Famous Turkish Actor Haluk Bilginer won the Best Performance by an Actor award at the 47th International Emmy Awards. Bilginer won the award for his performance in the TV series Şahsiyet (Persona) playing the role of Agah Beyoğlu, a character facing a future with amnesia. On receiving the award Bilginer gave a short speech: “Thank you, this is a great honor. My thanks to the Academy for this precious award. Our series Persona is about justice and amnesia, but not amnesia of an individual, more dangerously and harmfully, amnesia of the society. Therefore, please make sure the society you live in does not suffer from amnesia” he told at his speech on the stage that after his name announced as 2019 Best Performance by an Actor Winner.

After the program, he gave a brief interview with Anadolu Agency and sharing his feelings with Turkish media. “I am very happy that this award went to Turkey more than myself. It is very pleasing that work we do with love and admiration is appreciated by others on an international platform and crowned with an award” the actor said.

Following the news of that Bilginer’s success, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Communications Director of the Republic of Turkey Fahrettin Altun and other politicians congratulated Bilginer on different platforms. “This is a very important award for Bilginer himself. But also, a very important accomplishment for Turkey. This award goes to Bilginer but this achievement will set a very good example for young Turkish artists” Ersoy told journalists. “I congratulate our precious actor Haluk Bilginer for Best Actor award that he won at the 47th Emmy Awards with his performance on the Sahsiyet TV Series” Çavuşoğlu posted on his Twitter account.

After Bilginer’s return home, he thanked everyone who congratulated him. “Even being a candidate for this award was very pleasing for me. Winning this award, on behalf of myself, the reason for happiness. On the other hand, the real reason for my happiness is that this award was welcomed as an occasion of pride and happiness in Turkey. This made me happy. It shows that we were needed that kind of energy. Everyone is so happy. Therefore, I am happier than everyone” he said to Turkish journalists in Istanbul.

In the 12-episode mini-series Bilginer plays the character, Agah Beyoğlu, who is diagnosed with Alzheimers. Agâh Beyoglu is a retired judicial officer living alone in Beyoglu, Istanbul’s most populous and lively district. His daughter lives abroad and his wife died years earlier. This monotonous life of Agâh is upset by his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He knows that he will forget all of his memories because of the illness. While struggling with the idea of his condition, Agâh starts to think that forgetting can be also be an opportunity as well enabling him to comfortably commit a murder that he had planned for years. Recognizing that he will eventually lose memories of the crime in the future, and he would also not suffer from a twinge of conscience.

Along with Emmy winning project, Bilginer has had an extensive career as actor. Bilginer was born in Izmir in 1954. When he studied at Izmir Turkish College he participated in inter-high school theatre competition receiving his first award this contest. After that, he worked as a guest actor at the Izmir State Theatre. In 1979, he started studying theatre at the Ankara State Conservatoire. After graduating from the Conservatoire, Bilginer was an actor for the State Theaters starting in 1977.

Following his education and work experiences in Turkey, Bilginer moved to England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). From 1980 to 1993, Bilginer actively worked in England. He gained popularity for his appearance over 250 episodes in the long-running British soap opera EastEnders where he played Cypriot Mehmet Osman. He also acted on stage, taking roles in Macbeth, My Fair Lady, and The Phantom of The Opera.

In 1987, Bilginer returned to Turkey to act in Cloud in Love (Kara Sevdalı Bulut). This was his first performance in the Turkish film industry. The same year he also took a role in The Other Side of the Night (Gecenin Öteki Yüzü) with Zuhal Olcay. During these years, he worked at both in Turkey and England. In 1992, he married Zuhal Olcay also an actress. Then, both had roles in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series. Bilginer played Colonel Ismet Bey, while Olcay played famous Turkish female author Halide Edip Adıvar. They later established a theatre project called ‘Play Workshop’ in Istanbul.

During the 1990s, Bilginer continued acting extensively both for TV and film. Some of these movies were Innocence (Masumiyet) directed by Zeki Demirkubuz, Sawdust Tales (Usta Beni Öldürsene) directed Barış Pirhasan, Harem Suare directed by Ferzan Özpetek and particularly ‘Alas! My Father (Eyvah Babam!) which was particularly popular in Turkey.

Bilginer also awarded the Best Actor Award in Angers Film Festival in France for his role in Masumiyet, a film which also received numerous awards in Turkish film festivals.

During 2000s, Bilginer became an important actor both in Turkey and globally. He participated in various projects. In 2003, Bilginer took short role in Buffalo Soldiers directed by Gregor Jordan. In the movie, he acted alongside celebrated US actor Joaquin Phoenix.

In these years, his other remarkable films are; Where Are You Firuze? (Neredesin Firuze?) directed by Ezel Akay, The International directed by Tom Tykwer, Thief! (Hırsız Var) directed by Oğuzhan Tercan, Killing the Shadows (Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü?) directed by Ezel Akay, and 7 Husbands of Hurmuz (7 Kocalı Hürmüz) directed by Ezel Akay. Bilginer also acted in many TV shows, some of them are; Sweet Life (Tatlı Hayat), Dear In-law (Sevgili Dünürüm), and Dear Minister (Sayın Bakanım), She’s Gone.

For the last ten years, Bilginer has established himself as a highly acclaimed and successful actor both in Turkey and internationally. Bilginer continues to work in Turkish and International films and television. Some of the international film projects that he has taken roles in include: The Reluctant Fundamentalist directed by Mira Nair, Rosewater directed by Jon Stewart, and The Ottoman Lieutenant directed by Joseph Ruben. He also acted in some Turkish TV series including; The Role of My Life (Hayatımın Rolü), Goldens of Istanbul (İstanbul’un Altınları), The Innocent (Masum), and Şahsiyet (Persona).

Bilginer also shared the leading role with Turkish actress Demet Akbağ in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes awarded film Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu) in 2014. Bilginer has crowned his national and international career with a prestigious International Emmy award.

One of the reasons behind Bilginer’s success is that has a great passion to learn and to develop. In 2002, when Bilginer attended a television program he explained his view about life and acting: “Happiness means fighting. Happiness means always fighting, happiness means to climb over obstacles that are against you. When you do this, it means you’re happy. Without doing anything, with just sitting, you can’t be happy or unhappy.” At the program, Bilginer ended up his speech with his personal motivation: “I tried to do beautiful things, I tried to do the right things. But still, I am a student and I am so jealous of Haluk Bilginer 20 years later. Who knows what he would learn.”

Written by Yeter Ada Şeko – ISTANBUL

Towards the mid-1920s Turks were asked “not to follow the Islamic traditions, but the traditions of the West; not to use the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, but the Latinized Turkish alphabet; not to wear fez or amamah (also known as imamah>; an Islamic headwear), but only fedora or similar kind of Western headwear.” Moreover, to be an elite in the newly established Republic, one had to be a positivist, or a fervent follower of scientism even. All of these changes were implemented incrementally after the 1924 constitution, ultimately defining and describing the Republic of Turkey’s “desirable citizen.” Thus, an amnesiac generation was born, severed from a thousand years-long tradition, that couldn’t read the tombstones of its ancestors, that would mistakenly assume any note written in Ottoman Turkish was religious scripture to be hung on walls.

As people could never be transformed into Westerners overnight, many tragic events came to pass. Many were in limbo between the East and the West. Author, screenwriter and filmmaker Ayşe Şasa’s parents were the exemplary “desirables” of the country who adopted and embraced the new lifestyle. For this reason, the schizophrenic nature of the republic left its mark on their daughter Ayşe Şasa. She was lonely, emotional and intelligent. She would become a true Western intellectual, unlike her parents, and continue to inquire and interrogate relentlessly. Even though the rigorous bouts of the said schizophrenia that started in her youth were abated by “sincerity and veracity” later, they continued to haunt her for many more years.

Cultural Alienation and Şasa’s Trauma

Her mother would organize balls, while her father was an affluent businessman and an admirer of the US who would participate in sports that emerged in parallel with the republic’s foundation, play tennis and indulge in sailing. According to Ayşe Şasa, they “despised traditions, the past and everything that was related with it. For them, everything that is Western was good without an exception. Nevertheless, they lacked the ideological and cultural background that an average Western bourgeois possessed.” She, on the other hand, would become “a madwoman who settled down on a misty mountaintop and attempted to interpret the world of the sane,” as put in her own words. She would be always conscious of the difference between the sane and herself; constantly observing the sane, she would try to encode her feelings and ideas to this world.

Her mother had entrusted all her upbringing to tutors, so that she could be “educated in accordance with the necessities of the age.” Ayşe Şasa, in her own words, was feeling like “Dickensian orphans,” as she was thinking and speaking in German, the language of her tutors, instead of her mother language, Turkish. She was raised by two Jewish tutors, along with a Christian tutor, who fled the cruelties of the Nazis. With them, Hitler and the Nazis became a part of her life; as a child, she was told the stories of people being buried alive by her tutors. Even though she couldn’t comprehend the reality, she became extremely afraid of death at the age of four. However, the tutors weren’t content with only telling stories; a tutor who threatened her with jail time and even threw Ayşe Şasa into a ditch a couple of times was followed by another who forced her to write “Ich bin ein Esel” (literally “I’m a donkey” in German, with the connotation of being a dunce) a thousand times.

Ayşe Şasa said “it was a complete form of alienation; I was praying to Gott, not Allah.”

Frau Katie, boasting of raising King Zog of Albania, had promised Ayşe Şasa’s parents that she would be “educated in the most scientific manner.” For instance, Katie was making her lay on the snow in the winter and letting her cry at night, so that her lungs could develop properly! Despite being a cardiac patient, she was sent to ballet lessons and forced to learn to play the piano she hated, just because these were “the necessities of the age.” Sister Katie made her adopt the German conception of God, “Lieber Gott.” Ayşe Şasa said “it was a complete form of alienation; I was praying to Gott, not Allah.” The Christian tutor was taking her to the church in Taksim and making her light a candle in front of the Christ icon. “I started to identify myself with this pale body that was covered in blood clots. Meanwhile, during my primary school education, my parents would take me on their trips to Europe. We would visit the churches of Rome and this made me anxious. The pale body of Christ covered in blood was arousing fear and sorrow, which in turn exacerbated my melancholia,” she recounts.

She was sent to the American College for her secondary education. The ambition for success that was instilled by Sister Katie was effective in her school performance and many sports activities, including swimming and skiing. She entered contests and won. Ayşe Şasa was a student that received many awards and commendations. In her book, she says that “the main educational policy of the American Girls’ College, which was a Protestant institution, was the instillation of the humanist philosophy to children in every course. The humanistic approach essentially is a movement that incites hostility against tradition and divine inspiration. This approach makes a god out of each human being. The college was a place where the Western lifestyle was taught and the West was idealized. Arts, science and philosophy were idolized, made into a religion; there was nothing sacred with the exception of human beings and their creations.”

When she heard “there is no God” uttered by a guest of her family, it had an immense impact on her; contemplating the non-existence of God, she lost all conceptions of God and there was nothing divine left to resort to, including the “Lieber Gott” of her childhood. While reading Camus, Sartre, Kafka and Joyce, she becomes a nihilist during her education; believing that happiness is pedestrian, she almost started to pursue unhappiness.

Rauf Orbay was another important figure in Ayşe Şasa’s life. Orbay was an Ottoman officer, one of Atatürk’s companions, and her mother’s uncle.

Another important figure in Ayşe Şasa’s life is her mother’s uncle Rauf Orbay, who was an Ottoman officer and one of Atatürk’s companions. As he was sent into exile for 9 years after the foundation of the republic, her great uncle is also a political figure; she listened to many tragic stories extracted by him. Ayşe Şasa, joining the street protests side by side with all the leftist Turkish intelligentsia to support the May 27 coup in 1960 that would result in the execution of the prime minister and three other ministers, attempted to boast to his great uncle who was deemed a “zealot” at the time. In her memoir, she recounts the event: “I was covered in dirt when I went to my great uncle. Laughing, he said ‘are you rebelling, miss? These are nothing. I had three near misses with the death penalty.’ There was a sudden chill. It took years to realize who and about what I was talking to.”

“Everything alla turca was considered shameful in our home,” she said in one of her interviews. The usage of the word “alla turca,” the distinction between alla turca and alla franga, along with the preference of the latter, was even an indication of the schizophrenic nature of things. In this respect, listening to classical Turkish music was also considered a shameful act in their household. Constantly looking for sincerity and veracity in everything, Ayşe Saşa expressed that she used to hate Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha and rightfully so: “Holidays would come so suddenly; out of the blue, I was required to kiss the hands of the elderly (a traditional act out of respect).” At that time, especially in major metropoles, these holidays were devoid of their religious elements and were only celebrated out of habit. For Ayşe Şasa, it’s absurd to celebrate Eid al-Fitr without fasting throughout the month of Ramadan. In a similar sense, Ayşe Şasa explains that she used to see Eid al-Adha as a meaningless ceremony, as the flesh of the sacrificed animals wasn’t distributed to the impoverished. “The noteworthy thing to understand is that I myself and my parents are just temporary speckles. Nevertheless, the events transpiring within this tiny unit also takes place in all segments of the society with varying intensity at a macro level; this is the true disaster,” she says.

Always cataloging everything in her mind and able to relay this to the reader as well, the first image that came to Ayşe Şasa’s mind while thinking about writing her memoir was the French hospital La Paix in Şişli, Istanbul: “I was 16 years old and wasn’t religious; yet, while I was passing in front of the hospital, I said that if this hospital was to be a means to finding the truth, I would concur to be there. As if wishing a wish… I was intrigued by the word ‘truth’ and was almost obsessive about it. I believe I first saw this word in Plato’s dialogues during my secondary education. If I had to define the story of my life in a much simpler way, I would say that it’s an abstract of a pursuit, the pursuit of the truth.”

Twenty to twenty-five years later, she was hospitalized because of severe schizophrenic episodes and was taken to La Paix Hospital by her family. Thoughts and images of Nazis, the gestapo, juntas and torture rooms riddled her episodes, along with the Turkish War of Independence, exile and extractions of her close friend and fellow leftist Kemal Tahir about his time in prison, police pursuits and torture. In her book titled Delilik Ülkesinden Notlar(Notes from the State of Insanity), Ayşe Şasa describes these bouts that she noted while being in that state. It’s not definite whether this is the case for all patients of schizophrenia, but there seems to be a pure, innocent side in facing the perception of a greater threat. Illnesses make the temperament of a person more apparent, as they say; it seems that the good and kind nature of Ayşe Şasa was also explicit during her episodes. During her stay at the hospital, she would start to pray for the first time in her life; not to Gott, but to Allah.

http://thenewturkey.org/portrait-french-sufi-night-reunion-seb-arus-eva-de-vitray-meyerovitch/

Ayşe Şasa discovers Ibn Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam

In her 40s, she marries for a third time. She has become an addict of sleeping pills because of her illness and weighs 40 kilograms despite being 1.78 meters tall. In those days, she sees the name Ibn Arabi in a book catalog. She has never read a work written by an Islamic scholar to that date; she would order the book from the UK, but put it aside and not read for the time being. Her third husband is a filmmaker, just like her second husband, and shows a level of affection that Ayşe Şasa has never experienced in her life. “During those days, while my mental faculties were acute, I started to read Fusus al-Hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom, or also known as The Seals of Wisdom). Even though it was a difficult read, I was able to understand certain in-depth concepts to an extent because of my philosophical background. After a while, an event that couldn’t be explained through rationality occurred: it felt like I was standing gazing upon a ray of joy, a shimmering sea. ‘This doesn’t resemble any other book you’ve read,’ I said to myself. Ibn Arabi was describing and ascribing meaning to the universe and dimensions through Allah’s ‘the compassionate’ attribute. In the book, I saw the renowned hadith qudsi that is beloved by sufis: ‘I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known. “From that moment on, Islam becomes a part of Ayşe Şasa’s life and her sole interest. She meets an academic working on Ibn Arabi and finds herself in the vast world of Sufism. “The mind, rationality is insufficient in penetrating and permeating the secrets of the universe. The mind exists and is important; yet, it is inadequate. Once miracles start to take place, they never end,” she says.

An elderly woman said “You assume that life is over, but it suddenly starts over, again and again.” Ayşe Şasa, one of the most prominent screenwriters of Turkish cinema, passed away on June 16 2014, at the age of 73. She said that there was no death, only a life that was deeper than life; indeed, the book which tells the story of her life is aptly named The Journey of a Soul.