Belated post, can't think of a title

I realized today how rarely I actually get in a car here in Turkey. I get around on the dolmuş – basically a small version of a public bus. The dolmuşlar (lar/ler is the plural suffix in Turkish) in Antalya aren’t actually true dolmuş. The real dolmuş is just a van (we’d probably call it a 14-passenger van in the US; in Turkey, it’s about a 30-passenger van), that may or may not have any markings saying where it is going, and may or may not follow an actual route. The word dolmuş is related to the word dolu, which means “full”. Some connoisseurs of Turkish cuisine may be familiar with dolma, which is also related – dolma means “stuffed”. I think my readers can probably understand where I’m going with this – the dolmuş is pretty full. I have a priceless memory of an old British man getting furious at the driver, yelling “it’s full up! It’s full up!” It’s doubly funny, because saying “it’s full up!” is one of those British expressions that just strikes me as ridiculous, and also because no one paid any attention to him. In Turkey, public transportation is never too full to accommodate a new person. I’ve ridden in a normal-sized sedan (4 people in the US, maybe 5) with a total of 7 other people. I’ve seen 15 people in a taxi (Fiat Doblo, in case you were wondering and have nothing better to do than Google “Fiat Doblo”).

I probably ride in a car, at most, once or twice a month here. In America, I probably get in a car every day. As AFS would say, it’s not right, it’s not wrong, it’s just different. There are times I definitely miss having a car, but to be honest, most of the time it doesn’t bother me. There’s basically no parking in Turkey anyway, at least not in the massive, well-tended, paved sense that we enjoy in America.

I actually wrote the two proceeding paragraphs a while ago. I’m writing now because I have a few essays to write. I’m applying for a program at Duke called Focus which is basically several clusters of related classes. Students in the same cluster live together and have small seminar based classes which is a neat way of making friends, or so I’m told. I have to write four essays, which is a bit of a drag. I gotten out of the habit of actually having to study anything except Turkish and I’ll probably be in for a little bit of a shock once I get back to the states and actually have to start hitting the books. (Multiple books, plural, instead of just my pocket Turkish-English Langenscheidt dictionary.)

What else? I suppose that I should write something about the “Kurdish issue” here in Turkey. My first advice would be to read up on the issue well, although take every thing you read with a grain of salt. In my opinion, anything you read about any extant conflict should be treated this way, whether it’s about Israel, China, Russia, Sri Lanka, Congo, or even, dare I say it, our own United States of America. You can’t believe everything you read, no matter what the name at the top of the page.

So. The Kurds are a trans-national ethnic group living in the southeastern region of Turkey, as well as parts of Iran, Syria, and Iraq. There has never been a census in Turkey that asked about the ethnicity or race of Turks, mostly because according to the Turkish government, all Turkish citizens are Turks. Indeed, in Turkish, there is only one word, Türk, that describes both ethnic Turks – i.e. members of the ethno-linguistic group that came from present-day Mongolia, settling down throughout the present-day Central Asian Republics – and citizens of the modern Republic of Turkey. For many years, the official Turkish government line did not even accept the fact that Kurds were ethnically different. This is pretty much nonsense – the Kurdish language is Indo-European (a Kurdish-speaking friend of mine tells me that it has some similarities to Russian).

The Kurds make up, probably, about 20% of Turkey’s population. Some of them live in large cities like Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara, and are highly successful. Many, however, still live in very rural and undeveloped areas in the southeast of Turkey.

One should not confused the “Kurdish problem” with the “terrorism problem”. The terrorism problem primarily comes from the PKK, a (theoretically) Marxist organization that espouses Kurdish nationalism. It is based mostly in northern Iraq these days, and has lost a bit of power since its leader, Abdullah Öcalan (“Apo”) was captured in Kenya in 1999 by MIT, the Turkish intelligence service. It still, however occasionally manages to kill Turkish military targets. This tit-for-tat struggle has been going on for decades. One of the reasons I’ve heard for Turkey’s generally close relationship with Israel is the fact that both have been plagued since their inception by terrorism. It’s an interesting comparison, full of realpolitik and irony (the Kurds are sometimes called “the Jews of the Middle East” because of their lack of a state, although, then again, so are the Armenians.)

Turks, no matter what their political stripe, take this issue extremely seriously. You will never hear a joke or lighthearted comment about a “şehit” – martyr, any soldier or policeman killed in the line of duty – nor will you see the PKK ever referred to as a “militant” or “guerilla” organization as you sometimes will in the western press – in Turkey, they are simply “terrorists”.

There is also the “Kurdish problem”, which stems not from terrorism but just from the fact that Kurds do not have as many civil liberties as Turks in Turkey. They have virtually no access to Kurdish-language education. Some Kurdish names that do not have equivalents in Turkish are illegal, making it impossible for parents to register for identity cards for their children. In some cases, Kurdish children born in Germany have been reused entry into Turkey because of their names. The situation is definitely improving, though, for Kurds, albeit slowly. Twenty five years ago Ankara referred to Kurds as “Mountain Turks” and claimed that the word “Kurd” was a nickname that came from the sound of their sandals as they walked through the snow. Today, there is a TRT channel (the Turkish state broadcaster) that broadcasts in Kurdish. The current prime minister of Turkey has even tentatively uttered the previously taboo word “Kurdistan” to refer to the autonomous region in northern Iraq. Many of these gradual reforms are being spurred as Turkey tries to comply with various EU treaties and agreements regarding the rights of minorities as part of it’s 50-year Quixotic quest to be admitted to the European Union.

I’m happy to try my best to answer any other questions.

On a lighter note… how many of my readers know what Eurovision is? If you have a sec, Wiki it. Basically, it’s like a cross between World Cup and American Idol. Every nation in “Europe” (for the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that countries like Israel count as Europe) is eligible to enter a song. The results are, in general, hilarious. Any person residing in any of the European countries sending an entrant is eligible to vote via text message, the only caveat being they cannot vote for their country of residence. Each country picks its favorite ten entries and points are awarded to the other countries accordingly. While it would be nice if people voted based on the artistic merit of the performers, what usually ends up happening is “bloc voting”, where all the Scandinavian and Slavic countries vote for another. Cyprus and Greece, without fail, award each other the maximum 12 points every year. Turkey receives a huge amount of votes from Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, thanks to the Turkish Diaspora in these countries. I was shocked when Serbia awarded 12 points to Bosnia & Herzegovina – perhaps they were feeling guilty? Most of the former Yugoslavian countries, in fact, ended up awarded points to each other. I guess that having a neighbor win a song contest can trump years of ethnic cleansing.

So? Norway won. If you want you can probably find the winning song, on YouTube, by Alexander Rybak, who looks like he is about 12. I liked the Azerbaijani entry better myself.