Messin’ with Texas

A few weeks ago, Alper sent me this video. This is from the main highway into Istanbul, the highway that I take to get into the city. The best part is probably the last driver who drives not only against traffic but in the fast lane?! The question is why do so many people need to go against the flow of traffic? Are they stupid or are the roads poorly designed. My guess is a combination of both, but more the later.

I have several more traffic, driving and car related entries if you are interested:

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I actually wasn’t sure that the Istanbul based soccer club Fenerbache had beaten London’s Chelsea last night during their champions league match last night here in Istanbul. Fenerbache is the most expensive team in Turkish history this year with a total cost for it’s players of 100 million euros. That’s quite an impressive number. Besiktas and Galtasaray are finishing somewhere around 50 million euros. Chelsea on the other hand is the most expensive team in history, coming in at 456 million euros per year. As you can see these two teams are of a drastically different scale.

However, since signing Roberto Carlos over the summer (See: Roberto Carlos is Coming to Istanbul) Fenerbache has seemed unstoppable. They are currently in the quarter finals of the most prestigious tournament in Europe, which means they are in the tops 8 in Europe this year. They are on pace to win the Turkish league again this year (they are currently on top).

Well last night I looked at my window to this scene:

Keep in mind I live in a remote sparsely populated part of Istanbul. The majority of the noise is from that darn truck which is out almost everytime there is a big win by a Turkish team, but you can hear the horns of all the other motorists. They are all stopped just before a roundabout where the people get out of their cars and run around and scream. Sorry I didn’t get a video of that, but I will have another chance the next time Fenerbache or the national team accomplishes some great feat.

Of course worse things can happen than losing sleep. If you remember (See: Wine-ing and Crying) I got teargassed standing in a crowd of Besiktas supporters last year. That was not fun.

Anyway, Fenerbache has to tie or beat Chelsea when they play in London next week on the 8th of April. If they score at least two goals, they can also lose by only one and still move on because of the away goals rule, but the finer points of the Champions Leagues rules are not interesting. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

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Two weeks ago a friend from high school, Jessica, came to visit me. She, like me, is an expatriate. She currently lives in Cadiz, Spain where she works as an English teacher. She came to visit Istanbul for one week. Below is an excerpt from her blog entry or you can click here to read the whole thing on her blog. Thanks for visiting Jessica it was a pleasure to have you.

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Then we met up with Conrad and went back to the same one Conrad always goes to and his friend Izzie and his other Turkish friends showed up and we played more backgammon and they smoked hookah and we drank lots of tea and orchid milk drink. The Turks never get bored of hookah and backgammon and tea. It’s so absurd. If I had to pick one drink that I always drank, and one thing I always smoked, and one game that I always played, it probably wouldn’t be those. It would probably be white mochas, and maybe it would be backgammon, but it could also be Scrabble or Geschenkt or Taboo, and we won’t discuss anything to be smoked.

>>>

Now here are some pictures. Since Jessica wrote everything in her blog, and it’s too far in the past, I will only give some pictures to look over.

Waiting for our traditional Turkish breakfast with Leyla and her friends. This was a nice cafe in Yesilkoy right on the Bosporus. Because it was outside and there was food, lots of birds were flying around and Kyle got crapped on twice.

Jessica and I standing at ‘Rumeli Hisari‘ the fortress built by Mehmet the Conqueror before he conquered Istanbul. The whole place was built in only four months!

One of the many ships passing through the Bosporus. This one I found interesting because it’s carrying railroad cars!

Swimming anyone? There are many ladders like this (and nicer ones) for swimming in the Bosporus.

This is me eating Iskender Kebab, an extremely delicious Turkish specialty. I failed to make my brother and Jessica try this while they were here. Sorry guys.

Jessica, Leyla and Theresa out at our favorite bar, Akdeniz (which means Mediterranean Sea in Turkish). They play great 80s and 90s music.

Doruk and I at Akdeniz. Jessica thinks that my friend Doruk looks like Jack Black. Not sure that I agree.

After Theresa broke a glass, Doruk was really distressed.

Some of the best sites to see in Istanbul from the left, Hagia Sophia, the ancient Cisterne that stored water for the city and the Blue Mosque.

Jessica was really excited to see Starbucks so she took a picture of their menu.

This is the view from the Galatta Tower which used to be part of the defenses of Istanbul. It’s on the European side just north of the Golden Horn. Jessica had to visit this on her own while I was at work.

Since it was Saint Patrick’s Day while Jessica was here we went to an Irish pub where this guy got a drink thrown in his face. Lesson learned: don’t piss off crazy Turkish girls. That’s his hat I am wearing.

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The Turkish economy is actually quite good. The size of the unreported or black market economy makes Turkey reasonable stable. Despite the very volatile political situation that has been developing over the past year, the Turkish Lyra spent most of the fall being one of four currencies rising against the year. However, there are hiccups form time to time.

When I moved to Turkey the Lyra was trading for 1.41 against the dollar. One month ago it was at 1.16. Today it’s at 1.24. Despite the bumpy ride, things seem to calm down. Since the financial crisis of 2000 where the Lyra lost half its value over night, things have been pretty good. A lot of people lost a lot of money during this crisis, however many with close ties to the government coincidently sold everything they had and invested in foreign currency weeks or days before the crash (according to my friends). Some people think another crisis is coming (SeekingAlpha.com) which may contribute to the recent volatility. People remember what happened and are afraid it will happen again. Despite a GDP growth rate of 5.1% and single digit unemployment (according to the CIA world fact book), people still don’t have much faith in the economy. All  the major banks here in Turkey allow you to easily open your own foreign currency account online for no charge. I currently have four accounts and am considering opening a fifth, adding a fourth currency to my list. A lot of business is done in Euros in Turkey as well, including my own company’s. We buy and sell everything in Euros as a way of making our pricing structure more stable.

Just after the markets closed on Friday March 14th,  a case was brought against the ruling AKP (justice and development party) party here in Turkey. They were brought up on charges of anti-secularism (that’s illegal here in Turkey) and will be investigated by a special court on whether or not they have violated the secular laws of Turkey’s constitution. This is not the first time that a government has been brought up on charges of being anti-secular, and if the party is dissolved, it will not be the first time that a government has been removed from power for such a violation. Naturally Monday morning, when the markets opened, things got crazy.

Two months ago I moved most of money to Euros at around 1.7-1.75 Lyra to the euro. On the 14th when the markets closed,  things were around 1.85. On Monday, by noon, the Euro broke 2 Lyra (I sold everything). When things closed one week later on the 21st, the Euro was at 1.917. My speculation clearly paid off. Despite the ongoing case against the government (which again, is widely unpopular among the educated upper and middle class), the economy seems to be doing alright (Turkish Daily News Article).

So now that things have calmed down for the time being, what will I do with the windfall I received from this speculation.  It’s not too much so probably I am just going to buy a round for my friends. More likely though, I will do my best to speculate against the outcome of this court case. If the government is removed - which by the way has control of the executive branch as well as most of the parliament - I am sure things will get crazy again.

Cheers.

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Check it out:

Turkish Government Bans YouTube!

No more YouTube!

In Turkey there is a law called article 301 which has made it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’ since coming into effect in June of 2005. The article states:

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Article 301 states the following.^[6]

1. A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

>>> (excerpt from wikipedia.org)

The law has been used to persecute journalists, writers, bloggers, poets even people for public speeches they have given. The most notable cases were against Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for an interview he gave for a swiss magazine (charges were dropped against him), Wordpress.com - an online blogging community, and most recently YouTube (it has been banned several times over the past year), for a video of Kemal Mustafa Attaturk singing about how he is a homosexual (at least these are the major incidents that i know of)

I am sure you can all see what an obvious violation of freedom of speech this law represents. The current government has been ruthless about persecuting journalists, shutting down newspapers, blocking websites. They must think they have a mandate from Attaturk himself to protect the Turkish identity. In the international community, the European Union has insisted Turkey remove this law. Although allowing international law and international treaties to override Turkish national law, Article 301 is nonetheless a clear violation of fundamental freedoms and political rights. There has been talk of removing the law, but it has been more than one year since president Abdullah Gul suggested removing the law. Instead the government recently lifted a long standing law from the early days of the republic banning head scarves in public areas, but that’s a whole other story.

Regardless of whether or not this law stays active or is repealed, Turks will feel very strongly about their Turkishness. In my experience it seems that the Turkish identity and Attaturk (the prophet of this religion like nationalism) are more sacred than Islam in Turkey. There are many mosques in Turkey, and many people fast during the month of Ramadan, but there is at least one picture of Attaturk in nearly every business in the whole country. While religion is important here and it is observed, Attaturk and Turkishness are indoctrinated by the state. In school, teachers teach how great Attaturk was, they teach how about how important everything he did was. His drive to secularize Turkey is what saved Turkey from the mess that many of the other Islamic nations are in right now (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya). In some ways Attaturk has god-like status here, in other ways he’s far beyond that. Recently we met a man who had Attaturk’s face tattooed on his arm.

This intensity sometimes manifests itself in violence against those who do not share this view point. With the state prosecuting “anti-Turkish” antagonists, vigilantes within the community do so as well. Hrant Dink, former editor in chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, is the most notable case in recent history. He was a very vocal critic of both the Armenian and Turkish stances on the ‘Armenian genocide’ (Related Blog Post: Turmoil in Turkey: Part II). He had been prosecuted three times for his opinions about the incident before a young ultra nationalist Turk, Ogun Samast, assassinated him in January 2007. Pictures later surfaced of the arresting officers smiling and congratulating the killer while holding a Turkish flag. What kind of message does that send? Another notable case was Michael Dickinson, a British artist who made a collage showing the Turkish prime minister as a dog. He was held for 10 days. You can see the picture in question below:

He later showed this collage, again of the prime minister, getting himself into trouble again:

I find both picture entertaining especially considering what my friends, and many of the other educated people in Turkey have to say about the current government. To any of my Turkish readers, I pose this question: Is Turkey getting better in terms of human rights and freedom of speech? I would like to hear some opinions other than my own on this one.

With YouTube banned, what am I going to do at work on the slow days. At least I know that I can always retreat back to my home country, where I can say what ever I damn well please.

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On Wednesday, Istanbul was shaken up by a minor Earthquake. I am not sure where I was but my flat mate felt it, so did most of my friends. Maybe because it was my first earthquake I didn’t notice it? That doesn’t make any sense does it? Regardless, people were pretty shaken up by it because of reports of a big earthquake on its way.

In 1999 a massive earthquake rocked western Turkey. It hit in a city east of Turkey called Izmit (200,000 people, Turkey’s 35th largest city), causing massive damage. Some estimate put the death toll as high as 40,000 people and the damage to Turkey’s infrastructure was enormous. The quake registered 7.6. Since then Turkey redefined it’s building code to prevent the widespread damage in the next earthquake.

The US Geological survey has predicted that another massive earthquake will strike Istanbul in the next 30 years. Thus, while I was excited to have lived through my first earthquake (despite not noticing) some of my friends were quite scared. Until the news confirmed that a second earthquake would not be immediately coming, Istanbul was on edge.

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Sorry I haven’t written much but my wrist has been bothering me a lot because I spend too much time in front of my laptop, which has a keyboard that is too small for me. Both of my wrists are killing me right now. I have been dreading typing anything lately.

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In December07, I got up and went through my morning routine. Everything was pretty normal; Bathroom, shower, brush the teeth, get dressed, breakfast.  On this particular gray and dreary morning, I poured the last drop of milk out of the container I had been using into my cereal, filling it far short of the desired level. So I took to the fridge rummaging around. I found one bottle and checked it over for the percentage. The bottle had already been opened and had not been bought by me so I assume Murat had bought it. It was in Turkish so I figured if I looked for a number I could figure out what kind of milk it was (I hate skim milk). After about a minute, I thought screw it, I am sure it’s fine.

The first spoonful of this milk had something wrong about it. The taste of the cereal hid the problem but not well enough. Something was definitely wrong with this milk. It tasted a little sour and salt of all things! It was definitely salty.  I smelled the bowl and it smelled fine. It definitely hadn’t gone bad. I smelled the container which also smelled fine. Perhaps I was going crazy?

After two more spoonfuls, sniffing the bottle of milk a second and third time after each mouthful, I had had enough. Something was wrong with this milk! I needed to get something else for breakfast because I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s when I noticed the big letters on the front of the bottle. I guess perhaps while looking for a number I didn’t bother to mentally process any of the writing on the bottle, or perhaps because I know so little Turkish I simply disregard text that I see written. This however, written in the biggest font on the bottle was a word that I did know. It said “Ayran.”

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 Ayran is a Turkish specialty. I made my parents try it once while we were in Paris together back in March 2003 and they both were disgusted by it. This is awful they said, how can you drink this? My mother then proceeded to say that Ayran tastes like “yogurt mixed with salt water.”

Well that is exactly what it is. It is yogurt, salt and water mixed together. It is typically served cold along side just about every dish. If you are curious, you can check out this Ayran recipe. Ayran and yogurt in general are incredibly popular in Turkey. Ayran is a standard drink and can be purchased anywhere that Coke or any other soft drinks. It can be purchased in small containers or many places have their own Ayran machines that keep it well mixed and ready for serving. Even McDonald’s here serves Ayran (note: I have been told this. I have never actually been in a McDonald’s here nor have I eaten food from there).

Variations of Ayran can be served with mint, black pepper, cucumber juice or garlic. I can’t say that I have had any of the variations, but I have seen a kind of cold yogurt soup made with cucumber juice. I haven’t tried nor have I investigated what it is really, but it looks like Ayran with cucumber pieces floating in it. It is common in the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia (in other words a lot of the territory previously under control of the Ottomans). In some places in Turkey it is the standard welcome drink for visitors - bumping tea from that spot (Wikipedia.org)

I am not crazy about the drink, but I have a taste for it. It is refreshing and goes great with a heavy meat dish such as a kebab or gyro/donner. From time to time I order it, but the availability of fresh fruit juice here means that I end up ordering those instead.

What I learned from this experience is that I really should start learning Turkish. I was briefly motivated for a few days. I am hoping that in the next few months I will find that motivation again. Perhaps a third goof (remember trying to do Laundry?) to really get me going.

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Current Mood: Happy

Well a lot has happened since I last wrote a real post way back on… December 12th! It was a real pain in the butt trying to get my domains transfered and set up my new host for my website, but it’s all finally done thanks to the help of Ant and Ali Emre.

So what has happened. I guess most of you know about the primaries in the US, which has been the news item winning most of my attention. I guess that’s not interesting for my American readers (everyone else go to cnn.com, they have good coverage).

Izzy and I went to Morocco for one week. It was an organized all expense paid tour. This was the first time I have done something like that and probably the last. I prefer to travel on my own schedule and to just wander around. Although it was a fun trip, I don’t think I will do it again. I covered four cities in seven days. On the way over I hadn’t quite gotten over a nasal infection. I couldn’t equalize the pressure when we went up and I nearly fainted from the pain. I spent the last two days of the trip praying to the porcelain gods. Anyway here are the pictures. Sorry I don’t have any of when they threw a monkey on Izzy’s head out of no where on the street. That was probably the highlight of the trip.

Morocco Pictures

My brother came to visit me right after Christmas up through New Years. We went around Istanbul, partied with my friends, did some shopping… it was a nice visit. I think he had fun except for a little problem with food or water, everything went well. Another friend of mine, James (aka Spags) was here as well. Graham, Spags and myself went to Kapadokya, ‘the land of well bred horses.’ Kapadokya is one of the most interesting places in Turkey according to my friends. It is full of bizarre land formations and underground cities that have been used by countless cultures for thousands of years. Because of it’s relative isolation on the high plateau of central Turkey, it was never a important strategic point to control so it was more or less ignored by conquering armies. I will let you look at the pictures for yourself. (oh I had a sweet new year’s eve party at my apartment. Those pictures are also there)

Pictures from Graham’s visit

Other than that I haven’t done too much. I went to Slovakia for an exhibition for work, but I haven’t posted any pictures. I finally got new climbing shoes. About one week afterwards Izzy hurt his shoulder so we can’t climb until it heals.

My gaming group has really taken off. We created “Istanbul Boardgame Enthusiasts” group on facebook and Izzy and I have been very aggressively trying to recruit new gamers. It has definitely paid off. The only problem we have had is about finding a place to play. Over the summer Wonderland started turning off the AC to get us to leave earlier. Then we moved to the Wrap which said they are now closing at 10:30 instead of 11:30. They had spent the weeks prior trying to kick us at at 11:00. Now we are playing at a bagel cafe called Tribeca. It’s definitely not the best place for us since we are so loud. When we are not there it is a very quiet upscale cafe. When we get there it gets a little wild, especially with the recent surge in people. I have a feeling we are going to be hassled there until we leave also. Here are a few pictures from our recent meetings:

Me explaining ‘Ticket to Ride’ to a captive audience.

In the back left of this picture is Ali Emre and myself. We are actually trying to get my webspace setup to transfer my blog in this picture.

This composite is courtesy of Rana. This was the final showdown in bang between Izzy the sheriff, and Turan the renegade. Izzy won.

On the political front, Serbs attacked the Turkish Embassy in Belgrade when Turkey backed Kosovo. Turkey invaded Northern Iraq to hopefully catch PKK terrorists. If you aren’t sure what the PKK is, I wrote about them in two previous blog entries: Turmoil in Turkey: Part I, Turmoil in Turkey: Part II. Turkey lifted the ban on women’s head scarves in all schools and other government institutions (this is a much bigger deal here than you think, but that’s for a later entry). Of course, that is only the last weeks worth of news in Turkey! To go with all three of those big events, there has been lots of protesting, especially in the east of Turkey where there has been daily rioting, vandalism and clashes with police. On the bright side of things after last weeks blizzard which dumped nearly 10 inches of snow in some places, the weather is warming up! Here’s a picture from trying to drive in the first, and the smaller of the two snow storms.

Alright, that’s all I have for now. Take care of everyone and keep reading. Thanks mom and Chris for bugging me about getting back to blogging.

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I am no stranger to doing my own laundry. Throughout university (in the US and in Switzerland) I had to do my own laundry. When I came to Turkey however, my house keeper was doing my laundry once a week. She kept doing things wrong like washing things I didn’t washed, or washing dry clean only thing. So I got annoyed and took washing into my own hands. Until two days ago, I was reasonably successful.

The first few weeks of doing laundry I would set the machine to some setting where the machine stays full of water and doesn’t unlock (it’s a side loading machine). I could understand if there was a soak setting where the machine would fill with water and sit, but this setting seemed to wash the clothes and then just never finish the cycle. The only way I could figure out how to get them out was change the setting and try again. Through trial and error, I found the one setting out of 8 or 10, that I can use on all clothes and doesn’t take too long.

Two nights ago I encountered a new problem. When I opened the washing machine, my clothes smelled really strange. Our original giant bag of detergent had run out so I had used something else I found under the sink. Suspicious I called a friend to consult. Very slowly I sounded out the words on the bag as the other end of the line began laughing. Apparently I had washed my clothes in some kind of chemical you run through the washing machine to protect it, and I had used a lot of it!  It was too late to buy new detergent, so went to sleep.

Having learned my lesson, I went to the store the next night to buy detergent. Again I called a Turkish friend to consult on which one to buy. Eventually I found one and brought it to the front of the store. No wallet! I frantically began searching my pockets for my wallet. I needed this detergent. I hadn’t done laundry in three weeks and I literally had nothing left. I found 5 lyra, a far cry from the 23.50 it was for this detergent. Like an idiot I had to walk out of the store empty handed after having held up the line as I rummaged around in my pockets. I needed that detergent.

I thought about it for a bit then I thought why not borrow the money from someone else. So I called the guy in charge of our building, Ercan. He knows me well because I am always getting locked out of my apartment and he has to let me in. Using another friend to help translate, I managed to borrow 15 lyra. Not quite enough to cover the bag I wanted, but could just buy a cheaper bag; problem solved!

Back in the store, detergent found, waiting in line, paid for! It was 18.50 so I had only 1.50 lyra left. Just as I paid my friend called to check how things are going. I said I had to buy a different one because the other was too expensive. As I read the label, she informed that I had once again bought the wrong one. I had bought detergent for bleach. Not knowing what to do, I had her translate to the cashier my error. After laughing at me (I was laughing at myself too), she went and got the right detergent and gave me a new receipt.

Problem solved, laundry done.

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Current Mood: Angry

I remember it all very clearly. I went climbing Wednesday night, had dinner and then went out in Taksim for Leyla’s birthday. Drove home, no problem. Was very tired though.

Thursday night, Thanksgiving, Murat took the car I had had the previous night. He called me and asked if I had left any bags in the car. I distinctly remember looking at my backpack full of climbing stuff in the morning. It was sitting in the back of the car. I remember thinking there wasn’t much point to taking it out of the car in the morning. So yes, my favorite backpack ($120), my climbing shoes ($70) and my harness (it was a steal for $60) as well as my cold medicine, a can of deodorant and a can of body spray - funny how I remember exactly the contents of my backpack that I had packed two days before.

If you haven’t guessed where this is going, yes, the car was broken into for a third time! (In case you don’t remember here are the entries for the previous two times: Broken Window 1, Broken Window 2). It’s not so much the monetary value of what was lost as the sentimental value of what was lost. That backpack, which I bought over three years ago in Switzerland, has barely left my side since then. It has been hiking glaciers, skiing 2 mile high mountains, hiking hardened lava flows in Hawaii, diving trips, rock climbing (obviously), class, planes, trains, cars… it’s been everywhere. I loved that backpack. It even had a sticker that said “Polynesian Adventures” on it from Hawaii. It was good and dirty too. I can say with confidence that after my laptop, my backpack was my favorite possession. On top of all that, I am still sick.

So, I hope everyone else had a happy thanksgiving. There were some good things about the day, but in general it was a very sub par thanksgiving. It would have been nice to at least have some turkey and stuffing.

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