WHAT IS A TURK?

The “Turk” as the “other” in the European culture is described by Western historians, journalists, travelers, anthropologists and diplomats who visited Turkey in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic: Rudyard Kipling, Edmondo de Amicis (Constantinople, 1896), W.S. Monroe ( Turkey and the Turks, 1907 ), Joe E. Pierce (Life in a Turkish Village, 1964), David Hotham ( The Turks, 1972 ), Robert Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy On Our Planet, 1994), New Statesman and Society, 2 February 1996, and others. The project focuses on the arbitrariness of cultural “stereotyping” and its persistence by juxtaposing photographs with expressions of extreme ideas about the Turks.

What is a Turk? 2003
30 postcards in six concertino packs
digital print on paper, stamped envelope
each postcard 16 x 12cm
250 editions

What is a Turk? 2003
installation view
60 postcards front and back,
50 x 192cm