TURKEY’S president often complains that the one area of national life on which his conservative, Islamist-rooted government has not made a permanent mark is culture and the arts. Earlier this year, standing inside the Hagia Sophia—a Byzantine basilica converted into a mosque by the Ottomans and then into a museum by modern Turkey’s secular founders—Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his case for an art that evoked his country’s religious and imperial lineage, as well as its modern ambitions.
For many years, the president said, the arts in Turkey had been hostage “to a mentality that was more Western than the West, at odds with the nation’s values, and unaware of the rich heritage left behind by our ancestors.” The secular establishment, which Mr Erdogan has helped to depose over the past decade, would no longer monopolise Turkish culture, he promised, nor look down on artists who supported his government. The sentiment fitted the occasion—the launch of a festival in Istanbul dedicated to Ottoman and...
from The Economist: Books and arts https://ift.tt/2BfgU9V
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