The Ottoman prince was relieved of his camera.
Image by Twitter user Mete Sohtao?lu (@metesohtaoglu)
There are so many questions to ask about this strange story from the Turkish city of Amasya, where municipality officials have erected a statue of an Ottoman prince taking a selfie with one hand and holding a sword with his other. Most of these questions begin with, “Why?”
The statue, placed alongside a river that draws many tourists, has been the target of so much vitriol by local residents that someone took the liberty of relieving the stone prince from the camera’s unflinching lens by breaking the mobile off completely. Turkish police are currently investigating the matter.
“I find the construction of the statue a meaningless attempt to make fun of a historically important figure,” said one resident to Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. “However, the person who broke the cell phone should be found and punished by police.”
According to a city official, the statue actually doesn’t represent any specific prince in Turkish history. It’s not even a social statement on the nature of digital self-representation and the modern channels of image distribution available to us in the palm of our hands. No, in fact, say city officials: it’s nothing but a tourist attraction.
“Everybody knows that cell phones did not exist during that time period,” said another resident. “It is disrespectful to our ancestors to portray a prince in that way. Whoever broke that part of the statue should have just removed it completely.”
Image by Twitter user Mete Sohtao?lu (@metesohtaoglu)
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