Week 34 - what's on your mind, Gul?

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Gul - somewhere in Turkey



SPORTWASH AS PURE HYPOCRISY


 At the end of Turkey’s Formula 1 race last Sunday, they showered the podium with Sprite instead of champagne. Lewis celebrated his 7th title with some sticky Sprite and he didn’t say a single word about it.


 Imagine winning such an incredible race and reaching 2 billion viewers but the Turkish government breaks the tradition in the F1 podium ceremony.


Technically Turkey is a secular country and booze is very legal. Not using champagne, which is traditional to celebrate winning F1 races, made Turkey look more socially conservative than it is in practice. 


 Turkey’s ruling party AKP government has already been increasing the taxes on alcohol and blurring out alcoholic drinks in TV programs and movies. But, traditionally Turkish people like their drinks,


 Mercedes owner Toto Wolf said in an interview later on ‘We -Hamilton and himself - are flying home together and there’s gonna be something other than Sprite which we just saw on the podium’.




 Lewis Hamilton often says he is motivated to keep racing in Formula 1 because of the difference he can make to the world,


‘We got to face and not ignore the human rights issues that are around the countries that we go to. How we can engage with those countries and empower them to do more to really change.’ 


 Can international sporting events really clean up a country’s tarnished image? Some countries throw large amounts of money at glittering sporting events. Why? It’s just because sporting events are used to sideline critical views of a government and help to clean up its image and reputation. 


 Sport washing is being employed by authoritarian regimes that use important vents to reboot their reputations and distract people from their human rights records. Lewis Hamilton will head to Saudi Arabia – also with other F1 countries like China and Bahrain - for the first time, where human rights abuses have tarnished the Arab nations. 




THE ‘ART’ OF HYPOCRISY 

 The same hypocrisy I feel, making a connection between money and art. The latest example is Louvre Abu Dhabi.


For me, art and culture are being put into the service of money and power. United Arab Emirates government claims its role in the joint venture is to help build bridges between cultures based on tolerance, acceptance, and understanding. 


 These are nothing more than empty PR things as the UAE is not a place that promotes tolerance and universal human values. Abu Dhabi has emerged as one of the most aggressive buyers in today’s global art markets and it’s been said that UAE paid over a billion dollars for the right to use the Louvre’s name. East meets West is a bad cliché. No cultures meet there. 




 UAE’s intolerance of criticism continues as authorities’ sentence human rights activists and forcibly disappear individuals who criticize the authorities.


There is no freedom of expression, there are no women's rights so how this country could be a tolerant country.  


 Maybe art does not mix well with money, but art and culture are valued exclusively in terms of a shared ethical concept. 


 Therefore, the art world should take responsibilities very seriously and make their position on human rights and other ethical issues in the way their arts are delivered in host countries. Artists, athletes, galleries, museums, and other institutions, clubs can provide a voice for the voiceless and have the ability to reach beyond borders.










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