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The Rise of Kurdish Theatre in Istanbul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2015

Elif Baş
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Extract

Imagine a festival taking place before about five thousand people in a park in Adana, Turkey, in June 1992. In the middle of the park is a stage made of concrete. A touring Kurdish theatre company comprising four men, Hüseyin Kaytan, Kazım Öz, Nihat Öz, and Kemal Orgun, is performing a short play called Du Şivan (Two Shepherds). They enact a village raid and choose the villagers from among the audience. Kemal Orgun plays the commander of the task force raiding the village. The other three carry out the operation, rounding up the villagers. Orgun struts among the villagers, harassing them. All of a sudden, a woman jumps onstage and tries to grab the gun Orgun is carrying. He tries to wrest the gun from her, but she won't let go. A great commotion ensues, and more people clamber onstage to help the woman and attack the actors. When a man tries to strangle Orgun, he yells out in Kurdish, “Bira ma tu çi dikî, te ez kuştim?” (Hey my friend, what are you trying to do, kill me?). When the attacker finally understands Orgun is Kurdish, he releases and embraces him. Recounting this incident in his interview with me, Orgun remarks that they were almost lynched. The Kurdish woman who had jumped onstage and impulsively attacked Orgun had thought this was a real raid, just like those that had been taking place in Kurdish villages in Turkey for years. Her rage and instinctive self-protection is at one level slightly amusing, but this was also a bitter episode that demonstrated the consequences of the oppression of Kurdish people in the country. After the festival, Orgun and the other members named their theatre company Teatra Jiyana Nû (New Life Theatre). This became the foremost Kurdish theatre company and has trained many Kurdish actors, who in turn have further sustained and promoted Kurdish theatre by establishing their own companies.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 314 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2015 

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References

Endnotes

1. Kemal Orgun, interview with the author, tape recording, Istanbul, 4 June 2014. All interviews translated by the author.

2. Ibid.

3. Ataman, Muhittin, “Özal Leadership and Restructuring of Turkish Ethnic Policy in the 1980s,” Middle Eastern Studies 38.4 (2002): 123–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 125.

4. Ergin, Murat, “The Racialization of Kurdish Identity in Turkey,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37.2 (2014): 322–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 325.

5. Ataman, 127.

6. Yavuz, M. Hakan, “Five Stages of Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 7.3 (2001): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 2.

7. Şimşek, Sefa, “New Social Movements in Turkey since 1980,” Turkish Studies 5.2 (2004): 111–39Google Scholar, at 131.

8. Yavuz, M. Hakan, “A Preamble to the Kurdish Question: the Politics of Kurdish Identity,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18.1 (1998): 9–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 14.

9. Ergil, Dogu [Doğu], “The Kurdish Question in Turkey,” Journal of Democracy 11.3 (2000): 122–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 127.

10. Ibid., 122.

11. Ataman, 128–9.

12. Paker, Evren Balta, “AKP's Approach to the Kurdish Problem: One Step Forward, One Step Backward,” Perspectives: Political Analysis and Commentary from Turkey 3.13 (2013): 12–15Google Scholar, at 12.

13. Yeğen, Mesut, “'Prospective Turks’ or ‘Pseudo-Citizens’: Kurds in Turkey,” Middle East Journal 63:4 (2009): 597–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 615.

14. Ibid., 605.

15. Zeydanlıoğlu, Welat, “Turkey's Kurdish Language Policy,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 217 (2012): 99–125Google Scholar, at 120.

16. Amir Hassanpour, “The Politics of A-political Linguistics: Linguists and Linguicide,” Kurdish Academy of Language, http://www.kurdishacademy.org/?q=node/180, accessed 10 May 2015.

17. Aydın Orak, Radikal Tiyatro (Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 2012), 23.

18. Roger Lescot, “Littérature kurde” (1977), 798; quoted (in English translation) in Scalbert-Yücel, Clémence, “The Invention of a Tradition: Diyarbakır's Dengbêj Project,” European Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (2009): 1–21Google Scholar (PDF), at 4 (https://ejts.revues.org/4055 , accessed 22 June 2015).

19. Orak, Radikal Tiyatro, 23–4.

20. Yücel, 5.

21. Mirza Metin, interview with the author, tape recording, Istanbul, 16 August 2013.

22. There is no literal translation for the word hawin; it means “to accompany a piece of music.”

23. Metin interview.

24. Erdal Ceviz, interview with the author, tape recording, Istanbul, 27 May 2014.

25. “Panel 1: Kültürel Çoğulculuk Bağlamında Alternatif Tiyatro,” Mimesis 13 (2007), http://mimesis-dergi.org/mimesis-dergi-kitap/mimesis-13/panel-1-kulturel-cogulculuk-baglaminda-alternatif-tiyatro/, accessed 3 May 2013.

26. Orgun interview; Ceviz interview.

27. Ceviz interview.

28. İpek İzci, “Kürtçe tiyatro yapmak daha büyük bedel istiyor,” Radikal, 2 April 2012, www.radikal.com.tr/kultur/kurtce_tiyatro_yapmak_daha_buyuk_bedel_istiyor-1083586, accessed 5 June 2013.

29. “Panel 1.”

30. Ceviz interview.

31. Metin interview.

32. Ceviz interview.

33. This and subsequent references to Ceviz all draw on the Ceviz interview.

34. Ibid.

35. Berfin Zenderlioğlu, interview with the author, tape recording, Istanbul, 16 August 2013.

36. Metin interview.

37. Zenderlioğlu interview.

38. Ibid.

39. Nico Hines, “The Ten Most Notorious Jails in the World,” Times (London), 28 April 2008, www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article1874289.ece.

40. Welat Zeydanlıoğlu, “Torture and Turkification in the Diyarbakır Military Prison,” in Rights, Citizenship and Torture: Perspectives on Evil, Law and the State, ed. John Parry and Welat Zeydanlıoğlu (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009), 73–92, at 9; reprinted online at https://welatzeydanlioglu.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/torture-and-turkification-in-the-diyarbakir-military-prison.pdf, 1–13, at 9, accessed 23 June 2015.

41. Metin interview.

42. Zenderlioğlu interview.

43. Mirza Metin, “Disko 5 No'lu,” 2011, 5, unpublished manuscript presented to me by the playwright. Subsequent citations are given parenthetically in the text after the abbreviation D5N.

44. Zenderlioğlu interview.

45. Tuğçe Nuhoğlu, interview with the author, tape recording. Istanbul, 29 May 2014.

46. Seval Haraç, interview with the author, tape recording. Istanbul, 29 May 2014.

47. Zenderlioğlu interview.

48. Metin interview.

49. Orak, Radikal Tiyatro, 79–80.

50. Aydın Orak, “Daf.” 2012, 1–2, Unpublished manuscript presented to me by the playwright. Subsequent citations are given parenthetically in the text after the title Daf.

51. Aydın Orak, interview with the author, tape recording, Istanbul, 19 August 2013.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. “Kürt tiyatrosu 20 yıldır mevcut,” Sabah, 27 June 2009, www.sabah.com.tr/Yasam/2009/06/27/kurt_tiyatrosu_20_yildir_mevcut, accessed 15 October 2013.

56. Zenderlioğlu interview.

57. Vercihan Ziflioğlu, “First Modern Kurdish Theater Opens in Istanbul,” Hürriyet Daily News, 5 May 2011, www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=first-modern-kurdish-theater-opens-in-istanbul-2011-05-04, accessed 6 June 2013.

58. Yaşam Kaya, “Kurdish Theater: Politics Leaves the Stage,” Turkish Review, 10 January 2012, www.turkishreview.org/reports/kurdish-theater-politics-leaves-the-stage_540812, accessed 23 June 2015.