January 23, 1999
More Notes on Turkey
So for the fourteen years the Turkish government has been at war with the Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK), a separatist organization based in the majority Kurdish lands of southeast Turkey. A great deal of resources and lives have been sacrificed in order to bring this rebel army to heal, but to no avail. Now, I’m not going to go off on a lengthy explanation into what are the causes and consequences of this military campaign, in which tens of thousands of both Turks and Kurds have lost their lives. If you want some extra information you can check out Budget Press International at http://www.angelfire.com/ca/bpress, which has an brilliant article on the Kurds of Turkey written by that close associate of mine, David Reeves. But because I do have an intense interest in the Kurdish people, I couldn’t help but say a little about this problem. And the focus of my attention is on a small article in the English language Turkish Daily News that caught my eye. It is called “1998 Profile of the Terrorist Organization”.
The first paragraph, in large type, states “In the operations made against the terrorist organization last year 1,843 of the terrorists were killed, 29 injured, and 155 captured alive. A total of 118 terrorists surrendered.” Damn, that’s a lot of terrorists! In the entire article, the PKK is never mentioned, just the “terrorist organization”. This phrase is used throughout the article. When it never mentions the name of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, instead he is, of course, the “leader of the terrorist organization.” Now the Daily News has no problem talking about the PKK and Ocalan, having his picture on the cover of one newspaper I read. But this article is based on reports from the Anatolia news agency, the official state-line.
Now I knew that the Turkish government has always refused to acknowledge that they have a genuine separatist movement in their midst, referring to their Kurdish problem not by that name, but as the “south-east problem.” But this was the first time that I saw it right in front of my face. This is one of the benefits of traveling, but also one of the most disconcerting elements. You read and you study about this and that, but these things are always kind of in the abstract, you might understand them, but you don’t really grasp them. But here I was, in Istanbul, where there are a couple million Kurds that have been driven from their villages, and here I was reading an article about them that failed to even mention them. That’s right, not even the word “Kurd” is anywhere in the article. Anyway, I will not go on with another political diatribe (not that I haven’t already). If you would like any more information you can read the aforementioned article, as well as access my Kurdish Info Page, with a bibliography and many Internet links, from the Budget Press homepage.
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But, y’know, Istanbul is a very interesting town to visit. The first thing you notice as you drive from the airport is the way people drive, zooming along, zigzagging their war through any crack in the traffic they can see. Much as they do in Moscow, or L.A. for that matter. But the one difference is that they always have one hand on the horn. Not a minute goes by where every driver on the road doesn’t have some reason to honk their horn. When you are walking down a street, they’ll start honking their horn at you from a block away.
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As someone with an interest in Islam, I was looking forward to being in a place where I could here the call to prayer, five times a day, everywhere. The first time I heard it the afternoon of my arrival, it was like music to my ears. The song of the muezzin made me want to head down to the mosque and pray. We stayed in Sultanahmet, the old part of town, near the Blue Mosque, one of the largest and busiest in the city. The loudspeakers placed on the tops of the nearby minarets could be heard very clearly from our room. But our first morning in the city showed us the downside of staying so close to a mosque. At five in the morning, at what seemed to be a deafening level, we were thrown out of our beds with the first call of the day. Well, I figured, such is life, and I’m sure after a few days I will get used to it, and I’ll sleep through it. Alas, this never happened. Every morning for a week, we were blasted from our sleep, immediately shaken from out dreamful bliss by an earthquake of sound into reality.
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We visited Istanbul during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (or Ramazan in Turkish). During this time of the year, a good Muslim will not eat anything from sun-up to sundown. Now, of course, Istanbul is a tourist city, and Turkey is a secular country, so there were plenty of places to eat, but once you left the tourist center and you went into a restaurant or cafe we would quickly realize that we were the only ones in there. And the help would stare at us longingly as we ate our food. We realized the first day that it would be best to eat before sundown, because once the last call to prayer rang out, every restaurant would be packed with a line going out the door. A few times we ate about half hour before the sundown, and the restaurant would be making preparations for the breaking of the fast, baking enormous amounts of bread, setting all the tables. Then, about 10 minutes before chow time, people would start filing in. They would order their food, and it would be delivered, but they would not touch it. They would just sit and stare, holding some bread in their hands. Then, the second the call went out, they would start gorging themselves.
Walking through the Grand Bazaar or other shopping districts, you could see everybody in their shops eating. It was the one time of day where the amount of hassles on the street from carpet or leather salesmen, shoe-shiners, or postcard peddlers were minimal. Throughout the city there were huge tents set up, and once night fell there would be lines a couple hundred yards long of people waiting to get free food.
On the side of the Blue Mosque along the Hippodrome there are cafe lined up against the wall. During the day they were closed, but once night hit, they all opened. The trees were all lit up with lights, and families would be walking along, meeting friends, sitting down and drinking tea, and eating some of the most delicious sweets I have ever had. I read in the Economist (which I was starved for, it’s almost impossible to find in Moscow) where the author wrote that even though Muslims fast themselves sick during Ramadan, it is still their favorite time of the year, because once night hits, everyone is together and is happy. This could be seen clearly along the Blue Mosque. Everybody was smiling and with their friends and family, talking, eating, and letting their children run around playfully.
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RE:
Budget File #4
If all of the Budget Files are as interesting as this one, count me in. I thought that you did an excellent thumbnail sketch of Turkish politics, a subject that would usually generate yawns…
Russ Bobbitt
Reply:
Thanks for the complement. Makes me think that perhaps I know what I’m doing.
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I’m still getting replies from Budget File #1. I’ve got more replies from the first one than from all the others combined. I guess it just shows that when you talk about Palestine and Israel, everybody’s got an opinion…
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RE:
Budget File #1
I agree that anti-Semitism - like all other forms of racism - is an ugly thing, no matter whether its target is Russian Jews or Palestinians. Second, about immigration: if I see the current economical and political situation right, then the majority of Russian immigrants will arrive not to Israel, but to western Europe and the US. The same was in the 2 immigration waves you've mentioned: both in 1882 and 1905, the majority of Jews preferred going to America, not Palestine (and I can't blame them)…
Dan Tamir
Tel Aviv
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…Germanys population density is a bit higher than the one of Israel. Japans population is way higher. As we know both countries started World War II with one of the basic (pseudo) reasons to get more territory; as a powerful argument for the people: "We need more space". I tell you man, this is dangerous and old fashioned thinking. And it's fucking unnecessary: now Germany and Japan have been living peacefully for over fifty years, with way less territory than before the war but instead being among the economically most powerful countries. Know what I mean? You gotta live with what you have, no one can turn back the wheel of history. Not even the truly sorely tried Jews. And this is perfectly fine since you don't need the bloody space, you can live fairly well without; many other countries proved that under harder conditions…
Phillip Arnold
Germany
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RE:
Budget File #3
Really? The Russians don't celebrate the 25th of December?
Zoey
Reply:
Before the revolution, the Russians used the old Gregorian Calendar, which meant that Christmas fell on our January 7th. After the Communist came to power, they switched to the Julian calendar, which the west uses, but they did not switch the day they celebrate Christmas. As states in the article, most of the Russian Christmas traditions were moved to New Years, but since the fall the old Christmas, called Orthodox Christmas, has resumed it’s place as a major holiday, albeit not as important as before.
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Until next time...
#6
Janurary 30, 1999
Lazy Russians?
So I was talking to my students in the Advanced Class about the relationship between employers and workers in Russia. They said that the bosses needed to be tough on their employees in Russia. I commented that if a boss treats those under him well, that they in turn will work harder and have more pride in their work. They disagreed with me on this point. ‘But that is a common practice in America’ I said. Yes, but that is America, not Russia, was the reply. Russians are lazy. They must be treated with a firm hand, or they will take advantage of you. This really surprised me. I mean, I have read many books where this was said, but I had shunted aside. But here were actual Russians saying that their people were lazy. Russians were always trying to find the easy way out, they said. Trying to get the most benefit out of the least ammount of work. It reminded me of the Russian folk hero Ivan the Fool, who was always trting to create get rich quick schemes that, of course, always ended in failure. (Kind of like Ralph Kramden.)
Now, I had read stuff like this before, but it was in 19th Century literature or historical accounts of that period, and the subjects of such reproof were serfs or peasants. This was the justification of the harsh punishment metted out on the people for the smallest of infractions, and the reasoning behind the fight against the emancipation of the serfs. If given their freedom, the serfs would cease to work, the fields would lay fallow, and what crops there were would rot in the fields. But here it was, 1999, and this idea of the laziness of the people still held firm.
I saw a vicious circle spread out before me. This inbred idea of the peoples laziness, whether right or wrong, make the people in charge believe that the only way to get people to work is through harsh treatment. This is turn makes the people to their jobs haphazardly, without any pride, which leads to shoddy workmanship and inferior products, etc. The people really don’t have any motivation to work hard (certainly not because of their pay, when the Russian average monthly salary is $20). They will not see any of the benefits of their work, and will be brow-beaten in the process. This in turn makes the employers even more harsh. And it ingrains into the minds of the people, one, the injustice of the employers, and two, the laziness of the people.
This goes to show us once again just how far Russia has to go before it is like the ‘west’. Sure, it’s easy for me to say to my students that the people on top should treat the people on the bottom with more respect, because in the end this will make for a healthier company, and for them to agree with my reasoning. But for this type of thinking to take root, the old way of thinking would have to be washed away. Centuries of doing things a certain way would have to be changed. The Communists knew that for there to be a change in Russia, there would have to be a complete overturning of society, but they instead continued to perpetrate the same ideas, for they were harsher than the tsars, and the circle was even more ingrained into the society.
The Russian people have been treated like chattle for the whole epic course of their history. For the bosses to start treating their people like humans, they would have to change their entire way of thinking, and most likely come under a lot of pressure from their peers. In turn, the people would have to overcome their mistrust towards those above them, for they have never had a reason to trust them in the past. Of course this change of mindset will not be easy. And it won’t happen overnight, as we can see right now with the country on the brink of collapse. It will take generations for any type of change like this to take place.
Of course, a couple of days later, in a different class, we were talking about stereotypes of certain nationalities. The students had to match certain adjectives to the Italians, French, British, Japanese, and Americans. When the assignment was over, I asked them which of these stereotypes could be applied to Russians. One student said lazy, but the whole rest of the class said ‘No !’ quite emphatically. So then maybe all this I have said is just bull, and I have no idea what I’m talking about.
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While I’m on the subject of me not knowing what I’m talking about, I would like to direct your attention to the last Budget File, and the letter wrote by Zoey. She asked me about whether Russian celebrate Decemeber 25th, and I gave her an answer. But on one important aspect I was wrong, which has been subsequently pointed out to me. Read on…
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If you'll permit a slight correction from one of your former professors... Russia used the Julian calendar until 1917. This was promulgated by Julius Caesar in 45 BC in his capacity as Ponifex Maximus. (Meaning "Supreme Bridge-Builder," or High Priest of Jupiter. Interestingly, this is still one of the titles of the Pope in Rome.) His calendar had a year of 365 days, with a "leap year" added every four years by adding a 29th dayto February. It was the most accurate calendar the Western world had know up to that time, but it was still a trifle too long, and over the centuries the discrepancy began to pile up.In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII reformed the Julian calendar, chiefly because the major Christian holidays were getting out of sync with the seasons. In particular, Easter was becoming a winter holiday, which undercut some of its symbolism. The discrepancy also was disassociating it with the Jewish feast of the Passover. Gregory's reform consisted of (a) dropping ten days from the calendar; and (b) omitting the leap year the last year of each century, with the exception of every fourth century. The resulting calendar was vastly more accurate than Julius Caesar's, but for political reasons non-Catholic countries initially refused to accept it. However, Protestant Germany and Scandinavia gave in after the Thirty Years War, and Anglican Great Britain (with its North American colonies) accepted it in the 1750s. After the February Revolution of 1917 the new Russian Republic disestablished the Russian Orthodox Church, and in the process initiated transition to the Gregorian calender, which the Bolsheviks completed the following year after seizing the government in their "October Revolution." (The February and October Revolutions were each actually a month later, using the Gregorian calendar.) The Russian Orthodox Church continues to use the Julian calendar for the liturgical year, which accounts for why Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7th. According to the Julian calendar, that day is actually December 25th! (Of course, the ten day discrepancy of the 16th century has grown to the two weeks of today.) Merry Christmas!
Bill Green
San Bernardino, California
So I stand corrected. And I appreciate being set strait.
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Until next time…
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