Ara Güler, who sadly passed away at the age of 90 this week, was Turkey’s most notable photojournalist and one of the best seven photographers according to the Photography Annual published in Britain in 1961. He assumed the title of “Master of Leica” in 1962.

He was born in Beyoğlu, Istanbul; lived there for his entire life, and his funeral was held at Beyoğlu Üç Horan Armenian Church. He once said: “Same house, same wife, same Beyoğlu. I have always been happy about living in Beyoğlu.” Although having lived in Beyoğlu his entire life, he witnessed many lives from all over the world and conveyed all these lives to millions with his lens. He recorded every aspect of life with his camera in times of war and peace, opulence and poverty, military and civilian regimes. He said: “Do you think shooting a photo only takes camera? No, it above all takes heart. I shoot life, and I am dealing with the problems of the human race. I photograph people’s lives and troubles.”

He was born on a summer day in 1928, five years after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Istanbul family while his father was an orphan who lost his family during the 1915 Armenian deportation. Growing up on his own, his father was a notable chemist who was running one of the five pharmacies in Istanbul. “Of course, back then, the medications could not be readily purchased, they were made in pharmacies. My father was a great chemist”, Güler said. He grew up in an intellectual family in which everyone spoke at least two or three languages, and studied in prestigious schools. In his own words, he was a mischievous kid who went to good schools. According to him, “One who does not repeat classes cannot come to their senses. Good students are always apprehensive; they constantly study due to this feeling.”

Istanbul, Ara Güler archive

After finishing secondary school, his father sent Ara Güler to work at İpek Film, the company of former Turkish Foreign Minister İsmail Cem’s father, with the hopes of taming his mischievous nature. He undertook all kinds of tasks assigned to him in the company, yet he did not become a filmmaker. “Every other colleague of mine having worked there became filmmakers, but my adventure was left incomplete. Once, a huge fire broke out in the building during the screening of an upcoming film’s trailer. I was the last one saved by the fire service. My mother got diabetic on that day out of stress, and my father did not allow me to work at film-making any longer.”

Güler then developed a keen interest in theater: “Muhsin Ertuğrul, (an actor, producer, screenwriter and art director who directed the first Turkish sound film, the first Turkish movie featuring an actress, and the first Turkish film receiving an international award) was a friend of my father. All the makeup products used in the plays were made in our pharmacy. Theater has always had a special place for me. I used to watch plays from behind the stage every night. I also have a major on drama.”

But this “infantile fancy” – to quote his own words – did not last very long despite his love for theater and the nine plays he wrote. While writing short stories for the Armenian-language newspapers and literary magazines, he studied at Istanbul University Faculty of Economics. His father helped him find a job in Yeni Istanbul Newspaper and this was where he started his photojournalism career. “Back then, there wasn’t such a concept as photojournalism, there was only photographer. I was the first one doing this profession in Turkey. Taking a photo means shooting a view or any other thing and make something out of it. But in photojournalism, you photograph the very incident and it is recorded in history. As the photojournalists and cameramen of the 20th century, we write the visual history. And it does not contain anything fabricated unlike the history written by writers. We see, write and document only facts. It is like stopping time with a machine and putting it in a capsule.”

India, Ara Güler archive

He also worked as a war correspondent and conducted interviews with guerillas in Palestine, Philippines, Ethiopia and Sudan. “Bombs exploded right by me. Of course, I was very frightened but I did not run away, and it was impossible to run away. Bullets, bombs, and smog were covering all over. Even if you managed to escape, you would still have to take 900 km to return from the front. For example, Sudan is a desert. You cannot walk there. How could you survive thirst and hunger? There were no vehicles. The only vehicles were the military trucks carrying goods or ammunitions that were constantly pounded by jets. Everything posed a danger, and you run this risk once you go there. This is what journalism is; bearing witness to the world. We are writing about the world.”

Aside from working in war zones, he photographed and interviewed many renowned figures including Bertrand Russell, Aragon, John Berger, Arnold Toynbee, Jacques Prevert, Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Fellini, Hitchcock, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman. Güler once said about Charlie Chaplin: “I sent a letter to Chaplin, but received no reply. So I went to his house and spoke to his wife. He was paralytic; he did not want to pose in that condition. Einstein was already dead. But fortunately, I managed to shoot Picasso. Picasso even drew a picture of me. And Dali gave me the hell. He pecked at me, as he did to everyone. But I did not give up, I never give up! A photojournalist does not give up.”

Beginning from Turkey’s second President İsmet İnönü, Güler interviewed and shot the photos of all the political leaders. One of them was the incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “I know him since he was the metropolitan mayor. We grew up in the same neighborhood. I photographed him while he was a mayor and while he was entering the prison. He is undaunted. How many presidents have so far defied the U.S. in Erdoğan’s way? Which leader could speak up against America other than Erdoğan? For example, they called [former President Süleyman] Demirel ‘Morrison Süleyman.’ I like Ecevit, but I never liked Demirel. I like Erdoğan, too, as he defies the U.S. policies”, Güler once said.

Ara Guler takes a photo of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Erdogan’s study room in Ankara, Turkey on December 19, 2015. 

After the June 24 elections a critical question has arisen: what’s next in Turkish politics? The June 24 elections constitute a significant step in Turkey’s long history of democratization. The transition to a presidential system has now been consolidated with the victory of the AK Party-MHP alliance. This will precipitate a new wave of institutionalization, which will strive to achieve unity and stability at the state whereas the state remains open to society and societal differences. This means a fine balance between two contradictory forces of political life: identity and difference.

It is mostly due to the empowerment of democratic politics in the last 16 years that links society and its demands with the state. However, we should still insist that the political situation in Turkey begs to be analyzed in order to shed light on the question of what’s next in Turkey. The wisest start may be to spend some time on the issue of social cohesion.

Friends, Rivals or Enemies

There are three degrees of social cohesion that can be found in society. At the top of it lies consensus on the social good. All society may gather around a certain set of ethical-political values. Members of society perceive each other as “friends” and each define their identity and interests not independent of others in society.

This is followed by another situation where society is divided into multiple social groups on the basis of value or identity differences. Here, members of society perceive each other as “rivals.” Despite the fact that individuals define their identities different from each other, they share some form of interest, such as accepting the rules of competition among each other. In this type of society, one can at least testify to fair and open elections and peaceful transfer of power among rivals.

And lastly, there is a form of society in which members of society perceive each other as “enemies.” In this situation, individuals or social groups neither share a common identity and interest nor the rules of competition among each other. Here, what members of society share is a common understanding not to attack each other. One can easily put that the balance of threat keeps society from dissolving or from plunging into a bloody civil war.

Turkey characterizes the second form of society where individuals and social groups perceive each other as rivals. Since 1950 Turkey has conducted free and fair elections and despite intermittent military involvement into politics it has observed peaceful transfers of power. Increasing polarization during election times is a fact yet it has not degraded the country to a lower level of social cohesion so far.

Collectivity, Intersubjectivity or Hegemony

Another issue is the dominant way of sustaining social cohesion in society. There are three models to bring society together. One of them is to acknowledge that society remains in a form of collectivity of subjective realities. Here the individual is seen more significant than society, political community is put behind civil society, and economic relations override political and cultural ties.

The second one is to channel society to create an intersubjective reality. This model accepts each as equal and emphasizes a rational deliberation among members of society. Here a common ground in society is searched in a non-political manner.

The third model is hegemony. Here society is brought together through a hegemonic project that aims to carve up the largest and most inclusive social whole by integrating free-floating societal demands. It involves a struggle of transforming the interests and identities of others by applying various ways of persuasion.

Turkish politics seems to adopt the hegemonic model. Political relations overweigh economic relations. Rational deliberation among members of society appears to be scarce. Conflict and competition determine political life. Political actors mainly strive to create the most inclusive identity or social whole in order to hold on to power.

The post-June 24 elections era in Turkey will not nurture the character of a society of rivals. If anything, it will most likely boost society’s current state and decrease the likelihood of devolving into a society of enemies. However, it is also likely to intensify hegemonic rivalry among political actors, especially due to the increasing primacy of democratic politics in holding on to power. One should not forget that the opposition in Turkey has searched for alternative ways until recently – other than democratic politics – to hold on to power.

There is widespread criticism that Turkey’s ruling AK Party has a poor democratic performance. Disrespect for basic rights and liberties of political and social opposition is counted as the main reason for that. This is claimed to testify the fact that the AK Party performs an authoritarian governance and undercuts democracy. Indeed, the AK Party fails to provide an equal treatment of all demands in society. In other words, it is unable to embrace society as a whole. The question is whether failing to represent all of society, or not being able to respond to all demands in society makes a political party authoritarian. More to the point, can we label a political party authoritarian in every instance of failure to carry out the impossible task of democracy?

What is to be democratic?

In order to give a satisfying answer to this question we should carefully differentiate two things: democracy and authoritarianism. Authoritarianism means to violate the basic principle of democratic politics, which is accepting the emptiness of the place of power. Respecting the principle of democracy involves first of all having a multi-party political system, periodically conducting open and fair elections, and allowing the political opposition to be present in the parliament. Secondly, we can also add that the right to oppose and criticize policies of the ruling force through various channels is to be respected. And finally, the ruling power is to admit that its rule is bound by law. Therefore, if the ruling group do not allow for political opposition and assumes its power above the law, then we can declare that there is an authoritarian regime in the country.

If the ruling political party respects the presence of political opposition and allows to be limited by law, then we can say that there is a democratic regime. This posits the different dimensions of democracy. However, democratic regimes also require providing an identity to the social whole. This identity dimension constitutes the second moment of democracy. Indeed, democracy is an ambiguous political regime which encapsulates both moments, that is identity and difference, and requires to hit a handsome balance between these conflicting forces. Harboring these two conflicting forces, democracy is an impossible task and cannot fully be achievable. Even if the ruling political power respects the difference dimension, it usually fails to provide an incontestable identity to society. Generally, it fails in the identity dimension and falls short of embracing all demands in society. This failure can be viewed as a lack of democracy, yet cannot be labelled as authoritarianism.

Is the AK Party authoritarian?

Looking from this perspective, the AK Party is not representative of authoritarian politics. However, it might fail to provide a full-fledged democratic rule. To put differently, its lack of democracy does not amount to authoritarianism. Its failure in democracy stems from not being able to provide an incontestable identity to the social whole. In its early years of rule, the AK Party sought to provide an overarching identity by responding to all social demands. It aimed at trivializing the existing societal differences between Turks and Kurds, Sunnis and Alawites, conservatives and secularists, and Muslims and non-Muslims around the so-called politics of “civilization.” The party believed that society as a whole had to come together around this identity, which was supposed to remedy all societal fault lines.

Yet this politics of civilization faced a strong resistance in society. With the Gezi Park protests (2013) and the PKK stimulated HDP riots (2014-15), it came to a halt. Following this failure, the AK Party began to provide a new identity through the so-called politics of “native and national.” Currently, the AK Party seeks to bring society into unity through this discourse, as it calls society to come around this identity of being “native and national.” Yet the party has faced and continues to face robust resistance by the opposition. The political opposition follows the politics of difference by raising the criticism that the AK Party does not respect rights and liberties in society. This undoubtedly seeks to block the AK Party’s hegemonic moves. However, the opposition does not perform the second moment of democracy – it does not even consider providing a workable unity in society. Therefore, the opposition in Turkey also fails in its democratic performance.

Briefly, the AK Party cannot be blamed of reducing democracy to elections. The governing party embraces both moments of democracy. However, so far, it has yet been unable to bring society around a workable unity.

The objects surrounding our daily lives are not just pieces of particular shape and color meant to perform a particular function. Objects are texts that convey meanings. They are the instruments of emotion and ideology. Therefore the narratives built through the usage of social and cultural objects can not be treated as objective or innocent. They are filled with the makers’ bias: ideology, motives or sensation. Television dramas and films are like dreams. Elements belonging to disperate contexts or situations can be combined together along with human beings from disperate backgrounds. A story can be woven through this manipulation that is far away from reality or makes the idea of reality obsolete. Yet, in these represented or imaginary stories, objects and their combinations become metaphors, open to interpretations. Hence, in the light of above statement, visual media plays two important roles: it reflects as well as shapes the society. Here we comparatively examine two television serials. One is set in Turkey (Huzur Sokağı or Serenity Street), and another is set in Pakistan (Khuda Aur Mohabbat or God and the Love). Representation of Islam, Islamic symbols and women are at the centre of the two narratives.

“I did not start wearing hijab before because … ,” says Feyza (Selin Demiratar), the character of a young Turkish girl who wears miniskirts, visits late night parties and drinks occasionally, to her beloved, Bilal (Kutsi). Feyza belongs to a rich corporate family where the concept of hijab exists as a dressing for the poor, ignorant and backward people, thus having no place within the realm of a “modern” family.

“… because I always had a feeling that if I begin wearing hijab I would be doing it for you, not for God. Now I don’t care whether you are with me or not. I have found my world now,” Feyza tells Bilal, a man who comes from a modest family and defines every aspect of his life in keeping with religious guidelines. Feyza utters these words after going through a series of hardships and deception at the hands of her own family members and friends. As she prays in silence calmness befalls her. Prayers give her peace that she has found absent all through her life. Now in this new world bowing her head to God liberates her from all the sadness of past and fear of future. Even Bilal, her beloved, who in fact had opened the gates for her to this new world of spirituality becomes insignificant to her. Such is the overpowering influence of this new life.

http://thenewturkey.org/the-journey-of-a-soul-ayse-sasa/

These lines describe what lies at the heart of the narrative of the Şenol Sönmez directed Turkish television serial, Huzur Sokağı. Few things in this message set Huzur Sokağı apart from its Pakistani counterpart, Khuda Aur Mohabbat, directed by Saud Raheem. First, it establishes that religion is to be appreciated as a ‘consequence’, not cult or authority. Second, compromise between love and God, rich and poor is not completely impossible, as represented in Khuda Aur Mohabbat. Third, within a social setup woman’s identity does not have to necessarily be overshadowed by religion, which has historically been deemed as proprietorship of man. The two serials, though unrelated, hit the screen around the same time in their respective countries – Huzur Sokağı in 2012 and Khuda Aur Mohabbat in 2011.

The relationship between religion and modernity

Both Huzur Sokağı and Khuda Aur Mohabbat have a socio-historical context in Turkey and Pakistan. The two countries are Muslim majority and the debate between Islam, secularism and modernity has existed ever since the two states were formed in the first half of the twentieth century. More specifically, since the 1980s the debate gained more salience in Pakistan as well as Turkey, with a particular focus on women. In Turkey, the demand for the right to wear the headscarf in public places, like schools, public offices and universities, was raised as the secularist republican rule had become ever more oppressive in that regard. On the other hand, through Zia-ul-Haq’s “Islamization” process in Pakistan new parameters were legislatively drawn curtailing women’s rights. The two television dramas capture these two opposing debates involving Islam, women’s rights, and human rights.

Huzur Sokağı represents a complex interplay between religion and modernity. It rejects modernity in its Western form, which promotes individualism and divests a human being of spirituality. It completes this “modernity” by infusing a spiritual element – that is religious values – into it, and it revitalizes the power of a sokak or street. Thus an individual is no more simply a corporate machine, but a human being, a social animal who identifies himself/herself within a neighborhood. The food cooking in one kitchen can be shared by the entire community. So Huzur Sokağı emphasizes molding of the existing social order to make it conducive for all the social agents irrespective of their beliefs, gender and economic status. It does this by putting the individual at the center. Conversely, however, Khuda Aur Mohabbat reflects the rigidity of the social structure in which an individual is merely an object that serves this structure.

For a century now structuralists and post-structuralists have been arguing about the arbitrariness of meaning of symbols and words; the same word or object can mean different things in different settings. This is exactly what the two serials exemplify. The headscarf and abaya, traditionally a Muslim dress, for instance, assume two different types of meanings within the setting of the two television serials under discussion.

The power of ideological symbolization

Huzur Sokağı’s hijab, analyzing the character of Shukran (Sinem Ozturk), signifies wisdom, self-respect, patience, politeness and prudence. The hijab of Khuda Aur Mohabbat, on the other hand, is a symbol of an overarching authority — a mix of religion and patriarchy. It not only segregates but also blocks. Apart from being a symbol controlling identity of a woman, the hijab of Khuda Aur Mohabbat, which also extends to the face, allowing only eyes to be visible, acts as a wall that solidifies the difference between male and female. Throughout this drama serial hijab has a central role that cements the male-female difference.

However, perhaps for the first time in modern Turkey, a television serial has such an extensive visibility of the hijab and abaya, yet there is no conscious focus on this dress. Huzur Sokağı’s increased exposure to the Islamic dressing may be attributed to the changing ground reality of Turkey. After the lifting of the ban on headscarf in Turkey, the visibility rate of headscarf throughout the country has gone up. The portrayal of women, with and without headscarf, involved in normal exchange of social life, is an assertion of the need for different sections of the society to intermingle and coexist with each other in the new Turkey.

Its focus is on the complex features of characters – wisdom, shallowness, recklessness, foresight, morality/immorality, politeness and so on – that cut across the ideological and identity boundaries. In the process, not only is the social gender difference obliterated but the secularist-conservative divide also becomes insignificant; one is not promoted over the other. For instance, Bilal, the lead male character, who is depicted as very religious, self-respecting and authoritative, falls in love with Feyza, who is quite unlike him. For Bilal, the condition to be in love with Feyza and get married to her is not to transform her to a pious woman. This is not even a point. Even Bilal’s own teenage sister, Rezaan, doesn’t wear a headscarf and sometimes wears miniskirts. Still Bilal loves and cares for Rezaan as an elder brother would do. Though it is Bilal who, after their father’s demise, acts as head-of-the family, he never imposes anything to the family members. He acts as an obedient and respectful son to his mother.

The narrative and symbolization of Huzur Sokağı is integral to the Turkish government’s ideology in trying to redefine Turkish identity, i.e., advocating the creation of a culture of cooperation, rather than competition or confrontation, among different social and ideological groups. In a society like Turkey there has been a raging antagonism between extreme/strict secularist policies of past regimes at the cost of those who were surviving their religious tradition in the country’s remote corners.

Huzur Sokağı also attempts to serve as an educational platform which sends clear socio-cultural signals. It does not obliterate the “secularist” discourse to promote a “religious” one (as some scholars tend to see them as two binary opposites). It is simply redefining the secularist discourse to broaden its circumference in order to become more inclusive. Khuda Aur Mohabbat, on the other hand, is a spectacle of tragedy. An individual is trapped in a structure, whose rigidity gives him/her a choice between death and submission. The individual is an object whose emotions, feelings, thoughts and desires are subject to structural regulation.

The Social Divide

When two people – Imaan (Sadia Khan), a girl from a poor and religious family and Hamaad (Imran Abbas), a boy from a modern, rich family transcend their class boundaries and fall in love with each other, the end they meet is death. Even changing sides does not help Hamaad: he forsakes his rich family to become equal to his beloved and begins to pray, but then it is the girl’s father Molvi Aleemuddin (Salman Shahid) who refuses to accept this marriage, signaling the social stigma, entrenched inequality between the two families and “illegitimacy of love marriage in Islam”.

The uncompromisability of the social classes so vividly illustrated in Khuda Aur Mohabbat evokes a high degree of emotion. The narrative and mode of representation can be interpreted as a general signifier for the most of the post-colonial South Asian cultures, including India and Pakistan, the two most populous nations of the region. Within the boundaries of these countries two unequal societies exist side by side. While one is defined by its economic status – a highly westernized elite who predominantly occupy governmental positions, the other is defined by its poverty and religiosity.

Due to poverty and massive population states in Pakistan and India have not been able to exert their authority to the peripheries of the countries. Consequently, in the absence of any support from state apparatuses, large masses of population find refuge in cultural and religious rituals. It is the local bodies at village level and, in some cases, tribal bodies, that regulate the social life through religious or cultural decrees. Weak state institutions find it hard to reach out to the people at the periphery. While the elite are guided by their economic status, those at the bottom adopt religion and traditional rituals as an authority guiding social behavior. This overwhelmingly resulted in religion becoming a source of power, which became capable of justifying patriarchy. Molvi Aleemuddin represents this authority in Khuda Aur Mohabbat. The serial symbolically captures this convolution.

Islamic symbols like hijab and beard, in the past two decades especially, have assumed an extremely negative connotation. Comparative analysis of Huzur Sokağı and Khuda Aur Mohabbat opens a window to see the artificial nature of human perception about symbols: meanings of symbols are not natural; they are produced through social interaction. Therefore, anything wrong about Islamic symbols is only a matter of human perception, which can change as well.