A week here in İstanbul - complete with festivals, protests, and book fairs

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This entry took me a span of three days to write and type, plus it follows the events of a week, so it may seem a bit schizophrenic. I will make sure to space out the days from each other and try to keep it from being too confusing.

Well it has been a while now since I have written again but it is not because I have not wanted to. Really I have been cut off from most of the world for about a week - just taking a few unproductive days to myself. Wednesday of last week (October 29th) was the 85th anniversary of the founding of Turkey, called Cumhurriyet Bayramı (Republic Festival). There were a lot of people out on the streets and in Taksim there was a huge festival with fireworks, music, and lots of rather nationalistic speeches and such. I probably should have stayed until the end but I didn’t actually feel very safe what with all the patriotic young men - about a third of them drunk - running the streets. Hatice and I decided we should maybe go home instead of risking our lives and sanity. For the entire week before the day and now about a week after the day there have been a ton of Turkish flags up on every building as well as banners proclaiming it the 85th anniversary celebration. There were streamers everywhere and people where all wearing ‘Turkey’ t-shirts like the tourists buy. Everyone had the day off except people who work in restaurants, the corner stores, transportation workers, and people who work in the clothing stores.

Sunday one major thing happened in İstanbul but I decided to avoid it because I knew it was going to get violent so instead I let one of my friends show me around Sultanhamet. She had gone to university near there and really loved the place which made me appreciate it more than I did before. It was fun because I got to see a new side of the neighborhood other than just the tourism business. I spent the whole day with her and had dinner at her friends house with a few other people. It was a really lovely Sunday for me. On the other side of town however the story is completely different. There was a protest in Taksim on Sunday and when I went over to Sultanhamet I saw all the police in riot gear. I didn’t hear about what happened until I watched the news that night but when I saw the preparations, it didn’t look like it was going to be pretty. The protest was concerning the fact that the DTP (Democratic Peoples Party - essentially the Kurdish party) wants to hold a meeting with some of the other parties concerning the treatment of Abdullah Ocalan in prison where it is alleged he is being tortured. The other parties wont speak with the DTP about it so the people protested. Unfortunately it got violent. The police abused some of the people at the protest, put them under surveillance after the protest, and used pepper spray on them. My friend was visiting relatives in Kasımpaşa (a neighborhood not too far away from Tarlabaşı) and they had to close all the windows because the pepper spray came into the house. All in all I am glad I was on the other side of the Golden Horn because if I hadn’t found other plans that day I was going to go for a walk in Tarlabaşı to take pictures. My luck!

Monday I was going to go to İHD like usual but on my way there the boss at İHD said that we needed people to man the booth at the book fair. This book fair is the largest in Europe and as such it is held all the way out of town because no venue in town is large enough to hold it. On the way out there I took the shuttle and slept most of the way but on the way back I used three different forms of transportation to get home. The first was a bus just like any other but then Leyla (who was with me trying to get home) showed me a form of transportation I had never seen in this city before: the Metrobüs. Using the Metrobüs allowed me once again to marvel at the sheer size of the city. So many people live together like ants, all piled on top of one another with no space to breath. I must say though that the closer I get to the city center the more I like what I see.The buildings might be completely on top of one another, falling down form disrepair and absolutely filthy, but it looks more lived in, less stark, more like a neighborhood. The buildings out near Tüyap (where the book fair was held) all look a bit fake but somehow at the same time, they look something like a dirty strip mall that is rarely acknowledged as İstanbul and is never visited. There also doesn’t seem to be any chance of social interaction with ones neighbors because the streets are all roads: just connecting one place to another and not inviting anyone to play or chat in them. The streets closer in where the people really pile on top of one another at least invite community more than the starkness of the roads. This I think may be one of the biggest problems when trying to live in a city of 20 million people - how to forge a community, how to stave off isolation, how to not let the city eat you up. I was on the Metrobüs for 35 minutes and there wasn’t even a second of that where I didn’t see either an apartment or an office building - and that is only the European side of İstanbul.

Tuesday I went back to the book fair but it was really boring. Again I was astounded by the sheer size of everything but somehow it didn’t impress me as much as it had yesterday. Wednesday I was absolutely exhausted because I had stayed up half the night watching the polls come in from our election. I think my exhaustion compounded all the things that were going on today in my head because looking back at it now it doesn’t seem like such a big deal but at the time I thought I was going insane. Anyway, I went and taught English in Tarlabaşı like normal and then went to İHD. I had just arrived when I found out there was going to be a press conference about the events of the past Sunday given jointly by members of İHD and the DTP in front of the DTP office (back in Tarlabaşı). I knew I was definitely going but I was kind of afraid given what had happened on Sunday but it turned out all right. There were about 50 normal police, dressed halfway in riot gear, standing menacingly in front of the only logical exit to the place; 5 of the special red and black police wandering around; and there were probably also a few civil cops that I didn’t make in the crowd. Anyway it all went off without a hitch but just before it began you could see the tension in everyone's eyes. Once it started and Gülseran (the head of İHD in İstanbul and our resident lawyer) began making her speech it went fine. I got to chat before and after with my friends from İHD and DTP as well as the reporters I had met while working at İHD. From what I understood, Gülseran was talking more or less about what DTP always says: we aren’t the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party - the active terrorist group in Turkey), we fight for all people’s rights, we want peace not war, etc. Everyone from İHD and DTP were standing behind here showing solidarity and people from the street and the reporters were listening intently to see if there was going to be some interesting news they hadn’t heard before.

I went back to the office and Leyla and I had just settled down to cut a weeks worth of newspapers we had missed when and Israeli guy, about 65 with stark white hair, walks in the office. My first impression of him was that he was absolutely crazy. He kept saying things that didn’t make any logical sense but you could also tell that he was really upset about something. His story was just as crazy as he seemed and I don’t know how much I believe - but really what is the point of doubting him straight up. It does me no harm to believe him, so I might as well until I find better evidence. He was a lawyer in Israel who formed the New Generation Party in Israel in the 1970’s. His party fell apart sometime after that and for the past 19 years he has been followed and harassed by the Israeli security forces. They have physically and emotionally abused him, stolen his property, and turned all his friends against him - so he says. He has been harassed in every country he has ever been to by civil cops and the secret service. He claims that Israel has been alerting all the other countries that he is to remain under surveillance at all times and so they have been doing this in Bulgaria, Armenia, Georgia, Austria, and Turkey. He wanted us to help him by writing to everyone who has anything to do with that kind of thing in Turkey. I tried explaining to him that there probably wasn’t going to be much of a reaction but he would not take no for an answer. He was really difficult to work with because he wouldn’t listen to a thing you said to him. It was always about how much he had suffered without letting the people around him help in any way. At one point I almost blew my cool because he wouldn’t just keep his mouth shut for two minutes. Oh Well. I also hadn’t eaten anything all day and it was 3:30 in the afternoon. Anyway we both made it out alive and today (Thursday) Leyla and I are going to translate what he wrote and send the letters he wants us to send. Well that is it for the past week. More things will probably happen again soon because it seems like the action is starting to pick up here. Until next time…

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