walking to the office

am i alive?

this morning i hopelessly clicked on my tüpbebek shortcut and actually found my block. (glory be!) then i read the news. blogger has been temporarily unbanned, waiting for "missing evidence." to temporarily celebrate, i'm going to post some missing content: pictures from fall in Erzurum. but i also want to write a bit more about the ban and my thoughts, especially as it relates to Cumhuriyet Bayramı- Republic Day in Turkey, October 29th.

We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us. -Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

digi-turk, a large Turkish cable provider, sued over blogger sites linking to free football games and a local court in Diyarbakir province (South-Eastern Turkey) made the ruling, which banned access to all blogger sites in Turkey. there are a few issues for the legal system to iron out here, like why a provincial court can make a ruling that bans access to internet for the whole country, and why the entire blog hosting service is banned instead of the specific sites breaching intellectual property rights (something that could be done with just a bit more work). but because of these anomalies, the bans can't represent the majority of the Turkish people or the Turkish courts.

in discussion boards about the banning of blogspot, i saw a lot of Turkish people very upset. but i asked my students about the banning and they seemed indifferent or apathetic. most answered by saying that they know how to get around banned sites with proxy servers, and they all know that youtube was banned because of attacks/criticism/satire on/of/about the founder of the modern Turkish Republic: Kemal Atatürk. but i was thinking, especially now that it is the Republic Holiday, of the countries the founder of modern Turkey was looking to as models of his Republic. for better or worse, he looked at Europe and The West when structuring the Turkish Republic (France especially influenced the political system and language). the list of countries that censor internet include Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. and i wonder what Atatürk would think about censorship and to find his Republic in this company on this issue today, even when the censorship is done in attempts to preserve his own legacy from defamation.

to be clear, i'm not trying to write for anyone, although i am trying to make an argument towards the release of censorship on certain grounds. and i'm finding myself more vocal on this topic since it has affected me personally. not only do i host this site on blogger, but i host 2 other sites for my students, one on American Cultural Studies and the other on Introductory Phonetics. much content like this gets caught up in the bans and inhibit the population from information and perspective.

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by the way, i found an interesting Turkish group doing some action on this issue and others: meet the Young Civilians.

This Blog: Banned

on this friday the 24th, blogger and blogspot fell the way of youtube, wordpress, and a specific Richard Dawkins' site: banned from Turkish IP addresses. (see here here here)


youtube was banned after videos satirizing/attacking/insulting Kemal Atatürk, the much revered founder of modern Turkey, had been posted.

wordpress was banned after the lawsuit of an Islamic creationist.

the reasons for restricting blogger/blogspot have not been officially released. i don't think this tube baby said anything too harmful. in case yr wondering, i'm now using a proxy to get to the site and post. most of my students do the same thing so they can watch youtube. the proxy changes what i see on the page though, so i can't add pics or embed links, or do all the things that make this blog pretty.

but this does mean that the blog is super rebellious and radical- so super rebellious and radical that it is officially banned by court order. these words are now civil disobedience.


-tb

bilgi- Ergenekon

so it has been a week since my last post and about two weeks since a post with real substance. but i have been coming to the site and adding news articles related to the happenings in Turkey, and i'll take this post to discuss some of them.

after increased warfare with the militant-separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the last 3 weeks, Turkey expanded its military missions in Iraq and the PKK has increased violence in South-Eastern Turkey against civilians and the military. later, reports that Abdullah Öcalan, the founding leader of PKK, was being abused in prison (where he serves a life sentence) led to protests in Istanbul and many cities in South-Eastern Turkey.

what has led in the headlines though is the mysterious Ergenekon, a supposed ultra-nationalist group known sometimes as the "deep state." some ninety presumed members have been indicted and were set to go on trial last Monday, but the hearings were postponed amidst a chaotic courtroom and will resume sometime this week. those accused of being part of the group, which is sometimes characterized as a terrorist organization, include academics, journalists, and high-ranking military and government officials. some are claiming that this is the biggest court case in Turkey's history.

the story of Ergenekon is interesting as it deals directly with age-old debates and factions in Turkish politics (mainly the relationship between a secular state and an Islamic majority), reflects the variety of perspectives and opinions in the Turkish press, and will test the democratic function of the current conservative government. Ergenekon has two recent charges, first for planning an assassination against Kurdish leaders and Orhan Pamuk (the nobel prize winning Turkish novelist) and next for plotting to overthrow the current government (there have been 3 military coups in Turkey's history, so the fear is justified). newspapers supporting the AKP, the Justice and Development Party that has been in power since 2002, report on links between Ergenekon and decades of terrorist attacks, military coups, and assassinations. they claim, for instance, that both Hezbollah and the PKK either have ties with or are sub-sections of Ergenekon. seemingly more objective sources reference plenty of misinformation in these charges against Ergenekon, citing contradictions in the farcically long 2,500 page indictment and the investigative dossier approaching 10,000 pages (as a reference, the Nuremberg Trial had an indictment of 70 pages). conflicting charges name past leaders of the PKK both as members of Ergenekon and as assassination targets by Ergenekon.

in my research of the story and history, the existence of Ergenekon is rarely contested, but it may be a name for individuals or small groups of influential secular-nationalists, perhaps linked more by a shared ideology than an administrative structure, that occasionally carried out violent acts to support their ideological goals. but it is likely that the AKP, which barely staved of its dissolution for being theocratic, is now tying its political opponents to Ergenekon and creating a series of specious links to do so.

i feel odd sometimes writing about Turkish political events but thought that some people back home might be interested. and the news story seems to represent a lot of the current tensions. i'm intersted in Turkish perspectives, from those watching this blog and the events in Turkey. i'll post some more as things happen-the trial will likely take months.

Çatalhöyük

reconstruction of a home

picture from on top of a mound looking a one of the dig sites

inside the bigger of 2 dig sites, visible are the many levels of the city

a home

in 7500 B.C., in south-central Anatolia this was the site of one of the first cities on earth. archeologists have found no evidence of official leaders or a class system, no evidence of violence or the need for weapons, and think that women at least held equal power in the society. (see more here, here, and here.)

driving through villages and melon fields, i tried to think of the land 10,000 years earlier. at the entrance, we waited for a guard to take us to the dig sites. walking up the mound, knowing that below me had been such a successfully egalitarian society was a great feeling.

thanks to Onur Ekdik for supplying the pictures since i forgot to take my camera.

Erzurum pics

View from the clock tower

Looking up at Yakutiye Madrassah, Mongol Empire, 1310 AD

Erzurum's Inner Fortress and Clock Tower, Roman Empire, 5th Century

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Erzurum is gorgeous! that's where you get to spend yr every day? you've been holding out on me/us.

yes, face, these pictures maybe. they are beautiful pictures, but as you wrote this i think they don't represent my experience or the experience of viewing the city in full. i haven't really figured out what a picture of erzurum is like.
i wanted to take some pictures of the university in fall, and that is really beautiful too, and quite different from these views of the city. the university is different from the city, the historical sites here are different than the commercial streets, the outskirts of both the university campus and the city are different than their more manicured centers...
even on my same walk to the office everyday, i can choose between either beautiful or sad or confused scenery (i'll stick to this position- i'm not confused, the scenery is). i hope to put up more pics soon of different parts of town, shepherds and sheep and their dogs, horse drawn carts, BMWs in unruly traffic, the dirt paths leading to my apartment, the advanced sprinkler system of Atatürk University, the men with their wild suits and the boys and elderly shinning their shoes

a month and week of bits

it is not uncommon to bargain for medical operations. the medical advisor at the U.S. embassy had LASIK eye surgery for $800. low-income citizens have a green card for free health care. our group leader Ersin is irritated that we keep asking which doctors take our insurance- they all do. they all do. (any operations i've been itchin for? turkish for "i don't care if my kidney is dragging on the ground. 200 or this boy is hittin the road"?)

Bush's approval rating 25%, only one point better than the post-watergate Nixon. U.S. citizens approve congress 13% of the time, a record low. Pew report for Turkey has 12% favorablity towards the U.S., lowest of the 25 countries polled. Polls show skepticism about change with both Obama and McCain in Turkey.

watching Al Jazeera. dusty shoes, dusty apartment. coughy face. want to be a journalist.

Sean Hannity, your ass hat is showing again.

why is the economy the stock market? who needs a stock market?

the evenness of homes and genders at Çatalhöyük has me asking "what went wrong?" in Kappadokian cave-houses i hear myself saying "that's religulous" indiscriminately.

2009 looks like a great year for socialism. inşallah. commentator says socialists are punch-drunk.

filled in an Illinois circle for Ralph Nader. ballot affidavit incomprehensible.

the English Dept. has a tea room with two employees. i pick up the phone, dial, "Muhammed, merhaba, nasılsınz, iyim. bir çay lütfen." piping hot black tea in tulip shaped cup, lemon wedge, tiny spoon, bowl of sugar cubes appear on my desk.

Turkish student listing off metal bands to me "Iron Maiden, Pantera, Korn, Slipknot, Black Sabbath." his first time talking to a native speaker.

connection hasn't the girth to support the daily show. i miss you Jon.

my students have to be laughing at me right now. yes, wrong classroom. just kidding!- wish i could communicate with you. iyi akşamlar!

la!,la!,la!,la!

speaking a new language

i didn't think i'd be relearning English here. at first i had to find out how to understand Turkish English, the woman on the plane saying "sandviç" three times before i understood, me thinking it was a Turkish word i didn't know (it is a loanword, but phonetically the same).

now, after my first day of classes, i'm clearly speaking a new English. i've been told that students have little or no experience with native speakers, affirmed by a student visiting my office today. he told me to slow down and repeat myself when i said "is-ben-goo-meding-you"- the words melting together, different from his reading literacy.

in my second class of the day, speaking and listening to pre-first-year students, someone remarked that i was not speaking american english.

"yes. i have had to- slow down- my english. because i need- everyone to hear- me. and to understand- what i- am saying to them."

it's interesting what slowing down and changing breathing patterns does to my thought process. i wonder if it helps students to slow down so much and to speak such an unnatural English.

what i have found out today is that teaching here, to about 300 foreign language learners, will be much different than teaching experiences i've had in the past.

made this post cause i was tired of looking at the beard.

countdown to beardless?

i need a residence permit before my first 30 days in Turkey run down

Deadline: October 9th

today, my friend and colleague said i'll need a photo, and for that photo i must shave as part of receiving a government issued id

history of a beard: full beard for a year and a half, before that scruff+ for at least 4 and a half years--some of these skin bits haven't seen sun in the good part of a decade

updates as the events unfold

October 9th:

my friend and collegue says i can probably keep the beard, i think because it is not a religous beard (how would he know?) and so i went to have a photo taken.

at the teknofoto, i narrowly escaped the photographer adding a long dark beard and robe in post production. it is possible that every photographer in the city thinks an american needs a photo disguise for Iran. and, with limited Turkish, one could imagine how difficult it would be to convince them otherwise. (nothing more to explain here, i'm as confused as you are).

so after some confusion, the beard is still here, but the outcome is yet to be determined. i am one document away from convincing local authorities that my residence is legit, but they have not seen my photographs yet. they have seen my beard and failed to mention it as a problem. but who knows if the spiritual signifigance of facial hair is determined after the paperwork?

October 11th:

yes, still bearded. no, no residence pass.

simple tasks need translators, complex tasks too. need residence pass to have a bank. need a bank to get paid. Fortis practically went under, money will be coming there.

October 13:

beard, yes, residence pass no. my friend got yelled at in the rector's office, where everyone wears a different suit (it's cute really, in the states, walk into any bureaucratic building and you'll see black suits styled the same way. here, the brown pinstripe with lavender tie doesn't always work, but at least he's trying something different), and he wants to find my papers through happier means (who could blame him). so, we're waiting. i'm waiting to be paid, owed 1,800 dollars right now.

Things Take Time in Turkey (a little alliteration we've been taught [not one of my favorites]).

plagiarized and editorialized

i've been trying while away to have some source of influence in political debates and political media back home, particularly when i found out about the anti-Islamic documentary Obsession inserted as a paid advertisement in 28 million swing-state newspapers (the documentary and the fear-mongering tactic has been used before. Fox "news" ran the film 9 times in 2 weeks just before the 2006 mid-term elections). the DVD's mass distribution, which has been denounced by leaders from all major religious, was paid for by Clarion Fund, an organization backing John McCain.

i first wrote a review of the documentary (see no. 2 kuebribd) on the New York Times website shortly after the film's mass distribution.*

then, The Dayton Daily News distributed the DVD and just a week later Muslim visitors of a Dayton mosque were attacked with a chemical spray while praying. this prompted me, with the pushing of a good friend, to write a more extensive letter to The Miami Student and The Dayton Daily News.

The Miami Student, perhaps the most conservative student newspaper in the world (and i'm not trying to exaggerate), published my letter in full but changed the title from "Documentary Advertisement Spreads Religious Hatred" to "Anti-West aggression should not be overlooked." if you read the letter, you will see that the new title is almost contradictory to the message.

i'm not sure whether the editorial board at The Miami Student has poor comprehension skills or if they editorialized my title, something they have done with my letters before, in an attempt to distort the message. perhaps they meant to write, Anti-West aggression should be reconsidered, or examined thoroughly and rationally. or that Anti-Islamic aggression should not be overlooked, choices which would come closer to the intended message of the letter. but with their new title, one might infer that the attack against a Dayton mosque was carried out by a Muslim instead of two impressionable teenagers who just watched the racist DVD they got with their Dayton Daily newspaper, a DVD that filled them with irrational fear and hatred against Muslims before encouraging them to "take a stand" (my inference on the catalyst of the attack).

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technically, my letter to the Dayton Daily News was not published, but when reading what was published on the editorial page, i found two paragraphs i recognized.

Dore Procopio of Dayton "wrote":
"What a horrible fear-mongering, brainless, guns-waving approach to the Middle East and Islam. It is being distributed in swing states as part of an anti-Islamic and pro-Republican ad campaign. Too bad the DDN couldn't resist the payoff.

If we wanted to get at the heart of the terrorist threat, we could start by looking at the oppression of the people in the Middle East. It's no coincidence that the poorest countries with histories of colonization and intervention lash out against the West."

Dore found my New York Times review, switched out "DDN" for "nytimes" and modified the opening phrase, but left the rest untouched. i was a bit shocked, as an English teacher seeing my writing plagiarized, but am actually flattered that someone thought my message was worth copying and distributing (my actual letter to the editor was a bit more thoughtful, but i guess the DDN disagreed). i also found out that, despite her challenges with originality, i kind of like Dore, who is a librarian (of all people you should know better!) and also an activist (here holding a "shame" sign for Ann Coulter). the NYtimes comments also showed up on a blog about conservative media bias, this time without someone stealing authorship.

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apologies for the long post with its links and bifurcations and which may seem to have little to do with Turkey. but the issue i was writing about hit home (my new home) as i owe my comfort and safety here to the many Muslims who have been warm, understanding, and hospitable, despite the many abuses to their religion, culture, and people from my country's government and media.

i also don't intend to be self promoting, here or in other posts (it's hard because the medium pushes me there), but i wanted to give a glimpse of how 15 minutes of bad writing spread to a few outlets in the U.S. media, even if it had to be plagiarized and distorted to make it there.

*Final note: i don't know exactly what i meant by "would have caused popular uprising in a just society," as i wrote the nytimes review quickly not thinking it would show up elsewhere. i think that another letter to the DDN said what i was thinking best: "I wonder if the DDN would also tout the First Amendment to allow a paying advertiser to distribute a [hate-filled]DVD about other groups such as Jews, blacks, etc.? I find it highly unlikely that the DDN would be waving the First Amendment banner in those cases" (Miller. "DDN should have looked into sources of information." Dayton Daily News, Oct. 2, 2008). or maybe this is what i think i wanted to write: our recent history and socialization has made it difficult for us to treat racist and prejudiced misrepresentations of Islam in the way we would treat the same misrepresentation of other ethnic or religious groups, even in such extreme examples as Obsession.

Mac Turko

My brother asked me to try out the McTurco and report back, so here it is with full visual documentation.

The McTurco is 2 patties, lettuce, tomato, carrot, sweet and tangy turko sauce in a sesame seed, sesame-seed oil pita bread. The McDonald's also features the double köfte burger (köfte translates to meatball but normally it is a flat spicy patty of beef or lamb), a double meat Big Mac, onion rings as a side order, and a smoking section that was in full effect. My McTurco meal took place the day after Ramadan, meaning that it was the first lunch in a month for many of Turks feasting with me (in Ramadan the religious population takes no food or water while the sun is up).

To counter this ridiculous McDonalds promotion, click on the unseemly gluttony below.

Untitled from tüpbebek on Vimeo.

Generic Update

at this time i've been in Turkey for about 3 weeks. i came during Ramadan, which just ended a few days ago and has affected my visit in interesting ways (image of women in headscarfs hollering while they play air-hockey in the park). i will be living in Erzurum, in the mountains only about 200 miles from Tehran, and i have already visited and set up my apartment and office there (i feel extremely comfortable because of the hospitality of everyone). for the moment i am in Konya, about 150 miles south of Ankara, with a gracious friend for the Bayram holiday. i've also spent 3 days each in Ankara and Istanbul, mostly visiting tourist sites and eating good food. i have posts drafted about religion and public education, driving in Turkey, McDonalds, and being the only American in Erzurum (a subjective reality that has recently changed). in the coming months i'll be teaching english and american studies at Atatürk University, fearing God and -40 weather, and traveling as much as possible.

The Phenomenology of Eating Testicles

at home before heading off to Turkey, my dad would call me into the room when he was watching tv: “have you ever seen this guy? he travels the world eating all sorts of strange foods.” the 3 or 4 times i watched, perhaps 3 or 4 different versions of the same show, the travelers ate some form of testicles.

walking down a strip in Istanbul, my friend turned to me and asked if i'd like to eat lamb colon, which made me think of my dad and the travel show fetishism of strange meats.

why is it that travel becomes linked with eating strange foods, especially strange meats? especially in über-choice, globalized u.s. food markets we can probably eat testicle right at home, anytime we want. doubtless i could seek a local butcher in the u.s. serving a variety of strange meaty portions, but i never have.

so why are travel shows so often about eating testicles and why did i commit to eating lamb colon because i was walking down the street in a foreign country? my guess is that the act of eating strange meats becomes sound-bite exoticism. i'll call this the “you'll meet an acquaintance at a bar theory of travel.”

a bar somewhere in northern Illinois:

Acquaintance: “Hey man, i heard you went to Turkey, how was it?”

Me: “Turkey was nuts! they eat lamb colon over there!”

A: “did you try it?”

Me: “Hell Yes I did, and it was Awesome!”

the shock value of the food represents both the foreignness of my travels and my immersion into them. if i travel around Turkey without eating all the strange intestinal and sexual organs available then folks at home will think i haven't engaged with the culture. so i found myself eating lamb colon in Istanbul because it validates my travel experience.

(by the way, the dish is named kokoreç, and the lamb colon is ground up with spices, cooked on a skewer, and then finely chopped with vegetables and placed on submarine sandwich bread. it is really spicy and my Turkish friends say it is healthy and good to eat after a night of drinking.)

smooth slow record Konya

i'm working with a sony dcr-sr300 handycam which has a "smooth slow record" function that takes about 4 seconds of video and slows it into 12 seconds. when the audio is on it records-weird-in real time, so i take the films in silence. i'm only just begining to see what is interesting in this format and have gladly passed the filming water drip from a fountain stage (no promises i won't regress).

unstable movements, as a rule, seem to be the most interesting to take. the balance of a motorcycle and the slow change of facial expressions and body movements attracted me in my last outing with the camera.

the videos below were all taken on the first day of the post-Ramadan holiday. the streets in Konya were more active than in the last 3 days of my stay as people moved across town to visit with family and eat their first lunch in a month (more on my McDonalds experience with them later). the day was uncharacteristically cold and overcast.


Faces Konya from tüpbebek on Vimeo.

kedi

probably the most endearing surprise in my 3 days in Istanbul were the cats. i've heard you can tell a lot about a culture by the way they treat their animals. in chiapas mexico, poverty violated everyone and it wasn't suprising to see an elderly man in the market taking out some frustration by whacking a stray, starving dog with his cane.

in istanbul cats and dogs have few official owners but they have become surrogate pets for tourists and shopkeepers. streetcats find friends who feed them and provide temporary shelter. in alleys restaurant workers happily offer their scraps to waiting cats and dogs who moan in joy over the meals. i walked around practicing "kedi" and wondering if i could find a part-time pet in Erzurum.


kedi and/or crotch shots from tüpbebek on Vimeo.