Sunday, November 2, 2014

A boxwood plant, a palace, a restaurant, and 18 miners



     Yesterday I drove north from Middle East Technical University to the garden stores that cluster not far from the huge Karşıyaka cemetery. I had killed the very nice boxwood (“şimşir”) on the terrace outside my office – I had failed to water it at some crucial time this summer, although I can’t reconstruct how this could have happened – so I was in search of a replacement.  As I headed north, I wondered, could I see the Ak Saray (“White Palace”), the colossal, extravagant palace built by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, formerly prime minister now president, in the Atatürk Orman Ciftliği (AOÇ), the farmland given to the nation by Atatürk, land officially protected in 1992 from new construction?  Yes, I could!  There it was, dominating a distant hilltop.  
         Things have changed in the AOÇ.  I didn’t go there often, but it was always there as long as I have been in Ankara, a rustic park-cum-farm, with its dairy production (milk, yogurt, butter, important in the years before Pınar and other companies standardized and expanded this market), a zoo, snack bars, a beer factory, a small railway station, a garden shop, and a wonderful restaurant, the Merkez. Atatürk himself had dined here; the restaurant offered postcard photos of him, İsmet İnönü, and other dignitaries as tokens of that venerable past.  The building itself was plain, but in summertime, I loved having dinner in the garden amidst the trees.   
 

It was a glorious experience, relaxing yet dignified. The menu offered Chicken Kievski and Beef Stroganoff, staples of those old Republican restaurants founded in the 1920s and 1930s by White Russian emigrés.  Such restaurants are all too few in Ankara today.
The restaurant closed in 2013, allegedly because its rent was not paid.   

 Tarihi Merkez Lokantası Kapandı
Across the street was a garden shop, where I bought the now deceased boxwood and two rose bushes that continue to thrive on the balcony at home.  I imagine the garden shop has closed, too, the land on which both the garden shop and the restaurant stood now occupied by a portion of the new palace.  I didn’t have the heart to drive over there to check.  Who knows, I might have been stopped on the way by security guards, or not recognized where I was, had I even reached the spot.
The palace was to have been grandly opened this past October 29, Republic Day, the national holiday.  A few days earlier, though, flooding in a mine near Karaman trapped 18 miners.  They have yet to be rescued.  The country was reminded of the disastrous accident at a coal mine near Soma last May, which claimed the lives of  301 miners.  The Republic Day reception at the palace was cancelled, in recognition of this new tragedy.  How grossly indecent, many thought, to call attention to the vast palace, costing some $350 million, with its 1000 rooms, its tunnels and super secure bunkers when safety standards at mines, indeed at industrial and construction sites of all sorts, desperately need upgrading and strict enforcement. 

Monday, July 7, 2014

Brazil + Turkey = football and elections!



        I don’t usually follow football (= soccer), but every four years I come alive for the World Cup.  This year it's taking place in Brazil.  


These past weeks I’ve been watching regularly, since Turkish TV (TRT 1 and 2) is broadcasting every match at 7 pm and (the first round) 10 pm or (second round on) 11 pm, convenient after the work day is over.   

My teams are now either eliminated (USA & France) or never made it to the tournament in the first place (Turkey), so I can enjoy the final games with equanimity.  I’m sad to see Neymar out, though, for he was a pleasure to watch.  I wish him a speedy recovery from his broken vertebra.



        I’m learning a lot about the geography of Brazil.  Belo Horizonte, for example, is a city I had never heard of.  And I had no idea it takes 13 hours to drive from Sao Paolo to Brasilia.  The country is immense.   


I also thought of it as being flat (Atlantic beaches and Amazonian forests) but that’s a mistake. There are substantial highlands and even, in the extreme northwest along the border with Venezuela a mountain almost 3,000 meters high, the Pico de Neblina – almost always hidden in mist.  I never had much desire to visit Brazil, a country without the spectacular ruins of Mexico or Peru, but now I’m curious.  I shall look for a “Lonely Planet – Brazil” and explore the touristic possibilities.

        While the World Cup heads for its climax, we in Turkey are preparing for the first-ever direct election of a president, scheduled for August 10 and (if a run-off is needed) August 24. Heretofore, the President of Turkey has been elected by the Parliament.  Moreover, he (or she) should be non-partisan, and a steady rudder through political storms.  


        This description hardly conforms to the persona and ambition of the leading candidate, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  But he has long aspired to the presidency, we all know it, and this past Tuesday, July 1st, at a large gathering of AK Party faithful, he accepted his party’s nomination.

        Opponents include Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, 


a dignified, accomplished, professorial conservative running as an Independent (although backed by the main opposition parties), and Selahattin Demirtaş, representing Kurdish parties. Although İhsanoğlu should appeal to AK Party voters, his religious credentials being impeccable, at the moment most analysts think their loyalty to Erdoğan is unshakable.  

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (left) visits Hacı Bektaş

        Should İhsanoğlu win, we can expect him to uphold the traditional role of the president.  Erdoğan, however, has already promised change.  He will not simply preside, but will rule.

        If Erdoğan is elected president, what role will the legislative branch, the parliament, exercise?  Will separation of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial) be finished?  No one knows. 

        But the election is not yet a done deal, and İhsanoğlu is beginning to speak out.  In an interview published in today’s Hürriyet Daily News, he advocates keeping religion separate from politics, and notes a widespread desire for peace, stability, and a change in the tenor of political discourse.  He will not be a doormat that Erdoğan can walk over easily.


        A ripped, shredded campaign poster still hangs off a lampost at the turn-off to our local shopping center, even though municipal elections were held at the end of March.  The forlorn poster is for Barış Aydın, a nice-looking young man who stood as the AK Party’s candidate as mayor of Çankaya, one of the central districts of Ankara.  But Barış Aydın was destined to lose, no matter how attractive the ads and posters, for Çankaya is a stronghold of the center-left CHP (Republican People’s Party), the party founded by Atatürk.
        Although Erdoğan’s AK Party, which rules in Parliament, just squeaked by in Ankara overall, in the Çankaya district, its over 500,000 voters went 65% for Alper Taşdelen, the candidate of the CHP.  Barış Aydın received 22%.  I trust the AK Party has rewarded him for gamely accepting this sacrificial role.


Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Ankara swim, Chaco Canyon, and Signs




            One of my great joys of summer in Ankara is swimming in the outdoor pool at Sports International, my local fitness center.   


The pools (there are two) are open from early June til late September.  Because of a trip to the US (see below) and a recently diagnosed partially ruptured Achilles tendon, I couldn’t go until yesterday. 
I showed my membership card to the young man at the desk.
        “Your membership has expired,” he said.
        What?  No one told me.”
        “They telephoned you.  On May 9th.”
        “I was here!  Why didn’t they try again?”
        “I don’t know.”
“I’ll swim first, then go renew.”
“No!  You can’t swim!”

There was nothing to do but hobble (with my sore tendon) over to the main building, renew my membership, and hobble back to the pool building.  This time I was welcomed and the swim, with almost no one in the pool Monday lunchtime, was indeed glorious

Sports International sports a great array of signs, mostly warnings, cautions, and prohibitions.  Their number has increased over the years.  I normally pay them no attention, but yesterday, perhaps the result of that challenge at the reception desk, they rose up and angrily confronted me.

No smoking!

No food or drink in the pool area!

No diving into the pool!

Worthy members, please do not leave valuables in your car!  Thank you.

No parking!
Slippery floor!
        Staff only!

I recommend they add a sign I saw earlier this month in the garden of the Alderbrook Inn, halfway around the world on the Hood Canal (near Seattle):
 

        My Sports International favorites, though, are in the men’s locker room in the main building: DO NOT WALK NAKED and the poster with Michelangelo’s David  draped with a towel.


Its Turkish legend roughly translates as follows:

“Towel Culture.  The ancient Greeks walked around naked in the baths.  But that was in the 700s BC.  As for us, in public areas, let’s follow up-to-date rules and use a towel.”

        Non-Turkish readers will understand, I’m sure, that the Turkish male has a highly developed sense of modesty.  


        The outdoor pools (there are two) open in early June.  I couldn’t go earlier, because Marie-Henriette and I traveled to the US for tourism and a family visit.  The touristic part included a visit to Chaco Canyon, a spectacular archaeological site in remote northwestern New Mexico.  To get there, you have to drive over dirt roads the final 20 miles (32 km), a deliberate strategy on the part of the government to keep crowds away.  Once there, the national park (Chaco Culture National Historical Park) does have a paved road that gives access to a visitors’ center and to the main ruins.

The ruins at Chaco Canyon, excavated especially from the late 19th c. through the 1930s, consist of “great houses,” smaller settlements, and kivas (ceremonial areas) built by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo, Navajo, and Hopi peoples in the 9th-13th centuries AD.  The great houses are huge: over 600 rooms (at the largest, Pueblo Bonito), multi-storied, and built with amazing stone masonry.  The finds – pottery, turquoise jewelry, etc. – are stunning.

        Why did people settle here?  Over the decades, interpretations have changed.  Early explorers believed the canyon was a locus of heavily populated villages.  Now, the great houses are understood as ceremonial centers used only for specific events.  People would come from afar, staying only temporarily.

        This interpretation will remind the reader familiar with ancient Turkey of Göbekli Tepe, the sensational ceremonial site in the southeast, not far from Şanlıurfa.  

Göbekli Tepe consists of stone-walled, round buildings, sometimes containing relief sculptures of people (stylized), vultures, scorpions, and predatory animals, startling images of unknown meaning.   The architecture recalls the kivas of Chaco Canyon and the surrounding region.  Like Chaco Canyon, Göbekli Tepe is thought to be a ceremonial center, revered by people coming from a large radius.  But the time difference between the two sites is huge: Göbekli Tepe, assigned to the earliest Neolithic period, is dated by Klaus Schmidt, the director of excavations, to the 10th-9th millennia BC.  Any correspondences must be coincidental, even if each may reflect a similar social dynamic. 

        Sign at Chaco Canyon: not so different from signs at Sports International (even if SI has yet to be recognized as a sacred site).  Göbekli Tepe is not yet so well organized for visitors, but no doubt in a few years it will be.
               
       
       

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Spring cleaning


            The other day I came across Uğur Bey, our photocopy man, relining a desk drawer with some heavy paper.
        “Spring cleaning,” he said.  It looked neat and tidy. 
“I need to do the same,” I said, “for my whole office.”  A Herculean task, I’m afraid, thanks to my congenital disinclination to order and the lingering effects of last summer’s renovations in our Faculty building (plaster dust, books & notes stashed randomly).  

        One Monday morning in early February, I returned to my office from ten days in England, a visit with some lectures to give at the University of Reading, courtesy of the Erasmus staff exchange agreement between our Archaeology Departments.  Our spring semester was already underway.  My wastepaper baskets were full.  The croton on my desk, its leaves drooping, was dying of thirst.  Murat, our cleaning man, had not once set foot in my office, it was all too clear. 

        Looking on the computer, I learned that one of my courses – introduction to European art and architecture, medieval to modern – was scheduled in a classroom without a projector.  Another course had been assigned no room at all. 
        “The rooms are all taken!” was our secretary’s immediate reaction.
        By the late afternoon, the waste baskets had been emptied, the carpet vacuumed, the croton watered, and the two courses had been scheduled in a classroom (with projector) right next to my office. 

        Murat is well-meaning but cleaning is not his forte.  Three young colleagues from the Pyschology Department, newly arrived last September and installed in offices on our Archaeology corridor, finally gave up on him and arranged for the janitor from Psychology’s heartland, two floors up, to come down and clean their offices.  This man appears daily, with a cart well-equipped with trash bags, cloths, sponges, and cleaning products.
        We archaeologists suddenly took notice.  Why were we accepting shoddy cleaning?  But now, surely Murat would be inspired by his colleague’s example, procure proper equipment, and empty our trash daily – wouldn’t he?
        A few weeks passed and nothing changed.
        Fed up, we demanded that our chair speak with Esat Bey, the supervisor.  Esat Bey once came on an Archaeology Department field trip to Hattusa, the Hittite capital – we know him well.
        The next day, Esat Bey made the rounds, speaking with each colleague.
        I ran into Murat and Esat Bey in the corridor.
        “If he doesn’t clean regularly,” Esat Bey said, “we’re going to fire him.  How often does he empty your trash?”
        “Once every ten days,” I said.
        Esat Bey gave Murat his orders.  Murat smiled.  They have known each other for a long time.
        My trash is now emptied daily, more or less, my office vacuumed and the desk wiped regularly, more or less – with water splashed on the carpet, routinely.  The water splotches are a sign that a cleaning activity has taken place.
        It’s now up to me to do my share – to put on a CD (Cesaria Evora is particularly inspiring) and ruthlessly sort, throw out, arrange, organize.

        At home, our cat is shedding, now that winter has given way to spring.  Momtaz is a long-haired Persian, so there is much fur to shed.  A daily brushing is in order, by her personal groomer (Marie-Henriette or me), which she enjoys enormously.

        This Sunday we’re having nation-wide elections, for municipal offices.  Will this be an electoral spring cleaning?  The prime minister has framed these elections as a referendum about himself, although he is not a candidate. In the two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, the races are tight between the incumbents, both AK Party (the prime minister’s conservative Islamist party, which holds a majority in Parliament), and the main challengers, both CHP (Republican People’s Party, the main left-center party founded by Atatürk).
        Melih Gökçek has been the mayor of Ankara for 20 years.  His mustachioed face is very familiar.  To him we owe a Piranesian network of underpasses and overpasses, no doubt helpful for traffic flow but contributing nothing to the visual elegance of the city.  To think that Ankara could have had its own Champs Elysées, if only the urban planning principles of the 1930s had been stuck to!
        To boost the mayor’s prospects for reelection, the new metro line to Bilkent and beyond, westward along the Eskişehir road, was opened just two weeks ago, after at least a dozen years under construction.  The prime minister joined the mayor at the official opening ceremony.  
We rode the new metro to Kızılay the other evening.  It is great, we all agree, but is opening it now, just before the elections, going to change anyone’s vote?  


As one of the numerous AK Party campaing posters notes, “I’ll look at accomplishments, not empty words” (“Lafa değil, icraata bakarım”).  Many voters might be doing exactly that, although (in light of the corruption scandal ongoing since December 17th) not in the way the AK Party intends.


Meanwhile, the fruit trees on the Bilkent campus are in full, magnificent flower. 
Spring is here. 




Saturday, February 22, 2014

Two books to enjoy



     The first book is a historical novel, Escape from Smyrna.  I wanted to write the kind of book I enjoy reading on a trip or on vacation – a puzzle, a good mystery with drama, colorful characters, vivid settings, and a touch of humor.  It took me a long time, but I’m happy with the result – and so is everyone who has read it so far. 

     Escape from Smyrna unveils the intertwining histories of three families, Anglo-American,Turkish, and Greek, bound together by an ancient necklace that incites violence yet has powers of healing and redemption. 
     It is 1982.  Four Swiss hippies steal a gold locket from a chapel on a barren Greek island.  Soon after, it appears for sale in Istanbul's Covered Bazaar.  Oran Crossmoor, a 26-year-old American, buys the locket, recognizing it as part of a lost family heirloom, a necklace of four medieval reliquaries.  When he shows it to Leyla Aslanoglu, a rich, witty octogenarian friend of his mother, she claims it as treasure of her family.  Neither Oran nor Leyla has any idea that the answer to their conflict over the necklace lies in a dramatic escape from Smyrna decades earlier ... 




        The second book, Anatolian Images, is a collection of short articles about Turkey that my late friend, Toni Cross, wrote for the newsletter, “Ankara Scene.”  Ancient, medieval, modern; history and archaeology but also tips for shopping and quick getaways  – Toni’s Turkey was rich, varied, fun, and sometimes deeply moving.  As co-editor (with Patricia Ülkü), I have read the articles countless times, but every time I pick up the book and start to read I can still hear Toni’s voice.  I love the pictures, too.  A wonderful book, both for those new to Turkey and for those familiar with it.

          "Toni Cross's work informs, delights, and captivates.  Her knowledge of Turkey transcends time and place, but is always presented with wit and affection.  Readers will share her enthusiasm, see Turkey through her sharp and gleaming eye, and come away with a truly unique perspective and an in-depth knowledge of Turkey past and present."
                                     
                 Robert Finn, Visiting Scholar, Columbia University




Charles Gates, Escape from Smyrna.  Winchester, UK: Top Hat Books, 2013.  ISBN: 978-1-78099-849-7   (www.tophat-books.com)

Toni M. Cross, Anatolian Images.  Edited by Charles Gates and Patricia Ülkü.  Istanbul: Libra Books, 2013.  ISBN: 978-605-4326-77-8.   (www.librabooks.com.tr)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Happy New Year in a nutshell (or in a shoebox)



       

        Christmas and New Year’s Day have come and gone and we are firmly in 2014.  The Ankara weather has been dreary, day after day of gray skies, sometimes fog, now and then a bit of drizzle.  No rain, no snow – but roads nastily slippery as moisture enlivens the dormant oils.  Marie-Henriette reports seeing several accidents en route into the city yesterday, cars having spun and skidded, including a near miss for herself.
Winter began one month ago.  With a prediction of snow soon to come, I rushed to my local Shell station to have our snow tires installed.  Last year, it barely snowed so before I went I wondered aloud to our kapıcı (caretaker of our apartment building) if changing the tires would be worth the trouble.
“There’s already one meter of snow in the mountains,” Murat said.  “We’re going to have a rough winter.”
 
My parking lot on December 8

A few days later, the temperature dropped sharply.  I was up early to get started with a challenging course preparation.  The car was covered with frost.  I had to scrape it off – what a bother!  First I started the car, to warm it up.  But as I sat down, turning the key in the ignition, I noticed the beauty of the large frost flakes that covered the windshield.  Each large, complex flake was perfectly placed in an intricate tapestry.  I didn’t want to move.
The next afternoon, December 7th, snow began, and the following morning, we awakened to full sun and all Ankara brilliantly white.
 
Two cacti eye the snowy street
         
        In contrast, the political climate these days is not sunny, clear, crisp, and beautiful.  Instead, it’s like our New Year’s weather: nasty, slippery, with dormant oils awakened.  On December 17, we awoke to news of several dozen people hauled in for questioning on charges of corruption, including three cabinet ministers and their sons.  A raid on the home of the general manager of Halkbank, a state bank, yielded a few million cash dollars stuffed  in shoeboxes.   
 

        The prime minister, indignant at this assault on the integrity of his government, has blamed plotters, foreign and domestic, and he has used his considerable powers to block further investigations.  That charges of bribery and money-laundering might be true, or at least deserving of examination, seems not to be of concern.  Prosecutors and dozens of policemen involved in the probes have been removed from their posts.  Critics are denounced.  Even a middle-aged woman in Manisa was detained when she held up a shoebox  to protest while the prime minister was addressing a rally.  
        As we ordinary folk wait for explanations of who, when, how, and why, every day some new incident, declaration, or rumor compounds the mystery.  No one knows what lies ahead, but most hope that the rule of law, enshrined in the Turkish constitution, will be reaffirmed. 
 
         The Ethnographic Museum, with equestrian statue of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

         One week ago Saturday, I treated myself to an afternoon downtown.  The coast was clear – no demonstrations; the city center crowded with shoppers, as usual.  I was having New Year’s cards printed at Fırat Color, the photo store in Kızılay I have gone to for over 20 years, a shop which miraculously has survived the transition from traditional film to digital cameras.  I had a few hours to kill, so I walked up to two museums I hadn’t visited for years, the Ethnographic Museum and the State Painting and Sculpture Museum.  The buildings, designed by Arif Hikmet Koyunoğlu in the 1920s, are distinguished examples of the First National Style, and dramatically sited on a hillside with a fantastic view to the west (even if the immediate foreground is marred by an unsightly jumble of miscellaneous buildings, roads, and railway tracks).
        In the language of Turkish museums, “ethnographic” = “traditional Turkish arts and customs.”  One will learn nothing about New Guinea, Mali, or Bali, not even about Bulgars, Greeks, Circassians, Kurds, or Arabs (all component peoples of the Ottoman Empire).    
        This afternoon, visitors are few, the staff somnolent.  The exhibits, even if well presented, are predictable – with the exception of several intricately decorated wooden doors and minbars (pulpits in mosques), some even from Seljuk times, 700 years ago.  For me, these are the highlights. 
 
 Woodwork (detail)

This museum was the resting place of Atatürk from his death in 1938 until 1953, when his grand mausoleum, the Anıt Kabir, was completed.  Photos of the funeral journey from Istanbul to this museum line the walls.  While I am examining the photographs, a man and his son rush in; the man positions his son by the place where Atatürk’s coffin once stood and takes a picture; and out they go. 
 
         The State Painting and Sculpture Museum

        The State Painting and Sculpture Museum shows works by Turkish artists of the 19th – 20th centuries.  The paintings are in the fashionable western European styles: realism (notably orientalist themes), impressionism, post-impressionisms of various sorts, and, in the final rooms, abstract art.  Much seems derivative and I walk through fairly quickly, but from time to time something catches my eye.   

 
     
        I love Osman Hamdi Bey’s orientalist painting of 1908, “The Arms Merchant” (“Silah Taciri”) -- above -- and I enjoy the great charm and upbeat message of Şeref Akdik’s 1935 “School Registration” (“Mektebe Kayıt”) -- below -- in which a village couple are signing up their three small children for school and everyone is visibly thrilled.  This is what the Republic is all about.   
 

And the large salon at the north end of the museum, furnished in late Ottoman style, is stunning. 

        I leave this museum feeling happy and satisfied.  I am tempted to continue on to the Cer Modern Arts Center, Ankara’s newest modern art museum, not far away behind the massive courthouse, but it is already dark and, more importantly, a phone call has come from Fırat Color: my cards are ready.  

        Best wishes to all for a Happy New Year 2014!