Category: Culture/Art

‘I Can’t Imagine Studying Anywhere Else’: The culture shock and awe of a semester in Istanbul

‘I Can’t Imagine Studying Anywhere Else’: The culture shock and awe of a semester in Istanbul

Posted by The Elm on March 1, 2013 · Leave a Comment

By Allison Davis

Foreign Correspondent

How many cups of tea can one person drink in one day? This is the competition I have with myself on a daily basis. When people aren’t drinking tea, they are sipping on a Turkish coffee. In fact, my flatmate read my fortune using the coffee grounds left in my glass on my very first day in Istanbul.

Life in Istanbul is so different; it cannot even be compared to life at Washington College. Fortunately, I have three other WC students living near me. The four of us are working to figure out class registration, having four campuses, shuttle systems, cafeterias, and that’s all just on our school’s campus.

Our most challenging tasks are learning the language and navigating the streets. There have been times where we have sat in a restaurant for an hour waiting for the check. Only afterwards did we learn from my Turkish flatmate that it has to be asked for.

There are always mistakes in our communication with Turkish people. For example, I tried to ask a person where they are from and instead asked them where they perform a particular bodily function. When I go to the weekly fruit and vegetable bazaar in my neighborhood, I end up asking for an entire kilo of oranges, rather than just one single fruit.

Our new motto within our group of international students is “Live and Learn” or, on crazier occasions “YOLO.” Because we are still learning the language, we order random food or purchase things that look interesting at the grocery store. It’s extremely important to be flexible and open to trying new things.

I have only been in Istanbul for three weeks now, and I am only now starting to be more comfortable with the customs. Learning to adjust and adapt to different lifestyles is important when we interact with Turkish people.

I live in a flat that is a 15 minute walk from campus, which is different from my short walk to classes at WC. Another difference is that nobody has a dryer here, so if I do too much laundry, it takes two or three days to dry and I have no clothes or towels (it’s difficult to shower when you have to use T-shirts as towels).

This is just the beginning of my adventure in Istanbul. I can’t imagine studying anywhere else. There’s always a new neighborhood to explore, a new club to party at, and new people to meet. It is possible to be woken up by the first call to prayer that every mosque plays from its minaret, study the rich history of the Ottoman Empire during the days, and enjoy the modern atmosphere of the clubs and bars in Taksim Square at night.

Taking advantage of the city is our main priority. We ride the bus to different neighborhoods, the ferry to the Asian side of the city, or a horse carriage to the top of an island. The most amazing part of Istanbul is its hugeness. It’s not a city with a skyscraper skyline, but anywhere you look is still considered Istanbul. Two continents are included in this city, along with nine islands, and so much in between.

On my most recent adventure, my friends and I, a group of international students, travelled to Büyükada, one of the bigger islands. There are four larger islands and five smaller ones. Automobiles are not used on the islands, so everyone walks, bikes, or rides in open horse-drawn carriages.

On the Sea of Marmara, the boardwalk was an amazing sight with beautiful temperatures for the month of February. We sat along the Sea of Marmara, eating fresh fish and drinking our Efes (the beer of choice in Turkey), and we pondered if it was possible to have a better day.

In our case, it did get better. We reached a park near the top of the island and hiked the rest of the way. From the top was one of the most breathtaking views I have ever experienced. The view of Istanbul stretched for miles, and we sat there and admired it. After pretending to parkour on the rocks at the top of the mountain, we walked back to the ferry to head to our flats.

We, your fellow three WC peers and myself, are constantly visiting new places, trying new foods, and learning more and more Turkish words. I hope to keep you updated on our Turkish lifestyles and adventures!

via ‘I Can’t Imagine Studying Anywhere Else’: The culture shock and awe of a semester in Istanbul : The Elm.

March 2, 2013

FCTA PRESENTS: LECTURE BY JUSTIN McCARTHY, PhD.

FCTA PRESENTS: LECTURE
BY JUSTIN McCARTHY, PhD.

“Essential Men: the Heroism of Ordinary Turks.”  

justin

When:Saturday, April 06, 2013, 1:30pm

Where: Earth Science Auditorium,

University of Toronto, St. George Campus

Address: 5 Bancroft Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5

Supported by Turkish Students Association at UofT

Justin McCarthy, PhD, Professor of history 
Justin McCarthy received a Ph.D. in Near Eastern history from U.C.L.A. in 1978 and a Certificate in Demography from Princeton University in 1980. He is presently Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville.

Professor McCarthy specializes in the social and demographic history of the Modern Middle East, particularly Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. His books include Muslims and Minorities, Death and Exile, The Population of Palestine, The Ottoman Turks, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans, Who Are the Turks? (with Carolyn McCarthy), The Armenian Rebellion at Van (with Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taşkiran, and Ömer Turan), Turkey and the Turks (with Carolyn McCarthy), and The Turk in America. Professor McCarthy has recently completed a study of the Armenian rebellion in Sasun. He has also written articles on Middle Eastern, Balkan, Turkish, and Ottoman topics. As a historical cartographer, he has produced the Middle Eastern map series for the Middle East Studies Association and the U.S. Department of Education, as well as maps for publications. He has lectured in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Israel, Bosnia, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States and Canada.

Professor McCarthy was awarded the Order of Merit of the Turkish Republic in 1998. He has been voted a Corresponding Member of the Turkish Historical Association. He has received the Chairman’s Education Award from the Turkish American Friendship Council and awards from Turkish-American organizations, including the first Şükrü Elekdağ Award, presented by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, in 2000 an honorary doctorate from Demirel University, and in 2007 an honorary doctorate from Atatürk University. In 2005 he was invited to address a special session of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Rotary International gave him its Paul Harris Award. He has held a Senior Research Fellowship from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, a National Needs Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, an International Research and Studies Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and other grants and awards. Professor McCarthy has served on the Boards of the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Turkish Studies Association, and the International Congress for Asian and North African Studies, as well as the advisory boards of various organizations.

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***************************************************************

FCTA, The Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations is an umbrella organization representing 19 member associations from Victoria BC to Quebec, which include approximately 50,000 Canadians of Turkish origin and 200,000 Turkic Canadians. The Federation was established in 1985 and is a non-profit organization with no political affiliations. It supports and encourages activities that deal with important cultural, economic, educational, historical, social and religious issues that relate to the Turkish Community in Canada.

www.TurkishFederation.ca | Info@TurkishFederation.ca | Tel:(647) 955-1923 | Fax:(647) 776-3111
1170 Sheppard Avenue West, Unit 15, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M3K 2A

*Our mailing address is:

The Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations

1170 Sheppard Ave. West Unit 15

Toronto, On M3K 2A3

Canada*

March 1, 2013

This Is Simply Our Home

Syriac Orthodox Christians in Turkey

”This Is Simply Our Home”

In recent years, around 60-100 Syriac Orthodox families have returned from central Europe to Turkey. Encouraged by changes in the political atmosphere, the minority nonetheless faces a host of problems, from the expropriation of land belonging to a monastery, to a ban on special schools and kindergartens, and also a lack of places of worship in Istanbul. By Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere

A sign in Aramaic at the side of the road defiantly bids visitors “Welcome to Kafro” next to the official Turkish sign on which the village is called “Elbeğendi”. Here, some 15 kilometres south of Midyat, live 17 Syriac Orthodox families. There are no shops in the village, but there is a café that allegedly serves the only decent pizza in the area.

“German is the lingua franca amongst the children in the village,” says the pizza maker in flawless German, which he learned while living close to Stuttgart. All of the families here have returned to Kafro after living in Germany and Switzerland, some of them for decades.

Among them is also the muhtar, the elected village chief, Aziz Demir, who lived with his family in Zurich and near St. Gallen. “Even if our lives there as Christians were very pleasant, something was still missing,” he says on the terrace of his house, where he lives with his wife, from a neighbouring village, and their youngest son, Josef, who attends secondary school in Midyat. With a sweeping gesture beyond the newly landscaped garden out onto the plain, he says “This is simply our home.”

Urgent need of restoration

The Demirs and the other 16 families all live in new houses, because the buildings of the old village, within site of the new developments, were for the most part destroyed in the clashes between the army and the PKK. As was the old church, which is in urgent need of restoration but still awaits the necessary permits.

Land dispute with the Turkish government and Kurdish village leaders: The Mor Gabrial is the oldest surviving Christian monastery in the world. There have been claims that the monastery was built on the grounds of a previous mosque – regardless of the fact that the monastery was founded over 170 tears prior to the birth of MohammedThe inhabitants of Kafro have therefore erected a small chapel with the help of the “Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg”, as the sign next to the entrance indicates. Services only take place here once in a month, however, as the village does not have its own priest. From the roof of the old church, Demir points out the surrounding villages from east to west: “One is Christian, one Arabic, one Kurdish, one Yazidi and then another one Christian: Enhil (in Turkish Yemişli), where Tuma Çelik comes from.”

Çelik already moved with his family to Istanbul as a ten-year old, in 1974, and then emigrated to Switzerland in 1985. There, he became an activist fighting for the interests of the Syriac Orthodox church. He wrote for Aramaic magazines and was one of the founders of “Suroyo TV”, which broadcasts in Aramaic from Sweden. He has been living again mostly in Tur Abdin since 2010.

Legal proceedings against Mor Gabriel

Last summer, he founded the first Turkish-Aramaic monthly magazine, Sabro (Hope), which is published by volunteers in Midyat. Also last summer, he launched a website called “We have grown up in this world together”, devoted primarily to the legal proceedings against the region’s oldest monastery, Mor Gabriel.

The Syriac Orthodox Church claims to derive its origin from one of the first Christian communities. It uses Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as its official and liturgical language. Pictured: Altar in the Curch of KafroMor Gabriel was founded in 397. 1,611 years later, a complaint was filed by the surrounding villages alleging that the monastery was illegally occupying land, some of it even located inside the monastery walls and for which the monastery has paid property taxes regularly since 1937. Nevertheless, the courts have been handing down decisions against the monastery since 2008 and have granted around 28 hectares of its land to the Turkish forest ministry; the last judgement was passed in July 2012.

Now the only hope is to take the case before the European Court of Human Rights. Erol Dora, the first Syriac Orthodox member of the Turkish parliament, who was elected for the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Mardin in 2011 and previously worked as a lawyer for minority foundations, commented: “We as the BDP and as the Assyrian people will do all we can to support the monastery at the international level, because we believe that in this trial we have justice on our side.”

Just one of many problems

For Çelik, however, Mor Gabriel is but one problem among many: “This is just a small drop in the ocean. Assyrians lived mainly in rural areas, where the land registry system was the least active. That’s why so many churches, monasteries and community buildings are not even registered.”

In Switzerland, he became an activist fighting for the interests of the Syriac Orthodox church: Tuma ÇelikToday, the great majority of the Syriac Orthodox faithful lives in Istanbul. Sait Susin, chairman of the Syriac Orthodox Foundation in Istanbul, estimates that about 17,000 of the approximately 20,000 members live in Istanbul. Currently, there is only a single Syriac Orthodox church there, in the trendy district of Beyoglu, which was built in 1844 for the around 40-50 families living in the city at that time. The community, most of whose members now live in Bakirköy, close to Atatürk Airport, therefore also uses Catholic churches for services.

In addition, the foundation has been submitting applications for years to build a new church, for which it needs land to be assigned to it by the municipal administration. Last year, the city made two “immoral offers” of land confiscated from Catholic and Greek Orthodox communities. The Syriac Orthodox leaders therefore rejected the offers for the time being. Should the plot in question be returned to the Catholic Church, however, they would be prepared to try to reach an agreement with the Catholic priests to erect a new church next to the Catholic cemetery.

“You are not a minority”

But that is not the only problem confronting the Istanbul community. Outside of Tur Abdin, only a minority of its members are fluent in Aramaic. Çelik estimates that “around 3,000 people in Istanbul speak the language, but only about 200 can also read and write it.” The foundation had therefore submitted a request to open a kindergarten with instruction in Aramaic. The response of the ministry of education was: “You are not a minority; therefore you cannot teach your children a foreign language.”

Although Syriac Orthodox Christians are clearly not Muslims and thus should be able to benefit from the minority rights stipulated in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, the Turkish State has granted these rights thus far only to Greeks, Armenians and Jews, with numerous infringements.

An adjustment of Turkish laws to European minority rights standards, long overdue, would not only solve the problem of the kindergarten, but would also create a modern frame of reference for all the other issues. Nothing revolutionary, just equal rights for all.

Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere

© Qantara.de 2013

Translated from the German by Jennifer Taylor

Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

February 28, 2013
Istanbul to host International Istanbulensis Poetry Festival

The 2nd International Istanbulensis Poetry Festival, organized by Sultanbeyli Municipality, will be held from March 6 to 9 with the participation of 52 poets from Turkey and around the world.

The festival was launched at a press conference yesterday, where Sultanbeyli Mayor Hüseyin Keskin said that their goal was to make the neighborhood into a valley of education and culture with such festivals.

The coordinator of the festival, Özcan Ünlü, said that poetry festivals were being held in many parts of Turkey but they wanted to make their festival more meaningful with a rich program and big awards. “A poet who attends the festival cannot attend it again for the following three years. In this way we try to invite different poets,” he said.

The festival bears the name of the Istanbulensis flower that grows only in the Aydos Forestry area within the borders of the Sultanbeyli neighborhood. The flower was introduced to the world in 1982 by British scientist Brian Mathew.

In the opening of the event on March 6 at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert (CRR) Concert Hall, poets will conduct readings before Bülent Ortaçgil and Birsen Tezet take the stage.

With the slogan “four continents, single verse, Istanbul,” the festival will host special events organized in cooperation with schools as part of the festival. Children’s literature poets and writers will also present their works.

As part of the festival, a special event for women will be held on March 8, International Women’s Day. Female poets will read their poems in the event at the Sultanbeyli Municipality Culture Center. Among these poets will be Ayşe Sevim, Gonca Özmen, Hayriye Ünal, Anna Santoliquido, Fatma Sadık, Sharerh Kamrani, Çulpan Zaripova, Ferqane Mehdiyeva, Tanagöz İlyasova and Fatena Al-Ghorra.

In the closing ceremony of the festival on March 9 at the Sultanbeyli Municipality Culture Center, Feridun Düzağaç will perform a concert after the presentation of the awards.

Further information about the festival can be found on www.istanbulensissiir.org.

via Istanbul to host International Istanbulensis Poetry Festival.

February 28, 2013
Turkey May Be More Tolerant of Some Non-Muslim Minorities Than Muslim Minorities

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary on the island of Heybeliada on the Marmara Sea near Istanbul.

ISTANBUL — The Princes’ Islands are a chain of volcanic droplets off the coast of Istanbul, famous for their grand Palladian-style wooden summer homes and sweet-smelling pine woods. From one of the hilltops of the second-largest, Heybeliada, “the saddle-bagged” island, the view across the water is of a metropolis in motion, growing higher and wider, eating into more and more green space every year. But on Heybeliada itself, the only distractions are the squawk of seagulls and the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages (no cars allowed). There, it is easy to imagine that time has stood still.

In a way, history has indeed been frozen on Heybeliada since 1971. This was the year when the Turkish government imposed a form of martial law and shut down educational institutions not under state control. The hilltop seminary, the Holy Theological School of Halki, which had since the mid-19th century trained generation after generation of Greek Orthodox priests, was closed. Later, some of its land was confiscated.

The rest of Turkey has changed a lot in the intervening years. In 1999, twin earthquakes on either side of the Aegean Sea produced a rapprochement between Turks and Greeks, and much longstanding bitterness — the result of earlier conflicts in the Aegean and in Cyprus — dissipated.

Turkey no longer argues that it should limit the rights of Turkish citizens who are Greek Orthodox, tit-for-tat, because the Greek government does the same. In any event, Athens has ceded far more rights to the Turkish Muslims of Thrace, lifting restrictions on the sale and repair of property.

But the Halki seminary remains closed.

Meanwhile, the die-hard, anti-Greek stance of Turkish officialdom has softened. Turkish courts have started returning land that had been seized — illegally, they say — from non-Muslim religious foundations, including land around the Halki seminary and the Greek Orthodox orphanage on the hilltop of the next island.

The Turkish government itself seems eager to improve relations with the 3,000 Greek Orthodox and other non-Muslims who live in Turkey and their powerful lobbyists abroad. The Turkish foreign minister and minister of education say that Halki should reopen; the United States and the European Commission regularly push for the same.

And yet the Halki seminary remains closed.

Why? I think the explanation has nothing to do with vestigial resentment between Turks and Greeks and everything to do with the government’s care not to alienate mainstream Islam.

The problem with reopening the Halki seminary is that if Greek Orthodox priests are allowed to be trained there again, in an institution outside the state’s control, the Turkish government could come under pressure to extend that right to Muslims.

The current government very much represents the Sunni mainstream. Last week Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that the halls where Alevis — Turkey’s Shiites and 15 percent of the population — congregate are mere cultural centers, not places of worship.

The implication is that real Muslims pray in mosques and under the government’s watchful eyes, like those of the powerful and well-funded Presidency of Religious Affairs, which licenses after-school Koranic courses, administers Turkey’s quota for sending pilgrims on the hajj and pays the clerics who prepare the weekly sermon.

Turkey, formally a secular democracy, may want to become more liberal toward its religious minorities, but not at the risk of tolerating more diversity within the Muslim mainstream.

And so the Halki seminary remains closed.

Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

via Turkey May Be More Tolerant of Some Non-Muslim Minorities Than Muslim Minorities – NYTimes.com.

February 28, 2013
Cleopatra’s half-sister found in Turkey ruins

An Austrian archeologist believes that bones found at a Turkish historical site are those of Cleopatra’s half-sister Arsinoe IV.

Princess Arsinoe was murdered about 2000 years ago by assassins sent by Cleopatra.

The woman’s skull was found in 1926 in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, which is now in modern Turkey.

Archeologists found it in a burial chamber on the site, known as the Octagon but it later disappeared during the Second World War.

In 1985, Hilke Thuer, of the Austrian Academy of Science, found the rest of the bones, which she has maintained belonged to Cleopatra’s sister.

Now new techniques may be able to determine whether the controversial claim is true.

Critics say the bones are of someone too young to be Arsinoe, reported the Daily Mail.

Arsinoe was exiled to Ephesus by her sister, who saw her as a threat to her power.

More from GlobalPost: 18 ancient Odyssey mosaics stolen in Syria: minister

Cleopatra convinced her husband Mark Antony to have the girl murdered in 41 BC, said Live Science.

Both were members of the Ptolemaic empire, a legacy of Alexander the Great’s conquests.

Despite some setbacks, the archeologist believes she will one day be able to make a definite conclusion.

“They tried to make a DNA test, but testing didn’t work well because the skeleton had been moved and the bones had been held by a lot of people. It didn’t bring the results we hoped to find,” Thuer told the News Observer.

“I don’t know if there are possibilities to do more of this testing. Forensic material is not my field. One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there currently is no other method to really determine more. But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is hope.”

Thuer’s theory will be explained during a lecture this week at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

via Cleopatra’s half-sister found in Turkey ruins | GlobalPost.

February 28, 2013