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.