“Art for demos”

Abstract

On 27 May 1960, Turkish Armed Forces carried out a coup d’état in Turkey. The day of the coup was later declared as a national holiday. Shortly after the coup, a monument/statue was erected at Taksim Square, the central square in downtown Istanbul. It was an approximately 7-metre-high bayonet placed upright on a roughly 2-metre-high pile of rocks. For 20 years, this phallic symbol of the military survived many public events and demonstrations at Taksim Square. Some of these demonstrations were violent and destructive at times. Nevertheless, the bayonet somehow endured them. Ironically, it took another military coup d’état to abolish the national holiday and the monument/statue was quietly removed from the square in 1980. This chapter endeavours to problematize the decision-making processes for the placement and removal of artworks and monuments in public spaces. The recent alternative approaches to public art will also be discussed with their advantages and shortcomings.