Burası Türkiye

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I am afraid this will be something of a scattered blog enty because when I began writing this all I could think about was the night I had on Saturday night but originally I intended this to be about the apparant Turkish aversion to activism. As it is I will save that topic for a bit later but will instead start with my night. As you know I am currently volunteering at two different places so I can talk to people hear their stories. At Tarlabaşı Toplum Merkezi I have met all kinds of people from newly migrated Turks and Kurds to long term residents of Tarlabaşı to people who have fallen in fortune and are now jobless and practically homeless. I go and hang out before I begin teaching and stay and chat after I finish. Then I go to the Human Rights Associaton here where I hang out with a three regulars (all Kurds - one Zaza from Diyarbakır, one from Van, and one originally from Mardin grew up in Sweden) and all the others who come to volunteer their time. We arrange press conferences for the activist community, keep a library, keep records of HR abuses in Turkey through the newspapers, and most importantly we are a place for people who have been abused to come to tell their stories. People of all types (although admittedly all at about a certain income range) come in with tales of police abuse; abuse in prison; abuse based on ethnicity, sexual identity, and gender. We also get those types who have been abused but they in turn have continually abused others (I must admit I am thinking of one person specifically). This is what I do with my days other than hanging out with my Turkish friends who work in Taksim (near the area where these places are).

Last night my other friends - all Turkish but all very cosmopolitan (speaking French, English, German, and a little Chinese) - invited me to the opening gala of a gallary, Contemporary Istanbul. So I dressed up for the occasion and wandered over. I saw Istanbul bourgoisie at its best eating mini sandwiches drinking wine and chatting to the sounds of the Bosphorous and and ambient jazz band. Now my friends like a bit of a more upbeat party so after about ten minutes they decided to leave and try their luck in the party capital of Istanbul: Taksim. We went to their usual haunt but as I am in Turkey and not a Western European city the power was out in that whole neighborhood. We went next door to a bar that had a generator and hung out there for a bit. Then they started to get bored again so we wandered over to what my good friend Emek described as a meat market. Thankfully it was already too full of bimbos so we weren’t able to get in - but the evening wasnt over yet. Emek’s friend Semah (who I had never met before but she is absolutely brilliant) really wanted to go to this place called 360. So, since we had dragged her to these three other places which had all been a bust we decided to let her have her way. This time when I asked Emek what this place was like all she could say was “high priced meat market with bad house music”. That did not in any way shape or form adequately prepare me for the dog and pony show I was priveledged enough to witness.

All I could say the first ten minutes after I walked in the door was “I have officially seen all of Istanbul”. Although perhaps not quite accurate it does come pretty close to the truth. Although this place isn’t anywhere as posh as some of the clubs on the Bosphorous, it still draws the rich of Istanbul in droves. The music really was aweful: they even managed to wreck Amy Winehouse’s voice. The people were extremely impressed with themselves but at the same time they might have had some reason as they are in general some of the movers and shakers of this city. My favorite part about the whole night was that Emek said the reason she wanted to leave the gala opening was because the people were to bourgie for her and then we end up at this place where she might have felt even more out of place than I did. The one redeeming quality about the place - other than the people watching of course - was the view. There is a very good reason it is called 360; with a birds nest like view of Istanbul as far as the eye can see it is absolutely stunning. Other than thiis one the main attraction for me was simply thinking about this set of people compared with the types of people I see everyday, the people who if they even knew this place existed wouldn’t be let through the doors because their clothes would in now way be acceptable. I dont feel entirely comfortable doing this because I didn’t really meet the people at 360 but the sheer contrast of the two lives I lead was put in technicolor with digital surround sound yesterday.

Anyway, enough about this very strange club my friends brought me to last night. I finally got to speak with my dad two days ago after he was incommunicado for about three weeks and he inspired me to write a blog on activism in Turkey. Immediately I thought of three specific conversations - although not entirely related to the activist community - that really shaped what I know about politics here. The first was a conversation I had with a woman named Yağmur. She had asked me what I thought of all the stuff that was going on in Turkey specifically in the Southeast and other things like this. She is a very open minded person but I kind of avoided answering her question inseat turning it back on her. She said that no one in Turkey knew why these human rights abuses happened but they mostly felt that there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. I then asked why people didn’t try to do anything about it but all she could say was that this was just the way it was. Turkey is just Turkey.

The other conversation I remember really well was with the Swedish-Kurd working with me named Leyla. We were discussing her proposal for a masters thesis and one of her experiences with the police here in Istanbul. She was shocked and outraged by their treatment of some men on the street and every day she comes to work with something else that she just cant comprehend. Finally one day she just came in and said she had the perfect saying for this country: Burası Türkiye. This literally translates as Here is Turkey. There really is no other explanation for it. I dont know how people can live their day to day lives suffering as much as they do without doing anything. Later on she and I were talking about the lack of activism again and democracy. She told me something she had read in a book that most other countries with working democracy had had to fight for their democracy but Atatürk simply handed democracy to Turkey. That is I admit one explanation but I dont think it can be the only reason for this apathy. I mean we have apathy in the States but trust me on this, it is nothing like the apathy here.

The third conversation I actually had just before my father called with one of my Turkish friends, Harun, who works at a vegetarian restaurant that I hang out at. Harun and his friend were telling me about the history of the Turks all the way back from China when they moved accross all of Central Asia to Turkey and created the Ottoman Empire. I then got them to talk about more recent history specifically after independence. Harun said that everything was going just great while Atatürk was still around but after he died things just kind of got out of control. Every ten years practically like clockwork there were military coups and everyone just assumed that this was they way life was supposed to work he said. Now people think that even if they try to do anything it wont work because someone else would come in and shut down the action. He also said that I would never understand it because I am not Turkish which bothered me a little but oh well. This series of conversation have really shaped the way I think about activism here and why there isn’t more of it going on. I don’t like it and I don’t agree with the apathy that surrounds Turkey - both young and old - but Burası Türkiye.

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