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Let’s Go to Cappadocia: Hamleci Mansion, its History, Evolution and Influence

August 24, 2022Readart, cappadocia, community house

If Ayrancı is a shining spot on our inner world maps, Hamleci Mansion in Ürgüp is one of these luminous spots. For many of us, all these spots are the places where the feeling of being a community and the taste of being together penetrate our minds and hearts. While these vibes are transformed into Ayrancı-Neukölln Dolmuş magazine, we continue our journey to Cappadocia and then to our stop in Ürgüp, Hamleci Mansion. In this article, we want to try to explain how Hamleci Mansion has come to this day and where it goes. So, we want to go on a mini journey together.

Ürgüp is a place where the fabulous nature of Cappadocia survives, and the mansion is a place where the historical traces of the region can be followed. The famous fairy chimneys were constructed by wind and water giving shape to the texture formed by the drying of the waters in the history of active volcanoes. This geography, where different societies and cultures live, gives the feeling of an open-air museum that we can visit and see even now. Cappadocia, which Assyrians call “Katpatuka” and means “the Land of Beautiful Horses” in Persian language, is referred as the land of fairies according to a local legend.

Dear Yılmaz, who has absorbed Cappadocia into his soul, says that those who come here cannot leave when they enter the right door. It is indeed so, the roots that pierce and hold onto the rocks are so strong that it is impossible not to feel. This is the reason why we have not been able to get enough of dreaming of going back to and producing together in these lands and the Hamleci Mansion.

Hamleci Mansion was built about 200 years ago by the Greeks living in the region. One day when we were interested in the maintenance of the mansion, we learned from someone who came to do a research on the old Greek houses of the region that, in Evangelia Balta’s book “Prokopi”, there is a photograph of the first owner in front of the mansion. With the combination of these information, the stories about the mansion began to merge one by one.

We learned that the first owners of the mansion were Greeks and when they had to go during the population exchange period between Greece and Turkey, the grandfather, nicknamed Hamlecioğlu, bought the mansion. Hamleci Grandpa, whose stories we had been trying to learn for a while, was Atatürk’s telephone handler. According to what is told, he did not speak much. He was highly respected by those who knew him, and was able to see his great-grandson while he was alive. At that time, we learned that Hamleci Grandpa’s own family, as well as tenant families and “Yoğman Ağa”, who was handling some of the works of the mansion, lived together in the mansion. Ürgüp was the most famous and developed region in Cappadocia at the time that Hamlecioğlu Dede and the generation after him lived.

Another feature of the mansion that is the subject of architectural research today is its wooden door. This door was painted green after Hamleci Grandpa went on his pilgrimage.

There is a garden on the right side extending from the old door. Once in the garden, there were horses in the barn, old fruit trees, a vegetable patch and an irrigation pool. This fertile garden, which has been neglected with the decrease of the residents one by one over the years, is covered with weeds and trees. Even a part of the house was destroyed by these trees and according to the stories, this destroyed part was quite magnificent. Apple trees, which were said to have at least ten varieties before, have left their places to the self-growing apricot and black elderberry trees as well as a walnut tree that is hanging from the neighboring garden.

When you continue from the plain that extends from the garden to the mansion, you will reach the stone stairs leading to the courtyard. When you arrive the courtyard, you will see the old stone house, some parts of which are in the rocks, and the “yellow house” where the vine trees make a shade at the entrance. The courtyard, which connects the mansion and the yellow house, is in the shadow of the vines during the day and the stars and the moon at the night. According to Evangelia Balta’s book Ürgüp – Prokopi, the shape of these stone houses was determined by the rock on which they rest.

We can easily feel the natural fabric of Ürgüp in this wide area where there is a gazebo that overlooks the front garden. This mansion, which once hosted a crowded population, has sections that serve different purposes such as flour place, barn, sheep pen, tandoori, grape distillery.

When we returned to the mansion after fifteen years long abandonment, while cleaning, we discovered that there was a chapel carved into the rock between parts of the house. We think that this chapel may have inherited from the early times of Christianity. In the third century, Christians trying to meet their shelter and security needs in the Cappadocia region were able to protect themselves from the religious pressures of the Roman Empire by taking advantage of the structure of the region’s rocks suitable for carving. During these times, they continued their lives and religious practices in these safe areas. We think that the chapel, according to another assumption, may have inherited from the tunnels connecting the houses in the area.

The flour house between the yellow house and the mansion served as a cellar where cheeses, meats, vegetables and fruits were stored thanks to its location in the rock and thus keeping it cool even on hot summer days. There are two separate wells in the garden and under the “yellow house” where the tenants stay, and even the neighbors would come and take water from these wells. While there were two separate symmetrical stairs leading to the yellow house during the time of Hamleci Grandpa, today only one of them stands.

The place under the yellow house, which has an independent entrance and which we transform into a workshop today, was previously a sheep pen. The place that involves the tandoor and is used as kitchen is between the flour house and the sheep pen. This place is called “tafana” in the local language, and neighbors used to come to benefit from the tandoori. There was a grape distillery in the garden and grape molasses was boiled in large cauldrons through making fire.

Especially during Ramadan and during the holidays, the mansion was full of relatives. When grandfather was alive, they would come to kiss his grandfather’s hand. These meetings were used to lead to get 3-4 generations of the family together. Local dishes of the region were cooked for the arrivals. Hamleci Grandpa always sat on his cushion next to the wood stove in the left corner of “the room with stove”.

We have not even been able to open most of this place, some of which are in the rocks, and new rooms are linked from the other rooms. However, the never-ending features of the mansion and the fact that Ürgüp has a huge differences and great calmness compared to Ankara provides us the space we need to construct the projects we want to do.

You start carving each rock with a hole. To begin with, we decided to revive the wine culture, that is unique to Cappadocia but is hurt, within ourselves. For this purpose, last summer we had an attempt on winemaking in cooperation with our friends in the region. We have experienced winemaking in terms of the grape harvest, the crushing of the grapes, the correct maceration. During this process, we visited the wine room daily and talked nicely with wines. We are currently at the stage where the grape juices waiting in barrels and patiently waiting for them to become wine.

In permaculture, there is a crop / harvest / benefit cycle. According to Bill Mollison, all kinds of useful outputs that come out as a result of the behaviors or operations of the elements in the system are the benefits in that system. At the same time, these benefits are theoretically unlimited. We chose this principle as our road map while we construct a life system we will create in Hamleci Mansion. While buying what we need from the areas we live in and from each other, we chose to diversify and increase what we can give. With the awareness that everything is possible when we come together, all kinds of benefits we have achieved – from creating a rainwater pond in the garden to enjoying each other and healing – has been our motivation. We were good for each other, when it was good for each other, we were good for our environment as well. There were times we worked hard for Hamleci Mansion, and also we camped together in magical landscapes. It can be said that we work in festival vibes. This is our biggest reward.

It is not an easy task to get Hamleci Mansion back on its feet. Its historical nature makes any kind of renovation difficult. Considerable amounts of financial resources are required for the restoration. We are currently writing a project to receive grant support. We dream of in Hamleci Mansion, there will be a gallery area, a suitable environment where we can host artists from different places, a garden kept alive with permaculture principles and a boutique cafe or restaurant connected with the products of the garden. We are open to any improvement of and contribution to these projects that we dream of together.

In fact, what we are aiming at is to build a life woven with the art of coexistence while providing a space to everyone to discover what they want to do and helping them bring their discoveries to this life. What we experience while doing this is, starting from our uniqueness, learning to be “the one” and reflecting this; accordingly, we reach a state of “being a collective one” formed by the coming together of “all the ones”.

We are sending you all the smell of potatoes and chestnuts on the stove from Hamleci Mansion and our journey with the dream of having a place where we can enjoy our existence and materialize our ideas by taking care of each other. Let us know if you come nearby!

Contact with the authors:

Sevecen Kaplan @sevconot

Esin Metin @kaplumbagamutfak

Ayşe Yayla @aysmayslay

Translated from the Turkish original by Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

textum Magazine

August 17, 2022Readcritical thinking, politics

https://textumdergi.net

How would you introduce textum Magazine to someone who doesn’t know yet?

In order to address the starting point that brings together the team working in the establishment and preparation phase of textum Magazine, first of all, Middle East Technical University (METU in short; Ankara, Turkey), more specifically METU Political Science Student Club (SBT) should be mentioned. When almost all of us were undergraduate students at different levels, we organized a lot of activities together. Reading groups, talks, workshops, symposiums… These events always meant more than just “academic activities” for us. Of course, it also had such a function, we were improving ourselves and each other academically; but what is essential is that we were organizing a solidarity, an “idea”. Therefore, SBT was always at the forefront for both the discussions of students’ representation and the problems related to the faculty as well as May Day. So we are, as a part of this community.

Rather than just being a “student community”, with the work we did together during the time we worked for SBT, it became for us a “school”, an “alliance” and a kind of “organization”, trying to mobilize its academic qualifications in favor of the laborers and the oppressed, seeing itself as an ally with those and believing in the unity of thought and practice.

It would not be wrong to see textum Magazine as the fruit of this intellectual togetherness.

Although it was METU and SBT, which brought us together as those who took part in the realization of textum, we can say our current composition that stretches across much more diverse backgrounds and experiences and, consists of a group of students and academicians. The textum team is predominantly students operating in the field of social sciences and fed by different schools / approaches of critical thinking. In this respect, we would like to state that it is a team that keeps the discussion within itself constantly alive. In addition, this mosaic structure of the subjects of the textum is the characteristic that makes collective work even more productive. The main motivation for this team’s unity is prioritizing the critical thinking that puts social realities and problems on the agenda against the mainstream intellectual thinking. The raw material of the activities, that we have shared and been a part of over the years, is this critical thinking.

Hence, we can say that Textum is an intellectual exercise field trying to make a humble contribution to the motto of understanding and changing the world while taking some academic concerns into the account, but essentially affected and inherited by the practice of labor struggles. Also, it aims to contribute as much as possible to moving labor struggles one step further through working letter by letter.

What kind of problems, needs, goals, concerns, affections, motives did you have in the beginning and construction process of this project?

In fact, the answer to this question is closely related to the issue we discussed in the previous question. We think we need the critical thought and its organization as much as water, as much as air. We mentioned above a team that wants to take their earlier work one step further and pursue a search beyond these mentioned activities. Textum consists of a team that has a collective history and desire of working together as well as trying to think and produce by discussing and asking new questions.

Knowing that such an activity will somehow continue its life and hoping it to continue growing, we wanted to establish this channel. This is a medium that we hope to be instrumental in sharing thoughts and productions with more people, circulating them more and bringing people together. You will notice that when we mention the team who took part in the establishment of textum, we are actually talking about a “generation” shared same space and time and also gathered around similar motivations. In this manner, the textum is also a “generation project” for us. In addition to our experience of working together, we started this project with our belief in emotional togetherness of our generation and its critical and intellectual energy. We wanted to establish a publishing platform that brings people together who shares similar problems and desires, and have similar perspectives in terms of thinking and producing to us. Moreover, we wanted to contribute to the circulation of intellectual products which are produced in this setting. As a result of such a search, textum became actually the way “we have things to say”, too.

What kind of problems did you encounter until this point? And what processes did you experience and what kind of solutions did you develop to overcome them?

Obviously, approximately a year ago before we put the magazine into a concrete form, we had to hold meetings and we needed some discussions.

However, regardless of the course of these discussions, it took almost a year for this project to materialize and finally exist, both because it required a considerable workforce and overtime to start its publication life as a magazine, and also many of us were experiencing some radical changes in our lives. In this context, some of the results of the Covid-19 epidemic in the form of remote working-staying at home and the need to understand and interpret what is happening in the world more than before due to the epidemic provides us a suitable environment for realizing textum and to put into practice what we have in mind for a while.

Since the beginning of the pandemic process, we had already communicated with each other and continued to follow approaches to the outbreak and its direct and indirect consequences both in academia of Turkey and the world. As a result, as a positive output of the pandemics process, the textum, which we planned in advance but could not implement due to certain problems, started its publication life in June 2020.

Of course, there were other problems we encountered during this period. Many articles in the scope of our first file, which we planned for release, had content that required one-on-one or collective meetings with people. In this context, we had to constantly conduct our meetings online due to the pandemic. It should be said that this situation creates some obstacles to our deeper consideration on the issues. Similarly, it should be said that all the meetings that should be held as a publish team are also held on online platforms. Although such online meetings have beneficial aspects in terms of overcoming spatial distances, it should be emphasized that these meetings are not as efficient as face-to-face discussions. So much so that we even have to do this interview over the internet.

We tried to find solutions to such obstacles and disadvantages by meeting face-to-face and exchanging ideas in groups in the conditions that allow outdoor meetings in summer months, despite not all at the same time. Thus, we can say that our second file, which could overcome the disadvantaged conditions of the first file, was created with a richer content in terms of intellectual depth. Of course, we intend to develop the studies in future files.

Finally, we have to say that we faced with some structural problems of online magazine publishing. The best known of these is some technical problems in textum’s database. To be more specific, we wake up some mornings that the texts on the site were distorted, their order lost and similar problems occurred. In addition, sometimes access to the website may be disturbed. In fact, as we mentioned above, these are the problems of online magazine publishing inherent to technological diffuculties. Fortunately, some of the backup processes we have done on time, helped us in such cases and such small but annoying problems can be overcome.

What have you found on the way until the magazine reached this point? What do you hope to find for the future?

This is a really good question. Perhaps the most important benefits of a magazine or a similar project are those have found on the way or the ones to be found in the future. From this perspective, we should say that the first (and perhaps the nicest) thing we find on the way until the textum arrives this point is new colleagues. We should say that the textum, whose foundations were laid at SBT events in METU, has made many people a part of this work since the preparation process. In this context, the Textum Assembly, which we created as soon as we started publishing, became an inspiring medium where new ideas were discussed, as well as a structure in which we feel the strength of our fellow travelers walking with us with its ever-expanding sum. We are very happy to find companions who share similar feelings, excitement and intellectual approaches with us.

On the other hand, with this work, each of us gained new interests and experiences. One way or another, a publishing experience is ours. We have to follow discussions in a wide variety of fields, read and evaluate receiving articles, and make translations and interviews. There is a diverse learning process in both content and form for us. In summary, we aim to progress towards a publishing practice that will become stronger day by day with our new colleagues and our deepening perspective. In this respect, we firmly believe that the progressive process will bring new gains in every aspect.

What kind of interactions did the magazine project and its process create in your close circle? What kind of reactions did you get?

It would not be wrong to say that we have received positive reactions in general. Especially since the first file we published, we have received feedbacks, which encouraged and made us happy, from our academic community. In addition, we have received and published new articles from friends who are inspired by what we have done and who want to improve the textum with their work. The most important output of this process is that we have contributed to the organization of critical practice in the intellectual field. Especially with our second file, the criticism we directed to the university, as an institutional structure that we are currently in, has gained the appreciation from our many friends. They congratulated us on our courage and made us look to the future with more hope.

In what direction do you want to advance in the future? What goals do you have?

What we have produced in our short publication life so far and the feedbacks make us think that we are not doing a bad job in line with the goals we mentioned above. We want to continue to work and produce in this direction as well as more people to feel and contribute as a part of this medium. The inherent motivation for publishing and establishing a publishing platform is to circulate, read and discuss the products you produce. We see that we have reached a certain readership so far, that our work has attracted attention in different circles with increasing interest. Of course, as a very young, newly established magazine, we are at the very beginning of the way. Our hope is to ensure the continuity of this interest, to create more and to produce works that deserve this.

It is our greatest wish that those who have academic, political and social interests and concerns, and those who have words to say in this context, will contribute to this discussion platform that we are trying to establish. The doors of the textum are wide open to those who wish to contribute to critical social thought. This call is of course primarily a call for our own generation. Today, a medium where the young generation, worn and despaired by the social crises of our age, can express themselves, discuss and speak about the mentioned social crises has become more needed than ever. Therefore, creating and expanding these types of mediums is one of the main goals for textum.

When considered in terms of publishing activity, it is useful to remember the fact that current time directs us all to digital channels. The fact that printed publication is becoming an increasingly rare method to choose increases the interest in digital platforms such as textum. However, it would be wrong to think that digital publishing alone provides access to the reader. The quality of the work produced here becomes very important. Another main goal in terms of textum is to produce intellectually quality content. Therefore, when we talk about our future goals, we would like to emphasize that we want to ensure the collective continuity of our work and to increase the quality of the content produced.

What have you learned from the mistakes you have made so far? What would you recommend to those who want to do similar projects?

As we said before, this is a long journey, we are at the very beginning of this road, and we learn new things with every step we take. Maybe this is not a mistake, but we could do it without the one-year delay we mentioned. In this sense, if it is accepted as a “wish”, we say, if only we had entered into this business before. On the other hand, there are some difficulties that the work itself poses. Although we have worked together or separately in various publishing works, we learn how difficult it is to produce a compact and organized file. In this sense, we did our best not to make the mistakes, that we made in the first file, in the second one. We believe that we will gradually reduce these mistakes in future studies.

Do you have any calls for solidarity to overcome specific challenges regarding the project?

To what extent it is possible to call this “difficulty” is unknown; but one of the most important achievements for a magazine would be to create its own audience. In this sense, we always repeat our call to be more read and shared.

Any last words?

Thank you very much for your invitation. We wish you good luck in your work, too!

Interviewer: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Translated from Turkish original by: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Annihilation

July 29, 2022Readannihilation, hürkan, korhan, literature, meteor, short, story, tevfik, underground, urhan, writer

Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Chapter 1

Korhan was looking out of his window. His house had a position for him to see Sakarya Street from the front. So, he was in one of the best places to observe all the turmoil. Thirteen days had passed since scientists announced that exactly twenty-eight days later, a meteorite would crash into the Earth and bring about the end of humanity.

Things haven’t gone so well for Korhan lately. For almost a year, he has been contemplating existence and searching for it in his own way. After one year, he could not reach anywhere, and while he was cursing his fate, he heard the news from television. His fate, which had not revealed the secrets of existence, gave him the gift of “annihilation” itself.

After hearing the news, Korhan realized that he was happy inside, let alone sad. This meteor promised chaos, rebellion, falling paradigms, freedom and annihilation. All this was convenient and pleasant for Korhan. For a man who is chronically on the verge of suicide, he could not be filled with more joy and happiness.

A long time passed away before he thought of taking a look outside, shedding the thoughts that he had been buried since he received the news. He wondered, how did people react to this situation? He was horrified when he looked out the window. Life was in its normal flow.

He had already given up hope on people, but he thought that this was too much even for them. How can someone who would die in twenty-eight days still commute to work? He reassured himself that maybe they did not hear about the meteor yet, or they did not grasp the gravity of the situation. “Let’s see after a little more time,” he said to himself. He still had to go out while everything was “normal” and get food, water and cigarettes, so he did.

Chapter 2

Now, thirteen days later, Korhan could envision the meteor and the annihilation in a more reasonable way. He was sitting and watching Sakarya Street from the window as always. People were also starting to realize the situation, and so the chaos was felt faintly.

Still, some people did not get out of their routine. For instance, the police were still guarding the interests of their precious state, the politicians were making restraint calls, and the religious preachers declared the coming of the apocalypse and called for worship. But except for these people, everyone surrendered to chaos and extinction.

Outside, Korhan saw a crowd dancing, drinking, talking, having fun and making love around a big fire. “It’s just like the old days of resistance,” he thought, got out of the house and surrendered himself to the crowd moving as if it were a single, large organism.

He drank, danced, laughed, drank again, chatted, loved the conversation, liked, had sex, sobered up, got high… And he ruminated… The world would disappear after a very short time. For this reason, he was perhaps living the happiest day of his life. The more he looked at this strange situation, the more he felt special. However, as a quick observation would infer, he was not much different from other people. The majority of the people were well aware that they would extinct after a while. Interestingly enough, they were happier, except for some presumptuous paranoiacs. People were suddenly unchained. Future anxiety, responsibilities, complexes, morality, the state, insecurity, in short, all oppression mechanisms became meaningless. The collapse of these mechanisms, which took hundreds of years to form, in a few weeks, gave Korhan incredible pleasure. He took one last puff and killed his cigarette.

Days were passing by. The end of humanity was fast approaching. Humanity was perhaps at its happiest era ever since hunter-gatherer times. Those who could think for a little bit were questioning how humankind could have condemned itself to suffer all this time. There was no answer to that. The meteor was like an executioner, fulfilling the last wish of a death row inmate. It has given humanity its last wish; freedom. Yet, this did not mean that the execution would not happen. The meteor was as concrete as a guillotine, annihilation was as inevitable as a revolution. Death is too close to be worthy of worrying.

The meteor came quite close and created a sight too beautiful for words to describe. There were three days left to the hit. The world was overwhelmed with joy. Korhan had slowly begun to think about where and how he would face the annihilation. He definitely wanted it to be in a crowded place. He must see the last moments of other people. Should he be lying down or standing? What should he wear? Should he be high or sober? He had to decide all this right away. He could not simply die out. What about his last words? “Oh God, there is so much to do,” he grumbled.

Chapter 3

Korhan made his way home to sleep and postpone what needs to be planned. He was feeling confused as he climbed the stairs from the apartment door to his house. Someone was sleeping in front of his door. He recognized Yasemin while trying to get into the house without waking her up. Yasemin, Yasemin, Yasemin. He found Yasemin unexpectedly, as usual, she was lying on the mat, curled like a cat. When Korhan made a move to wake her up, he felt discomfort and restlessness inside. He felt this way for the first time since the approach of the meteor.

For a moment, he thought of not waking Yasemin and continuing his life. But realizing that his conscience would not be at ease afterward, he sent this thought back to the depths of his subconscious.

-Yasemin, Yasemin! Wake up, you will be sick.

– Wait a second (stretches, yawns). Korhan is that you! Ha, ha! You got bald and thin, I hardly recognized you.

– It cannot be said that the years have been very affectionate to you too. You got old.

– Korhan, my dear, getting old is an individual decision. Some of them age at fifty, others at twenty like you. Dear Korhan, would a person got old in the second year of college like you? As for me, I will grow old the day I come to fifty.

– Yasemin, I am not sure if the past years have aged you, but as far as I can see, it has fed your ruthlessness. Wait for a little dear, don’t attack from the first minute.

– Oh yeah, I was indiscreet again wasn’t I? But I’m sleepy, you could not come. Won’t you let me in?

– Sorry, I was lost in thought. Come on in.

So Yasemin and Korhan entered the house. Korhan was taken aback and puzzled.

“So this is where you live, huh, the location is pretty good.” Yasemin started the second round of conversation.

-It’s ok, I like living in the center of the city.

-The inside of the house is also not bad, I like it.

“Thanks,” said Korhan. Yasemin did not ask a new question or start a new conversation. At that moment, in this moment of silence, Korhan realized that the subject that made the conversation exist was Yasemin. Korhan decided to break this annoying silence. But there was a problem. Korhan’s mind had turned into an empty board. Nothing came to his mind to break the silence.

Unbroken silences grow. The tension increases as it grows. As the tension increases, panic starts. The more you panic, the more difficult it is to find something to say. This is a vicious circle. Korhan was experiencing this. Mutual silence continued for a long time. Korhan, who was nervous, decided to gather all his attention and put an end to this. Korhan forced himself to think: “What can I say, what can I say?” “The meteor!”

At this exact moment of “eureka”, Korhan remembered that he had only three days to annihilation by eluding the drunkenness he had experienced since seeing Yasemin. Yasemin had blown his mind and he completely forgot about the meteor. Finally, he broke the silence clumsily. “By the way, we don’t have to worry about aging anymore, we will have three more days at best.” Yasemin had difficulty understanding this assessment coming out of the blue.

– Oh, you are talking about the meteor. I don’t believe it.

– How come?

– Just, I don’t.

– What does it mean, how is that possible? Look, it can be seen right over there, above us.

– I don’t believe it, do I have to? You cannot question people for not believing. Do they have to believe? There is no such thing! I have a friend who doesn’t believe in atoms, in fact, they are three brothers. The little one doesn’t believe in time. The other doesn’t believe in inflation.

– Inflation?

– Yes, inflation. I accept it too. It is ok not to believe in atoms or time, but not believing in inflation is quite difficult.

And they became silent again. Korhan, who could not tolerate a new silence, immediately came to the point without dancing around it.

– Why are you here Yasemin?

– You know when people do not believe in God but pray anyway. Like that, I say goodbye to the people I value in life even though I do not believe in that meteor.

– So, tecahül-ü arif?

– No, it’s more like a hüsn-ü talil .

Korhan was very happy. It was priceless to experience, just before the annihilation, one more time that Yasemin loved and valued him as he was. Yasemin was saying and showing this in her own way. They spent that night together.

When he got up in the morning, Korhan realized that Yasemin was gone. He was already expecting this, otherwise, it would be more difficult. Yasemin left a note: “There are other people I should see. Stay with love.” Korhan had found the peace he was looking for. Frankly, he no longer cared about existence or annihilation. He had gone beyond existence and annihilation. He felt like Epicurus. And why he felt that way, he had no idea. He always thought that as he got closer to annihilation, he would feel like Nietzsche. Where did Epicurus come from now? He decided to follow this feeling and read Epicurus’s philosophy until the annihilation. In this way, he decided how to say goodbye to his existence soon.

Chapter 4

At home, Korhan mingled with his thoughts for a long time, his mind was very clear and thoughts were almost rushing in his mind. He was thinking so quickly, clearly, and boldly; he was suddenly discovering the bridge between two thoughts that he could not reconcile with each other for years, or he could see the missing side of a thought he had been affirming for years in a “snap”. Yasemin left him with two things: tranquility and sorrow. This duo stimulated Korhan’s brain. When he looked up at the clock, he said “yes”. “Time is up.” Annihilation is now at the door. He wore his favorite clothes. He pulled out some of his favorite books and put them in his bag. He put a bottle of whiskey and cigarettes in the bag. He was ready now and he could leave the house and welcome the annihilation.

Korhan stepped out of the apartment door as if stepping into a festival. It was so crowded that there was no place to step. Korhan’s sharpened intelligence immediately began to examine people and their last hours. People were waiting for the meteor as if they were waiting for the New Year. Most people came together and formed this great crowd to meet the annihilation together with other people. The crowd grew as the meteor approached because people could not stand the idea of dying alone, they wanted to die together. Korhan could not decide, were these people afraid of death or loneliness? Even for those who fear death most, when everyone died at the same time, it was as if death was no longer frightening. At least Korhan’s instincts were telling that. In this case, people must have been afraid of loneliness.

But when he recalled the life going on just before the meteor, he realized that the situation was a bit more complicated than it appeared. They were so lonely and loveless that if people were afraid of loneliness in that disgusting system, they would rather die than live like this. The dilemma of whether people were afraid of death or loneliness, so they needed to come together just before the annihilation, challenged Korhan. He overcame the dilemma with a synthesis: People were afraid of dying alone. Another possibility was that this issue was a subject far beyond what Korhan could understand. Korhan was overwhelmed while thinking about all these.

He felt the urge to be away from people, which he often felt, deep inside his soul and mind. Korhan would not be able to do it. He did not like people insomuch that even the transformation they had experienced in the last month was not enough to make Korhan love them a little. It took less than a minute for him to change his mind about what he had been planning for the past week; observing people’s final moments. His new plan was to go to nature and to meet the annihilation there, in the arms of mother nature. There was only one place in Ankara where he could meet with mother nature. Thus, he set out for the forests of Middle East Technical University. He wondered how much time he had. It was getting dark. The day the meteor would hit was clear, but no one made a statement about its hour. Korhan was hoping at least to enter the forest before the collision.

He was looking at the meteor and trying to estimate his remaining time. But it was not possible to understand. In this uneasiness, he was able to reach mother nature on the double. Large pine trees and slightly moist soil with a fragrance greeted him. Korhan was grateful and happy. He sat down on the ground reverently. He took out his whiskey and had a sip. He wanted to take out his joint and light it up. He could not. Because he forgot to take a lighter with him.

Chapter 5

At that moment, Korhan felt like crying due to the absence of a lighter. His situation was really, really annoying. He had to struggle to get calm again. When he succeeded, he got up and started touring around in the forest. Being very aware that he was making his last walk under the pine trees, he walked slowly towards the pond. As he approached the pond, he heard crackles first, then realized that the crackles were coming out of a fire, then he saw the fire, then he saw the old man with the long white beard over the fire, and finally sat next to him.

– Old man, do you have a lighter?

– Yes, here.

– Can I sit by you if I am not going to ruin your last moments?

– Sit down. You are a God-sent guest.

– Would you like to take a puff?

– Alright.

– I’m Korhan.

– Nice to meet you.

– Making a fire was a good idea, brother. Otherwise, we would get cold.

– Yes.

– Are you always so silent or is it special for today, old man?

– I am silent on special occasions.

Based on his short answers to Korhan’s questions, Korhan realized that he wanted to spend his last moments in peace. This is exactly what Korhan wanted; to disappear in peace. He stopped talking and left the old man in peace. But the approaching footsteps broke the silence which was just beginning to rule. However, for the first time in a long time, the silence was not bothering Korhan. It was easy for Korhan to be silent next to this old man. “I wish I had met this man before, I could have learned a lot from him”, he thought.

When Korhan turned his head in the direction of the sounds, he saw two people, one man and one woman, approaching. Afterward, they asked permission from Korhan and the old man and sat next to them. After them, two or three people coming from different directions sat in the same place. So they formed a small group. Apparently, the idea of dying alone seemed unbearable to people here also in mother nature’s arms.

The group, which seemed like a mid-sized group of friends with the participation of new people, was waiting in silence. Everyone now understood that they were living their last minutes, given the terrible size of the meteor, and no one was speaking. The silence was growing. Korhan knew that unbroken silences grow. He didn’t want that. He broke the silence immediately:

– Yes friends! Let’s take your last words.

Some said a poem, some quoted, some swore, some prayed. The old man just smiled and kept his silence. Then someone from the group asked the last words of Korhan. Taking a deep breath, Korhan drank his whiskey in front of him and took out the book with the Epicurus picture from the bag, threw it into the fire in front of him. He said, “If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not.”

As soon as he completed his words, the meteor hit the earth. It started an uproar. A cloud of dust covered the earth step by step and left nothing behind. It was very fast. Nobody could understand what happened. Nobody suffered either. Everyone was dead. Except for one person. Korhan was alive. Nothing had happened to him. He hadn’t succeeded even not to exist.

Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

2015 /2016 Winter, Ayrancı-Ankara

Translation from Turkish: Meltem Uz

Cover Design: İlkin Taşdelen

Photographs: Barış Pekçağlıyan, Emrah Özdemir, Kubilay Öztürk

Turkish edit: Aliye Burcu Urhan

/NCOUNTERS/ IN BERLIN

July 17, 2022Readart initiative, berlin

How would you introduce this project to someone who is not yet aware of the / NCOUNTERS / project?

Hello Dolmuş! You started with a difficult question… It is difficult to define, but we can roughly say that we are a political audio-visual space maintained by the people living in Berlin. In particular, we are trying to include and encourage “emerging” artists. We reflect on the limitlessness of art and are fed by the diversity of artists’ past experiences. Maybe it can be called a “mapping” project… Apart from that, we do interviews and broadcast sets. I hope we will share tracks and make premieres soon. Many ideas…

What kind of problems, needs, goals, concerns, affections, motives did you have in the beginning and construction process of this project?

The concepts of art and artist were used as status symbols rather than their essence, which must be related to the culture we grew up with. For this reason, it was difficult to accept and stand behind our own works. We noticed that some other “artists” also had similar problems. Of course, being a migrant subject made this situation even more difficult. An encouragement was definitely needed. In addition, the stories of people are very interesting, we are usually aware of the products they produce, but the various conditions that make the products are considerably less visible. However, these processes can also be very inspiring.

What kind of problems did you encounter until this point? And what processes did you experience and what kind of solutions did you develop to overcome them?

There are many problems, of course. Before the pandemic, togetherness were possible and relatively easy, but even keeping our own community alive is not possible under the current conditions. This is very understandable, of course. Maintaining a collective in these dystopian conditions, where even two people cannot come together, may not be a very meaningful expectation. Beyond that, financial difficulties are struggling us. It is necessary to try to understand this in line with our immigrant subjectivity. There is uncertainty in many areas. To be clear, this is not an issue where we can produce a permanent solution… Creating financial resources is a must in order to continue what we do. Developing our human resources is the only way to put forward the ideas we have in mind. We hope that maybe we can reach people through this interview and work together.

What have you found on the way until the collective reached this point? What do you hope to find for the future?

People have stories and they are worth hearing. This is the main finding. As in the name of the project, we believe in encounters, so it cannot be said that we are trying to find something actually. There is no clear plan, there are many ideas, wishes and manifestations.

What kind of interactions did the NCOUNTERS and its process create in its close circle? What kind of reactions did you get?

It organized our close circle around a political-aesthetical sphere. Although it is difficult to talk about tight ties, it would not be an exaggeration to talk about the artists, students and immigrants organized around NCOUNTERS. Perhaps people may have seen that something can be done. Establishing a political aesthetic formation in Germany, this new homeland where we are fighting at the survival level, was revolutionary in our own small world. That’s why we think it might have been an encouragement.

In what direction do you want to advance / NCOUNTERS / in the future? What goals do you have?

As we said, there is no clear road map. But we are about to be a “record label” that makes premieres and releases. We want a little more visibility so that we can support the artists we support more and open up space. In short, we want to be productive. Basically, we want to have our own resources that can sustain themselves.

What have you learned from the mistakes you have made so far? What would you recommend to those who want to do similar initiatives?

It must be tried. Ideas may not create excitement as much as practices. Therefore, it is sometimes up to some of us to throw the first stone. Then, processes and ideas bring their own organization. For this reason, even in a collective work, some of us may need to take the initiative in some processes. This should not be a discouraging situation. Other than that, I guess there is nothing that can be called a mistake. At the end of the day, they are all encounters.

Do you have any calls for solidarity to overcome specific challenges regarding the project?

Obviously, we claim to be a collective space, so it is for us that people should own the project and make its influence area larger. Of course, there are many needs, but we are aware that we are going through difficult dark processes. Therefore, it may not be the right moment to ask for support right now. But criticisms, ideas, productions and various collaborations would be useful in carrying us forward.

How did NCOUNTERS get politicized through migrant identity so much although it was ultimately a techno music project? Was this a spontaneous process? Or was it formulated in this way from the very beginning?

We are a collective space mostly dominated by social science students. We are also migrants. We are naturally political. Everything we do is also minimally political in this direction. In our music, in our project, in our existence. We can say that it developed naturally without much effort. Otherwise, it does not seem possible.

What kind of supports and oppositions has this politicization process received?

While politicization was viewed as radical by some, it was welcomed by others. So maybe the white privileged community around us had to question their own white privileges and mindset. Being a part of the NCOUNTERS requires a minimal political consensus, perhaps this is a minimal but existential consensus, like not being homophobic, not being racist, and looking at the white privileged world order from a critical point of view. Therefore, although NCOUNTERS is an open space, in a sense, perhaps it imposed itself.

Although NCOUNTERS has a political rhetoric, it has been criticized for including mainly white heterosexual male artists, especially at the beginning. What do you think of this criticism? What has been done to overcome this situation after this criticism?

A very meaningful and appropriate criticism, of course. However, this does not seem like a criticism that can be avoided through planned individual inputs. The community has to open itself to the outside. Of course, our aim is not to make an identity politics, but we set out from our own subjectivity, but we also included white privileged artists in the process. We try to be an open space and frankly we feel like our stance is getting a little clearer with our last actions. Frankly, we learn, too.

How has the pandemic affected the process for NCOUNTERS? Have you been able to develop certain survival strategies for the pandemic? What are your plans for the post-pandemic?

Pandemic literally minimized the encounters. Of course it was difficult. It was difficult to motivate the people, the community. But to keep people productive, we made the “Avoid NCOUNTERS” series. It wasn’t a bad idea, frankly. We had quite favorable conjecture before the pandemic, frankly, we had a full-house party. We do not expect to start where we left off after the pandemic. It would be naive. But we are sure that we will do our best to adapt to the new world and politicize the dance music scene.

As a “trans-national” underground techno project NCOUNTERS was, one way or another, a part of Berlin nightlife and party culture. It seems that the pandemic has affected Berlin’s nightlife irreversibly. We probably won’t find the nightlife we left after the pandemic. What direction do you think this transformation will be? As some say, if there is a scene that has become more commodified and where control mechanisms have been created, will it be attempted to organize a resistance practice resembling the illegal “raves” of the 90s, which defends a more communal and libertarian option?

To put it plainly, we are not experienced enough to make assertive comments on Berlin night life. However, if we evaluate the developments in the last three years in the light of global developments, it would not be wrong to say that the dance music scene has become commercial. It is not a very new discourse either. But of course there is no situation that would be very hopeless. It doesn’t make sense to be conservative against the change either. Despite the commercializing dance music scene, there will definitely be new spaces of resistance and their music.

Any last words?

Neukölln streets, where we learned the life and dancing and then forgot again …

(Bpm: 140, Kick: 4/4, Local Neukölln)

It is necessary to be open to encounters, dear Dolmus and definitely try, try!

https://www.ncountersberlin.com

Interviewer: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Translated from the Turkish original by Tevfik Hürkan Urhan