Dance revolution: The last tango in Diyarbakir

Embracing each other firmly but gently while moving with light steps, Nadire and Halil spin in intricate circles in the middle of a room that is lined with wall to wall mirrors. When he takes the lead, she follows him. Instinctively, her legs react in a sensuous response where they remain in a suspended state of heightened physical and emotional intensity. In these moments, they know they are mastering the tango and dancing the way it is meant to be danced.

Five hundred metres away from where they dance, shooting and explosions can be heard in the historical area of Diyarbakir, Turkish Kurdistan’s “capital”. The Turkish army is fighting armed Kurdish militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

After two years of peace talks, the summer of 2015 saw violence erupt once again between the Turkish government and Kurdish fighters, making the latest round of fighting just one more battle in a conflict that has dragged on for decades.

From the earliest years of the Turkish republic, Turkish Kurdistan has been the site of a struggle for the recognition of Kurdish identity and autonomy. During the 1980s, this struggle turned to war with the Turkish state.

Like Nadire and Halil, dozens of tango lovers come and dance to escape the realities of daily life in Diyarbakir. For Kemal Ciwan Isik, director of the Tango Med School, tango is a powerful way to create a sense of respite in the midst of life ridden with politics and war. “It is a sensual dance. Dancers have to abandon themselves to their partners and forget everything else,” he says.

'Tango is transgressive by nature'

Before settling in Diyarbakir, Isik, in his 30s, lived a comfortable life on the Turkish Riviera. Describing himself as an activist, he explains that he had always ultimately wanted to come back to his native region and “do something”. In his mind, tango has the potential of being a powerful political tool. “Tango has a force, an energy that Kurdistan needs,” he says.

Originating in Argentina, the tango was danced mostly by people from poor social classes and was considered crude and provocative by outsiders. “The tango is transgressive by nature,” Isik says. According to him, the tango expresses values that oppose the conservative and authoritarian ideas of the AKP, Turkey’s ruling party, and its leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

When Isik arrived in Diyarbakir in 2009, there was no place to dance in the city. In 2011, Isik opened a school dedicated to teaching tango using the financial support of his students. “There was nothing to do here, so he became successful very quickly,” explains Bircan, a dancer in her late 20s.

Six years on, Tango Med School is still the main tango school in Turkish Kurdistan and Isik estimates he has taught more than 1,200 people. Many of his dancers take part in festivals in Turkey but also abroad in countries such as Cyprus, Spain, France and the Netherlands. Two of Isik’s former students are now seeking to open their own schools in other cities in Turkish Kurdistan.

Many of Isik’s students share his political views and are committed to using the dance school as a platform to help heal the wounds of Kurdish life.

'This goes beyond politics, it’s about being human'

“There are a lot of problems in this city and since we love our people and culture, we decided we should do something,” Nadire says.

Following the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, thousands of refugees fled to Turkey where they were taken in by Kurdish municipalities. In Diyarbakir, the municipality opened a camp which now houses around 4000 refugees.

Members of Tango Med School quickly organised a collection to provide refugees with basic necessities. “We collected enough clothes, food, medications, tents and blankets to fill 10 trucks,” Halil says. Due to a lack of resources, Diyarbakir’s municipality was not able to distribute the items, so members of Tango Med School lent a helping hand.

To help further, they also started activities for refugees, especially children, living in Diyarbakir’s camp. “Every Sunday we were going to the camp to play with the children and to talk with the men and women,” Nadire explains. “This goes beyond politics,” says Halil, “it’s about being human”.

'This kind of erotic dance encourages sin'

Isik’s commitment to spreading the tango in Kurdistan has found some opposition. In 2010, Isik was invited to give lessons in Batman, a conservative city not far from Diyarbakir. However, soon after classes began, a local organisation claimed that tango was immoral. “Their problem was that women were dancing,” explains Isik. The tango is an intimate dance in which partners touch and embrace each other. “Conservatives couldn’t deal with that,” he adds.

The story hit the headlines of national media, along with photos of the classes, but Isik refused to bow to the pressure. “We continued until the end of the course. Because people were scared by the threats of the conservatives, only one person came at the last lesson,” he says.

This has not been the only time a tango event has come under political fire in Turkey. In 2014, an association called “Well-behaved Adana Platform,” urged local authorities to cancel an international tango festival in Adana. The group made a statement that said “a festival that exhibits adultery through such physical closeness has no place in our religion or national [Turkish] culture […] this kind of erotic dance encourages people to sin." Contrary to their demands, the festival eventually did take place.

Despite the pressures Isik has faced in teaching tango, threats against him and what is deemed a transgressive dance are subsiding, and more and more people are signing up for classes.

'If I can’t dance, it is not my revolution'

Women are at the core of Isik’s project. According to him, men in Kurdistan often prevent women from running their own lives. “It’s not easy for women in Kurdistan to dance, and we have to be careful where we do it,” says Bircan.

Traditions force women to hide their bodies and feel ashamed of them, according to Nadire. “By dancing we learn to feel and love our body, and we gain control over it,” she says.

The project that Isik is most proud of to date took place in 2014-2015. Named Jinwari (feminine in Kurdish), it gathered 40 women in tango choreography workshops where 20 of them were activists or lawyers either involved in defending human rights or politics. “We danced together for nearly a year, and at the end the change was radical, we felt much more free,” Nadire says. “For these activists, it was like a therapy,” Isik says.

As a result of the conflict between Ankara and Kurdish militants erupting again, many of these same activists are now facing problems and Isik is concerned about their fate. After our interview, Isik stands up to go back to his students who are dancing in the next room. Then he stops, takes a breath and quotes famous Russian anarchist, Emma Goldman. “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution […] a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.”