Dervish on the Eurovision Stage
CONCLUSIONS: DERVISH CEREMONIES AS “BATTLEFIELDS” OF CULTURAL IDENTITY
Turkey’s Eurovision history, on the one hand, and recent developments in the representation of whirling ceremonies as cultural heritage on the other, shed light on the heterogeneity of strategies of similar actors in the context of cultural diplomacy. As the most significant figure of Turkey’s ESC history, Sertab Erener has been a cultural ambassador of a modern and historically connected Turkey on a European stage. Not only did she mediate between competing cultures and nations, but she also combined tradition with modernity, associating the ritual of whirling dervishes with modern popular music. This effort, besides arousing debates between institutions on the representation of whirling dervish-es, helped the whirling dervish image gain recognition beyond the religious domain and national borders, resulting in processes of cultural heritage manage-ment, popularization, and politicization.
Since then, the whirling dervish both as image and practice has been appro-priated by a variety of actors ranging from directors to artists, tourism compa-nies, and political institutions. The ESC winner wants to include whirling
Dervish on the Eurovision Stage | 87
dervishes in her performance on the opening ceremony of the contest, challeng-ing the ritualistic meanchalleng-ing with a secularized stage show. The Mevlevi NGO and the Ministry collaborate for international recognition of the whirling ceremony as cultural heritage. The dancer whirls in a special whirling gown with a gas mask on his face as a way of protesting the government at Gezi Park. The dervish salutes the government at the end of the Sema ceremony in Konya. The state-employed musicians apply for official permission to perform in the NGO-organized Sema ceremony in Ankara instead of the state-NGO-organized Sema cere-mony in Konya. The audience mark the Sema cerecere-mony with protest by whis-tling and applauding in İstanbul. These actors all contribute to the struggle for power over the image and use of the whirling dervish. Debates over the repre-sentation of whirling ceremonies show that collaboration can lead to internation-al recognition, as in the inscription of the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which resulted from a shared initiative of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the International Mevlana Foundation. At the same time, competition among actors can lead to a “protestival” spectacle, as in the case of Şeb-i Arus İstanbul 2013. In conclusion, Mevlevi Sufism has an expansive area of influence both at the national and international levels. In twenty-first-century Turkey, perfor-mances of whirling dervishes involve complex interplays of power, and hetero-geneous interests struggling for the power of representation lie beneath the tranquility of whirling ceremonies.
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