BERLIN — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has the ability to provoke in art as well as in life.
Less than 28 hours after the Biennale art festival in the western German city of Wiesbaden set up a statue of the Turkish leader in a public square bearing the name “German Unity Place,” the mayor had it pulled down late Tuesday night, citing security concerns.
Sven Gerich, the mayor of Wiesbaden, a German city of about 275,000 people just west of Frankfurt, said on Wednesday that he and the city authorities valued freedom of art and sought to protect it, but that the statue — standing nearly four meters, or 13 feet — had crossed a line.
“An art installation that needs to be protected by a massive police presence in order to ensure the public peace was not proportional,” he said in a statement announcing that the statue, which went up Monday and was to have remained in place until the festival closed on Sunday, would not be reinstalled.
After the Weisebaden authorities allowed the artist — the installation’s creator has not been identified by the Biennale organizers — to raise the statue, that was followed by a statement from the city on Tuesday. It expressed support for freedom of expression through art but warned that officials would intervene if they believed that the statue posed a threat to public safety.
Maria Magdalena Ludewig, a curator for the Biennale, which is running under the motto “Bad News,” had sought works and installations like the statue, hoping to foster the kind of open political debate that has become increasingly rare.
“We were aware that public room for consensus has become increasingly difficult,” she said. “Each camp has become very hardened, as have the lines of conflict when they butt up against one another.”
Uwe Eric Laufenberg, director of the Hessen state theater in Wiesbaden and of the Biennale, said opposing viewpoints were evident on Monday as people reacted to the statue.
Some people placed a candle traditionally used on graves beside a small sign reading, “Press freedom” next to the statue’s foot. Some people spat on it; others posed proudly beside the statue of the Turkish leader, taking selfies.
“The conflicts were visible on the square,” Mr. Laufenberg said of the opposing views toward the Turkish leader. “But for the majority of the time it stood, the discussion was peaceful. Emotional, but peaceful.”
Many seemed unaware that it was a temporary art installation, and news of the statue’s appearance also caused confusion in Turkey. The Karar newspaper ran an article on the work under the headline “A weird Erdogan statue in Germany.” It explained that “Turks who suddenly found the statue in front of them couldn’t make sense of it.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the Turkish Consulate in Frankfurt posted an image of the statue on Facebook with a comment that it “is not well intentioned and is also provocative.” It called on the city of Wiesbaden to take it down.
As the day continued, supporters and opponents of Mr. Erdogan gathered around the statue, which was been guarded by members of a security service and police officers from a nearby station.
A group of Kurdish women began singing their national hymn, and a group of Turkish men countered with their own national anthem. Soon after, the two sides began scuffling and the police called in about 100 officers as reinforcements.
They were soon able to restore calm, and both Mr. Laufenberg and Ms. Ludewig said they believed it would have remained that way. But the mayor, Mr. Gerich, after consulting with the police, decided that the only way to ensure safety was to keep a large police contingent on the scene or to remove the installation.
Shortly before midnight, Mr. Gerich called in the Fire Department. It brought a crane to hoist up the golden likeness of Mr. Erdogan — with his right arm raised, evoking the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by American forces in Iraq — and hauled it away.
“They defended their decision by arguing the cost factor,” said Martin Hammer, a curator. “But if you think of what the country is willing to pay for Mr. Erdogan’s upcoming state visit or the average soccer game that takes place every weekend, then it seems that political debate in public spaces is not considered as valuable.”
Mr. Erdogan is regarded with suspicion across Germany as a whole, but he remains popular among many of the more than three million Turks, and their descendants, who call Germany home.
Tensions between the two countries have been strained ever since Mr. Erdogan began cracking down on opponents — including several German citizens — after a failed coup attempt in 2016, complaining that Western nations, including Germany, had failed to support him. In 2016, the Turkish president sought to sue a German comedian, Jan Böhmermann, for a crude poem lampooning him as part of his comedy routine.
Even if organizers would have preferred to see the statue remain in place, the community’s brief encounter with the work will be integrated in the remaining events and performances of the festival, Ms. Ludewig said.
“We will continue to debate and discuss in places throughout the city in the context of our main theme, ‘Bad News,’ or what was unthinkable yesterday is reality today,” she said.
Source : Nytimes
