Turkish Awakening (5 page)

Social differences definitely exist here, and snobbery is neither politically incorrect nor outdated, but at crucial moments it simply melts away. This, too, is part of a shared humanity which is hard to express but so obvious in action. A friend of mine moved here from America and for the first months of her residency took care to avoid the alarming-looking tramp who passed his time swigging beer outside her door and occasionally asking for a lira. One day, Gill arrived outside her house with an antiques dealer who had carried an Ottoman sideboard home for her. He asked for his tip, and had no change for the hundred-lira note which was the only money she had on her. Gill was starting to panic when Musa
the tramp piped up from his recumbent position on the step below them. ‘Don’t worry, lady – here’s a tenner. Pay me back whenever.’ Gill was understandably both touched and a little embarrassed by this, and from thenceforth exchanged pleasantries and further lira with Musa the tramp, who referred to himself as
kapıcı
(doorman) of her building, and was indeed quite effective at keeping everyone at bay.

There are surprisingly few tramps in Turkey. I think this is because of the very strong ethos of family support, and in the absence of family, the Islamic culture of charity, which means that the local mosque often takes care of struggling members of the community. This does not happen when the problem is drink or drugs, hence the presence of tramps swilling beer. My favourite local personalities are the crazy buskers with no talent, for example the dancing Michael Jackson impersonator with the permanent streak of paint in his hair and a gaping hole in his trouser seat, moonwalking in everyone’s way on the busiest Beyoğlu streets. More respectable is the man who looks quite smart from afar, in a shabby suit and slicked-back hair, who sings in the distinctively warbling style of Ferdi Tayfur, Turkey’s moustachioed answer to Tom Jones in his seventies heyday. This gentleman politely but relentlessly serenades couples dining outside restaurants until he is paid to go away either by his intended audience or the desperate restaurant manager.

A much more cohesive and significant presence in the margins of Turkish society is the
çingene
(gypsy) population. There are more than two million Roma here, which is not counting the gypsies from Dom and Lom backgrounds in the Middle East and the Caucasus who have wandered over
to Turkey. To me and, I think, to most people, they are something of a mystery – classed sometimes as an ethnicity, sometimes as a marginal social group, they are maligned and misunderstood as a stereotype. Where do they come from, why are they so attached to their nomadic lifestyles, and why is it primarily the women who work (at least in the Middle East)? In Turkey as in most Middle-Eastern countries, gypsies beg. But in Turkey, they also have a commercial integration into the community, even if they have no political voice. The first thing most visitors see in the centre of Istanbul is Taksim Square, which is bordered on two sides by flower stalls run by gypsy ladies wearing bright scarves and baggy
şalvar
trousers. In some neighbourhoods they sit on street corners peeling figs or shelling walnuts, and in others they do odd jobs like cleaning the copper pots most traditional Turkish households still use in their kitchens. They very rarely work for an employer, even off the books – they are their own bosses. One gypsy man I talked to had accumulated enough money through the odd jobs of his family that he could afford to buy a car, in which they all slept every night, and in which, crucially, they could travel. It would seem that, even with the potential to buy into a middle-class lifestyle, gypsies prize their autonomy and independence of movement above anything else.

I understood a lot about Turkish compassion by observing the street life of Istanbul. One of the things that struck me most forcibly was the absolutely natural and welcome presence of stray dogs and cats in the street. When it comes to sheer number and collective charisma, the hordes of dogs and cats win hands down. A constantly shifting but permanent
diaspora, they constitute perhaps the one minority population which has survived and even flourished through the political upheavals of Istanbul’s past. They tend to keep to a particular district like loyal residents, and are considerably more treasured than their human counterparts.

It is one of the most charming paradoxes of Turkey that a nation of Muslims who are told from an early age that animals are dirty and to be avoided are real pushovers for a cute or diseased stray in the street. Essentially, it is a testament to the natural warmth and kindness of the people that animals here are constantly cared for, fed, watered and even vaccinated courtesy of locals and indeed state vets. Having a pet is still a fairly new concept, strictly for the emerging middle and upper classes. Most Turks would not dream of keeping a filthy dog in the house but will go out of their way to drop off a bit of meat to the aged Alsatian on the corner, provide him with a bowl of clean water and generally keep an eye on him. One of my favourite photographs from the height of the Gezi protests was a weeping Labrador being tended to by protesters in gas masks who were tenderly spraying alkaline solutions into the dog’s eyes to neutralise the effects of tear gas. At the medical tent that was set up in Gezi Park, a young veterinary student treated stray dogs and cats while her medical student colleagues treated their human owners.

Some locals devote themselves entirely to caring for the city’s legions of flea-bitten waifs. Once, when leaving my house, I was startled by the sight of an elderly gentleman in a tattered overcoat standing motionless in the middle of the road, arms outstretched like an urban scarecrow. With no obvious cause, it looked like he was holding up the traffic in a
personal protest of some kind until I noticed, below most onlookers’ eyeline, a small kitten cavorting under the wheels of the nearest car. The aged cat lover did not budge until this animal was safely on the pavement, by which time several irate taxi drivers were leaning out of their windows and shouting at him. Unmoved, he settled down with the kitten and a bag of food he removed from an inside coat pocket, and I realised that this extraordinary person was the mysterious local Cat Man who left bowls of food and water and well-fed kittens in his wake. A few months later I saw him asleep on the steps of a local mosque, surrounded by his dependants. Considering the price of vet-bought dry food, I wonder how this man affords his mission of mercy. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the vet gave him knockdown rates, knowing the destination of these bags of food. That is one of the wonderful aspects of the Turkish community – ruthless in business, they band together for a common cause like cat charity.

Strays create unnecessary fuss in Istanbul considering how happily integrated they are. The municipalities want to round them up, rather as they did in 1910, when all the strays were deported to an island off the mainland of Istanbul and ended up eating each other. Animal rights enthusiasts want to round them up and put them in care homes. In fact, the status quo is just fine – they are independent, self-respecting agents of the streets who are fed and cared for: an ideal arrangement. They belong to everyone, and no one.

The care of strays is one of the instances in Turkish society where collective instinct is directly at odds with official practice. If any of the ministers voting for the bill to round up strays were to encounter a capering puppy on the street, I bet
fifty lira he would give it a pat on the head or at least a kind word. But he would go ahead and vote to evict strays anyway, because policy is policy.
Burası Turkiye –
‘This is Turkey.’

‘This is Turkey’: I have heard this so many times as an explanation for inexplicable Turkish norms. It takes some time to get used to the way things are done here, partly because traditional customs have an unexpected way of cropping up in a society which is modernising with lopsided enthusiasm. Turkey is still a very young country making its way in the world. The struggles it is going through at the moment bring to mind the predicaments of an adolescent who is simultaneously self-confident and insecure. Turkey is coming of age.

Mass migration, urbanisation and a growing awareness of human rights in the past fifty years have changed the social, economic and physical landscapes of Turkey, but it is the social landscape that is the most difficult to navigate. For a fairly relaxed Brit, Turkish etiquette has been intimidating because it is so complex, so imbued with history, and cannot really be taught; instead, it must be second-guessed like an erratic maiden aunt. I only realised this after I learned enough of the language to notice the subtleties of the ways people interact. I wince to think of the mistakes I must have made early on, the teas I should have accepted, the praise I should have lavished: clumsy blunderings through the pitfalls of Turkish convention. Paradoxically, underneath the filigree of social niceties is a steel core of uncomplicated good will and
warmth. Turks have a humble and humbling generosity, especially towards guests, which cuts through the elaborate tradition with which they often cage their interaction.

The idiosyncrasies of Turkish conversation are endless: specific modes of address, the polite use of passive and impersonal verbs, phrases for everyday interactions – what you say to someone working, someone eating, someone whose food you have just consumed, someone ill, someone with a family member newly deceased or betrothed. ‘Congratulations’ will not suffice for good news, nor ‘Sorry to hear that’ for bad. You must tailor your words to the occasion, in age-old format, or risk causing grave offence. You must also be wise to traditional practices. I once offered to pay for a freshly fried doughnut (
lokma
) handed to me by a kind man on a street corner in Selçuk, noticing too late the surrounding mill of people and remembering that the public distribution of this particular sweet is traditional on the part of a recently bereaved Turkish family. The money in my hand seemed suddenly sordid as I fumbled for the correct words of condolence for this grieving man.

Turkey has retained a sense of community in which everyone is involved in everyone else’s affairs, their good news and their bad, and this is formalised in language – people communicate, on all levels. The village-like interdependency of Turkish society has remained despite the huge urbanisation of the last few decades, and has thrived with technology like mobile phones and Skype. The average Turk speaks to their family several times a day and will know the details of their ex-neighbour’s second divorce settlement or a distant cousin’s circumcision ceremony via an impressive network of
gossip intelligence. I soon noticed that Turks communicate not only with their closest circles but also with complete strangers much more readily than Europeans, at least in informal situations.

In Turkey, if you have even a brief exchange with someone working – at a desk, hauling concrete, cooking – you wish him or her well as you leave:
Kolay gelsin
, which literally means ‘May it come easily.’ I have become so used to saying this that when I visit England I have to stop my impulse to translate the phrase into English. Approximations are always clumsy: ‘Take it easy’ sounds American and slightly patronising to an English ear. ‘Good luck’ is portentous and uncalled for. In fact, the expression itself is uncalled for in England because there is no expectation that a stranger will take any interest in your activities, or vice versa. In Turkey, recognition of others is natural, even if it is just in the form of an offhand, oft-repeated expression.
Kolay gelsin
is a simple sign of solidarity which transcends social class, promising nothing while radiating good will. Turks have a lovely way of saying goodbye to someone:
Güle güle
,
which literally means ‘[Go] laughing’.

There are plenty of other phrases like this:
Geçmiş olsun
– ‘May it pass’ – is what you say to someone who is ill or generally having a tough time. ‘Get well soon’ is the less frequently repeated and more specifically medical equivalent in English, but it doesn’t cover the pan-sympathetic sense of the Turkish, which can refer to someone’s financial troubles or just a bad hair day. It is such a simple phrase, little more than a voiced smile, but equally cheering.

I am certainly not saying that Turkey is a socialist country, or particularly socially progressive, but it does have this indelible,
shared humanity which persists despite – or perhaps because of – the upheavals of its troubled past and present. I can sense a similar atmosphere in descriptions of Britain during the world wars, when people united in fear and unaccustomed hardship. That was temporary. In the relatively emergency-free society of today’s Britain, everyone minds their own business, even if this is belied by the cowardly anonymity of a Facebook profile.

The downside of the importance Turks place on social expression is the huge capacity to get it wrong and cause offence. Turks are notoriously sensitive. If the offender is a bumbling foreigner on uncertain ground, he or she is benignly forgiven, but less fortunate are offenders in the international political arena. In August 2012 the Turkish media and main opposition party responded with hysteria to a photograph published by the White House of President Obama holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone to Prime Minister Erdoğan about the Syrian crisis. The photo was deemed highly offensive, the baseball bat simultaneously incomprehensible and aggressive. The White House press secretary’s excuses of the importance of baseball season fell on sceptical ears and the power balance between Obama and Erdoğan was construed as darkly as possible.

If Turks are easily offended, so too are newcomers to Turkey who are unused to the particular rhythm and nuances of Turkish conversation. There are several characteristic expressions and signs that, if one is not informed, range from the bewildering to the downright offensive. For a start, in place of ‘No’, there is a dismissive lift of the head or eyebrows, often accompanied by a sharp click of the tongue. This indescribably
rude-looking and -sounding gesture seems to imply complete disdain, as though the person in question cannot even be bothered to open their mouth to answer you. It is almost as common as actually saying ‘No’ and not in fact rude at all. Nestled amongst various Italian-style hand wavings, emphatic pinched fingers and so on, my absolute favourite Turkish gesture is the deliberate, double, palm-to-palm hand wipe, to denote something complete or finished. For example, ‘I never saw him again,’ or ‘She spent
all
his money!’ would be accompanied by this gesture to add gravitas and irrevocability.

Having only ever been spoken to in Turkish by my grandmother in early childhood, I was amazed to discover the usage of epithets and modes of address in a context outside the home.
Canım
, for example, literally means ‘my soul’ and was, I thought, extremely affectionate. So it is, but I quickly discovered that one applies it to anyone who isn’t actually your boss or father-in-law – to customers in a taxi, friends, strangers in the street, lovers or animals. I have decided that it is equivalent to ‘my dear’, although it still, somehow, retains its heightened significance for loved ones. That is one of the beauties of Turkish: the freedom you are granted to invest as much as you want into a language that is, fundamentally, laced with passion and affection.

Having addressed my big sister as
abla
throughout my life, I understood it to mean ‘big sister’. And so it does – but you can also apply it to any female, about the same age or older than yourself, whom you happen to encounter in an informal setting. I am
abla
to anonymous strangers, or the rather confusing
ablacığım
(pronounced ‘abla-jum’) – literally ‘my little big sister’, used affectionately. To friends I am Alevciğim
(‘darling Alev’),
and in a formal setting I am ‘Alev
hanım
’ which cannot be satisfactorily translated into English but is equivalent to individualising ‘madam’ – ‘Madam Alev’, which is quite nice, if one doesn’t think of brothel owners. Alev, or any first name used by itself sounds rather bare and blank. Turks like to create a kind of relationship, whether formal or informal, with everyone they meet, and they do this initially through tokens of language before an established, mutual understanding is reached. Adding either an affectionate suffix or a respectful title to someone’s name shows the speaker’s good intentions, come what may, and establishes a vague power balance within which Turks feel more secure.

When I started travelling around Turkey, I discovered that, while Istanbul is a glorious mix of Turks from all over the place, there is a kind of cohesive, relaxed vernacular here which one does not always find elsewhere, especially not in more traditional or rural communities. For example, in Kayseri, a very conservative city in the middle of the Anatolian plain, I was no longer
abla
and my boyfriend was no longer
abi
(‘big brother’, or ‘mate’). Instead, he became
hocam
(‘my teacher’ – traditionally a teacher of the Koran) and I was
yenge
(literally ‘wife of my brother’). The latter conveyed respect to me – it would be politely assumed that we were married – while suggesting a brotherly camaraderie between the taxi driver and my boyfriend, although not as relaxed as
abi
.
Hocam
, likewise, is more a term of respect than a literal form of address. It is, significantly, not really applied to women, and the only time I have been addressed as
hoca
was when I was actually a teacher at the Bosphorus University. In Ankara, the capital city,
hoca
is often used, not because people are
necessarily conservative but because it is a student town. Students ironically call each other
hoca
,
‘teacher’, and it has spread and mingled with the traditional, Anatolian use of the term.

Turkish is the linguistic equivalent of a crazy fruit salad, with Turkic roots, a great deal of Arabic vocabulary both ‘Turkified’ and lifted directly, many Persian words and quite a considerable body of French. These French words were transliterated to suit the Latinised form of Turkish that was introduced by Atatürk in 1928, in place of the Arabic-Persian script. Over the past century, certain words and modes of expression have come in and out of currency, reflecting shifts in Turkish society. Aside from my taxi driver impersonations, my mother was also shocked by the amount of Arabic vocabulary I use, words like
maalesef
(‘unfortunately’) or
selam
(a standard Arabic greeting)
. Sağ ol
(‘thank you’) is not an Arabic phrase but it is a good example of an old-fashioned expression now very much in vogue. Its direct French-Turkish counterpart –
mersi
– is now fairly rare, and only really used by people above the age of thirty or so, and of a relatively privileged background. My mother, her vocabulary frozen in time from when she left Turkey in the seventies, uses
mersi
not because it was particularly chic to do so, but because it was normal; only peasants said
sağ ol
at that time, she says. This expression, meaning literally ‘be healthy’, was associated, at least in my mother’s circles, with backward, rural Anatolians who had more in common with their Middle Eastern neighbours than the more Western-facing, self-styled ‘progressive’ Turks. The latter sprinkled their speech with the French that retained kudos as the former language of the late Ottoman noblesse and the formal language of banking and
bureaucracy. Thus, a formerly civilised, urbane word has become slightly passé and pretentious, while Arabic equivalents are both populist and popular. This has a lot to do with the huge rural migration to cities that has been taking place over the last thirty years in particular, meaning that the divide between snooty city types and the rustic masses has largely been worn away, and the latter’s parlance has prevailed.

The mass migration of the last few decades has had important social consequences in Turkey. There are many more young people in cities competing for jobs and spouses, more office-centred jobs as people move away from agricultural employment, and interesting clashes between the inherent machismo of Turkish society and attempts at sexual equality in the workplace as women struggle up through the viscous grime of ingrained patriarchy. There is also a big patchwork of people displaced by choice, as it were: about half a million people move to Istanbul alone every year, and many of them have come from the East or Black Sea regions.

Turks are always interested in origins. Most big-city dwellers these days are originally from elsewhere, so people are always curious to place each other. The question which comes even before ‘What’s your name?’ is
Memleketiniz neresi? –
‘Where is your hometown?’ While Turks are very patriotic on a pan-Turkish scale, they are also deeply devoted to the particular area where they were born, or where either parent was born. Finding out that a stranger comes from anywhere in a hundred-mile radius of one’s own hometown is a cause for huge celebration on first meeting. Any geographical connection, no matter how arbitrary, is something of a triumph in this enormous, scrambled country, and the ‘neighbour’ is
seized on almost like a long-lost relative – probably a sign that Turks feel fundamentally more comfortable in a smaller community than the modern super-communities in urban areas today.

Although migration is now the norm, Turkish language reflects a time when people stuck with the community into which they were born. The word
yabancı
is derived from
yaban
(wilderness) and means both ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner’/‘non-local’. It reflects a village-like sense of community in which only immediate friends and relations were familiar, and anyone new to the area was big news (this is still the case in many rural parts of Turkey). Other terms like
yurt dışında
also reflect this – the phrase literally translates as ‘outside the area of the tent’, so would have originally been used to mean anywhere outside the immediate family homestead in the Turkic nomadic regions. Now it means, simply, ‘abroad’ – anywhere from Greece to the Gambia. Originally,
yabancı
was most frequently used in the ‘non-local’ sense, but it increasingly applies to people from distant countries as more and more tourists come to Turkey. As not only a non-local, but indeed a Genuine Foreigner living in Turkey, I normally provoke a Turkish Inquisition on first meeting. There are several questions that I expect to be asked: How old are you? Are you married? Where do you live – but where
exactly
? What do you do? Is that well paid?