On October 8th of last year, our agency errorist sent a letter to Osman Baydemir, the Mayor of Diyarbakir. In it we presented our campaign qwx and the city, which was an extension of the qwx – show ur lingua campaign we did online in 2009, and which was well publicised both within Turkey and internationally. qwx – show ur lingua was an online gallery of photographs of people sticking out their tongues as a statement and sign against Turkey’s repression of minority languages. It was our intention, and the purpose of our letter to Osman Baydemir, to show such pictures in public spaces and on billboards in and around Diyarbakir. The letter was a detailed project description which included pictures of billboards in Diyarbakir with our images superimposed on them.
We were assured during phone conversations with city authorities in Diyarbakir that our project had been received. They promised to call us back, but this never materialised. Further written requests on our behalf went unanswered. The only written contact with anyone within the city administration was done over the internet with District Mayor Abdullah Demirbas. Demirbas confirmed that our project had been received and promised that we would be informed about any decision made about our submitted project.
By mid-December, and still without any confirmation from the city authorities, we decided to go through with our project on our own, reserved 20 billboards in Diyarbakir, and started searching for sponsors. On Monday January 17th we were informed by a journalist who had written about our internet campaign qwx – show ur lingua in 2009 that an almost identical campaign with similar slogan was underway with the support of the local city authorities.
When we called Diyarbakir on the following day, and after strong insistence on our behalf, we were finally put through to Osman Baydemir’s press secretary. He denied any link to our submitted project, which we know to have been received by the said authorities.
The obvious parallels between the two campaigns did not go unnoticed by the personnel of the company who rent out the billboards. On Tuesday we received an e-mail asking whether we would still be needing the billboards we had reserved, as the campaign we were planning was obviously already running. The campaign which is currently visible in Diyarbakir has quite obviously been conceived on the basis of our submitted project. The campaign itself, as it has been realised, is however far inferior to our submitted project. We do not know what is worse; that a project which we have been working on with passion and idealism for many years should have been taken out of our hands, stolen and copied, or the fact that the city of Diyarbakir should have messed up the campaign and missed the chance to push it through in an aesthetically pleasing, professional way.
See for yourself
www.diyarbakirhaber.gen.tr/haber-526-KCK-davasina-anlamli-tepki.html
