18 February 2025
Dear Cihad,
Hope this e-mail finds you well.
I’m really excited about our upcoming exchange of letters and looking forward to learning more about your exhibition at 1646!
(Unfortunately) I’m quite well-versed in Turkish TV series, and very recently I have been following the discussions around the new historical series focusing on the Şakir Paşa family—an influential Ottoman and Turkish family active from the late 19th to the 20th century, known for its members’ contributions to art, literature, and diplomacy, including painter Fahrelnissa Zeid, writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, and engraver Aliye Berger. Whether the series reflects the truth is questionable, and there has been significant debate over the argument that the family was not actually this controversial.
These popular shows create a story (or a history) that the majority of the audience registers as the truth. Also, in real life, actors are often mistaken for the characters they play. The media has so much power and potential over re-creating history. In that sense, your exhibition is truly intriguing and prone to open up new discussions. Could you maybe begin by telling me how you became interested in history and memory as fluid concepts and how this title Parroting the Parrot came to be?
Looking forward to reading your response.
All the best,
Ulya
12 March 2025
Dear Ulya,
I hope you’re doing well! It’s great to hear from you, and I’m also looking forward to our exchange.
Your thoughts on the Şakir Paşa series resonate deeply with my own interest in how history is mythologized through media. The way historical TV series shape public perception—sometimes blurring the line between fiction and recorded history—is something I have been exploring in my project Parroting the Parrot.
My interest in history and memory as fluid concepts stems from questioning who gets to write history and how narratives are continuously rewritten to serve different purposes. In the case of Cem Sultan, his story has been told and retold across different contexts: as an exiled prince, a tragic figure, even a symbol of European-Ottoman entanglements. I was particularly drawn to how his own writings, especially his Gurbetname, present a counter-narrative to the way he has been historicized.
The title Parroting the Parrot reflects this tension between repetition and reinterpretation. The parrot in the film serves as a guide but also playing with the idea that history is often recited rather than critically examined. Just as actors in historical dramas can become inseparable from the characters they portray, history itself is often consumed as entertainment, its complexities flattened into familiar tropes. Through this work, I want to explore how history is performed, mediated, and reimagined.
I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on how you see these media-driven narratives influencing cultural memory.
Looking forward to continuing this conversation.
All my best
Cihad
17 March 2025
Dear Cihad,
As I took some time to gather my thoughts on how history is performed, mediated, and reimagined, the present moment suddenly became a platform for reflecting on how history is being formed. This past week has been hectic, beginning with the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul. Nationwide protests continue as crowds gather on the streets every day. More than 200 people, including students, journalists, and friends, have been arrested unlawfully.
When it comes to how this entire situation is being represented in the media, words fail me in describing the stark discrepancies across different platforms. The media has become a tool of the government, and unfortunately, only a small number of outlets are disseminating information about the ongoing events. The current situation here serves as a strong and vivid example of how media-driven narratives influence both the course of events and society at large. Of course, it’s difficult to predict how today’s events will be historicized, but I can only hope that what is truly happening on the streets will be accurately represented so that cultural memory is shaped accordingly.
The idea of Parroting the Parrot also reminds me of the game in which a sentence is whispered to the person next to you, and as it passes from ear to ear, a word or two changes. By the time the last person recites the sentence out loud, it has become completely different from the original. Sometimes, as stories are repeated, cultural memory is reshaped to the point where the initial story is no longer present. This, I suppose, is the most unsettling consequence of parroting the parrot.
I’m curious to hear how you address this in the video—what kind of approach are you taking? Are there specific methods or tools you are using?
I look forward to hearing more soon.
All the best,
Ulya
1 April 2025
Dear Ulya,
Thank you for your message. I’ve been following the situation in Istanbul, and it’s deeply unsettling. The way events are documented—or erased—in real time will inevitably shape how they are remembered. As you say, the present moment is not only a reflection on history but also its formation. The discrepancies in media representation are stark, and it’s difficult to watch as narratives are shaped to serve power rather than truth. I hope you and those around you are staying safe.
Your description of the whispering game resonates strongly with Parroting the Parrot. That slow, almost imperceptible distortion of a message over time is exactly what I’m exploring—how history mutates not only through deliberate rewriting but also through repetition, omission, and reinterpretation within the hands of power.
In the video, I approach this through a combination of visual and textual layering. The CGI parrot, as a narrator, performs Cem Sultan’s words, but in doing so, it alters their meaning. Cem’s poetry, originally written in the context of his exile, becomes something else when voiced by a bird—its sincerity questioned, its authority undermined. The Mehter Band scene also plays with this distortion: an Ottoman military band performing in Dutch creates a historical dissonance, suggesting the ways cultural memory travels, adapts, and is repurposed.
I’m also interested in the aesthetics of historical media—how films, reenactments, spectacles create an illusion of authenticity. The video borrows from these visual languages but twists them slightly, making the familiar feel uncertain. It’s in this space of uncertainty that I hope viewers can reflect on how history is both constructed and consumed.
Do you think there’s a way to trace back to an ‘original’ narrative, or is every retelling inevitably an act of transformation? Perhaps the real question is not whether history changes, but how we navigate and engage with these shifts—what gets preserved, what gets lost, and what new meanings emerge along the way.
Take care,
All the best,
Cihad
7 April 2025
Dear Cihad,
Thank you for showing your solidarity regarding what has been going on in Turkey for the past two weeks.
Your last question is intriguing. I’m closer to the idea that it is not possible to trace back the original narrative, but one can only try and reach the original sources to build their understanding of any historical narrative. If we follow this train of thought, history will always be constructed and endlessly consumed—which I believe is what the video is aiming to underline as well.
At this point, I would like to go back to the story of Cem Sultan and see what kind of discrepancies drew you to his story? You already stated that you were drawn to the discrepancy between his Gurbetname and the way he was portrayed in other sources. Can you give me some examples of how he was portrayed versus how he was narrating the time period in his own writing? I’m curious to hear more about what kind of sequences from Gurbetname we will be witnessing in Parroting the Parrot as well.
Cem Sultan interestingly connects to another historical debate that I would like to bring up. In 2020, on behalf of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is unfortunately still under arrest, purchased an oil painting by the Italian painter Gentile Bellini dating to the 15th century, at a Christie’s auction. The painting is one of the three original portraits of Sultan Mehmed II. However, it is still a mystery who the second figure in the painting is.
History Professor İlber Ortaylı claimed that the mysterious figure in the portrait of Sultan Mehmed II is Cem Sultan. Contrary to Ortaylı, historian Murat Bardakçı stated that the person depicted opposite Mehmed is not Cem Sultan. Bardakçı said, “Cem Sultan arrived in the capital during the days when Bellini was in Istanbul, and even if he happened to encounter Bellini by chance, it would have been impossible for him to be portrayed in this manner — alongside his father and at the same height.”
We might not be able to tell whether this is Cem Sultan or not, but witnessing two historians debate who the second figure in the portrait is serves as yet another testament to the mysteries of history.
All best,
Ulya
8 April 2025
Dear Ulya,
Thank you for your insightful response—I really appreciate how you frame the impossibility of tracing back to an ‘original’ narrative, yet still stress the importance of returning to primary sources. That’s exactly the space I’m trying to navigate in Parroting the Parrot: where the tension between source and retelling becomes productive, even poetic.
Cem Sultan’s Gurbetname caught my attention because of its tone—melancholic, introspective, at times even romantic. Amid the political chaos he was entangled in, he manages to carve out a deeply personal voice. His verses move between classical form and raw emotional honesty, revealing a mind preoccupied with exile, betrayal, and spiritual searching. This stands in stark contrast to how he’s often portrayed elsewhere: as a political pawn, a rebellious son, or, in Western narratives, a mythical “Ottoman prince in exile” wrapped in Orientalist intrigue. What moved me was precisely this gap between the intimate reflections in his writing and the simplified, symbolic roles assigned to him in dominant historical accounts.
The story you mention about the Bellini portrait is fascinating—and perfectly encapsulates the ongoing mythmaking that surrounds Cem Sultan. Whether or not the second figure is actually him almost feels secondary; the fact that there’s still active debate over his image centuries later speaks volumes. It shows how figures like Cem remain open—available for projection, speculation, reinterpretation. That sense of instability, of being half-seen or mis-seen, also feeds into the way I’ve animated the parrot: as something both knowing and slippery, wise and absurd.
All my best,
Cihad
15 April 2025
Dear Cihad,
As you tell me more about your motivations for portraying the parrot and how you do so, I become increasingly curious to see how these motivations take shape in the video. I think it’s also quite fitting that the readers of our conversation will have a very different experience, since they will have seen the work beforehand.
Speaking of experiences, I’m now even more intrigued by how the story of Cem Sultan—and the work in general—maps onto your personal experience. The phrases you use to describe the parrot as “being half-seen or mis-seen” and having a “sense of instability” evoke the experience of immigration—which is particularly interesting, as immigration stories often have many faces. I’ve seen how someone’s story can subtly shift depending on the medium and the audience. And then there’s the other side of this: the subjective differences in how similar journeys/routes are experienced.
Was this part of what drew you to Cem Sultan, as an exiled prince? Do you think his story can shed light, for example, on the class dynamics of immigration? Does your personal story fit into this narrative—and if so, how?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Warmly,
Ulya
16 April 2025
Dear Ulya,
Thank you for this beautifully reflective message. I really appreciate how you’re picking up on the subtleties in the parrot’s portrayal and connecting them to broader experiences of migration. The idea of instability—of being half-seen, misread, or slipping between definitions—resonates deeply with me, not just as a motif in the work, but as something lived.
Cem Sultan’s exile isn’t just a historical episode—it mirrors, in a way, the ambivalence many migrants experience: being caught between places, languages, and narratives that don’t quite fit. His writings speak from this liminal space, where identity is in flux and home is always somewhere else, sometimes remembered, sometimes reimagined. That dissonance feels familiar.
While I wouldn’t claim a direct parallel between my story and Cem’s, I find myself aligning more with the parrot than with him. The parrot, to me, embodies the role of the observer, but never got a chance in shaping events. When political shifts unfold, like the ones we’re seeing now or those in Cem’s time, we often find ourselves in that same position: witnessing, echoing, questioning—but ultimately sidelined. I sometimes wonder, had Cem won the fight against his brother, would he have become the very force he seemed to resist? That ambiguity is central to the work. The parrot’s instability—its mimicry and misfires—mirrors not only the unreliability of historical narratives, but also the position many of us occupy in relation to power, language, and representation.
All my best,
Cihad
22 April 2025
Dear Cihad,
I can definitely relate to you identifying more with the parrot. “Ultimately sidelined” is such an accurate description of the disappointment and fatigue that we experience during political shifts. I think it is also quite descriptive of our resistance methodologies in terms of communication. These days I feel like a parrot re-posting news, sharing and re-sharing stories on Instagram, desperately hoping to feel heard. So I guess ‘the parrot’ also has this role of amplifying sounds by multiplying them. In that case, repeating becomes important because it is not just a redundant recurrence but an effective reiteration.
With the exhibition opening fast approaching, you must be close to finalizing the details. How has your experience been working on such a large-scale video project? I’m curious to hear your overall thoughts and insights.
All the best,
Ulya
22 April 2025
Dear Ulya,
Thanks for your comments—especially your take on the parrot as both sidelined and amplifying. That tension between powerlessness and insistence feels so familiar. Lately, repetition has started to feel like a form of persistence. Not because it guarantees change, but because it refuses to disappear. In that sense, the parrot becomes more than a mimic; it becomes a witness who won’t stop echoing.
As for the video—yes, things are coming together, though of course that last stretch always feels like walking a tightrope! It’s been my most ambitious video project so far, not only in scale but also in layering different media and timelines. Juggling historical research, CGI, language shifts, and sound design—while still keeping the work open-ended—has been both demanding and rewarding.
Looking forward to sharing it all with you soon.
Warmly,
Cihad
24 April 2025
Dear Cihad,
Thank you so much for this generous and thoughtful exchange—it’s been a real pleasure to write e-mails with you over the past few weeks. I’ve really enjoyed the way our conversation wandered across time and references, circling around Cem Sultan, the parrot, and the echoes they leave behind.
Your reflections on repetition, mimicry, and layered timelines stayed with me, especially the way you describe repetition as both vulnerability and insistence. I keep thinking about the parrot not just as a figure of translation or spectacle, but as something that resists forgetting—by saying things over and over again, even maybe when no one is listening anymore.
I’m really looking forward to seeing Parroting the Parrot in person at 1646. I imagine it will be something entirely different to encounter it in space, with its different layers unfolding through the narrative.
Until then, thank you again for your generosity and for sharing so openly about your work and process.
Warmly,
Ulya
