A Turkish lesson in nation building

In its campaign to spread democracy, Washington reckons one of the key players should be Turkey, which it holds up as an example of how a successful democracy can flourish within an Islamic society. But some Turks are wary of this close relationship.

Good reporting from the BBC.

The Cavernous Divide

As the number of billionaires in the world expands, so does the number of those in poverty.

Check it out at AlterNet.

Saturday, March 19th, 2005

Today finds me back in Ankara, after five weeks in the sunny cit of İskenderun. It had to happen, but I’m still sad about it.

Anyway, I’m tired so I won’t write much. The bus ride was fine… long, but fine. However, I did have the best döner I’ve ever had in my life at some roadside café… I’m not sure if it was because I was hungry, or because of the durum style, (like a wrap, but with thick bread), but I scarfed it down with unbridled joy! I would have had another, but it was so filling and tasty, I decided that a second would only lead to regrets.

Good grief, what am I talking about. Anyway, on Sunday I’m going to a football match with my friend Mehmet, so I’ll report back. Now it’s off to bed!

Oh wait, before I do… my travel plans have changed. I found a great priced ticket, to I’m leaving İstanbul on the 30th and heading to Chicago, where my life-long neighbor and friend Shawn will be waiting for me. What a great way to come back home… greeted by a good friend.

So yes, my days here are really numbered. The countdown begins…

Turkey's campaign to educate women

Turkey's campaign to educate women is a very recent BBC story on some grassroots activities in Turkey to boost women's rights, something which I feel is lacking here.

I really am curious about the number of these types of organizations. One thing that I have viewed here (and if there are any Turks reading, please feel free to prove me wrong, it will make me happy) is that grassroots organizations like these are generally viewed as criticism of the government, therefore a threat to national security. There is a great fear here of forces working to "pull our unified country apart". I have asked frequently about organizations like the one in the article, but people either have no idea what I'm talking about or get very reactionary and defensive about their government's efforts. Dissent on the status quo is often looked at as heinous or illegal.

Anyway, check it out, it's good stuff.

Wednesday, March 16th, 2004

Yesterday after work, I drove with Ebru, Hasan and Mustafa (Bir) up the nearby mountain to a place named Sözlük. We had a marvelous late afternoon view of İskenderun, which you can see here:



It was an interesting place. The contrast was huge: shanty villages next to opulent summer getaways. Apparently rich people in the area have two summer house: one by the sea, for when they want a swim, and the other up in the mountains, so they can stay cool.

Hasan really wanted us to go to a very run down little village. We arrived and maneuvered our way through the tiny streets, lined with old men sitting near the doors of their houses, and plenty of old ladies with baggy pants and headscarves (something you don’t see in İskenderun). Finally we turned up at a crumbling foundation that was mostly a pile of rubble.

“This is my mother’s old house,” Hasan proudly stated. She had lived here a long time ago. Hasan actually grew up in the area, but in a different (and hopefully much nicer) house. It was very interesting to see this teacher, who is fairly comfortable by Turkish standards, standing in the surrounds of his no doubt poverty stricken childhood. What a change to go through. His family must be very proud of him.

It was a fun time, and also very profound. I feel like I understand a bit more about Hasan now.

Thank you Rachel!!!!

Rachel, my lovely sister...

I'm sorry, I read your your blog after I had posted to mine, so I didn't have your name listed. And I forgot to go back and change it once I read your nice message.

So, thank you for the birthday well-wishes, Rachel. They were very nice.

Hopefully now I'm not a poophead!

See? Some Americans aren't that bad...

This is a hysterical, real life photo from an actual American company that is doing something really funny. My dad sent it to me and I was greatly entertained.

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News is an article that came out in the New York Times yesterday, exposing the greater public to the propoganda our goverment has been subjecting us to (and paid for with our tax dollars) through staged news segments aired on many television networks across the country. It's a fascinating read and worth registering that the NYTimes website in order to check out.

If you really can't be bothered (shame on you), at least read Not Necessarily the News, a transcript of an interview about the article.

I can't wait to come home to all of this.

Tuesday, March 15th, 2004

Hi hi hi. Thanks for all the birthday emails yesterday, all four of you. Mom, dad, Stephanie and Ben Luginbuhl… you guys are the best. The rest of you are… as I often say in Turkey… “çok bombok.”

I think it’s time for an update on my life plans. My time in Turkey is running short. I know that a scattering of people all around the world are having an at least passable time following my exploits. Unfortunately, all things must pass.

I’m heading back to my main base in Ankara later this week, most probably on Friday. No more Mediterranean for me. İskenderun has been good, but my work here is pretty much finished. When I get back to Ankara, I will spend the week reacquainting myself with old friends and preparing for the CCID visit to Turkey which begins on the 25th.

I’ll be flying to İstanbul, where I will greet a delegation of instructors and administrators from three different community colleges in the USA. My dad will be among them, as CCID is his organization! We’ll spend some time at İstanbul University’s technical college, and see some sights. Then, it’s back to Ankara, with meetings at the American Embassy, with the Turkish Higher Council of Education, and random others that I don’t even know about.

The instructors will be spending their time at the two schools I have worked at: Çankırı and İskenderun. But I’ll be with my dad and another of his colleagues in the capital.

And following this, I will most probably return to the states!

The time has gone so quickly. I feel both horrible and wonderful about returning home. There is a lot that I’ll miss about Turkey. Mostly the friendships I’ve made. There are some cultural things here that make me squirm sometimes, but all in all it’s a wonderful place. I’m already dreading the shock of fitting back into the consumer-driven, materialistic and non-thinking society that I call home. We’ll see what happens. I can always self-medicate…

I really like blogging, so I’ll probably start a new one. I was in a restaurant the other day, and eating all these tasty salads that they just bring out as part of the meal (no cost) and I was thinking… these salads are so nice. But in America, we’d never get them, because most of the customers would probably complain and say “Ewww… what is this stuff? Blah, blah blah.” So we get iceberg lettuce and a few tomatoes. And gross Ranch dressing. What is this stuff?

Salad for the masses.

Then I was thinking about starting a new blog, and I realized that most of what I say is absolutely useless. Just like our unexciting appetizers. So my new blog will be called “Salad for the Masses.” The goal will be to bore you all with the mundane details of my life, such as what music I’m listening to, what board games I’ve played recently, who I think stinks at the moment (whether I’ve met them or not), and whatever else I can think of. You will all be truly bored.

And then maybe you’ll all start eating tastier salads.

Women; our women

Here's an article from today's Turkish Daily News, highlighting some of the incredibly unpleasant events that led up to World Women's Day on the 8th. Crazily enough, although this has been in the news for some time now, many of the teachers at our school did not even know that it had happened.

Dogu ERGİL

Although a few days late, I wholeheartedly congratulate the women of our country and the world, for their show of solidarity on “World Women's Day,” commemorated on March 8. Women's equality and freedom have been the litmus test of democracy, social justice and discrimination of all sorts in our day. If this statement seems too hypothetical or abstract, one should observe the mass beating (not meeting) of women on the streets of Istanbul, who were trying to commemorate their international day, seizing the opportunity, in part, by chanting slogans of various ideological leanings. Their enthusiasm was matched by the police force, who tried their kickboxing skills and effective club use on women's sensitive organs, skills that must have been acquired during their new “riot control” training consistent with EU standards.

Yet their rather effective measures were bitterly (for some, insultingly) criticized by the EU Troika that met with Turkish authorities in Ankara the following day. Most Turkish officials got furious about these criticisms. Some said that “the police were provoked” (if not by chants, by what?), some tried to protect the police by claiming that most of those demonstrations were illegal because permission was not obtained from the governor's office. But none of the officials could explain the disproportionate use of force against women who only cheered and chanted.

This conflict revealed two basic qualities of Turkish culture that is an indication of its incomparability with more liberal cultures. One is political in nature; the other is social. However, they compliment each other:

1) Primacy of state over society. Rights are apportioned to the citizens as privileges by executive initiative in return for obedience.

2) Primacy of men over women that take the shape of discrimination against the latter especially in conservative sectors of the society. Male dominance of women is intertwined with state dominance of society, both of which reinforces authoritarian traits in political and social life.

The official rhetoric of the government was protective of the police, as usual, despite obvious misdemeanor. Why? Because the police are primarily charged with upholding the established order and its power structure. Defending the rule of law is secondary in state centered political systems. Criticizing excesses in the practices of the security apparatus is taken as criticism of the whole system, with its existing hierarchy. The belief of those in power is such that when one goes down, so do the other echelons of the official structure and hierarchy. This is why legal scrutiny of the bureaucracy and official cadres of the state has always been problematic in Turkey. This is the root cause of most power abuses and corruption. This is why Turkey is so much in debt due to corruption while she has failed to achieve zero tolerance against torture. No wonder the country appears under the “semi-free” category of the reliable international scale of the Freedom House research institution that measure and compares basic freedoms and liberties in each country.

Regarding being a victim of traditionalism that affect women as lack of education, gainful employment and being subjected to systematic in-house violence, public beating of women did not seem as an extraordinary phenomenon to our authorities. They dwelled on two concepts: provocation and illegal demonstration. Let us assume, for a moment that the police were provoked, but with what? It was not violence that caused them to react, it was chanting and shouting without official permission and in the name of illegal organizations. World history is full of banned organizations of one time or another emerging and eventually becoming favored political parties. More importantly, there is no legal justification to beat and cripple people for chanting words of protest during peaceful demonstrations, especially after adopting laws as part of EU reforms. Why then?

Considering that nearly 70 percent of Turkish women are subject to violence of some sort at home by their husbands, as revealed by research data, the reactions of the police against “cocky, insolent” women may simply be a “normal” reflex born out of daily practice. Conditioned by authoritarian politics and culture alike, both the bureaucracy and politicians (of the incumbent AKP) condoned, or at best, did not renounce the beating of woman. How else can we interpret the following statements?

- The Istanbul police chief: “Police use force. This is his right. Transgression of the allowable degree of force and behavior ought to be judged by the judiciary.”

- The prime minister: “The police were provoked. The members of TUSIAD (Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen that criticized the act) should be concerned with their businesses and leave politics to the executives.”

Both of these statements are exemplary of the dominance of the state over society and politics over law. The first portrays the police as the punishing hand of the state, like that of the shepherd tending the flock, disciplining it when necessary. The other statement totally misses the meaning of politics as collective decision-making, power sharing and collective scrutiny of executives' deeds. The prime minister still believes that politics is a privilege of politicians and executed by the government. How unfortunate!

If the government believes that it can discipline the people at will disregarding internationally acknowledged legal standards, how in the world can we prevent men in their pajamas from beating women at home or in their uniforms on the streets?

How many years is it going to take to adopt EU values and standards?!

Monday, March 14th 2005

Well, today is my birthday. It’s been 24 glorious years… thanks to all for the presents, messages, and flames. I appreciate it all.

Since Monday night is not very convenient for partying when you have to work the next day, we decided to have a birthday celebration on Friday night. So after a lovely dinner at Ebru’s house, I went to the Olta Bar with Hasan, Mustafa Bir, Mustafa Iki, and Ebru. There was a great band playing traditional “art” music, and the beer was cheap and plentiful! We stayed until midnight or so, drinking, laughing and generally enjoying ourselves.

There was even a surprise birthday cake! I also received some gifts: a nice collection of combs. My hair has been a running joke here (some people think it’s a little unruly). Everyone conspired and bought combs for my presents, so now I have one for each day of the week. I even used one today. It felt weird.

We ended the night by walking along the coast, back to Ebru’s house. I finally got dropped off at my place and into my bed by about 3 am. Quite a night! My first birthday in Turkey…



This photo is of me making a rude Turkish gesture. Unfortunatley it was blocked by an overzealous (and probably tipsy) Hasan, so it has to be left to your imagination.



And here’s one of us walking back to Ebru’s house. From left to right: Mustafa Bir, me, and Mustafa Iki. Bir is Turkish for one, and iki is two. Since they are both Mustafas, this is the easiest way!

P.S. I realize that I look very stupid in these photographs. So please, no comments!!!

Father novelists

Elif ŞAFAK

The entire family of fruits is simply fascinating. There are some fruits that right away tell you what is inside them, buried deep underneath. Take grapes, for instance; you look at it and you know instantaneously that the outside and the inside is more or less the same. There are no big surprises when you are eating grapes. But then there are some other fruits that look like one thing on the outside, and a completely different thing inside.

Take watermelons, for instance. There is no way of telling what is inside a watermelon by just glancing at the outside. Turkish patriarchy resembles the second model. On the surface this society is so modern and women have been “given” the legal, social, and economic rights for emancipation, starting with the right to elect and be elected. Comparatively speaking this society's gender relations have been like no other country in the Muslim Middle East. The watermelon looks green and firm on the outside. But take a step forward. Cut the watermelon in half and take a look inside. Surprise! It is not green but red; it is not firm but mushy. Inside you will find a patriarchal society which profoundly, systematically adores its paternal figures. I cannot help but wonder: Is this society, despite its history and age, still that symbolic orphan that the Ottoman male elite had wanted to turn it into, a boy in need of a father?

I don't know if the reason why I am asking this question is because I, unlike the overwhelming majority of my peers during my childhood in Ankara, have been raised by a proud, progressive single mother. But here is the question: Where does Turkish society's systematic need for symbolic fathers come from? Father politicians, father TV anchormen, and father coaches… Why do we first create and then deify them? More than all other fathers in all other spheres, it is the tradition of and the need for Father Novelists that interests and bugs me most.

Novels can present an excellent venue to read and study not only fiction but also the gist of the society in which they were written. As Serif Mardin argued, evaluating the venture of Turkish modernization by concentrating on its novels and novellas can provide us with a deeper insight into the issues until now pushed to the margins of mainstream academia. Broadly speaking literature, all around the world, among all forms of art, has retained a privileged position in projects of culture-building. Literature promoted the collective internalization of norms, conventions, and symbols. Nevertheless, the significance of literature's constitutive role becomes all the more visible in countries like Turkey, in those cases of belated modernity where rather than the civil society it was the state -- THE STATE -- that played the main role in the process of social transformation. Herein literature was not one of the many constitutive forces, but the constitutive force of the nation-building process.

Likewise, as Jale Parla indicates, Turkish modernization made its epistemological break through literature in general and novels in particular, rather than through any other cultural, intellectual or artistic channel of expression. Early Turkish novelists were almost all male, coming from wealthy or influential families, and either educated in the West or with Western teachers, and deeply affiliated with Western culture, which does not mean that they did not want to retain their cultural difference as they interpreted it. Moreover, they were almost all employed in a branch of the state apparatus. They were in other words state employees. And that should give us an idea about their limits.

More significantly perhaps, early Turkish novelists wrote fiction with a mission in mind: a task to guide their readers in an era of great upheavals. A mission to educate the masses and to show them right from wrong. Rarely did they place a character in a novel haphazardly or because the story demanded so. Instead, every single character in these novels was deliberately located so as to represent something larger. Every character is a representative of an identity or community or ideology. That is why there have been more typologies than personalities in a large number of Turkish novels. Thus the characters these novelists created, the stories they conveyed and the language they used were all deliberately chosen as parts of a broader project of modernization.

The genre of the novel has been seen as a primarily cerebral activity, some sort of a cultural engineering in which the novelist was assumed to be above: above its plot, above its characters, above the book and finally above its readers. Ever since then this trend keeps coming with us. We like to see novelists as primarily father novelists.

What happens if you are a female novelist? Now that is a problem. Fortunately there is a solution, actually there are two solutions. Two magic potions you can resort to depending on what suits you best.You can age as quickly as you can and jump from the category of “young” to the category of “old woman” for the latter, unlike the former are respected. (It is no coincidence that women in the Middle East age more quickly than women in the West.) Or you can stay at the age you are but de-feminize yourself. That too is a good way to earn society's respect. Don't look feminine, don't act feminine. De-sexualize de-feminize yourself as much as possible so that when the readers look at you they don't see a woman anymore but something closer to a father intellectual. That too is a strategy widely practiced among intellectual Turkish women.

I propose another method: let's not age before our age, let's not de-feminize our bodies or souls. Instead let's confront this deeply-rooted need in our culture for paternal figures. Let's crack this watermelon…

Pictures of Walls

Here is a great website I recently stumbled upon. Note the Boards of Canada reference in the linked picture.

Homegrown Osamas

Here's an article from the New York Times that Hannah sent me. You can read it there but the bandits make you register, so I've posted the text here also.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Before the "Rev. Dr." Matt Hale, the white racist leader, was arrested for seeking the murder of a federal judge, and long before the judge returned home last week to find her husband and mother murdered, I had lunch with him.

Mr. Hale, who is smart, articulate and malignant, ranted about "race betrayers" as he picked at his fruit salad: "Interracial marriage is against nature. It's a form of bestiality."

"Oh?" I replied. "Incidentally, my wife is Chinese-American."

There was an awkward silence.

Mr. Hale was convicted last year of soliciting the murder of Federal District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. Now the police are investigating whether there is any link between Mr. Hale or his followers and the murders. Some white supremacists celebrated the killings, but Mr. Hale has strongly denied any involvement.

The possibility that extremists carried out the murders for revenge or intimidation sends a chill through our judicial system, because it would then constitute an assault on our judiciary itself. Throughout U.S. history, only three federal judges have been murdered, but all three murders occurred after 1978 and all at their homes.

Threats to federal judges and prosecutors have increased sharply since they began to be tabulated 25 years ago, but the attack on Judge Lefkow's family, if it was related to her work, would take such threats to a new level. Who would want to be a judge if that risked the lives of loved ones?

Whatever the circumstances of those murders, Mr. Hale provides a scary window into a niche of America that few of us know much about. Since 9/11, we've focused almost exclusively on the risk of terrorism from Muslim foreigners, but we have plenty of potential homegrown Osamas.

I interviewed Mr. Hale in 2002 because I had heard that he was becoming a key figure in America's hate community, recruiting followers with a savvy high-tech marketing machine. Over lunch in East Peoria, Ill., he described how as a schoolboy he had become a racist after seeing white girls kissing black boys.

"I felt nauseous," he told me earnestly.

Mr. Hale said attacks on race-betrayers and "mud people" were understandable but a waste of time. "Suppose someone goes out and kills 10 blacks tonight," he said, shrugging. "Well, there are millions more."

What troubled me most about Mr. Hale was not his extremist views, but his obvious organizational ability and talent to inspire his followers. When he was denied a law license in 1999 because of his racist views, a follower went on a rampage and shot 11 people - all blacks, Asians or Jews.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, American law enforcement authorities cracked down quite effectively on domestic racists and militia leaders. But Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors 760 hate groups with about 100,000 members, notes that after 9/11, the law enforcement focus switched overwhelmingly to Arabs.

The Feds are right to be especially alarmed about Al Qaeda. But we also need to be more vigilant about the domestic white supremacists, neo-Nazis and militia members. After all, some have more W.M.D. than Saddam.

Two years ago, for example, a Texan in a militia, William Krar, was caught with 25 machine guns and other weapons, a quarter-million rounds of ammunition, 60 pipe bombs and enough sodium cyanide to kill hundreds of people.

We were too complacent about Al Qaeda and foreign terrorists before 9/11. And now we're too complacent about homegrown threats.

Mr. Hale handed me some of his church's gospels, including "The White Man's Bible" - which embarrassed me at the airport when I was selected for a random security screening and the contents of my bag laid out on a table. Then, even though the screeners apparently believed that I was a neo-Nazi with violent, racist tracts, they let me board without any further check.

That "White Man's Bible" says: "We don't need the Jews, the [blacks], or any other mud people. ... We have the fighting creed to re-affirm the White Man's triumph of the will as heroically demonstrated by that greatest of all White leaders - Adolf Hitler. So let us get into the fight today, now! You have no alibi, no other way out, White Man! It's either Fight or Die!"

So we don't have to go to Saudi Arabia to find violent religious extremists steeped in hatred for all America stands for. Wake up - they're here.