Fireworks After Football Match Destroy Painter’s Home and 20 Years of Artwork
A fireworks display allegedly launched by football supporters after the Kasımpaşa-Trabzonspor match caused a fire in a fourth-floor apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district. The blaze destroyed the home and studio of painter and musician Murat Melih Özen, along with paintings accumulated over two decades, works prepared for an upcoming exhibition, art supplies, musical equipment, family keepsakes and personal documents.
The incident occurred in a five-story building on Tepebaşı Caddesi in the Evliya Çelebi neighborhood. According to the reported account, the firework fell into the apartment after the Süper Lig match and ignited a fire inside the residence. The apartment, which Özen rented and used both as a home and a workspace, became uninhabitable.
At the time of the fire, the 47-year-old artist was in Dalaman visiting his mother. He learned about the incident from a phone call informing him that his home was burning. By the time he received the news, the flames had already destroyed much of his professional and personal life.
Özen had been preparing a new exhibition and had spent months completing the paintings he intended to display. Only two or three additional works remained before the collection was ready. The paintings, easels, brushes, paints and other materials were all inside the apartment. The fire also consumed equipment from his former professional music studio, song lyrics, documents and memories he had preserved for years.
Among the destroyed belongings were paintings created by his late father. Özen also lost private papers and personal items that had emotional value rather than financial worth. He said some of these materials belonged to people he had known who were no longer alive, making their loss impossible to measure in monetary terms.
“Everything I had is gone,” Özen said, describing the damage. He explained that he had devoted his life to painting and had been producing art since early childhood. Although he had worked professionally for approximately 20 years, he said his relationship with art began when he was only three years old.
The artist emphasized that his work represented far more than a collection of objects. Each painting contained years of effort, experimentation and personal experience. He wanted people to see the works in an exhibition and discuss them, regardless of whether they were sold.
“For me, selling them was not the most important thing,” Özen said. “I wanted people to see them and talk about them. I did not want them to disappear in this way.”
The fire also destroyed an expensive easel purchased for him by his sister. Özen said his financial situation had recently been difficult and that his sister had bought the equipment after he asked for help. Along with the easel, valuable art materials-including paints, brushes and containers of turpentine-were lost.
As a musician as well as a painter, Özen had also kept equipment and written material from the music studio he once operated. Lyrics, records, documents and other items connected with earlier periods of his life were damaged or completely destroyed.
After returning to Istanbul, Özen said he had almost nothing left apart from a bag, a backpack and his laptop. The physical destruction of the apartment created an immediate practical problem, while the loss of his artwork threatened years of professional development and the exhibition he had been planning.
The incident has also raised concerns about the risks created by fireworks used in densely populated urban areas. A projectile that is harmless when launched in a controlled setting can cause serious damage if it lands on a balcony, roof, window or apartment. In a city with closely spaced buildings, even a single firework can quickly lead to a major residential fire.
Fire safety specialists often warn that fireworks should never be directed toward buildings or used near balconies, open windows, parked vehicles and flammable materials. Wind, launch angle and unexpected technical failures can cause fireworks to travel far beyond their intended path. The danger increases when large crowds use them without professional supervision.
For artists, the consequences of such a fire can be particularly severe. Paintings, sketches, notebooks and unfinished works may be irreplaceable even when they have no established market value. Digital records can sometimes be recovered, but original canvases, handwritten notes, family artworks and years of experimentation cannot simply be recreated.
Özen said he was not seeking an excessive demand but wanted the damage and the labor behind his lost works to be recognized. He stated that he would explore legal options to determine responsibility and seek compensation for the losses. His position, he explained, was not based solely on financial concerns: he wanted accountability for the destruction of his home and career archive.
The case also highlights the vulnerability of independent artists, many of whom work from rented apartments and cannot afford separate studios, insurance or secure storage. When a home simultaneously serves as a residence, workshop, archive and exhibition preparation space, a single disaster can eliminate every part of an artist’s livelihood at once.
Özen argued that public celebration should not come at the expense of another person’s safety and future. While those who launched the fireworks may not have intended to cause a fire, the result was nevertheless devastating. His paintings, tools, family memories and private documents vanished within minutes.
The artist has begun sharing images of the burned remains of his works, seeking to show the scale of the destruction and the effort that went into creating them. For him, the photographs are not merely evidence of property damage; they document the loss of an entire period of artistic life.
The fire left Özen facing the difficult task of rebuilding from almost nothing. Beyond finding a new place to live and work, he must decide how to resume painting after losing the works that represented years of development. His immediate priority is to recover what can be recovered, establish responsibility and regain at least part of the labor and creative history destroyed in the blaze.