Hello and welcome to Almanack. The Oxford Middle East podcast.
My name is Peter's focus, and today I'm joined by Adam Abdullah and Kalyani Net and Gundy's to talk about unofficial ways of expressing dissent.
We discuss where we're graffiti music. Our football fans played in the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath to 2013 protests in Turkey
and Morocco and Palestine as Mominul Morsi diet cattle were tackled and mocked by Mike Dahmer.
But that did not stop and the Murray and pass my daughter Mustafi and most.
At the moment, one of those on the green and still enjoying the vitamin D regimen a week or bohemian of speed treks on Tuesday,
accusing him of to to finally get a deal for the good of you to bust my, you know, get better daily consequence tax cuts.
But I immediately tired up the government, the country, but also gets out of one. I get deals on those two together.
I hate holiday. Yeah, I bet they deny.
Yeah, right? Oh yeah, I bet I did.
I. Yes, I know that it's been my.
Hurry. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our episode today about non-traditional means of expressing dissent.
We are going to be talking about Egypt's. That's going to be my area of expertise.
Adam is going to be doing Morocco and Palestine, and then Kalyani is going to be doing Turkey and Palestine.
And I thought the best way to start would be for Adam to give us some information
on the context of why these non-traditional forms of expressing this and have
developed by describing what the case is in Morocco because what is happening in
Morocco is equally applicable to all the other countries we're going to discuss. Well, thank you so much for your letters.
This is, I think, a really interesting and important discussion that we're going to have.
And one of the ways that you can look at other alternative ways of dissent is that
in societies where you are policed more where your discourse is more police,
where your speech is policed to a large extent,
where there are not so many official ways of showing your dissent or disagreement with government policies,
you will find it that you will have to look for alternative ways to dissent.
Basically, this is a way how political actors or citizens, for example, in Morocco, are protecting themselves.
So if they happen to disagree with a government policy and they don't feel that dissenting from it is something that is safe for them,
whether it be physical harm or something that would impede their career or social life,
they might look for ways how to be how to anonymize this form of dissent in Morocco, for example.
You know, this can go from music on the internet. So this was like a huge intervention in political discourse and political activism in Morocco.
Was that the penetration of Merkel by the internet.
Also, obviously, this is what we're going to be talking about later as the ultras movement and football fans in North Africa in general,
but also in Morocco in particular. But I was wondering what it looks like in Turkey, if it's any similar in Morocco.
You can't touch the king, the royal family. These are topics that are off bounds and out of balance.
And if you cross these red lines, then you will be persecuted. So I was wondering what it looks like in Turkey, Kehlani, while in Turkey,
it looks a bit different in that while you know Turkey is now known for having to imprison
the highest number of journalists in the last few years under the AKP government,
and there are certain things that you know one no one can say you can't criticise Erdogan in particular,
sort of a unique feature of censorship in Turkey is that it's constantly changing.
So even in terms of arts, the things that people read respond to in public space and are entertained by it and the way history is told,
those are always changing.
For example, based on 12 Turkish Kurdistan, Erdogan has first funded a movie and then banned it later on when things fell apart.
Things change quite a bit in Turkey in terms of what is allowed, what is not allowed.
Street art is allowed in protest of certain things as long as it doesn't push the state on certain issues.
So it was one of those things that's very changeable and it goes with Erdogan's mood.
So you're saying basically that you're allowed to do graffiti and allowed to criticise things and slogans?
You criticise the things the government also does not like?
Exactly. Either they don't like or don't care about at this moment, but they could at some future point, you don't know.
And this is I mean, this is something that is definitely running theme, not only in Southwest Asia and North Africa, but also everywhere else.
Like, as long as you're staying within a certain space which is defined by ideology or hegemony or whatever you want to call it.
And this is something that obviously as they exacerbate that in countries where laws around free speech are,
you know, not as clearly defined or protected as as in Europe, for example,
to bring it back to where we were, one of the ways people can express dissent in these countries is,
for example, the first thing we're going to discuss, which is graffiti. Kalyani, you mentioned that during protests,
that's like at a time when many of the laws breakdown of this and people use those as opportunities to express themselves.
So, for example, the Gezi Park protests in 2013, that graffiti played a substantial role.
Could you go into this? But yeah, of course. I think in general, there's a debate that always happens between graffiti versus vandalism.
When you talk about graffiti, what is graffiti, what does that realism?
And I think it comes down to in some ways, doing these big protests, a question of,
you know, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.
It's kind of like that. It ends up being something of that nature.
But I think what was significant in the Gezi Park protests was how widespread the use of graffiti was.
And also, and this is, there's a lot of comparison done between sort of the Gezi Park protests and the Tahrir Square protests and its interior.
You saw more sort of artists taking ownership. A lot of artists came up through creating these beautiful murals and, you know, they were recognise,
Oh, this is this artist's work, etc. or they've painted over this person's look.
Whereas the duck in the Gezi Park protests for some reason, then you know, there's no telling why or what really is the catalyst for these things.
But there were a lot of symbols that were just taken and could be used repeatedly
in order to give a bit of background as to why some of these symbols are used.
Basically for the Gezi Park protests happened in May, over May and June in 2013.
Basically, it started kind of small.
A local opposition leader, Sara Syria, and about 50 individuals decided to protest the conversion of the last green space in space in Taksim,
which is Gezi Park being converted into a shopping mall.
And there was a disproportionate police response and media response, and that sort of snowballed into this massive movement.
And what was interesting here was that there was a huge amount of mass media censorship because
Erdogan's very good at sort of controlling the media and the narrative that is broadcast in Turkey.
But on the other hand, in sort of proportion to that graffiti and especially graffiti shared through social media on sort of Apollo of its own.
And a good example of that on one of the days when the protests were really picking up speed, CNN in Turkey instead aired a penguin documentary.
And so that gave rise to the name of the Penguin Media.
The media that won't report the protests so suddenly found like images of penguins wearing gas masks being Stenzel all over the city.
And then the Twitter board wearing a gas mask.
So Zhang, who was censored, who is not censored graffiti was particularly good for sharing on the on platforms like Twitter,
Facebook and even their vision of Urban Dictionary, which is great.
You also saw a lot of like the mobilisation of pop culture at that time.
So one of the things that was written on many of the walls this winter is coming, which of course,
is the Game of Thrones reference the significance of saying that Erdogan's first meme, and it's a very sort of disrespectful way of addressing him.
And it's sort of really sort of writing that in a public space is really making a statement.
And, you know,
in Egypt was something very similar in that they would basically draw on inspiration from Egyptian history and Egyptian symbols to for their graffiti.
So there's, for example, quite a famous one of King Tut's uncovered and dressed as Che Guevara,
which is incredibly funny if it wasn't for the quite context.
There's also one of Queen Nefertiti wearing a gas mask.
And there's also obviously a huge number of pieces, for example, of the Sphinx, as it is like the pre-eminent symbol of of Egypt.
And then there's also very famous graffiti called that includes a cyclist where a tank is facing a bread boy and anyone who's been to Egypt,
especially. It's like the slightly less expensive neighbourhoods has probably seen these guys on
their bikes carrying like a huge number or huge amount of bread on the on their head.
And it basically, for many people represented like the daily struggle for sustenance and was also quite interesting
about this piece of graffiti that was developed and it's evolved as the revolution went on.
So, for example, after a major massacre. The Maspero massacre,
dead bodies were added under the tracks of the tank and then pro-military revolutionaries
would later remove these bodies and instead add the army and the people on one hand,
which with hindsight is an absolutely bizarre thing to say.
And then this graffiti piece was also developed by more feminist graffiti artists that took away this
slogan and then added quite a grim picture of a soldier feeding on a woman as if it was like a vulture.
Just like in Turkey, it became like a way for people to express their displeasure with the regime.
Absolutely. There's Nick in this in response to that, those sort of things that kind of picked up.
And the first thing is there's a trend of using humour in these forms of resistance.
And I think humour is weaponized basically because it is a good way of sort of capturing sort of that
sense of community as like a group of very disparate people coming together in protest of something.
And humour as a way of sort of disengaging the state or whoever is the oppressive power and their narrative about these so-called terrorists,
these rebellions,
etc etc. Because when you look at the evidence of revolt and its humour and its sort of teasing and mildly insulting that in many ways,
it takes the wind out of their sails because it's almost a mockery of the power that they're going up against.
So people are often found in graffiti that it's good and it's sort of very useful to sort of weaponize humour in this way.
Yeah. Like, I'd like to create counter-narratives because especially in the Middle East,
these dictators stay in power by telling the West that if they fall out of power, they're going to be replaced by wild eyed terrorists.
While these people, like through the graffiti, can highlight the fact that like, no, you know,
we just want peace and dignity and greed are not to be tortured as soon as we criticises the government, for example.
Exactly. And I think there's also harkening of their own history is, like you say, with sort of using equity and the things etc and even in Turkey,
the sort of, you know, where we co-opting this nationalist sort of narrative that you're using against us.
I think those things are really important. And of course, the change of NATO graffiti and the fact we're going to add to it, remove it.
And it's sort of constantly evolving. It's it's a nice nice is not perhaps a good word.
It is an interesting sort of parallel to revolutions themselves, right?
Yeah. I mean, talking about constantly evolving. You know, I think sort of slightly different, obviously, because of the imposition context.
But when you look at the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian landscape, right,
so this is this is like a constant battle between who defines the space, right?
So the space, unlike in other contexts, perhaps is inherently political or ready.
So you could argue that there is either a total absence by definition of public space in Palestine, especially what I'm talking about the West Bank.
You virtually don't have any squares in a refugee camp, you don't have any places where you could congregate.
And the only way of communication is basically these walls that are that used to be empty.
But now they are a very densely populated by plain graffiti,
which is something that emerged out of necessity during the First Intifada because the Israeli occupation
basically stops the Palestinian movement from communicating in any other way other than this.
You know, they didn't had the time in the 80s, in the late 80s. There was no way to use, you know, technology in the same way as we have today.
Telephones were confiscated and I think lines were cut as well.
The only way that you could coordinate a national movement was through writing on the wall,
you know, which is something that is very effective in a way,
but also extremely precarious because you have to remember that they would usually create these graffiti at night.
The refugee camp would be under assault on there.
There was a curfew at night in these refugee camps, so if the soldiers would catch you spraying, graffiti would get arrested or worse.
So this isn't like an interesting element in comparison between these two very different contexts.
But another one contemporary as the apartheid wall or the separation will depend what you want to call it,
which has become like a huge canvas for international graffiti artists to come and paint on it.
And it's like a controversy. I would like to hear how you feel about it as well in terms of because there's
a lot of criticism relating to art basically doing something to the wall,
which is making it more agreeable, making it more digestible for the international audience, rather than just showing it as it is a very ugly,
oppressive manifestation of occupation, apartheid and colonialism really settler colonialism.
So it's a very interesting. Discussion, I would like to hear what you what you think.
Personally, I think if anyone makes the argument that you know they shouldn't put graffiti on the wall,
I think that's quite weak because first of all,
you know, if you have to look at the wall all day, you probably don't want to look at like this grey monolith unless you have to.
More importantly, though, I do think it's a very good example of the medium being the message,
because the fact that people can graffiti there, you know,
just highlights the fact that this wall has been placed in the middle of a society basically that is blocking people from from going somewhere.
So I think it draws much more attention to it because when I saw it, when I was in Palestine,
for example, it is quite a few tourists around who might not know everything about the history,
but they have seen in the guidebooks like, Hey, you should go to this, well,
you should see the graffiti because in many cases it is very beautiful, and even famous ones like Banksy have gone there to do graffiti.
And interestingly, there's a similar parallel in in Egypt during the 2011 revolution as well.
One of the murders, which sparked the revolution was of the so-called called, Savage said, and he was beaten to death by some policemen.
And his name and his face was painted on the side of the Ministry of Interior,
basically highlighting the fact that the Ministry of Interior was in charge of the people who ended up murdering this guy as well.
The Makama is the centre of the Egyptian bureaucracy, and this is an enormous building right next to Tahrir Square.
And it became a canvas in which people could paint and basically allowed them to reclaim a
building and a location which had become a symbol of government inefficiency and corruption.
So I think any opportunity like whether it's in a park or on the apartheid wall or a government building in another country,
it allows people to sort of reclaim a piece of land or a piece of all, which has always symbolised something very different for them.
Yeah, I think that there is one thing that's really interesting about Palestine and,
you know, forms of protest like music and graffiti done by Palestinians.
And I think it's this question that repeatedly comes up who is it for who the audience of this graffiti was the audience of this music?
I think, for example, Banksy has created the sort of, you know, he's brought this international awareness of what's happening to Palestine.
And obviously that was instrumental in sort of, you know, capturing sort of people who were unfamiliar with these issues and capturing the attention.
But there are people within Palestine. Of course, we call this conflict tourism.
You come, you see oppression and then you leave and you know, you take a good picture, you take a selfie.
And that's that's the extent of it. I still have to live with this wall, which is very beautiful now, but nonetheless it is still a wall.
And I think there is a middle ground somewhere that I'm not saying one or the other.
But I think this idea of who is it for is something that repeatedly comes up for Palestinians because of the nature of the world
who is looking at it becomes sort of a very interesting sort of idea because Palestinians themselves are physically looking at it.
But through the internet, it's sort of reaching an international audience. Almost everything is built for that international audience.
Yeah, I just want to say also, I mean, I think, you know, you guys make pretty good points that I wouldn't necessarily disagree with it.
But I would say that one interesting thing is to consider the fact that, you know, Palestinians have agency rights or Palestinians themselves.
It's not. It's not like internationalists came in and they started this whole thing with creating graffiti, right?
So this is and this is not what you're saying, obviously,
but I think it's just important to really stress that centralising the perspective of the people who immediately relate to that cause,
we immediately relate to that reality. And actually, I think, you know, a lot of Palestinians are not against using this as a kind of us,
as a as a means to protest what it is more is their opposition to what Kehlani mentioned.
Like, like, as you said, conflict tourism or or people.
You know, I know I'm going to bring this up because this is something that I've had in me for a long time.
So this is this was the ugliest union of Jewish students they had on their Facebook page.
If you go on their Facebook page and you look at their cover photo.
One of the things that they had there for a while was the picture of them going to Israel,
and they had a picture with that wall and it said, Peace, Shalom and Salam.
Oh no, with like a dive. And they were there and they were like looking really happy.
Oh, we're on a trip to Gaza. You know what? I think it was the Gazan separation wall in that case.
One of them, it was either the West Bank or Gaza. But this is exactly like the worst case scenario that can happen with it.
You know, this is the danger that can that this foreign intervention in this space that is to be reclaimed by people resisting colonialism can happen.
Like this situation is like the worst case scenario. So I guess this this is where all of the anxieties come from, the frustrations,
because if someone is making money off that suffering or showing it as something that it's not, that's that's really problematic.
Yeah, I think you raise a good point because for every action and for every piece of art or graffiti somebody makes,
there's going to be a reaction that like a desire, probably to take it away.
And you see, it's sadly very clearly in Egypt now that if one goes to downtown Cairo,
there's there's no graffiti anywhere anymore because the government sees his coup and his sham
election in 2014 have has removed all the graffiti in pretty much wherever you can find it,
and even introduced a protest law which made protesting and graffiti illegal.
And graffiti artists would get enormous fines and several years worth of the salary and up to four years in prison.
They basically flip it on its head a bit like UGC. You mentioned that, for example,
the quotes are from the newspaper is that the statements on the graffiti are inflammatory and obviously made in haste obscenities.
The rule and will note needs only a brief to bring down. Sankara's have become disillusioned.
The capital has turned into a series of insults and will guarantee so under the guise of like, protecting, I don't know the good people of Cairo.
They say, OK, let's get rid of all the graffiti and let's find the living daylights out of anyone who dares paint on the wall,
which allows them to basically de-politicize their crackdown as well.
And it's exactly what you just did by standing in front of this thing.
They basically removed the context of why these things are there and then only look at it in a way which benefits benefits,
which is very unfortunate because if graffiti is about reclaiming public spaces for the people,
the Egyptian government has been extremely successful in regaining control of all the public spaces in Egypt by banning,
protesting and removing the graffiti. I love how the journalists obviously made in a hurry.
I mean, if you're going to make them illegal, what is the person supposed to do?
You think they're going to sit there and just be like, OK, let me rethink about this and do it.
Very pretty. I mean. I think, yeah, the danger is either it becomes labelled as vandalism or it becomes something else entirely,
either sort of co-opted by people sort of with their own personal interests at heart.
Yeah, no, exactly. And you know, sometimes happens often happens with the with the Palestine keys.
And it can be reduced to an Instagram post for some people.
In addition to graffiti, there's you know, another very popular way of expressing dissent is is through music.
Often there's music. When it's current, it's criticises the states,
but sometimes it has to be a bit more surreptitious than that because they only had some examples as well of this being the case.
Oh yeah. Interestingly enough, a lot of the examples I looked at were of hip hop music, which I think is less surprising when you think about it.
Because of course, hip hop sort of is a genre that grew out of resistance to authority, sort of protesting oppression,
etc. They're a couple of songs in the last few years that have come out in Turkey,
which have sort of immediately irked the government or tones come down really hard.
And one of them, of course, is the artist as well, who had a song called Ola Almiron's incident or event.
And through the song, he sort of describes actually many events that have been taken taking place across Turkey that have fallen under the radar.
Whether it's violence against women, whether it's sort of corruption,
whether it's sort of increasing inequality and whether it's sort of ignoring all of that in favour of keeping the ruling party happy.
It's still on YouTube. It has 10 million, 10 million music. You can listen to it on Israel's channel, but it's still there.
But he was immediately imprisoned from being accused of inciting drug use.
So the song, which is a very racist attitudes towards hip hop anyway.
Oh, it's all about inciting drug use, et cetera, et cetera. This particular letter just quickly.
What I just think is it's quite interesting that that's a bit similar to their criticism of the graffiti in Cairo,
where it basically refutes to like a good society and use that as as a way to suppress dissent in any way,
shape or form, because they're basically, you know, try to hold onto conservative values in a certain way.
Exactly. And even though there was nothing really going against conservative values here, it was mobilised against this particular song.
I think what sort of people who I think what is interesting about the song also there was interplay between the English and Turkish a little bit.
So, for example, he rang school and then he goes on to say all eyes on me.
And that's kind of an interesting way to see if there's an incident and all
eyes are on us and we're not responding or we have not acted a certain way.
And it was really interesting to have that, which is which is a reference to Tupac's song All Eyes on Me or his album.
So there you go. Adam, you also had some something to say about like Hip-Hop in Palestine.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, hip hop and rap in general is, I think,
now the most prominent form of radical expression in alternative Palestinian culture, especially amongst young people.
So you have people like these are authors and artists that really reflect the reality, the harsh reality of the way people live it, you know?
So an interesting group as well as a group called get that five oh, kebab camps, I guess.
I haven't heard of them before. I started doing research on this one.
And there are a Palestinian group based in Lebanon when they were asked about their
music and how does it relate to traditional Palestinian expression of resistance.
The their response was basically that hip hop and rap builds on on this.
They they share similar ideas, they share values, but they make it more relatable to the current situation of of the of young people,
especially economic class, and also reflecting the oppression that they feel not only from the occupation,
not only from the Zionist entity, but also from the Palestinian Authority, from Arab regimes like whether that's Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, obviously very important player and muzzling Palestinian dissent.
But it's interesting how you see it also relate to global issues, right?
You have like collapse like collaborations like with these Palestinian artists,
where low key here in Britain, with French musicians, with musical groups in Ferguson.
There's there's an amazing music video.
The song is called We Could Be Free, and it's about like a delegation of people from Ferguson going to Palestine.
There's also an interesting point that this he's a Palestinian-American Hip-Hop artist called actor,
and he was talking about how another interesting part of leveraging hip hop in this way is that it
echoes certain poetic traditions that are sort of common in the Arab world makes it a common response.
Homes about homes and traditions, homes that are both on behalf of either the artist or the patron or whoever it is.
It was interesting to read about how they sort of incorporate sort of these two
styles and sort of find these similarities and kind of merge them together.
I mean, I hate to use the word sort of.
Globalisation, but that is the word that came up a lot, sort of taking something that is both global and local and combining it.
But there was also another thing, another issue that I thought I would ask Adam as well,
which is this whole idea of it isn't for us, if it's the Palestinians feeling of this thing isn't for us.
A lot of the American Palestinian rappers sort of felt a lack of authenticity.
Even though they have a bigger audience, they have more resources to sort of protest and collaborate with others.
They felt that there was something inherently inauthentic about themselves and also in terms of the choice of language.
Many of them were choosing to speak more in English than in Arabic because they knew the audience would also connect more to that.
Is this an interesting sort of thought as who gets to make the music? Who has that amplification power?
That's a really good point. Kalyani, and thanks for bringing it up.
I think it's interesting because the way I understand it, so for context, so I was born in Prague, but my father is Palestine and my mother is Czech.
I see a difference between the Palestinian identity and expressions of this identity in the Diaspora,
in Palestine, proper, in the refugee camps in Lebanon, for example.
I see that as a different kind of diaspora than to the Diaspora in the West, quote unquote.
Right. So I don't I wouldn't see them as less authentic. I wouldn't see them as any less worthwhile to to listen to their expression or not
having the same ability to express as Palestinians like a Nasser or the synaptic.
And it's and it's a very interesting combination.
So I think one of the expressions of Palestinian identity and the reflection of or the result of the Nakba,
the continuing the the state that Palestinians find themselves in, which is this diasporic existence.
One of my favourite tools in the world, like just one of my favourite Arab parties, is Kuroki,
and this is like a rock group that still lives in Egypt and their songs, most of them on the political.
And when they are, they tend to be, like, very metaphorical to the extent that,
like a foreigner would never understand what they were referring to when it comes to like the political
messages they have to other people who I can recommend listening to what is called a centimetre.
And he currently lives in London, probably because of his music, which is much more expressly and explicitly political.
So, for example, in one of his songs,
he talks about being on a bus and saying that the bus driver is a crazy guy who keeps having accidents with the bus,
and that obviously refers to the current leader of of Egypt, Sisi.
You know, it is allegorical, but not very subtly so.
But then there's another artist, Rami, as some who currently lives in Sweden, if I'm not mistaken.
And before the elections, I think in 2018, he made a song called Balata, which means date.
And this became an incredibly famous song because it basically calls President Sisi a day and it builds in a very positive way.
And he says, for example, of shiny brown and Mr dates for years have passed in disgrace.
And then he says, You lived in gardens. We lived in jails, obviously referring to the massive inequality.
But then he gets a lot more political and says, you clumsy. So you lousy, clumsy loser.
Your desperate gold digger, you betray. And then he calls the soldiers loyal barking dogs.
And the army is a very sensitive topic in in Egypt, and criticising them that explicitly is in general, a very bad idea.
And then towards the end of the song, he does a twinkle twinkle little star.
I wonder where your balls are to the president.
The consequences of this have been quite extreme because they habash the guy who directed the music video, which I can recommend everybody to watch.
He died in prison. Pre-Trial detention in Egypt is meant to only last two years,
but he was not released when he should have been basically putting it in a legal black hole with no opportunity to escape,
and the circumstances surrounding his death are a bit unclear.
And then another guy who wrote the lyrics is also in prison, and he should have been released earlier in 2021.
But he hasn't been, and he has been charged with terrorist affiliation, disseminating fake news,
abuse of social media networks and contempt of religion, all for producing this song.
And the reason I'm saying this is because of what you guys called out and about, like who has the power to make music?
Because on one hand, I do think the people in Egypt should make music about Egypt.
But on the other hand, like the repressive apparatus,
there is so strong and so all encompassing that only people outside of the country have the capacity and opportunities to be explicitly political.
There should also be an understanding of like the enormous obstacles they face when when doing so.
So the artists that who made the song shared and his fan friends is the way that some people describe it centre and friends in this particular song.
And. So some them can be translated as I won't be, I won't be silenced, but it really means I cannot be silent.
The reason this made such a splash is not only was it released very close to Olé,
which was the previous song that I spoke about, but also as a cover, you know, the musical styles that these 14 artists.
It also brought up very directly. It was all very overt, but a protest against Odofin and the government,
and a good example of that is they have a sound clip within the song of the murder of this woman called Immunoblot,
which happened in 2019 and it was very famous, had garnered a lot of international attention because she was murdered in broad
daylight in a cafe by her husband in front of her ex-husband in front of her daughter.
And to use that sound clip within a song, people found it very jarring, but also very powerful.
And I myself, I it's it's very on the nose kind of messaging,
but it is interesting that they use those kind of clips that have already gone viral on the internet and sort of using them again inside this song.
You know, they address other things, including environmental projects that have sort of degraded turkey, et cetera.
But I thought what was really interesting was that the song particularly addressed the youth
of Turkey in the end and basically sort of says it's your responsibility and it's your fault.
The line is I'm sorry, but this country's hopeless generation is your creation, which I thought was a really interesting sort of thing.
Just turn it around. Yes, all of these problems are there, but who is responsible? Who's supposed to step up?
Yeah, I just thought I had to mention the song because it made such a huge splash and sort of people sort of were responding so strongly to it.
Moving on to like the last section, which is football and football ultras, I didn't think of this until Adam proposed.
We should look at it, and then I was very happy with it.
So Adam, could you basically describe what role the oceans play in?
I guess the political scene in Morocco. So it's I think it's absolutely fascinating because football is something that is so global and it's,
you know, it's probably the world's most popular sport and game. And it's such a huge phenomenon, especially in North Africa.
People wear football shirts everywhere all the time.
You know, it's it's just the thing that people do, and it doesn't have to be a Moroccan club.
It's very it's like a fashion international thing when it comes to ultras.
So ultras is basically a movement of fans. It comes from Latin Ultra means to be further away or further in the direction of than other people.
And it was started. This was started in the early 20th century in Latin America and Argentina,
and then it was brought to Italy and from Italy it spread to North Africa and in North Africa.
Usually, what you would see if you go to football games that there would be chance, especially in you're in the European context.
But in North Africa, especially Morocco, there would be actual songs so that the whole crowd, especially the old trust,
which is like the core of the fans, they literally sing for five minutes and everyone knows the lyrics and they don't break that nothing.
It just keeps going. And for me, I used to go to football games and ice hockey games back in Prague,
and this is for me so impressive because it's it must feel absolutely incredible when you're there.
And this really shows how much in need people and especially young people.
And you have to remember that Morocco is a very young population. 46 percent of the population are under 15 years old.
So you have to keep that in mind when you talk about that society.
And so you can see how there's a huge need for expression of political, but not necessarily even dissent.
I mean, it's mostly dissent. But even of political opinion in a non government regulated platform, and this is what the football stadium provides.
It provides a very high level of anonymity. So if you go to a stadium,
which is also why people protest when the government tries to check people's IDs when they
go to football games because they want to keep this anonymity because it protects them,
it protects people from being persecuted. It protects people from being targeted by the government and face consequences for what they say.
This ultras movement, its work or its avenue is most visibly manifested in the stadium,
but they also do work in the neighbourhoods where they're based.
So in Casablanca, in Quneitra, like in all major cities in Morocco, but also in Algiers, right?
Algiers also has two very important teams, which took part, by the way, and in the end,
the popular uprising against President Bouteflika, which resulted in his ousting.
So there's also a way how these movements feed into a more a wider movement to political
culture and what agency they have for for people living in those popular areas and for young.
And I think it might be interesting to look at one of the lyrics of the songs in the context of North Africa,
especially an Islamic devotion, is something that is present everywhere.
It's like ubiquitous, right? You will always find in these songs got you always find a love.
So one of them is, Oh God, bring us to victory.
And that's how it starts. And then it says, you have made us lose our skills and you threw drugs at us.
How do you want to see us money off of the country? The riches of this country you have stolen away.
And you have given it to foreigners and this whole generation is lost and you killed our passion so you can see it.
And obviously, when they're saying you've lost our money, you given it to the foreigners, you threw drugs at us and hashish and that stuff,
they're talking to the government, right, that they're directly speaking to the government and to the stakeholders,
which is something that they could not do anywhere else. And I just find it really fascinating and I wonder what it's like.
And the same it is, by the way, it also applies to Tunis and Algeria.
So I'm really wondering, what's it like in Egypt? Because I think there's going to be a lot of parallels.
Oh yeah, definitely acquired because the first and incidentally,
the last thing you mentioned was their role in the ouster of Bouteflika because during the 2011 revolution,
and I'm sorry to keep coming back to it, but a lot happened in Egypt in that period.
The ultras, the Egyptian ones, especially from like the two main groups, Zamalek and a largely.
They were quite important because they had quite a lot of experience fighting the police so they could teach the
protesters like how best to create bricks out of paving slabs and throw them at the police and how to deal with teargas.
So what you had basically was like a group of well-organised group of people who are incredibly highly
motivated and who are well known because just like in Morocco and most other countries like football,
is a religion in Egypt, and they would therefore like extremely potent opponents of the regime,
both because of the organising and because of the very high level of societal support.
Because I don't know how it is in the countries where you guys are from,
but in most European countries, being an ultra isn't seen as like a very good thing.
It has associations with, you know, drugs and violence and often like neo-Nazism as well, while in Egypt, people are big fans of the ultras.
There has been some quite strong reactions from the government against the ultras because of the role they've played in the revolution.
So there's something called the Port Said tragedy, which led to the death of 72 al-Hathloul militias,
and the government blamed the violence and rioters and hooligans.
But there were several indications that the state was involved in worsening the situation because
the security forces who were at that football match did not step in to stop any of the violence.
The lights in the arena were turned off to increase the chaos.
The only exit the ultras had from the stand was locked and blockaded again by the security forces,
which basically guarantee that it would be a massive stampede and also also made illegal in 2015.
Unsurprisingly, they were branded as a terrorist organisation and membership.
Just being a member of an all for now can lead to a very long prison sentences,
and I think I wouldn't be going too far out on a limb to say that just might be the most aggressively persecuted
group in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood because of the very central role they have played in Discord,
all expressing discontent against the states.
And this I don't know if this is the case in North Africa or anywhere else, but in Egypt now, most football matches, even before COVID,
were played in empty stadiums because the government was so afraid of not totally controlling all old public space,
which is basically where you started the podcast today.
And the unfortunate result is that because they're not allowed to be in matches anymore and because membership from the largest group is now illegal,
their relevance has declined. It's interesting to see how extreme the depression is in Egypt because in in Morocco,
it's a similar situation, although it's exaggerated in terms of oppression of ultras activity.
So they are very much a legal organisation, but basically what the government is trying to do there,
there is a settled law that they pushed in terms of exactly controlling IDs.
That means attendance at the matches or criminalisation of certain activity.
So for example, similarly, there was an incident in Morocco that happened where two fans got killed in a stampede in Morocco,
and the government basically used that as a pretext to control their activities further.
There is also cases where people got arrested after a football match because of the chance that they were or the songs that they were singing.
It's very surprising some of the things that they chant, you know, they chant stuff as well as like, We're ready for water.
If the police come at us like, we're ready for you. We're going to fight you.
Obviously, all cops are [INAUDIBLE], and these are very radical songs that they sing.
They really have no reservations.
And it's very interesting and fascinating to see that because as you said in the European context, especially so, so in the Czech context, exactly.
The Ultras are always associated with neo-Nazi ism, like they are neo-Nazis.
They're violent, they're directed towards minority groups and fascist Nazi ideology.
Whereas in Morocco, it's fascinating to see how it's really like progressive politics,
basically right based around the context of the working class and.
A really disgruntled youth. And and they also take it to like the global context and connecting it to Palestine quite often.
And I really think that this is a unique situation that that exists in the Arabic speaking region.
I don't know. I don't know if in Turkey, it's similar as well, but certainly in Europe, in the rest of the world,
you will not find football ultras movements as involved in community life and in political life.
And being actually formative of a political situation as it is in North Africa, I'm sure I mean, I can't pretend to know that much about football,
but there is some interesting sort of comparison with Turkey because obviously Turkey is sort of very passionate about football as well.
And to go back to the Gezi Park protests because was sort of the seminal moment in recent Turkish history.
I guess there's the Better Torture Group, which is basically the best known supporter of the Besiktas Football Club,
which is amongst the top three biggest football clubs in Turkey.
And they were they were very well known for sort of mobilising against sort of the police
forces and sort of doing and sort of organising A.1 protests during the Gezi Park protests.
I like their motto. The motto is charged a heresy, a car which is torture is against everything, and the little angel show is the anarchy symbols.
So that kind of tells you about, you know, how they look at themselves.
They are very involved in their neighbourhood, etc. the occasional sort of do things with Greenpeace or whatever like,
you know, protest that they feel strongly about, I suppose.
And they're also a group of very disparate football supporters who come together for this.
Again, most famous, the most famous for their role in the 2013 protest in Turkey,
a particularly famous event was when they chased a water cannon away by using an excavator,
which I don't know where they acquired it, but they acquired it and they it worked.
But what's interesting is that what happened in response, which is I can't remember the date,
but very recently Erdogan has backed his own football club, and that has sort of come to the forefront.
And it's it's a football club called Actually Hit.
Suddenly, it's emerged. It's not been one of the big three till now, but it has said Myanmar as it has a lot of funding.
It has the colours that they wear are of the AKP party, which is Erdogan's party.
They have his portrait in their trading rooms.
So it's a very interesting co-opting of the space of protest because even the best of class neighbourhood is known for sort of.
Rapidly becoming more, if one could say Islamist is more sort of incorporated into Urdu and messaging,
so it's no coincidence that he's chosen this neighbourhood and sort of he's even donned a uniform and played this no trial for a bit.
That's another story.
But it is really interesting to watch how he sort of co-opting this space for himself so that he does have sort of much more power over the space,
which could otherwise be used for protests. But one thing I did want to point out,
but going back to the graffiti stuff was even pointed out sort of the role of sort of the figure of the women in the Egyptian case,
if you had talked about. Mm-Hmm. And also in the Gezi Park protests, women keep sort of coming up in these protests,
like the women of the red dress as a symbol that stands with every other woman,
there's a woman in a black dress as a woman in a blue bra, which was a woman who hijab,
a woman who was sort of while being detained by the police, her clothes ripped.
And therefore, you know, that became part sort of involved inside these protests.
So I think that's really interesting how women are used sort of like symbolising the protest against this oppressive state of the,
you know, hegemonic power that is against the protesters. That's just sort of a separate point.
Don't do it that way. No. But I think it's an interesting point just because these regimes, which people protest again, tend to,
as we said earlier, the rest a lot of the legitimacy on conservative, often very patriarchal values.
And then the fact that like women are out there protesting and expressing their opinion and being somewhere where the father says they shouldn't be,
for example, already, you know, that in itself becomes like a revolt against the system just because of how,
you know, patriarchal and how conservative and traditional the system in itself is.
So I think that's a very good point.
Actually, low key in the song called From Iraq, Who Chile, and it's about the protest movement that was happening at the same time in Iraq.
And at the same time in Chile, right? And he has this audio sample from a protest that was happening in Baghdad, I believe.
And it's an exchange between an Iraqi politician who's a man and a protester who's a woman,
and he's basically patronising her and he's telling her, Oh, look at you, how can you be like shouting in the street like this?
It's says this is so shameful. And she's in Arabic.
We see a like, it's like, This is a shame, you know? And she said to him, Oh, how can you be telling me about Abe when you're the one who's like,
got the country into the state that it is now, you're the one who's corrupt, you're the one who's really should be ashamed of himself.
So this is like these two worlds come to clash, right? This like this fight for legitimacy and the fight for public space and expression of dissent.
And I think that what we've discussed today, basically the the football, the music,
the the graffiti and so many other ways that we haven't even mentioned today are all
avenues and they are a manifestation of this struggle taking place in a contested area,
right? And in politics that are contested,
that are an example of how these internal conflicts that are maybe invisible are made visible by the people who are suffering,
who are trying to express this and trying to make a change.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Oxford Mills podcast.
Almanac is a student for an initiative at the Middle East Centre in the University of Oxford.
The opinions expressed in the podcast are not in any way represent the official opinions of the University of the Middle East and to.