Rediscovered painting fires politics controversy

A painting discovered in a provincial office of the main opposition and thought to have been made in 1939 by prominent Turkish painter İbrahim Çallı will be sent to Ankara to determine the precise identity of its creator.

“There is no clear information as to when the painting arrived here. However, the painting has remained under protection until this day since 1987. Its maintenance is being carried out by Nuri Hacıoğlu. There are 60 years of work on this painting,” Oğuz Kaan Salıcı, the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) provincial head in Istanbul, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News.

A press meeting was held yesterday at a CHP office in Istanbul’s Eyüp district where the painting was discovered. During the meeting, members of the CHP’s women’s branch began cleaning the painting with a glass cleaner spray despite the presence of a deep crack on the painting’s glass cover. Although it still remains unclear as to whether the painting is original or not, the expectation in the district office is to buy a new modern office building with proceeds from the sale of the expensive painting.

“The true significance of the painting [is due to the fact that] it is a portrait of [former President] İsmet İnönü,” Salıcı said, adding that it was irrelevant whether the painting was truly made by Çallı or not. “We are aware of Çallı’s significance.”

The fate of the painting remained unknown for more than 70 years until it was found to be abandoned and randomly placed in a storage space inside the CHP’s office, causing a public outcry. Daily Radikal also published a comprehensive article on the issue Nov. 7.

‘No museum keepers’

The painting will now be sent to the CHP’s General Council in Ankara where it will be inspected in the coming days to determine whether it is original.

“We preserved the painting despite the fact that we are no museum keepers.”

Contrasting his party’s treatment of historical artifacts with that of the government, he said that “it is evident what goes on in the Topkapı Palace Museum under the government of the Justice and Development Party [AKP]” in reference to a recent scandal in which the director of the Topkapı Museum allegedly had a historical throne belonging to Ottoman Sultan Selim III carried into his own private residence.

The Topkapı Museum’s director, Yusuf Benli, was also accused of serving his visitors breakfast on historic pieces, such as a Louis XIV-style marble table decorated with paintings.

The artifact allegedly has stains from food on it that can longer be removed.

When political parties were shut down following Turkey’s 1980 military coup, valuable items were thrown into storage by the coup leaders while the contents of the parties’ archives were shipped off to the Turkish Cellulose and Paper Factories Corp. (SEKA) for recycling, Salıcı said.