Michèle Jolé
Tribute to Barlas Tolan
8 December 2015
I was unable to do so last year, but I wanted to pay tribute to my friend Barlas Tolan. Indeed, by asking me in 2003 to teach the course on urban sociology in the Department of Sociology, he created a deep and lasting connection between me and Istanbul, Turkey, as well as with the academics and students I had the opportunity to meet there.
In doing so, Barlas Tolan continued an initiation into this country that had begun for me with another colleague from Ankara, the urban planner Tuğrul Akçura, whom I had met twenty years earlier at the Institut d’urbanisme de Paris, where I was teaching. That relationship had been interrupted by his sudden death in Paris in 1984. This tribute gives me the opportunity to express my gratitude to these two mediators, who introduced me to the complexity of Turkish society and to the refinement of its intellectual and cultural elite.
It was also at the Institut d’urbanisme that I first met Barlas Tolan, who was a visiting professor as part of an agreement between our two universities. As the person responsible for international relations and as a sociologist, I naturally became his main contact. Moreover, we quickly discovered that we had both studied at the University of Nanterre, that we had both been close to Henri Lefebvre (his doctoral supervisor), and that we shared an interest in urban studies. His doctoral dissertation, defended at Nanterre in 1971, was entitled
Les problèmes de l’urbanisation en Turquie et leurs aspects sociaux
. These shared experiences naturally created a certain intellectual affinity between us, despite our theoretical differences!
I believe that Barlas Tolan appreciated his time—even though it was brief, lasting nearly two months—at this Parisian institution, where he taught and had rich exchanges with his colleagues. A friend of mine, a professor at Nanterre, also gave him the opportunity to participate in a course on urban public space in the Department of Sociology, an opportunity he naturally accepted with pleasure and perhaps with a touch of nostalgia—who knows?
I would say that his ambition was not only to share knowledge about urbanization in Turkey, but perhaps also, more broadly, to raise awareness among a French audience that knew little about Turkey and was often, quite regrettably, unfamiliar with the country. With irony, he would recall that “the fiancée” (Turkey) was growing impatient while waiting for her husband (Europe)!
Moreover, his stay at the Institute made it possible to establish a framework for more regular exchanges between professors and students, a framework that, it seems to me, still continues today. Clearly, this stay allowed him both to temporarily free himself from his administrative responsibilities in order to devote himself to teaching and to engaging with an audience that was new to him, and above all to try to heal what he experienced as an affront following the failure of his candidacy for the Presidency of Galatasaray University.
Finally, I would like to evoke the person that Barlas Tolan was. And what could be more alive than a voice to bring back someone who has passed away? The timbre, the volume, the accent, the silences, and the laughter all reveal something. Thus, when I listened again to his appearance on the France Culture programme
Métropolitain
, recorded that same year, in which he spoke about Istanbul and the gecekondu, I recognized, beyond the words themselves, his eloquence and the pleasure he took in speaking, what I dare call his “roundness”: the roundness of his voice, expressed in a carefully chosen and impeccable French, softened by a slight Turkish accent and his rolled “r” sounds; the roundness of his body and his appetite for life, though at times tested by circumstances; and also a roundness that can be associated with his good-natured character, mischievous as revealed by the jokes he made during the interview.
This good-naturedness was also expressed through a generosity of hospitality, of time and attention, from which I was fortunate enough to benefit, with great happiness and gratitude. He loved his city, and he loved introducing it to others. When Thierry Paquot asked him in the interview how he would describe Istanbul, he replied: “I would say that it is a very beautiful city, with an incomparable setting, and everything we have done over the past fifty years to destroy it has not always succeeded; what remains is still enchanting.”
He was eager to share this enchantment, and what better way to do so than by gathering around him, as he often did, his small world from the Department of Sociology and the “foreign visitors passing through,” in his magnificent apartment overlooking the Bosphorus, in the evening at sunset, where the pleasures of the table accompanied those of reverie and conversation. He was very proud of this.
Thank you, Barlas Tolan.
22 November 2015
Michèle Jolé