The Fear of Being Censored

Abstract

In the movie Mambo Italiano, the queer character Angelo Barberini says: “Being gay and Italian is a fate worse than . . . actually there is no fate worse than being gay and Italian.” To that I say, well, try being gay and Turkish and Muslim and an artist! In my experience, these components never sit well together, especially when your artwork consists of nudes and fetishes. As someone who was born Muslim, I believe that people should be free to wear headscarves (or not) or to go to the mosque (or not). I don’t separate people into groups designated by whether they are Muslim or Christian, gay or straight, Kurdish, Turkish, or another ethnicity. For me, any of my friends, colleagues, or models can have any background. But the conservative government in Turkey is very rigid in their view of who is “bad” and who is “good.” If you are not one of them, you are seen as being against them. I first faced censorship when I was studying photography as a freshman in college at Canakkale (18th March) University. I was participating in a juried competition held by the University, for which I was given an award for one of the three works I exhibited. When I went to the opening, I noticed that the title of one my photographs had been changed. It was a picture of a sweet eighty-yearold French woman by the name of Madame Brigitte. In her youth, she had fallen in love with a Turkish man and made a life for herself in Turkey. I set the photograph in an inner garden and called it “Tears of Madame.” It was meant to be an emotional portrait full of sadness. At the opening the name had been changed to read: “The Woman Looking at the Skyline.” Despite giving me an