When I say "gimmick"...

... you say "cheap".

50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:

"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."

He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.

Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.

Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"

Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!

Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.

It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here

Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.

Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.

Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.

Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.