In 2012, award-winning photographer Guy Martin moved to Istanbul. At the time, Turkey was regarded as a nation of wealth and power, with a stable democracy with secular leadership. However, this began to change with the rise of Islamic State, Presidential elections, the Kurds becoming a credible political force, the refugee crisis, and the failed coup d’etat by a section of the Turkish armed forces in 2016. In this volatile environment, fake news, before it was known as such, thrived, fuelled by change and instability. Since the abortive putsch, independent media workers have been sacked in their thousands, and scores imprisoned; Turkey is now the world’s leading jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Against this backdrop, Martin was drawn to explore Turkish soap operas, some of the most watched television shows in the world. The soap operas that had previously exported a simultaneously nostalgic and socially progressive vision of Turkey across the Arab world, refocused their storylines to emphasise the Turkish military and political power plots by deep state operatives, collusion by foreign powers, and terrorist attacks. Martin was introduced to a soap opera Director and given free rein to shoot on set, recording the action both during, before and after the cameras were rolling.

What began as a documentary project quickly spiralled into a deeper journey along the fault lines of truth, and the power of narratives to control reality. It is this dizzying blur of fact, urban myth, intense political fear and fiction pervading Turkish society – and Martin’s work – that we come together to discuss. Joining us will be storytellers of all stripes, from prizewinning authors to frontline journalists and translators.

Chair:

Maureen Freely was born in the United States, raised in Turkey, and educated at Harvard. A professor at the University of Warwick, she is currently the chair of English PEN. Her seventh novel, Sailing through Byzantium, was chosen as one of the best novels of 2014 by The Sunday Times. She has translated or co-translated a number of Turkish memoirs and classics, as well as five books by the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. She is also the translator of two memoirs about Turkey’s Islamicized Armenians, and the biography of the Turkish-Armenian journalist and political activist Hrant Dink.

Speakers:

Guy Martin is a British documentary photographer. He graduated with a B.A(HONS) in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport and shortly afterwards, won the Guardian and Observer Hodge Award. He went on to pursue a long-term project in Southern Russia and the Caucasus, before documenting the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. His work regularly appears in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, D Magazine, FADER, Huck Magazine, Le Monde M Magazine, Time Magazine, Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, WIRED, Harpers and National Geographic.

The Parallel State was supported by grants from the Magnum Emergency Fund and the Saint-Brieuc Photoreporter Festival and was the winner of the inaugural Viewbook Transformations Grant, and the Project Launch Award at CENTER, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The project was first exhibited in the Rencontres d’Arles 2017 as part of the New Discovery Award. Martin is a member of Panos Pictures, and his print sales and special commissions are represented by NineteenSixtyEight. An exhibition of ‘The Parallel State’ will be on display at Benrubi Gallery, New York, in February 2019.

Pelin Turgut is a London-based writer, storyteller and international facilitator. Co-creator of the popular alternative film festival -!f Istanbul-, several unique storytelling courses at institutions across Europe and a teacher of the art of storytelling, her first novel Secrets of a Vanishing Country was published in Turkey last year. The book is currently being translated into English.

The 2011 revolution in Egypt raised hopes that democratic institutions would replace Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship.  The recent removal of President Morsi by the Egyptian military and the violence on the streets that followed has instead left Egypt facing an uncertain future.

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor and renowned Egyptian journalist Yosri Fouda met at the Frontline Club on 12 August to attempt to shed some light on recent events and on Egypt’s political future.

Yosri Fouda (Left) and Jeremy Bowen (Right). Photo Wotienke Vermeer

Fouda explained that the Muslim Brotherhood, whom many had seen as the most well-organised political faction in Egypt had overreached, causing their administration to quickly lose popularity:

“I think the legacy of more than 80 years of working underground; they were subjected – and we have to always remember this – to all sorts of oppression and exclusion, and torture in some cases, got them a little bit ahead of themselves and they wanted to not only form the government but to actually reshape the state.”

Fouda also claimed that while the Army had chosen to remove Morsi following massive street protests, it was not done out of pure economic self-interest, as many had claimed, noting that:

“The army had more privileges under Morsi compared to even what they had under Mubarak.”

He also explained that the army had found the year-and-a-half period of directly administrating the country after the fall of Mubarak unpleasant and did not want a return to martial law.

I went to a celebration with some military people and some civilian people… to my left was the Commander of the Artillery. There were some young officers with their families, every now and then shouting the famous slogan… “The army and people are one hand“. And every time they shouted this the Commander of the Artillery said, “Never again!… What did we have in the end? We were shaving in the street, going to the toilet in the street and we were called names by kids!”… So they too had a very bad experience with us and they too have been trying to learn something from it.”

Responding to an audience question on how the Muslim Brotherhood could be included in any future liberal democratic form of government if they subscribe to an Islamic ideology, Fouda emphasised the dangers of excluding them again:

“In my opinion what we do not want to have is going back to the time when many forces… particularly Islamic, had to work underground… you really need to accommodate and it’s not going to be perfect, it’s going to be painful and it’s going to take time but it is much better than driving anyone underground.”

Bowen fielded a similar question on why Western governments had chosen to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood despite their alleged ties to terrorist groups and why Western media had chosen to frame Morsi’s removal almost exclusively as a coup d’etat.

“The Americans and other Western countries attach a lot of great importance to elections. They believe that the way of establishing a new Egypt was through a democratic process, so well there’s an election… it produced the result it produced. I think they felt obliged to say, “Well alright. Go ahead. See what you can do.””

Fouda received a round of applause from many of those in attendance, by stressing the importance of building genuine democratic institutions if Egypt is to move forward through its current political turmoil:

“What you are really after is the rule of law… if we manage together to lay the foundations for a healthy society that goes by the rule of law, then the revolution will have succeeded.”

Daniel is a freelance journalist and researcher specialising in foreign affairs, with an emphasis on Russia and the former Soviet Union. Twitter: @danielabkennedy

Watch and listen to the event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/egypt-crisis-yosri-fouda-in