Turkey |
|
|
|
|
|
Arts and Culture news from Turkie
|
| 10. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 09:30 am |
|
Turkish TV series director turns creative talents to Bosnian War
Turkish director and producer Osman Sınav is working on a real-life story that occurred during the Bosnian war. Sınav says the film follows a young musician that loses an arm that later becomes a fearless sniper. The director, who has enjoyed great success with past TV series, says Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of his favorite countries in the world
Osman Sınav visited Sarajevo to have talks with the screenwriter of the film, Almir Basovic.
|
Popular Turkish television director Osman Sınav is leading a film project set during the Bosnian War of the 1990s that features true events from the fighting.
“We are working on a real story. A young person who only wants to play guitar and make music and has no idea about the war until the day it begins loses his arm and cannot make music. Later on, he becomes a sniper and a fearless warrior using his two remaining fingers. The film tells the drama of this period,” Sınav recently told Anatolia news agency.
Sarajevo University Conservatory Department member Almir Basovic is the screenwriter of the drama, which features real events from the period.
Sınav, the director of popular Turkish TV series including “Deli Yürek” (Crazy Heart) and “Kurtlar Vadisi” (Valley of the Wolves), visited Sarajevo last week to confer with Basovic. The director said he came to Bosnia and Herzegovina for a second meeting with Basovic after their first meeting in Istanbul.
Sınav said he had previously come to Bosnia immediately after the war for footage for a TV series he was working on.
“When I came here for the first time, I saw that one can fall in love with a country just like a man falls in love with a woman. Bosnia gives me the feeling of love and I am in love with the country. It is like a lover who is far away from me,” Sınav said.
He also said the Ottoman-period Gazi Hüsrevbey social complex in Sarajevo was a very significant place for a common story. “A social complex was constructed 500 years ago and it includes a Turkish bath, a covered bazaar, a mosque and an almshouse, which still serves meals every day for free regardless of the religion, language or nation of the people. This complex has survived for 500 years thanks to this perspective. This is why we should not produce Brazilian TV series but more different and serious stories.”
The director said Turkish cinema should broaden its horizons and make stories on a wide range from Sarajevo to Tabriz and from Baku to Almaty.
Sınav also said Turkish TV series were very popular across a wide region. “Turkish TV series draw great interest in many countries. Turkish artists are loved so much. We have to make the most of it and make good productions for further cultural collaborations. This is why we are here.”
First Turkish TV series broadcast abroad
Sınav said the first Turkish TV series broadcast abroad was his “Deli Yürek,” which was sold to Kazakhstan for a low price. It received huge interest in the country and was later shown in Bosnia, drawing the same interest, he added.
“At the moment, Turkish TV series are on the screen in a wide region on three continents. This is a very serious gain and it will bring economic income. You not only sell TV series, you also establish a cultural connection. Brands and tourism are sold thanks to it,” he said. “Politicians or academics couldn’t do this over 20 years but you can do it in one or two years with a TV series. Today, most children under 5 years old in Azerbaijan are speaking Istanbul Turkish.”
Sınav said the interest in Turkish TV series should be evaluated in the best way and added that the most important issue was to find stories in common.
‘Muhteşem Yüzyıl’ disappoints
Filmmakers should also be extra careful during the present period in which the Turkish film sector is opening to the world, he said, adding that there was big interest in the Ottomans throughout the Balkans and that Ottoman heritage still survived in many places.
“The new TV series ‘Muhteşem Yüzyıl’ [Magnificent Century] will draw great interest in the country because of Süleyman the Magificent,” he said. “But I am sure people will say the [Süleyman] in the TV series is different from the man they know. Because he is shown like a poor man running after a woman. It will disappoint them. Producers should have this perspective but they don’t have it. It is too wrong that the Ottoman Sultan [Süleyman], who was called ‘magnificent’ even by his enemies, is shown to be a very simple man,” he said.
Source: here
|
|
| 11. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 12:08 pm |
|
According to summary I can say, book includes mostly exaggeration, not reflecting the real situation in KSA...
Turkish woman recounts difficult life in Saudi Arabia with book
|
|
| 12. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 12:44 pm |
|
According to summary I can say, book includes mostly exaggeration, not reflecting the real situation in KSA...
Can you be more specific? Which bits are exaggeration? I have never been to KSA. But the writer has. I assume you also have.
|
|
| 13. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 01:16 pm |
|
Ok si++, please check the bolded parts, does not reflect the situation, and also many of them differs from location to location.
Turkish woman recounts difficult life in Saudi Arabia with book
Zekiye Yüksel came back to Turkey after she lived nearly four years in Saudi Arabia. AFP photo
The difficulties of living as a woman in Saudi Arabia are the subject of a new book by Turk Zekiye Yüksel, who lived in the country for three-and-a-half years.
“You can never walk alone. You should either have your husband, father or brother with you. During the three-and-a-half years I stayed there, I couldn’t go out to buy bread even once, for instance. This is very important because it hurt me. That means you have no bread at home and cannot go out to buy it. I even had to order my tweezers through the driver,” she said.
Yüksel is the author of “Being a Woman in a Sharia Country,” which recounts her time in the austere kingdom as a literature teacher for Turkish children whose parents had moved to Saudi Arabia for work opportunities.
Most of the children were from the Mediterranean province of Hatay, which has a high Arabic-speaking population.
“My students were born and raised there. They had never gone to the theater. The Turkish school was like oxygen for them. They couldn’t go out, but the curriculum of the Republic of Turkey was used by the school,” said Yüksel.
Since the families heard about Turkish girls who married rich Saudi men but were unhappy, they generally sent their daughters back home to Turkey after graduation, Yüksel said.
“I lived in Riyadh and just craved to drive a car, go to a supermarket, take a commuter bus from one city to another and walk in the street. I learned how valuable life in the Republic of Turkey is. I walked 40 minutes every day in the school’s yard, as though I was pacing back and forth in a prison yard,” she said.
“Arab women communicate nonverbally through their eyes and feet. These are the only body parts visible to everyone. So, women give importance to their eyes and feet. Since the weather is always hot, they wear shoes and sandals that are unimaginably attractive,” Yüksel said.
Saudi houses are surrounded by high walls like castles from the Middle Ages---not all of them, there are thousands of modern compunds with fitness centers, swimming pools etc, said Yüksel. “When you open the windows at your house, you face huge walls. Having a balcony is banned, in order to keep women inside.”---again not all of them
Yüksek said women were banned from driving in Saudi Arabia and added that women could not go anywhere alone because there were no commuter buses either.
“In Turkey, even if women are pious, they drink tea with neighbors and go to the village market. The wife of the religion instructor became ill in Riyadh because she did not have a social life. Since my friend was coming home tired, he couldn’t take his wife out,” he said.
Polygamy is widespread in Saudi Arabia, according to Yüksel. “I realized this because three or four women were walking behind a man in the street or at a park after they left luxurious villas.”
The muezzin, or the person who calls the faithful to prayer at the mosques, would make the call with an unattractive tone of voice in order to prevent women from falling in love with the voice, said Yüksel.
“After I returned to Turkey, I started to listen to the adhan [call to the prayer] admiringly,” she said.
Source: here
|
|
| 14. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 01:37 pm |
|
Ok si++, please check the bolded parts, does not reflect the situation, and also many of them differs from location to location.
OK. Anyway I think the writer descibes the places she have lived in KSA. It´s only her observations.
|
|
| 15. |
15 Feb 2011 Tue 05:01 pm |
|
I agree... this might just be exactly how this woman experienced her time there. I have even had a similar experience in a part of Turkey. I went to the shops with some male friends/family members, when I forgot something. When I wanted to go back alone to get it, I wasn´t allowed  Also, when walking down the street next to a male-tea house, I would get angry stares if I didn´t make sure that my male companion would walk on the tea-house side, and I would walk on the road side. Shame on my for walking by a bunch of men. If I would live in that place for a year and write a book about it, people would probably tell me that Turkey is nothing like that. However, life in that particular place IS like that.
|
|
| 16. |
22 Feb 2011 Tue 11:22 am |
|
Arts, culture and the prime minister
A theater play can focus on anything. Usually in the old days, Turkish theater plays focused on political issues. Although it was very hard to do a proper or funny play with political issues, playwrights and artists tried very hard and in the past, Turkey opened new dimensions in terms of political jokes.
Political issues were also seen in comic strips. Many comic strip magazines, such as Leman, Hıbır, Uykusuz, Pehguen, Lombak all wrote about politics or politicians.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was also the focus of those comic strips and sometimes he was disturbed by them and filed suit against some of the artists.
However, the latest suit was a little bit different from the rest and it was a little bit disturbing for the arts and culture community in Turkey.
This time the suit was against a theater play. The play focused on workers’ deaths in the Tuzla shipyards, people who cannot pay their hospital bills, women’s problems and a TV series that featured violence and ultra-nationalism, like “Kurtlar Vadisi” (Valley of the Wolves).
Erdoğan has filed suit against 16 people from the Beyoğlu Kumpanya art group, with the reason given that the group insulted him during a play last year.
The group was accused of using the phrase “İşportacı Tayyip,” or “street vendor Tayyip,” during a song in the play “Ülkemizden” (From Our Country) during the Erguvan Festival, which was organized by Istanbul’s Çatalca Municipality on July 11 and 12 last year.
Source: here
|
|
| 17. |
25 Feb 2011 Fri 12:21 pm |
|
Return our sphinx or else, Turkey tells Germany
Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay. AA photo
Turkey´s culture minister Thursday demanded Germany return an ancient sphinx uncovered from a German archeological dig nearly a century ago or it would revoke permits for other excavations.
Ertuğrul Günay told the Tagesspiegel daily in an interview that German authorities had until the start of the digging season in June to hand back the priceless artefact, thought to date from around 1400 BC.
The sphinx, dug up from the ancient city of Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite empire, in the early part of the 20th century, was taken to Germany for restoration but now sits in a Berlin museum, much to Turkey´s annoyance.
"If there is no commitment (to return the sphinx) by the beginning of the digging season, I am firmly determined to cancel the excavation license for Hattusha," said the minister.
Gunay also threatened the several other German archaeological digs around the country, saying the permits could go to Turkish scientists.
"Turkey has new universities, new archaeological institutes as well as keen and successful archaeologists. If we do not see the hoped-for cooperation in this area, we would not hesitate to transfer the digs to our own universities."
Germany is also embroiled in a row with Egypt, which has demanded the return of the 3,400-year-old bust of fabled beauty Nefertiti which currently has pride of place in the Neues (New) Museum in Berlin.
Cairo began to demand the restitution of the Pharaonic-era statue back in the 1930s, but successive German governments have insisted the piece was bought legally and that there are documents to prove it.
Source: here
|
|
| 18. |
09 Mar 2011 Wed 05:08 pm |
|
Canadian singer to promote latest album in Istanbul
Canadian singer will promote her new album in Istanbul.
Canadian singer and composer Loreena McKennitt will promote her latest album in Istanbul at the end of March.
McKennitt will be in Istanbul on March 27 and 28 as the guest of Odeon Music to promote her latest album, “The Wind That Shakes The Barley.”
The musician will participate in several TV programs and hold a press conference while in the city.
A singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes, McKennitt is known for her refined, warbling soprano vocals. She has sold more than 14 million records worldwide.
Source: here
|
|
| 19. |
17 Mar 2011 Thu 10:18 am |
|
TV series cause tension between Turkish and Azerbaijan producers
Turkey’s hit TV series ‘Çocuklar Duymasın’ (Children Shall Not Hear) has caused tension between its Turkish producer and Azerbaijani producers. MinT Production, which holds the copyrights of the series, is preparing to sue the Azerbaijani Xazer TV channel. The owner of the production company, producer and screenwriter Birol Güven, says: ‘The problem of copyrights is common in all around the world. There should be a certain standard’
One of Turkey’s most popular TV series, “Çocuklar Duymasın” (Children Shall Not Hear), has caused tension between its Turkish production company and Azerbaijan.
MinT (Made in Turkey), which holds the copyrights to the TV series, is set to sue the Azerbaijani TV channel Xazer for copyright infringement.
According to information provided by the production company, a TV series aired under the title “Aramızda Kalsın” (Between You and Me) in Azerbaijan is essentially a remake of “Çocuklar Duymasın.” Speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review, screenwriter, producer and the owner of MinT Production, Birol Güven said the Azerbaijani company had made an exact copy of his series.
“We have to start a legal process. This initiative is very important for the development of our sector. While preparing a TV series, we think of foreign markets; relations should have a legal ground. The problem of copyrights is the same all around the world. We want to be a model for it.”
In recent years, Turkey has made great progress in the TV series sector as well as in the cinema sector. While cinema films and young directors return to the country with international awards, Turkish TV series have become popular in the Middle East and the Turkic republics.
Source: here
|
|
| 20. |
27 Mar 2011 Sun 03:44 pm |
|
Turkish novel receives book of year award in Serbia
A Serbian publishing house picked a Turkish novel as the book of the year, Turkey´s Culture & Tourism Ministry said on Friday.
AA
ANKARA- A ministry statement said "Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitusu" (The Time Regulation Institute), a book by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, received the book of the year award from a Serbian publishing house--DERETA.
The book was earlier translated into Serbian within the scope of a project to publish Turkish novels and books in other languages. The award has been granted since 1991.
"The Time Regulation Institute" offers the reader a truly fascinating and engaging narrative set in post-Ottoman Turkey. It deals with the juxtaposition of opposites: wealthy aristocrats and family people working as hard as they can to scrape by, the old way of life against the influx of modern Western culture, and parallels between the days of the yore and the young Republic.
Source: here
|
|
|
