Abstract
Kırkayak Kültür is a cultural organization in Gaziantep, Turkey which, since 2011, has organized social, cultural and art activities, helping empower socially and culturally disadvantaged groups at risk. Through dialogue and solidarity, Kırkayak works to eradicate prejudice and discrimination and to integrate newcomers within society. With the war and arrival of Syrians in Gaziantep, Kırkayak opened its doors to Syrians, redefining itself as an open space where everyone is equal with the right to use and participate in the center regardless of their citizenship. Kırkayak developed as a rare space in which Syrians could escape marginalization, discrimination and violence and find a place where they could express themselves as artists, writers and photographers, rather than simply as refugees. This chapter describes how Kırkayak redefined itself from a simple cultural center to an open space where members imagined new forms of togetherness and formed new identities beyond the binaries of belonging as either citizens or refugees.
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Notes
- 1.
Nihad Haddad, who is better known as Fairouz, is a Lebanese singer and is one of the most celebrated Arab singers of the twentieth century.
- 2.
The “Ansar” metaphor refers to the residents of Medina who helped and protected Prophet Muhammad and his entourage in escaping from prosecution in Mecca. Among Islamist groups this is a commonly used metaphor. It expresses the idea that Turkey has a moral and religious obligation to open its doors to Syrian refugees and to provide them with protection just as the residents of Medina protected Prophet Muhammad from prosecution. The Turkish Government used the Ansar metaphor in its initial response to Syrian refugee crisis (Kurbanoglu 2014).
- 3.
The Dom, which in the Domari language means “man,” later referred to as Rom, is the name for a large ethno-linguistic group believed to have originated in India. Colloquially and more pejoratively referred to in English as “Gypsies,” the Dom in Europe prefer the term Romany (or plural Romanies), while in the Middle East and North Africa, the preferred term is still Dom (Williams 2000). Dom have been present in the Middle East for at least a thousand years and in Syria since before the Ottoman Empire, and more Dom live today in Syria than anywhere else in the Middle East (Hilleary 2013).
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Tarlan, K.V. (2020). Kırkayak Kültür: Facilitating Living Together. In: Baban, F., Rygiel, K. (eds) Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe. Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_10
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