Some Final Thoughts on Turkey
Turkey was not great. The apartment AlteCocker was using was burglarized. If you've read the blog from the trip, you know that.
Turkey was not great for another reason--and that was the politics. The country is split down the middle between the secularists and the Islamists. The current president, Recip Erodogan--recently elected to the presidency with 52% of the vote--wants to revise the Turkish system to give the formerly titular presidency more power. Erodogan is detested by most of the educated Turks in Istanbul but he is revered by the religious people in the provinces for whom he has improved basic services such as roads and water. Turkey has been the source of a lot of infrastructure projects over Erodogan's tenure. AlteCocker rode the new subway tunnel under the Bosphorus--which was on her list of things to do. People appreciate improvements in ways to get around, but many just look at Erodogan and think, Ataturk is turning in his grave.
AlteCocker's take on this is that Ataturk is indeed turning in his grave. The opposition to Erodogan is disorganized. Until something gets organized there will be no choice and Erodogan and his acolytes will remain in power.
In the 1920's and 1930's Ataturk brought Turkey kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Veils were banned for women and the brimless fez was banned for men. Western hats were mandatory. While that may seem silly, to pray in a fez was easy. To pray in a hate one has to remove it. While there was an authoritarian tinge to all of this--as in why could the veil not be a choice?--Turkey became an essentially secular country. If, for example, you were a university student and a woman, you could not wear a veil at the university.
Now there is an effort to roll things back. Not only are head coverings for women now optional (as they are in the US), there is a move to push those women who don't want head covers to be forced to cover themselves. The society is split (just like society in the US). We can expect more instability if Erodogan pushes his conservative agenda too far. We had Gezi Park, after all.
The army, frequently involved in coups in the past, has been suppressed. The police, totally disinterested in solving petty crime (such as a burglary of an apartment which resulted in credit cards being used to charge things to a nonexistent tour company--no doubt in cahoots with the burglars), has been co-opted by the government into focussing on locking up demonstrators. On the night Ramadan ended AlteCocker walked down Istikal Caddesi. Nothing untoward was happening but the side streets were full of police with very large paddy wagons just in case. It left a bad taste in AlteCocker's mouth.
In 2011, when AlteCocker did her first home exchange in Turkey, she called it the "Best Home Exchange Ever". This time she had a different reaction. The support of Erodogan's government for Hamas and the antisemitic graffiti she observed all over (spray painted with templates with "nice" messages such as "Death to the Jews"), left a rather bad taste in AlteCocker's mouth. No it wasn't the burglary. Even without the burglary, this was not the "Best Home Exchange Ever". It was the viewing of a society in the midst of trauma and dissolution.
AlteCocker will not be planning any more home exchanges in Turkey. AlteCocker is Jewish. She is not about to vacation where the government promotes nasty graffiti about Jews. By the time she left, she was glad to go. She did not feel welcome.
Turkey was not great for another reason--and that was the politics. The country is split down the middle between the secularists and the Islamists. The current president, Recip Erodogan--recently elected to the presidency with 52% of the vote--wants to revise the Turkish system to give the formerly titular presidency more power. Erodogan is detested by most of the educated Turks in Istanbul but he is revered by the religious people in the provinces for whom he has improved basic services such as roads and water. Turkey has been the source of a lot of infrastructure projects over Erodogan's tenure. AlteCocker rode the new subway tunnel under the Bosphorus--which was on her list of things to do. People appreciate improvements in ways to get around, but many just look at Erodogan and think, Ataturk is turning in his grave.
AlteCocker's take on this is that Ataturk is indeed turning in his grave. The opposition to Erodogan is disorganized. Until something gets organized there will be no choice and Erodogan and his acolytes will remain in power.
In the 1920's and 1930's Ataturk brought Turkey kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Veils were banned for women and the brimless fez was banned for men. Western hats were mandatory. While that may seem silly, to pray in a fez was easy. To pray in a hate one has to remove it. While there was an authoritarian tinge to all of this--as in why could the veil not be a choice?--Turkey became an essentially secular country. If, for example, you were a university student and a woman, you could not wear a veil at the university.
Now there is an effort to roll things back. Not only are head coverings for women now optional (as they are in the US), there is a move to push those women who don't want head covers to be forced to cover themselves. The society is split (just like society in the US). We can expect more instability if Erodogan pushes his conservative agenda too far. We had Gezi Park, after all.
The army, frequently involved in coups in the past, has been suppressed. The police, totally disinterested in solving petty crime (such as a burglary of an apartment which resulted in credit cards being used to charge things to a nonexistent tour company--no doubt in cahoots with the burglars), has been co-opted by the government into focussing on locking up demonstrators. On the night Ramadan ended AlteCocker walked down Istikal Caddesi. Nothing untoward was happening but the side streets were full of police with very large paddy wagons just in case. It left a bad taste in AlteCocker's mouth.
In 2011, when AlteCocker did her first home exchange in Turkey, she called it the "Best Home Exchange Ever". This time she had a different reaction. The support of Erodogan's government for Hamas and the antisemitic graffiti she observed all over (spray painted with templates with "nice" messages such as "Death to the Jews"), left a rather bad taste in AlteCocker's mouth. No it wasn't the burglary. Even without the burglary, this was not the "Best Home Exchange Ever". It was the viewing of a society in the midst of trauma and dissolution.
AlteCocker will not be planning any more home exchanges in Turkey. AlteCocker is Jewish. She is not about to vacation where the government promotes nasty graffiti about Jews. By the time she left, she was glad to go. She did not feel welcome.