Setting the record straight on off-the-record meetings

We met with a group of consular and political officers at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul this afternoon. There've been comments (I won't go so far as to call them complaints) from various quarters about the consulate's request that the meeting be considered off-the-record. There have been some obligatory references to freedom of speech and some rather uncharitable comparisons between Turks' and the FSOs' willingness to talk openly with us. All of these complaints strike me as something closely akin to rubbish (if not, in fact, the beast itself).

Of course the consulate briefing was off-the-record. Individual officers in any country's foreign service don't have on-the-record opinions - their opinions are the official party line. While I'm sure we could have gotten an on-the-record briefing, it would have differed very little in content or flavor from the papers they gave us or the State Department website. Going off the record allowed the FSOs present to actually voice their opinions on U.S.-Turkey relations or whatever.

Furthermore, comparing the consulate's position with the more open-mouthed Turks we've met on the street is ludicrous. Of course they didn't speak with us off the record. There is a huge difference between the private opinions of individuals and the public opinions of governments, particularly the United States. Private citizens, for all their being wonderful people, do not have a foreign policy agenda and do not worry about plausible deniability, but governments do. We never talked with members of the Turkish foreign policy community, which is a shame. But if we did, it either would have been a) on the record and the party line, or much more unlikely b) very off the record and something approaching not the party line.

I know it's fun to criticize the U.S. government. I know that unfavorably comparing the U.S. to whatever country you're currently touring is chic and hip. But this is a little ridiculous.

Turkish Mystery solved!

I went to pick up Ross (yes, readers! The one and only Ross Williford!) at the airport this afternoon and was confronted with a hilarious and appropriate sign.

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The "Meeting point? Meeting time?" Turkism makes so much more sense now.

Forward into the past

We went to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations this afternoon. Our guide, a history professor from the local Bilkent University, prefaced the tour of the museum by telling us that Turks had thought their history began with the Ottoman Empire until Ataturk revealed that Anatolian history stretched back to the beginning of history. Thank God for Ataturk.

Turkish identity began in 8000 BC and has been going strong ever since through the empires of the Hatis, Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Greeks, etc. Of course none of these groups were actually native to Anatolia Ataturk defined the Turkish ethnicity as anyone living in Anatolia, and apparently this was applied retroactively as well.

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What's that carved on that dagger? Could it be... a crescent?! Do you think it's a coincidence that the Hittites made a dagger with a crescent? Of course not! They were loyal Turks eagerly anticipating the establishment of the Republic some 4000 years later.

Of course I'd be remiss in my description of Turkish heritage if I didn't mention the Phrygian king Midas (yes, the Midas), who many people wish was buried near the sight of Gordion, which is in turn near Ankara (but he's probably not). Midas is yet another bit of Turkish heritage that had little to do with the Anatolians of antiquity and has less to do with Turkey today. But damn it all, he lived and died in Anatolia, so he's a Turk.

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The museum is very excited to have such a personage as Midas in Turkey. At times they control their glee.

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And at times they don't.

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They're not alone in being excited about this. When we went to visit Gordion and Midas ourselves I learned that part of the compulsory military service Turkish men undergo is a quick 'cultural appreciation' tour of the country so they learn just what they're fighting for. One of the major stops on that tour is Midas' tomb, which I'm sure really helps to stiffen their resolve to never surrender an inch of their homeland.

Boys, those barbarous Greeks are coming a-raping and a-pillaging yet again and we have to hold them here. I won't tell you to think of your sisters, who will be despoiled by their priests and left for dead. I won't tell you to think of your homes, which will be burned down and demolished by those Orthodox dogs. I want you to think about Midas, a good man and a good Turk who fought and died for this country some 3000 years ago. Do you want some Greek taking pictures of his tumulus? Buying postcards at his souvenir shop? Do you?

Actually, Turks take their Anatolian history very seriously across the board. The museum is one of the major pit stops for Turkish children who come into Ankara from eastern Anatolia for their first dose of TURKISHNESS. At some level it's admirable what Turkey's done with its history. It has this incredible smörgåsbord of cultures that have somehow been blended into a tapestry of identity that, factual and accurate or not, certainly makes for a good story.

At some times the layers of identity are pretty obvious.

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Layer of Identity 1 would be the original Ankara Castle, which was built by the Byzantines out of whatever materials were readily available (this includes columns, etc. from the Greeks... let's call them Layer of Identity .5). More recent layers of identity were made of brick (patriotically red brick, you'll note) and a stucco clocktower that could be found anywhere in Europe.

But the assimilation of so many cultures that weren't really meant to be assimilated into Turkish identity hasn't always been easy. Often Turkey has had to turn those cultures, and history itself, upside down to make it all fit together.

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Ha! Upside down! Man, I kill myself sometimes.

In all seriousness Ankara really is a fantastic place to see the contrast of Old and New Turkey and get a feel for all the layers of identity that have been pressed together to create Turkish identity. On the hill surrounding Ankara Castle you can see what is very nearly the original village of Ankara that existed before 1922.

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Stretching out around the castle, though, is Republican Ankara, a testament to 90 years of rapid growth and modernization.

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Whoever said Ankara was a boring city was patently wrong. Istanbul is a beautiful blend of old and new. Ankara has that same old and new, but the line between the two is much more stark.

That is old Ankara.

This is new Ankara.

That is old Turkey.

This is new Turkey.

Maybe these things make it a bad place to live - maybe having to choose between old and new Turkey keeps you from experiencing the full flavor of the other. But boring it is not.

Anıtkabir (or, I think I finally get this whole secularism thing)

We visited Anıtkabir this morning to pay our respects to the father of Turkey. I'd had a bit of a laugh before coming after I read that guests were not required to remove their shoes in the mausoleum (the traditional show of deference in Islamic holy sites), but they were required to remove their hats (the traditional show of deference in Christian holy sites). Cheers for Westernization.

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I came to Anıtkabir expecting ridiculous levels of nationalism and secularism, and by and large I wasn't disappointed. The complex surrounding his tomb features a series of museums detailing the exploits of the early Turkish Republic, housed in such humble and propagandaless buildings as the Towers of Independence, Liberty, National Pact, Revolution, Republic, Defense of Rights, Victory, and Peace. I read through a description of each next to a scale model in the Tower of Independence and learned about the various relics secular historical artifacts housed in each. Was any of this religious? No, surely not. Preserving hairs from the Prophet's beard is religious. Preserving Ataturk's toothbrush is merely due diligence to the Anatolian historical record. I did a double take when I came to the description of the Tower of Victory's contents, however.

Inside the tower the cannon car carrying Ataturk's holy corpse from Dolmabahce Palace to Sarayburnu is on display here.

Well there's no talking around that one.

This, of course, forced me to reevaluate the admittedly shaky understanding I had of the Republic's secularity. The simple summation, that Ataturk and the Republic are SECULAR, can't really be squared with the explicitly religious overtones at Anıtkabir. I think I've worked out an alternative - it is the philosophy of the Turkish Republic that the purpose of religion is to strengthen the state, not subvert it. As such, religion, even state-sponsored religion, is permissible, or even desirable, so long as it encourages a strong government control and doesn't conflict with Kemalist philosophy. Revering Ataturk's cadaver, or referring to him as Gazi, or referring to military casualties as şehit, is entirely in keeping with this.

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Armed with a greater understanding of realpolitik we went through the attendant museums depicting the Ataturk's campaigns and reforms during the early years of the Republic. The museum was fascinating both as a display of Ataturk's reforms, which I'd never actually seen listed out before, and as a display of the official party line on said reforms.

Ataturk's optimistic 'Peace at home, peace in the world' philosophy was a big hit at the museum. Yet how can that be achieved when the state commissions huge oil paintings reminding the Turks of Greek Orthodox priests leading a horde of barbarous Greeks in raping and pillaging their way through Izmir? Is that what leads to peaceful and comradely relations with Greece? Nationalism has never really lent itself to positive propaganda about neighboring countries, yet rubbing more salt in the Greek-Turkey relations wound seems excessive.

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Other information presented in the museum was fascinating because I'd never heard it before. For example, during the Hat Law reforms all Turkish women Westernized their dress willingly. Oh! What a relief! We've been having this silly headscarf argument over nothing!

Also, periodic Ataturk quotes provided the proper context:

"To write history is as important as to make many history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity."

Let us repeat, there was no Armenian genocide.

Ankara

Ankara's always been described to me as a European city stuck in the middle of Anatolia. I guess maybe that's true, but it really depends on how you define a European city. New Ankara was built European, that's certainly true. There are wide boulevards and grand hotels, and everything there looks very fresh. If that's your definition of a European city, then sure, Ankara is Western and Istanbul is Eastern. Yet from what I've seen in a day, the Ankarans seem more Eastern and the Istanbullus seem more Western. There are more heads covered in Ankara, more tank tops in Istanbul. Istanbul, for all its Eastern-influenced buildings and organic, winding, chaotic streets, seems more like a Western city just based on the people who live there. For all the Kemalists' work to make Ankara the beacon that brings Turkey into modernity, contact creates Westernization, not city planning, and contact is at its height in Istanbul.

We visited Koca Tepe Mosque, which was built in the 1980s to resemble the Blue Mosque in Istanbul (Clayton later pointed out how interesting it was that they chose to imitate a mosque built in the heyday of the religious autocracy from which the Republic is so desperate to distance itself). Mosques in the Ottoman Empire were typically built with a bazaar either beside or underneath that would provide revenue for the mosque's operation. Koca Tepe has a similar system, though it's been adapted to the modern age.

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We checked - the supermarket doesn't sell alcohol.

I went for a walk during halftime of the Spain-Germany match this evening and watched a guy get hit by a car. I stood on the sidewalk and took pictures while the Turks to either side of me stood and ate popcorn.

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The whole thing was deliciously reminiscent of Pamuk's recollections of taking a picnic to watch the old Ottoman houses burning down along the Bosporus. See? I can be an Istanbullu too. But I'm in Ankara.

Cappadocia musings

We've been exploring the Cappadocia area for three days now. I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on it. There are lots of carved out sandstone cones.

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Some of these can be climbed through.

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And then there are more churches than you can shake a stick at. Though while we say churches, it would probably be more accurate to describe them as small chapels, or perhaps religiously-motivated broom closets. Most of them, while very grand and ornate, could not have held more than a dozen worshipers comfortably, which I guess explains why there are so many.

The one thing I haven't seen a whole lot of are helpful signs in English and other foreign languages (or really even in Turkish, for that matter). There are certainly plenty at all of the tourist destinations in the area, but I've no idea how you'd get to them if you weren't from Cappadocia.

I'd postulated earlier that this might be to preserve and protect the jobs of local guides who are thus made indispensable to both foreigners and Turks coming to see the sights, as the tourists wouldn't be able to find the sights in the first place without a local taking them to the nondescript out-of-the-way location at which they're found. Yet it could also simply be that everyone goes by public transport around here - no one, foreign or Turk, is going to actually drive to Cappadocia and then try to drive around to the various sites. They'll just dolmuş.

Preliminary Cappadocia

We've recently arrived in Üçhisar, a smallish town in the Cappadocia area. Preliminary exploration of the neighborhood at dusk revealed a friendly purple-shirted Turk and a colossal climbable conical castle.

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Views of the smaller cones surrounding said conical castle.

The aforementioned friendly and purple-shirted Turk turned out to be so friendly that he showed us all around the towers, explaining the original uses of various mysterious stoneworks. None of his explanations seemed particularly feasible (particularly his assertion that a certain basin was originally used to store large quantities of Efes that came out of a spigot at the bottom) yet they were certainly entertaining.

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It was only after a lengthy tour of the ruins that we discovered our friendly purple-shirted Turk wasn't so much a friendly Turk as an unemployed but enterprising Turk, and that the free tour of the ruins he'd provided wasn't free so much as... not free. All of this came as something of a shock.

He assured us that he only wanted a little money. I had unsettling memories of Cairo, where this phrase really translates as "I am going to attempt to estimate your cumulative net worth and ask for twice that. Ready set haggle." I braced myself for the worst - how much would the 'tour' be? 20 YTL? 30? 40?

He asked for 5 YTL. What a wonderful country Turkey is. Even the hustlers are more reasonable!

Fifth in a series of dispatches from Eşenler

We're leaving Eşenler this morning. What's probably struck me more than anything else is the relaxed pace in the village - the laid-back, casual, slow-moving nature of Istanbullu Turks that I had attributed to relative financial security and position in the upper middle class is for some reason shared by those in the village.

Our cherry-picking was similarly lackadaisical. When I asked Muammer about if they had had problems with insects and if they sprayed the cherries, he said that there were some problems, but the cherries were a hobby, not for profit, and so it was ok. What, precisely, do they do for profit then? I have to think that the two major sources of income for the village are the cherries... and us.

I guess overall I'm curious about the extent of the observer effect here - how different is what we've seen in this village because we are able to see it? Muammer said that the adjacent village of Upper Eşenler is considerably less open to outsiders.

Actually, let's take a brief break from the deeper musings and take a look at this geopolitical oddity.

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Oddity aside, Upper Eşenler is supposed to be more conservative and less accepting of outsiders. Muammer, who's actually from Upper, intimated that his German wife isn't really accepted there. But the villagers in Lower were trying to marry us off to Turks at least twice a day.

So ultimately it seems like there are three possible reasons for the difference between the two villages. The first, that there is some bizarre fault line of political beliefs running between the Eşenlers, seems unlikely. So either Upper has a reason to dislike outsiders or Lower has a reason to like them. It's possible that Upper has such a reason, but I don't know what it would be. The most obvious reason for Lower to have an abnormal liking for outsiders is a steady stream of them paying to come in and homestay. But this would appear to be phenomenally circular logic - Lower can't decide to allow outsiders because they like the outsiders they've already allowed. Maybe it was a gradual thing - they let in one, liked him, then let in some more. Now they're a pillar of secular leftism and Western-minded openness.

This, obviously, means a few things. First, the experiences we've had in the last few days probably aren't totally representative of the majority of rural Turkey. HOWEVER, and this is big, individuals JUST LIKE US have, through the fact that they're coming to the village in the first place and being at least somewhat likeable while there, made a village open to the West.

Fourth in a series of dispatches from Eşenler

I've been kind of overwhelmed by the importance of the family in the village and in the minds of our hosts. In our opening conversation the first evening, all of my questions were about my hosts' political opinions and personal histories, but all of theirs were about my family.

This was apparently not just idle conversation. When we went to dinner last night (an extended family affair that included about the same number of aunts, uncles, and cousins that my family typically sees at Christmas) I was introduced as "Kevin, who has one sister who is 30 years old and is married with a 2-year old son and a mother and father who are alive."

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This was another meal, not the big extended family one, but you get some of the mood I hope.

When we went out cherry-picking this morning, it began as just me and Ihsan, but eventually most of his family - mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, nephew - was there.

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Obviously I've missed a few in this photo. Sorry.

Third of a series of dispatches from Eşenler

This evening with my family has been the first time I've actually sat down and watched an hour of the news in Turkish. I had no idea what I was missing out on.

Hilarious headlines/topics include:

There has recently been an outbreak of some disease carried by ticks that has killed a few people. Many Turks in rural areas, including our own in Eşenler, are very worried. While I couldn't understand the meat of the story, the title was pretty clear: Pasted over a picture of a huge tick rampaging through an innocent piece of foliage, the words BYÖ-TERÖR? Um... no. No it's not.

A brief report from the Eastern Front was summed up with a pair of brief headlines: 1 soldier martyred, 2 PKK dead.

While Fatih Terim may be the leader of the Turkish soccer team, the leader of Fatih Terim is Ataturk.

I don't have a one-liner for the last item, but man, it was great. While I couldn't follow all the Turkish being spoken, I would assume that the commentary began as something along the lines of "Islamist radicals have always recruited from innocent - the unemployed, the uneducated, the insufficiently Kemalist. But now, the Islamists are targeting someone new: your children. (DUH DUH DUUUUUUM)" A new wave of religious kids' games are being marketed, such as a version of Monopoly that features the Kaaba and the Dome of the Rock as properties to acquire. The segment ended with a clip of a young girl playing this and saying to herself "bismi lah rrahmanirrahim bir ve uç" or "in the name of Allah the merciful and compassionate [I rolled a] 1 and a 3." While I don't know that the phrase "Do not pass go, do not collect 72 virgins." appears somewhere in the game, I can certainly pray that it does.

I guess I don't really have a coherent point about all of this, and maybe it's not much more terrifying than the evening news in the U.S., but still. I felt pretty alarmed about the state of Turkey after reading the headlines. We've heard that the military is convinced that Turkey is constantly surrounded by existential threats. I wonder what gave them that idea? Or, more likely, I wonder what they're using to transmit that idea to the general public?

Second of a series of dispatches from Eşenler

Here's another interesting bit from the conversation with my host.

When he's not helping his family out picking cherries and other delicious fruits, Ihsan works as a house painter in the village and in Konya. He's been doing this for a few years. I asked how he got into the house-painting business, and he explained that when he did his military service in 2002 he painted officers' barracks for most of the time. I asked if he did any painting before that, or if he had some other profession, and he said no. He'd gone to primary school through 8th grade and maybe high school somewhere else (I wasn't quite sure on that point) but there was no way to go to university.

This unfortunately requires a tangent that I should have touched on a month ago - the use of var and yok in the Turkish language. Var is typically translated as 'there is' and yok is typically translated as 'there is not', though Lewis Thomas' Elementary Turkish translates them perhaps more accurately as 'extant' and 'not extant', as it implies a sense of finality that doesn't really translate. The var/yok construction is used for everything: Döner var? Döner var. Problem var? Problem yok! When you say that something yok, it doesn't mean that it isn't convenient or isn't readily available. It means it doesn't exist. It isn't an option. Period. When Ihsan said "Universite yok," he was expressing the situation of most of the rural population of Turkey - there is no university.

Anyway. He didn't go to university, so he picked cherries until he picked up the house-painting trade through the military. In such a context it's hard to condemn the mandatory military service that Turkey expects of all its male citizens. It serves as a form of vocational training that may be filling a niche for which there is not currently any alternative for much of the population. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just saying it may not be as universally terrible as many Americans (including myself, in this very blog!) have described it. Food for thought.

First of a series of dispatches from Eşenler

Soooo... wow. We're spending the next few days in homestays in the village of Lower Eşenler, located kind of in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains. We've been here for a matter of hours and I've already had a thrilling succession of interesting thoughts, so there's lots of blogging to be done. I'll post in a series separated by thought process.

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I've spent the last few hours chilling with my family, watching TV, and occasionally chatting with my hosts as much as my Turkish allows. There've been some surprising discoveries. I'd assumed that the rural, overwhelmingly headscarved, lower class would be staunch about their religion and support the AK Party, yet when I asked my host he said that he doesn't like AKP for economic reasons - the job market has been rapidly declining in the last four years since they've come to power (this was a much more nuanced response than I'd been expecting). He then proudly and rather emphatically declared that he was a strong leftist. Further conversation with Muammer, one of the ones who arranged the homestays, revealed that, in fact, the whole village tends to the left. Huh!

The dichotomy I'd been expecting between Kemalist urban areas and Islamist rural areas doesn't really exist. The call to prayer is observed to the same extent in the village as it was in Istanbul - that is to say, not at all by anyone. Turkish flags and Ataturk portraits, though they don't exactly abound in the village, are still very present and prominent. Far and away the most incredible evidence of Kemalism in Eşenler is my host's son, whose name is, get this, Mustafa Kemal! Mustafa Kemal! I kid you not!

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I'd assumed that Kemalism and secular Turkish identity hadn't really spread throughout the country, and that in the more remote areas would still identify more with older Islamic bases for social cohesion. This is quite clearly not the case. At least, it isn't the case in Eşenler. But Eşenler may be a special case - it's a remote village with a constant influx of Westerners who are both spreading Western culture and eagerly receptive to learn about Eastern culture. How is that effecting the political thought processes of the villagers? How representative is this village of the whole?

More on carpets.

We're spending a few days in Konya visiting cool people, some of whom (like Mevlana) are dead and some of whom (like Memet) are in the carpet-making business. Mevlana didn't have a whole lot to say, but we learned even more about the carpet business from Memet. He's producing carpets solely in natural dyes, almost exclusively for export to European and American markets. He exports traditional Turkish carpets to Europe and, get this, traditional Navajo carpets to America. That's globalization for you.

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Some of the natural dyes in question.

A lot of his business comes from restoring the antique rugs of rich Europeans. He dyes new thread to match the colors of the original and sets his people to work reweaving them. It's a labor intensive and difficult process, and he apparently gets something in the way of $50,000 for each restoration.

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He's unraveled less ornate carpets from the same period and is currently bleaching the thread. He'll redye this to use in the restoration so that all of the restored carpet will be from the same time period. What a perfectionist!

Of course, Memet didn't actually do the carpet weaving himself - that job goes to the 30ish households in the greater Konya area whose women collaborate to weave a single rug of the course of a few months. They get a several hundred dollars for this - obviously it isn't enough to feed a family, but it's a tidy bit of supplementary income that the household wouldn't have otherwise. Memet insisted that the women enjoy weaving the carpets and it's a wonderful situation for everyone. He's probably right. You always approach these situations expecting to find a sweatshop hidden somewhere in the depths, but the more we looked at it the more it seemed like there wasn't anything too dodgy going on.

Sooo... yeah. It's a good day in Turkey, I guess.

Hoo-ah?

Turks in the middle of their military service at a base near Eğirdir came into town for the weekend to be with their families. I never actually met any young militaristic and clean-shaven Turks wandering the streets with their families, so I unfortunately can't really write about that.

However! I did see a guy on the street just before we left Eğirdir this morning wearing a fascinating t-shirt. Ideally I'd display this shirt in a picture, but I didn't get one, so I'll do my best to display it dramatically as possible as text.

SIMPLE QUESTION PREVENTS AUTOMATIC ACTION!

His shirt really was that color.

Perhaps because I was already thinking about the Turkish military and forlorn about my lost blog post about conscripts, I immediately linked this shirt to the military complex in Turkey and shot off on a mental tangent. The above sentiment seems central to the system - officers are trained to think and reason, but the average Turk civilian, doing his obligatory 8-month stint in the military but nothing more, only gets trained to obey orders. So this is the capstone of the Turkish education system - questions, even simple ones, even important ones, even good ones, prevent automatic obedience and are discouraged. It's a good method for training sheep but maybe less good for training citizens of a democracy.

The Tourism Extravaganza Post

So the last few days have been a blur of exciting and picture-worthy events, but there hasn't been a lot of deep thought attached. As such this is mostly going to be a string of pictures and brief descriptions.

Our journey begins at Pamukkale, a huge tectonic upheaval of calcium bicarbonate, limestone, chalk, etc... basically everything white that can be tectonically upheaved. This is every bit as bizarre-looking as it sounds.

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After a long and, you know, bizarre walk up, we reached the site of Hierapolis, the city built around the springs that created Pamukkale itself. The city is in ruins, obviously, but it's still a pretty incredible place.

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The next day we departed for Eğirdir, a small town on an eponymous lake (or maybe the town is eponymous - I'm unsure) that is apparently a popular resort destination for Turks.

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Upon my arrival the mountain climbing urge that had been barely suppressed through this long Philmontless summer awoke with a vengeance and I proceeded to climb Sivri Dağ ('The Sharply Upward Pointed Mountain') while my compatriots swam around in the lake.

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To give some idea of scale, there are 10-story buildings at the foot of the mountain (1). I walked around the back of the mountain (2) before reaching the summit (3) from the back.

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Quite delightful.

Today we went to a national park about an hour from the town (and lake) of Eğirdir that features a long canyon carved out by a river. We swam in the river. Good times were had by all.

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All of these sites occupied different niches in the tourism market. It was possible to gauge the prominence and projected audience for each site based on the languages used at each. Pamukkale, as the international tourism site that it is, featured all the important languages (i.e. Turkish, English, French, German, and, again bizarrely, Korean). The Hieropolis sites were in Turkish, English, and Greek.

Eğirdir, targeted as it was towards a primarily Turkish crowd, had very little in foreign languages. There were, unfortunately, no signs in any language helping the lonely hiker to find his way up Sivri Dağ, but the village halfway up was all in Turkish and the villagers I spoke with lacked the basic knowledge of English that most Turks possess in areas of higher international tourism.

The national park, again, had signs only in Turkish. This seemed passing strange, as the only group there (us) was not, in fact, Turkish.

Greek village

This evening we went up to a Sirence, a Greek village outside Selçuk whose inhabitants make a meager living bottling fruit wines. And not, you know, the normal fruits like grapes. Pomegranate, cherry, and blueberry are only a small taste of the bizarre wines available. The village, though, was fantastically rustic and peaceful. I absolutely loved walking around the quiet little chute-shaped country lanes.

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It was quite quaint.

Yet all is not as it seems! The city is in no way Greek - the inhabitants speak Turkish, are Muslim, and identify themselves as Turks, not Greeks. The only smidgen of Hellenism in the village is a ruin of an old Greek Orthodox church that the now nonexistent Greek population used to go to.

Nor is it nearly as meager as it may appear. Someone (I forget who) said, in a tone of voice that suggested he knew what he was talking about, that the village is actually one of the most wealthy areas in Turkey - wineries are no longer the province of the poor. The streets and houses may be rustic, but there's undeniable quality in the workmanship.

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That is not the window of the lower class.

We debated for a while about why the Sirencians took such pains to portray themselves as a poor Greek community instead of a prosperous Turkish one. The only conclusion that I came to was Joe Tourist would be more interested in a rustic Greek village selling fine wines than a rebottled Turkish establishment. Ultimately I have to agree with Joe Tourist - I liked the village more when I thought we'd stumbled upon some unknown jewel than when I realized we were yet another round of tourists stopping off to wine and dine. I can't decide whether the false advertising made me feel better or worse.

I guess this post didn't really have a very finely-crafted point.

Just Plain Theft

We spent the morning walking through the ruins of Ephesus just outside of Selçuk.

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It was pretty incredible.

Yet it also gave me a sense of the frustration that has to be felt by the Turks and many others every time the West has stepped in to rescue some defenseless statues. Our tour guide at Pergamon yesterday made a point of noting that "the statue from the Temple of Zeus was NOT stolen by the Germans - it was bought from the Ottoman Empire fair and square, unlike everything else, while Schliemann was busy demolishing Troy." She was rather understandably bitter about the whole thing.

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At least they left us the seats.

As we walked through the remains of Ephesus, nearly every building would mention somewhere in its attendant description that the statues originally decorating the facade could now be found in the Ephesus Museum... in Vienna. Well, that's not particularly convenient.

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There are several rather conspicuously missing statues here.

The Ephesus museum in Ephesus has done its best with what European museums left it. It has a number of satisfactory exhibits and displays, yet from the incredible goldmine of Ephesus it's barely kept a pittance. What I found to be the most meaningful exhibit in the museum was a letter from a Dutch tourist who apologized for taking a small rock from the floor of the agora in Ephesus and mailed it back to the town. Above the rock was a short poem in Turkish and English: "Every flower is beautiful in its own garden. Every antique is beautiful in its own country."

We're looking at you here, Europe.

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Well, he's not. His head's somewhere in Europe.

Identity Theft

We've spent the day touring the (purported) site of ancient Troy(s) and Pergamon. Talk about layers of identity! There've been civilizations in Anatolia for thousands of years. And unfortunately, Turkey has attempted to gorge itself on the famous attributes of each, representing a nightmarish amalgamation of cultural history. All of the ruins at Troy and Pergamon are tied into the web of nationalist identity.

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Our tour guide was very adamant about the fact that Troy was an Anatolian civilization, not Greek. Regardless of how much Hellenic influence might have shaped Troy, and how little Troy resembled anything else in later Anatolian civilization, Troy is located in Anatolia and it is therefore part of the Turkish cultural heritage. Hands off.

Later Clayton noticed a (rather horrifically misshapen) bust of Homer with the label "father of poetry, son of Anatolia." Well, yeah, ok, I guess he was. Thankfully they didn't go so far as to call him a Turk.

At Pergamon it was much the same - the city may have been founded and developed by Greeks, Macedonians, and Romans (basically everyone in the area except Turkic tribes), but it's in Anatolia, and that makes it Turkish cultural heritage.

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Yet somehow it doesn't seem overwhelmingly Turkish to me.‎

How can Turkey make sense of all this disparate heritage? There's no common thread running through it all except geographic location, and whatever connections that brings must begin to wear thin after a few thousand years. How else can they find a meaningful cultural connection with the distant past? Call their positive qualities cultural inheritance and sweep their negative qualities under the rug?
Our tour guide at the ruins of Pergamon told us some fascinating trivia about the Asclepeion, a surprisingly sophisticated healing center located there. In order to preserve the institution's reputation for medical infallibility, no cemeteries were allowed anywhere in the city, and no one who was deathly ill was allowed within the city.

"At last!" I thought. I can finally see a clear national heritage here! An official state policy that attempts to reshape the truth by denying that anyone ever died should be nothing new to the Turks.

Gallivanting around Gallipoli

We spent the day touring the peninsula in the Dardanelles where the Gallipoli Campaign was fought during World War I. Exciting!

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Beginning in the nearby town of Çanakkale and continuing throughout the afternoon it was clear that the tour was tailored to a very specific crowd - Australians and New Zealanders. Our tour guide spoke English with a truly bizarre mix of Turkish and Australian accents, and all the local restaurants were decorated with stereotypical Australian widgets. My favorite may have been the Boomerang Bar and Grill, which was apparently named on the assumption that visiting Aussies would say "Hey, boomerangs! We've got those back home! You've got our business, mate!"

The astute among you will have already deduced the cause of this bias towards our cousins in the Southern Hemisphere - most of the Allied forces at Gallipoli were from the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and most of the foreign tourists coming to the battlefield are from the same countries. Our tour jumped from one ANZAC cemetery to another, highlighting the major offensives and losses of the Allies. The little attention paid to the Turks concentrated mainly on their respect for the ANZAC forces, both during and after the campaign. Ataturk's quote about the battle was featured very prominently.

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"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly. Therefore rest in peace, there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lay side by side, here in this country of ours... You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

All in all I was impressed by Turkey's ability to repackage its one victory in WWI as a foreign tourist destination.

But there's more to the story! Dr. Shields and I spoke with our tour guide about the obvious ANZAC bias in our tour, and he assured us that in recent years a very different tour has been developed for Turkish tour groups. War memorials were erected soon after the battle by the Turkish government, but were removed in the 1930s to make room for ANZAC memorials that took their place. I can only imagine how galling this must have been to Turkish nationalism. Presumably it was deemed necessary as part of the effort to integrate with the West.

In recent years the government has erected Turkish cemeteries alongside the ANZAC cemeteries. The ANZAC cemeteries, and more particularly the annual ANZAC Day, have a pretty obvious nationalist theme alongside their express purpose as a war memorial, but they've got nothing on the Turkish cemeteries. According to our tour guide, the government (and particularly AK Party) has been working to rebuild Turkish pride surrounding the Gallipoli campaign, recasting it as a nationalist religious shrine for the Turkish martyrs who fell at Gallipoli in defense of Islam. Every day, AKP foots the bill to bring busloads of conservative-minded lower class Istanbullus to Gallipoli to be reminded of the martyrs of yesteryear.

The Turkish casualties buried in the Gallipoli cemeteries are referred to as religious martyrs (which is not particular to Gallipoli, admittedly - the staunchly secular military refers to all of its casualties that way) and gazi - the Turkish word that is essentially equivalent to mujihadeen. The Turkish cemeteries include prominent mihrab, the key component that makes a mosque a mosque, reemphasizing the religious air of the sites. It seems pretty incredible for these to be funded by an ostensibly secularist state (particularly at a battlefield where Ataturk himself was the commanding officer!).

Dr. Shields commented on the danger of AKP attempting to hitch Islamism onto the nationalist machine that Turkey has perfected over the years, but didn't expand on where that danger lay. As we stood at the remains of the ANZAC trenches listening to our tour guide speak in an Australian about the conditions of the ANZAC soldiers on campaign, and a Turkish tour guide stood twenty feet away at the Ottoman trenches telling a headscarved crowd about (presumably) the conditions of the Turkish martyrs on campaign, I ticked off the potential dangers in my head.

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Equating national pride with Islam and Islamism with national identity can help to rapidly expand the party's support base, but it might increase the risk of eventual conflict with a military and Kemalist elite that find such manipulation of their own manipulation of the public perception distasteful.

While most Islamist parties have in the past been virulently anti-Western, AKP has distinguished itself by pushing for both Islamism and Westernization. While encouraging Turkish nationalism may help their push for Islamism (though it's unlikely), glorifying a battle between Turkey and the West as a clash between Islam and the infidel can hardly help their attempts at Westernization.

Secular nationalism and Islamism provide diametrically opposed sources of social cohesion that allow Turkish polity to swing from one extreme to the other - it's not a particularly stable system but it works. AKP's decision to equate itself with its ideological opponent may make for good propaganda in the short run but if the ideas become too inextricably linked it could be catastrophic for both movements later on. So long as the two remain separate, there is always a viable alternate base for national cohesion. But if, as Erdoğan once claimed, democracy is a train from which one can disembark on reaching one's destination, perhaps nationalism is a bus from which one can do the same.

As we finished at the trenches and continued our survey of ANZAC cemeteries, we noticed that the bus of the faithful had broken down. It was being pushed to the next Turkish shrine by a number of men determined to continue the pilgrimage.

Maşallah.

Ha!

No one talk to me about my camera being inferior to all those 10-pound bricks people are hauling around. If my camera was so terrible, could it have taken... this?

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I win.

Eyups and downs

We went up the Golden Horn today to see Eyup, which is the name of Muhammed's standard bearer who fell during the Prophet's attempt to take Constantinople, the mosque complex that was built around his tomb by the Ottomans, and the entire city district surrounding that mosque. We visited all three.

The district of Eyup seemed, by and large, much like every other district of Istanbul. The sun shone, the flowers bloomed, etc. The one startling difference was the considerable portion of the area that's been set aside as a huuuuuuge cemetery for those wishing to be buried close to Eyup (the man, not the building or the district). Dr. Shields noted that, apart from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Eyup's tomb is one of the closest connections Muslims have to Muhammed, so it's pretty key.

Eyup Mosque is the primary site for boys' circumcision ceremonies, which take place when they are around ten (!) years old. This is apparently done regardless of the day-to-day religiousity of the child's family, meaning that Turks from every point along the spectrum of Islam seen in Istanbul collect at Eyup. They provide a fascinating picture of Turkey's struggle to be Western and Muslim simultaneously.

At one end you have fully covered women approaching Eyup's tomb with all due reverence, touching the screen that surrounds it with trembling fingers, occasionally weeping in the process, and backing away from the tomb as they leave. Somewhere further along the spectrum you have well-dressed women wearing fashionably-colored headscarves that are so badly positioned it's clear they've worn one perhaps twice before in their life. At the absolute far end of the spectrum you have our tour guide for the day, who, when I asked about the people praying towards Eyup's tomb and how that squares with Islam's forbidding praying towards any kind of intercessor between man and God, laughingly replied "Oh, ignorant people believe all sorts of silly things about religion."

As I reflect I suppose this isn't too different from the religious spectrum in the States, yet somehow the spread in Turkey seems more... dire. Perhaps because we've had 250 years to get used to the separation of church and state while Turkey's only had 75, perhaps because secularism and Islamism can be (and are) the founding philosophies of major political parties, I am far more unsure about Turkey's ability to reconcile disparate religious elements.

Come full circle

Our two-week excursion around the prominent places of Turkey is imminent. To bid a temporary farewell to the city we know and love so much, we hosted a grand soirée on our terrace this evening. Fruits, nuts, cheeses, and... well... a whole lot more fruits were the centerpiece.

At one point I was talking with a rather bemused Hande (our redoubtable Turkish teacher) after she'd been accosted by Edward and had some high-fiving strategy explained to her. Clearly clueless as to what had just happened, she turned to me and said "Fransiz kaldim."

Now, not speaking Turkish I had zero idea what this meant. "Fransiz kaldim yourself," I replied. "I'm glad you think so?"

She explained that the phrase translated as 'I was French' and was used colloquially to mean that you were being slow and weren't getting the point of a discussion. I laughed and commented that that expression said a lot about Franco-Turk relations, with which Hande agreed.

Considering 150 years ago the Turks were building Dolmabahce to be like the French, and 75 years ago Ataturk was trying to drag Turkey towards French Europeanism kicking and screaming, colloquial expressions that equate Frenchness with stupidity seem like something rather new. Or, if not new, perhaps hearkening back to an earlier era when the Ottomans regarded the Europeans as a bunch of unwashed barbarians hitting each other with sticks.

Cheers to dysentery!

Gentle readers. I have been doing my best to keep this blog chronological in its updates, even when that means delaying the interesting, nay, gripping, nay, riveting tales of my exploits by several days. I have done this in the name of Science and Modernity. This post, however, is not about me. It is about you. It is a public service announcement to all those who might someday go to Turkey.

WHEN IN TURKEY, A BRAGGART'S CLAIMS THAT HIS DIGESTIVE SYSTEM IS PROOF AGAINST THE WORST THE COUNTRY HAS TO OFFER MAY COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM.

The following is a morality tale. Attend. Those of you with fainter hearts may not want to continue.

For the past several days the brave members of BFRS:Turkey have been falling victim, like monkeys off the bed, to a variety of stomach ailments. Me being me, I stood strong against all these ailments, and dismissed those who suffered as the mean possessors of inferior constitutions. Yet tonight I find myself eating my words (but little else), for the latest to be struck down by the foul plague over Istanbul is yours truly.

The stage was set earlier today when I downed a ginourmous loaf of bread and half a can of strawberry jam for breakfast. Why did I do this? I don't know - it seemed like a good idea at the time. I felt a little queasy afterwards but I continued with my day. I saw some sights, I read some readings, I did the general Istanbul shuffle. I finished the day, like any good Istanbullu does, with a döner.

Returning to the flat I engaged in a series of academic pursuits for a period of a few hours. Feeling a need to relieve myself (and feeling, I will admit, slightly gaseous as well) I made for the water closet, only to discover that the water closet wasn't so watery after all - our water had been cut off. An act of the utilities company? An act of nature? An act of God? You be the judge.

Feeling some gastronomic distress, I determined to man up and wait out the lack of water. The next several hours were characterized by growing intestinal discontent and the looming conviction that the water had better resume soon. In the end, at about 12:30, I allowed that the Man, whichever Man it might have been, had won, and I had lost. I headed to the loo resigned to relieve myself regardless of the consequences.

So picture me perched, now, on the potty, growing gradually less gassy. I became aware of a rumbling in my chest. "Good heavens," I said aloud. "That's quite a rumbling in my chest." And these are, of course, my exact words, recorded verbatim for authenticity's sake. "This would be a singularly inconvenient time to projectile vomit." But of course, that is what I did.

My potty perch had been transformed into an inelegant sprawl upon the floor. My innards were leaking out from both ends, and as I lay there in the welter of my gore I could barely imagine the time I'd have cleaning the bathroom with no running water. Again I heard a rumbling in the distance. "My word!" I said aloud. "How many rumblings can a single night have? God, sir, have some heart!" And God did. The rumbling became a roar, and the water returned, and I reflected in silence on the lessons I'd learned. Bulimia's not a good way to make oneself thinner, and we all should beware the one dollar döner dinner.

Because, in all seriousness, I suspect that the döner dinner did it. This could be an illusory connection brought on by it being the last thing I ate, or by me being very graphically reminded of having eaten it about an hour ago. But what do you think, readers who have read this far? Was it the döner? Was it the tea with jam and bread that I had for breakfast? Was it the water, bottled though it may have been? Or was it Feruz Ahmed's Turkey: The Quest for Identity, which I have been incapable of finishing? Which was the culprit? I welcome your input.

A final thank you, however, goes to God. I don't know who turned the water off, and ultimately I don't care. I do know that the providential timing of its return could only have been due to divine intervention, and for it I am truly grateful.

You should all thank me that there are no pictures in this post.

Panic.

Some of us just took a casual stroll around the neighborhood and found three mosques we'd never seen, one built by Sinan, a charming cafe at which we'd never eaten, and many other things we'd never suspected existed.

I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO SEE EVERYTHING WONDERFUL IN THIS CITY.

Sorry there's no erudite observations today. I'm too busy being frantic.

Assimilator or assimilatee?

But about that Hagia Sofia thing. It is phenomenally huge. Seriously. Words cannot describe how big this thing is. Apparently, after it was built Emperor Justinian came in, looked around, and said "Solomon, I have outdone you." So yeah, it's pretty big, about as big as Justinian's ego.

Aya Sofya began, of course, as a Byzantine church.

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But it was converted into a mosque soon after the Ottomans set up shop in 1453 (by soon after I mean immediately after - Mehmet took the city on May 28th and Aya Sofya was rededicated as a mosque later that afternoon).

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Obviously the minarets took a little bit longer to be put up.

Aya Sofya typifies the Ottoman practice of converting churches into mosques. They became quite adept at it, though really it wasn't a particularly complicated process - put up some minarets, plunk a mihrab in the corner, whitewash anything explicitly Christian, and, last but not least, affix some big ole seals of Islamicity to the whole thing.

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Interesting thing about the big circley things in Aya Sofya, actually. They're too big to have been brought in through the gates, so they were probably built on site inside the building. Wow!

For several hundred years the Ottomans did a pretty good job of assimilating anything useful from the West (and for a while there was little enough of that) and making it Turkish. Somewhere, though, that changed. They went through a brief period where they should have been assimilating a lot more than they were (the printing press was ignored for a terribly long time). Later, as it dawned on them that the West was in many ways winning the race towards... um... winning... they began trying to assimilate themselves into the West in whatever ways possible. The Ottomans eagerly imitated European cities' love of tulips and European militaries' love of bands, not realizing that both of these things were originally Ottoman characteristics that the Europeans had themselves imitated centuries before. Such examples are humorous, yet they're also rather tragic at the same time. The Ottomans were clearly capable at one point of discerning which European innovations to imitate, as well as doing some innovating themselves. Yet at some point they seem to have lost that and begun imitating Europe wholesale.

Thank God they're not doing that anymore.