In what amounts to be a total disrespect for the creative editorial rights, German architecture magazine Arch+ for its November issue on Istanbul, unilaterally contaminated the writers' work by changing the feature's title to "Istanbul is becoming Green" which contradicts the writers' ideas. Arch+ went ahead with the publication regardless the Turkish editors' protests. Read the editors' statement here.
In what amounts to be a total disrespect for the creative editorial rights, German architecture magazine Arch+ for its November issue on Istanbul, unilaterally contaminated the writers' work by changing the feature's title to "Istanbul is becoming Green" which contradicts the writers' ideas. Arch+ went ahead with the publication regardless the Turkish editors' protests. Read the editors' statement here.
November 1, 2009
To our colleagues, friends and collaborators,
We would like to circulate this press release out of our discontent with some recent conditions we are experiencing with an internationally acclaimed architecture & urbanism magazine, ARCH+.
We, as Pelin Tan & Şevin Yıldız, have been working with ARCH+ Magazine for the past 11 months as invited guest editors for a special issue on Istanbul. While starting our editorial work we built up a conceptual framework for our reading of the issues in the city and presented this framework to the main editorial team. Until today we worked in close contact with the editorial team of ARCH+ magazine with exchange of ideas and open discussions. Although some things changed with mutual agreements and discussions, our core argument was always kept in consensus. We believed that Istanbul’s issues should have been addressed under the umbrella of neo‐liberal urban transformation but this presentation had to come with its own locales and particularities, with its own mechanisms and actors. We invited a group of writers and architects, to tackle the issue in this regard. We had a wonderful, fruitful experience with these writers, most of whose articles were written exclusively for this issue.
However; the recent situation that occurred in the last 3 days, shocked us deeply. Not only us but the institutional partners organizing the launching event of the issue in Istanbul (Pelin Derviş, Garanti Galeri and Ömer Kanıpak, Arkitera Architecture Center) came to a strong disagreement with the core editorial team of ARCH+ magazine. Let us summarize the fact and explain our concerns: First of all, a new conceptual framework (Istanbul wird Grün – Istanbul is becoming Green, www.archplus.net/flipshow195.php
We, as guest editors, feel responsible to the writers, colleagues and collaborators whose rights were violated along with ours. We, hereby, claim that the final printed version of ARCH+ magazine is released without the agreement and consent of its guest editors and writers. We would like to circulate this press release and reach as many people as possible not only because of the particularity of our case, but also because we believe that these intellectual violations and unethical realizations take place more commonly than we know of them. When we started working on this issue, we took it as an opportunity for a true, honest representation of what a big metropolis like Istanbul is going through, avoiding clichés and shallow polarizations.
Therefore, this stand is not only a matter of one‐time incident but also for the aspiration of unsuppressed intellectual production. The visibility here, matters not for us individually, but also for the domain of respected intellectual rights.
We kindly bring this issue to your attention.
Pelin Tan - Şevin Yıldız
8 Comments
As the conflict has been put forward on this platform I would like to present also the arguments of the ARCH+ editors which they have published in an open letter in order to give the readers the opportunity to make their own judgement.
The post here is very unfair because nobody knows about the real conflict nobody has even read the issue, particularly most of the readers here don't even read German. So the title Green Wash is total irrelevant and misleading and shows that Orhan Ayyüce didn't understand the German word play at all (maybe he doesn't even understand German). It's all about the critical urban transformation process taking place in Istanbul and that the authorities and developer are using positive aspects like ecology etc. to exclude the underprivileged and deny them the right to city. So in the end these positive concepts turn out to be "a wolf in sheep's clothing". This is what the issue "The greening of Istanbul" tried to discuss. That you have to beware of what real interests are behind the urban transformation process.
See open letter split in several parts below...
Part 1
To the contributing editors
To all contributors of ARCH+ issue No 195,
[…]
With its background it is more than vital for ARCH+ to have a specific approach and a specific agenda to avoid arbitrariness. With each issue we don’t want only to re-present a certain topic in all its aspects but the most important thing for us is to make the readers start re-thinking about this topic within its social and political as well as its professional context. In order to reach this goal ARCH+ has developed specific methods for which we are well known. One of these methods is that we always try to avoid preconditioned concepts, which makes the readers think they have already understood the issue before they have even started reading. For us, to stop the reader from thinking is the worst thing a publication can do. On the contrary we see our accomplishment in our ability to start a thinking process. This aspect can be seen in the way we use neologism, unusual and/or provocative constellations for the sake of a certain agenda setting. […]
In the case of the Istanbul issue it was clear for the contributing editors and for us that our starting point to look at the urban transformation process are certain “neoliberal” developments within Turkish society. But for us it doesn’t make sense to talk about neoliberalism in general but to look carefully at the urban processes in order to understand the specificity of the case of Istanbul. In our view it is irrelevant to recall in each sentence the term neoliberal or neoliberalism because it has become a common place and means everything and nothing. It rather prevents us from really trying to understand the phenomenons because everybody thinks he or she already knows what neoliberalism means. And because it has a negative connotation people tend to think they are already critical just because they say neoliberalism is bad.
(Part 2 below)
Part 2
After working for more than 10 months on the issue what was most striking for us is that we are dealing with a complex social and political context in which concepts tend to have a contrary meaning. What sounds positive at first can have a really negative impact in the end, and vice versa. We had the understanding that we are dealing with developments that behave like “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”:
- An Islamic movement that has risen to power with its attention to the underprivileged in society but which has changed to a middle class party that serves as an agent of neoliberal politics. At the same time it is also a political force that tries to strengthen democratic principles and has a clear agenda of the integration of Turkey in the West. (Tugal)
- “So much change, so little transition” (Tanju): In fact Tanju’s text, the intellectual backbone of the issue, is full of references to the ambiguity of concepts. […]
- An extreme nationalistic politics that tries to attract global capital.
- A governmental agency that is supposed to provide social housing turns to be one of the biggest players on the profit-oriented construction market. (Atayurt/Cavdar; Ucar)
- Talks of accessibility and safety turn city blocks into gated communities in the city centre. (Tolga Islam)
- A shopping mall, which normally represents a “bad” typology, turns to provide a new much needed and intelligent public space. (Tan/Yildiz/FOA)
- Grand gestures of reclaiming ecology are used to exclude the underprivileged and deny them the right to city. (Yildiz)
- A critical survey of the contemporary condition of Turkish architecture is accompanied by a selection of young interesting offices.
(Part 3 below)
Part 3
All these ambiguities have lead us to the opinion that we have to express this ambiguity in the concept of the overall issue. We found the working categories, which helped us to organize the articles during the conceptualization phase, not very specific and not helpful at all to convey these ideas. Together with the contributing editors we were using very banal concepts like:
History, Urban Transformation: Housing, Urban Transformation: Public Places, Large-Scale Urban Projects, Offices and Architectural Practices.
(The irony of the whole distressing situation is that if we have stuck to these banal concepts there will be no disagreement at all that has lead us to this upsetting confrontation.)
These working categories were not according to ARCH+’s profile like we have tried to make clear above. Therefore we started to think of alternatives, which help to convey the ideas of the issue directly. One of our main aims is to bring content and form into a congruent whole. Therefore the collaboration with our art director is not only on a graphic level but is much more on an intellectual level: How do we make the complexity of each ARCH+ issue graspable on a more emotional level by enhancing the intellectual integrity.
In thinking about these aspects we used Tugal’s text as a starting point because it reveals something that is new to our readers and which is at the core of the issue: to understand that Islam is not a coherent concept like the West tends to see it but rather a very contradicting one as any other concepts. To be precise: Islam/religion is only one of many mechanisms of power in a neoliberal context.
(Part 4 below)
Part 4
In order to convey this “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” idea of the whole issue we started to discuss what kind of basic “naturalistic” concepts are being used by the agents of urban transformation in a positive way but which the issue reveals as having very negative impacts on the urban live of people.
- There is of course the historical context. But history is not something neutral. In Istanbul history and tradition is inseparable with Islam and the Ottoman past no matter in a positive or negative manner. (For a deeper interpretation please refer to our editorial “The many greens of Istanbul.”)
- There is of course the urban transformation process including the housing problem. But what’s specific about urban transformation and housing in Istanbul? It’s about the great grass root development surrounding the gecekondus and urban activism, recently about TOKI and global capital as well as Green Money as the main actors in the power play. (Cf. editorial)
- There is of course the urban transformation process including the problem of public spaces. But how can we relate it to the overall development? For us it’s the question of accessibility and the right to city. (Cf. editorial)
- There are the large-scale urban projects. But what kind of impact do they have? What’s new in the way they are communicated? The perfidy of this point is that Ecology and Nature are used as positive concepts to enact an exclusive understanding of planning. (Cf. editorial)
- “Offices and architectural practices” is also no real help to get an idea of what we want to communicate. It’s about the search for a contemporary Turkish architecture, about the hope that the young generation might understand better their responsibility for society as a whole. (Cf. editorial)
(Part 5 below)
Part 5
Taking all these aspects into account we have developed the green concept in the ARCH+ tradition of agenda setting we described in the beginning of this letter. The interesting thing is that in Germany “Green” is associated solely with an ecological attitude, with the Green party etc. So by calling the issue “The Greening of Istanbul” we try to wipe off all preconditioned concepts of the readers on Istanbul, normally related to Gecekondus and the urban hot spot. Everyone in Germany who reads the title “The Greening of Istanbul” will be very surprised at first and start thinking about what it could mean.
By providing the different aspects we associated with that metaphor as we described above we came to the conclusion to change the name of the sections accordingly.
So according to the line of argument above we have changed the title, not the structure, as followed:
- The first chapter, originally called “History”, was changed into:
“Green: the Color of Islam”
Accompanied by the subtitle: “Urban policy between religion and modernization”
- The second chapter, originally called “Urban Transformation: Housing”, was changed into: “Green: the Color of Money”
Subtitle: “Housing between grass root, green money and greenback”
- The third chapter, originally called “Urban Transformation: Public Places”, was changed into: “Green: the Color of Accessibility”
Subtitle: “Istanbul between segregation and new landscapes”
- The forth chapter, originally called “Large-Scale Urban Projects”, was changed into: “Green: the Color of Nature”
Subtitle: “Urban transformation with ecological gesture”
- The fifth chapter, originally called “Offices and Architectural Practices”, was changed into: “Green: the Color of Hope”
Subtitle: “On the search for a contemporary architecture”
(Part 6 below)
Part 6
Our aim was to provide chapter titles that has at first glance a positive aspect, the so called “sheep’s clothing”. Graphically it’s overwhelmingly big on a double page spread. Something we have never done in this form before. This design stems from the concept form follows content of our art director.
Consequently, the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is revealed in the subtitle – and of course is explained subsequently in the texts to follow in each chapter. This explanation is set graphically small just as something is hidden: the literal “small printing” with the hooks.
That’s all we did. That’s all what caused such a sharp reaction from Pelin Tan, Sevin Yildiz, Pelin Dervis and Ömer Kanipak, which we cannot understand.
So to conclude: We did not change the concept of the issue. You might have found it more appropriate to call the issue: “The neoliberalisation of Istanbul” or “Contested Urbanism” or something like that but this is a pretended obviousness we always try to avoid as explained in the beginning of this letter.
Therefore “The Greening of Istanbul” was intellectually much more productive for us in the German context because it reveals the specific mechanisms of neoliberal politics in Istanbul.
Subsequently the titles for the chapters were developed as explained above without changing the structure of the issue. Every text is in the chapter as communicated to the contributing editors throughout the editorial process.
(Part 7 below)
Part 7 (last part)
We acknowledge that we did not inform the contributing editors about these changes. But this is a normal process not only due to time pressure in the end of each production but also because we never inform external persons about this kind of internal editorial process. We see it as the core competence of ARCH+ and reserve the right to do so in order to keep the profile of ARCH+ coherent. In our experience in the last 40 years we cannot remember that any author or contributing editor have reacted in such a way about the title and chapter titles chosen by us.
We hope that this letter can explain our intentions and can help to clarify any misunderstanding, which has caused this controversy especially between Pelin Tan, Sevin Yildiz, Pelin Dervis and Ömer Kanipak.
The problem we see is that the issue is in German only and the misunderstandings stems from the fact that we are discussing an intellectual product without you being able to read it carefully. But this was clear to everybody from the start of the project that the issue is for a German readership.
It is at your liberty to disagree with this approach of our magazine but we have never hidden the attitude of ARCH+, which is a public institution for over 40 years and well known. We invite you to write to the publishers and editors after having read the issue and to continue the discourse we have begun with this issue.
We do regret very much the confrontation and hope that you understand our argument. Disagreement on the title and subtitle of the magazine should not lead to such overreactions.
We send you all our best regards and hope that we can discuss this disagreement in a matter-of-fact way. The worse thing we can do is to disregard each other’s intellectual integrity.
We thank all contributors who have already sent us a positive feedback and denying the fact that the overreaction of the guest editors was done in their names.
Kind regards,
Nikolaus Kuhnert, Anh-Linh Ngo
ARCH+ editorial team
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