Monday, July 15, 2013

Image Problems and Topography

Turkey, and Istanbul particularly, benefits from the East meets West image of the region, so much that it trades in stereotypes. The food is a proud mix of West Asian and European cuisines, the people are all sorts of tan and brown colors, and the area is even called Asia Minor. Turkey is a fascinating mixture of disparate cultures and languages (now), but the problem is exactly that it’s a mixture, not a solution. The people are friendly in the park forums, but there are severe cleavages in Turkish society. Ethnic, social and religious groups identify themselves by their Turkish narrative, but there is only some overlap in the narratives and completely different readings of Turkey’s history.

Sometimes what we've seen in the political arena is less East meets West, and more East vs. West.

What I expected in Istanbul was some glistening oasis straddling the Mediterranean, which I immediately found wrong, having not consulted a map, apparently. The vibrant Europe I expected was replaced by neighborly köys. The quaint Turkish villages I expected were replaced by incredible traffic and businessmen.  The Islam I expected was confronted by demands for a more secular state, but the secularism I expected is 99% Muslim. This all speaks to my surprising ignorance of everything, especially of the Middle East as it actually exists, but it also speaks to the availability of completely different, authentic Turkish experiences. 

It was made clear to me that the other American interns at Mazlumder had seen a different Turkey and had a slightly skewed image of what was going in Turkey. They were staying in Fatih, the most conservative part of Istanbul, and had to get picked up and dropped off at work. They were losing their minds from the closure and I think that losing the opportunity to wander around and stare or be stared at depressed them. One of their coordinators said there were no good places in Istanbul to drink. That wasn't a joke he told, he outright stated that drinking was not commonplace. 

As I previously hyperlinked, Erdogan has gone on record denying that the national drink is a liquor called rakı, and instead this salty yogurt drink, ayran, and some recent laws have attempted to constrict the drinking culture, but what? People get drunk in Istanbul. There are many liquor stores and the cheap beer is safer to drink than tap water. And even though it's Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) in a majority Muslim state, the bars are by no means empty. That doesn't speak to Turkey as a whole, but you're in Istanbul, the New York (and New York exceptionalism) of Turkey. It's different here, but people argue endlessly about the nature and legitimacy of this difference.

One of the ways you can clearly see the cleavages in society is touring through the town. Fatih has all the ancient mosques and Ottoman and Byzantine buildings with engravings of ancient architects and visiting mathematicians, and the like. If you walked around all day in Fatih and never left (could never leave), as many tourists do, you would think the nation is full of observant Muslims, beautiful and ancient architecture and cheap, knock-off items like you'd find on Canal Street. 

On the other hand, I walked up past my little neighborhood to Levent and I was amazed by the wide streets, carved skyscrapers and smoggy orange sky. There was a hypercorporate Levantine oasis mere blocks from Ortaköy. It was impressive and manicured with cavernous malls and American and European fast food chains, a far cry from the cobblestones blocks away. 

The strangest and most visual difference is on Dolmabahçe road, the thoroughfare I take to work, with its blown up images of Atatürk kissing babies and staring through periscopes. There isn't an attempt to connect the history of the founding of the republic to the realities of the pictures, so they're fixed anachronistically, onto the sides of road where taxi drivers could care less. Likewise, in all government buildings (in a country where the bureaucracy was byzantine, there many state and municipal buildings) a large, more than life size picture of Atatürk is required to adorn the walls. Every building has a corner for Atatürk.

There is a strong connection to Kemalist tradition and the education system here pushes how glorious Kemal Atatürk was with his revolution, and that is apparent with the reverent images of the man throughout Turkey. İsmet İnönü, another founder of Turkey, has a stadium named after him near Taksim. You'll see his or Atatürk's gilded head literally jutting out of buildings

The prominent presence of Atatürk in the architecture of Istanbul demands the attention of a deity of a civil religion. Kemalism is an official narrative; even the religious conservative parties have to harken to nationalist sentiments. It's a major voting bloc. What's interesting is that it runs counter to the Muslim narrative of Turkey. The "only functioning secular Muslim democracy" schtick, like the East meets West, unravels when you examine it. The narratives don't coalesce, they stand opposite each other, especially further away from the Kurdish narrative also gaining national credence. The protests of the last two months have shown that the Turkish public takes quite seriously the identity and story of the nation, and go to the streets to demand their own narrative.

Turkey is facing serious image problems, not just in the region and in the Western media, but from inside. It hasn't sorted out its own history, still fighting Armenia on the semantics of genocide from 100 years ago. The Kurdish people have only been able to speak Kurdish openly in recent history. Declaring yourself a non-Muslim on your state identification takes incredible effort and only certain groups, like the Rum Orthodox Christian people, have permission to do it. 

"Turkey is a nation of contradictions" is also a stereotype, but it's accurate. Turkey is a nation of disparate realities, village life and pleated shirts and 300,000 Syrian refugees and EU aspirations and secular folks in the streets and 99% Islam. I don't think secession is the most viable solution to the problems created by these contradictions, but Turkey needs to find some common ground. 

None of these groups are disappearing. No one is going to drastically change their life, at this point. The government and Turkish society needs to find ways to better integrate these groups and halt the polarization deepening the ridges between them. It starts with new rhetoric and education. 

I don't know where it goes after that. Maybe I'll take a class.

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