Under the Abkhazian flag or not at all: Ridade faces down Georgian pressure in Tirana
'What we lived through was, for many of us, a vivid lesson that our existence is not only cultural but political'
The Ridade Kafkas Folk Dance Ensemble of the Istanbul Abkhazian Cultural Association travelled to Tirana this July for an international festival organised by the Federation of International Dance Festivals (FIDAF), and there ran into a wall of diplomatic pressure from Georgia. Dilara Tan spoke with Perit Jan Aydemir about how the group handled it. The interview was first published in Turkish by Jineps and is translated into English by AbkhazWorld.
Hello Perit. Today I would like to talk with you about Ridade's participation in the festival organised by the Federation of International Dance Festivals (FIDAF) in Tirana, and about the diplomatic pressure that came from Georgia during that process. For our readers, could you first introduce yourself and then, briefly, Ridade?
Hello Dilara. Thank you first of all for the invitation. I am Chushha Perit Jan Aydemir. I feel twenty-five, though I am twenty-nine. I was born in Nalchik in 1996 and I am from Düzce. I am a musician, and I also work as a project manager at an IT company. Since 2014 I have worked and performed alongside a great many wonderful people at Ridade. Ridade now holds a place in my life that I could not cut out of it. Next year is Ridade's thirtieth anniversary. I am slowly starting to feel that the ensemble has become a tradition. Being part of that tradition, and of the collective creative process, can be tiring at times, but there is something in it that leaves you spiritually fulfilled.
Could you take us through the application process from the very beginning? Was the first obstacle you met a pressure that Georgia exerted by way of Albania, or did it come up as a choice on Albania's part, a country that is itself an EU candidate and did not want to damage its strategic alignment with that great dispenser (!) of human rights, the European Union?
Let me say this at the outset: our taking part as Abkhazia came about entirely at FIDAF's own suggestion. Initially we applied from Turkey, as we had done last year in Serbia. But since there was already another team from Turkey, they suggested that we come and represent a different culture, as Abkhazia. After talking it over with the association's board and deciding it would not cause any problem, we accepted. When the crisis broke out later, we learned that FIDAF had no idea about the EU's policies or about Abkhazia. We were given no information at all about the situation. The whole thing began when a friend of ours told me that the posts about Ridade had been deleted from FIDAF's Instagram page, and I asked FIDAF why. Had we not asked, events might well have spun off to places we could not have managed.
The first explanation we were given was that the posts had been taken down under pressure from the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that the budget allocated to us would be cancelled, and that even our participation in the festival was now in question. Although I pressed them repeatedly, pointing out that another of the festival's participants, Northern Cyprus, is likewise not recognised by Albania, and asking why only we were being treated this way, we could not get a concrete answer. That was the first whiff that Georgia's hand was in it. Some hours later they came back with a proposed solution: that if we took part under the Georgian flag, these problems would be overcome. After I told them not to raise that again, even in passing, we settled on the terms that we would appear there not as any country but as Ridade, and only under the Abkhazian flag.
During the festival itself they caused us no trouble, and on stage they always announced us as Abkhazia. On the last night of the festival, after the awards ceremony, a FIDAF official came to me and admitted that the diplomatic pressure had reached the Albanian Foreign Ministry from the Georgian embassies in Rome and Baku, and that this was why they had put us through all of it. I should add that he apologised sincerely then and there. For all its weak organisational capacity, FIDAF was on our side throughout the process. On the day we returned to Turkey, a FIDAF official passed on to me an official letter from the Georgian embassy in South Korea, containing similar complaints, which it too had sent to FIDAF. FIDAF replied to that letter in terms that let us see it was embarrassed.
Given that similar crises have happened before, this was pressure that could well be expected from Georgia. Before going to Tirana, had you thought about what your response, your course of action, would be in the face of any fascistic attitude you might meet there? What needs to be planned in advance for future events?
I did think about it, yes. To make sure nothing went wrong at the festival, I gave a great deal of thought to the set of safeguards that had to be secured, and to how we ought to respond if the other side broke the agreement. After all, an outfit that could dominate the Instagram accounts of a small folklore festival in Tirana before we had even set off was not something to be dismissed lightly; there was a real chance it would cause some large, unexpected problem once we were there. And all of this happened just two days before the festival.
Setting off on a journey with friends, a long journey especially, is a very particular feeling. It deepens friendships and lets a person form new bonds with themselves and with those around them. Because we had felt this last year, and because tickets had already been bought for forty people, telling the team two days before the festival that we were not going was, frankly, not an option for me. I concluded that I could only secure the safeguards I have mentioned once we reached Albania, and in order to manage the crisis I shared it at first only with my family and the closest people whose judgement I trust.
When we arrived in Tirana the festival committee met us and a meeting was held with the other team leaders. After that meeting I told FIDAF that I believed they were on our side, but that if, during the festival, whether because of them or of any outside influence, our name were mentioned together with Georgia, or the terms we had agreed were violated in any way, we would bring the running order to a halt and would not take the stage. They told me to set my mind at rest. That was the last of the safeguards I mentioned. Once I had that assurance, I gathered the whole team together and we agreed on a plan of action, so that if we did meet such an unexpected situation we would stand our ground firmly together.
Even though we have come back from here with a gain, at future events one has to make sure that this kind of situation is fully understood by the other side beforehand.
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My last question is about the team. Ridade is a group that includes dancers from all the peoples of the North Caucasus. How did the members of the team behave in the face of this crisis? In what way has this crisis changed the team, or how will it?
For many of us it was a vivid lesson that our existence is not only cultural but also political. Our team, within the Istanbul Abkhazian Cultural Association, opens its arms not only to the peoples of the Caucasus but to all peoples. We do not stand up for this flag because we are Circassian or Abkhaz; we stand up for it because we are in the right. It is not enough to reduce the war of 1992 to 1993, and Georgia's policies, to the will of the Georgian people alone. Paying attention to which capitals hold the embassies that are trying to render us invisible, we have to read all of this as part of an economic, political and cultural struggle carried on with those who stand on the other side of history. I hope this crisis will help our team, and our peoples, to look at history and at current events in just this way. In the words of Yalçın Hoca (Yalçın Küçük), 'Politics is a dance in the minefield between two enemy lands.' And we danced on that stage.
Thank you, to you first of all and to all our teammates, for managing this process so well. And thank you too for sharing the matter in full detail and for giving us your time.