turkey is an amazing place! we arrived in istanbul on turkish independence day! our first course of action was a boat ride on the bosphorus. this place is so different from egypt – it is clean, prosperous, and everyone is dressed very stylishly. despite being 99% muslim, it is a hardcore secular state.
our second day in istanbul we went to koc university, an extremely nice (and very expensive) private university in the suburbs of istanbul. we had a lecture from a very well spoken professor there and then had a discussion with students about some current political issues. many universities are taught in english. i was struck by a vibe totally different from egypt – people actually think for themselves instead of repeating what they have been told, and they actually argued with each other instead of always agreeing on everything (especially regarding religion) like they did in cairo.
the turks have a very tolerant, western-friendly strain of islam. one of the leaders of this sufi/almost universalist hybrid between islam and the west is a guy named fethullah gulen. we went to the headquarters of his organization for breakfast and a discussion one day. the movement is extremely popular with turks, and it was on the extreme other end of the spectrum from islam in egypt. it struck me as rather shallow and vague from a theological standpoint, but hey, tolerance is better than extremism any day in this part of the world.
another day we went to the headquarters of the ak party, which is the ruling party in turkey right now. they are a “socially conservative” party as they like to say, but to the secularists they are “islamist” and have a religious secret agenda. one of the biggest issues right now is that the ak party has tried to lift a ban that currently does not allow women to wear headscarves in government buildings or universities. a lot of turks are religious and feel the need to wear them, so they have felt discriminated against since the establishment of secularism in the 1920’s. until 2001 turkey was ruled by an elitist secular class whose policies did not necessarily resonate with the majority of the population who are more rural and more religious than those in the cities.
in 2001 the ak party came to power with a platform of “expanding rights” of religion. thus, the political spectrum here is reversed from that of our conception in the west – the “conservative” religious party is seeking a more “liberal” agenda (eliminating the ban on headscarves, for example). we met with a couple journalists as well, and they presented the secularist position on the headscarf issue. the argument is that if they are allowed then social pressure eventually forces everyone to wear them, and turkey devolves into a fundamentalist state like the rest of the middle east. there is a good chance this would happen, so do you let people have their basic rights if it means that others are going to lose their rights in the future?
another huge issue here is that turkey is trying to get into the european union. it is still years away, but the reforms being implemented are great for the country regardless of whether they get into the club.
we also went to the american consulate in istanbul which was a great experience. it is a huge castle-like ediface on top of a hill, built this way for security reasons. the director of political relations there talked to us. another huge issue here is the debate about whether to call the discrimination that the turks had against armenians here during world war one “genocide.” barack obama has pledged to pass a resolution to this end and the turks strongly resent this – to the point that there is a very noticeable lack of the “obama-mania” here that seems to be sweeping the rest of the world. interestingly, turkish visas for canadians are three times more expensive than for americans because canada has already passed a “genocide” resolution.
there are these really cool outdoor public exercise machines all over the place in istanbul – they are kind of pointless but we spent lots of time playing on them! there is also a massive covered “grand bazaar” in istanbul which is extremely crowded and is the largest bazaar in the world.
