Erdoğan pledges to focus on culture, arts

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 21 pledged to focus on the fields of culture and arts, stressing that these issues would be the main carrier of the government’s 2053 vision.

“The great breakthrough in the past 19 years is the expression of a success that will go down in history. From now on, we need to concentrate on the fields of culture and arts, and we do,” Erdoğan said, addressing the Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Awards.

He underlined that they need to meet the requirement in the physical spaces for culture and arts.

Culture and arts also have a material infrastructure, he said, adding, “While equipping our cities with cultural and art centers, we not only constructed but also created this infrastructure.”

“The main carrier of our 2053 vision will be education and culture. We have done many works, such as the [Presidential Symphony Orchestra] CSO in Ankara and the [Atatürk Kültür Merkezi] AKM in Istanbul. Hopefully, we will finish the historical Rami Barracks among such works in a very short time. We have implemented these despite the many obstacles in front of us,” the president stated.

When one looks at the emergence of great civilizations in the past, one will see that the determinant of the process is culture, he said.

“The stronger you are in culture and arts, the more you can direct and manage your environment. It is a fact that the most powerful weapons of those who manage the global system today are the tools of culture.” Erdoğan stated.

These tools, which are described as soft power, turn into operational tools from time to time, Erdoğan noted.

“Who manages the internet content in the world has become much more important than who has the atomic bomb,” Erdoğan said.

In the past, the country’s television channels were “under the occupation of soap operas,” but now the Turkish TV serials are exported to nearly 150 countries, and Turkey is in the position of exporting the most soap operas after the United States, he said.

Teoman Duralı was awarded for science culture, İdil Biret for the field of music, Alev Ebuziyya for visual arts, Cüneyt Arkın for cinema, Gürbüz Azak for literature, Ethem Çalişkan for calligraphy, İbrahim Manav for bookkeeping and Kemal Tahir was given the “Loyalty Award.”