Epilogue

For three days now, people have been asking me: "How was Turkey?" I can only give a lame answer like "it was awesome" or "unbelievable". I am ashamed that, as a lawyer, words fail me in properly conveying the experience of visiting that place and living amongst its people. However, I am in good company. When he returned from his travels, Marco Polo told a visitor that he had not written about half of what he had seen. I feel that way as well.

To be embedded as I was, in a new (to me) culture, the discoveries were literally everywhere I looked. It was intoxicating. Addicting. Returning home has put me into some sort of travel rehab, and now I toil to produce enough time and money to go somewhere else. After all, where else am I to gain knowledge and understanding of the world and have a hell of good time doing it?

In the end, the answer is to travel. One of my favorite authors and TV personalities, Anthony Bourdain, once said that “If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” Tony is right. You will find out what is different about your respective cultures, but you also find out what is the same. Ultimately, this will lead to a better understanding of the world, and then finally, of yourself.  Since the trip ended, I feel like my blood runs a little differently. I realized just how young the United States and its culture is. I knew this from books before, but to see it is a different matter entirely. I look at how I eat differently. I see how much the US media bombards us with mostly useless drivel. There's so much more, and I am still discovering them as I get back into my real life.

Travel will affect and change you, and for the better. So, dear reader, I can only echo Anthony Bourdain's advice. Go somewhere, see things. Expand your mind and perspective by seeing how other people live their lives. Drive through their country. Eat their food. Even, if you must, do it on a cruise. Just make sure you bypass the made for tourist crap and go where the locals go. In the end, it will make you a better person.










Thank you for reading this blog. I also want to thank my longtime friends, the Adman family (Hasan Adman, Semra Adman, Tanya Adman Akay, Gungor Akay, Sevda Adman, andTamer A. Adman ) for all of their graciousness and generosity in hosting me and showing me their beautiful country and beautiful people. I am truly thankful that I have had friends like you in my life for the last 20+ years. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I will, one day, return to that wondrous place. I am already missing kebab.

Istanbul

To blog about a couple of days in Istanbul is difficult. It's sorta cliche to say that it is in an exotic city, but most cliche's come into their use honestly, and such is the case here. Greater in numbers than New York City but with a geography more like a much sprawled out Seattle, Istanbul is a city on two continents with a population as diverse as such geography could demand. There are spice markets, mosques, high end retail and street vendors selling everything. Everything is here. All nationalities are here, and East meets West. Want a Ferrari? Over here. Want a refrigerator magnet depicting the famed Blue Mosque? Right here. Trinkets? Armani? Yes. Prices are negotiable, for the trinkets and magnet anyway.

There are smells of the big city. Sewers and car exhaust for sure. In close, some, it is apparent, do not share in my ideas of what personal hygiene should be. But there are others that outnumber the bad: Of food carts selling grilled corn on the cob and roasted chestnuts. Of spices (saffron in particular) in the market. Fish, always fish. If there was a candle of that scent, I would be bringing that home along with the olive oil and raki. There are carts selling simits, a sesame seed encrusted bagel type thing. Food, good food, is everywhere. Cafes are around every corner and the Turks, being who they are, are drinking tea in them. Never really having drank tea before, after this trip I find that I like mine with about a teaspoon of sugar, mildly warm, not hot.

Sounds of the city: Car horns, of loud people talking in Turkish, hawking items. Others are speaking english, some german. They are all here. Then, five times per day, a wailing singing call for muslims to pray at the mosque. The designs of the mosques are partly based upon this call, as there is at least one, often more, magnificent minaret for a caller to climb up and make this call. These days, loudspeakers do this job, and with great effectiveness. The numerous woman walking around in full black burqas are reminders that not all the world wants to live like we do. Indeed, for westerners and Americans alike, Istanbul will challenge us to think about ourselves and others.

There is so much history here. The Ottoman Empire. Of Byzantine emperors and sultans. They ruled over millions in ancient times, and their palaces are still here. The Romans had their way here too, and the magnificent columns they left are still here, some erected a thousand years before Columbus sailed for the New World. They were here then, now and they will likely be here long after you and I are gone from this earth. The Hagia Sophia, the massive domed structure and masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, the seat of power for emperors and pulpits for Christians and Muslims alike, is here, and tourists marvel at the stupendous dome and ponder. The thresholds into these buildings are worn smooth from centuries of thousands walking over them. Indeed, I almost slipped on one. These men were the masters of the universes of their time and now, in the finest tradition of Ozymandius,  the public stalks their palaces as tourists. The underground cistern, once a source for fresh water for the city, is still there, with it's columns holding up a layer of the city. Fish swim above the stone floor, a visual dichotomy that is here for any person to see and believe.

There is history, but there is also the present. Shopping the malls as architecturally modern as any in the world filled with merchandise to please any shopper. The subway, with it's clean, sleek trains and spotless stations would be the envy of New York City or anywhere else where mass public transportation is a necessity. The streets vary from narrow and winding to four laned highways, all paved with stone in the city, asphalt or concrete outside of them. Hilly streets. Street closed off to traffic. Taxis everywhere. A boat tour of the beautiful Bosphorus strait, one of the busiest waterways in the world, shows multi, multi million dollar homes on coastlines and the hills circling them. Write an owner of one of these houses a check for about $15 million and you can have one too.

Until then, I shall admire them from afar, but I will try to admire them in person as often as I can. Istanbul is pretty far off the radar from my home in the midwestern United States, but I will, as health and fortune allow, return here again.

I urge you to do the same.

Real Travel v. Pseudo Traveling

I have been in Turkey for over two weeks now, longer than anywhere I’ve ever spent in one place on one trip (and still 2 days to go). Because of that, and because I’ve been staying with a friend and living local, it’s an entirely different perspective than if you do it with a tour group or other something like it. This way, the local way, is a real treat in travel. Here, for me, there have been no tour groups, no freeze dried spiel on the sites. I visited here the real way and did what the real people here do.

This is the best way to travel. I’ve often told the story of when people tell me how much they loved Alaska. Inevitably, after saying how much the beauty and people of the majestic 49th state wowed them, I then ask them:  Did you go on a cruise? After inevitably saying yes, I tell them how Alaska really is. As someone who motorcycled rather extensively through it, the real part of Alaska, not nicely-wrapped-up-for-the-pseudo-traveller-cruiser Alaska, I can tell you it’s nothing more than a big cedar swamp with the occasional snowy vista. It’s a backwater filled with missionaries, pipelines and people who are, shall we say, a bit different? While I may have enjoyed myself a bit more in a town that catered to the day tripping cruisers, I know what it’s really like there. It ultimately leads to a better understanding of the place you are visiting. In the end, isn’t that why we travel?

Even before coming here, I read about Turkish driving. “Crazy!” one source said. “Dangerous!” said another. From everything I’ve seen, Yes and Yes. Even the legendary traveller and investor Jim Rogers, in his excellent book Adventure Capitalist, makes mention of this phenomenon.

Most charitably put, Turkish driving is an art form. There are some rules, but mostly you are left to your imagination, guile, and courage in driving a vehicle. With those parameters in mind, Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic was only slightly less treacherous than the four of us taking a taxi to Ayvalik. The roads are, at best, two lanes, but the Turks treat them as six. Cars, mopeds and motorcycles were weaving in and out at high speeds amongst each other. Speeding in close quarters. Near misses. No look passing. Passing on the right. Motorcycles passing between cars. Passing so close you can touch their mirrors. And door handles. Traffic that makes Hall Road at home seem relaxing. Parking? Wherever you can fit your car, and even then not all the way.

The same goes with the many motor scooters and motorcycles used here. They are not used for pleasure riding as in the U.S., but (with gas at $15 per gallon) a cheaper, practical way of transportation. I saw one guy with his entire family – wife, one toddler and one infant- and himself on a scooter. In the above described traffic, mind you. I have not seen, nor heard of, any type of traffic enforcement here. If there were traffic cops here, they would be severely underpaid for the task before them.

Tanya, Tamer’s sister and an expatriate living here, said that the reckless style of driving is the result of an attitude the Turks have: If it’s your time to go, so be it. That’s God’s will and that’s the last of it. Me? I will take my chances using a little prudence on the road. Tamer also opined that driving is the most stressful part of any trip here, and he tries to avoid it, and with good reason: Last year, his parents were in a bad crash, caused by a reckless driver.

As I am the fifth wheel on this trip, I am most often in the front seat when a relative picks us up. Thus, I have a front row seat to this chaos. Once, when putting on my seatbelt (and wishing for another), one relative said to me that I didn’t need a seatbelt.  I replied with a polite “bullshit” under my breath and a smile. He later passed a car on the left in a blind curve with another barreling down on us from the opposite way. Thankfully, we made it.

Turks seems to accept this survival of the fittest as a fact of life. For me, it’s an excellent moment of perspective. While I do take my chances every now and then on the road (I do ride motorcycles, after all) unlike the Turks, I will be happy to stave off my eventual demise as much as possible. 

If you ask ten Americans what the national drink of our country is, you will likely get ten different answers. Do you go non-alcoholic, like Coke or iced tea? Alcoholic beverages? Perhaps. But beer is too varied for any one group to agree on.  Microbrew? Wheat? Guinness? Or even (ew) Bud Light? Hard booze would have its factions, but certainly not everyone drinks vodka, gin or scotch. Wine? There’s only 59 different kinds.

In Turkey, there is no such debate. Without question, the national drink that Turks go for is an alcoholic beverage called raki. Prounonced ROCK-UH, it is the go-to drink for everything from family gatherings, informal meals, weddings or watching the big game. Every self respecting Turk who is not a friend of Bill W. has a bottle in their fridge.

Raki has a recipe for preparation, but it is so simple that even the most inebriated can stumble through it. First, you need a proper raki vessel, normally being a straight glass holding about 5 ounces. Fill halfway with the good stuff, and then add another half glass of water, preferably ice cold. The raki then turns cloudy and opaque. Add an ice cube or two (again, merely preferred, but not required). No fruit flavoring or garnish. Serve with a separate glass of water to sip on. This is always followed by a clinking of glasses with all of your drinking partners, and you are then ready to imbibe.

The taste is that of anise, i.e. black licorice. Served cold enough, it can be refreshing, like a gin and tonic. Served often enough, it will knock you on your ass. The saying is that so long as you drink raki while sitting down you are fine, but once you stand up, it’s all over. There is a tradition of eating fish with raki, and another saying goes that if you eat the fish without raki, the fish will cry in your stomach. I also found it goes well with cigars.

It comes distilled from fermented grapes, an easy crop to grow here, and is firmly entrenched in every Turk’s DNA. Ataturk himself loved raki and would often end his day with a few good slugs of it while discussing policy and issues with his staff. I drank a good bit of it at the wedding we attended, and the resulting bonding experience with my new friends was priceless, for all they needed to know was my name with a questioning “Raki?” as in “does Ereek want more?” My answer was always yes, and a nod of my head brought the bottle over and away we went. It was a bit of a rough morning.

When you visit a foreign country, you should drink what they drink and eat what they eat. For every unappetizing fried sardine, there are five wondrous foods that, chances are, you will not be able to readily get at home. So eat up while you are there. The potential rewards of epicurean perspective, fellowship and, well, good fun are too great to ignore. Following my own advice, I can report that a bottle of raki will be residing in my Smoking Room, so stop by for a sample before Tamer and I drink it all. Just be careful before you stand up.

Turkey is, from a historical perspective, a young country. Founded by a group of revolutionary reformers in 1923, this is a country coming into its adolescence, and is not without the drama that all teenagers go through. This is nothing new to the history of the world. Indeed, when it was a teenager, four score and seven years after the Declaration of Independence, the United States was in the midst of it’s own rather serious coming of age. Yet, even in an identity crisis making worldwide headlines, Turkey is an amazing anomaly. It is a modern Islamic country, which is almost an oxymoron in the world today. It is the ying to the notoriously conservative Islam yang of Saudi Arabia.

But yet, here is Turkey, where the people hear the wailing call to prayer in its many mosques as they walk past racy ads of woman in bikinis at the bus stops. The woman dress here as any western woman would, legs and arms uncovered. There is a whiff of misongyny, but scarcely anything more that what we see in the U.S. today. There are Burger Kings, Oreos, and, thank god, Diet Coke. Tradition is important here, but to the Turks, their tradition is a modern one, not one of the ornate robes, fezzes, and flying carpets of the Ottoman Empire.

The man most responsible for this miracle of Islamic modernism is Kemal Mustafa Ataturk. Ataturk, whose surname was given to him by the Turkish parliament, meaning, “Father of The Turks” was, in every sense of the term, a badass. A warrior, a visionary, and evidently astute politician, he was an Ottoman Empire army officer on the losing side of World War One when Allied forces (the side the U.S. fought on) tried to occupy Turkish land. Ataturk and his men fought them and drove them out of Turkey in what is now called The Turkish War of Independence. With a victorious army and no government, Ataturk looked around and said “let’s do this our way. We live in a modern world, we need a modern country.” He and his allies then set about implementing radical ideas in government the overturned centuries of Islamic tradition and dogma. Imagine if George Washington not only fought off the British but also said we are going to free all the slaves, mandate gender equality, re-do the education system, institute a new alphabet, establish a banking system, enact a radically new modern penal and civil code, legislate what you could wear, and so on. In short, Ataturk did for Turkey what the Tea Party claims Obama is trying to do to the United States. If there was a Fox News in Turkey in Ataturk’s time, I’m sure at some point the various talking heads would’ve eventually committed suicide on the air.

Ataturk’s reforms had a central component: We are not mixing government and religion, he said. Turkey has a secular (i.e. non-religious) government in a country whose religion can be, shall we say, a bit syrupy. The ancient systems of autonomous government fiefdoms tinged with religious based policy became a thing of the past under Ataturk. “There will be one government, and you shall have your religion, but not together, doing the same thing” is my paraphrased interpretation. Things like this get my attention.

And for this vision and political leadership in its implementation, Ataturk remains a much-loved icon amongst the Turkish people. Icon is perhaps too weak a word. He’s everywhere. There are pictures of him in barber shops, restaurants, and there are even bumper stickers depicting his signature. Stately statues of him are in every town I have visited. Souvenir shops sell Ataturk clocks and cigarette lighters (the latter of which will end up in a certain Smoking Room). We went to a concert in an open amphitheater and behind the performers were two flags: The Turkish flag, and an equally big, almost creepy depiction of Ataturk staring right back at us, as if saying, “I am here, and I approve of this concert”. The conductor of the orchestra gave an open salute to the Ataturk banner before commencing the concert. On the date of his death, at the exact moment of his passing, everything (traffic, markets, government, etc) stops for a one moment of silence in his honor. The Admans, my generous hosts here, themselves have a picture of Ataturk in their china cabinet. In it, he is impeccably dressed, seated in white slacks, morning coat, cigarette in hand, the absolute picture of genteelity.  It is an obviously staged press photo, but to achieve an iconic political image such as the one Ataturk established, the visual must equal the theoretical.

These days, many Turkish people feel, Ataturk’s legacy of secularism is under attack from the present Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He is a conservative ruler, who is trying to implement many policies and laws rooted in Islamic tradition, like no alcohol after midnight, nor can women cannot wear certain forms of nail polish. Because Turkey is experiencing favorable economic growth, he continues to hold power and he sees it as a mandate to go against some of the most core of Ataturk’s beliefs. He rules with an arrogance and heavy hand that reads right out of the Islamic playbook. Although the recent riots started as a protest against the development of a park, it really escalated once the police were ordered in, a bit like burning down the house to get the flies out. The resentment against his non-secular social policies began to hemmorage out, and then the protests made worldwide news. People are seething here at the Prime Minister, who is angling to become president of the republic once his term ends in a year or so from now. Considering Vladimir Putin did the same thing, this should be troubling for the Turkish people.

Is this a coming of age for the Turkish people? Time will tell. In the meantime, the power does rest with the people, and democracy, though not perfect, works more often than it doesn’t.

Ataturk Statue.

Bust of Ataturk in Cunda. 

Ataturk watching Tamer getting a shave. 

The immense Ataturk banner at the concert.