TURKEY FALL 2017 - 2 - THE SCARLET OF ISTANBUL AND MEDITATING AT THE AIRPORT

I watched a movie on the plane from Chicago to Istanbul, Istanbul Kirmizisi: My translation is “The Istanbul Scarlet” however online translation is “Red Istanbul”, I respectfully disagree. A very powerful movie that blends together all walks of life in Turkish society into an intermixed series of personal histories heavily shaped by generational traumas that unfold very gradually through the movie in moments that are the least expected.

The cast of The scarlet of Istanbul

Orhan who has lived in London for years without visiting Turkey agrees to help Deniz -a famous director- and Orhan’s friend from his youth to edit his first book. Deniz, the son of a very old and wealthy Istanbulite family has been living in a mansion with his mother. His mother has been struggling with cash shortage and the fading grandeur of their mansion and status in high society. Orhan finds himself in the middle of Deniz's complicated relationships, mysterious friends and strange family members, which leads to a relapse of his alcoholism. Then starts unfolding his own trauma…

True scarlet of Istanbul for those who haven't seen it first hand

I couldn’t help but notice time and time again how the appearances rarely tell the full story of a person’s life and what their life is about… A queen-like set of attitudes and elegance may be hiding deep suffering and poverty. A man a little better looking than a beggar on the street might have come from the same mansion as the high society’s “princess? Addiction as the mirror of unresolved trauma… How Turkish culture encourages avoidance rather than bravely processing and resolving trauma… Isn’t it the same in many cultures in fact?

how childhood trauma affects brain and behavior

Ah, how childhood trauma is behind everything that we do that forces us to adopt behaviors to push aside the problem of the moment without resolution of the root cause… Haven’t I seen many patients, acquaintances and even family members, who couldn’t examine their lives that led to their premature death, just like in the movie… As the film unfolds, it becomes almost a textbook on trauma, maladaptive behaviors to numb the pain of depression, and prematurely short-cut lives... I wonder if the script writer had studied adverse childhood experiences that I focus on lately in my teaching and research. I definitely would watch it one more time.

Istanbul behind the veil of its familiar fog

As I head toward baggage claim, I am paying a renewed attention to people of many ethnicities that walk past by me; I am more curious than before about what their story may be. What type of adversity they had dealt with in the past, what type of resiliency brought them to this very spot in their lives… Are they happy in this very moment, are they suffering of some impermanent, sometimes misperceived problem in their minds? I feel that this openness opens my heart to more loving kindness and space.

Routine crowd with a variety of cultures evident at Istanbul Ataturk Airport

I could never imagine in the past that simply a new way of looking at life based on wise knowledge could change our thoughts and emotions so drastically in a relatively short period of time. And the name of this new way is mindfulness, and its tool, meditation. I am thankful to Jon Kabut Zihn, whose mindfulness work first convinced me to the importance and feasibility of this paradigm shift, to Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dalai Lama, and many others, who have been teaching millions on earth the tools of meditation so that more and more of us could lead mindful lives. If one would like to fight against being judgmental, discrimination, hatred, anger, anxiety, even sadness, this paradigm shift and its tools are highly recommended…

If only we could maintain the mindfulness and awareness we cultivate before the beautiful horizons watching the elegant dive of a seagull when we are challenged with emotionally charged situations in daily life...

As I am typing these lines, I am startled with a woman screaming from the security check point with an accusatory tone in her screeching voice. As she continues screaming and blaming, a second voice starts escalating in an angry authoritarian tone, most likely a security officer. I am glad to see that I automatically start taking deep breaths that prevent me from getting carried away with judgments of my own, which were pretty frequent in the past “What do you expect? These angry Turks! I hate this screaming and screeching! on and on and on…”

I wish some wise publishing house had translated Thich Nhat Hanh's books including this one to Turkish...

This time I am calm and curious without any emotions attached to it, although I can’t help but think fleetingly “Welcome to Turkey…”. Still some element of judgment there… As soon as I think this thought, the next one is “This is not Turkey, this is two individuals who are both ‘trauma triggered’.” At the same time I am thinking of countless young homeless people screaming exactly the same way on “Reality” shows on TV channels in the US! This helps me be curious about both individuals: “What triggered this woman? Could the officer have done or said something differently that triggered the other one? Could she have approached the triggered person in a trauma informed and trauma sensitive manner to prevent the escalation? Could the triggered woman have acted differently had she been able to understand her trauma, had she been meditating?”… on and on and on... I will never find out the answers to any of the questions… All I can do is feel loving kindness for both of them and hope they may be free of enmity, anxiety, fear, and anger and find peace and happiness in their lives…

I wonder if these fiery sunsets make Turkish people as fiery as they are, as we are... I just wish we could keep the fire within limited to our writing, our dancing, our singing, and loving with loving speech and actions...

TURKEY FALL 2017 - 1 - SWAYING BETWEEN TWO CONTINENTS

My second visit to Turkey four months apart in 2017. Turkey has always been something of a push and pull for me at least for the last 20 years. When I left Turkey in 1998, with the hopes that I could establish a more free, more peaceful, less hectic life in the US for both myself and my daughter, I was more on the push wave. Although my financial future was well secured in Turkey as long as I was willing to work 60-65 hours a week, to which I was becoming more and more averted, the path to my academic aspirations had seemed to be a dead end.

Cooking together, one of the cultural traditions in Turkish culture

I was a very future oriented person then, putting my ever-present anxiety to good use; a propeller to build a future… I have to give credit to myself, how could I not be? …having grown up in a developing country, where nothing is secure, where most if not all aspirations may clash with a wall of corruption any time, where ‘whom you know’ (mostly corrupt) override any and every skill set and competency and where future is always a concern in one’s mind with some hopes but mostly surrounded with a halo of fear...

Gezi resistance of 2015 in Istanbul when the government tried to destroy a centrally located park

Add to this, the shame culture Islam pumps over especially women, there is almost no opportunity to stay in the moment, joy almost blinks its eye for a moment during a sunset walk, or a hike in the deep forests, or in the waters of the Aegean along with peaceful strokes as if stolen from long narratives of struggle with life. No wonder, when I had read this quote in a book “Life is a long telegram. The relatively fewer dots are the blissful moments scattered in between numerous lines that represent the struggles life presents. Treasure those blissful moments.”, it had resonated perfectly with my then-experiences.

20 years ago, a gay rights march would be unthinkable

It took me a mere couple of months in the US to start feeling the pull to what I had left behind. Relatively sterile and homogenous environment at the Ohio State University, my port of entry to professional life in the US opened my eyes to some of the beauties of the Turkish culture that did not exist in Columbus, Ohio. I recall my discussion with my daughter, then 13, “There are good and not-so-good in both the US and Turkey. If we can preserve what is good in Turkish culture and add to it what is good here, that will make us the best people we can be.” She was in, and all too naturally, we preserved our mother tongue Turkish, a must to remain connected to the culture.

Best cartoon I have seen on Tayyip Erdogan's approach to ISIS-Kurdish fight

Over time, having spent more of her life in the US than in Turkey, she became a woman full of compassion, curiosity, freedom, exploratory enthusiasm, fearlessness that she acquired, some, from American culture, some from Turkish and some from both.  She is probably the person that I would have liked to become had I had all the resources she has had. American culture, rather the section of it we chose to connect transformed my life as much as hers. I discovered I was not a true democrat as soon as I arrived in the US. Discussions about gay rights as part of human rights had not been part of my activism at all! Even in my medical training, homosexuality was taught to be a pathology! I had to wear my humility hat and relearn homosexuality as part of human panorama.

Saturday mothers who claim their loved ones "disappeared" while in state custody due to political arrests

I learned about secular volunteer work. I found myself as free as a bird in relating to other people in a framework of non-judgmental, flexible, respectful connectivity.  The suffocating “everybody has to be in your business because everybody knows your business better than you” attitude in Turkey dissolved into my past, only emerging in small doses during visits, which I learned to manage over time, with compassion but sensible boundaries. Both my daughter and I are not American, nor Turkish, but at the same time both Turkish and American. Add to this, my Greek heritage and her probably Central Asian heritage on her father’s side, we don’t know where we belong anymore, but we feel at home wherever we go, all around the world for that matter.

Talk about conspiracies in which multiple states are intermingled

This reminds me of what Pema Chodron, writes about groundlessness: “Groundlessness makes most people uncomfortable, unknown generates anxiety, and we try to avoid it at all costs. Life is a river, if we try to swim to either shore to grab onto something, we will lose the opportunity of enjoying the river. Staying in the middle of the flow is groundlessness. To meet all challenges and beauties of life with the same calm and peace, we should make ourselves comfortable in the groundlessness of each moment.” Once upon a time, I could never ever consider this, engulfed with anxiety that we call goal-orientation, aspiration in developed countries I was in need of controlling every single moment, day, month, year of my life. It took me over 50 years of learning to understand what she means: embracing in peace and with calm the groundlessness life presents to us day in day out. Although, it isn’t easy to do this when unworthy, incompetent presidents control the lives of millions to serve their best interest, try, I do my best… With this paradigm shift, to my surprise, I am thoroughly enjoying what is happening as life happens to me in this “life is a work-in progress” attitude...

Pema Chodron is one of the wisest and most compassionate philosophers I have been reading lately

As I am typing these lines, something happens on the place that draws my attention to cultural clashes and biases that are all around us. The incident involves a middle-eastern couple sitting in front of me. The lady’s traditional attire, topped with a conservative head scarf and the gentleman’s dark features coupled with their accent made it clear they were not born in the US. As the stewardess is going through her last minute checks, she tells them to put under the seat in front of him the backpack that he apparently is holding on his lap. She is about to pass by my seat when I ask her whether my bag is OK (I had put a seat belt around my bag!!). She politely says it is unacceptable, and I move it to where it belongs, under the seat.

One of Pema's wisest quotes

When she returns, she is very upset with the couple in front of me, since they had moved their bag onto the seat across the aisle that is empty! As she tells them what she already had instructed earlier, the lady reaches out across the aisle and tries to buckle the seat belt over the bag! The stewardess now looks like she is about to kill someone. Having lost her hope in the customers’ capacity to abide by the rules, she tries to move the bag to under the seat, unfortunately, it is too voluminous to fit there!! The couple is almost paralyzed, they are murmuring something not quite audible, the lady is trying to do something about it with minimal success. The gentleman sitting on the window seat, who would be expected to resolve such problems in Middle Eastern culture is just not doing anything that makes me think ‘this is weird, I wonder what is going on with this family?’

Are we this afraid of the truth!?

The stewardess is fighting with the bag to push it under the seat without much success.  In the end, she manages to have the bag get stuck between the two seats, and walks down the aisle, clearly fuming and frustrated.  To tell the truth, I am slightly frustrated, too: I wonder if the couple was simply being sneaky in putting their bag on that seat, rather than under it; I wonder what their motive might be in not obeying the rules of the flight… Luckily, I also catch myself thinking “who knows what you don’t know about the justification of their attitude, Resmiye, let’s not be judgmental.” At the same time, I am feeling for the stewardess, but am also wondering whether she could have approached the problem in a more peaceful way. Did she have a bias against this couple the moment she recognized they were “other” in her mind when she didn’t even feel the need to check my seating because I look more like of the dominant ethnic group in the US?

That is me versus the below picture of a Middle eastern couple: Appearances leading to biased treatment?

As we get ready to deplane, I notice that a younger woman from behind approaches the seat of my neighbors, who clearly seem to be her parents. As I pass by them, my physician eyes notice that there is some neurologic abnormality with the gentleman. He is of the age, he might have had a stroke. No wonder he was sitting by the window, the lady as his protector on the aisle seat. He most likely was not able to stand up and find a place for their big backpack. She on the other hand is either not strong enough to do the task or as a woman of her own culture didn’t feel comfortable being the center of attention of all the passengers at the time the bag became a problem. I feel grateful that my inner voice had cautioned me against sharing the stewardess’ frustration in full. There was indeed something I didn’t know and recognize, which I could appreciate now. How many incidents do we encounter when we form an opinion that may be totally baseless and wrong? How often we miss the opportunity to “find the space between an experience and a response”  to pause in order to make a just, fair, and kind decision to act… If only we could always manage this…

The couple in front of me pretty much looked like this sweet couple