KEBABBLE Turkey's song and dance over Eurovision
By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Unlike most competing nations, Turkey throws itself
wholeheartedly into the annual kitsch extravaganza that is the Eurovision song
contest, and here there is none of the tongue-in-cheek lampooning of
contestants or their songs that is popular in nations like Britain.
The contest is taken so seriously that Turkey's choice of singer and song were
announced this year by the top state broadcasting organization, TRT, on their
important New Year show. Hadise, the Belgian-born R&B singer-songwriter,
will be Turkey's representative with the pop song Dum Tek Tek (Crazy For
You).
With her youthful looks, great vocal range and racy dance
routines, Hadise's nomination has been widely welcomed by the public. She
already has European success with her 2008 hit Stir Me Up and was the
consistent winner of TRT's online polls for who should go to Moscow, where the
contest takes place in May.
Controversy already surrounds this year's competition, with Georgia's entry We
Don't Wanna Put In, a not-too-subtle jibe at Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin after the nations' five-day war in August, 2008. The Caucasus
nation initially threatened to boycott the event in protest against Russia's de
facto annexation of two of its separatist regions after the conflict. A
spokesman for Putin has denounced the song as "hooliganism".
There has also been anger at Israel's plans to field the female Jewish-Arab
singing duo Nini and Mira. The pair was selected by Israel's national
broadcasting authority for the competition a day after Israel began its
offensive against Gaza in December, 2008. The Israeli-born Nini was criticized
by Israeli peace activists for calling Hamas a "cancer" and a "virus", while
Palestinian Mira was attacked in a petition organized by Israeli-Arab artists.
Accusations of geopolitics, vote-rigging and vote-swapping playing a role in
the concert's results have dogged the competition for decades. It was not until
2004, when the contest was held in Istanbul that the disputed island of Cyprus
and Turkey first exchanged votes, despite a failed attempt by the Turkish
organizers to present the Cypriot entry as the "Greek Administration of
Southern Cyprus".
In Turkey, some have said Hadise's performance and songs are not representative
enough of Turkey's cultural and religious identity - aside from the chorus, Dum
Tek Tek is sung entirely in English.
"There's not a trace of Turkish culture in the song. It's like an erotic belly
dance show," said Ismail Yilmaz, a member of parliament for the
ultra-nationalist MHP party. "How can a copy of something Western with no
reference to our culture, our Turkishness or our Muslimness claim to represent
us?"
Hande Yener, the so-called "Madonna" of Turkish pop, said: "Her music style
does not suit me at all. Nobody has to like each other. The public should
decide who should go to the contest." Yener was herself a candidate for
Turkey's 2008 Eurovision position before she wrecked her chances by flipping
the paparazzi the "bird".
In terms of success at the contest, Turkey has fared better since the
introduction of telephone voting, rather than panels of handpicked judges, in
1997. Telephone voting allowed for the force of the Turkish diaspora in Europe
to be felt and in recent years high scores have come from Germany, France and
the Netherlands where there are significant Turkish minorities. But this power
may be somewhat curtailed in 2009, as juries are to be reintroduced following
complaints over the fairness of voting by mobile phone text messages.
Turkey had its first Eurovision victory in 2003 with Sertab Erener's Every way
that I can. Since then Turkey has been in the top 10 three times, with
part of its newfound popularity down to the emergent new nations joining the
competition, for example newcomer Azerbaijan gave Turkey full points in 2008.
While for most of the populations in "Old Europe" the show offers little more
than a welcome break from grim economic conditions, in Turkey and "New Europe"
it is a more serious affair, symbolizing independence and attachment to a
notion of "Europeaness".
A study published by Derek Gatherer at the University of Surrey in 2006 found
several collusive voting blocs, the two largest were the "Viking Empire"
(Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania) and
the "Balkan Bloc" (Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia and
Montenegro, Turkey, Bosnia Herzegovina, Albania and Romania).
From 1999 to 2008, all but two of the contests were won by a member of either
the Balkan Bloc or the Viking Empire, with the exceptions the 2004 contest won
by Ukraine and the 2008 contest won by Russia, both members of a smaller voting
alliance known as the "Warsaw Pact" - though given last month's dispute over
gas supplies the chances of Ukraine giving Russia its usual high vote look slim
this year.
Though the supposed goal of Eurovision is unifying the greater continent
through music, it has come to mean many things to many people, and some people
say that while the show might not be fashionable, it is certainly still
watchable. One thing that is sure, however, is that Eurovision is here to stay,
and with any luck it will be in Istanbul in 2010.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She
moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.
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