not to pollute the streets,” but “to color them with dormant energy.”

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)

Kraliyet düğünün mimarı Prenses Diana

Gelinle, gelinlikle ve baldızla ilgili tüm Twitter mesajları, Facebook yorumları ve haberlerin arkasında gizlenen iki büyük soruyu unutmamak gerekiyor. Monarşi değişen dünya düzeninde ne anlama geliyor? Ve Diana olmasaydı, kraliyet düğünü bu kadar sempatiyle karşılanabilir miydi?

İki bine yakın davetlinin İngiliz bahçelerini hatırlatan yeni dekorasyonuyla Westminster Kilisesi’nde, bir milyon kişinin Londra sokaklarında, iki milyar kişinin de televizyondan izlediği kraliyet düğünü sonrası konuşulanlar genelde aynı yerde noktalanıyordu. Bir masal düğününe tanık olmuş, en şüphecilerimiz bile bu mükemmel organizasyonu suratlarında kocaman tebessümlerle izlemiştik.

Monarşinin çağın gerisinde kalmış bir kurum olduğuna inananların artık Cambridge Düşesi olan Kate Middleton’un gelinliğinden heyecanla söz etmesini, ya da tarihinin en kötü ekonomilerinden birini yaşayan İngiltere’nin vatandaşlarının gelin ve damadın bir kez daha öpüşmeleri için çığlık çığlığa bağırmalarını anlamak zor.

Gelinle, gelinlikle, baldızla, damadın mahcup bakışlarıyla ve o rüküş şapkalarla ilgili tüm Twitter mesajları, Facebook yorumları ve haberlerin arkasında gizlenen kocaman bir soru duruyor aslında. Monarşi değişen, karmaşık ve modernitenin yeni bir boyutuna geçmiş dünya için ne anlama geliyor?

Yazının devamı British Council Blog'da

‘Filedelfiya’ stories unmask small town life

Yeşim Erdem’s collection of stories, ‘Filedelfiya Hikayeleri’ (Filedelfiya Stories) is an honest, and at times brutal, look at small-town life, the comfort and burden of families, and remembrance for times and places left behind over the course of someone’s life. The Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review asks Erdem whether one can ever go back home

Photo: Burcu Çağlayan

With a collection of four stories on the comfort and burden of families, and nostalgia for childhood and all things lost – or never gained in the past – Yeşim Erdem’s Filedelfiya Hikayeleri (Philadelphia Stories) is an exploration on small-town life.

Filedelfiya here is not the city that once was the symbol of colonial America, and now one of the largest cities in the U.S. The stories have no relation either to the 1940 movie that made Katharine Hepburn a box office name, The Philadelphia Story. Filedelfiya here is an Aegean town in Turkey that no longer bears that name from antiquity and the Middle Ages.

One of the first ancient cities in the world, Filedelfiya is now a small town, known for its dried raisins and vineyards. And the town was also once home to writer Erdem, who prefers to refer to her hometown as Filedelfiya, not Alaşehir, perhaps to emphasize the transcendent nature of her stories that could come from any place in Anatolia, and who thinks the most distinctive quality of the town was simply the grape vines.

Filedelfiya Hikayeleri features four stories that are seen through the eyes of four people, spanning a period of four decades. The story of a little girl’s foray into the reality of stigmas attached to a certain kind of small-town woman is followed by a young man’s brush with unrequited love in the most unlikely place. The third story features a “bad guy,” who refuses to accept any responsibility in a life that would make him feel good and worthy, while the final and the longest story centers around a woman who returns to her town and to her family for one final visit upon her mother’s death.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)