Turkari means Turkish style painting. It is not a new term. It can be seen in western encyclopedias before 1975. In early days of the republic it was called “alaturca” (Alla Turca). In time, the meaning of the term alaturca changed to low quality, second class, so nowadays alaturka is not used. Turkari takes place in eastern culture. Chinese culture is also in eastern culture. Westerners name the old style Turkish painting art as “miniature” and intellectuals of that time quickly adopted this term in Turkish spelling “minyatür”.Today the term minyatür is still in use. Neither in Seljuks, Ottomans nor in any other Turkish realm in history, artists who prepared manuscript books never named this painting art as miniature. The artist who lived in this region, muralist Behsad, muralist Osman, Sultan Muhammed, muralist Sadıki, muralist Arifi, Matrakçı Nasuh and many more must be called Turkish stye painting artists, of course Turkari artists.

The last person who used Turkari term was the poet Yahya Kemal Beyatlı. He visited Harem of Topkapı Palace and according to a copy of Hayat magazine published in 1956, Beyatlı found Turkari embroidery in rooms of Harem extraordinarily beautiful. The term was used by Ziya Gökalp before Yahya Kemal Beyatlı. He said “in Europe this Turkish admiration is called Turquerie”. In Turkey, after Yahya Kemal instead of Turkari term miniature (minyatür) term was used.

German born art historian W. Hausengen, after seeing manuscript books at Topkapı Palace, had written a book “The Ottoman Miniature” which was published in America, brought miniature term to Turkish. Up to that date, intellectuals who didn’t research traditional Turkish painting especially, adopted this term spelled as minyatür in Turkish. Some intellectuals studied traditional Turkish painting after Hausengen, however those studies were modest and insufficient. In those good faith studies, topic titles were always “minyatür.”

In 25-40 thousand years of civilization history, research of the last thousand years is not troublesome. But searching Turkish civilisation, which spread to 12-20 thousand years, as physical geography figures were so different from today, many times alphabet end religion changed, migration to far lands carried out and after thousands of years they alienated to their roots; is very difficult. Especially taking into consideration the unfriendly western attitudes, systematic and high budget cultural attacks, Turkish intellectuals were confused. Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı said that ,”Turkey is a country in a cultural chaos and does not adopt its historical heritage, the environment has not been protected with cultural consciousness. In twentieth century Turkish cultural identity was not preserved enough and we couldn’t decide on and be aware of our cultural identity.” Regarding the west and east cultures, “one of them is superior to the other” is incorrect and can lead us to inextricable mistakes. According to the western thinking we divide art as western and eastern. As a result of this, east pursuits spritual consepts and west pursuits materialism. We can find this determination in many western intellectuals and artists works. Also Prof. İlber Ortaylı in his book “Europe and us” mentioned when the capital city wanted to be moved from Bonn to Berlin, press insisted that moving to east should make the society eastern, to continue European capital city should stay near to Rhine.

Against western societies common presence of conceptual integrity, in eastern societies, two different art concept had been developed. These are China art and Turkari. Turkari is not only in painting art, also it can be seen in every level of life. Italians “Fumo como Turco” understanding shows that Turcos have different way of life from western societies. Karl Marx is one of those who determined this difference. His book named “Grundrisse der kritik der politischen ökonomie” had been written after das Capital as an additional part. Marx noticed that property and production relations of central Asia societies were different from western societies. He named this concept as Asian type of production. This opinion was mentioned in the review, “Formen, die der Kapitalistischen production vorhergehen” towards 1853. At that time, Karl Marx was searching in ancient societies, property and production relations. In Europe those were Antique or Germanic. In central Asia, people didn’t have personal property, production tools were shared. Production was made for personal consumption not for common market. This was not called Turkari style production but Asia type production. If India and China included, his thesis would gain more universal acceptance. We Turks accepted the thesis. In Encyclopedia of Britannica’s 1975 edition, at early 19th century, Liverpool’s prosperity was expressed with number of Turkari furniture manufactured in one year. It was more than 10,000. We understand from this, there were two types of furniture, western type and Turkari type. French people’s Turkari definition, from 16 to 18th century, affected by Turkish art and culture, western trend. With foresight of western colleagues, Turkish academians associated Turkish painting with Uigur cave paintings of 6-11th centuries. Famous Soviet metallurgy scientist Memedov found that figures, embroidery on a bones date was 12,000-20,000 years BC. These were the first samples of Turkari and today the same symbols are still in use. The Swastica symbol which was adopted by westerners İn the 19th century has been used in at Ural region since 12,000 BC and it is still one of the figures used in Turkari. Turkari is based on the arrangament of symbols. The migration of Turks to wide and remote lands, their conversion to several religions and change of alphabets troughout centuries caused some differences in the style however there is conceptual consensus. In Turkari there is no eye-perspective instead of this artists have heart-perspective, emotional-perspective. For example artist’s beloved, even if behind a mountain, is the biggest part of the composition. At 16th century, excluded the short term occurrence of Baghdad school style; human figures have no facial expressions. Turkari’s predicate with body expressions. In time of centuries Turkari deeply affected neighboring cultures. We can see that impression at China and Japanese paintings. In Uigur and Japanese paintings, impassive faces and body movements are same, but mountain and nature descriptions have their own geographical features. I hope you appreciate the difficulty of explaining today the topics of 20,000 years. In Erzincan over Mama Hatun tomb geometric Turkari embroidery is the same with, famous theoretical mathematician Penrose’s “Penrose tile” figures. Peter J. Lu professor of Theoretical physics at Harvard University said: “Humanity recently discovers what Turks did throughout thousands of years.” I want to add, Turkish intellectuals have just become aware of what Turks did throughout thousands of years.