Görgün Taner, general director of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV – the organizer of the Istanbul Biennial) expressed the need for an international dialogue even in the state of emergengy in an interview with Hürriyet Daily News:

No country can continue its life in isolation in our globalized world. You get nowhere with boycott. You cannot achieve an outcome by breaking dialogue.

Relations between states, nations, institutions and artists should not be interrupted. The level of relations could differ but breaking relations are not the right stance.

We tried to explain this to artists. Each country has different conditions. But the art world and artists are there to tackle this.

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Read the full interview at Hürriyet Daily News