Haydarpaşa In Colors

Haydarpaşa, with all its all magnificence, is one of the most dominant buildings in Istanbul's soul. If Istanbul is a meeting point between east and west, then Haydarpaşa, being the main train station on the Asian side, is the very point where  these two symbolic poles touch each other perhaps in the most elegant manner. It's like an eagle head proudly standing at the edge of the Asian continent looking at the European shores of Istanbul with a confidence that it seems to take from the vast continent behind.

It was always depicted in the old Turkish movies as the first and rather shocking contact point between peasant Anatolian families and the "challenging" Istanbul with all its - to any foreign eye - intimidating skyline that can be observed right when stepping out the main hall. Perhaps it's this effect or surprise that it makes it "so Istanbul". 

In those movies, you would mostly observe these families observing this skyline - which seemingly is so much more different to what they have in their villages - with thoughtful eyes and maybe also hear the hero utter a word or two showing that he accepts the challenge he is being offered. That that challenge is still the major one going on in Turkey's politics today.

This show I came across by accident. Like many of the Cultural Capital - 2010 things, I didn't hear about this when it happened. Anyway, better than nothing, I'm putting it here.Nice one, indeed, done by these guys.

‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo.

Art Actors

Last weekend I was in Italy for my good friends' - Idil and Axel's wedding. There is no way for me to describe how much at home I felt in that creepy castle in the middle of beautiful Tuscany. About 30 people - most of them knowing each other since a very long time - became a great family under the same roof. Everywhere we turned we found friendship and care. It was a weekend filled with joy of life.

Result of one of our many little night time activities we organiszd during our stay; reenactment of Da Vinci's "Last Supper":

First with men;

and then with women;

Idil at this one just became the perfect Jesus.

There is a tendency in the group to turn it into a collective hobby where we would re-enact masterpieces like this one. 

Let's see how it develops. Hope to share further results here soon.

Not Being Able to Present The Turkish Identity In Eurovision

(This discussion on Eksi Sozluk was opened to criticize Turkey's entry selection for Eurovision.)

Assuming that Eurovision is really a place to present an identity - an interesting thought though I must say -, right away, the question that comes to one's mind is what Turkish identity that is not well presented in Eurovision is like. We, as a nation, love to live at the peaks of a reactionary attitude. But, don't you think that slowly we need to start to understand that this land we live in has a history and that we didn't land here from space or even more absurdly from Central Asia? Our essence is a mixture. Only 7% of our genetic pool is originated from Central Asia while around 30% is from Middle East and another around 30% is from Europe.

We have made ourselves so deeply condition that we Turks have to be the center of the world, that we are a very special race crowned by the contemporary fact that we are a Muslim nation, we tend not to understand or see that we are owners of this also in terms of civilizations highly fertile land . Being cut from history other than the official one, we tend to forget what really matters is the LAND. Cultures flourishing on it don't vanish but only change form by interacting with each other. Have no illusions: We are Urartu, we are Hittite, we are Sumer, we are Persia, we are Antic Greece, we are Troi, we are Byzantine, we are Armenia, we are Seldjuk and we are Ottoman.

With this certain stupid idea what a real Turk is like (encoded by official and still too nationalistically oriented education system) in our head, we struggle to find whether we fit into that image. But the minute we try to fit ourselves into something is the actual moment where we put a distance to our true selves.

Manga, Mor ve Ötesi, Hadise, Kenan Dogulu - all of these artists are rooted from this land. They grew up here and they were loved here.They are PART of this land. They reflect this land. Without any complexes they should be accepted.

And if really needed - I don't see why we should it need it though - we shouldn't refrain from looking directly into the eyes of our sarcastic foreign friends and say "hey - we are this, I don't fucking care about the rest, really."

Don't think we are pure. Nobody actually is. But living up to the idea that we are mixture can be really nice - creative, passionate, joyful. And we have an opportunity where we could realize this state of mind more easily than most of the other nation states.

Armenians Killed 519.000 Turks

A sentence designed to continue like this: "... therefore incidents where 1.5 Million Armenians were killed cannot be called a genocide."

Numbers quoted might be correct or not. Incidents that happened could be called a genocide or not - this actually isn't the point. Far from it. But the claim that the suffering party has to be 100% the victim like in the Holocaust to call it a genocide is utterly foolish to me.

In the end, while until only 100 years ago, "Kurds, Armenians, Turks etc." lived in this land, now "Kurds, Turks etc." live. Find the difference between the two pictures.

What Genius Sounds Like

It seems Fazil Say did it again.


He took this classical Turkish song from 18th. century (one of my favorites),...



to turn into this brilliant jazz piece:

Utanıyoruz! *

Yes - today I'm ashamed to be a Turkish citizen. I'm ashamed to carry the citizenship of a country which sees no problem in hosting an official war criminal - El Beshir, Sudan's president, primary responsible authority for Darfur crimes. And this isn't the first time we did it. It is already the third time in two years of time. But this is the first time after he was officially declared as a war criminal by International Criminal Court in The Hague.

* WE ARE ASHAMED! 

Update on November 8th: What a relief! He's not coming.

Beat It

Of course, Istanbul had to do it as well. MJ@ Galatasaray square.

Turkey's Not Europe

Couple of weeks ago, when reading through, the temper hit my head and I felt the urge to contribute in a discussion board on Sunday Telegraph's site.


To understand the average human being's thinking pattern, one should really spend some time on reading newspapers' commentary sections - my favorite sports among with listening to religious radio stations. (topic for another entry). There you would understand how difficult it actually is to reach a peaceful world with current education systems (and with the current nurtition diets for that matter) on the globe.

There is so much to say on this topic that I couldn't include. Anyway; shallow as it is, I'm copy and pasting my stuff here:

Hello from Istanbul; I believe the Turkish perspective is definitely needed here.

First of all; I must say that I was deeply shocked by the level of ignorance displayed here in the commentary section and the apparent confidence displayed when doing so. It seems to me that everybody is pretty sure that nobody else knows much about the topic anyways and feels free to speculate about or even create historical “arguments”.

The paradigms we grow in establish a very essential part of our thinking process. The average being isn’t able to think out of this cage and completes his life having nothing added to the human culture. To maintain a monster-poor-savage Turk image is the easiest; so it is to forget that history isn’t that easy to grasp especially looking from only one side. 

I will not argue whether Turkey should join the EU or not – to be absolutely honest I don’t care. All I care is some historical facts.

First of all, when Turks overtook the city of Istanbul 1453 it didn’t end a glorious Byzantine empire. They merely finished a painful process that had started 200 years ago by a force which was far more barbarian in the way they treated the city. You might be very interested in finding out who: For any questioning mind, here are Google key words: “Constantinople Latin Invasion 1204″.

Moreover, the conquest didn’t end the Byzantine culture, in fact Turks acknowledged that culture and built upon it. In our music, other art forms, imperial architecture, traces of the Byzantine culture is very evident


While kingdoms in Europe were persecuting the ones that weren’t from their own, in Istanbul, Christian (Catholic & Orthodox), Jewish and Muslim lived side by side for centuries. I mean side by side. Today in districts of Istanbul like Ortakoy or Kuzguncuk you still have a mosque, a church, a synagogue at the same little square – all still active. By the beginning of 20th. century there were more churches in Istanbul than there were in London.

Secondly – it’s true that Christian minorities were forced to leave their soils and even got killed in great numbers during the last years of 19th. century and first 20 years of the 20th. century. But we must place these facts into the big picture of that time and realize that nation state transformation was in place anywhere in the region. Turks wanted their own nation state and unfortunately they acted towards it in a shameful way. But they were not alone. Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians, Macedonians did it. And Armenians tried to do it. And none of these nations have sent Turks who had been living on the same territory for centuries with flowers and waved good bye.

Thirdly, in 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus based on its rights coming from the London agreement which was signed between the UK, Greece and Turkey. In 1974, the military administration of Greece decided to add Cyprus island to their motherland. Some acts of terror have started, killings of civilians took place. And Turkey moved in making sure that only one third of the island is taken.

History is like this. No one is innocent. And I mean no one.

We are perfectly aware of our strengths and flaws. A strong sense of confidence is growing in Turkey. We have been transforming our identity and surroundings in the last 20 years in a positive direction. Yet we know we have to cover much more. This transformation process isn’t that smooth. Lots of ups and downs but eventually we clearly see where we want to reach and EU is not an essential part of it.

We are neither European nor Middle Eastern. We are a mixture, a fusion, just like our beloved city of Istanbul and we love every bit of this richness.

Illustration of two faced Roman god - Janus. One face looks towards the east - past, the other one to the west - future.






I believe I could finish with an anecdote. In 1964, when the Cyprus conflict started to gain pace, Johnson – the US president at that time – sent a message to Turkish president Inonu where he openly threatened Turkey against any military action in Cyprus. Inonu’s response was a public statement; ”if it’s necessary to do so, a new world would be set up and Turkey would not hesitate to take its part in it”

Please excuse possible errors in my English.

Confrontation with a Jew

Sounds like a title coming from a Nazi officer's wartime diary but no the title is today mine. As discriminative as it sounds, the type of conversation I had with a Jewish fellow couple of weeks ago justifies this title as we had the opportunity to discuss some of the tragedies the Turkish-Jewish diaspora had to face coming from the Turkish governments in the last 80 years particularly during 1940's and 1950's.


Bit of a background first;
 
Of course - if you look at the surface Turks love the Jews. First of all, an average Turk couldn't care less that Jesus was betrayed by a Jew and for that matter, quite frankly for Jesus himself.

Secondly when the catholic crown in Spain looked for places to dump them in 1492, only two places in Europe were willing to accept them; Amsterdam and Ottoman Empire's trade cities including Istanbul and Thessaloniki. It is said when Sultan Beyazit 2nd. heard about the news, he said something in effect; "Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!"  He was very right especially when you considered that the Jewish population was known to be very good in trade.


This pragmatic approach - actually found in every successful empire in history and today's world - ensured a peaceful habitat for Jews in Ottoman Empire to show their magic.Indeed until the beginning of 20th. century, they became an essential nation in the Empire. Of course, we are not talking about type of daily life we would encounter in today's world where regular Ottoman Jews and Muslim Turks meetup in the corner shop for a drink to wash down the daily stress. In fact, until the beginning for 20th. century very few Jews spoke Turkish. They had their own districts in the city (not Ghettos - Mahalles in Turkish meaning simply district) which they rarely needed to leave. In 18th. century Istanbul which was crazily cosmopolitan, this was the way cospolitanism was experienced.





Then when in early 20th. century, as the nation state transformation took pace in the region, unpleasant incidents started to occur against the Jews as well. Although we could safely say that when compared to tragedies what Ottoman Greeks and Armenians had to face, what Jews had to deal with was softer.

Coming back to present; I was at my good mate's wedding coctail where the majority was Jewish. I didn't have any other friends and so I started to gulp down margaritas after margaritas until the point I realized that a little, at his well above 60s, white haired, partially bald, chubby man in his funnily looking white suite was on his own as well. He was checking people around with a shy attitude and was occasionally answering greetings sent over to him from far away corners of the room by shaking his head or slightly raising his glass.

We came eye to eye, smiling at him I walked over and said "you are too handsome to be so bored." No - this isn't how it happened and I haven't turned gay yet; neither do I use such terrible pick-up lines.

We got started talking about daily stuff. He immediately understood that I wasn't Jewish whereas I immediately understood that he was Jewish. Our initially polite and distant conversation developed quickly thanks to my sometimes a bit too direct or even impudent style. I asked him about his first hand experiences at incidents such as the Wealth Tax and September 6-7 1955 incidents; two major sins in the Turkish Republic's short history.

Now, you should know that these are still delicate issues in Turkey. An average Turk thinks he is not racist. He sees racism as a western notion and ignoring the very western transformation his own country has been experiencing from an empire to a nation state, he argues that the Ottoman Empire didn't have any racist history and therefore Turks are exempt from racism. To support this, he gives examples of Ottoman Empire's Milletler or Nations System - an indeed brilliant system for its time. This in the past living, self protection mechanism however prevents him from dealing with phenomena that are actually very evident in today's life including racism. Therefore he prefers to ignore related shameful acts from his own history as if they never happened and shows strong reaction when they are brought up. The reaction is mostly fueled by a sense of deep insecurity.

What I found particularly encouraging were his direct and honest responses that he gave looking directly into my eyes, recognizing the state's and for that matter at that time young nation's direct responsibility. His confidence made me realize with the help of all the movies made and public discussions hold things were changing.

I had been trying to face and come into peace with these actions by reading and by trying to remotely empathize with victims. But this was the first time I could find a real opportunity to actually discuss these face to face with a victim. I chatted with him to learn as many details as I could learn from him where I realized with every detail I could catch, I was becoming freer in a sense my ties with a nation in a nationalist sense was weakening but with the humanity strengthening.

We talked for an hour and in the end we toasted to the human; the sometimes most horrible animal.

Bad Eye

Today, I have come across a scene that would have been possible in only very few places on earth, fortunately or unfortunately including Istanbul.

A woman at her 40's is walking on one of the main shopping streets of Istanbul with her daughter. Very conservative in her moves, the mother looks quite poor and is wearing an old fashioned hijab. The uncovered daughter walking beneath her mother is throwing wannabe sexy smiles around; she is at most at her 15. The big inscription on her tight t-shirt says: "NO SEX CAUSES BAD EYE".

The incident looked so weird that I questioned whether or not it could have been that long since the last time I got laid. Or whether or not Istanbul is the bad eye itself.

July 19th. 00:20

It was yesterday midnight when the smoking ban in Turkey started to be in effect. Last night after having couple of beers with my friend Idil, we moved on to Peyote . When we reached the place, at roughly 00:20, we found people apparently kicked out from inside gathered in front of the entrance smoking their cigarettes. The mood seemed to be quite positive where everyone was complaining but secretly seeming to like it.

We moved on to Cihangir. Walking along streets lined up with clubs, we passed by groups of people smoking outside. I kept thinking that the law was received surprisingly fast until we reached our destination club Kiki to find it still in a thick smoke cloud. The law apparently hadn't reached there last night. People were smoking, so were the bartenders and DJs.

So yeah, luckily another night could be spent with smoking and being smoked. But indicators show that not many of these nights are left for Istanbullus.

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.

Meet my hero: Selim Aydemir

A few weeks ago in this post, I had tried to explain a phenomena about the culture I grew in. In an attempt to describe the way artfulness is hailed in the Turkish society, I used these sentences:

"...In Turkish society, artfulness in daily life is hailed and to be artful is accepted as the common norm to the degree that sometimes complying with rules is seen as stupidity.

The Turkish cunning behavior generally drives the humorous innovation in daily life and appears at the point where there is some saving in the amount of labor or more rarely in the total cost or the time to spend..."

and here is the news I came across in today's paper. Selim Aydemir, a soccer player in the 3rd. league in Germany, was fired by his trainer because he simply preferred to secretly take the tram for couple of stations during a running training instead of running the course like all of his team mates.

In the same post where I described this behaviour, in an attempt of further explaining this strange characteristic, I said;

"... What makes it even more bizarre is we are perfectly aware of our flaws and contradictions but we love them. We love to make fun of ourselves where we call the Turkish stereotype "yurdum insani" - "human of my country".... "

and to exemplify this sentiment, here is how one of the major newspapers in Turkey preferred to comment on this news:

"Answer to Turkish style training: You're fired."

I'm so delighted to be able to provide a good example. I can sleep peacefully now. ;)

Ree-inwenting the Turkish Vheel

I have been giving some thinking to the innovation culture in general and how it is positioned in the Turkish culture.

In a company, there are several reasons why innovation is needed in strategic management. To me personally however, the psychology behind the need of innovation has three aspects;

1- My admittedly obsessive and possibly troubled way of thinking - if the majority seems to agree on something, there has to be something very wrong about it.



2- A sense of aggressively radical resistance against the perceived suppression of fear. In other words, if I come to feel my being is seriously limited by a sense of fear, my immediate reaction is to act against the will of that fear - sometimes in a very radical way. Innovation generally comes together with a sense of risk and fear of unknown. So, in a situation when it comes to decide in favor of an innovative action that I believe in, I tend to become a radical.

3- The great sense of satisfaction that would come from creation of new things.

As mentioned in our company innovation plays a great role. I feel very fortunate that both of my business partners share the same kind of vision about the business where we place the innovation and differentiation strategies in a very central position when taking tactical decisions. I feel very fortunate because in Turkey to find two innovative professionals in your whole business network is difficult enough let alone to be so much aligned with them to set up a company together.

Unfortunately as it is, innovation as a concept is not very much valued in the traditional Turkish society. Even though things have been changing rapidly where an innovative culture seems to flourish at a great pace in new generations, even in my generation innovation can be seen almost as an act of naivety or stupidity, something definitely not needed, something hippie until of course you show people the money you make through it. As money is perceived to be the only universal sign for success.

There are lots of proverbs or sayings suggesting this sentiment. "Eski köye yeni adet getirmek" for example literally meaning "Bringing new traditions to old village" is a saying generally used ruthlessly to criticize progressive ideas. No wonder that the national program that targets fostering innovation culture is named "Bring new traditions to old village!"






"If you think I'm driving wrongly, just ring me and hang up. I'll be calling back."







Another sad example is the word "yaramaz". When a child is being naughty, we call them "yaramaz" literally meaning "useless". Can you imagine how suppressive can that be? The act of naughtiness is usually coupled with a sense of innovation mixed with some creativity and the culture stamps this act as "useless". Well, I know about this as I had to cope with this word all through my childhood. One who could see my parents' faces after parents days at schools could easily tell I was quite a pain in school administrations' asses. I still enjoy being naughty for very much the same three reasons I have listed above.


Come to think of it, one witnessing life in Turkey would very much surprised if someone told them that Turks are not in peace with innovation or creativity. Because one of the key aspects you would be able to observe in life in Turkey - and in Turks in general - is our fierce practicality and pragmatism.


We are practical animals. Function is important but not the way it is in the Scandinavian design for example - function is achieved somehow with the givens not through minimalist creation. Rather, aspects already there are brought together - possibly ignoring or breaking some rules - to achieve a function. Aesthetics, permanency, perfectionism (hell no!) is not important. This is why yu come acros tousands of typos in signs in Engilish wenin turkey.


To explain the philosophy better, another example would be to mention how the civil engineering
discipline is called in Turkey; "Insaat Mühendisligi" - "Engineering of Building". Civilization versus the building. This is what the classical Turkish thought is all about.

In Turkish society, artfulness in daily life is hailed and to be artful is accepted as the common norm to the degree that sometimes complying with rules is seen as stupidity.

The Turkish cunning behavior generally drives the humorous innovation in daily life and appears at the point where there is some saving in the amount of labor or more rarely in the total cost or the time to spend. An example would be the basket-grocery culture in cities. Especially if you live at one of those streets lined with apartment blocks on both side, it is the norm to call the grocery shop by shouting his name from your window, as soon as the grocery man appears in front his shop, tell him what you need and dangle a basket down to street level for him to put your groceries in and take the money from.

As said, emphasis is always on saving through cunning behavior. But this shouldn't make you think that we like to save as the Japanese people do for example. Hell no - we are big spenders. I think we have been carrying this sense of saving from deep problematic history where tomorrow was always a big unknown.

Today, this sense of saving is merely a competition object for people to play around where results of cunning behavior is compared with other results in a childish sense of competition. Men would compete on how smart they are showing how many rules they broke that day to save on a few meters of extra drive or a few extra Liras.

The classical Turkish innovation versus a product of the new Turkish design that is flourishing at great pace - a boat design which collected many of the major innovation design awards globally last year.

However when you talk about "real" innovation, we are not talking about daily shit anymore, we are talking about the betterment of the future at the cost of "blood and tears". Even if there is a saving in the end, to get there requires long, patient work in an ambiguous environment. We are talking about taking risks. In the case of Turkish society, we even are talking about risking your image in the society because of the fact that even if you messed up everything through traditional methods - they would call you unlucky, but if you would lose it all by trying new things, they would call you stupid.

The whole picture is simply difficult - if not impossible - to accept for us.


This brings us to the general problem of lack of anticipation in the Turks. This phenomenon is much easier to observe when it comes to (not) anticipating even probable catastrophes in near future. The great Istanbul earthquake waiting to happen in probably less than 10 years is a good showcase for example where very little is done in preparation. Or a family continuing to live in the same ruinous apartment despite the repeated warnings and when something bad happens crying loudly in protest of god is also a very Turkish behavior.

I guess this is related to the nomadic past somehow. You see - in the big picture, when you are permanent somewhere, the trouble comes to you. You are the victim who needs to take precautions - to be proactive. The nomad is the trouble itself. The decisions are reactive, immediate and temporary. For the nomad, two steps ahead isn't something to think about. So it is not easy for us to work for the not yet seen catastrophe and as most of the catastrophes arrive without prior set appointments, well...

But in the context of innovation, this lack of anticipation affects more in the gain area; we are very reluctant to work for probable gains which are not seen clearly yet as well.

As I'm writing these I come to realize a strange double facedness in things (but then again if the matter is Turkey and Turks, I would be deeply shocked if things would easily sit on a thought template) :

Turks are extremely good when dealing with ambiguity in their daily lives. But when it comes to the future - even tomorrow - their tactics shift from dealing with ambiguity with reason to a strange fatalism, to an emphasis of temporariness of everything. On the other hand, when it comes to risking, we take risks when dealing with daily problems but when it comes to invest for the future, we suddenly become extremely risk averse when deciding on critical actions.

What makes it even more bizarre is we are perfectly aware of our flaws and contradictions but we love them. We love to make fun of ourselves where we call the Turkish stereotype "yurdum insani" - "human of my country".

Probably thanks to these bizarre national characteristics, there is a very much developed humor culture which created some of the best selling humor magazines in the world. Movies that makes fun of this Turkish stereo type like "Recep Ivedik" gathers millions and millions of people to movie theaters to share one common sentiment. A sentiment which wouldn't be understandable for a foreigner at first sight.

She might not be very helpful when it comes to be innovative but I love this country. I love its strange people. I love the strange sense of humor exemplified by this man here carrying a placard saying "To do a protest, I'm looking for individuals to recruit".

I love this identity which is about the sense of independence, a fierce stubbornness, almost an anarchist rebelliousness.