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The GYV Award for Exemplary Behavior or Initiatives in the Societal Sphere went to Rakel Dink, the wife of Hrant Dink, the murdered editor-in-chief of the Agos newspaper. Two audiovisual and stage arts awards went to Kalan Music and Mahsun Kırmızıgül for his movie “Güneşi Gördüm” (I Saw the Sun).

Messages of brotherhood and tolerance were delivered at the Journalists and Writers Foundation’s (GYV) Coexistence Awards ceremony on Saturday in İstanbul, stressing the importance of mutual understanding.

The ceremony opened with speeches from poet Hilmi Yavuz, who is also the head of the 11-member selection committee, and GYV Chairman Mustafa Yeşil. Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Şahin, İstanbul Governor Muammer Güler, State Minister for Family and Women’s Affairs Selma Aliye Kavaf and several deputies also participated in the ceremony. In his opening speech Yeşil said since its inception in 1994, the GYV had advocated plurality, peace and the art of living together through organizing countless conferences and panels.

Noting that prejudice and discrimination are not the teachings of the Islamic faith or Turkish culture, Yeşil said that once the people act with the voice of their conscience, they will always accept others the way they are.

The ceremony was then followed by musicians playing individually and then as an orchestra as a sign of coexistence. The awards are delivered to outstanding individuals and institutions contributing to coexistence and social peace in six categories.

The Literature Award went to Elif Şafak, whose book “Aşk” (The Forty Rules of Love) became a bestseller in Turkey last year. Expressing her gratitude for being selected as a recipient, Şafak said special thanks go to the “invisibles”: her readers. The Scientific Research Award went to the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) for their extraordinary activities to promote coexistence through scientific research. Accepting the award on behalf of the organization, TESEV Chairman Can Paker said everyone at the institution worked round the clock to contribute to Turkey. Read more…

Much of the action in novelist Jenny White’s gripping 19th century detective story “The Abyssinian Proof” takes place in and around a village inside old İstanbul that sounds as if it must surely have been made up.

Yerabatan Sarnici

Set inside an ancient cistern dating back to the fifth century, it’s a self-contained and almost absurdly quaint place in which houses peep out from amid the luxuriant foliage growing out of crumbling antique walls. Could such a place ever have existed? Well, actually it did well into the 1970s when, in “Strolling Through İstanbul,” John Freely and Hilary Sumner-Boyd described it as a “very picturesque little farm village whose housetops barely reach to the level of the surrounding streets.”
They were describing the Cistern of Aspar, a giant hole in the ground in front of the mosque of Sultan Selim I as you approach it from Fatih and Çarşamba. But what on earth was this cistern, and what role did it play in city life?

Way back in 1978, I remember being taken by a Turkish friend to visit the Yerebatan Sarnıcı (Underground Cistern) close to the Aya Sofya in Sultanahmet. At that time, it was not officially open to the public, and we stood at the edge of a dark space that seemed to stretch back into infinity, peering at the dim shapes of 336 soaring pillars topped off with elaborate Byzantine capitals; a steady sound of dripping provided the soundtrack to our visit. It was a sixth century cistern, my friend told me, although at the time that meant absolutely nothing to me. Now, of course, the Yerebatan Sarnıcı is one of the city’s main attractions, kitted out with walkways, suitably evocative lighting and the haunting sound of the ney (reed flute), and always crowded with visitors who gaze in awe at the sea of columns and at the fish swimming in the water beneath them, before trekking along the walkways to inspect the upside-down head of the Gorgon Medusa adorning the base of a column at the rear. However, probably not one person in a hundred really appreciates the part that the cistern played in ensuring that first Byzantium, then Constantinople and finally İstanbul were kept supplied with water. Read more…