Turkey’s winning women ignite culture wars

ISTANBUL: When Merve Dizdar won Turkey’s first best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, and the women’s volleyball team lifted the European trophy this month, many hearts swelled with pride. But their triumphs also ignited culture wars.won Turkey’s first best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, and the women’s volleyball team lifted the European trophy this month, many hearts swelled with pride. But their triumphs also ignited culture wars.

Dizdar, a slight 37-year-old with an ear-to-ear smile, dedicated her win “to all my sisters” dreaming of a better Turkish life.

It was a poignant message delivered on the eve of a May election that veteran President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won by playing to his Islamic conservative base. It also earned Dizdar a dressing down from Turkey’s media regulator.

“The Sultans of the Net”, as Turkey’s volleyball team is called, relied on an openly lesbian player who occasionally dyes her spiky hair pink, to win the first title for a national sports team in living memory.

But state television refused to interview Ebrar Karakurt, who was pilloried on social media for representing LGBTQ rights.

And thus two moments that could have lifted Turks’ spirits during one of their most painful economic crises in decades became subjects of division and hate.

Ozer Sencar, founder of the MetroPoll survey agency, said the fissures that divide Turkey — an overwhelmingly Muslim nation formed from the Ottoman Empire’s ashes by a fiercely secular field marshal a century ago — appear to be growing worse.

“Polarisation in society has reached such a magnitude that everyone finds a pretext in everything to fight, with art and sports being no exception,” Sencar told AFP.

Dogan Gurpinar, a historian at Istanbul Technical University, said Erdogan’s defeated political opponents could start using culture and sports more to speak out against his rule, which was marred by purges that followed a failed 2016 military coup.

“(Secular) quarters are embracing culture and sports more after their election defeat,” Gurpinar said.

‘Beautiful days’
In “About Dry Grasses”, directed by Turkey’s 2014 Palme D’Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Dizdar plays a former activist who is trying to rebuild her life after losing a leg in a bombing.

Dizdar looked briefly confused after her name was read out at the Cannes awards ceremony, wondering if she might have misheard.

Then, reading from a prepared script in a trembling voice, she denounced the position Turkish women now find themselves in after Erdogan’s two decades in power.

“I dedicate this award to all my sisters, who never give up hope no matter what, and to all the fighting spirits waiting for the beautiful days they deserve in Turkey,” she said.

Secular opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who ended up losing to Erdogan in a runoff presidential ballot the following day, seized on Dizdar’s words.

“Today, together, we will gift democracy to ‘all the fighting spirits waiting for the beautiful days they deserve in Turkey’,” Kilicdaroglu said.

But she was lambasted in pro-government media, which now dominate Turkey’s political landscape.

“You will learn to respect your own country, Merve Dizdar,” Ibrahim Uslu, the vice president of the RTUK media watchdog, warned.