Coşku Turhan - Transforms dreams into reality!

There is nothing in life that you can’t transfer into movie screen.  Coşku Turhan who is the Senior Lead Technical Director at Sony Picture Imageworks, creates environments which looks very real but would be impossible to capture in a movie.

Cosku Turhan who was born in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara is only 31 years old and lives currently in Los Angeles, California with his wife Ceyla Doral Turhan. After his grad study at University of Southern California (USC), he has started to work for the giant company, Sony where he achieved many accomplishments. So far, he has worked for many top box office movies such as Beowulf, Alice in Wonderland, Green Lantern, G-Force, and Eagle Eye. The next movie is ‘The Amazing Spiderman.’ That is simply amazing.

His main goal in life is to increase the Visual F/X quality of the Turkish movies. He thinks that Turkish moviemakers have great ideas, yet not enough budgets to transfer each thought to movie screen. He loves Los Angeles, and he loves his life over there despite the heavy working hours. ‘If you love what are you doing, you don’t mind working hard’ he says.

Coşku Turhan is also a great musician who created a popular song called ‘Rütbeni Bilicen’ for one of the most famous singers of Turkey, Kenan Doğulu. 

Here's my longer article on Hurriyet USA daily newspaper in Turkish.

Canan Çevik - The earthquake that shook humanity!

It is no news that an earthquake hit eastern Turkey recently, and many people lost their lives and homes. What has been missing from reports of this disaster is its political dimension.

The affected region is home to a Kurdish majority, and some fascist sects of Turkish society have actually cheered over the loss and devastation brought upon Kurds—simply because they are Kurds!

As you may already know, there’s a long history of tensions between Turks and Kurds, since Kurds aspire to an independent state within the country, and Turkey would never allow it. But to condemn individual Kurds and to see them as deserving of this terrible disaster is utterly narrow-minded and mean-spirited.

As a Turk, I would like the world to know that in spite of ethnic tensions, we are as capable of solidarity and humanitarian action as any nation. To that end, I conducted an interview with Canan Çevik, a Kurdish Turk who studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS Amherst), and I am glad to share her humanistic thoughts—as a strong message against the politics of hatred.

Canan Cevik said, “Right to life trumps all else, especially in the midst of human suffering. Discrimination itself is a shame, but to discriminate against those who are already down, is very close-minded. Our humanity is the most essential thing in life. Although no one should question another’s race under any circumstance, some bigoted people question people’s races even during hard times. That is incomprehensible! On the flip side, it was great to observe a lot of generous people of all races helping the region.”

P.S. The interview will be published at Hurriyet very soon!