A lot was happening this week. So here are fragmented updates instead of a single overarching theme.

• Thirteen years ago today, the Gezi Park protests started in Istanbul. Those were glorious days of a rebellion that was and still is unmatched in terms of scale and spirit. We lost eight of us in those days. May they ever live on in our fight for justice and freedom.

• We are moving! After spending the last 3 years in Beyoğlu, we are moving back to our old place in Bakırköy, which was nicer in almost all aspects except the location: rent, space, parking spots, noise. The biggest downside is of course proximity to our dear friends…

• I was on paid time off since Wednesday, so we had some time to watch three movies:

  • One Battle After Another (2025): After all the fuss this movie made last year, I was very curious about it. I found the portrayal of revolutionaries too caricatured, but it was nevertheless an enjoyable watch. See Žižek’s review.
  • Sentimental Value (2025): This was a very slow-burning movie but I liked it. I posted about this on Mastodon: “One can endlessly psychoanalyze the characters of the movie but it was ultimately about making peace with Home.” Also, I think this was my biggest exposure to Norwegian and I was fascinated by how beautiful it sounds.
  • Project Hail Mary (2026): I kept hearing about this movie the last few weeks and, being always thirsty for science fiction, we decided to watch it. I really really enjoyed the friendship between Grace and Rocky so much that everything else about the movie was shadowed by it. Because of the camaraderie between them, Project Hail Mary is now located closer to RRR (2022) in my vector space. See Marta’s review focusing on the politics of the movie.

• I started playing World of Warcraft Classic with a friend primarily to have a gathering location in cyberspace. I remember how boring it was to kill monsters to complete quests when I was into MMORPGs years ago. To my surprise, I now find it relaxing to mindlessly farm and loot.

• Susan Sontag’s essay collection On Photography had been sitting in my book pile for a long time. This week, on a whim, I opened it and started reading the first essay, “In Plato’s Cave.” This was my first experience reading Sontag; I can definitely say that I’m impressed by her foresight:

It would not be wrong to speak of people having a compulsion to photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in a public event comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form. That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph. — Susan Sontag, In Plato’s Cave

It was a packed weekend, so I couldn’t publish the weekly update on Sunday. Another one-day-late edition.

Fascism became a catch-all phrase for leftists to criticize their adversaries. It is a term that has a historical meaning, and I don’t want to repeat the same mistake of muddying the definition. By fascism I mean:

• consolidation of power in a single powerful leader,
• dismantling of all institutions to remove any safety brakes in the system,
• controlling a large part of the economy and corporations,
• ultranationalist rhetoric,
• cult of regenerative violence,
• separating society into two blocs: decent citizens and indecent others,
• cancelling elections or rendering them meaningless.

Today, Turkey is at high risk of being ruled by a proper fascist government. Out of the pillars of fascism that I listed above, four of the seven are firmly in place, two are forming:

• Erdogan was the strong authoritarian leader from the start in 2002; he reached the peak of his power in 2017 by changing the constitution after the failed coup d’état in 2016.
• Since 2008, all major institutions were either taken over or shut down. It started with the military, then the media, and lastly the whole legal system.
• The government controls many conglomerates directly, and others need to align themselves with it under the threat of otherwise being unable to do business.
• Nationalism is at a strange point right now. Between 2013 and 2024, government supporters were the primary nationalist group, with smaller groups on the opposition side as well. The balance changed after the government started peace talks with the Kurdish armed organization PKK. Today, there is a strong ultranationalist reaction against Kurds, especially on the opposition side. Erdogan is overseeing the whole resolution process with the PKK from a safe distance, so he still has room to maneuver and channel the reactionary nationalist sentiment for his own gain.
• I don’t think the violence is institutionalized, but cliques in the government are experienced in doing psyops through conventional and social media to amplify the bloodthirsty demands of radical groups (“slaughter all stray dogs”, “deport all the immigrants”).
• Erdogan and his AKP separate society into two: immoral atheist laics and decent Muslim conservatives.

In 2025, they started putting together the last pillar: no elections. It started with arresting the popular presidential candidate of the opposition, Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, in March 2025. Last week, it reached its peak with removing the whole leadership of the main opposition party from their posts through legal shenanigans. Today, the risk of fascism is higher than ever.

We have been protesting every day since Friday. The numbers on the street were not huge—definitely lower than what we had when Imamoglu got arrested. Nevertheless, the bright side is that we didn’t give up; there are still people who care to resist. Is it going to be enough? I don’t think so. We desperately need something that can radically redefine the rules of the game, because we are losing the one Erdogan defined. As Hannah Arendt describes, totalitarian systems are capable of eventually restructuring reality to make it coherent with their goals. What we need in Turkey right now is a revolution—not the revolution as the locomotive of history as Marx puts it, but the Benjaminian revolution as the emergency brake.

Previously.

the biggest news of this week was definitely the exhibition at OtonomArt. after ~50 hours of work, it was so exciting to put Syzygy on display. it was also thrilling to see my name as the artist on the label.

i’m glad i photographed the sculpture after every session so i could see the gradual process. now, looking back, i find it eerie to look at the first photos. i created this thing from mud with my bare hands!

Continue reading → 79 words

One day late reflection on the previous week.

Last weekend was so busy that I couldn’t find an hour to sit and write a few paragraphs. Yesterday, we had a Mother’s Day dinner with my in-laws (where did the morning go? who knows!). On Saturday, I watched my first ever American football game. My hometown team, the Halcyons, was playing against the ITU Hornets. Unfortunately we got our asses kicked by the Hornets, but it was fun either way!

On Friday, thanks to my $employer’s FryDay policy where we have a 4-day work week once each quarter, I spent 6 hours in the atelier sculpting. One thing that always surprises me about sculpting is how physically demanding it is. I rarely fall asleep on the couch, and Friday evening was one of those rare occasions. I started working on a new piece: this time I’m doing an (all) female torso.

I think these are all the things I can mention in the life-updates category. But I also want to share some links:

• My wordy webring neighbor Martha started a substack. From time to time I also think about starting one to be more “discoverable”. It happens especially after writing something that I’m proud of, so it’s no surprise to see her announcement after this post. Then I remember what competing for attention felt like on Twitter and say “no, thanks.” Also, I don’t know when or how it happened, but when I see a substack.com link I start to have the same kind of bodily feeling as when I see medium.com.
• Ironically, I will share a Substack link now, but this is not a mere substack — this is Astral Codex Ten. Scott wrote about taste and art, which I find related to what I obliquely described in Oblique Art.
• Lastly, I really enjoyed this essay questioning the meaning of home by Mikhail Minakov.

Contemporary art is often criticized for being extravagant, farfetched or nonsensical. You might think of the paintings and movies of David Lynch, sculptures of Miquel Barceló or even the banana (Comedian) of Maurizio Cattelan. They are definitely strange and hard to interpret, and in Cattelan’s case, give the finger to Art as an institutional practice. I have no problems with this kind of art. I don’t think the artist owes me any meaning. Even if the artwork seems straightforward, it is still too easy to misinterpret. My sculpting tutor made a sculpture of an anorexic girl with a VERY visible vagina and still, people keep thinking it’s a male…

However, I do have a problem with contemporary artists’ lack of courage. I keep seeing (and hearing!) a lot of artworks that are not too abstract but too vague. As if the artists struggled to accumulate the necessary conviction to breathe something of themselves into the work. This obliqueness of art makes me so frustrated. It feels like the artist hides behind the foggy landscape of the present where meaning is either too atomic to be interpreted by anyone but the artist or too high-level for anyone to hold all its significance at once. It seems to me that oblique art is neither, but an epitaph of the artist’s cowardice.

Last week I went to a concert to listen to a violin concerto composed by a friend of mine. I’ve never had the chance to listen to any of his works. I had high expectations because of the praise I had heard about him and the overall aura of his very likable presence.

(He is not aware of this blog and I don’t think he’ll ever read this. E, if you are, I’m sorry.)

Then I heard the same obliqueness in his concerto.

Before the concert there was a pamphlet with a long exposition about the composition. I found it very odd because, of all art forms, music is the one that requires the least amount of exposition. Of course it’s not that easy to tell a story just with music, but it opens such a direct channel with the listener that the story does not need to be told for music to bloom into emotions.

Then it started. For a minute or two, the violin didn’t even make any sound. We waited awkwardly, watching the violinist sway and tremble while the contrabasses in the orchestra smirked at each other. After a time that felt like an eternity, we heard a few notes from the violin. It was a good melody! Alas, it didn’t last long. Then the orchestra started to hum a very ambient sound. Everything sounded like the white noise tracks I listen to while I read. This all lasted for almost 45 minutes; here and there, the orchestra abruptly made sharp noises which felt like jumpscares. At one moment, I opened my notes app and wrote “are we in a David Lynch movie?” to show my wife. The out-of-placeness of everything definitely felt like a David Lynch movie, but unfortunately not like watching one, but being trapped in one.

Sunday reflection on the passing week.

I charged my car battery! This might sound unimportant to you, but it was a big deal for me. My father was a handyman and I helped him a lot on different projects throughout my childhood. So in theory I have a good grasp of how to use tools. But it was not enough. One also needs to be willing to do this kind of stuff, which I was not. My experiences of doing projects at home with my father primarily taught me that a project never goes according to plan. There are always edge cases that lead you away from the happy path, and it’s always easier to hire someone else to be responsible for them. But more and more I feel like the immortal insight of Ozan Akyol, a Turkish comedian, is spot on: “You call an expert. They come and you immediately realize that they’re just another guy.”

Things didn’t go according to plan this time either. The charger I bought required the battery to be removed from the car. So I needed to find a socket tool for that. Then I needed to figure out how to use the damn tool. Then I needed to figure out how to actually charge the battery at home. Doing so was anxiety-inducing. Can it suddenly catch fire? Will there be acid fumes slowly destroying my lungs? My brain habitually overindexes on failure modes. I think this makes me a good engineer but at the same time prevents me from doing novel things.

Anyway, I did it. The car works now. I now know how to remove the battery, charge it, and put it back. I improved my practical knowledge by doing the damn thing with my hands. This is how you build phronesis, right? With this knowledge I’m better equipped for the future even if I decide to delegate the task to someone else¹.

I attribute some of this achievement to my practice of sculpting. Ten years of solely building in the digital realm didn’t help me grow confidence in working with my hands. But with sculpting I feel like I’m building this confidence. It feels nice.

Speaking of sculpting, my first real sculpture, Syzygy, is completed and due for molding and casting this week. I will exhibit it on May 16 at OtonomArt. I suspect (hope) at least one person is going to ask what syzygy means. The term has too many interpretations and usages—gnosticism, Jung, CCRU… I want to write a post here about it so I can be prepared to talk about it there.

If you’re reading this post and have means to be in Istanbul on May 16, consider yourself invited to the exhibition.

I was in Antalya, Turkey for the company offsite last week. This is a reflection on the past week. photo dump.

The worst type of leader is the one who needs to be the leader. The second worst type is the one who just can’t accept that they are the leader.

I’m a leader. Writing this fills me with dread because it sounds megalomaniacal to my ears. However, it’s true. I am a leader. I’ve been a leader for some time—I’ve been the technical lead of my team for the last three years. Although they had been calling me that for some time, I think I never really assumed it. I always treated it like a symbolic title that they needed to give me not because I deserved it but because conditions demanded it. Somebody had to fill the void, and no one else was going to.

Dunno what really changed but this year I started to feel I fit the position. It’s not like I had impostor syndrome and I finally got over it. I was confident with my technical abilities for quite some time.¹ I just started to feel comfortable with the idea of being the leader. This required a lot of convincing for my inner-anarchist who has zero trust for the symbolic capital of the title. My teammates have done most of that convincing by looking up to me and putting their trust in me. Another part was my peers, superiors, and customers, and this never-ending feeling of being the adult in the room.²

Last week was one of the most challenging weeks for my team. We needed to finish a pretty daunting release that required us to work long hours under great pressure. We were at the company offsite which required us to participate in a lot of meetings and discussions. At the same time, the team needed to finish the development and testing of big features for the release. We did it. I am grateful to have wonderful teammates who never hesitate to laugh under stress and never cease to support their fellows no matter how tired they are. And they shape me as well. It’s a dialectical process—just as leadership shapes the team, the team shapes the leader.

I’m writing this in haste before packing my laptop for travel. This will be a short one.

• The bust is finished! I’m calling it “Syzygy”.
• We finished A Knight of Seven Kingdoms. I loved it!
• We started watching the new season of The Boys.
• I talked about my recent inability to read in analysis. Unsurprisingly, I started reading again. I’ll probably finish the current read tomorrow on the plane.

Random thoughts on the passing week.

• After 2 weeks of hiatus I was finally in the atelier again to work on my sculpture. I think the bust is coming to an end. I feel the resistance to continue working on it. One part of me says “I’m bored of this, I want to work on something new,” while another part says “this is 80% finished and I know the last 20% is the hardest part.” I honestly don’t know what to do. Anyway this is how it looks right now:

• We are watching the new Traitors Türkiye show with my wife. It’s definitely cringey, but thankfully I’ve exercised my cringe muscles enough to get hooked on the show. It’s so funny to watch a group of people slowly implode because of their failure to coordinate. They keep voting away the innocents because the group keeps selecting tall poppies as the Schelling point. I’ve never watched the US show so I don’t really know the format, but I wish we didn’t know the traitors so we could try to spot them alongside the participants. Nevertheless it’s a good show to watch while we eat instead of the always depressing Turkish news.

• I don’t know why but I haven’t been able to read the last few weeks and I’m starting to worry. I’ve been reading Rosalind Krauss’ Passages in Modern Sculpture since last month. It’s a good book and it’s a gift from my friends, so I don’t want to abandon it. I think I’m not able to read because life has been so busy the last few months. Work is busy, I needed to travel a lot, and my political duties plus my hobbies already take up too much space. The problem is authors keep writing books, so there’s this never-ending feeling of being behind. (GUYS CAN YOU PLEASE STOP PUBLISHING NEW BOOKS FOR LIKE THE NEXT 10 YEARS OR SO!?)

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