Archive for 'Turkey'
Erdogan
Posted on 03. Oct, 2002 by admin.
9/20/2002 The elections are coming in two months. The leftists include two Jews whose-families converted to Islam in the 1920′s, Al Gore types, western-oriented and American-bred. They’ve split off from Prime Minister Ecevit, and then from each other, and there are now something like 27 secular parties (at last count) who will all be running [...]
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Yom Kippur in Istanbul
Posted on 16. Sep, 2002 by admin.
Last night, we went to temple Neve Shalom on the European side of Istanbul so our Israeli friends could check out the Yom Kippur evening services. As much as I hate being among a group of people who believe in the absurd, it’s a historic and hidden building, Istanbul’s oldest and supposedly nicest synagogue. We [...]
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Fighting at the Sultan’s grave
Posted on 13. Sep, 2002 by admin.
Elif met me one day near Mesut’s bread factory in Fatih, and we went to the Sultan’s grave at the Suleymanie Mosquegot, where we got into a lovely fight with the ticket-taker. He told her to wear head-covering, which not only against the law for the municipality to demand (ominously, the heads of the government [...]
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Six months with the Istanbul Opera
Posted on 20. Aug, 2002 by admin.
2/17/2002 The Turkish Opera had its auditions on the 11th for new people to become a sozmesleli, or independent contractor. You toil away for the opera at low pay for a few years doing that, waiting for an opening as a lead singer, or cadreau – at which point, you’re on the gravy train, salaried, [...]
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Puking in Diyarbakir and Nemrut Dag
Posted on 10. Aug, 2002 by admin.
Now it was time to head north to Diyarbakir. I was pissed at Isik for having sung Mardin folksongs the whole time we were around the region; now as we were approaching the oil wells of Batman, it was payback time: over and over: “Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo BAT-MAN!” After the [...]
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Threatened Hasankeyf
Posted on 08. Aug, 2002 by admin.
All these stories and Kadri suddenly opened up in the car about his family history: Armenian; his grandfather died at 42, Musur, went from Caucus to Iraq, moved to Kiziltepe where one uncle stayed and another liked to whore. We pushed east, through Siverek, and I loathed it. It looked like it was bombed, and [...]
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Syrian monks at the Saffron monastery
Posted on 08. Aug, 2002 by admin.
I was getting to see all the places I wanted and they pretty much let me decide, and I kept saying, east. We drove to Mardin, a city of 60,000 settled at the top part of a hill with a great view of the Syrian plain. It ’s always been very politicized, with lots of [...]
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The Kurdish lord of Viransehir
Posted on 08. Aug, 2002 by admin.
I had big plans for the next day, we’d see monasteries and border towns and Hasankeyf and it would all be just so, but Turkey always seems to get in the way of your plans. Kadri knew an guy in Viransehir, a high-school buddy he hadn’t seen in 41 years, who had become a lord. [...]
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Bazaar in Urfa
Posted on 07. Aug, 2002 by admin.
The next morning we saw Urfa, and it was like having left the country – very middle-east; little Turkish spoken; Kurdish and Arabic; covered women; men wearing baggy pan ts. First impression is how beautiful it all is. There’s a wonderful section of narrow streets with medieval houses with lattice-windowed overhangs; over the doors were [...]
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East to the Syrian border
Posted on 06. Aug, 2002 by admin.
After three days at Elif’s father’s house in Antalya, swimming and eating as if on a beached cruise ship, Kadri announced that we’d be going east to Nemrut Dag, as if it were a surprise: what the hell else were we going to do there for 15 days? He’d already taught me some pantomime, took [...]
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