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It has to be said that Ankara is an ugly city. It has neither the sprawling historical grandeur of Istanbul, the whitewashed prettiness of the Mediterranean resorts, nor the lush green scenery of the Black Sea harbours. Rather, it seems to have been designed first by Soviet architects fleeing Stalin's reign of terror, then by 60's town planners who were of the opinion that nothing soothes the eye more than a nice slab of concrete. There are, it is true, a few beautiful old buildings dating back to the early Republican period and beyond, but these are tucked away in the seedier parts of the city and coated carefully with grime so that no one will notice them.
However, there is one thing which redeems Ankara aesthetically. Turkey is a very young country, demographically speaking, and Ankara has more universities and colleges than anywhere else apart from Istanbul (which doesn't count, since it has a population almost twice that of Israel). This combination means that you are likely to see more bright young women per square mile here than almost anywhere else in the world. Not only that, but Turkey's rich gene pool means you also see more beautiful women around (I should know, I married one of them). In fairness to genetically homogenous countries like Sweden, it must be said that a rich gene pool also makes for some stunningly ugly combinations, but then you have to take the rough with the smooth.
Now Mayday has come and gone leaving only broken windows and broken heads behind, and the temperature has risen to a comfortable 23 degrees, all these young beauties are out in the streets wearing considerably less than they were a week ago. In addition to relieving the aesthetic blight that is Ankara, this fills me with a strange feeling of joy. It is not, admittedly the same feeling of joy that used to fill me every Spring when I was a student myself - that was more like "well maybe this term I'll get laid". Now I have reached the relatively sober age of 36 I can take a more detached view, and see this blossoming of female flesh in the same light as the blossoming of flowers that happens at more-or-less the same time. Well, almost.
Now, I've watched "The Blue Angel" and "Lolita", and read enough Malcolm Bradbury novels to know that for a university teacher to become infatuated with youth spells TROUBLE. What, one may ask, do I do when it all gets too much, and I am in danger of forgetting my age, marital status and professional ethics? Nothing much, actually, but these days I often, on seeing a beautiful young woman, mentally intone elhamdullillah, which is Arabic and means something like "Thanks be to God." Really, I do! I should point out that is by no means standard Muslim practice, and it doesn't actually stop me thinking lustful thoughts, but it does make me think them in a slightly more respectful way, something along the lines of "Assuming there is a God, and this God had some purpose in mind in creating this adorable person, giving expatriate English teachers a thrill was probably fairly low down on His/Her list of priorities." The thing is that come May, just walking down the street means I am constantly subvocalising elhamdullillah in a manner reminiscent of zikir, the Sufi equivalent of mantra. Maybe in this way I shall eventually attain enlightenment.
Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul may not appeal to everyone. I, for one, vastly prefer the medieval simplicity of Topkapi Palace to this piece of Ottoman-Rococo decadence. Nevertheless, it is an important part of Turkey's history - what the British, since Thatcher, have been calling "heritage". It was therefore extremely disturbing to find that large parts of it are crumbling. This was revealed last night on Arena, a television programme hosted by one of Turkey's (if not the world's) finest investigative journalists, Ugur Dundar.
The part of Dolmabahce that tourists see is, of course, immaculate (unlike Topkapi, which, while in generally good condition, is still a bit scruffy). One might imagine one was walking round an English stately home whose owner had decidedly orientalist tastes. It is also a phenomenal display of wealth; if the government sold half the gold in there, they could probably pay off their foreign debt twice over. However, if you go down into the basement, as Mr Dundar did, the scene is very different.
Firstly, as I said, the palace is literally crumbling. This is partly due to general lack of attention, and partly because its Ottoman builders introduced an ingenious air circulation system to prevent damp, which has now been cut off by a recent hotel development. This means, among other things, that the room where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk spent his last days, while in good condition itself, is in imminent danger of disappearing through the floor.
What is really shocking, though, is the treasure trove locked away in these damp, mouldy rooms. The items on display upstairs are only a fraction of the wealth of Dolmabahce. Downstairs, antique furniture, silverware, priceless carpets, paintings, illuminated manuscripts and silk screens are slowly being eaten away by damp, fungus, insects and mice - in fact the only things unaffected are those objects made of gold or china, and even the latter get smashed by falling ceilings or collapsing shelves. Valuable historical documents crumble in piles on the floor, while swords and rifles rust away. In the attic, there is even a collection of ammunition, which apparently is still capable of going off.
Why, one might ask, has nobody done anything about this disgraceful state of affairs? The answer cannot be simply lack of money, since there are hundreds of museums around Turkey who would leap at the chance to take this burden off the hands of the curators. For that matter, if they really don't want them, there are hundreds of museums and art galleries around the world who would pay substantial amounts of money for almost any of these items. One reason, of course, may be that to give away or sell these artefacts would have meant admitting what had been going on all this time. Another is that there already exists a pretty trade in antiquities from Dolmabahce, in fact Arena pointed an accusing finger at Aysegul Nadir (formerly married to Asil Nadir of Polly Peck fame). This enterprising lady has already been caught once leaving Turkey with a medieval Koran, and has apparently made regular visits to closed-off areas of the palace. However, I leave the question of Ms Nadir's doings to the press and the courts, since I am not in a postition to judge, and it actually makes little differencce in practice whether the items in question remain in damp obscurity or are spirited off to some private collection; in either case we don't get to see them.
When wandering around the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert, I am sometimes angered by the cavalier way Western museums and collectors have plundered the orient, and I am certainly in favour of returning the Elgin marbles to Greece and the Zeus temple (now in Berlin) to Turkey. However, I can't help thinking that at least in Western museums things are looked after decently and are available for the public to view, rather than being locked away in a basement to rot.
At the moment I should have every reason to be happy. My football team (Galatasaray) is assured of the championship, inflation has started to fall for the first time in living memory, and the British have come up with a Eurovision song contest entry that isn't totally bland and embarrassing. Yet for the last three days, I've been walking around feeling decidedly morose and wanting to bite the heads off passers by (or passerbys, as my Turkish students more logically write). Why is this, I wonder? Work is also fine - I have a job I enjoy and which pays reasonably well (not a common occurrence in my life) and my dissertation topic has finally been accepted. I suppose it could be the quantity rather than the quality of work that is a problem - I haven't had a real day off since the end-of-Ramadan holiday (apart from another religious holiday, which I spent in bed with flu). Working every evening and weekend could make most people a bit ratty, but I've been on this routine for most of the past two years, and it hasn't bothered me before.
Female readers might here point out that all of the above are typically male concerns - work, football and the like (actually I was exaggerating about the football - I do support Galatasaray, but I'm hardly a fanatic). What about love, human relationships and so on? Maybe the malaise lies there. Well, if John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Marks and Spencers is right, men tend to concentrate too much on their achievements (or the achievements of their countries, football teams etc.), while women are more concerned with relationships (and shopping). However, it doesn't necessarily follow that I would be a happier man if I became less achievement-oriented and more relationship-oriented. Actually, I used to be pretty relationship-oriented in the past, but now I tend to regard relationships as just something else that require work from time to time, so I must be incorrigibly "Martian" in my outlook.
For example, last night my wife and I watched Bed of Roses, which is a romantic film about … well, romance, and I have to confess I was bored stiff. So the heroine's a really nice person, and so is the hero, and in the end they get over their differences and get married. So what? Nobody gets shot, there are no car chases or explosions, and no one jumps through a window into a swimming pool. OK, forget action, there are no ideas. A film should have one or the other (preferably lots of both, like Star Trek or The Seven Samurai). Failing that, I'd settle for some gratuitous sex. I was also annoyed because the newspaper had promised me a film about a woman recovering from amnesia who realises she's been doing dirty work from the CIA. And the woman in question was Geena Davies! Grrrrrrrrrrr. This, if nothing else, should be proof enough that, despite my feminist symapathies, I come from Mars, where films all include heroes facing fearful odds (for the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods) and no one gives a dingo's kidney about relationships, unless it's to do with your comrades in arms or someone like Geena Davies*.
Anyway, I've already written enough about men and women's supposed modes of thinking elsewhere ('Male Logic' and 'Women's Intuition') and I am still no closer to discovering the source of my grim mood. Perhaps it's one of those feelings which, as the Buddhist writer Pema Chodren says, come and go like weather, without really meaning very much. Maybe, in fact, it is something to do with the weather itself, which is decdedly unsettled at the moment. Who cares? I'm off to snarl menacingly at passerbys.
Tony Blair has managed to put yet another feather in his hat, after obtaining a pardon for the two nurses jailed in Saudi. Once again, Tony's teeth did the job, King Fahd fell for the irresistible Blair grin, and two Brits are saved from execution and 500 lashes respectively (legal note - the maximum number of lashes prescribed in the Koran is 100 - for adultery - but then Saudi Arabia is to the Islamic world what Calvin's Geneva was to Christendom). What amazes me is the ease with which Blair pulls off these stunts. It was only a short while ago that he flashed his teeth at Arafat and Netinyahu and persuaded them to meet up in London (not that they achieved much there, but that was hardly Blair's fault). Now he's in Northern Ireland with William Haig, knocking back the beer at the Boyne Arms or wherever, getting slapped on the back by Orangemen and, with that toothy grin again, convincing them that Catholics are really jolly decent chaps.
Is there nothing, one wonders, that the Blair grin will not achieve? Here is a speculative timeline for the Prime Minister's future accomplishments.
1/6/98 Blair visits Belgrade. Serbian government agrees to an
independent Kosovo.
10/6/98 Blair in New Delhi. Indian signs nuclear non-proliferation
treaty.
15/6/98 Official trade talks in Beijing. China agrees to hold
democratic elections. Dalai Lama returns to Tibet.
25/6/98 Blair visits Cyprus, leads happy Greek and Turkish Cypriots
in a display of folk dancing on the Green Line.
30/6/98 Blair attends IMF summit. IMF agrees to write off all Third
World debts.
10/7/98 Blair's American tour starts.
11/7/98 Cuban embargo lifted.
12/7/98 Race riots start in Los Angeles.
13/7/98 Blair visits LA. Riots stop. Farrakhan lauds cultural
achievements of Jewish people. KKK Grand Wizard makes speech
praising Martin Luther King.
14/7/98 Bill Gates agrees to bundle Netscape 4.05 with all Windows
packages.
15/7/98 Bill Clinton drafts a bill to give back all government land
to Native American organisations.
29/7/98 Blair in Northern Ireland again. Paisley says Reformation
was "overstated".
13/8/98 Blair converts to Islam, makes pilgrimage to Mecca.
14/8/98 Sunni/Shia merger talks start.
Well, I will admit some of this is exaggerated, especially the bit about Bill Gates. What is ironic is that my namesake Robin Cook, who is supposed to be doing all the international stuff, keeps coming up with highly reasonable and practical proposals for solving the world's problems, and no one is interested. For example, he has just proposed a way of getting round Greece's perpetual veto on anything to do with Turkey and the EC, by organising an aid package for Turkey which all fourteen remaining EC members have agreed to. Obviously the Greeks are not going to be too happy about this, but at least it isn't their money that's being spent, so they are unlikely to object too strenuously. What is surprising is that Cook's proposal has had a cool reception in, of all places, Ankara. Now, it is none of my business to tell the Turkish government what to do, but it strikes me as somewhat strange to be less than wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of fourteen governments queuing up to give you money. I put it down to Cook's naïve habit of putting substance before smiles.
One of the odder moments of my wedding was when, after we had made our marriage vows before the registrar and assembled guests, my wife whispered in my ear "Where is your foot?" "At the end of my leg," I replied, somewhat perplexed. My wife, having located the missing appendage, stamped on it, and my yelp of pain was greeted with applause by her relatives (my relatives being as confused as I was). I later discovered that this is a Turkish custom: whoever first steps on the other's foot will be the dominant partner in the marriage.
What brought this peculiar memory to mind today was a review in Aktüel magazine of a new publication by the Family Research Foundation called Örf ve Adetlerimiz which means something like "Our Usage and Traditions" - basically a guide to how to be a good Turk. According to this volume, prepared by no less than twenty-four scholars, foot-stamping destroys the sanctity of the wedding ceremony, along with quipping with the registrar and cries from the guests like "Oh, oh" ("serves him/her right") and "Vah, vah" (the Turkish equivalent of "Oy vey"). As in many cultures, it seems, humour is incompatible with sanctity, though I would have thought a nation which produced the Bektashis (Turkey's "joking dervishes") would know better.
Örf ve Adetlerimiz does not only deal with such sombre and sacred subjects as marriage, though. Observing rather truistically that "daily life begins when one rises in the morning and ends when one falls asleep at night" it gives us rules for just about every aspect of existence. For example, men who are of an age to shave should shave before breakfast (presumably men who are not of an age to shave should do so after breakfast, a logical problem reminiscent of Russell's "barber paradox"). When sitting at home, one should not put ones feet up on the coffee table, or any other item of furniture, nor should one cross one's legs "in an exaggerated or unseemly manner" or have one's knees too far apart. Hands should be kept on the knees, and the gaze should be slightly lowered. These rules, remember, are not for visiting your ninety-year-old Aunt Agatha, but for your own home.
What constitutes a more direct attack on Turkish culture, however, is the banning of pyjamas, which may be worn in bed and while shaving (before breakfast, remember) but at no other time. I should explain here that Turkey, like China and parts of the USA, is a pyjama culture. On returning home from work, your average male Turk will thankfully exchange his work clothes for slippers, a sleeveless T-shirt and pyjama bottoms (or in more modern families, jogging pants) before grabbing a cup of tea and collapsing in front of the TV. What could be more sensible? To tell a Turkish man not to wear pyjamas is like demanding that he shave off his moustache or stop drinking raki - a direct affront to both his manhood and his national pride. I should add, though, that, with a few exceptions, the Turkish male is not a pyjama lout - if guests are expected he will quickly change out of his pyjamas, shave and refrain from placing his limbs in exaggerated or unseemly positions. But within the snug circle of family and close friends, pyjamas rule, and long may they do so.
While attacking such venerable Turkish institutions as foot-stamping and pyjama-wearing on the one hand, the book attempts to defend Turkish culture from Western imperialism on the other. Celebration of the New Year has always been a thorny issue in Turkey. After Ataturk adopted the Western calendar (another of his many good ideas) New Year was instituted as a secular festival and a good excuse for a party. However, some killjoys with a lamentable ignorance of European culture have objected to it, thinking that it is a Christian festival. Örf ve Adetlerimiz tries to steer a middle course, allowing the sending of greetings cards, so long as they do not have images of Santa Claus. Dressing up as Santa Claus is even worse, and smacks of Christian propaganda. This so-called Santa Claus, we should remember, started life as a shaman, who was later thinly Christianised by identification with Saint Nicholas, a man who co-incidentally came from what is now Turkey. Remembering a Turkish shaman figure can hardly be unpatriotic, and if the best that Western imperialists can come up with is a fat man in red pyjamas saying "Ho ho ho", then Turkish culture should be pretty safe anyway. Maybe the real problem is not Santa Claus' cultural imperialism, but his pyjamas.
All in all, Örf ve Adetlerimiz is simply the latest in a long tradition of "How to behave" books going back to Castiglione's The Courtier and even the Analects of Confucius. In particular it resembles those books on etiquette that were so popular in the 1930's (before then you didn't need a book to tell you how to peel an orange or address a viscount - if you were from the right social class the necessary information was encoded in your genes). To be fair, the book does contain some sound advice, like exhortations to use recycled paper, or reminders to employers that "workers are human beings". What made both me and the Aktüel reviewer laugh, though, was its subtitle "on the threshold of the twenty-first century." Our vision of the future must be severely impoverished if we count the abolition of pyjamas as a serious step towards the twenty-first century. After all, look at most science fiction. What do the crew of the Starship Enterprise wear? Space pyjamas.