Bosphorus Blues

Merhaba Arkadaşımlar,

I can hardly believe it has only been a month, it has felt as though I have been here for a year. I scheduled a fairly busy routine for myself, between studying, planning for the future and working at KOLT, but I find the time to mingle with Istanbul’s students too.

Every other weekend, I go to Taksim and Galata in the Beyoğlu district. It’s a great place to meet people from around the world and improve my Turkish. There are plenty of bilingual students at Koç University, but it’s a lot to demand from others to ask if they can help your Turkish for several hours. So, I go to this really cool language exchange event in Taksim called Speak Easy. It’s full of people trying to learn other languages. Most of the people being Turkish, people are mostly trying to learn English or German, but they are more than happy to return the favor and decipher my Turkish.

Taksim and Galata are also really cool places for other reasons. Every time I come here, I always hear great music. You don’t even need to pay for it either, street performers come out in the late afternoon and evening and express themselves for everyone to hear. I hear jazz and traditional Turkish music being played the most. There are plenty of bars that offer free music too. Ağaç Ev, or Tree House, is my favorite. Turkish rock or blues bands play there on most nights. If you’re in the mood for roof-top reggae, I recommend the Rahat.

If you have liras to spare, I encourage you to check out the clubs featuring live music in Taksim and Galata (research before stepping inside). Most of these require a fee, but they are often worth the money. I prefer two clubs near Galata, which is in walking distance from Taksim. Club Babylon plays a wide range of music, and you can get a decent student rate at 25 TL. Nardis Cafe’s entrance fee is more expensive, at 40 TL, but the jazz there is always incredible. I drink water on these nights.

Another reason why I enjoy Galata is its history. Tourists do not come here to learn about its past like Fatih, with its Aqueducts and Roman walls or Sultanahmet, where Ayasofya / Hagia Sofia is at, but it is one of the oldest parts of Istanbul. I do not know when the settlement known as Galata today was founded, but its history extends as far back as the Roman empire. By the later years of the Byzantine Empire, it was Genovese trading settlement. Merchants from all over the world met here with with the Greek traders. The continued presence of these merchants is the reason for it’s European character.* As mentioned in an earlier post, there are no grand mosques here unlike historical Istanbul across the Altın Boynuz, it retained much of its European character due to the continued presence of traders from Europe. Perhaps until Republican-era Turkey, this quarter of the city was more Christian than Muslim.

It is a little harder to find, but you can see the history of Galata. The exception being, that one enormous tower, called Galata tower. Not far to the north, closer to Taksim, Ottoman-era embassies are still used as consulates by European governments. The Pera Museum, a former hotel, features a lot of western art depicting Istanbul. The work there is an interesting visual representation of western perceptions of the city and empire. I'll post the photos from there when I can.

Anyway, I should get ready to leave for Eskişehir and Antayla. I have a week off for Kurban Bayram. I’ll let you know how it goes!

*Mehmed II, the conquering Sultan, told its fleeing residents that no harm would come to them if they remained. This this allowed for preexisting trade relationships to resume after the city’s conquest.

Echoes of Gezi

Hello everybody,

Now I have been in İstanbul for a week, but really, my stay here has felt like a month. Orientation, applying for grants and internships has kept me busy. Yet, in between all that, I've found time to reconnect with old friends, many of whom are surprised that I followed up on my promise to return. The view of the Bosphorus, the peaches and tea are as good as I remembered them. Thrift Shop is blaring out from every fifth store. After a basic tour of old İstanbul - Sultanahmet - I'm taking today off to rest and read.

And eat.

Among the places I went to last week was Taksim Square, or the place many of you remember as being at the center of the protests that took place in June. He is a recap of what happened:

As early as April 22 - Earth Day - environmentalists began to protest against a decision reached by a distant municipal council (run by the AK party) to demolish the park in order to make room for a massive shopping and cultural complex. Gezi Park, being one of the few green areas remaining in the heart of İstanbul became a focal point of environmental protest. When the bulldozers came at the end of May, the protestors were there staging a sit-in, setting up camp in Gezi.

Although political opposition and environmental organizations gathered support for the protests, the people most responsible for the enormous scale of the protests were, ironically, the police who came to clear the park of protestors. Their use of tear gas and torches to clear the park was seen on social media sites throughout the Turkey - and the rest of world. By the beginning of June, a protest which started with no more than 60 people, swelled to hundreds of thousands in all of Turkey's major cities.

Through June and into July the size of the protests remained large. According to a local shop owner, it was not until Ramazan (Islamic month of fasting) and the increasing intensity of summer heat that the protests began to diminish. Yet, there are still anti-government demonstrations throughout Turkey. Although many of protests are not primarily focused on Gezi Park, the clashes between demonstrations and local police escalate much more readily than last year. The political scene in Turkey, even at its most calm, has notably intensified. The average size of protests are noticeably larger and the police are more quick to formation and violence. Even in September, every time I come to Taksim square, I quickly examine the situation from the underground metro before taking another step.

Although it is easy enough to identify the perpetrators of this summer's violence, the reason for the enormous scale of the Gezi Park protests, as well as the police and government response, is complex. Doing so requires a very long discussion on the use of violence in Turkish history and an examination of Turkey's social demography. Simply put, my view is that political repression and violence in general are much greater in Turkey than elsewhere, and a large contingent of the public increasingly identifies with victims of violence of diverse backgrounds (Kurds, journalists, secular students). Further exacerbating this is the historical repression pious Muslims (even just simply that) have faced at the hands of authoritarian, secular governments, which is likely one reason the center-right AK party overreacts to peaceful demonstrations.

Whatever the cause, the effects are palpable. Even at secluded Koç University, I can hear students plan protests in the cafeteria. Only yesterday, the manslaughter of a student by police in the distant Hatay province triggered large protests in İstanbul, causing some in my orientation group to avoid their apartments in Taksim. If the tense political climate is not somehow resolved peacefully, violence will ensue. I pray for justice and reconciliation to come soon, but I am pessimistic.

In spite of all that, I cannot emphasize enough how glad I am to be back in Turkey and look forward to understanding and speaking with the Turkish people.

Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (Atatürk Cultural Center). A protest landmark.

This is how many police there are when there are NO protests. All of those buses are filled with them.

Political cartoon of Danny Trejo at Gezi. He's a tough dude...

Tavla a.k.a. Backgammon. Very popular in Turkey.

What I find myself often typing upon.

Preparation

Merhaba tekrar,



It’s only two weeks until I leave for Turkey. Meanwhile, getting ready to travel abroad this year and last have been two completely different experiences. For one, the things I want to do in Turkey this time around are different from what I wanted to do last time.

Cafe Orchid. Strongly recommend. 1746 W Addison St, Chicago, IL

I’m not going claim that I am not a yabanci  - a foreigner - but Istanbul now seems to me more of a home than last time. Unlike most exchange students, I have already been to Koc, so I have a pretty good idea of what my living situation will be like. I can imagine myself crashing there as I can imagine living in a dorm at DePauw. I became accustomed to passing through Sultanahmet square, and while I will be visiting many of these landmarks again, I will probably not be spending as much time looking for new sites in Istanbul. Also, knowing people in Istanbul makes it seem less distant (Though, none of this will make my flight ticket cost less).

But, there is so much I haven’t done! Learning Turkish is always an ongoing personal project. I’m really excited to test what I have learned from my summer Turkish lessons (through Turkish American Cultural Alliance); I feel very comfortable with basic conversational Turkish. Plus, there are so many places I haven’t even been to (even in Istanbul). I’m hoping to travel to Anatolia more this semester - visiting some friends in Ankara, going to Konya and seeing the magnificent caves and rock formations of Kapadokya (a.k.a. Cappadocia).

Meanwhile I’ll be looking for a job. This is my last undergraduate semester, and those students loans are not going to pay themselves. I really have little idea of where I might work at. A paid internship at a think tank would be nice, but I’m also considering teaching English as a second language between now and graduate school. Not sure who would hire me and where I would like to work. Hopefully, I’ll get a Fulbright grant to teach English in Turkey. I also plan to apply for a critical language scholarship through the State Department. We’ll see how this all goes. Who knows? Maybe I will find work in Istanbul.

Anyway, I am excited for the adventure Turkey promises and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you guys.

Also, I'm looking forward to raiding this record store! Small, but it has a great selection. Yeni Çarşı Cad. 60/A, Cihangir/İstanbul - Avrupa, Türkiye

Not even deportation can keep me away.

Tekrar merhaba!

I am returning to Turkey on September 5 (a date I marked on my calendar since a long time ago)! I will be studying at Koc University again, and this time, complete the semester.

You read that correctly. I left about a month after the last post I made (if you scroll down, you will see that the last blog was September 12). The one sentence explanation is as follows: I had visa troubles, and after unsuccessfully negotiating with American embassy and Turkey’s immigration bureau, I was forced to return.

This didn’t happen only in one day, it was a month-long ordeal - and that was the hardest part. Depending on the day and the circumstances it brought, I might feel confident that I would get to stay or that I was certain to leave. It was mentally exhausting. For a long time, I did not want to blog about all of this because (1) I didn’t want this to possibly be the last post about an otherwise great experience, (2) I still feel slightly embarrassed about being one of the few people who had visa troubles and (3) I didn’t want to dwell on it.

However, that is in the past and I’m looking forward to returning to Turkey soon. I’ve been preparing for it over these summer months by refreshing my Turkish, which I did not work on over my crazy spring semester. I was surprised by how much I forgot, but I’m quickly finding that everything I learned is not too far from memory. The work assigned by my tutor is much easier to complete than it would have been last year. My experiences in Turkey have never been far from my thoughts either. Both of my theses were on political topics in Turkey and the protests began about the time when school ended.

The Gezi protests were particularly difficult to watch. I made friends with the protestors and government supporters while I was there. While I knew that Turkey has experienced political violence in the past, I had been hoping that something had changed in the political scene. Instead, identities are in as much conflict as ever in Turkey. Thinking about it kept me up a few nights.

The scale of the protests surprised me, but I saw people protesting in Beyoglu, particularly Taksim Square, on a pretty regular basis, most about jailed or dead journalists. I stayed at a hostel not even a quarter of a mile away. I’m not expecting there to be as much social unrest when I return, but I am increasingly curious as to what I will see when I return. Will the trees in Gezi park be gone, or will there be more protests? I am not expecting a new government, but these questions linger as I wait.

I’ll keep this post short, but I’ll get back to you all before I leave.

Görüsürüz