Güzel İstanbul

Guzel Istanbul is a sculpture made of concrete, located in Yildiz Park in Istanbul, Turkey. The statue shows a naked woman and was created by an artist named Gurdal Duyar.
In 1973, the Istanbul Municipality asked artists to create 20 sculptures to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. Guzel Istanbul is one of these sculptures, and it shows a naked woman to represent the city. The base of the sculpture has pictures that represent the history of Istanbul.
Originally, Guzel Istanbul was placed at Karakoy Square. But some conservative politicians and media outlets said it was offensive and wanted it taken down. In March 1974, the sculpture caused a big argument in the government. After nine days of debate, Guzel Istanbul was removed and damaged on March 18th. It was left in Karakoy Square for over a month. Eventually, on May 2nd, the statue was moved to Yildiz Park and put back up on a temporary base. It still remains in Yildiz Park today, but nobody has fixed the damage done to it.
Commission
In 1972, the governor's office in Istanbul created a group called the Board for the Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Republic. The board was made to plan for the anniversary which would happen in the next year. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the Istanbul Fine Arts Academy, and the State College of Fine and Applied Arts worked together to make the Fine Arts Committee. This committee was part of the Board for the Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Republic. The committee included Sadi Calik, Mustafa Aslier, and Huseyin Gezer. They asked 50 artists to make sculptures to celebrate the anniversary. The sculptures were put in many places around Istanbul, like parks and squares.
There was not enough money to make 50 sculptures, so the number was changed to 20. The Board also made the qualifications to be a sculptor stricter. They only picked artists who lived in Istanbul and who had either won a state award or were well-known in the art world. This meant 30 artists were not able to participate. The artists that did participate included Kuzgun Acar, Tamer Basoglu, Zerrin Bolukbasi, Ali Teoman Germaner, Yavuz Gorey, Zuhtu Muritoglu, Fusun Onur, Kamil Sonad, Nusret Suman, Seyhun Topuz and Gurdal Duyar.
The Fine Arts Committee did not tell the artists what kind of sculpture to make, so they could create something in their own unique style. The committee wanted the sculptures to be diverse and represent the different styles of sculpture in Turkey at the time. The artists were also not told where their sculptures would be placed. They could be put in a park, a square, or on the side of a road. The artists had to submit their ideas for the sculpture they wanted to make to the State Art and Sculpture Museum by 20 August 1973.
Gurdal Duyar submitted a sketch of a nude female figure which he named "Beautiful Istanbul" (Guzel Istanbul in Turkish) as his proposal. The board approved his proposal during a meeting attended by local government officials, and selected Karakoy Square as the location for the sculpture. The design and nudity of the sculpture were not considered problematic at any point during the selection process.
The sculpture is also known as Ah Guzel Istanbul ("Oh Beautiful Istanbul").
Design
Gurdal Duyar's idea was to symbolize Istanbul through a sculpture of a naked woman whose arms were tied by a chain, which represented the defensive chain put up by the Byzantine Empire in 1453 to block the Ottoman fleet from entering the Golden Horn. The woman in the sculpture was trying to break free from the chains, which was supposed to represent the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, which was later renamed Istanbul. Duyar explained that he associated his hometown, Istanbul, with the natural beauty of the female form.
In Duyar's final design, the female figure is depicted leaning slightly backwards with her arms wrapped behind her, and her head inclined backwards as she gazes at the sky. Her hands are bound by a chain, which is not visible from the front. The upper part of the sculpture sits on a decorated plinth adorned with reliefs of pomegranates, figs, honeysuckle, and a bee. According to Duyar, the pomegranates represent Istanbul's many legends, figs represent its divinity, honeysuckle represents its air, and the bee represents its population density, dynamism, and abundance. Apart from its historical and political significance, Duyar's work has also been interpreted as a universal representation of women's liberation. The sculpture, which used 7,000 kilograms (15,000 lb) of poured concrete, was 4.8 meters (15.7 ft) tall when it was first installed.
Erection and removal
On March 10, 1974, Guzel Istanbul was installed in Karakoy Square, which is an open and busy area located near the northern end of Galata Bridge in Istanbul. The sculpture received a lot of attention and caused controversy. According to Ahu Antmen, the controversy was caused by the sculpture's placement in a crowded area. On the other hand, Onat Kutlar believed that the controversy was due to the sensuality or realism present in Duyar's sculptures, including Guzel Istanbul.
Guzel Istanbul Affair
Before Duyar's sculpture, there were other nude sculptures displayed in public areas of Istanbul, and at that time, the Istanbul State Art and Sculpture Museum had numerous nude sculptures on display without any controversy. It has been suggested that the officials who commissioned Duyar's sculpture did not expect its nakedness to be a source of controversy. However, after the sculpture was installed in Karakoy Square, it faced immediate backlash and calls for its removal from politicians who perceived it to be indecent, particularly members of the National Salvation Party, who were part of the coalition government at the time. This sparked a public debate that was fueled by prominent Turkish political figures and covered by major media outlets, which is now known as the Guzel Istanbul Affair.}}
A media campaign against Guzel Istanbul started shortly after it was installed in Karakoy Square. For ten days, various newspapers described the sculpture as indecent and erotic. One newspaper, Sabah, even printed a front-page article on 21 March 1974 that accused the sculpture of corrupting the morals of Muslim Turks. This led to the sculpture becoming a topic of discussion in the government. Deputy-Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan called the sculpture immoral and suggested its removal on 17 March. The Minister of the Interior, Oguzhan Asilturk, said that the sculpture was disgraceful to Turkish mothers and should be removed. The mayor of Istanbul, Ahmet Isvan, said he disliked the sculpture because he found it tasteless, not because it was a nude. The Governor of Istanbul, Namik Kemal Senturk, stated that he could not judge the sculpture on an artistic level, but that it had been placed in the wrong location and thus had it removed.
The controversy over Guzel Istanbul led to a heated debate, with some Republican intellectuals and others defending the sculpture and arguing for its right to remain. However, the controversy also had political implications, almost leading to the collapse of Turkey's newly formed governing coalition. The CHP, the other party in the coalition, supported the National Salvation Party's position that the sculpture was indecent in order to avoid political conflict, despite this going against their own ethical values. Some scholars, such as Huseyin Gezer, defended the sculpture, stating that there is a difference between a naked woman and a nude sculpture.
Removal and public backlash
On the night of 18 March 1974, nine days after its installation, Guzel Istanbul was removed from Karakoy Square. In a midnight intervention, the sculpture was broken off its base and damaged: its arm was broken off. It was removed from the park and placed on a pile of sand near the Kumkapi municipal construction site. The front page of the newspaper Milliyet showed a photograph of people standing on top of the empty plinth on the night the sculpture was removed, as well as the rubble resulting from the plinth's destruction. An article in the newspaper Sabah stated the goal of their campaign to have the sculpture removed had been accomplished. This was countered by articles in the newspapers Milliyet and Cumhuriyet, which described the sculpture's right to remain as a necessity for democracy.
Some Turkish intellectuals reacted to the events. Burhan Felek criticized the removal, saying a sculpture should not be removed just because a minister does not like it, and that there is not a referendum of beliefs for every issue. Melih Cevdet Anday criticized the government for choosing what the people should and should not like. Hifzi Veldet Velidedeoglu stated dominance of the mentality that puts forward religious conservative traditions in the context of fine arts would regress Turkey to a desert of bigotry. Guzel Istanbul was also defended by cartoonists and caricaturists such as Erdogan Bozok, Altan Erbulak, Nejat Uygur, Yalcin Cetin, Ferruh Dogan, and Nehar Tublek, who made cartoons commenting on its removal. One of the cartoons showed those that removed the sculpture as backwards and outdated, another criticized the politicization of art, and another criticized censorship; and others asked why fake issues were being made in the news.
Cartoonists and artists who opposed the removal wanted to protesting it by covering all sculptures in Istanbul in black cloth but they cancelled their protest. The removal from Karakoy Square was seen as being against freedom of expression in art; to protest this, the Association of Turkish Sculptors organized an exhibition around the theme of nudity to show that the creative will of artists would continue. Many sculptors participated in the show, including Fusun Onur.
The debate about Guzel Istanbul spread beyond Istanbul; provinces Manisa and Zonguldak offered to have Guzel Istanbul moved to their cities. Guzel Istanbul was one of 20 sculptures of which many others were damaged or removed.
Charges
On 20 March 1974, the Istanbul Public Prosecutors Office, considering the articles published about the sculpture in newspapers as charges, opened an inquiry to decide whether the sculpture was obscene. According to a news report, if the sculpture was found to be obscene, the 50th Anniversary Committee would face prosecution under articles 426 and 576 of Turkish law. Mustafa Aslier, a member of the committee, reflected on the events that led to the removal of Guzel Istanbul; he had been implicated in the statements and publications by the press and the MSP that led to the charges.
Relocation
On 3 May 1974, through the secret intervention of Bulent Ecevit, Guzel Istanbul was taken to Yildiz Park and left lying on its side underneath a tree. The move ended the heated political and public debate regarding the sculpture which had lasted almost two months, although Guzel Istanbul was left in an poor physical condition. In the subsequent months, photographs of the sculpture lying on its side in the park appeared; several newspapers published opinion pieces -- including articles by Burhan Felek and Bedi Faik -- describing the sculpture being left in this state and asking why the process was disrespectful to the artwork and the artist. The statue was eventually mounted onto a new makeshift plinth without the motifs, all of which had been destroyed. , the sculpture stands in a small corner near the park's Ortakoy entrance. According to some press accounts, it has not been well maintained; parts of its concrete are crumbling and its inner structure is exposed.
Later events
Gurdal Duyar, the sculptor of Guzel Istanbul, said little about the statue's fate and did not participate in the controversy. In 1995, Turkish journalist Nebil Ozgenturk asked Duyar about the repeated removals of the artist's work. Duyar said his role as the artist was limited to creation of sculptures, adding: "Our job is making sculptures; removing, breaking or changing their location is a different area of expertise".
In 2017, the Istanbul Municipality hid the sculpture by surrounding it with a fence made of saplings after parents had complained about it being visible from a nearby playground. After news of this censorship spread, a campaign on social media criticized the censorship and succeeded in having the saplings removed.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Other websites
Guzel Istanbul documentary Hic Bilmiyordum, Season 2. Episode 8. - via GAIN (subscription required)
Guzel Istanbul, Besiktas Kultur Sanat - via Besiktas Municipality
CS1 Turkish-language sources (tr)
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Articles containing Turkish-language text
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