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“Hareket Halinde Türkiye” için Laudatio

Thomas A. Prof. Bauer ödül töreninde

LAUDATIO FOR “TURKEY ON THE MOVE” RECEIVING THE SPECIAL AWARD OF THE ERASMUS EUROMEDIA AWARD 2008 IN RESPECT TO THE OUTSTANDING THEMATIC FOCUS

Turkey is a country in transition, socially, politically and culturally. That makes the country moving and changing. Turkey is a country, even better: a society on the move, physically, socially and culturally and is doing its way in search of its identity not only between the two poles of Kemalism and Islamism, not only with the stream of East to West and not only from Anatolia to Germany and back to Turkey just for a family intermezzo, it is on the move also from traditional cultures to stations of mod-ern civilization, from rural habits to urban attitudes and from elementary life style to more sophisticated performances of individual life.

It seems to be a character of Turkish public communication not to touch problematic and delicate issues. There is an agreement on keeping silent publicly what relates to the systems of believe. The cultural globalization, the mediatization and the hybridization of culture, life style and religion provokes the need of open and public discourse on all those ideological constructions of social and individual life, but hits upon a culture of rituals.

Nedim Hazar, the script writer and director of the six-part documentary “Turkey on the move”, followed the ways and the mobility of people that is always in motion and found unbelievable biographies to be told. He developed a way of telling a media story that not only is a story but also in same time a statement on current discourses: how can marriage be negotiated, how is life with and without head scarf, what is the chance for a common life of gay people, what makes refugees from;eastern authoritarian countries feeling being in Europe just having arrived and staying in Turkey, how do migrants to Europe feel being back in Turkey for a short while and what is the key parameter of understanding ones own life as a profession just being a Turk. It is the ethno-methodological and the cultural-anthropological approach of Nedim Hazar that makes possible to involve the Turkish society into reflexive discourses on its own diverse roots, but also on its discrepancies and contradictions. It is done in a way so that Turkish people accept and say: Yes, its Turkey – this way and that way.

But it is also the media environment and the public engagement oft ntv, the famous and successful Turkish private television broadcaster that gives Nedim Hazar the elbowroom to realize his creativity for public utility. The Heinrich Böll Stiftung, always engaged in cultural development, funded the project.

The ESEC jury came to the conclusion that this tv documentary should be selected and elected as a model how to provoke a discourse in media on difficult issues and topics – especially as it is a most sympathetic way to bring to consciousness such difficult issues and as it makes a speech for the acceptance of cultural diversity. For that the jury decided to award Nedim Hazar and ntv with the Erasmus EuroMedia Special Award in respect to the thematic focus.

Thomas A. Bauer, Vienna, Oct. 10, 2008

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