Modern Day Political Nomad and His Turkey Saga

"We have put together an ensemble plan modeled on the Kennedy killing. In that case, CIA anchored the plot with assistance from the Mob and the Israelis. In the current case, CIA and military intel will anchor, with assistance from the Saudis and the Israelis. U.S. intelligence, as overseen by my office, will engineer a stand-down of military defense on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. on a date in early September of this year. This stand down will enable two planes, hijacked out of Boston, to crash into the two largest towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. The hijackers will be Saudi nationals who believe they are working for us," says ruthless and despicable Dick Cheney character in a play called 'We, Macbeth' at London's fringe Theatre Technis. 

To my surprise, the powerful politician Dick Cheney role is acted out by now-homeless artist Michael Dickinson who had been tried in Turkey for 'insulting Tayyip Erdogan's dignity' with his poster-sized collage depicting the Turkish prime minister as a dog attached to a Stars and Stripes leash. He tells me with excitement the collages he produced including Erdogan's are always with him in his bag wherever 'life throws him out'. Although being homeless, the artwork has been taken care of. Referring to his bitter case with the prime minister, he says he will soon be applying to the European Court of Human Rights. "I lost my job after the trial and my whole life has been turned upside down since then."

"Funny the way things go," he adds. Sleeping in a cardboard box for weeks in London's Camden area after being deported from Turkey last October, he tells me how he spent the Christmas Day in the street. After having the unbearable solitary feeling when sleeping in the cardboard box, he shortly searched for a company. 

"The Christmas morning while walking in the street after leaving my cardboard box home, I was passing St Michael’s Church in Camden Town, when I suddenly felt the urge to go in. The Christmas service had begun and was in progress. The congregation wasn’t very big. There were a few vergers/assistants waiting near the entrance. My eye was suddenly caught by the Nativity Scene set up with the statues of Mary and Joseph, the Three Kings, the shepherds and the barn animals, grouped round the statue of the infant Jesus lying in the manger. I reached down and picked Jesus up (big as a teddy bear) and made my way to the exit," he says. 

Having recently moved into a former polytechnic Assembly Hall built in 1929, on a future  demolition list, but currently squatted by a group of young Poles, he feels a bit settled for now.

"I was sleeping in a cardboard box on an iron grating outside the back of a Sainsbury’s store in Camden Town under a staircase in a quite a concealed position after arriving from Istanbul. It was quite well lit by a street lamp and behind a lowish iron barred fence which I can easily climb. Buses and cars stop at a traffic lights on the nearby street and I hear blasts of different music from car radios, and snatches of conversation from passersby. They have no idea that the box lying on the grate in the little enclosure they pass contains a live body," he recalls.

After living in Istanbul for 27 years on and off, he was caught by a police officer in Taksim while fortune telling in streets with runes. He has since then been deported for five years from the country for overstaying his visa. (FG/HK/BM)