Last Tuesday, we met <a fr-original-style="" href="https://instagram.com/bengu?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">Bengü</a> (Gün) in Beşiktaş, one of her favourite places in Istanbul. We talked about the neighbourhood, being an Istanbulite and art spaces. We searched for an answer to the question "How can people who live here nourish themselves?" Are you curious about what we found? Then, come close and take a seat. Let us get you a Turkish coffee so we can start our conversation.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">ID</h2><ul fr-original-style="padding-inline-start: 20px;" style="padding-inline-start: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; list-style-position: inside; box-sizing: border-box;"><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Your nickname: Coruja - my nick name from back when I played capoeira.</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Last exhibition I visited in Istanbul:&nbsp;Salt Beyoğlu, The 90s Onstage, an exhibition that sheds light on the place of performance art in Turkey's past.</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Last artist I discovered in Istanbul:&nbsp;Adelita Husni-Bey in the Also your wound, Rosa&nbsp;exhibition curated by Pelin Uran.</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The place in Istanbul where you can get your fill of art without going to a museum or gallery: Urban in Beyoğlu, best place to meet friends from the art world.&nbsp;</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Non-Istanbulites wouldn't know: How endless a city can be.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I live in: Beşiktaş, still my favourite.</li><li dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">In my heart, I feel like I am from: Brazil.&nbsp;</li></ul><h2 fr-original-style="text-align: left;" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">SHOOT THE BREEZE</h2>You were born in Mersin, you came to Istanbul for university. You lived in Dubai for a while and then you came back to Istanbul, and you're still here. How did Istanbul's place in your heart change over the years? What are the factors that make this place 'home'?When I first arrived in Istanbul from Mersin, I was mesmerised by the city. The way the Bosphorus shaped the whole city, its never-ending energy, and its size, which was difficult to grasp at first, felt very good to me. I guess the city was not so crowded at that time, or I didn't realise it when I was a student. Of course, living on the campus of Boğaziçi University was very lucky, we were in the most beautiful corner of the most beautiful city in the world.&nbsp;As a result of work and the general rush of life, the relationship with the city changes. It is both my home, where I feel very comfortable, and an area of constant struggle. Nevertheless, Istanbul has not lost anything from its beauty for me. With a ferry journey, I can recapture the feeling I experienced on my first day here. There is still so much to discover.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/8/4/1663866385678.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Bengü is in her neighbourhood, Beşiktaş<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">You are the co-founder of Mixer, a gallery that creates a space for young artists to introduce and express themselves. At the same time, you have experience in managing a 'guest house' that provides artists with the opportunity to create. What does the presence of these institutions in Istanbul, which have different dynamics but serve the same purpose, add to the city? What is the impact of the city on these institutions?&nbsp;I have always nourished myself through such institutions. Although each institution you mentioned is quite different, they have a common goal; to create space for artistic creation and for the creation to meet audiences. In a multi-layered city like Istanbul, such initiatives carry special importance. It is not a one-sided relationship. The existence of these institutions cannot be considered separately from the audience living here. Institutions that nourish the audience, arouse curiosity and create a space for questioning and discussion, also strengthen and nourish the life here.As a person who has been involved in the arts for years, how do you intellectually nourish&nbsp;yourself in Istanbul apart from visiting exhibitions and museums?&nbsp;We are lucky that there is a very vibrant art scene in Istanbul, and this period now is even more active with the biennial. I participate in talks and events as much as I can. I especially enjoy spending time in Salt Galata's library. The best thing that nourishes me in Istanbul traffic these days is breaks with audiobooks.Do you find anything missing from the art scene in Istanbul, a place/platform that you think should exist in the city? If so, why do you think we need such a space? I think most cultural institutions are still very closed off, and they target similar audiences. We need more spaces that bring people together for participatory works, that are more inclusive and inviting. This was also the reason why ICOM changed the definition of museums recently. We all need to figure out how to really realize the following statement in this new definition: “Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability.”

Aposto Istanbul

Meet Bengü Gün, traveller from Mersin who made Beşiktaş her home, an art consultant with a fondness for creativity and production. And of course, an Istanbulite.

Bengü Gün

<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">23rd Battle of the Bands still accepting participants</h2>The last day to sign up for the Battle of the Bands contest, which continues to make the voices of independent bands heard, is 2 October. You can<a fr-original-style="" href="https://linktr.ee/radyobogazici" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">&nbsp;apply here</a> and avoid missing the opportunity to make your band's voice heard with Battle of the Bands.What is it? Organised by Turkey's first university radio station radio boğaziçi, Battle of the Bands is held within the scope of&nbsp;Sınırsız Müzik Festival, the centre of attention of Boğaziçi music lovers for twenty-eight years. It invites all young musicians to the stage. The winning bands will be awarded at an event at Boğaziçi University South Campus on Saturday, 22 October.

<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">ID</h2>Your nickname:&nbsp;I don't really have one but my name at Starbucks is Poyraz and some friends call me that now.&nbsp;I have visited in Istanbul recently:&nbsp;Silivri! Far away but technically still Istanbul!&nbsp;I have explored recently (in the city):&nbsp;Last week I took a group of visiting students on a walking tour of Yedikule and Samatya, one of my favorite areas of the city.&nbsp;I live in:&nbsp;Kurtuluş&nbsp;&nbsp;I am from:&nbsp;Albuquerque, New Mexico<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">SHOOT THE BREEZE</h2>Hello Paul! I remember reading a quote recently from you which answered a tweet that in summary said, "If you live far, far away from where you were born and grew up, you are a nut job." And you replied, "6486 miles away, must be a weirdo." It sure is a long way from the United States to Istanbul, but I am not sure if it makes you a weirdo. Can you please tell us how Paul Osterlund ended up in Istanbul?I came to Istanbul for the first time on a student trip in 2007, when I was 19 and in my second year of university. We attended a lecture at Boğaziçi University and I clearly remember being floored when I first saw the view of the Bosphorus from the hill leading down toward south campus. As a kid who grew up in a small town near landlocked Albuquerque, New Mexico, to say the least I was awestruck. At that point I realized that I could live in Istanbul. I came back in 2008 and spent a year studying at Boğaziçi University as an exchange student. After living in the US for a couple years, I returned in 2011 to do my MA at Sabancı University and have been here ever since.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1659715737689.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Paul is in front of his local watch repairerPhoto: Deniz Sabuncu<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">You have been living in Istanbul for more than a decade now. You speak fluent Turkish and most probably know Istanbul better than most of the locals. You even have a Turkish Studies MA from Sabancı University! I believe that your relationship with Istanbul in particular, but Turkey in general is unique amongst the expats living today in the city. Can you please dwell on your love affair with Istanbul, what is so fascinating about the city for you?I love that it is a 24-hour city. I like coming back to the neighborhood and having tavuklu pilav&nbsp;on the street at 4 AM, or being able to order beer from numerous shops at any hour. After getting used to the pace and energy of Istanbul, going to other cities where everything shuts down at 10 PM or midnight is depressing and disorienting. In spite of the catastrophic over development and obscene construction, I still manage to find beauty in the city all the time. Even in places in my neighborhood or nearby that I've passed by hundreds of times, for the first time I'll notice a neglected but charming Art-Deco building, an old wraught-iron door with heart and tulip patterns, or an ornately hand-painted golden apartment sign. Living here has accelerated my attention for details and interest in architecture.Istanbul is also completely responsible for me becoming a journalist. The city is an endless source of inspiration and there is an infinite number of stories to be told. I was finishing my MA thesis in 2013 right when the Gezi Park protests broke out, and coincidentally my thesis had a chapter about Gezi Park. By that point I knew I didn't want to continue in academia but did want to keep writing about Istanbul, so I decided to get in to journalism. That same summer I was fortunate to get a scholarship to attend an intensive advanced Turkish language program at Boğaziçi, and afterwards I realized that I felt confident conducting interviews in Turkish.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1659715825728.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Paul is together with his beloved watch repairmanPhoto: Deniz Sabuncu<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">I would like to sideline Istanbul for a second and ask you about the "musician Paul" and how he continues to produce music throughout his time in Istanbul. You were in a band called "Foton Kuşağı" earlier, which was set to open for New Order in 2013's One Love Festival. Now you, together with Kenan Sharpe and Parham A.G, are in a band called "AŞK". Could you tell us about your music-making journey in Istanbul, and how it compares to music-making in the US?My first friend in Turkey, Onur Güzel, got in touch with me via Myspace in 2007 because he heard one of my old band's recordings and told us he liked it. I happened to be going on my first trip to Istanbul a few weeks later and ended up meeting up with him several times and becoming friends. When I first lived in Istanbul in 2008-09, Onur and I started a group called Taratarama. After moving back in 2011, I started Foton Kuşağı, which was active until 2017. We played in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Eskişehir as well as 12 shows across Holland, Germany and France in 2013. I've been playing in bands since I was 15 so it's something I have to do wherever I am.Having said that, I did take a hiatus for a few years before starting AŞK at the beginning of this year with Parham and Kenan. It's a loud yet tuneful punk/indie rock trio. We recorded a two-song single that will be released soon, one song is in Turkish and the other is in English. Making music here is considerably more difficult compared to the cities I lived in in the US. There are a limited number of venues for a city of this size, you have to pay by the hour to rehearse in practice spaces and transporting gear can be a nightmare.In the US, I lived in a couple punk houses, one of which I shared with four friends who were all musicians and we had a huge basement where we could rehearse, record, and throw shows and parties, we could cram 60-70 people in there and our neighbors were cool with it despite the noise and would never call the cops. Such a setup is obviously impossible in Istanbul. However, there are lots of people and bands across numerous genres that are making exciting music in the city, and there are plenty of reasons to be enthusiastic about the music scene here despite the financial and logistical difficulties that musicians and concertgoers alike have to deal with.

This is Paul Osterlund; journalist, musician, city cruiser, and one of the most enthusiastic expat Istanbulites.

Paul Benjamin Osterlund

In the forth issue: (AKA Cihangir Issue)Hopping (What’s going on in Istanbul: Hand-picked and unmissable events):&nbsp;A night of swimming at Hilton Istanbul Bosphorus, open-air The&nbsp;French Dispatch&nbsp;screening,participatory urban walk by ATÖLYE Bomontiada, and more.Water Cooler Talk (Local news that you need to know to survive or just to speak of):&nbsp;Opening of Basilica Cistern, aka Yerebatan Sarnıcı, banned LGBTQAI+ films at Boğaziçi University's open-air film festival.What’s Cooking (Selected places to eat, drink, cafés, food markets): A safe space in Cihangir for plant-based foodies and vegans, where one can eat without realizing there is a hint of beef bouillon in the soup.Istanbulite (A talk with a creative inhabitant): We met with Pat in Cihangir’s Kahve Firuzağa, where she is a regular.

<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2021/8/6/1632570633897.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" alt="1975, Königburnn Augsburg © Kemal Dinç" width="550" ratio="Infinity" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable"> I was a kid who was educated at the Türkan Şoray Elementary School in Istanbul, who spoke Turkish fluently. From an early age I experienced the theatre plays and events performed at our school by Boğaziçi University students. I was in the school band.At 11, I arrived at this country where I didn’t speak the language. The German administration was ill-prepared for the unsolicited migration of the 80’s. No education program for foreigners existed then as it does now. From one day to the next, kids were forced to face education in an entirely unfamiliar language.So in those days I’d also been made to feel like a strange creature fallen from space onto Earth. Even my family felt like strangers. I had siblings but I felt alienated from them as well. I still talk with my mother about those days, she tells me, “We didn’t really get you, you were so different.”There was only one thing in those days that felt familiar to me and that was my father’s bağlama on a peg on the wall, which he would take down maybe 3, 5 times a year to play.I felt an affinity with the bağlama: I recognized and knew it but it was only in those days that I began to truly get to know it. My social life was virtually nonexistent. I did go to school but did not join in groups and sports activities because of the language barrier. As such I focused on the bağlama and started practicing night and day. By 13-14, I knew and played that saz well. It was my only friend.Once the time came to learn a trade, I announced to my family that I wanted to study at the conservatory. I was told that I would not make any money down that path. This while becoming a musician was all I ever dreamed of.A few years later, I left home to pursue that dream. I moved in with a Greek friend I knew from before. He was a drummer and made fusion music. I was thus introduced to a whole different world. Bağlama in tow, I got in with rock, hiphop and other such genres of music. I thought that there should be a school for all that and wanted to study music myself. In fact, at a recital, a guitar instructor who had really warmed up to the bağlama said to me: “If you can’t study the bağlama, you can at least study the guitar. I’ll instruct you free of charge, but on one condition: even if you learn the guitar, you may never give the bağlama up.”So my academic life began, with the guitar. I made many multifaceted friends in Leipzig where I studied and got my master’s degree. I got to see the world, so to speak.A nice thing about schools in Germany is that they’re filled with students who come from all over the world and contribute something of their own cultures and themselves even as they receive instruction in classical music. My Italian classical guitar instructor used to tell me constantly: “When you make classical music, learn and practice with German discipline but don’t play like a German. That is to say, putting that framework you’ve brought with you from Anatolia into the guitar, into music, is what matters.”

Musician, composer, teacher and Chief of the World Music Department at Pop Akademie Baden-Württemberg Kemal Dinç, shared his immigration story, how music played a role in this story and how his music is affected by this story with us.


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