Turkish Muse

Which president wanna-be is most like you?

Normally I wouldn't post anything that encourages you to visit someone else's Web site, but this is too good to not pass along. USA Today's new Candidate Match Game asks you to answer 11 different questions that take your pulse on issues including the Iraq war, healthcare and immigration and then tells you which 3 presidential candidates think most like you.

Afterward, you can rate the issues by importance. If the Iraq war is your number one issue, the results will reflect that. If you couldn't care less about taxes, the results will take that into consideration too.

The 3 candidates the game came up with for me, Dennis Kucinich,
Mike Gravel and John Edwards, are of course all Dems.

Let me know your results here after you take the quiz.

Relativity

Know what's worse than a traffic circle in Jersey?

A traffic circle in Turkey.

A new chapter for Turkey?, writes BBC

Given that Turks were talking about entering the European Union when I lived here eight years ago, it makes sense that not all Turks are chomping at the bit every time there is a bit of good news about their application.

It's been a long, hard road for them to even begin negotiations with the EU (some of that difficulty has been, admittedly, of their own doing, although if Sarkozy could just keep his mouth shut, it might go a little easier for Turkey), and talks are expected to take at least another 10 years -- without even the guarantee of full membership at the end of it all.

But a story on the BBC's Web site today gave, I'm sure, many hope that progress is indeed being made on their admittance to the European institution.

To read the story on the BBC's Web site, click here.

24 September 2007
Turkey gets back on the EU track
By Kirsty Hughes
Writer on European affairs

Turkey appears to have emerged from its simmering political crisis, with the successful installation of a new government and president.

As a result, attention is now turning back towards Brussels, to see whether Turkey's stalled bid to join the EU club can gain new impetus, or whether it will hit fresh obstacles.

In Brussels, politicians and diplomats are cautiously optimistic that membership talks can move forward this autumn.

This positive mood is driven both by events in Turkey, and also by EU hopes that the Union has resolved its own internal crisis over the failed constitution.

Military worry

Gary Titley, leader of British Labour MEPs in the European Parliament, calls the recent political developments in Turkey "very positive", though he cautions that the future remains uncertain.

"Turkey has a newly elected government... with a strong electoral performance, and a prime minister who up until now has been very reform-minded and actively delivered what he promised," Mr Titley says.

"The worry is how the military will respond... but I think they got their fingers burnt a bit, pre-election."

The European Commission will give its annual report on all the candidates for membership, including Turkey, at the start of November.

Turkey could be criticised for its lack of political reforms over the last year, so some EU diplomats and politicians are hoping that Ankara will rapidly bring forward certain key reforms - not least on freedom of speech and rights of religious minorities - rather than wrapping all reforms together in a longer constitutional process.

The European Parliament is also debating an annual resolution on the state of Turkey's membership application - with a vote due before the end of October.

Diplomats welcome the absence, so far, of some of the contentious phrasing seen in some previous parliamentary resolutions.

There is no demand that Turkey recognise the Armenian massacres of 1917 as "genocide" this time, for example.

But neither is there any direct reference to the goal of the talks being membership of the EU club - a reflection of the strong opposition to the idea in some quarters.

Wise people

"The [German] Christian Democrats are fervently opposed. The trouble is they express their opposition in a way most of us cannot accept - talk of a Christian club is manifest nonsense and unacceptable," says Gary Titley.

But it is France's President Nikolas Sarkozy who has been most vocal in his hostility to Turkey's eventual membership of the bloc in recent months.

In a wide-ranging foreign policy speech at the end of August, Mr Sarkozy indicated that negotiations with Turkey could proceed, but only if they were limited to areas that could lead equally to membership or to his preferred alternative of a "privileged partnership".

He also added a second condition, that the Union set up a group of "wise people" to look at the Union's future direction in the years 2020-2030.

EU diplomats see these demands as Mr Sarkozy's way of getting himself off the hook of his own electoral promises to oppose Turkish EU membership, while not provoking a major EU crisis.

But some also worry about how to handle France's implicit demand not to open talks on five or more areas of negotiation, or chapters, which Paris says only apply to full membership of the club.

A new chapter?

In June, French diplomats already blocked talks going forward on the single currency chapter, though notionally on technical grounds.

Other chapters on the French list are said to be those dealing with regional funds, agricultural policy, finances, and institutional issues (including voting powers).

So far, there has been no public confrontation or political discussion of this French blockage at EU foreign minister level.

Some diplomats hope that such confrontation can be avoided for now, as long as talks are successfully opened in one or more other areas of negotiation this autumn.

But with eight chapters already blocked due to a dispute over Turkey's failure to open its ports to Greek Cypriot vessels, the aim of building up momentum in the talks faces challenges.

And if talks do not move forward in the autumn, or the pile of chapters openly blocked by the French grows, then, as one diplomat puts it: "It is another ball game entirely."

For now, there are hopes that talks could open soon in the area of health and consumer protection.

Disenchantment

But with fellow candidate Croatia bounding ahead in its membership talks, and likely to open as many as seven new chapters this autumn, the slow pace of Turkey's talks will become only too obvious.

Meanwhile, the Turkish mood towards the EU remains disenchanted.

In Istanbul, Hakan Altinay, director of the Open Society Institute, says Turkish public opinion is deeply pessimistic on Turkey's eventual EU membership.

"This is related to the Cyprus impasse and to Sarkozy's statements," he says.

"It is difficult to conclude that we have seen the end of French manoeuvring."

And while he is optimistic about future Turkish reforms on free speech, and on tackling the problems in the Kurdish-dominated south-east of the country, he considers that "movement on Cyprus is unlikely".

But despite these doubts, the prospects for EU-Turkey talks are now brighter than at the start of the year.

TURKEY'S PROGRESS
Chapters opened:
Science and research
Enterprise and industry
Statistics
Financial control

Chapters France may block:
Economic and monetary policy
Regional funds
Agricultural policy
Finances
Institutional issues

Chapters suspended over Cyprus:
Free movement of goods
Right of establishment and freedom to provide services
Financial services
Agriculture and rural development
Fisheries
Transport policy
Customs union
External relations

Our second family

Saturday night we had dinner with Seda, my parent's exchange student last year, and her family. It felt a little like cashing in my parent's check, considering that the whole year Seda was with them, Jeff and I lived in Wichita. (We have apologized profusely to Seda for this grave error. Luckily, she has forgiven us for our lapse in judgement.)

Here are some pictures from Saturday night.

Seda:

Jeff and Seda's father:

Seda and Barbara:

Jeff getting his butt whopped at backgammon:

Seda's father reveling in the fact that he is whopping Jeff's butt at backgammon:

Seda's father, sister Tuğba, grandmother and mother:

And the lovely present Seda's family gave us:

Lucky

There are a few times in life when you instintively know what the right choice is to make. Oftentimes, it is a sudden decision, one that you hadn't anticipated making.

On Saturday morning, Jeff and I ran into such a situation. On our way to get his hair cut, buy a couple of fall jackets and sit for coffee somewhere, we stopped to feed our street kitties.

Küçük Bebek (Little Baby) hadn't come out on Friday and I was starting to get worried when he didn't appear for breakfast on Saturday morning either. After a few minutes of calling him, the little kitten stumbled out from underneath a car.

Covered in dirt, sneezing, coughing and shaking, the baby looked worse than I'd ever seen him.

I approached the kitten and he sneezed again and uttered a pitiful meow. Tears sprang to my eyes. I looked at Jeff. We were thinking the same thing.

If we don't do something, this kitten will surely die. All of our Saturday afternoon plans suddenly seemed trivial. A haircut? It can wait. A jacket? I'll wear a winter sweater. Coffee? We can spend the money elsewhere.

But this kitten? This kitten needed help. And it was in our power to give it.

I picked up Küçük Bebek and held him tight to my chest while we hurried to the vet. Turns out the kitten was infested with parasites, a bacterial infection in his lungs and a virus. He will stay at the vet probably until this Saturday to fight off his sickness before we take him home for the winter.

This morning when I checked on Küçük Bebek at the vet, he purred as he cuddled in my arms.

"That cat is very lucky to find you," the vet said, smiling.

Our new kitty, whose name I think we'll change to Şanslı, which means "Lucky" in Turkish:

Labels: cats

The honeymoon is over

When I was a Rotary exchange student, I learned that there are certain stages of life, transititons, if you will, when you move to a foreign country.

For the first two to three months, you experience “the honeymoon.” Everything is new and exciting and fresh; differences between your home country and your new country are jewels waiting to be discovered. You laugh at misunderstandings and at your pitiful attempts to speak a new language.

Slowly, as you begin to settle into your new home, some of the glamour and shine of your city begins to wear off. Rough spots that you didn’t notice before suddenly become clearer. This is when you leave the honeymoon stage and begin to experience what I call the Backlash.

This is where I am.

Considering that I have lived in Turkey before, it makes sense that my honeymoon period only lasted a month.

Seemingly overnight, little things have started to annoy me that didn’t before. Differences that I saw as “quaint” are now frustrating and simple misunderstandings have become irritating.

Something as simple as ordering breakfast and tea by myself in a restaurant on Monday was enough to cause me heartburn for the rest of the day. You see, I was a white woman, not Turkish, simply trying to enjoy a late breakfast alone while reading my book. My waiter seemed to have a problem with that, as if the idea of a woman eating ALONE was anathema, or at least foreign, to him.

I waited 20 minutes for my tea; when I finally got so frustrated that I asked the waiter where it was, he came back with a cup of English tea, not Turkish tea. Another 15 minutes later my breakfast came, a plate of cheese, bread, tomatoes and cucumber that should have taken no more than five minutes to prepare. When I could see that everyone around me was clearly receiving better and faster service, I could not help but feel annoyed.

Similar things have happened with other Turkish men. When I am with Jeff and we are speaking to a Turkish man, the man will focus his entire attention on Jeff despite the fact that I AM CLEARLY SPEAKING BETTER TURKISH. Sometimes, it’s as if I don’t exist at all.

The fact that Turks allow cats and dogs to roam the streets is a HUGE source of contention for me. How can a culture purposely leave domesticated animals on the streets to fend for themselves when these animals are meant to live with and among people? Cats were domesticated THOUSANDS of years ago – they are meant to sleep on your pillow, not under your car! Dog is man’s best friend, but not here where they must dig in the garbage for food and are left friendless and alone.

I don’t think I will ever come to terms completely with the disregard many Turks have with street animals, especially cats and dogs, but I hope to come to accept it -- and our other differences -- graciously and realize, as Rotary always said, that “It is not better or worse; just different.”

No kidding

To give you an idea of what I do on my days at work, here is one of the funnier ledes I've had to rewrite recently:

"Ege University Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Major Branch perform male breast reduction. The large breasts which psychologically disturb the men are now no more problem."

Labels: work

My weekend

Yes, I know that today is Wednesday and that I have titled this post "My Weekend." But you see, I just went back to work today, so technically Saturday through Tuesday is my weekend.

I have not been to the internet cafe in several days, a mistake which I will not repeat as there are several stories floating through my head that I want to write here but cannot seem to focus on enough to do so.

One of the hardest things about living in Istanbul -- if you can call it hard -- is passing up the temptation to go out every single night of the week. There is ALWAYS something to do here, whether it's watch a soccer match, drink tea and play backgammon, smoke nargile by the sea or take in live music at a bar in Taksim.

Our weekend emcompassed all of those things, plus a traditional iftar dinner (the dinner that breaks the fast during Ramadan), a movie ("The Marsh" -- I don't recommend it), a Turkish fish dinner complete with an entire bottle of Rakı, and coffee and sweets at a bakery in our neighborhood.

Yeah, it was a little decadent, now that I think about it. But I make no excuses.

Watch where you eat

Yesterday was the first day of Ramadan , a month-long fast for Muslims that includes more viligant prayer and worship.

For foreigners and non-Muslims, we celebrate the holiday vicariously through our Muslim friends by attending puppet shows, shadow plays and the various music and theatre performances around the city. Even more fun for us is "Şeker Bayram" (Sugar Holday), a 3-day feast of candy, sweets, food and family at the end of the fast.

But the one thing we have to be careful of is when and where we eat during Ramadan.

In Istanbul, a city considerably more Westernized than most of the Muslim world, it's hard to tell how sensitive we non-Muslims need to be when it's lunchtime, the weather is beautiful and we want to sip tea and eat a sandwich at a sidewalk cafe where fasting Muslims are strolling by.

Or when it's 5 p.m., two hours before the fast ends, and you and your friend just want a snack to get through the last few hours of work. That's what happened yesterday to a friend of mine and me. She bought ice cream, I bought pretzels, and we proceeded to chomp our way through the hallways and onto the elevator.

Upon entering the elevator, which was full, I looked down and saw a woman holding a bag of Ramadan pide, a special bread baked only during Ramandan that is used to break the fast. Suddenly, I realized what we had done.

We raced out of the elevator at the next floor, not wanting to offend anyone any more than we probably already had. I mean, seriously...if you were fasting, the day was almost over and someone stood next to you with a chocolate coated ice-cream cone, wouldn't you be a little peeved?

Labels: holidays

Being a Dıscourse upon the Multitudinous Adventures of PhılCollins4Ever

Tomorrow marks the end of my second week at school. My new job is exciting and rewarding. Classes will start next week (which isn't the reason why it's been rewarding...), and we've been in orientation, development meetings, and the like since we began. The program that I teach with has just been created this year, and is still in process of being finalized. I've described it as a pedagogical obstacle course because it involves a lot of rigorous and creative work: team-teaching, creating new assessment plans, implementing new curriculum, getting to know a new group of people, and trying to accomodate many different disciplines at the same time. Anyway, it's fun because it's challenging. It's stimulating to meet the challenges you want to face, as opposed to, say, the challenges you have to face because you're underemployed ın the midwest. Those kinds of challenges blow.

As Barbara posted before, this has also been a week for meeting new people. We also had dinner with an administrative assistant from the school who's been teaching herself critical theory in English in addition to her own work. Critical theory (for the uninitiated, a concatenation of literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and a smattering of Marxism) is daunting reading for 99% of people who read Englısh as a first language, so we find her impressively ambitious.

My foot heals slowly. I don't feel any difference from day to day, so I should say that I hope it's healing. It doesn't help that I walk a lot, or that I keep dropping heavy weights on my foot (kidding about this part, mom).

In the meantime, I have two ambitions: to see a lot of football matches, including the upcoming game between Beşiktaş and Liverpool, and to learn how to play the saz. The saz is a Turkish stringed instrument that sounds unlike any stringed instrument I've played. I have a small hope that it's comparable to the guitar and mandolin. I found a place that offers lessons, but since I don't speak Turkish, I'd need to look around for someone who can teach by pointing.

This weekend ıs wide open and full of potential. We plan to waste it by watching monster trucks on international pay-per-vıew.