“We are constantly fighting with demons”: Emin Özmen on Turkey’s turbulent decade

On May 28, 2013, protests against devel­op­ment plans in Istanbul’s Tak­sim Gezi Park erupt­ed into a huge, nation­wide upris­ing that saw mil­lions take to the streets across the coun­try, while kick­start­ing a fran­tic 10 years in Turkey. With opti­mism wear­ing off from the elec­tion of the increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a decade ear­li­er, and con­tin­ued con­flict with the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty (PKK), the moment marks the start­ing point of pho­to­jour­nal­ist Emin Özmen’s new book ​‘Olay’, which doc­u­ments an unsta­ble, tumul­tuous, and often vio­lent decade that the coun­try has faced since.

The book makes for tough view­ing, as the pages flick between protests, polit­i­cal crises, and human tragedy. The Gezi Park protests and resul­tant police bru­tal­i­ty is cap­tured in black-and-white, as are refugees cross­ing the bor­der to Syr­ia or Greece as they attempt to escape being caught in cross­fire between Turk­ish secu­ri­ty forces and mil­i­tant PKK forces. Destruc­tion is ever-present, both from mil­i­tary con­flict and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters – in Feb­ru­ary 2023 a 7.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake killed 55,000 in Turkey and Syr­ia, injur­ing a fur­ther 100,000, while Özmen also cap­tured wild­fires rip­ping through vil­lages. Moments of resilience also shine through, yet they remain cloud­ed with strug­gle – one shot depicts a joy­ous danc­ing crowd at a 2021 LGBTQ+ rights ral­ly, where min­utes lat­er tear gas and rub­ber bul­lets were unleashed onto the crowds.

Huck caught up with the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mem­ber of the famed Mag­num agency to chat about the new book, hopes for the future, and how pho­tograph­ing pain and suf­fer­ing for a decade in his own coun­try has affect­ed him personally.

Do you remem­ber where you were when you heard the news about Sakine Can­sız on Jan­u­ary 9, 2013? And what was your instant reac­tion? Why did that moment feel like the right time to begin the book?

I was a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for one of the biggest Turk­ish news­pa­pers at the time. I took my cam­era and went to Diyarbakır and Der­sim. The chronol­o­gy begins with these mur­ders because it marks the start of an end­less whirl­wind of dra­mat­ic and chaot­ic events. Even if, for me, the real turn­ing point is sym­bol­ised by the Gezi upris­ing. Every­thing was turned upside down after that point. But sev­er­al events hap­pened in the same year that led to the Gezi uprising.

Dur­ing those years, I had no inten­tion of mak­ing this book, because I had no idea where the coun­try was head­ing. Like a jig­saw puz­zle, it took time to under­stand every­thing and get the full picture. 

Can you tell me and read­ers about the mean­ing of ​‘Olay’? Why was that a fit­ting title for the book?

“Olay” can be trans­lat­ed as ​“inci­dent” or ​“event”. This book chron­i­cles the dizzy­ing suc­ces­sion of events that my coun­try has expe­ri­enced over the last decade. When you turn on the TV or social net­works, every day you’d see ​“Olay” (which can some­times be the equiv­a­lent of ​“break­ing news”). 

Olay also reflects my state of mind, how I feel as a Turk. Liv­ing a thwart­ed love. I think a lot of Turks feel that way. We are con­stant­ly tossed between the vio­lence and the calm of every­day life. No respite. Nev­er a week with­out a dra­ma, nev­er a month with­out a major event. Here, noth­ing is sim­ple, every­thing is inter­min­gled and con­front­ed, the beau­ti­ful as well as the ugly, sad­ness as well as joy. We are con­stant­ly fight­ing with demons, which we are strug­gling to bring out the light from the depths of violence.

How did the idea for the pho­to­book come about?

We for­get every­thing very quick­ly in Turkey, which is why the main pur­pose of my book is to con­tribute to our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. When I look back, I see that so many impor­tant events have tak­en place over the last ten years. I think their impact will be deci­sive for the future of my peo­ple. I tried to record as many of them as pos­si­ble. I want­ed these events and these peo­ple not to be for­got­ten, so that we can learn from our mis­takes and, I hope, change them. So it’s also an attempt to open up a healthy con­ver­sa­tion – with the next gen­er­a­tions, I hope (I say the next gen­er­a­tions because I know that’s impos­si­ble in the tox­ic polit­i­cal atmos­phere that cur­rent­ly reigns in Turkey).

How dif­fer­ent was life in Turkey before that point? Com­pared to now, 10 years later?

Until 2013, pol­i­tics was not in the cen­tre of every­thing, and Turk­ish soci­ety was not polarised deeply as of today. 

We had a lot of prob­lems but there was an optimist[ic] wind, espe­cial­ly when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to pow­er. The promis­es were great: the hope of end­ing decades of con­flict with the PKK, bring­ing peace to the region, devel­op­ing the econ­o­my, mov­ing clos­er to the Euro­pean Union. It seemed that we could move towards safer, more pros­per­ous hori­zons. All this was only to unrav­el in the fol­low­ing years, inex­orably, relent­less­ly. A whole gen­er­a­tion and I were only going to know this shad­ow, to grow up despite it, to try to build our­selves in its shade. This shad­ow is still there, 20 years later.

Can you give a bit of insight into some of the events/​crises that have affect­ed the nation in that time?

Since 2013, Turkey has seen mass demon­stra­tions fol­lowed by bru­tal repres­sion, an urban insur­gency accom­pa­nied by mas­sive destruc­tion in the south­east of the coun­try. In 2016 alone, 16 large-scale ter­ror­ist attacks were car­ried out, tar­get­ing work­ing-class neigh­bour­hoods, bus sta­tions, ral­lies, etc. Increas­ing repres­sion and eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment have trig­gered one cur­ren­cy cri­sis after anoth­er, as well as gal­lop­ing inflation.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, includ­ing jour­nal­ists, teach­ers, politi­cians and dis­si­dents, were impris­oned after an attempt­ed coup that saw army tanks tram­ple cars and F‑16s fire on demon­stra­tors. Mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, purges, repres­sion, stu­dent demon­stra­tions, dis­rupt­ed elec­tions, bar­ri­cades, tear gas, police oper­a­tions, deten­tions, bomb­ings and funer­als fol­lowed one anoth­er. Then earth­quakes, floods, for­est fires, extreme drought and an unprece­dent­ed eco­nom­ic cri­sis joined the bal­let of tragedies. The mas­sacres in Syr­ia, Iraq and far away in Afghanistan have led to mil­lions of refugees flood­ing into Turkey, chang­ing almost every dynam­ic. The book aims to show us what has hap­pened, but also to ask ques­tions and warn us about the future.

As a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, what has it been like to wit­ness first hand and up close, repres­sion from police forces? Does it ever affect you?

In Turkey, jour­nal­ists have been one of the main tar­gets in any kind of event for a few years. As a result, I have been detained sev­er­al times, my equip­ment seized by author­i­ties for months. Of course it’s affect­ing me. I became anx­ious and stressed.

But I’m high­ly moti­vat­ed and strong­ly believe in the impor­tance of the work we, as jour­nal­ists, do. As Nazım Hik­met, the great Turk­ish poet said once: 

If I don’t burn

If you don’t burn

If we don’t burn

How will dark­ness Ever turn

Into light?

I may be stopped, blocked or what­ev­er you can imag­ine. Those will hap­pen to some of us one day or anoth­er, but our response should be to keep col­lect­ing the evi­dence of these very spe­cial times of Turkey. That’s the best thing we can do.

What was your most mem­o­rable moment from mak­ing the series?

For me it’s def­i­nite­ly the Gezi Rev­o­lu­tion, once again. Because I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any­thing like it before or since. There was such hope for change, such sol­i­dar­i­ty, and such mass strength.

The years 2015 and 2016 and its failed coup d’état, as well as the con­flict in the south­east were par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable too. Two night­mar­ish and vio­lent years. While I had to work in the south-east of Turkey to cov­er the con­flict between the Turk­ish forces and the Kur­dish insur­rec­tion, I was con­stant­ly afraid that my wife would be injured or worse in an attack in Istan­bul. It was chaos every­where and all the time.

Are there any pos­i­tive sto­ries of resilience and strength from Turk­ish peo­ple or indi­vid­u­als in the face of the tur­bu­lent back­drop that you could share?

No mat­ter how hard I look, I can’t find a spe­cif­ic exam­ple. What a ter­ri­ble obser­va­tion for me to see that I can’t find a pos­i­tive sto­ry to tell… there must be some but it’s as if I had for­got­ten, with­out being able to explain it to myself.

Maybe it’s a more gen­er­al feel­ing that comes to mind. It’s incred­i­ble how wel­com­ing and warm all the peo­ple I’ve met who were going through tragedy and had lost every­thing were. Even though they had noth­ing, they would make me tea or a hot meal and offer me shel­ter if they need­ed to. This resilience and gen­eros­i­ty touch­es me deeply. 

How do you see the out­look for the next decade?

Even if I don’t see any alter­na­tives to the cur­rent régime in the close future, one day it will change for sure. But the recov­ery will need time. How will the polarised soci­ety be reunit­ed? When will the finan­cial crises end? What about the future of mil­lions of migrants? What’s the solu­tion for Kurds and oth­er minori­ties? What can Turkey do for the peace in its neigh­bour­ing coun­tries? I have more ques­tions but no answers. I just know that, in Turkey, every­thing is pos­si­ble. In a good way and in a bad way.

What does the book and project Olay mean to you personally?

When I look back to all these years now, I will prob­a­bly car­ry all these painful mem­o­ries for­ev­er. This book is a way for me to bring clo­sure, to put an end to this whirl­wind that has left me exhaust­ed and drained. Olay is my trib­ute to the peo­ple in Turkey who marched for jus­tice, to those who want­ed noth­ing more than peace and who in return were beat­en, impris­oned, robbed of their dig­ni­ty or died for free­dom and equality.

It’s also, in a very per­son­al way, a sym­bol of what my wife Cloé and I went through dur­ing those dif­fi­cult years. We lived through it all togeth­er, and putting the book togeth­er made us realise just how crazy and sad­ly remark­able those years were.

Olay by Emin Özmen is pub­lished by MACK

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