ONE MORE TIME PORTUGAL

PORTUGAL AND YOUNG MEDICAL STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING OF MEDICAL EDUCATION 

I am back to Portugal, my third time visiting o Porto as the locals call it. I love this town; with her twin sister Gaia and the Rio do Doru in-between, they are a miniature replication of Istanbul, which lies with her Asian and European halves, similar to Gaia and o Porto, on both sides of Bosphorus. This is my first time in o Porto in the winter time, though. It doesn't surprise me that it is raining constantly, how else she could be this green in the heat of the summer, but my hosts are profusely apologetical for the weather; typical for the wonderful people of o Porto, kind, polite, elegant, warm, and caring, wanting to make their guests as comfortable as one possibly can. I feel so much at home, almost more at home in this town than anywhere else in the world, surrounded with its good people. That is why I will be extremely surprised when Zeynep, the wonderful receptionist in Lisbon, who will help me get on the plane back to Istanbul tells me "Portugal is wonderful if it weren't for its people". I then recall Teresa telling me how different Lisbonites are from the people of o Porto. Who knows maybe Portuguese of Lisbon are different than those of o Porto.

Beautiful o Porto across from Gaia along Rio do Doru at night

I had another first experience in Portugal this time. Due to scheduling conflicts, instead of flying from Lisbon to o Porto, I had to take the fast Alfa train. Once I figured out the system and got onto my train, I so appreciated the experience. It was almost better than flying. My dear friend Teresa had reserved a "comfort" seat for me, equivalent to business class on a plane. It was indeed comfortable with music, and newspaper and drink service. I had a seat across from a gentleman was on the way to o Porto with a shared table in-between. I thought, it would be an opportunity to chat with a  local. But no, he had no eye contact with me, deliberately looking down or to the sides. After a few attempts to catch his eye, I decided, "just as in Turkey, it may be culturally inappropriate for well educated men to look at women and well educated and well mannered women to attempt to chat with stranger men", so I gave up and focused on my computer just as he did. During my last evening in o Porto, when the guests including myself were having dinner with Teresa and her husband, a gentleman at the restaurant approached our table and chatted briefly with Antonio, Teresa's husband again without casting an eye or acknowledging us, women I asked them whether this was what I assumed it was. They laughed so hard; especially Teresa was a scene to enjoy while she was telling me in a very animated way "Quite on the contrary, they look at you as if to pierce you and some, look at you from head to toe and all around." That was quite a demonstration of how she rolled her eyes as if she was turning me around to see even my back. Is that what is lying in even intellectual men of Portugal, who love to throw their jackets over their shoulders (without wearing) and stroll.

Portuguese men carry their coats this way when they are in a casual mood or with a casual group

At the end of my 3 hour 45 minute trip, Teresa's "driver" meets me at the entrance gate to "Campanha" pronounced as kaempaenyeah, which sounds like French, feels very musical to me. Jose Manuel is a short, slender, bright faced young man. Maria, Teresa's secretary describes him as in his 40s, but he looks like he is in his early 30s to me, always with a smile on his face, I will find out. His English is as good as my colleague Agostino's, pretty good! He acknowledges me with a warm smile; he must have studied well, the picture of me Maria had told me she was going to show him. With that warm smile, I know that must be who would be waiting for me. He pronounces my name beautifully as most Spanish-speaking people do. He is very helpful as all of o Porto people are. We have a pleasant chat on the way to my hotel, Casa do Medico, which is in the center of the recreational campus of the Medical School of the University of Porto. He tells me he is married to one of the secretaries, Amelia, who also works for Teresa. They have two daughters, one is 20 and works at a shop, "she is a shop-girl" he will describe her with a smile on his face, almost apologetical that she hasn't gone further in her education. The other is 13 and in school.  He tells me Teresa is at a TV station to promote the third child abuse conference she and her team have been organizing in o Porto, in which I will also be presenting tomorrow. I admire her so much, she is organizing at least 2-3 conferences a year in addition to several local/regional courses, in addition to all the clinical work she has to do, in addition to heading one of three branches of the National Institute of Legal Medicine in the country. Some of my friends call me 'force of nature', they haven't met Teresa, who is constantly thundering among Europe, South America, and Africa.

The incredible female leader of Portugal pushing for a very humane approach in her country to manage child abuse and neglect

As humble and chatty as I am with drivers, receptionists at hotels, secretaries of colleagues that I work with, seeing the expression on their faces, full of respect, a measured distance, the shy smiles; I wonder what kind of an impression we academics make on these lovely people's minds, who might not have been as fortunate as we have been with the resources that brought us to where we are now. I have seen over the years that my humility and friendliness can cover some of the distance between them and I in my attempts to communicate with them, but not fully. This, impossible-to-eliminate distance is based on biases that societal norms impose on them, I believe. Social psychology, perhaps should be the next thing I should study. As we chat warmly, I can't help but thinking of these biases, barriers almost remnants of perceived untouchabilities, subtle cast systems crippling our societies. I can't help thinking of gated communities of the USA, membership clubs and facilities, even the club locker room at the gym at my university, all geared toward a subtle segregation, which then lead to these impossible-to-cross barriers and biases.

My hotel room is simple but clean and comfortable. Portugal is going through such hard times, economically, I would be perfectly OK to stay with Teresa and her family, but she wants to treat me properly. Tiago, Teresa's older son, who just graduated from Medical School and, to my surprise, his girlfriend Isabel pick me up from the hotel to take me to their home for dinner. It is past 8 pm, this is the European style, dinner can wait until 8-9 pm. Isabel, I find out is also a medical student, and is she a beauty, my goodness, over the evening I will discover, inside and out. She has a real royal beauty, looks like one of the princesses with royal blood out of a Micalengelo painting. I tell Tiago "It looks like you have found the most beautiful girl in town." They both chuckle with pleasure, a bit of shyness on Isabel's face. I ask them how they met. Tiago interviewed Isabel when he was doing his master's thesis, which is part of medical education in Portugal, thus every physician graduates with a master's degree as well. When it came to defending his thesis, Isabel contacted him and asked him if she could come listen to his defense. I ask her "Did you have him in mind romantically then?" with a loving mischievous smile. She smiles back with a shy but innocently mischievous look in her eyes and nods her head. I crack up, they follow, how sweet. After all, as Teresa reiterates during the dinner, women are always the one, who leads the way to relationships, but doing it subtly since to make the man feel he has the lead is the talent we all need, that's what the society dictates on all of us, doesn't it? 

I can't help but think of the book that I am reading lately "Women don't ask". This is a book that was assigned to a group of women faculty, who volunteered to join a group our medical school decided to sponsor to help us women faculty learn our rights better and learn to ask for things we need professionally. As feminist as the authors clearly are, they resolve in the end that, as much as we should be more assertive to ask for what we need, we should still do it in a way we should not come across as assertive as men are expected and tolerated to do. Because.... our socialization dictates that. What a dilemma, not that I have a problem with that, I don't like extreme assertiveness bordering arrogance in either sex, but when will men learn to be mroe sensitive, more elegant and respectful when it comes to negotiating? I must say, we are still more lucky than generations of the last century, but still, we have a long ways to go to bring men and women onto the same platform.

Linda and Sara do a very good job in this book in explaining why men and women have totally different negotiation styles from home to work


Isabel is extremely humble, though, as if she is not aware of her beauty, her elegance and talents. Tiago just took his residency entrance exam, but is not expecting a very high score. He is interested in psychiatry, though, and is expecting he will be able to get into a program in o Porto since not many people are interested in psychiatry. He tells me he studied for the exam for only 6 months, I am astonished with the preceding "only". Isabel, on the other hand has started studying for it 4 months ago and she will take her exam next November! To top it all, they tell me, there are people who study much more and for longer than Isabel, too. Wow, quite similar to the Turkish system. But the equivalency of this in the USA is the three-tier USMLE tests. Medicine is tough all over the world, I guess.

PLEASURES OF A SUNNY SUNDAY BY IZMIR BAY AT CESMEALTI

PLEASURES OF A SUNNY SUNDAY BY IZMIR BAY AT CESMEALTI

Mehmet, Kezban and I decide to leave the city and go to Cesmealti after breakfast. It is a beautiful morning after apparently they had a severe cold front last week. Cesmealti is the shoreline quarter of a quaint little town called Urla located in the southwest of Izmir Bay. The shoreline is lined with small cafes, fish restaurants that are almost on or even in the water, in some cases. The one that we choose not only has an added patio-like platform extending into the water slightly above the sidewalk, but it also sprawls onto the rock pier stretching into the little cove. The cafe owner has scattered small wooden tables on the crest of the pier; it is so enjoyable, so casual, and natural that, although I doubt they have license to do that, I also doubt anybody, including the city officials cares about this violation of ordinance. Is there some bribing going on to keep the status quo, your guess is as good as mine. This is Turkey. As much as I like the societal organization in the US to protect everybody's rights, sometimes I miss this kind of benevolent breaking of rules and regulations if there is no financial gains behind it.

                                                                  Cesmealti

We sit at a table right at the tip of the crest of the rocky pier. I am savoring the unique experience of being surrounded with the Aegean on all three sides. The chatty crowd of Izmirites is behind us. It is lovely to feel how cheerful everybody is, upbeat conversations, chuckles, laughter within the hiss and fuss of the waves is all the audio stimulation that reaches my awareness. As we sip our tea, I can't help feeling awed with the size of the ducks around, some swimming in the water and some strolling casually among the tables or on the beach. They look like Canadian geese, and I know that that species doesn't visit this side of the ocean! I ask my sister-in-law to take a picture of some of the ducks while Izmirites are feeding them with bread or gevrek. As the sun starts her journey down toward the skyline, we decide to visit the open farmer's market, which is famous for its wild greens "horta", that Cretans like me and my mother appreciate greatly.

Huge ducks by another lakeside very similar to those I saw in Cesmealti

Farmer's markets "pazar" in Turkish, are different than those in the USA. One thing is that, for an approximate population of 100,000 or so a market is held at least twice a week on an assigned space covering at least 2 acres or so. The vendors start arriving around 5 am, unless they have camped out at the market place or in their trucks from the night before. By seven am, most vendors have arrived and are ready to go, with all colors of produce displayed in huge heaps underneath their canvas awnings. There is no set beginning time for the shopping, which is totally dependent on when the local crowd wakes up and start flowing into the market place. During the early hours of the day, many more, unofficial vendors arrive, spreading a canvas spread onto the asphalt at the periphery of the market place, extending the market into the surrounding streets, doubling, sometimes tripling the surface area of the farmer's market throughout the day. And, there is no official ending time to these markets, either. Whoever runs out of goods to sell is more than welcomed to leave. But majority has brought much more than they can sell and most of the market remains alive until after sunset. During the final hours before dusk, vendors become generous, reducing their prices by 30-80% and sometimes you may get a bunch of tomatoes, or beans, or whatever, for such dirt cheap, the peak of the crowd is usually during the afternoon. When majority of the vendors start loading their trucks with their tools and whatever they couldn't sell, the poor arrive and they start picking up, at no cost, the goods that are just dumped by some of the vendors, who don't want to take back what little is left.

A corner from a farmer's market, with true farmers selling their greens, "horta" in Cretan

Kezban and I start our expedition in the market. this is one of my most favorite times in Turkey, going to an authentic farmer's market, where I can find lots of peasant women, who bring their own produce, that most likely was picked just the night before, if not the very morning. Urla has a significant immigrant population from Crete, we know we will find lots of horta, wild greens that we Cretans steam and treat with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and sometimes with garlic and serve as salad/side dish along with fish or meat dishes. And, we do, too. I buy a few different kinds of horta, since we are planning to buy barbun, a special kind of salt water fish found in these waters, a delicacy for fish lovers. I  know my mom will love it as well. On the way out of the farmer's market, we take a peek at the old olive oil mill, that is being renovated by the municipality. It is heart-warming to see Turkish local governments becoming more interested in preserving the old and authentic.

As soon as we meet with my brother, we head toward the fish market, which is another unique phenomenon in Turkey. Each coastal town has a fish market, the size of which varies depending on the size of town. This town hosting tens of thousands of Izmirites each weekend, when the weather is good, has a fairly large one, two acres of covered area with hundreds of small open-front shops displaying all kinds of fish and seafood. We buy two kilograms (more than four pounds) of barbun, the favorite of most fish "connesouir" in Turkey and half a kilo of tongue fish for my mom. I have a feeling, 8 people, whom I will host for dinner at my mom's house tonight will not leave a single bone behind. And, that turns out exactly to be the case at the end of the evening. Everybody fills up their bellies with this crisply fried delicacy to the max, the last couple nobody wants anymore find their way to my, already full but eager-to-except-these-extras tummy, knowing that I won't be able to have them again until at least March, when I will return for my niece's engagement party.

A corner from a fish market, the orange fish is barbun

The rest of my visit to Turkey is job related. I will attend a conference related to a research project exploring the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences and sexual abuse in Balkan countries including Turkey, for which I have been scientific consultant and ethics committee member. I will meet with the Izmir Child Abuse Task Force to discuss their contributions to and expectations from the newly established Child Protection Center of Izmir as part of the second wave of pilot centers being established in the entire country to respond to child sexual abuse on a  multidisciplinary basis. I will finally spend a day at the said center and provide peer review to the wonderful and extremely enthusiastic and dedicated members of the center. Full three days of work before I leave to go to Portugal, and what wonderful three days they turn out to be. After I am done with my work, my belief in Turkish people has been renewed one more time; the good in them, the talents in its intelligent from its researchers, to its physicians, to its administrators, to its prosecutors, to its psychologists, to its victims, to its families wanting to help their children is shining through them in all they have done since my last visit. Good is everywhere, if only people with know-how do their part trusting their people with no hidden agendas solely with the purpose of helping who need our services. It was so gratifying to hear from the prosecutors, who have become part and best advocates of the Child Protection Center model say "this is the best project we have seen being implemented in Turkey for decades." What else do I need for all the hard work we have been doing for 11 years now to get to this point?

PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN TURKEY

PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN TURKEY AND TURKISH BREAKFAST

These children, the gevrekci boys, unfortunately come from poor neighborhoods, majority of whom, are helping their parents with their income. Most go to school, I learned over the years by talking with them. They get surprised when I attempt to talk to them asking them what neighborhood they live in, if they go to school, what grade they are in, how they are doing in school, etc. Apparently, most people tend to not see that their vendor is a child; they choose their gevreks, pay and dismiss the mini-adult they've just failed to notice. I sometimes wonder what kind of market-sharing system exists among them since they range in age and demeanor over a very wide range and I have heard that sometimes altercations break out among them. There must be one, may be a study for Dilara, the daughter of my best friend, who is doing a PhD in Sociology.

I would like to do something different this morning, though. I would like to go down to the shopping district of the neighborhood and get our gevrek from a bakery along with other breakfast goods since one of my brothers Mehmet and his wife Kezban will join my mother, her assistant and I for brunch this morning. I want to have an elegant and all inclusive Turkish breakfast, which is a favorite indulgence for pretty much all Turkish people. I walk down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, I have to increase my energy expenditure after the several pounds I gained during the holidays in Iowa City. As soon as I reach the sidewalk beneath the upper level yard of the apartment complex, I notice him: a young man with a large cart full of items that he is pushing. He is one of the "professional recycling" entrepreneurs! He stops by one of the dumpsters in front of one of the apartment buildings. The physician in me is concerned that he will do his exploration in the dumpster with no gloves and who knows what he will be exposed to. I can see, his left hand has no glove on. He reaches into the dumpster with his right hand, though, and valla! He does wear a latex dish-washing glove on his right hand. Turkish minimilastic submission to rules and regulations...

Professional environmentalist recyclers


He takes a plastic item out of the dumpster and transfers it into his cart. Alas, on the way to the cart the item passes from his right hand to the left with no glove. Apparently, whoever taught him to wear a glove while exploring through the dumpster didn't fully explain to him the reason for that. He moves on with the fake satisfaction that he is doing his job by taking the proper precautions to protect himself. I wonder if any public health professional considered doing a study on these recyclers to find out the prevalence of various infectious diseases in this population. A topic to discuss with my friends at Izmir Department of Public Health.

I also wonder how many miles this man has done already and how many more he will do all day. But wait, I guess I don't need to worry about his joints and muscles for walking so many miles every day. Things,  in Turkey, seems to have changed in this arena, too. Ten feet ahead of me something I had never seen before is unfolding. Our environmental entrepreneur approaches the sidewalk for a different purpose this time: he pulls the canvas "container" of his cart off its metal frame and starts dumping its contents into a truck bed! Wow, it looks like garbage sorters travel not on foot but with a truck nowadays, I am stunned. Businesses must be indeed growing in Turkey if it came all the way down to mechanization of this trade as well...

Recycling of goods off dumpsters has become motorized in Turkey!


Mark, my friend, a law professor and a sociologist, is correct after all, globalization is indeed making developing countries wealthier. I can see that every time I travel to Turkey, but at what cost must be the next question, which Mark is not asking. It is also clear before my eyes that most of the new wealth at least in Turkey is accumulating in the hands of privileged, already wealthy.  And, it is accumulating more and more in the hands of the religiously fundamentalist corporations or those that are pretending-to-be-so, the "nuevo rich". The ever Americanization of Turkey follows the trend of constant increase in the gap between the poor and the rich at an ever-increasing rate. This, globalization advocates have not found a solution to. Garbage sorting entrepreneurs being able to own or rent a truck to collect more garbage and even more so, the top rich being able to live in gated communities guarded by security men "enjoying" their jets and yachts don't help reduce the squatting communities in the barracks of every metropol, nor does it help the poorest struggling in those communities or in isolated countryside be able to get health insurance or better food, clothing, housing, and education for their children. I wonder if the greedy rich ever worry about how to close this gap, in America they certainly do not, and I don't see any sign of such a concern in Turkey, either.

After all of this proselytizing, I am back home, Shahodat, my mother's caretaker has steeped a wonderfully aromatic Turkish tea, already. We start furnishing our breakfast table with purely Turkish breakfast items; gevrek right out of the neighborhood brick oven, three different kinds of cheese, one of which, an aged kaseri cheese came from the cheese capital of Turkey, Kars, along with two kinds of olives both green and black, sliced fresh cucumbers, green and red peppers chopped into rings encircling a bunch of parsley treated with sea salt and lemon juice, finally a bowl of sliced tomatoes treated with olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, mint, and sea salt. Mmmmm, I can see how we will enjoy all this. Mehmet and Kezban arrive soon and they have brought a home-made sucuk made by one of Kezban's childhood neighbors from her home town Adana. Sucuk is a Turkish sausage prepared with ground beef treated with lots of spices, salt, and garlic and stuffed into lamb intestines to serve as casing before it is dried. Because it is treated with so many different kinds of spices and salt, it is edible even raw. But the best way to eat sucuk is to grill it in 1/8 inch thick slices into a sandwich or cook it with eggs in olive oil or butter. In my kitchen it is always olive oil since we pretty much do not use butter at all in Cretan cuisine.

A picture off the internet close to our breakfast table

I am glad I bought fresh organic brown eggs. I give the responsibility to cook the eggs and sucuk to my brother. This item has to be prepared at the last minute, just before starting breakfast since it is most delicious when it is warm/hot. We check the table, one more time, we are satisfied with what we see. Mehmet is on the job to cook the eggs and sucuk, even my mom is waiting with a childish excitement of "sucuk for breakfast". She is not allowed to eat it due to its salt content, but on such rare occasions, we ignore the doctor's recommendation, thinking at age 70 she may enjoy some of the not-so-good juices of life. She is thrilled, she eats her sucuk with such savoring, I can tell all she is focusing on right now is her taste buds and what is happening on her tongue. In other words, she is meditating.

TURKIYE: WHERE MY ROOTS ARE

TURKEY AND ITS ROOTS, BRIEFLY

This time destination is home: the streets, the sky, the mountains, the sea; all the things  I grew up with, or by, or on, or under. How I love visiting this land. It is such a rich universe with its people, Turkish, Kurdish, Laz, Circassian, Jewish, Armenian, Greek, Arab and many more; with its corresponding language variety, as you walk on the streets in Izmir, you may hear multiple languages some from tourists, but some from its residents; with its nature, savoring a sunset by the water, Aegean, is like no other; strolling in its wild life preserve, an open air zoo, is refreshing, hiking in its mountains is coming back home; and thinking of its history with its good and bad is eye opening to say the least.

Anatolia, on which Turkey and its peoples live has always had a logistically important place in history: Serving as a geographic bridge between Asia and Europe and even as a gateway to Africa from both, put Anatolia in a unique position throughout the history. Anatolia, home to the old cultures of antiquity, following  the southern wave of the big migration out of Asia became the new home for the Turkic tribes of Central Asia moving toward the west. One of those tribes "Osmanogullari - The sons of Osman" grew to become the owner of the land, eventually overthrowing the unconquerable Byzantine Empire. Not only that (but also because of that), Ottomans grew to become an insatiable imperial power stretching its claws onto three continents, carving out as much land as possible, and ruling numerous peoples in its territories as other imperial powers of the old world, Spanish, British, Portuguese, French were sailing to and conquering the new world.

                                                                    Turkey in red

I had read a book on Ottoman Empire, written by a British researcher, in which Istanbul, in her hay-day was described as the Paris, London, New York of today, cities that everybody would like to visit, live in, become part of to reach the most up to date art, science, business and politics. Istanbul was where numerous world languages were spoken, where numerous nationalities and ethnicities lived side by side, where everybody wanted to migrate to. Those were the days before the WWI, before allies invading Istanbul and before ethnic cleansing took place in an attempt to eliminate Ottoman-ness and replace it with Turkish-ness following the Turkish Independence War. I wish there could have been a way to preserve that rich, very rich diversity along with claiming and sustaining sovereignty. Although Istanbul's "world city" persona declined to a certain extent after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey's significance remained due to its political conjuncture.

The next significant role Turkey played in world history was during WWII when it became the "limiting membrane" ahead of Hitler's Germany's expansion to outside of Europe to the south of the Black Sea. One good thing the Turkish administration of the time did to serve not only peoples of Turkey but probably the entire world also, was to play the game of politics in a very refined way with both sides of the equation between Churchill and Hitler. This kept Turkey out of WWII and saved allies the burden of having to fight Germany in yet another front.

Currently, Turkey is, one more time, rising (or pretending?) to become a "key player" in world history, now in the Middle East, the reality of which is arguable in my mind as we saw very clearly in the negotiations between the world and Syria that the current Turkish pri-minister attempted leading with no success. The Turkey of the last century, that had shaken off its past with its islamic socio-cultural identifiers, toward a more modern and enlightened future has gradually been forced to revert to that past under well planned, political agenda based on re-molding of the society back to an islamist one by the use of the educational system. This plan in fact has been in the process of implementation since after WWII under unfortunately the auspices and encouragement of the western "developed" world, yet another near-sighted foreign policy supported by administrations of post-WWII. The pace and patience and subtlety of this plan have always reminded me of those of "bolero"; invisible baby steps for several decades that escalated to moderately, visible moves for another couple of decades, still difficult to interpret for most of the society in terms of the major repercussions they bore within them, only appreciated by politically keen intellectual eyes and minds, finally topped with the last decade's marching of islamists to all layers of the state including the underground hidden state structure. I am curious about what I will hear this time from my brothers and friends about what is happening in Turkey politically lately.

With these thoughts I drift into sleep with my neighbor already snoring next to me: Quite unlike me but I end up sleeping pretty much most of the 10-hour flight from Chicago to Istanbul this time. Off and on, I think, I slept for about 6 hours. Probably because the flight left at 10 pm and after the service, when the lights were turned off, it was midnight central time and I was ready to go to sleep. As a result, I was quite energetic when our airbus landed in Istanbul, the only problem was that it was 4:30 pm Turkish time. When my brothers and sisters in law left my mother's apartment after our reunion dinner, it was 12 am with no sleep in my wide open eyes. However, with meditation, I was able to put myself to sleep probably around 12:30 am only to wake up at 3 am. It was around 6 am when I was able to drift back to sleep. At 9 am I woke up with calls from the "gevrekci" boys down on the streets. My mother's apartment building is in a pleasant neighborhood in Izmir. It is on a hill high enough to give us an almost panoramic view of the Izmir Bay from both the front and rear balconies of the apartment. There is a small neighborhood park, a school, and a tennis court in front of the apartment building, which provide an expanse of open space, unusual in an urban setting in large metropols of Turkey. The green space in the front, the hills around in the distance, beyond which is the Aegean make this apartment quite pleasant.

If not exactly this, it is pretty close to what we see from my mother's apartment, Izmir Bay in the distance
Every morning, boys from 8 to 18 years of age cover the streets of the city on foot selling a baked good called "gevrek" similar to bagel. They carry a wooden tray of 3 ft in diameter on their heads over a doughnut shaped soft cushion that enlarges the contact surface between the tray and their head. The tray is piled with gevreks. Gevrek with cheese is almost staple food for breakfast in Turkey, especially in Izmir. In other cities they sell baked goods similar to gevrek, a terrible shadow of it that they call simit, acma and other names, none of them tastes or feels like gevrek. The proof of that is that all of them are sold as "Izmir simit" or "Izmir acma" or "Izmir gevrek" to convince the buyer that it is as good as what you find in Izmir. As soon as you take a bite you know that it is not true.

gevrek, crunchy, warm waiting for a slice of turkish tulum cheese along with a glass of turkish tea