“Kostantiniyye” Sculpture Removed in Istanbul
By HG Masters
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Societal tensions are running high in Turkey, following a suicide attack by Kurdish militants on police in central Istanbul on December 10, the assassination of the Russian ambassador by a police officer at a photo exhibit in Ankara on December 19, and the deaths of more than 15 Turkish soldiers in Syria in a battle with ISIS fighters for the town of al-Bab. In recent years, Islamist groups have been increasingly emboldened to threaten cultural events, such as the mob that stormed the Contemporary Istanbul art fair in November, demanding the removal of a sculpture by Ali Elmacı featuring the face of a late Ottoman sultan painted on the sculpture of a woman wearing a bikini. Güneştekin, who is Kurdish, told the Kurdish-media outlet Rudaw, “Some extremist people protested against me and the sculpture, saying that ‘here is Istanbul, not Byzantium’ and they wanted to lynch me and my art,” he said. “Istanbul was called Kostantiniyye from 1453 to 1930. Clearly, those who protested do not know the history.”
H.G. Masters is editor-at-large of ArtAsiaPacific.
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