Change In Plans

This post is about some of the elements of Turkish life which we have found surprising, and that we would not have known without being here.

First, unlike every other European country that I know of, Turkey is a gun culture. Although gun ownership is generally forbidden, there are an estimated 25 million guns in private hands (population of 75 million). Gun violence, somehow, is still very low, maybe because of nearly universal male military service. Men we spoke to about gun ownership said they had them at home, “for security”. Yesterday, India were on a run in the mountains of the coast. We were surprised to hear (and later see) several quail hunters blasting away with shotguns. We were told, by the mayor of Gocek (random!), who we met coming down the mountain with his Italian 12-gauge and a rucksack full of quail, “Turkey is a country of hunters.”

Second, the popular adulation of Kemal Ataturk seems quite real. In many other countries it is required to put the President’s or the monarch’s photo in all public buildings and places of business. In Turkey, Ataturk is depicted in all of those places,but also in every house that we have been in. There is even a nautically themed Ataturk portrait, sun faded and salt-stained, on the bridge of our gulet. One man said, “I have the pictures in my home because I want my children to grow up knowing who we are as Turks, and what we stand for.” The national identity that these pictures symbolize is powerful. We have not seen any pictures of the current president, Gul, nor of any generals.

Third, we walked past a war memorial in the town of Fethiye yesterday. It was a 30-foot obelisk, with the names of war dead, and the dates and cities where they fell, carved in black letters. Around the base were dramatic black cast-iron figures of fallen soldiers, weeping women, scared children. What was strange was that the dates were recent (mostly in the 1990s), and the battles were in cities like Van and Hakkari and Sirnak, all down in Southeastern Turkey. This small town lost at least 20 of its sons fighting the Kurdish separatists. All in, my understanding is that more than 25,000 Turks were killed in this fighting.

Fourth, Turkey and Greece had a big population exchange (roughly 150,000 people) in the 1950s and 1960s: Muslims heading east and Orthodox Christians heading west. This was somewhat similar to the India/Pakistan exchange, but one twentieth the size, and much less violent. Many of the emigres traced their family roots back 1,500 to 2,000 years or more, inluding some of the earliest Christian settlements. Presumably it was at this time that the Greek village of Megrim renamed itself Fethiye, after “Turkey’s first aviation martyr,” who crashed trying to fly from Istanbul to Cairo in the 20s.

Fifth, apparently Turkish public schools teach history starting pretty much with the founding of the Ottoman Empire in 1300. The idea is that Turkish national identity starts with ethnically Turkish people, who came from Central Asia. The thousands of years of Hittites, Greeks, Lycians and Lydians, and Romans and Byzantines is ignored as being “not Turkish.” I would like to know whether this is still true, but public-school eduated adults indicated that it was the case when they were growing up.

Our time in Turkey has been wonderful. We will give some thought to the bigger issues, and will try to connect some of these dots after we leave for Italy on Saturday.