Censorship on visual arts and its political implications in contemporary Turkey: four case studies from 2002-2009

Abstract

Debates on art censorship often have proved to offer a fertile ground for research on the issues of art, autonomy and freedom. Through an analysis of four case studies, this study aims to offer an analytical survey on censorship on visual arts in Istanbul from the recent historical context of 2002 – 2009, during the rule of recent Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP – Justice and Development Party) government. The selected cases are situated within the framework of modernization, political Islam and Kemalism and are analysed as cultural expressions of the contemporary Turkish political scene. The cases are selected according to the variety and the possibilities offered by the censorship mechanisms as well as the positioning of the artists within the processes. Interviews with the artists discuss (a) the norms of censorship; (b) the engagements of the artists within the processes; (c) self-censorship; (d) the censors’ justifications for each case. The research suggests that although recent censorship on visual arts in Turkey always reflects a specific socio-cultural context, the general formulation of censorship has its roots in moral justifications, in both political Islam and the state nationalism, as a response directed against the representators of any kind of perceived oppositon in its political and social sense.