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Whose Crisis? Syrian Refugees and the Turkish Stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2022

EMİNE FİŞEK
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Abstract

Since the eruption of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the arrival of refugees in Turkey has been unprecedented in the country's history. Theatre practitioners have been slow to address this migratory moment, but an exception has been Istanbul-based Dostlar Tiyatrosu's 2017 production Göçmenleeeer, a translation of Romanian–French playwright Matéi Visniec's Migraaaants. Developed in the context of Europe's own migratory ‘crisis’, Migraaaants is composed of a series of vignettes that critique European refugee policy and the deadly economies that it has prompted in the continent's borderlands. What happens when Migraaaants is produced in a national context where the binary of European ‘hosts’ and non-European ‘refugees’ gives way to another set of political identities? How do we assess the emergence of a shared paradigm of ‘crisis’? And finally, where does crisis stand in relation to our ability to imagine a transnational aesthetics of political resistance to anti-immigration policies?

Type
Article
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 28 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2022

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay and Ziya Umut Türem for their suggestions on earlier versions of this essay.

References

Notes

2 Asu Maro, ‘Göçmen İnsanlık Zamanı’, Milliyet, 27 November, 2017, available at www.milliyet.com.tr/yazarlar/asu-maro/gocmen-insanlik-zamani-2563187.

3 Burvill, Tom, ‘“Politics Begin as Ethics”: Levinasian Ethics and Australian Performance Concerning Refugees’, in Balfour, Michael, ed., Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters (Bristol: Intellect, 2013), pp. 199–213Google Scholar, here p. 204.

4 Commentary on the use of documentary, verbatim and testimonial theatre practices concerning refugees runs throughout Helen Gilbert and Sophie Nield's special issue on Performing Asylum in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 13, 2 (2008); Michael Balfour's edited collection Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters (Bristol: Intellect, 2013); and S. E. Wilmer's Performing Statelessness in Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). For more on the convergence between documentary forms and security procedures see Alison Jeffers's discussion of ‘bureaucratic performance’ in Refugees, Theatre, and Crisis: Performing Global Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). For a discussion of the realistic claims and ethical efficacy of documentary theatre see Caroline Wake's ‘To Witness Mimesis: The Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Testimonial Theatre in Through the Wire’, Modern Drama, 56, 1 (2013), pp. 102–25.

5 For a discussion of the role of affect and the modes of witnessing that it makes possible in applied theatre and performance practices in contexts of political violence see James Thompson, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

6 Emma Cox and Caroline Wake, ‘Envisioning Asylum/Engendering Crisis: Or, Performance and Forced Migration 10 Years On’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 23, 2 (2018), pp. 137–47. Whereas Cox and Wake are concerned with crisis as a strategy for conceptualizing asylum, Charlotte McIvor has explored its role in shaping the EU's growing interest in arts and culture vis-à-vis the migrant and refugee crisis, specifically the provision of funding for migrant and minority-ethnic artists. See Charlotte McIvor, ‘When Social Policy Meets Performance Practice: Interculturalism, the European Union, and the “Migratory and Refugee Crisis”’, Theatre Research International, 44, 3 (2019), pp. 230–47.

7 Matéi Visniec, Migraaaants (Paris: Editions L'Oeil du Prince, 2017). All of the following translations are my own.

8 Theatre and performance practices that emerged in response to and during the period surrounding the ‘European refugee crisis’ of 2015–16 include (but are by no means limited to) Anestis Azas's Case Farmakonisi or The Justice of the Water (2015), Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group's Refugee Tales (2015–), the Center for Political Beauty's The Dead are Coming (2015), Efriede Jelinek's Charges or Die Schutzbefohlenen (premiered in 2014, but revised well into 2015), and Yael Ronen and the Gorki Theatre Exile Ensemble's The Winter Journey (2017).

9 Matéi Visniec, ‘Note d'intention’, in Visniec, Migraaaants.

10 For an overview of this trend, see Wilmer, Performing Statelessness in Europe, pp. 11–51.

11 See Meltem Ahıska, ‘Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 102, 2–3 (2003), pp. 351–79.

12 For the latest numbers reported by the Turkish Ministry of the Interior's Directorate General of Migration Management (Göç İdaresi Genel Müdürlüğü) see www.goc.gov.tr/gecici-koruma5638.

13 Cox and Wake, ‘Envisioning Asylum/Engendering Crisis’, p. 140.

14 Steven Erlanger and James Kanter, ‘Plan on Migrants Strains the Limits of Europe's Unity’, New York Times, 22 September 2015, at www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/world/europe/european-union-ministers-migrants-refugees.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news.

15 For details, see ‘EU–Turkey Statement: 18 March 2016’, at www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18/eu-turkey-statement.

16 Visniec, ‘Note d'intention’.

17 Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of Labor (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 7.

18 Visniec, Migraaaants, p. 133–4.

19 Ibid., p. 153.

20 For more on the convergence of humanitarianism and repression see Didier Fassin, ‘Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France’, Cultural Anthropology, 20, 3 (2005), pp. 362–87; and Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011).

21 Visniec, Migraaaants, pp. 50 and 52.

22 Le dernier caravanserail: Odyssées, DVD, dir. Ariane Mnouchkine (Paris: Bel Air Classiques, ARTE France Développement, CNDP, 2006).

23 Visniec, ‘Note d'intention’.

24 Cixous's programme notes are available at www.theatre-du-soleil.fr/fr/notre-theatre/les-spectacles/le-dernier-caravanserail-2003-177.

25 Visniec, ‘Note d'intention’.

26 Emma Cox, ‘Processional Aesthetics and Irregular Transit: Envisioning Refugees in Europe’, Theatre Journal, 69, 4 (2017), pp. 477–96, here p. 479.

27 For the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) overview of refugee-hosting trends see www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

28 Nergis Canefe, ‘Management of Irregular Migration: Syrians in Turkey as Paradigm Shifters for Forced Migration Studies’, New Perspectives on Turkey, 54 (2016), pp. 9–32, here p. 22.

29 Turkish citizenship law also denies citizenship to refugees and asylum seekers, but recent years have witnessed the selective naturalization of candidates with economic capital. See Şebnem Köşer Akçapar and Doğuş Simşek, ‘The Politics of Syrian Refugees in Turkey: A Question of Inclusion and Exclusion through Citizenship’, Social Inclusion, 6, 1 (2018), pp. 176–87, here p. 180.

30 For details, see Canefe, ‘Management of Irregular Migration’.

31 The website teyit.org documents and refutes these false narratives as they emerge. First published on 29 March 2017, it was last updated on 25 July 2019. Available at https://teyit.org/turkiyede-yasayan-suriyelilerle-ilgili-internette-yayilan-22-yanlis-bilgi.

32 Seçil Paçacı Elitok, ‘Mirekoç Working Papers: Three Years On: An Evaluation of the EU–Turkey Refugee Deal, 04/2019’, p. 3, at https://mirekoc.ku.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Mirekoc_Elitok_2019_Report_ThreeYearsOn-AnEvaluationOfTheEU-TurkeyRefugeeDeal.pdf.

33 Several productions are worthy of note. Examples of original playwriting include Can Yeleği (Life Vest), a solo performance written by Gönül Kıvılcım and directed by Nihat Alpteki for the Istanbul City Theatres in 2018, and Hak (Right), another solo performance written by Berkay Ateş, and directed by Ateş and Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu for a joint Turkish, Belgian and German co-production that premiered in Germany in 2014. Although migration to Turkey is inevitably present in both performances, the stress is on women's experiences in the Syrian war; the second is a narrative based on Syrian artist Amal Omran's departure from Damascus and is performed by the artist herself. Other recent productions of European plays on migration are the Plan B Theatre Company's 2017 production of Swedish playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri's Invasion! and the DOT Theatre Company's 2016 production of British playwright Zinnie Harris's How to Hold Your Breath. Neither production is as explicit in its acknowledgement of Turkey's migratory moment as Göçmenleeeer, nor did they circulate as widely.

34 Onur Bakıner, ‘Is Turkey Coming to Terms with its Past? Politics of Memory and Majoritarian Conservatism’, Nationalities Papers, 41, 5 (2013), pp. 691–708, here p. 696.

35 Erkal quoted in Emrah Kolukısa, ‘Sanatçı Genco Erkal: Atatürkçülükleri bir Hesap İşi’, Cumhuriyet, 3 December, 2017, at www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/kultur-sanat/878472/Sanatci_Genco_Erkal__Ataturkculukleri_bir_hesap_isi.html.

36 Dostlar Tiyatrosu's original presentation, referenced throughout media coverage of the production, is available at www.dostlartiyatrosu.com/tiyatro_oyunlar_gocmenleeeer.html.

37 Hayati Asılyazıcı, ‘Göçmenleeeer’, Aydınlık, 31 December 2017, at www.aydinlik.com.tr/gocmenleeeer-hayati-asilyazici-kose-yazilari-aralik-2017.

38 Metin Boran, ‘Göçmenleeeer’, Evrensel, 12 December 2017, at www.evrensel.net/yazi/80458/gocmenleeer.

39 Reşat Kasaba, Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009), p. 125.

40 Soner Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk? (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 91.

41 Köşer Akçapar and Simşek, ‘The Politics of Syrian Refugees in Turkey’, p. 179.

42 İltica ve Göç Araştırmaları Merkezi (İGAM), ‘Media 18-Month Monitoring Report: News Coverage on Refugees and Migration in the National and Local Media, 01.06.2017–30.11.2018’, p. 22, at https://medya.igamder.org/TR/media//ulusal-ve-yerel-medyada-multeci-ve-goc-haberleri-raporu.

43 Erkal quoted in Derya Aydoğan, ‘Müthiş bir tezgah var’, BirGün, 27 November 2017, at www.birgun.net/haber/muthis-bir-tezgah-var-192739.

44 Debarati Sanyal, Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), p. 220.

45 Visniec, Migraaaants, p. 66.

46 Ibid., pp. 69–70.

47 For a critical look at biopolitical analogies between refugee encampments and Nazi camps see Debarati Sanyal, ‘Calais's “Jungle”: Refugees, Biopolitics, and the Arts of Resistance’, Representations, 139, 1 (2017), pp. 1–33.

48 Aslı Iğsız, Humanism in Ruins: Entangled Legacies of the Greek–Turkish Population Exchange (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), p. 10.

49 See Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

50 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 20.

51 Ibid., p. 33.

52 Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), p. 16.

53 Cox and Wake, ‘Envisioning Asylum/Engendering Crisis’, p. 140.

54 ‘UNHCR: Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018’, p. 3, at www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf.

55 İpek A. Çelik, In Permanent Crisis: Ethnicity in Contemporary European Media and Cinema (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015), p. 13.

56 Janet Roitman, Anti-crisis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 2.

57 Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Oxford, New York and Hamburg: Berg Publishers, 1988).

58 Ibid., pp. 130–7.

59 Roitman, Anti-crisis, p. 32.

60 Visniec, Migraaaants, p. 181.

61 Ibid., pp. 183–5.

62 Roitman, Anti-crisis, p. 8.

63 Visniec, Migraaaants, p. 195.

64 My thanks to Genco Erkal and Dostlar Tiyatrosu for supplying me with a copy of their unpublished translation.

65 Roitman, Anti-crisis, p. 8.

66 Aslı Sarıoğlu, ‘Ölmüş Ülkeleri Terk Edenler: Göçmenleeeer’, Mesele121, 6 December 2017, at https://mesele121.org/olmus-ulkeleri-terk-edenler-gocmenleeeer.

67 Sanyal, Memory and Complicity, p. 2.

68 Şenay Özden, ‘“Misafir” Söylemi Gölgesinde Suriyeli Mülteciler’ in İdil Engindeniz et al., eds., Medyada Nefret Söylemi ve Ayrımcı Söylem: 2017 Raporu (Istanbul: Hrant Dink Vakfı Yayınları, 2018), pp. 107–11, at https://hrantdink.org/attachments/article/1265/Nefret_Soylemi_rapor_kapakl%C4%B1_web_2.pdf.

69 Benhabib, Seyla, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 101Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., p. 109.