An American in Turkey

Alright, I'm about to leave on a bus for Istanbul and I've found time to make one last blog entry before getting back to the states. I'll make a full blog entry from the US reflecting more on my time here as a whole later next week. Last weekend was spent up in the Black Sea town of Amasra. This completes one of my travel objectives to visit every sea that touches Turkey. The town itself is very quite, as it is way out of tourist season. The scenery there is beautiful with lots of cool cliffs and small islands. There is something really cool about knowing there is only a thousand miles of water between you and the Crimea. To think at one time this gigantic body of water was essentially and Ottoman lake! Aside from the scenery, smells and sounds, there isn't a ton to do in Amasra besides eat fish and shop for trinkets. The fish there is quite good whether it is Hamsi (tiny sardine like fish) Mezgit (slightly larger fish) or the famous Istavrit (mackerel).

The other large event of the past week has been the passing of one of my teachers the great Stanford Shaw. He died on Friday after suffering a brain aneurysm a few days earlier, he was 83. It came as a shock to a lot of people in this community, surely this was a man of great importance to Ottoman history. He was the first outsider to be able to access the Ottoman archives, the founder of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and a fantastic teacher at UCLA, Harvard and most recently Bilkent. What surprised us most though was that this man did not let age stop him from working. Every morning before our 8.40 class he would get up at 3 and work on his still unfinished book on the Turkish War of Liberation and the early years of the republic. As a teacher and friend he was incredibly approachable, and lectured as if he were some sort of walking dictionary. He was very successful at relating the life of the Ottoman Empire to his Turkish students, often posing such questions as "Do you know what the old name of Istiklal Caddessi is?". Most certainly his work must be continued and taken as a model for the rising class of Turkish historians.

Well, its just about time for me to get going. I'm staying one night in Istanbul and getting on the 4.30 flight tomorrow to Heathrow, from where I will transfer to New York. I really do miss all of you and hope to share some cool stories and pictures.

Noel Kutlu Olsun (Merry Christmas)
Mutlu Yıllar (Happy New Year)

This weekend was a bit more low key than usual. I went on a day trip to Konya with my Islamic Art and Architecture class for a tour of Selcuk era monuments and artifacts. Konya is about three hours or so south of Ankara smack in the middle of the south central Anatolian region and is, I think, the fifth largest city in the country (behind Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana respectively) with a population around 700,000. Konya is known to be a bit more conservative politically and socially, and that at least is evident when one looks at its history. The Selcuks ruled for a few centuries (10th-12th AD) from this central location and brought with them a long cultural heritage from Iran and a longstanding rivalry with the Ayyubids in Syria. Their place in history marks them as the clear predecessors to the Ottomans, indeed the progenitors of Osman ruled in the province that bordered Byzantium in the northwest. The two most impressive sites in Konya are the Alaeddin Camii, built for the longest ruling and most prolific sultan Alaeddin Keykubad II. This mosque is wuite odd as it most likely began as a church and then was added onto several times over the course of sixty years. The most interesting peice of decoration is perhaps the main portal to its courtyard which features a black and white marble interlace that is characteristic of teh Selcuk's Syrian rivals. The second site, which is a bit later, is the Mevlana Türbesi complex. Inside this ornate complex lies the tomb of Celaladdin Rumi, who usually goes by just Rumi (not Rummy like the ex-Secretary of Defense, Roomie, like that guy that sleeps in that other bed in your room). Rumi is best known outside the Islamic world as a prolific poet, perhaps the most famous Islamic literatuer (its close between him and Ömer Khayam who wrote the Rubbayat). Inside the Islamic world, however, he is most famous for founding the famous Sufi order of Mevlevi, who are known in the West as the "Whirling Dervishes". Sufi is actually short for the Arabic word which transliterates as faylasuf, or philosopher. Sufis and dervishes are the center of the mystical portion of Islam and are roughly equivocal to Monks and Saints of Christianity. The Mevlevis believe one can have a personal connection with God through their particular dance in which they whirl, furiously dizzying themselves to the point of euphoria. The order is essentially banned under Republican Turkish law, but dance troops who respect the heritage are allowed to perform the ceremony for the public. Under normal circumstances, an actual Sema (the ceremony in which they whirl) cannot be viewed by the public, so the performers you might see today probably aren't actual Sufis. Aside from these two sites we saw a couple of old medreses that are now tile museums with artifacts from the surrounding Selcuk excavations. We also paid a visit to the nearby Saadettin Caravansaray. The Selcuks were quite prolific overland traders and are credited with firmly establishing the Silk Route in Anatolia.

Next weekend I'm supposedly going to the southeast, particularly Urfa and Harran. I might post before then, I might not.

Güle Güle

I'm sorry I've been neglecting the blog recently, so here's a round up of events since Efes:

The Pope: I know a lot of you were curious about how I fared in my attempt to "see" the Pope last Tuesday, so here is how it went. I planned on catching him near Anıt Kabır (Ataturk's Mausoleum) as he was supposed to give the obligatory wreath laying ceremony there immediatley after arriving in Ankara. Me and about fifteen other students went. We were denied access to the monument, which was expected, so we decided to wait along the motorcade route, just to see what would happen. What followed was actually quite unexpected and somewhat odd. The motorcade route, as expected, was heavily gaurded by almost a thousand police officers with various types of weapons, ranging from the automatic to blunt force variety. We saw a group of at least four snipers on top of a building that had a good line of sight with the parade route, surely the Turkish government was anticipating some kind of riot. Paradoxically my group of fifteen or so students was far and away the largest civilian assembly of any kind along the route. There were several stragglers who were out walking their dog or eating at a local döner stand, but certainly noone who posed any sort of threat. As time went on, three more busloads of police in riot gear unloaded right in front of us. We were also subsequently interviewed by a few of the local TV stations that were there, presumably those without the high media credentials to get inside the monument. We were asked pretty general questions through translation about why we were here or if we thought the Pope coming was a good idea, all pretty innocuous. Then the security started to tense up a bit and a few cars come down the road, followed by the Vatican motorcade at about 30-40 mph. The Pope was in the third car back, something resembling a Lincoln Towncar, and quite visible, which is odd because one would think a motorcade for a head of state would have tinted windows. In all, I got a glimpse of the Pope and witnessed the rediculousness of the media firestorm that preluded the event in the Western media. In all the biggest protest of the day no doubt came from working mothers in the city who were stuck in long traffic gridlock caused by the Pope's motorcade (my own bus home was stopped dead for 30 minutes).

I've made two trips the last two weekends, one to the north central river town of Amasya and a return to Istanbul this past weekend. The Amasya trip was interesting because this is a town that every civilization to ever rule in Anatolia from the Hittites to the Ottomans has held. The town is smushed in between two rock faces which are dotted with giant rock tombs which date from the Pontic era. There are a few Selcuk era mosques there that are of note, particularly the Gök Medrese-Camii complex which has an interesting conflation of Anatolia-Syrian and Iranian structures. Istanbul was a lot of fun, I went back to Topkapı Sarayı and got to see the Harem, or the living quarters of the Sultan and his wives. It was fascinating to see these rooms in relatively good condition even though the elements pose a big threat to this unheated, uninsulated group of rooms. This was followed by another trek in the Kapalı Carşı (Covered Bazaar) where I finished up my Christmas shopping.

Most of my time the past few weeks has been spent researching for my paper. I've been looking into education reform in the reign of Abdulhamid II in the late 19th and early 29th centuries. One thing I've noticed as I examine how this Sultan tried to save a dying Empire, I've noticed subsequently how Imperial Britain and the modern "post-imperialist" United States have all run into similar problems, particularly Iraq. So far my assessment notices a common thread, all these governments tried to stuf ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag. This is pertinent because of the newly released Iraq Study Group report (for the love of God, don't waste your money on Amazon, download it for free at www.usip.org). I've only gotten a cursory look at the report, but there are a few issues that need to be raised. While the commission was certainly high profile (aside from Lee Hamilton and James Baker, it features Ed Meese the Attny General under Reagan and Sandra Day O'Connor), but throughout the process of interviews (of which there were at least 50) only one university professor and one Turk were consulted. By and large this was compiled by think-tank types who have spent little time studying the history of the region, its language or engaged thoroughly in its religious conflict. That said, you all would be well informed to read it because it does provide a lot of basic information about the situation there that most Americans don't know or comprehend. So read it, but don't stop there, pick up Stanford Shaw's The Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol. II, or Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong?, or if you're short on time, just watch Lawrence of Arabia! America needs to wise up to Islam and Middle Eastern history or else we're in for a long, dark, bruising experience with no end in sight.