GÖRSEL KÜLTÜRDE İŞÇİ SINIFININ TEMSİLİ (1960 – 1980).

The working class in Turkey lives its most active period in and around the foundation of Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP). In the journal of Sosyal Adalet, which is the own publication of the party, TİP visualizes its political discourse and identity with the support of artists, and gives coverage to the illustrations and works of photography by artists such as Abidin Dino and Fikret Otyam. In the same years, Nedim Günsür in his paintings, and Halit Refiğ, Ertem Göreç and Atıf Yılmaz in their films handle themes on labour. It is in the 1970s when the working class and its problems find a wider place in visual culture, and it is with the establishment of the Visual Artists Association when artists alongwith the working class begin to express their demands and expectations more clearly. In these years Yüksel Arslan renders Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, whereas the worker statues by Muzaffer Ertoran and Mehmet Aksoy get attacked, and the labour matters are adopted by the Turkish artists living abroad as well. On the other hand, compared to the previous ten years, the number of films dealing with the problems of workers increase in number, movies on the subject are directed by Lütfi Ö. Akad, Tunç Okan and Yavuz Özkan. In the present study, how the working class, emerged as an important motif in visual culture between 1960 and 1980, is handled and interpreted in painting, illustration, graphic design, sculpture and cinema will be examined in the axis of the political and social dynamics of the period in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]