Procrastination Getting Out of Hand

So here's some of my nostalgia photos that I've taken recently to remember funny little things about Ankara.

Serra, Martin, Caro, and Diruba on the terrace for Jake's birthday.

Coffee breaks at the math kantin

So tired, so hot.

Delicious Turkish breakfast with Tugba.

My sneaky photo of the inside of a dolmus. This is a nice dolmus by the way, my favorite is the really old 1960's style one.

Caro at Cati in the sunshine.

Tiny balcony party at Martina's

Beautiful  Yüzüncü Yıl

More of the apartment blocks of Yüzüncü Yıl.

The no mans land between Yüzüncü Yıl and the campus gate. This is where I was almost attacked by a street dog once but managed to yell loud enough to scare him. Proudest moment in Turkey so far.

All the pickled goodies at the grocery store.

Cuddley couples in the girls kantin

Devrim and watermelon party.

Breakfast at Caro's.

Wonderful smelling clothes on Caro's neighbor's baloney.

Dancing Germans.

Walking Germans (still in Yüzüncü Yıl).

More apartment blocks in Yüzüncü Yıl.

Typical delicious food from Cati.

The wonderful library and Martin with his short shorts.

Maybe I'll write a read post sometime, but for now I hope you enjoyed the photos. 

Things to Remember

My time in Ankara is coming to an end! Neiiiiiin. Even worse is that I have serious finals. I'll have written something like sixty pages before finals are over. Yeah I've moved into the library and I feel like Tugba doesn't believe me that I've been researching and writing for the past two weeks.


Anyways I started to get sad about leaving and took some pre-nostalgia photos to remember important things like people leaving their trash under trees to be picked up at night, dried mint that's put on all food items, and the wild dogs who seem to have died in the sunshine. So in leu of my sadness I'm going to do something boring and just for myself on this blog: I'm going to make a list odd things to remember about Turkey.


--Martin's saying "the yabanci obstical" refering to our gigantic presence in small places like the dolmus.
--The fact that there's no safety rules in Turkey. There's constant pot holes on the sidewalk, no railings on high stairs, no screens on windows in the library on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floor, rusty nails and sharp pieces of metal to hold things together. And somehow this has become slightly normal for me.
--Nescafe, EVERY DAY ALL THE TIME
--"Kimlik?!" AKA showing my ID to get into METU, the fortress
--Cati, the best place to take a three hour library break.
--The fact that METU is a zoo full of the best kept wild dogs and cats, not to mention the random pigeon that can fly into the classroom.
--"Hocam," which literally means "my teacher" but is used for literally everyone at METU, everyone from the kantin man to the administration people to professors. It was adopted at METU in the 70's as an attempt to break down the class and status barrier between everyone working at the school. Now its used for literally everyone.
--The cuddling couples at the girls kantin who can't go into each other's rooms because all the dorms are gender segregated.
--Dolmus and city buses going like 60 mph on the freeway, not taking turns slowly, and pretty much just throwing people around in all directions.
--Speaking of buses, how men always let me sit down even if they're closer to the seat or have been on the bus longer than me.
--The math kantin and the women there who thinks I'm nuts for getting like 5 Nescafes in one day. It was finals, okay!
--People drinking in devrim, the stadium on campus.
--The shitty/amazing apartments of Yüzüncü Yıl. 
--The 14 year old boy who runs the bakal in Yüzüncü Yıl from whom we buy beer.
--Trash collectors with these HUGE rolling bags.
--The pazar on Wednesday and Sunday in Yüzüncü Yıl. The people are really friendly and the fruit is so cheap and amazing.
--Getting the stare down every time I go to Ulus.
--The tezye, AKA Turkish aunties that are everywhere. They're these hilarious old ladies usually walking around with at least two grocery bags. I need a photo of this, but think old wrinkly lady in a flowered headscarf wearing a bag dress and walking arm in arm with her 18 year old nephew. Okay not hilarious, but so Turkey to me.
--Music like this. This is sort of the traditional plus pop category. Also possibly the best video to watch if you've been to Istanbul. Seriously, this video has so many things it in that represent Turkey to me. 

 

--And like this. Maybe my favorite Turkish song, and definitely my favorite singer. Look at her dancing at 0:48 and try and tell me she isn't the best. Also check out her other song Bu Mudur, I literally know at least 70% of the words to that song. I actually sang Bu Mudur at a karaoke bar with Jake and Dan...

--And this: the Britney Spears of Turkey. I might actually know all the words to this one haha. Also maybe a video for people who think Turkey is somehow uniformly conservative and full of headscarved women:

--Here's a little "alternative" Turkish music. Weird video, but great chorus, aka try skipping to 1:03.

--Also this, something a little more traditional. A song I think I've heard at least 20 times since coming to Turkey.

Haha well that turned into a lot of music videos, but there it is. I'm sure I'll think of more things to remember soon! Somehow this whole last semester just flew by!

Foucault!

So because this blog is mine and I can do whatever I want on it I just wanted to share my new hero: Michel Foucault.


I feel like its a bit of a cliche to say that grad students love Foucault, but let me just say that his concepts of power BLEW MY MIND. So good. I read this article "Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique" by Thomas Lemke (here's the link to the pdf: http://www.andosciasociology.net/resources/Foucault$2C+Governmentality$2C+and+Critique+IV-2.pdf) and oh my god, it was so good. It totally made me rethink the way I frame my academic arguments and possibly more importantly it made me rethink power. Foucault claims it is not important prove that there are differences between the reality of autonomous individuals and the coercion (laws, violence, war) of the government, but what is interesting and significant is how individual citizens form a compromise and conflict with their government’s laws. This is the compromise between what the government has decided is rational and how autonomous individuals interact with this definition of rationality.


I'm using these theories for a project on racism in Germany. Ah I love school.


I also love Foucault.

Bahar Şenliği!!!

 Here's the main stage in the stadium. Yeah, almost all the photos I took are blurry.

Spring Fest is a magical time once a year when every Turkish university host open air concerts for five days. Clubs from the school raise money and invite famous Turkish singers to play huge amazing concerts in the stadium. During the day there are local bands, student club tables, and food stands all around the fest area and people generally just hang out listen to music and drink. Its the Turkish equivalent to Spring Break in the US... except instead of giving students time off they make this huge party on campus and classes are still in session. The best part is the WHOLE university is involved and everyone attends the big concerts at night.

At METU the first night of Spring Fest is basically a ritual of remembering METU's radical past and its role in the 1970 and 1982 coups. METU in the 60's and 70's was a bastion of Marxism and radical liberalism. As previously posted, a student in the 70's painted DEVRIM (REVOLUTION) on the huge stadium and it eventually became part of METU's identity. To honor the radial METU past and to inspire people to continue questioning all forms of authority, students from the Student Revolutionary Marxist club light candles in the shape of DEVRIM on the stadium grass before the first concert begins. A friend told me this was because the first spring fest held at METU was led by the Marxist club who raised the money themselves to have the festival for 10 days. After the Revolutionary Marxist club lights the candles they run into the audience and wave huge banners of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and young Turkish revolutionaries who were killed in the military coups. Then they sing songs of solidarity while throwing their fists in the air. Its gets really emotional. Pretty crazy, but totally awesome. People set off lanterns with candles in them and its a whole sea of lights and students. Then the concert begins and everyone just dances and dances.

(I didn't have my camera that night so this is from http://imageshack.us/f/27/devrim.jpg/)

From the second day: A ton of people.

And us too.

The whole weekend was wonderful and really showed me how awesomely radical METU is. One student club stand had life size pictures of President Erdogan, the minister of finance and another Turkish political figure and people walking by could pay to throw eggs at them. Jake, Kamila, and I participated in the LGBT parade that walked to the school's registar's office yelling at them to recognize the LGBT club and saying that they would not do their military service (military service is mandatory for all Turkish men, but if you are gay you can avoid this by giving the government photos of you having sex with other men and then consenting to an exam where military doctors 'check' to see if your anus has been penetrated... yeah pretty horrible). In the end a friend, Köray, climbed up the side of the stage with the LGBT flag. So great. Basically I love METU now.

That's Köray holding up the "Here Comes the Prostitute" sign. This is in front of the registar's office.

 The fest was really really awesome and something the US should totally do. I mean, I free concert on campus by famous singers where everyone is happy and celebrating their school? Pretty wonderful and a lot of fun.

My dearest Getma friends.

11 People in an 8 Seating Van

Cyprus!

Getma takes over Cyprus.

In the bitter coldness of January, Buğra convinced 10 out of the 13 Getma members to go to Cyprus with him. Buğra is from Cyprus and is affectionately referred to as the "father" of Getma. He's not actually in the program, but he's dating Goksu so he's always around. He grew up on the North side of Cyprus, the section that is controlled by the Turkish government. 

For those who don't know here's a short history of Cyprus. Cyprus was part of the Ottoman Empire, but the majority of the population was Greek. The British were given Cyprus by the Ottoman Empire as a gift in return for British military support at the turn of the century and it eventually became part of the British Empire. After WWII the Brits were kicked out, but then there were a series of wars in which Turkey and Greece fought for control over Cyprus. Greece thought it belonged to them because the majority of the population was Greek and Turkey thought it was there's because it had been part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey invaded Cyprus on behalf of the Turkish Cypriots and war began. Eventually a line was drawn and the Turkish Cypriots were forced to move to Northern Cyprus and the Greeks in the South. Clearly there's still some problems and lots of left over resentment. Cyprus is still divided into two parts based on the 1974 Green Line that the UN patrols. 

Nice picture of the Division. Nicosia is the last divided capital in Europe. 

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738306000521)

So, we just went on a nice holiday trip because Buğra grew up there and could show us around. He very graciously put together a trip for us which involved renting a van and planning visits all around the island.The Getma domluş has to be the highlight of this trip because we managed to fit 11 people into an 8 seating van for a 5 day trip around an island.

Interestingly enough, in order to fit everyone in we divised a plan to put all the big people in the back seat and the little people in the front seat. The result? Germans and Americans in the back, Turks in the front. Whhhy are such big people??

Here's a nice photo of us crammed in the car. That's Caro sitting on my lap. Actually it was really hilarious. At all times there was one person sitting on all the others laps either laying across or sitting on one of us. In the front seat there was two people sitting on other people's laps. Haha at one point Jake was laying on all of us drinking a beer and commented, "Literally everything were doing right now is illegal in the US." Ah, so true Jake, so true, but so it goes in Turkey where the rules can be bendy. 

So much fun with big people in the back of the van.

We sang lots of songs and listened to lots of Cypriot music while driving around for literally hours sometimes. So much love in the Getma domluş. At one museum, Martin said, "I bet people are wondering how so many homeless people of different nationalities managed to get to Cyprus," because 11 ragged looking people emerging from the Getma domluş must have looked pretty ridiculous. Ah definitely one of the best parts of the trip was Getma bonding in the domluş.

Here's one of the songs on the casette tape we listened to all week haha.

Visting Lefkoşa was another great experience. The divided captial city is really really interesting. It looks and feels like a small old Turkish city on the North side, then on the South side its suddenly very European. All of Germans were so sure that it was more European, while I was more convinced it just looked Mediterranean--then I saw a handicap lift, a super modern bus station, and garbage cans everywhere. Alchoal also happened to be extremely cheap in Lefkoşa which meant I got to try this really great beer called Keo. Its a locally produced Southern Cypriot beer that is really really good. One of my favorite things about Lefkoşa was this old Church which had been converted into a mosque when the Ottoman's invaded. It is so clearly a gothic cathedral that they just slapped on some minarets. I love it.

Getma wandering the streets of Lefkoşa.

Here's the North Turkish side of border. (above)

Here's the same street just across the border in the Southern Greek side.

Great gothic cathedral with some minarets. 

Inside where they've added a mihrab, the corner which faces Mecca, and just covered up all the old Christian art.

Keo, the great Southern Cypriot beer. That's Buğra on the left then Martin, me, and Jake.

We were staying in Girne on the Northern coast of Cyprus and one evening Buğra thought it'd be a good idea to mangal, aka grill some lamb on the beach. So we set up a rectangular looking grill and ate TONS of food. It was so nice to have a real bonfire at the beach and make our own food by the water. It was really lovely.

Mangal on the beach.

We also went to Kormakitis, a Maronite village in Cyprus, which is an interesting place where an ancient Christian group, the Maronites live. They're one of the oldest Christian groups in the world and centuries ago some moved to Cyprus from what is now Lebanon. Its a really interesting village and we were lucky enough to come on St. George's day weekend so we got a really wonderful tour of this calm quaint village that tries to maintain its interesting heritage and culture.

The Maronite village. It was so tiny.

During the trip we visited Buğra's family. His grandmother was a sweet old lady living in Güzelyurt who served us these very soft carmalized walnuts while we looked at her old photos. We also met Buğra's mother and father at their house in Girne which is actually heaven on earth. Their house has a HUGE garden where they grow everything from oversized lemons (seriously look at that photo!) to peas and avocados. Ah, when I get older and have a million dollars I'm moving to Cyprus and into Buğra's parent's house. It was so nice of them to have us over and they were so generous to share their lovely house with us.

Largest lemons I've ever seen. This is Buğra's family's garden and my future home.

Cypriot coffee with Buğra's parents.

Eventually we ended up in Iskele, the long skinny part of the island. There's no big cities in Iskele, just little villages and beautiful beaches. We spent the whole day on Altinkuma (translation: Golden Sands), a beach with almost no one on it in the middle of no where. Ah, talk about heaven.

In the end I'll remember this trip for the Getma domluş, singing along to ridiculous music, cheap beer, missing lunch in order to save money, eating nuts and dried fruit like it's a meal, being so sweaty hot in the car, and reaching a whole new level of comfortably with the Getma group.

Cyprus will definitely go on my list of best trips ever. 

SPRING HAS ARRIVED!

So somewhere baby Jesus is angry at me for not keeping my lent promise, but hmm yeah all I can say is that things got busy. Just to list a few things I got really sick, Duncan came to visit, I went to Cyprus, and classes got super interesting. I should probably address all of these things in separate posts, but right now I'd like to talk about the SPRING! Its so sunny and wonderful here now! As I type I'm sitting barefoot in the grass in the bright sunshine. The library is right behind me haha.

Speaking of the library, I'm really excited to be in one class in particular, "Family, Marriage, and Kinship Dynamics in Turkey". In the course we discuss the different way family is understood in Turkey and the way its similar to worldwide perceptions of family. Actually sometimes its a bit depressing, so goes sociology when you realize we're all doomed to influenced by our social upbringing. One well expressed view on family is from Pierre Bourdieu's article, "On the Family as a Realized Category," in which Bourdieu claims that family structures are a series of obligated affection and affective obligations. Basically family is a circular relationship where you feel emotionally attached to your family and simultaneously are expected to preform certain duties for them and vis versa. I thought it was a very well articulated understanding of the complicated power structures embedded in the family.

As expected, the differences from American family life are most interesting to me. Its really a cool experience being a foreigner taking a class on Turkish family. I'm the only one who doesn't understand the social references, but it does makes it more fun when they ask me about stereotypes of Mexican immigrants in the US and suddenly I'm an expert. Actually that would be false, our professor studied at University of Texas, Austin and worked in Mexico, so I'm pretty sure I'm not the real expert, just the cultural one. Anyways I've learned a lot about Turkish culture such as women in Turkey are extremely shamed after divorce. Divorced women become threats to the monogamous relationships of couples. They are expected to wear modest clothes and devote their lives to their children. Not exactly typical of American where roughly 50% of all marriages end in divorce.

What should be really cool about this class is that I'm finally going to do real research! Hooray! My final project is on the duel lives of gay Turks. In the US, if you're gay its almost socially required that you come out to your family members and friends to be fully accepted in the gay community. In Turkey this is not always a viable option. Many gay Turks never tell their parents about their sexuality, but sometimes a few family members know. My project is on why gay men keep their sexuality from their family and how it affects their relationships with their families. I'm really excited to finally do real interviews, especially because I'm in Turkey and the whole topic is so different from my understanding of gay life.

Yeah so that's it for now. I'll have more to share, especially about Duncan visiting and the amazing Cyprus trip, but I should probably go write a proposal for the project I was just talking about.

Goodbye beautiful grassy outdoors. Ah those purple trees are everywhere!

Show and Tell

When I was in 5th grade, I had to journal my week long vacation to make up for the homework I was missing. I got the journal back with some mediocre grade because, in Ms. Dahl's words, I had "told" but not "shown" what I had done during my vacation. I feel like this blog is verging on only telling what I'm doing which is not only extremely boring, but totally underneath my own expectations and ability. In an effort to curb this problem I think perhaps my lent pledge will be to write at least once a week and not be so boring. Ha. Together we'll see how well this works out and if I can make baby Jesus happy with my Lent 'sacrifice'.

So onto exciting things! I'm back in Ankara (hooray!) and now that I'm looking at the semester from a whole new perspective. I came to Ankara upset about leaving my family, friends, and boyfriend. In retrospect I was totally unprepared to move to a completely different country with totally different norms. In addition, all my other travels were either extremely short (read: Janterm) or they were just so much fun I didn't care about the problems I faced (read: Berlin). Coming to Ankara was neither of those things. I was now living in a very different country for a very long time and there were problems that made me initially hate living here. First off its hard to be the foreigner all the time. People stare, people talk about you while you're standing right there, you wake up and the moment you step out the door people look at your like you're some foreign crazy. You get on the dolmus and again people are staring at the yabani who somehow knows how to ride the dolmus. There is literally no way for me to pretend to be Turkish.

At first this used to really really bother me. I was really upset for constantly being told through social interactions that I was different therefore somehow available to be treated like an alien. In my mind I think about how in US we're all taught not to stare at foreigners, handicapped, or disabled people (granted some people are horrible at this). Its part of our ingrained American identity to try and at least pretend that we don't see differences. This is why to me its rude to be stared at because I've been taught that staring at something that makes people feel uncomfortable and 'different'. While it can be infuriating at times, I think I've just grown accustomed to to being stared at. Also when I went to Istanbul I realized that this is really an Ankara thing. In Istanbul (at least in the touristy places I saw) people could care less if you were foreign. There were so many Germans, Brits, and other Europeans there that no could cared that I was clearly foreign. I don't think I was stared at the whole time I was there. In Ankara, the lovely Ankara, foreigners have no reason visit because there are barely any touristy sites. Ankara has Atatürk's mausoleum, the building in which the first parliament of Turkey was held, and an old ruin of a castle... not exactly enough to make droves of tourists come to Ankara. Even the city itself is relatively new to non-American standards. It sprung up in the 1920's when Ataturk moved the capital of his new nation from Istanbul to Ankara. In sum, getting stared at was seriously hard to cope with at first and like most problems I've encountered, I eventually just realized that its a cultural difference that leads to misunderstandings.

What I've found most amazing about Turkey, and also about traveling in general, is how little people actually need to live and how people just made due with what they have. I live in a nice part of town, but still have had the power go out at least four times and the water has been turned off twice, once for three days. To make the hot water in the shower work you also have to turn on the water in the kitchen so there's enough pressure to heat the water. Then the water drains from the tub into this hole next to the tub and when there's too much water it'll just go all over the bathroom floor. The sidewalks are cracked and there's never enough guard rails. The buses are totally irregular and have no timetable. It's just a sort of 'make-do' attitude and I feel like I've started to accept this mindset because the other day I bought a pair of shoes in two different shoe sizes. They only had the left shoe in my size so to remedy the problem I just got the right shoe one size up. (Okay in my defense it was in European sizes so its not like an American shoe size up, its only an centimeter bigger on the right.) I'm walking around with two different sized shoes. It's hard to explain but silly things like this make Ankara all the more enduring now. I've really grown to live the funny little quirks and even when its frustrating I feel like I still really like living here.

Maybe its the fact that I have friends that I love, a wonderful roommate, and a pretty decent system of interaction with friends from home, but I really like Ankara. Visiting England for such a long time also made me made me miss my friends and home in Ankara. It's really weird when you realized you're getting used to living in a very different place, but that's what's happening and I totally love it. So while living in Ankara can be really hard and in the beginning I had some serious doubts about my happiness here, I can honestly say I really love it and when I have to leave in a few months I am going to be very sad.