Furor over Despina Vandi Concert Cancellation in Turkey

The cancellation of a concert on Wednesday by well-known Greek performer Despina Vandi in Cesme, near the major coastal city of Izmir in western Turkey, generated a firestorm of reactions on Turkish-language social media and by state officials in the neighboring country.
The concert was organized by Turkey’s education foundation (TEV), with the Greek singer backing out of the event because, as she stated in a later Instagram post, its original entertainment-only character was transformed into an event with a “political connotation”. She also maintained that she was never told of the altered stage setting or acquiesced to the changes.
In taking to the same stage, the foundation’s president claimed that Vandi cancelled because of the presence of giant posters of Turkey’s founder, Kemal Mustapha Ataturk, on the set. Although Vandi never mentioned posters or flags, the Turkish official, Gülnur Soybayraktar, also “pivoted” to nationalist mode by saying the Greek singer didn’t want Turkish flags behind her. She said ticket-holders would be reimbursed.
The same claim, over “flags and posters”, was made by the mayor of Cesme, Lâl Denizli, who also used a nationalist tone.
The TEV chorus performed instead, singing among others, a nationalist anthem lauding Ataturk’s entry into Izmir, then Smyrna, in 1922 after the Asia Minor catastrophe and the end of two and a half millennia of Hellenic presence on the eastern shores of the Aegean.

Vandi’s written response, below: