Untitled

Untitled by Köken Ergun deals with Turkish society and the national and cultural changes it has undergone. A young man is trying to cover his head with a scarf bearing the Turkish flag. Gracefully and elegantly, he tries to arrange the scarf several times, but fails each time, finally breaking into tears. In the midst of the heated debates about head covering in the Turkish Parliament, the Turkish president sent personal invitations for the annual Republic Day celebrations to members of the Parliament, most of whom belong to the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) in order to prevent their wives from arriving at the event with the traditional Islamic head covering. Horrified by this act of secular conservatism, Köken expresses his personal protest, setting out to underscore the predicament of the contemporary Islamic body. Galit Eliat, 2006