As we decided that the project will focus on the situation of the post-communist countries and the role that they have right now in a transnational economical and political transformation process, we got more format on how a communication could be based. From the beginning Gülsün wanted to report about the transformations in the city of Istanbul after the political changes of 1989, because she witnessed the great function of Istanbul as a new trading center for the Black Sea Region. The talk that we had was much longer and included the experience of growing up during the military regime and the function of the regime in the cold war, but also the experiences of being in the opposition; the function of Althusser and the shock to witness the reality of the state socialism.- The whole text will be published in the Webzine. But we'll send you a smaller version of it for your information.
This talk that we (Marion von Osten, Peter Spillmann Zurich) had with Gülsün Karamustafa in her studio in front of the camera was to try somehow to get the experiences together, which we had had, when we came to Istanbul the first time, and to relate our experience to this new informal market situation for the post-communist countries which is called the "Suitcase Economy" as most of you know. A video will be edited out of this material.
M.v.O., Juli 98
Marion:
Now that we are almost on the end of our visit, I would like to ask you whether you had had a concept of taking us around. - First to the historical center and the traditional markets, to the "Eastern markets" and than to Akmerkez, the shopping mall.
Gülsün:
I really think as a citizen of Istanbul, I led you towards the city from the beginning because I had an idea of pushing you towards things. First of all I think this city has a logic, and if you follow it in the right way you understand it better. If you see the historical side first, the different layers of culture, how they are sited over each other and how they affect each other in history, you have one idea. This is based on the historical background. Then of course come the trade situations, in which we are interested. I think it is easier to understand it, if you base your knowledge together with the historical tradition of the city. Actually it is never static. It always moves. It is an active situation. For me as someone who spent a lifetime in this city, it is very interesting to see those changes because every time I go out and try to find something in its old place and tradition, I confront a change, and what I see never resembles the one before. Then I begin to think that there is the same kind of urge which moves the things in this city within the trade situations also. I would like to add one more thing at this point. It is interesting that the citizens of Istanbul, whenever they confront these changes, exclaim, "my god this time its the end of it, this city is finished". I personally think that this city would never come to an end where everything becomes total chaos, because it stands on a very, very active point in the world. It's like a passage from the South to the East, from the West to the North; and this situation of being a passage from all these directions never gives the city a chance to disappear, to stop, to become worse, it has its reasons. This change and flux gives it an eternal renovation. I think it will continue by renovating itself forever. This is my opinion.
Marion:
We were witnessing all these layers of existence, of living conditions which sometimes related to the history of Istanbul, but which are transformed, not turned down for example like the old bazaars that still exist, and I think even with their tourist background, they are still functioning.
Gülsün:
Yes, those markets are still existing in their old traditional way. This is what I like about these two old covered bazaars. Some of the goods are still produced there like in the old days, (such as jewelry).
There are still the old families who run their own works. This is something very important. It is one part of the trade situation. But what you have seen in some parts of the city are the new situations. The most interesting aspect for our project is that new kinds of trades have been developing in recent years. This new development started at the beginning of the 90s after the fall of the Soviet Block and the beginning of the new era for the Eastern European countries. They were all looking for a new market for themselves. Istanbul which was quite rich with a liberal economy and a reachable spot in the world, served as a very interesting market for those countries. In the beginning, people from Russia, and from Eastern European countries (mainly Rumanian and Polish) brought their own goods, sold them on the streets and took back something which was valuable from here (like blue jeans etc.) This coming here and going back was repeated endlessly. Lots of buses, lots of boats full of goods. We call this sort of trade 'the suitcase trade' and it is still continuing.
Marion:
A western economic term for these new markets is "informal markets". It is somehow a bazaar situation too. You don't pay taxes.
Gülsün:
Yes it has the same informality. It is also interesting, that the Turkish government backs this kind of trade, somehow to keep up this busy feeling of trade all over the city. They really ignore the fact that these people are coming and filling their suitcases and going back without paying taxes.
Marion:
I think it is very important that it has a tradition, that Istanbul had always been a consumer and a trade city.
Gülsün:
It was on the route of the caravans of the silk road, coming from the East. It was the last stop for them before entering Europe. I always like this kind of flow through Istanbul, and I have a feeling that it is still continuing.
Marion:
Do you think that's the reason why the textile industries are so strong in Istanbul?
Gülsün:
The textile industry is not only strong in Istanbul but also in Turkey as as whole, because we have this cheap possibility of producing cotton. Cotton here is cheaper than in any other country in Europe. We have cotton supplies that make it a possibility to have textile industry. We produce textiles but we still have quotas for exporting them. In many shops in Europe and in America you find textiles from Turkey under various famous brands.
Marion:
What we have seen here, when we saw the markets in the streets, is that everything is coming together - production, trade and consumption on the same spot sometimes, and that the city areas are structured because of the specific commodities. You have a street with electrical goods, a street with textiles, a quarter with household utilities etc.- What I want to say is that you don't have an industry in Asia and a printing industry in Switzerland and the trade in England- but you have everything together. I think it is interesting, because you can rethink what capitalism has done in the way of reorganizing this market situation, which is strongly connected to the family structures I think. The production situation and the trade situation would be called informal industries in the West - the black markets - and they would be forbidden. In that way I was also amazed when you were talking about markets, using it as a general term, even when this market is something like an area of streets where peopls sell things - we wouldn't say that. We would just say "Einkaufszone", shopping area.
Gülsün:
Yes, it is interesting that the market idea in my mind, is still the market-square situation maybe. For example the covered bazaar is an area where you have everything all together. There you only have the streets which are specialized on certain branches of trade such as a street for rug dealers or a street only for those who sell gold. When I go to this new shopping area which is only supplying the Russians, Rumanians etc., it also is a market-square for me. I can easily call this market, a bazaar. But is there a place which I can call a shopping area? Maybe Beyoglu where you are staying now, but not exactly in the European sense.
Marion:
In the western cities you don't have this market situations like here. You have a market situation of people of the countryside selling their goods, or what you call the flea-markets, but they are all controlled. After 89 we had the Polish markets near Potsdam Square in Berlin, where people were selling things on the street illegally. The market was turned down.
Now you have the new DEBIS buildings of the global players elite on the same spot, where in former times people were selling things to survive. That is a very interesting and highly symbolic situation. But I think if we criticize the new so-called globalized economic power relations, and how they are related to our actual living conditions, we have to reflect on the difference between a 'non-label' production situation on the markets here and a label situation there. The profit rates behind the labels or better trademarks are incredible, only on the one side. This label situation, or better this production of desire- for example for international fashion goods- needs a lot of images, a lot of cultural production, like in the Akmerkez Mall. You had the sculpture court, the fountain court, the shiny look. It needs a lot to be that exciting for the people. The attractiveness has to be produced with a whole industry. But if we criticize it, we also have to say that the old market situation is deeply related to patriarchal structures like a strong gender divided order. That seems to be different in the shopping mall. Women are the majority of the consumers and you see that it is possible for them to play with different identities through the fashion industries, on the one hand and on the other because they are from the middle class. The Mall, even the purest phantasy of capitalism, includes this promise about the changeability of gender roles, o.k. through money and style. This promise does not exist in this old structure and neither in the suitcase economy business, even though the consumers consist, as we saw, of 90% women from the East, while the trade is in the hands of Turkish males.
Gülsün:
This old trade center, the covered bazaar from the sixteenth century - production of goods and the action of trade is gathered under the same roof. Usually the basic situation for the covered bazaar is that you have all these trade sections. For example the jewelers, the leather traders, the furmakers, the potters, silversmiths, coppersmiths, and the others are placed in a very logical way. The main idea under the construction of the covered bazaar is based on having the sectors work peacefully and comfortably in combination with each other, as well as serving the merchants who travel with caravans. It was quite a service for the trade conditions of the time. Although reminiscent of the modern Mall it is quite different in mentality.
Peter:
It seems to be the main logic of a market that you have all these things together. It's possible to have a look at quality or price, to compare, because it's hard too to move from one part to the other. In this way it is a more real market situation here than we have today. Today we have just the sort of simulation of a market. It is a market because I have everything at the same spot like in this Mall. But I have no chance to choose actually between different styles of productions, different qualities of production, because the production is in China, the label production in New York. It's very interesting for me to see, that it still works here.
Marion:
Yes, that is true, but I like to come back to the gender aspect of it. My thoughts are going in an other direction, how the market situation itself is always based on, or you could say the exploitation has always been based on the gender difference. Most of the commodities of the Mall are produced here in the same way as the goods that are sold in the informal markets, even the carpet tradition is traditionally gendered. In the very poor areas of Istanbul we have seen the sweatshops in the cellars where kids and young women work. Their older brothers, fathers and husbands trade in the street, sitting in cafes, what ever. Maybe these were the production locations for the Eastern textile markets. I don't know. But I think this was a non-label situation, but the trademark situations, the production methods are not much different from what we have seen in poor areas, like in the Maqiulas in Mexico, but also in Turkey, Rumania, Bulgaria. It is the nearly the same form of exploitation. In te global economy, the multinational firms are using the Gender difference and the race division for their productivity in an unprecedented expansive way. Besides all the other changes that are happening now – there is this expansion of traditional forms of exploitation. The worldwide production got feminized, that is a fact, I think.
Gülsün:
It is also very interesting to talk about the traditional ways in which markets are functioning. For example the first market that became established from the Eastern European Countries and Russia here, after 89 was the prostitution market. All those beautiful young women from Georgia, Rumania and Russia came here to sell their bodies in order to make money to buy goods they wished to take back home and sell. Not only in Istanbul, but all over Turkey, mostly in the border regions. The Georgian border in the Black Sea region is a very fundamentalist Muslim area where those young women (who never experience prostitution as a profession, but for profit - a period to make their living) turned the whole family structures up-side-down in this region. Today there are songs about this situation made by local people, about these young women (who are generally called Natasha by Turkish men). Women of the Black Sea Region complained so much about them and they were thoroughly accused of "stealing" Turkish husbands. Now the situation is more normal. I think people have had the possibility of knowing each other better now.
Marion:
So you would say there are no prejudices anymore about the people from the East coming to Istanbul? But remember when we visited the Russian market, we were told that we wouldn't find good quality there (because those goods were only produced for Russians) and that we should leave the area.
Gülsün:
Yes, that was strange. I don't think that the quality of the goods was worse than the one sold on the main street. I don't know, maybe it is because they didn't want us to wander around this district, since we looked like Western tourists. You know, there is always the aspect of prostitution and dirty money behind this kind of trade. Women from Eastern countries who come here to buy things, very often work as prostitutes in the hotels around this area. So maybe they just didn't want us to witness the whole structure, or they just didn't want to have us as customers. I don't know.
I'll try to find out about it on the occasion of further visits to the area.
transcription: Sascha Rösler, Marion v. Osten