letter from Ozge Celikaslan
Dear DAI People, I have received today e mail from Ozge Celikaslan, from KozaVisual organization.
Dear Ljubica,
I’m sorry for replying your mail lately; I was abroad and couldn’t reply e-mails. It will be nice to meet you at NIHA (Netherlands Institute for Higher Education in Ankara, where DAI group is going to stay at) after your Cappadocia research.
I have been coordinating KozaVisual since last year. We went to Cappadocia, Ibrahimpasa Village two times in 2007. Alite was with us in one of them. Actually, we tried to understand the village life and villagers through visual tools. But we didn’t have enough time to understand it deeply. Later, I went to Cappadocia a few times for other NIHA projects.
The village is a typical one in mid-Anatolia. But at the same time, it has a special characteristic. It is divided in two parts: the new village and the old one. You will stay in the old part of it. Old part has caves; old houses remained from Greeks and churches in the valley. There was a huge migration motion in Turkey between 1904-1915 (if I’m not wrong for the exact dates). The migration was forced by the Turkish government and military forces. Greeks, Armenians and other minorities were forced to leave their villages and homes. The film, named 190B tries to tell this story. Director of the film tried to find the lost door number, which is supposed as a metaphor of the history. This Christian history had to be forgotten by the villagers, you could take it as a “loss of memory”
There are lots of underground cities in the area remained from wars or attacks. The guessed number is around 130 (I’m sure much more than this number). But only 30 of them were found and open to tourist visits.
Ok, I can tell more but the theme is water. Cappadocia has a special nature. The caves and huge stones all around the area, as an open museum, is the second example in the world. And the most important problem in the area is environment. There is no environment and water management policy in the area. For Ibrahimpasa and other villages, villagers still throw their wastes to the valleys. In the old times, this system works, because the waste was natural but now, modern wastes are plastic, chemical etc.
Water system is old and doesn’t work. The village has no water in winter because of the frozen pipes. You will see from the pictures of Willemijn and she will tell more about water problems I think. The point is, for the villagers, it is very ordinary. Some of them, especially younger ones are very angry about waste problems. I don’t know who is “the guilty”, government, mayors, municipality, villagers.
Art/Eco Platform Cappadocia is trying to tell it by art. And, you should meet with Fabriakartgroup in Mustafapasa, Sinasos with its old name. They organize the modern art festival in Cappadocia and the theme is “water bright”. I am also in the organization team. I told about your visit to directors of the festival, Kaan and Gulhan. They will wait for to meet with you. www.fabrikartgroup.org
I hope that this information helps. Do you have any other questions?
Greetings to your friends and I’m looking forward to meet you at NIHA between 12th and 14th of June.
All the best, Ozge - www.kozavisual.org