Atatürk sur l'Islam

pris de Gouverner au nom d'Allah de Boualem Sansal:

Depuis plus de cinq cents ans, les règles et les théories d'un vieux cheikh arabe, et les interprétations abusives de générations de prêtres crâssuex et ignares ont fixé, en Turquie, tous les détails de la loi civile et criminelle. Elles ont réglé la forme de la Constitution, les moindres faits et gestes de la vie de chaque citoyen, sa nourriture, ses heures de veille et de sommeil, la coupe de ses vêtements, ce qu'il apprend à l'école, ses coutumes, ses habitudes et jusqu'à ses pensées les plus intimes. L'islam, cette théologie absurde d'un Bédouin immoral, est un cadavre putréfié qui empoissonne nos vies.

Selam Berlin

Durch eine Dissertationsvorhaben auf Yade Karas Selam Berlin gestoßen las ich den Roman kürzlich an einem Stück im Zug von Köln nach (West-)Berlin sitzend. Kara erzählt die späte Jugend eines deutschen Türken (türkischen Deutschen vielleicht eher), der mit dem Mauerfall als 19-jähriger nach Berlin zurückzieht. Hier sieht er sich einerseits konfrontiert mit einem neuen deutschen Wir-Gefühl von dem die einheimischen türkischen Berliner ausgeschlossen zu sein scheinen andererseits mit türkisch-ostdeutschen Familiengeschichten deren Grundlage - in ihrer Normalität - bzw Karas Phantasie mich interessieren würden.

Kara ist keine intellektuallisierende Autorin, aber ihr Roman, abgesehen vom reinen Lesevergnügen, eröffnet dem (west-berliner) Leser eine Perspektive einer Welt, welche ihm (mir) einerseits zutiefst vertraut (denn ich wuchs ja in der gleichen eingeschlossenen Stadt auf), aber andererseits vollkommen fremd ist (ich habe kaum einen Bezug zur Türkei). Eine wirklich interessante, aufschlussreiche Lektüre.

Life in Istanbul IV

What really confounded me about Istanbul was the astounding disconnect between various parts of the population. As self-confessed post-nationalist I am convinced of that the nation state is nothing but a artificial construct without any true meaning. My relationship with young, educated tweensters from France, England, or the USA is far closer than my connection with fellow countrymen of mine who lack said education and engage in professional activities that are more closely tied to the traditional industrial sector or the low-skilled service industry. To realize that these fault lines within one nation as that much stronger in a country as nationalistic as Turkey provides with some food for thought (and is quite ironic really).

I have no idea whether what I am describing is a completely normal situation for emerging countries to be in. They struck me as odd, but that might simply be due to a lack of experience concerning non-Western countries. Basically, in Turkey, two main groups seem to have virtually no contact with one another. Those would be on the one hand the Kemalists, the young upper middle class who follow in the footsteps of Atatürk's Westernization in the 20s and 30s and in a sense glorify Western culture and capitalism. Concretely this results in their seemingly tring (if not consciously) being über-Western. This results in girls wearing skirts, shorts and tops that you would rarely see in the streets of Berlin or Paris. You might see these kind of revealing clothes in clubs and discos but not in every day life, the way they are used in Turkey. It means that the restaurants and bars these people frequent rarely serves Turkish food anymore, but instead the kind of internationalized uniform world food one finds every else as well (wraps, pizza, fries, you know the deal). It means that people are surprised to hear me order a Turkish coffee not a European one. It means that my trips into less sanguine parts are met with incomprehensive looks and a comment on the massive presence of head scarves in those neighborhoods.

I have not really met anyone from the other side as the religious, Western-Turkish and economic divide to a large extent seems to be an educational one as well. Basically, most of these more traditional people's forte are not foreign languages. But, I was struck by the differences and by how this separation is emphasized by most of my colleagues.

Life in Istanbul III (Basketball Edition)

I've been playing some pick-up ball lately over on the Asian side. There is a little park, right next to the water, with 5 fence-enclosed courts. The place always is full of players whenever I show up and thus quite the change from the courts close to the place I live where there barely ever is anyone playing. As people who travel and play ball at any decent level know, basketball styles vary as much as any other cultural expression. Basketball in the US is much more physical for example.

Turkey is an interesting case as there a couple of aspects to it that I have never encountered in any other place that I've played in (basically: Germany, the US, France and Austria). People here play a warm-up game before the actual one starts. The first three points don't count. The game only starts after those first three buckets. During the game the intensity is relatively high, but static. That means that it does not increase when the game nears its end (usually going to 30, with 1s and 2s). There also are virtually no celebratory gestures after the game. Winning doesn't seem to matter as much as in the US for example. Also, there are no fouls. Or barely any. I don't mean that people don't call fouls, they do. There simply are relatively few fouls. People play defense (if not crazily intense), but don't hack.

Finally, I've found it interesting that people here (comparable to Americans) play rather unorthodoxly, but well. There are quite a few people that shoot really well, even while their technique makes you cringe.

And yes, don't worry, I will continue to engage in qualitative field research as much as I can.

Life in Istanbul II

So, I started branching out a little bit this weekend, exploring neighborhoods that upper middle-class Turkish people told me were dangerous, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found a really nice park, with a relatively nice basketball court (the hoops are decent, the ground is gravel) in a neighborhood (Kasımpaşa I believe) that is a lot more down to earth than the one I live in. There are even more people on the street. Elderly women hanging in windows looking at people, kids playing with bottle caps, lots of women with head scarves and in general a crazy amount of kids. Definitely a bit poorer (probably even drastically so) and (yesterday, Sunday, at least) by a gigantic street market (kind of like the one in Neukölln, only more Turkish people, drastically less non-Turkish ones, and virtually no one that speaks English, French, or German).

In spite of the (exaggerated, I feel) warning I had received I felt really comfortable in the neighborhood. An interesting sub-aspect of this feeling of security is that not everyone recognizes (or acknowledges) that I am a foreigner. There are enough Turks who have a rather light skin (sometimes even red hair) for me not to stick out too much. My clothes sometimes give me away (shorts and sandals are something popular with the westernized crowd mainly), but I can get by without even being (too obviously) looked at most of the time.

Related to this surprising racial diversity (well, a lacking complete racial homogeneity describes it better I believe), which seems to me a remnant of the Ottoman Empire's far reach (or it might not, I have no idea really, but I feel like the explanation does sound good), is the occasional presence of black guys (I have not seen a woman yet) who are quite obviously Turkish and regularly integrated into local culture as far as I can tell (based on them sitting in tea houses with all the other men basically). These guys usually seem to be part of a poorer strata of Turkish society, yet make an impression of not being recent immigrants but accepted individuals and long-established members of that very society - one never sees them in groups for example, which would imply a more recent common immigration background.

Life in Istanbul I

It's been a week that I've been staying here now, and while my grasp of Istanbul as a city, let alone Turkey as a country, is extremely rudimentary, I would like share a few observations.

I live in a neighborhood called Cihangir here, one which has frequently been described to me as being an expat quartier. While this might be very well be true, foreigners are a common sight on the street, the place is still (luckily) very much dominated by Turks. This, in turn, leads me to my first (and primary) complaint of life here. I have a very hard time dealing with my muted existence here due to the fact that I don't speak any Turkish (discounting the three words I've learned since arriving here). Even in more touristy places (and I try to avoid those) people (customers and servers) have only a very rudimentary command of English (or French or German). Surprisingly when talking to elderly people chances are higher to be able to communicate with them in French (and sometimes German) than in English. In any case, this is a sore subject for me as it makes me extremely uncomfortable to be incapable to express even the simplest inquiry or to understand the response.

As a disclaimer, I have to add that I have met a decent amount of Turkish people whose command of English is astounding. The problem is, I feel, that there is a large disconnect between a select few who are absolutely fluent and the large majority who can barely say anything. Whatever the implications of this (high Gini-coefficient? the advantages of private schooling?), I am very undecided what to do about this as I will most likely not stay here long enough to make it worth it for myself to truly try to learn Turkish. I guess I will simply have to deal with the accompanying frustration.

Very charming is the fact that life tends to take place on the street here. Shopowners sit in front of their stores, drinking tea (çay), street vendors roam with carts selling fruits or collecting scrap metal. Men gather by the dozens in tea houses and sit for hours. More modern cafés cater to a younger crowd. Restaurants and bars invariably have virtually all of their customers sitting outside, making certain smaller pedestrian streets hard to walk through (and quite deafening). Kids play outside and every shady corner, step or grass area is occupied by one, two or three men (mostly, the grassy areas in parks are also occupied by whole families, who bring tea-making machines, water containers and stay hours). All in all, this provides a really nice atmosphere and I seriously wonder how this city changes with the weather in the winter.

The glaring negative aspect of this outdoor life is the sexual divide. Young women and men one sees without distinction, but there is a true generational gap when it comes to the presence of women on the street. Secondly, this seemingly charming street activity has at least some basis in very high national unemployment rates (~17% overall, more than 25% for youths). Thus, and as much as I enjoy the atmosphere, at least one underlying (and I assume important) explanation for it is of the more depressing kind.

To be continued....

Istanbul

Ich hatte Orhan Pamuks Istanbul von meinem Vater geschenkt bekommen, kurz bevor ich dort ein langes Wochenende verbrachte. Die Stadt war sehr eindrucksvoll und deswegen freute ich mich sehr auf das Buch. Ich muß ganz ehrlich eingestehen, daß ich am Anfang nicht so beeindruckt war. Der Nobelliteraturpresiträger erzählt in seinem Roman die Geschichte seiner Heimatstadt anhand seiner eigenen Lebensgeschichte, sowie parallel dazu durch Berichte, welche andere Schriftsteller über Istanbul verfassten - hier sowohl türkische als auch westeuropäische. Ich würde fast behaupten, daß man das Buch nur schlecht als Roman bezeichnen kann. Es gibt keine kohärente zusammenhängende Geschichte, vielmehr erscheinen die Kapitel als Ansammlung von Essays, welche sich alle mit Istanbul und zum Teil mit Pamuks Kindheit befassen, aber es gibt kaum Stringenz zwischen den Erzählteilen.

Aber, je weiter ich las, desto mehr gefiel mir das Buch. Die literatische Geschichtsstunde Istanbuls - Flaubert und Twain sind nur zwei der Autoren, welche Pamuk zitiert und fast die einzigen die ich (wirklich) kannte - war faszinierend und auch die Beschreibung der Entscheidung, welche Pamuk als 20jähriger treffen mußte, ob er sein Studium abbrechen solle und Künstler - Schriftsteller oder sogar Maler - werden solle, wird fesselnd dargestellt.

Letzten Endes kann ich zusammenfassend sagen, daß ich das Buch im Prinzip eigentlich jedem empfehlen würde. Die einzige Bedingung wäre vielleicht, das der- oder diejenige vorher kurz nach Istanbul sollte. Viele der architektonischen und geographischen Beschreibungen waren für mich bereits verwirrend, ohne je da gewesen zu sein, erscheinen sind diese unmöglich zu verstehen.

Ein letzter negativer Punkt ist das 'hünzü'-Konzept, welches laut Pamuk die Schwermütigkeit, die Lethargie, das Trarige ist, welches die Einwohner von Istanbul seit Jahrhunderten geprägt hat. Teilweise bedingt durch den Abstieg des Osmanischen Reiches und darauffolgenden tiefen Fall in eine arme Obskurität. Pamuk behauptet, daß dieses Konzept nur für Menschen, die in Konstantinopel gewohnt hätten zugänglich wäre und dies mag stimmen, ich kann es nicht beurteilen. Aber, ich finde, wenn man einen Text schreibt und dabei auf ein solches Konzept zurückgreift bedarf es einer stärkeren Argumentation dahinter, mir ging es nicht vollkommen auf, ich konnte es nur sehr bedingt nachvollziehen. Dies könnte natürlich auch meine Beschränktheit sein, falls noch jemand dieses Werk gelesen hat, würde ich insofern weitere Erklärungen dankend entgegen nehmen.