Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

I think today I’ll write a bit about the city. Ankara is an interesting place. It’s the capital city and much more modern than anywhere else in Turkey. But it’s an interesting sort of modern. A drab sort of modern. In most capital cities you find so many historical places, a great sense of time. Not here. A few tall buildings, busy streets, and apartment buildings everywhere. And it’s dirty. Turks have not yet figured out the importance of cleanliness, which is especially surprising considering my preconception of its value in Islam. There is trash everywhere.

Example: Süleyman and I were walking down the street, sharing some Turkish desert from a container. When we finished he threw it over his shoulder without a moment’s hesitation. It’s also common to see shopkeepers sweeping rubbish from their door, across the sidewalk, and into the street. In Çankiri, there is a small stream that runs through the town. It’s filled with rubbish: soda bottles, trash bags, rags, rotten fruit, cardboard boxes, and everything else. And yet people keep their homes immaculate. What a contradiction. It bothers me. When I speak with nationalists who are convinced Turkey will be a world power in 20 years, I’m often tempted to say, “Your people can’t even keep the street clean. How will you manage to run the world?” I haven’t yet said such a thing though.

Another thing is the large amount of air pollution. In Ankara it isn’t so bad, although it’s not good either. In Çankiri it was horrific. All the heating in Çankiri is done by coal. So once it gets cold there is a perpetual blanket of stinky smoke hovering over all the apartment buildings. This horrible haze that covers everything. Ankara has some natural gas heating, but most apartment buildings here do not. Once I woke up at about 5 a.m. in my dorm because of the smell. Almost suffocating. Which is better, to be too warm but able to breath, or comfortable but sucking in fumes? I chose to close the window, but I wasn’t happy about it.

It’s funny, most of the students I speak with don’t like being in Ankara. They speak with great fondness of Istanbul, or their home towns, and say that they can’t wait to leave. Even many faculty members complain about the city. History is so important to the Turkish people; perhaps the modernity doesn’t suit them as much as Atatürk hoped it would.

Another funny thing about Turkey is the rules. There are rules for everything. I’ll use my dorm as an example. There are rules for leaving to early and coming home too late. Every day between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. we must all sign a book saying that we are here. After 11 p.m. you must only whisper (except in the café), even though Turks don’t go to bed until much later. If I leave for the evening, I must sign a form saying I am leaving. And then they don’t let you back in until morning! When I get dinner I sign a form, and then take a plastic chip that says dinner on it. I walk about four feet, and then hand it to the person who lets me into the line for dinner! There are many more, but I won’t continue. It makes the Goshen College standards of living look like a heathen’s paradise! I now understand the meaning of “red tape” and why it’s a problem in Turkey.

Today at BIM I toured their server topography, and asked a lot of questions about the IT here. They are very advanced! The neatest thing by far was to see how much they use Linux. Debian Linux to be exact. It’s enabled them to invest far more money in hardware and bandwidth, since they don’t have to pay high licensing fees to use Microsoft operating systems. It’s the effective large scale use of Linux I’ve ever seen, and would make any open-source advocate very proud.

I’m making some good friendships in the department here. As always, the people are so warm and friendly. I can hardly believe my good fortune here… will things ever go badly?