Istanbul Is Blooming

Literally, the spring has arrived to Istanbul. The tulips started to show up everywhere.

"Sümbüls" started to shade the terrace of my favorite day-time cafe again.



But more importantly, our much beloved "erguvan"s (Judas trees) started to bloom dotting the green landscapes of Bosphorus with its pink flowers setting gray winter-time imaginations free. To an Istanbullu, when erguvans bloom, it is time to end the hibernation and mix with life outside.

Indeed, the same time has been coinciding with Istanbul's major cinema festival for the last 28 years. The event - Istanbul Film Festival - is a two weeks cultural feast consisting of some 200 movies gathered from all corners of the world shown in movie theaters that mostly concentrate around Taksim area attracting thousands of loyal followers every year.

The lively crowd on streets melts all of a sudden during matinées making the Istiklal and its side streets resemble school corridors. Then when the movies are over, the crowd makes its way back to the streets rushing to cafes to grab a quick drink over a short chat with an acquaintance run into on street until making their way to the next movie.

The festival marks the cultural awakening of the city each year starting a chain reaction of festivals blooming one after another around the city making you believe whatever events you attended during winter time were merely preparations for the real thing - the cultural summer.

Link:

Being In The Middle

My last two posts gave me thoughts around a favorite movie of mine named "Taking Sides" from Istvan Szabo.

Those in the middle seem to be richest poors or the poorest riches.

Being one?

Happy Children Day

Yesterday, when children in the west were celebrating their day exchanging smiles with politicians, some children in the east had to deal with a slightly more unfortunate treat.


"...Video footage of the protest showed an officer from the special operations unit beating the boy in the head with a truncheon and then kicking him as he lay on the ground..."

Of course, this specific case is an indicator of a big problem with lots of dimensions. But the output is as simple as shame.

Decomposing Leafs

Today's April 23rd. It is the 89th. anniversary of the first assembly of the current Turkish parliament. Much more importantly, it is the national holiday that is completely dedicated to children.

It is in the republic's tradition that the primary statesmen (president, primary minister, chairman of the parliament and minister of education) invite children to their offices today, give them their seats for couple of minutes and let them symbolically give orders and talk before the press.


The tradition apparently began in 1929 when Ataturk started to invite children to his office; but no one seems to know exactly whose idea was it to give the children the seat. It is however one of the rare state traditions that is being followed by all without any objections - something very rare in this country.


This girl - apparently a natural republican - replaces the prime minister to give clever answers such as; "don't ask me questions about the possible revision in the cabinet, I've just sit here". To a question whether she thinks that the raise given to civil servants this year was enough, she answers "I want to see them well off as much as you do. But these are tough times and tough times require tough decisions."

Another young lady that was replacing the president was challenged by a more difficult question coming from an enthusiastic 5 year old boy:

"What happens to decomposed leafs when they decompose?"


Everyone laughs at the only question that would mean something in the universe.

The laughter ends, the bullshit continues.

Source of Violence & Equal Societies

I read an impressive article in The Independent yesterday.

Key points to me;

"...One of our most basic psychological needs is for status – to feel that we are a valued member of our tribe. We evolved in small, very egalitarian tribes of hunter-gatherers, and have only lived outside them for a few minutes in evolutionary terms. So when we feel our status is threatened – or there is no way of becoming respected by the rest of the tribe – we begin to malfunction in all sorts of ways.

Indeed, almost nothing makes humans more anxious than panic about our status. Endless clinical trials show what happens to our bodies when we feel we are going to lose our status"
...
"Our systems flood with a hormone called cortisol."
...
"...Yet we have built our societies on exaggerating this status panic, and we have been ratcheting it up over the past 30 years. The more unequal a society is, the more intense it becomes. Even if you slip to the bottom in Sweden, it's not so very different from the top. But when there is a long social ladder, and the bottom rung means humiliation and poverty, everyone at every rung feels a sweatier need to cling to their place – and the society starts to go wrong. This isn't left-wing speculation: it is an empirical fact."
...

...
"How can this be? Permanent status panic is an unnatural state for humans. High cortisol levels corrode our insides and massively increase the risk of heart-attack. We eat more – and our bodies store fat differently. It hugs them to our middles, rather than storing them lower down, in our hips and thighs. We look for ways to soothe ourselves – like drug addiction. We are far more likely to break down into depression or mental illness, or to snap and attack somebody. "
...
"James Gilligan, the psychiatrist running the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, explains that acts of violence are "attempts to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation – a feeling that is painful, and can even be intolerable or overwhelming". He adds that he has "yet to see a serious act of violence that did not represent an attempt to undo this 'loss of face"
...
"Our élites have adopted an ideology – the extreme inequality of market fundamentalism – that simply doesn't suit our species. It doesn't have to be this way. By democratically taxing the rich and using the money to lift up the poor, we can make life better for all of us. Of course there must be some income differentials, but nothing like our own grotesque rates. Plato suggested the richest person should be allowed to earn five times the wage of the poorest person, which seems fair to me. "

I Want War

Just occured to me; do you know anyone from history or from today's world sent to prison for wanting war? None that I'm aware of. Isn't it ironic when you consider how easy it is to find yourself in prison or even get yourself killed under certain circumstances when what you want is "peace" ?

Why Dunning & Kruger Effect?

Sometimes I tend to think that it's a pity that it wouldn't be very practical to implement a law to enforce people to study issues they write about. A quote I tend to find very important is "Bilgi sahibi olmadan fikir sahibi olmak" in Turkish; somewhat meaning "to reach a conviction without the necessary information".

W: Aaa, this joke is really funny.

W:I'm sending it to you

M: Send...

The reason why I named Dunning & Kruger effect this blog actually slightly contradicts with what I just said above. I chose the name because I wanted it to remind me these 4 observed phenomena whenever I would feel the urge to express my thoughts here:

• Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
• If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill

Under the horror of these 4 principles, I wanted to remind myself that I should be doubting every idea & thought no matter where they are originating from - from myself or someone else. On the other hand, I didn't want my doubts to prevent me from sharing them.

I try to remember not to reach convictions without adequate thinking. Especially motivated by the challenge that my posts are being followed by some of the minds I value in this world, I keep re-thinking issues already expressed here. I love to observe that in this re-thinking process, ideas I share here tend to evolve, mature and sometimes even completely change on my mind. It's like a diary where records keep ever changing. Precisely the reason why I started this blog.

Especially in our age of communication, when I see how some thought patterns are prepared, packaged into easy to swallow thought tablettes to be consumed by public and served through public opinion channels wordlwide is somewhat disappointing.

It's like these radioactive marker drugs they inject into your vein to see how your blood travels through your body; a thought is created and you see it travel from continent to continent, from country to country, from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood for years - without being questioned, without being re-thought, accepted as they arrive, used with confidence and pride in every intellectual conversation.

Let's avoid that.

Recipe Nr 2: Chilbir Sauce

Last night we felt the urge to cook some pasta late in the night. There wasn't much in the fridge - so with the limited ingredients there were, I came up with this quick "chilbir" sauce for the spaghetti. Chilbir actually is a simple dish made of eggs and yoghurt which I modified a bit to turn into a sauce.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• About a full glass of yoghurt
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 4 mid-size peeled tomatoes
• Two pinches of dried mint
• Two pinches of sumac
• Sea salt
• Two pinches of paprika

1. Boil two glasses of water in a pan.
2. Fold the eggs into the boiling water - don't scramble!
3. Let it boil on for about 5 minutes until the color of the yolk changes significantly.
4. By now you should have at most half a glass of water left in the pan - add the yoghurt.
5. Mingle the mixture squashing the eggs into little pieces with a fork.
6. Slice garlic cloves as thinly as possible and add to the mixture
7. Chop the tomato into little piece and add to the mixture
8. Add the spices and salt
9. Mix and let the mixture simmer on for while until it’s viscosity feels right.

Afiyet olsun!

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

Thinking about death re-provoked my particular interest for one of my favorite photographers; Nan Goldin.

Especially throughout my university years, her images had a profound effect on me. I was writing pornographic sci-fi stories at the time; this is probably why what at first attracted my immediate attention was the "truth" and the venturesome immorality in her work. Then I started to realize the special thing about her; connections she manages to build with her subjects.

These connections are so strong, that her work witnesses her subjects making love, getting married, melting day by day with AIDS radiating -maybe even burning with- intimate truth of life. She even manages to photograph blankness they leave behind after her subjects' deaths.

Obama the Diplomat

Obama is currently visiting Turkey apparently having done his homework. Cutting all other bullshit out, at his speech he made at the parliament yesterday, he said;

"....This is my first trip overseas as president of the United States. I've been to the G-20 summit in London, and the NATO summit in Strasbourg, and the European Union summit in Prague. Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message to the world. And my answer is simple: Evet — yes.
...
This morning I had the great privilege of visiting the tomb of your extraordinary founder of your republic. And I was deeply impressed by this beautiful memorial to a man who did so much to shape the course of history. But it is also clear that the greatest monument to Ataturk's life is not something that can be cast in stone and marble. His greatest legacy is Turkey's strong, vibrant, secular democracy, and that is the work that this assembly carries on today..."





Obama in the Turkish parliament. The inscription behind says: " Sovereignty Is Nation's Alone Without Any Reservations". Subtext: "Sovereignty is not God's when it comes to state issues"



What a relief after 8 years rule of Bush (and all the bunch of his dickhead bureaucrats) who kept referring to Turkey as a country of moderate Islam.

It was the biggest mistake you could have done when approaching a country with a proud history where more than 85% of the public is allergic to the political implications of the Islam word, where its constitution, education system, governmental institutions are built around strict secularism; a country which is changing at a great pace doubling its income, industrial production, size of its urban middle classes every few years; growing its democracy more and more colorful and maturer every decade.

Of course, they harvested what they seeded; in 2003 the very same Parliament in the picture above - backed up by huge public support (including mine) - voted against any support of US ambitions in Iraq. No single US soldier was allowed to put foot on Turkey's soil. The public support for US policies dropped to below 10%.

Obama seems to have been taught well about Turkey's unique realities. Of course; these are all part of a game. But it's good to know that opponents at the table of diplomacy are well informed.

I'm Not Immortal Anymore

Another good swimming exercise at the pool. On the way out, couple of new emails, 2 missed calls and two text messages on the phone. Missed calls; one from my wife, the other one from my mother; an unusual combination.

I get into the car; my friend is driving. Check the emails - usual daily issues about the business; write some emails in response drinking water. Then check the text messages - one from some bank promoting something. Delete immediately. The next one is from my mother: "yarin memem aliniyor." "my breast will be removed tomorrow". I look around in the moving car. I look at the cars and buildings around to capture a reflection of what I have just read. No reflection whatsoever; the universe is still alive - there is no tragedy.

Quick call to mother; collect some soothing facts. The cancer hasn't spread anywhere yet and as she is only 55, there is a really good chance that it will not go too bad. Feel the fear in her dignified voice. There will be chemotherapy she says hating what she's vocalizing. Learn about the location and time of the operation and let her know that I'll be there. She seems to be prepared not to have me there with her. But she likes the fact that I seem to be eager about it.

"Do I seem to be that distant?" A quick thought that comes to my mind that should be stored and kept away until the ever postponed parent - son confrontation that will be done one day. (but of course)



We hang up; I look around, chat with my friend. Slightly feeling guilty for having fun. The "tragedizer" in me keeps needling me to remind me that I should feel worse. No; I don't. Maybe it's because I don't perceive it to be very serious.

The concept of death is not very alien to me. Couple of friends had died, couple of remote relatives as well. People died in the hospital I used to volunteer for. In other areas, I have been in cases where I came very close to death myself. But none of these experiences, or similar experiences confronted by other people, not even the fact that my mother in law had to go through the very same thing couple of years ago, could shake me the way this news shook me. In a subtle but powerful way. Despite all these experiences, I realized I didn't feel prone to death until I read that text message yesterday.

I am lucky; both of my parents are alive. So are other really close people in my life. Having the deadly word "cancer" touching my closest circle, it feels like death touches me for the very first time. No matter how serious this case actually is.

I'm not immortal. Not anymore.