A video piece, by Köken Ergun, also deals with Turkish society and the national and cultural changes it has undergone. A young man is trying to cover his head with a scarf bearing the Turkish flag. Gracefully and elegantly, he tries to arrange the scarf several times, but fails each time, finally breaking into tears. In the midst of the heated debates about head covering in the Turkish Parliament, the Turkish president sent personal invitations for the annualRepublic Day celebrations to members of the Parliament, most of whom belong to the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) in order to prevent their wives from arriving at the event with the traditional Islamic head covering. Horrified by this act of secular conservatism, Köken expresses his personal protest, setting out to underscore the predicament of the contemporary Islamic body.
In the time of the Ottoman Empire the Muslim rule prevailed whereby the religious scholars, the Ulama, determined the framework for the country’s laws according to the Sharia, Islamic law, while the secular ruler was free to operate within the lines drawn by the Ulama. This custom and the resulting rules were canceled in Turkey close to the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, in keeping with Ataturk’s desire to transform Turkey into a modern country and adopt the European life style. Today Turkey is fighting to be accepted as member of the European Union, and in keeping with Ataturk’s approach, it demonstrates its European facets and customs adopted in the country since the establishment of the Republic, while hiding the Islamic customs prevalent mainly in the rural population. Ergun’s work introduces a fundamental social and cultural question about the freedom of the individual in the public sphere, perusing secular coercion, mainly toward Islam, not only in Turkey, but in other European countries as well.
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