Turkish Children Speak the Truth...

From a friend's classroom:

Question: "What are some reasons that people are treated badly?"

Answer: "The Turkish people"


There was no period... but I wonder whether the child intended to complete the sentence.

THIS is our TOOTHPASTE...

Which we use after eating our cookies.



And people still say there is no racism in Turkey.

Pete, Pete, and Repeat walk into a bar...

Let me try to connect the dots...

I've been listening to a podcast called "The Best of the Left", and last week there was a discussion about metaphorical echo chambers. According to Wikipedia, "the term echo chamber is any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an 'enclosed' space." I gather it is not an actual enclosed space, but instead the simple act of talking to, reading, or listening to opinions that already agree with one's own (thus reinforcing them as correct).

When you hear someone say, "you're preaching to the choir," they are basically saying to you that the echo chamber of your relationship is redundant, in this case.

The point made in the podcast, or what caught my ear, dealt with a study that sought to determine whether readers of online news were ghettoizing themselves into echo chambers, and only reading information from sources that reflected their opinions.

Turns out, they don't, defying the expectations of researchers.

The study showed that bloggers and their readers alike, prefer to read what the other side is saying. Thus, ideologies are defined dialectically, in relation to one another, rather than through echo chambers. Blogs go a step further, creating a venue where people can interact with the "other" side. Posting comments to a blog is one example of how this process works, mechanically speaking.

Another nail in the coffin of the newspaper industry!

This relates to Turkey, in a minute...

I was raised, like most Americans, on the assumption of an objective media. The idea that journalism should report "just the facts, ma'am", and that the field brought with it none of the dishonest taints which accompany academia, politics, or discussions around the water-cooler.

Thus was I in for a shock, my first summer in Turkey. Myself a young leftist at the time, I learned through leftist friends of leftist newspapers and leftist magazines. These were clearly and aggressively ideological publications, and available in most news-stands (except those owned by the political right). A magazine rack provides a number of political stances, and while searching for one, a reader inevitably learns about others. Publications are also pressed to keep each other honest, because what could be more fun than discrediting your ideological foes.

Some of these papers are sufficiently extreme, that they are constantly being closed by the government, and then re-organizing under different names. One specifically, Gündem, used to print a "Victims" column, everyday featuring a journalist, lawyer, or revolutionary killed by the Turkish "Deep State". To carry Gündem in public was to declare to other Turks your ideological stance.

I remember a man in Tatvan, who was holding up his Gündem such that any passerby could see the headline and title as they passed. I felt that he wasn't reading, so much as making a statement about his politics, a proclamation of his leftist-ness.

Certainly, it was an act of defiance. Gündem was shut down in 2005.

The New York Times seems intended for hippy-pussies by comparison.

I noticed long ago that Turks are generally more politically aware. My political persuasion often differs from those with whom I speak, but there is clearly a mutual understanding of the political spectrum, the agents of political change, and the means available for exercising power. We disagree, but we understand one another. It's like we're speaking the same language, even though we're not.

Turkey is a military state. What I find interesting, is that with political action literally paralyzed by the threat of imprisonment or extra-state assassination, dissident voices constantly emerge from all points of the political spectrum. Their contribution to the larger conversation resonates meaningfully. The closest thing we have to this is Jon Stewart getting into an argument with Tucker Carlson.

Either ours is a fundamentally conservative country, or our leadership has complete control, for the differences between liberals and conservatives never come down to ideology, but rather policy. Americans all seem to want basically the same things. I know I'm failing to define this clearly, but I'll need to think on it more. The Turkish Left and Right want radically different things for Turkey (different from each other and different from what the Turkish state presently provides).

I could be wrong (and perhaps I ran from the America of my parents' generation, and not mine), but I get the sense Americans just want a middle/upper-middle class, college educated, nuclear family, lifestyle. Something which could be described as "Compassionate Capitalism", which is maybe also eco-friendly.

My ideology leads me to want collective ownership of the means of production and democratic participation in all levels of society, also maximization of local political authority into smaller geographic areas than nations (of our size) would be appreciated.

Those are distinctly different goals...

Some links on the right...

I'll be posting several links to other material on Turkey, the little gems that one runs into on the internet.

For now, there is only Arse About Fez, the site of a Brit living (I think) in Izmir. It's all funny, but take a look at the posts tagged "Fezasaurus" for a quick laugh. It's a list of ornate Turkish swears. The phrases are not nearly as interesting as their contexts and explanations, which are generally more bewildering than the chosen phrasing.

The list makes it clear to me, that I have for too long allowed myself to believe I really could swear well in Turkish. There always seems to be a bigger fish... amına koyayım.

1:02 minutes in Istanbul...

This is what my street sounded like at 11:21 this morning.

I like having the week off from work, cause it gives me time to actually live here.

The gentleman you hear yelling, intermittently, is selling pastries from a cart he is pushing through the street. He is one of several such men, who all push carts, either collecting or distributing something.

More on them later.

...

When I began cycling in the city, cars were a problem. Actually, cars were THE problem. I had my first near-death experience next to the Sisli Mosque, the first week I started riding. My death would've irked my parents to no end, having to travel to Istanbul and visit my grave in the grounds of the camii (Muslims bury their dead in the place they died).

I managed the car issue by learning the best times to ride, where to be when, and where to stay away from altogether. I've got a bajillion lights on my bike, and they are all bright enough that I only worry about the worst of drivers, these days.

Pedestrians presented the next obstacle. For whatever reason, I'm not deemed as serious a threat, by the Turkish pedestrian, as a car. In the opinion of any home-schooled physicist, I'm probably not. Still, I've been hit by a cyclist, and it sucks. The number one problem I've had with pedestrians, is that they step out in front of me within distances that my brakes cannot solve. I haven't hit anyone, yet, but I've come close. The deer-in-headlights effect that my squealing tires produces leaves me responsible for avoiding an accident. If it wouldn't hurt me too, I'd probably just roll on through them. Not injuries yet: so far, so good.

The latest threat on the road, as the economy turns people to more economic transport, is other bikes. Last night, lights flashing and obviously travelling quickly downhill, another biker pulled into my path.

I'm still not sure what to make of it.

This never happens...

After passing through the turnstile, while heading towards the escalator, a woman with Metro Security stopped Gregg and I to scan our bags. The hand-held metal/drug/bomb detector read our laptops as trouble, and we were asked to open our backpacks. A glance at the assortment of gym clothes and work papers and she let us go.

Busy with the task of profiling us, the obviously foreign John Does, a black man also walked past. If there is any single group of people who stand out more that WASPs, in Turkey, it's black people. I even catch myself staring at them, just cause there are so few around that I feel a surge of excitement when I see one on the street. It's probably the same feeling that a birdwatcher gets when sighting a rare bird.

Seeing that bag-checks were taking place, he actually asked if he should open his, but was waved on.

Maybe I've been watching too much of The Wire, but I'm seriously shocked that I live in a place so backward, that it fails to harass a black man...

He was even prepared to accept the profiling; ready to get it over with by opening the bag himself.

I wonder if he felt weird about the situation.