TRUTH AND ARTISTIC MEMORY IN ISTANBUL: AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE A NEW BALKAN CULTURAL STUDIES

Abstract

I confess I did a double take when I was invited to participate at the conference hosted by Istanbul’s Bilgi University and Swedish General Consulate entitled “Towards a New Balkan Cultural Studies” in October 27–30, 2005. Although I have lived in Istanbul off and on for nearly two decades –for the first time in 1967- I had never really thought of myself as inhabiting a Balkan city at all. Or rather, I think of Istanbul as a city that may have once belonged to the Balkans, but which like some latter day Atlantis had become submerged in a sea of change affecting Turkey and the region over which it presides.