Suzy Hansen on Emin Özmen’s Photos From Turkey’s Convulsive Decade
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on May 26, 2023
The Magnum photographer Emin Özmen remembers the day in 1993 when radical Islamists set fire to the Madımak Hotel in his hometown of Sivas, Turkey, killing 37 people. Intellectuals and artists had gathered there for a festival honoring a 16th-century Alevi poet.
Many of those who died were themselves Alevis, members of a Muslim sect that is a minority in Turkey. During the 1970s, right-wing Sunni groups often fought Alevi leftist groups in the streets. The violence eventually subsided, but tensions remained—the horror at Madımak, when Özmen . . .
