Karin Pinter – In This Silence

With all your tiresome commutes from district to district, your grand bazaars with truly multi-lingual shop owners trying to convince visitors that their Turkish Delight is better than their neighbour’s, and who call out to foreign women with ‘angel eyes’ in the hopes that their charm will sway those women to see them again…

Poetry abounds in your over-populated streets, where there are more mosques than I have ever seen churches in the whole of my life in Spain.

Farewell hazy sunset over the Bosphorus River, lined by riverside clubs and cafés, homes remnant from Ottoman times, and hilltops conquered by Turkish flags that serve as passionate reminders of your sensitive nation troubled by a longing to ride the progressive wave with freedom of choice, whilst retaining your religious heritage in moderation and weed out problematic insurgencies.

Farewell Ankara…
Thank you for the inspiration and the Rak?, the political discussions and the börek, the long bus rides through foggy mountain roads along rugged snow-covered terrain and the hospitality of your friends and family. Thank you for embracing me as your ‘cousin’!

A place like this, raw with emotion, the honesty and simplicity of life not fully tainted by commercialism, even though the big brands from Europe and the US have planted their seeds. Rebellious, young, like teenagers finding their way through the intensifying changes that life offers us all.

For some, a guiltless lack of language skills besides Turkish reminds us that not everybody wishes to be a part of this globalisational permeation of the world. A realisation that we visit other countries not just for their landscape or their customs, but to be challenged by a language we do not understand and thus be reminded of our vulnerabilities, for being far removed from one’s comfort zone and dependent on somebody else to speak for you is very humbling.

But, whilst you speak in words that I am far from understanding today, at the core your language is one of hope and dreams. Hearts that beat to the rhythm of eager anticipation to be a player in the European team, proud of your origins yet anxious to embrace new challenges with intelligent debate.

Be strong, have faith in yourselves, and you will succeed.

Selected quotes from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

As the countless minarets saluted me from their vantage points among the neighbourhoods of Istanbul, before our flight from Paris landed promptly late in the afternoon, it appears as though I have landed in Turkey during a time of cumulative political tensions.

As I watched news that I could hardly understand except for the translations provided by my friend and the few Turkish words I have managed to memorise so far, I could see proud waves of red flags taking over An?tkabir (the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) in protest against the re-ignited issue of the head scarf from a more religious-oriented government. Sensitivities run deep here, with great divides between public opinion for secular and religious policy, and ultimately way of life.

I am enamoured so far by the little I have seen or read of Turkey from a more historical and perhaps nostalgic perspective. It feels like a pivotal stepping stone between Europe as we have known it for a very long time, and the Middle East. A part of the Mediterranean that I have never explored, and yet which could step so easily from one side to another. And by sides I am not necessarily referring to religious aspects that we are made so aware of today, rather those that seem to define whether a country is to be considered ’safe’ or not. Whilst I wait to see what the coming week that I am here will offer, I have already been cautioned regarding theft etc. and could not help but feel stubborn defiance against casting any shadows over my first visit. It is sad to think of the social stigmas that still prevail, true or not, in such countries.

On a less political note, anybody who has ever driven in Spain will feel comforted by the fact that Turkish drivers share the same passion for owning the roads, if not more…

More later from this roving reporter.

Today mark’s Spain’s national holiday – Dia de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Day) – and one of the TV channels is re-playing Michael Bay’s Armaggedon (1998)… I like to think that whoever scheduled this film to play today wasn’t looking at a calendar when they did…

Watching the opening scene, and recalling other similar films of paranoia-inducing note (The Day After Tomorrow, Next, 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine, to name a few) I struggle to understand this country’s morbid fascination with death and destruction.

It is fascinating that a nation such as the US, with so many resources and potential for creativity, applies that creative talent to epic displays of mass destruction and paranoia. Obviously, there are many films out there of a more down to earth and humane nature, and other countries spew out their own doses of world-threatening entertainment (albeit in lesser amounts), but why are certain sectors of said nation obsessed that the rest of the world (and universe) is out to get them?