TURKEY NOVEMBER 2013 -5- FIRST TRADITIONAL KIDS AND ALL GET TOGETHER (1. GELENEKSEL COLUK COMBALAK TOPLASMASI)

11.11.2013

I go back to the end of 1980s even in the deafening chatter of my lovely crowd at my mother’s house. In mid-80s, my husband Zeki had already introduced me to his friend Mehmet and his wife Saniye, who had just had a baby then, our dear Ekin. We had recently moved to Izmir from Burhaniye, a resort town along northern Aegean, where I had worked for two years as a brand new Ministry of Health family doctor at a mother and child health care center. Saniye and Mehmet made me feel like I had known them all my life, I still vividly recall the weekend we spent together at their house. How could I have known then that they would have become two of my closest friends throughout my life? They did become indeed, which continued when they moved to Izmir in the end, and nowhere but to our neighborhood...

Mehmet and Saniye

When we moved to Izmir, my husband was hired by a company where one of my childhood friends Levent worked at. My history with Levent went all the way to our toddlerhood... In fact, his paternal grandmother and mine were neighborhood friends from Crete, where my entire family emigrated to Turkey from. I remembered how our grandparents chattered in Cretan like machine guns (so it felt to me when i was barely in elementary school) when we were kids. His father and mine had grown up together and both had become carpenters, whose wives (our mothers) also had become friends. I recall, our visits to their home in Bayrakli, one of the old town sections of Izmir at the very end of the bay. They lived in a two-story typical old Turkish house, which I admired. How could I have known we would also move into an even older, stone Greek house one summer, only to move into another one in a month due to the enormous size of the former and my poor 21-22 year-old mother being too scared to live in that huge house.

 

Levent and Suzan

Levent during our meeting tonight will bring up the second house of that summer we lived in. It was adjacent to the railroad tracks and an open movie theater. The screen was right behind our house and sitting on the window sill of the back room, we were able to watch the movie every night. It was quite fun for us kids of course, it must not have been so for my mother. At the end of the summer, we were back to where we came from in Karsiyaka. Our parents must have decided, where we had lived was not that bad after all. Isn’t it what happens in life in many situations: Especially, young people wonder the world to find out what they had in the first place was not that bad after all… Some on the other hand travel far far away to find independence and freedom to grow and flourish. I think what happened to me is the latter in life.

 

My honorary pediatric patients, who've now grown to become wonderful adults

Levent introduced his girlfriend Suzan to Zeki (my husband) and I. We liked her right away, she was soft-spoken, sensitive, and quite fun. We started socializing. It was several months after we met her, they came to our house one night for dinner. All of a sudden, Levent uttered "Find an apartment for us from this building or next, so we can get married, too, will you?" We were kind of surprised, but nothing compared to the expression on Suzan's face: She was stunned, understandably, since we would learn in a bit, this was Levent's proposal to her! And she accepted... It was a wonderful and an unforgettable moment (I still remember where we each were in our apartment when this very conversation took place). Moments like this; being witness to such an intimate moment of friends’ history that make people best friends I guess. We couldn't find an apartment for them right in our building, but in about .5 km or so, thus, we became neighbors for a long time, from 1988 till 1998 when I left Turkey and moved to the USA. Their daughter Gulce was born in 1989 and became not only my surrogate daughter but also my patient in my pediatric office, one of my precious patients a member of a slew of kids that were my honorary patients: Ekin, Mehmet and Saniye's daughter and Umut, Yildiray and Aysegul's son among a half dozen kids. I would schedule them personally to the last visit of mostly a Saturday, so that I could spend as much time as needed not only for the kids but for us parents as well. Each of these visits would end with casual friendly catch up conversations, which I treasured throughout my tenure in my private practice. It warmed my heart when recently, Yildiray sent me a message and asked me about Umut’s immunization status! Umut being 28 years old now, I felt sad that I had not kept his card but transferred his file to my friend Demet, who took over my private practice when I left Turkey. Fortunately, when Umut visited us this past fall in Iowa City, I gave him all the info he needed to get his missing immunizations in Austria.

Yildiray and Aysegul 

The last team that joined our group was Yildiray and his family. Yildiray was a friend of Mehmet and Levent and thus became a friend of Zeki. He happened to move to our neighborhood with Aysegul, his wife and Umut, his son. Umut turned out to be my daughter Zeynep's age! Yildiray was the "baba" (father) figure in our entire group. Always mature, coming up with good ideas on everything, dependable to the T! Aysegul was a "mother" figure, taking care of all our needs when there was nobody else to take care of them, child care being one! In the end, she would indeed start a home day care and become the care provider of all our kids except for Zeynep, whose care provider was my mother already. I "fell in love with her" the moment I met Aysegul and she never failed me! Zeynep became their surrogate daughter, especially after her father and I split, Yildiray played a very significant role in Zeynep's life.

A group of us from the dinner

More importantly, Zeynep and Umut grew up together sometimes fighting, sometimes sharing, sometimes teasing, but mostly in full camaraderie and loving each other.  When we left Turkey in 1998, they were both 13 years old, but fortunately, they kept in touch through the years including face to face meetings in Istanbul or Izmir especially during Zeynep's study abroad for a year in Istanbul several years ago. Every time we meet, we share so many stories together that crack us all up… I won’t share these here, though, since there is a ban on such stories in public from Umut! Our children grew up to become competent, well-trained young men and women. Umut now is in the sales management field at an international company, working in Austria, my daughter is going through her medical education in the USA, Ekin, Mehmet and aniye's daughter is in investment banking in London, Gulce, Levent and Suzan's daughter is a lawyer, going into international studies in Istanbul. The last offspring, Baris, Ekin’s brother, who was barely a few years old when we left Turkey is in college in Istanbul as well, whom I hope will also connect to us all down the road.

 

My brother and his wife

Just as I am going through all this in my mind, we have gone through quite a bit f food at the table including the main dish, hungarian chicken paprikash. For some reason, Yildiray postpones his main dish claiming "I'd like to go slow..." that is the t=rhetoric at “raki sofrasi” while drinking raki. In the mean time, I share with my friends the crystal candle holders I brought for each family. I will keep two of them at my mother’s house and each will get two to take home so that at every house we get together from now on, we will light candles at the dinner table. these candles will be aflame in honor of the light of our friendship that enlightened our paths for so long. It turns into a touchy moment. Suzan and Aysegul are in tears, I can barely hold them back. The guys, as expected are trying to lighten the air with jokes and teasing statements, but I can tell everybody is feeling the same: We all know how precious our friendship has been for all of us. It is such a priceless experience. What is almost more important is that our kids also share the moment with us.  Their faces are full of light, understanding, and love, just like us... We know they will carry the banner of communal sharing, appreciation and bonding to the next generation…

where can one fall asleep like this but HOME? that's how we all feel at each other's home at all times...

TURKEY NOVEMBER 2013 -4- 1ST TRADITIONAL KIDS AND ALL GET TOGETHER (1. GELENEKSEL COLUK COMBALAK TOPLASMASI)

1. GELENEKSEL COLUK COMBALAK TOPLASMASI

11.11.2013

If somebody had told me a month ago all the things that happened last night would happen, I could have never believed them! I went to bed around 1 am right after my friends left last night, feeling more for them (although I was also miserable with jet lag) since 3 of my beloved friends had a 6 am flight to catch, and the rest except for the three vacationers among us, had to be at work by 8 am. Despite all the difficulty involved, they all came, after carrying the sweet anticipation in their hearts for weeks just as I did. They all brought lovely, healthy food that they had cooked with their own hands just like I did, for all of us, our commune of 25 years of age. The only pronoun uttered throughout the night was "us" and "we" and "our" just as in the old days. Tears were abundant, but all full of love, longing, and happiness. Laughter was much more abundant, throughout the night, at times reaching the level of screaming in ecstasy, thanks to two of our kids, who played quite a trick on not only us but also on each other! When they did the most unexpected, put all aside and chose to be with us against all odds...

 

Yildiray and Aysegul

Around 6:30, they started trickling in. Aysegul and Yildiray, Umut's parents came in first. I had met Yildiray through my ex-husband Zeki, who then introduced his lovely wife Aysegul to us. Of course, Aysegul's arms full of sacks, full of her hearty food dishes. We "mourned" over the fact that Zeynep and Umut, our kids weren't able to come, Umut due to his hectic work schedule in Europe, Zeynep due to the distance and schedule conflicts in America. "Oh well" we calmed ourselves down, surely there would be more times to get together with kids and all. We knew at least two kids of our commune were coming, Gulce and Ekin, 5-6 years younger than Umut and Zeynep. We would hug them for all the rest.  

Suzan and Levent

Suzan and Levent followed along with their beautiful daughter Gulce, inside and out. Her height was at 25th percentile throughout her toddlerhood. Despite all my predictions that she would probably reach an adult height of 5'2" or 3", she is now 5'8" tall ! Well pediatricians fail sometimes, too… We laugh… We do have 8 pounds of baklava from Gaziantep, the baklava capital of Turkey! Hopefully, the boys will have enough and won't have to fight over it. We all lovingly recall a time when we had gone out to dinner during one of my recent visits to Turkey. Susan had brought 8 pounds of baklava, 4 for us after dinner, 4 as a gift to other friends of theirs to be delivered the next day. We saw very quickly the first 4-lb box being cleared empty. Yildiray and Mehmet were complaining that they had not had enough: However, somebody noticed that their plates were still full of baklava. In no time, Levent discovered that Yildiray and Mehmet had stolen the other box and were serving themselves more and more baklava from under the table! Good thing, he recognized that soon enough, the second box also found its way to ALL of our tummies, certainly with a larger share for Yildiray and Mehmet. When 50 year-old adults act like kids, you know they are with best friends, that’s who we have been for one another for a quarter of a century now, what a bliss…

Ekin, Mehmet and Saniye

The last team we are expecting is Mehmet and Saniye and their children, Ekin, for sure, and perhaps Baris, their son, too.  Around 7, we receive a phone call from Mehmet, who finally declares, he is lost. It becomes clear that instead of following my brother's crystal clear directions, he chose to follow his GPS, which was constantly sending him to a section of town quite opposite of where we were. Eventually, his wife and daughter giving him quite a hell made him accept that a human brain still needs to be monitoring these techno junkies and called us to get the directions. Of course we meet them all  with quite a bit of laughter and "boooo" for Mehmet taking the remaining of his self-esteem away from the poor guy. Saniye and Ekin are very pleased since they had been struggling with his technology obsession for over half an hour. Baris is missing unfortunately, I am sure, for our second get-together, he will be with us after hearing all of our stories.

Female gang before Zeynep's arrival

After all the greeting hugs and kisses and mini-catch-up conversations, I finally feel having arrived home with them all. The first round of raki is being served gradually, thanks to my brother Mehmet. He is taking care of the ice-cold water, cold raki, ice cubes and all. Levent has already devoured multiple pieces of borek. Several of the men are still teasing our friend Mehmet, for his submission to technology and getting  lost. Just as we are settling down, the door-bell rings that sends a cold shiver down my spine: "Who could that be? other than an unexpected, most likely unwanted spontaneous visitor, which potentially might spoil our evening?" Knowing, the visitor is at the ground floor entrance of the apartment building, I volunteer "let's not open the door" knowing too well, that is not possible in Turkey and Kezban my sister-in-law is already at the door letting the unexpected visitor in anyway.

Raki is a must in Turkish get togethers


There is something unusual, though, Kezban's voice, which is neutral and dull in her "who is it?" escalates into a full-of-pleasant-surprise, rather, feeling-pleasantly-stunned in the following "what do you mean it's me? oh my..." as she opens the door: All of this triggers curiosity in all of us but especially me. I peek through the living room door into the vestibule when Kezban has already opened the door, through which I see something, which makes me feel disoriented. For a second, I ask myself, “where am I, aren’t I in Izmir?” since it is my mischievous daughter, Zeynep, who is entering our vestibule with the most delighted chuckle on her face! It is like a dream, I still can't believe what I see, the little devil, she really tricked me… but I am as delightful as surprised. My entire gang is in our small vestibule now, trying to get a piece of Zeynep. Nobody believes, this is as much a surprise for me as it is for them. Delightful screams, hugs, kisses, laughter fill the space now. I am almost sure Umut will be coming, too, however Zeynep totally denies that. Umut's parents? They do, too, the excuse is, he has to come to Turkey next week, he couldn’t make to trips back to back. Two weeks in a row was not an option. Although, I am ecstatic with Zeyno's arrival, I am a bit disappointed that Umut  is not coming since he was the instigator of all this planning by stirring all the emotions from 15-20 years back a few months ago in the first place... I really wish he could have been with us. For some reason, I still have hope…

My crazy but lovely daughter's arrival brought tears to many eyes... happy ones, certainly...

TURKEY NOVEMBER 2013 - 3 - COMMUNAL LIFE MEMORIES TO COME TO LIFE

COMMUNAL LIFE MEMORIES TO COME TO LIFE

11.10.2013

Finally I make it home one more time, my fourth visit home this year, a first in 15 years. Most likely, I won't be able to come back until next fall for a full year. My entire family is home waiting for me, my mother, both of my brothers and their wives, my only niece and her husband to join us later on, after the opera they had bought tickets for ahead of time. I am pleased to hear that Melike, my niece has become an opera aficionada, dragging her husband down the same path. It looks like he has enjoyed it as much. After sharing memories of the months we have been apart, they all leave past midnight, I am exhausted and pleased. Alas, in 3 hours I am fully awake with jet lag not able to go back to sleep. Thus, my day starts at 4:30 am, a good thing in a way since I promised my family I’d prepare brunch for them, not so good for the evening I have been planning for my dearest of the dear friends, with whom I shared a full ten years together in the same neighborhood in such a way many people can never imagine sharing their lives with other human beings.

But I survive... By 6 am the cheese and spinach borek (spanakopita in other words in Greek) is ready to go in the oven. I go through all the vegetables in my mother's fridge and sort and rinse whatever I can serve to eat raw, and chop whatever I can mix in with the eggs to make a vegetable omelet for my guests.  By 7 am, I am ready to go out to do more shopping for the missing items that I need for a festive brunch. By the time, I return and rinse the rest of the vegetables I just bought, I have a rich mixture of chopped dill, parsley, mint, spinach, red and green peppers, black and green olives and mushrooms as well as several herbs, some of which I brought from home (that is, my home in Iowa City): All of this will go on top of an egg mixture I will lay over a thin film of olive oil to make into an omelet. My brother Mehmet is on a diet consisting mostly of proteins and vegetables. He claims it is working for him for his weight, I hope not at the extent of his cholesterol… I call him around 8:30 since our rendezvous is at 9. I get a loving scolding from a voice that sounds like coming from a cave deep in a mountain. I chuckle to myself. For me, it’s been ages since the day started, for him, he is still deep in the night. Isn’t this what we do in most of our communications with others, seeing the world through our own experiences that shape and color our “lenses”?

Around 9 am they start trickling in, and boy, are they happy with what they see on the table: Gevrek (Turkish bagel, unique to Izmir), varieties of cheese and olives, greens (arugula, parsley, dill, mint), tomatoes treated with olive oil, salt, lemon juice, dried basil and fresh mint, cucumbers, red and green pepper slices and borek... My brother Mehmet brought a special fresh cheese called "lor" in Turkish, it is neither salted nor sweetened. We love eating it mixed with either strawberry jam or honey. I guess, I take this from my mom: I love bringing people especially loved ones around a table donned with lots of good and healthy food. I’ve done it all my life living in Turkey role modeling after her. I exported this tradition to Iowa City, I think in a way, I moved my mother with me across the ocean through this tradition. What I like about this the most is the smile this very act brings to faces. I savor that moment. Making people happy doesn't cost much, really, just a bit of effort invested into making them feel precious is all that is needed... I am happy, I can do that, and I hope I will be able to do that for a long time...

After brunch, my mother's helper starts cleaning up and my brother and I head toward the farmer's market. I get ecstatic when I go to farmer's markets in Turkey. Even the largest farmer's market I have been to in San Francisco is dwarfed by any major farmer’s market in Izmir, Turkey. They are so vast and rich. There are some vendors in each market, who move from one market to another along with their goods. Due to rapid turnover, even their merchandise is very fresh. But, what is best in these markets are the actual farmers, mostly female that bring their produce to select markets that I like visiting. Those are the ones that bring the greens that I like to steam into outstanding fresh, delicious and healthy salads that are treated with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Nowadays, peasant women have started setting up cooking desks as well just like in American farmer’s markets. They cook their traditional pastries, some cook Turkish meat balls along with rice, some sweets. That has brought a different kind of life to the market I must say. To tell the truth, aside from my people, farmer's markets of Izmir is what I long for the most throughout the year, when I am away from Turkey in Iowa City.

My brother and I shop separately. He teases me with my "need for social interaction" when I chat up vendors or others I come into contact with as I roam the city. Most people do not converse with other people as much as I do either in the USA or in Turkey. However, I enjoy that thoroughly, this is the only way I get to know people to the extent that I do. This is the only way I can learn about politics in Turkey through real people roaming the streets. Perhaps, I have developed such interviewing skills based on the patient population that I see, who tell me the deepest secrets of their lives, I might be conveying some element of trust to people. No matter what, each attempt to converse with a person that I don't know pays off tremendously: a life story unfolds before my eyes, never fails, each time....

I load our market cart: every family has at least one large cart of this sort in Turkey, which is filled at least once a week, at times a second time midweek from a neighboring market. I buy 2-3 pounds of beets. Tonight one of my themes will be having a "beet panel" on the table. A lovely friend of mine gave me a bunch of recipes with beets being the main ingredient off of New York Times magazine the week before I left Iowa City. I would like to surprise my best friends with new recipes they’ve never tried before. The beets will be either graded raw or roasted or steamed before turning into novel salad dishes: I will surround the crystal candle holders that I will light to honor our friendship of anywhere from 25 to over 50 years with 4 dishes of beet salads.

The main dish tonight will be Hungarian chicken paprikash that I never served to my friends before. I will also make an international rice dish that I created splicing different elements from different cuisines: dill from an Iranian rice dish, parsley from Hungarian rice, chick peas from Cretan rice, orzo from Turkish and mushrooms and mint will be my improvisation out of nowhere. My friends will bring typical Turkish mezes/tapas to be topped with Gaziantep baklava that my friend Suzan, who is flowing in from that province will bring. I can feel already that it will be a phenomenal evening that will take us on a time travel. We will all feel young, recalling toddlerhood and school ages of our kiddos if not our own, too with some. Our children have all grown into remarkable adults, beyond their professional accomplishments, with their humanistic cores and skills. We know that Gulce and Ekin, age 24, both professionals, one a reluctant investment banker in London (she got in not quite knowing what she was getting into and is now waiting for her “term” to be done); the other a lawyer in Istanbul working toward international relations at an international firm will be coming. We know that Umut, a sales manager at Siemens in Austria, and my daughter, medical student in Iowa City, USA will not be coming. Baris, the last of our 5 kids among the four families may or may not come. My heart still desires all of us get together, some time, if not tonight, in the near future.

Finally, my cart all full, I call my brother to see what he is up to. He is done shopping as well. We head home to start cooking: of course, I will put both Firuza, my mother's helper and my mother to work with sorting and rinsing the vegetables. Poor Firuza, will clean after me the entire day as I create dish after dish, perplexed, in disbelief, not quite understanding why there is such fuss in the house right after my arrival, despite my jet lag... She doesn't know what they mean to me. She doesn't know what I mean to them. She doesn't know what we all mean to each other. At some point, she taps on my shoulder and stops me for a moment and says quizzically: “Abla (big sister in Turkish), you are a professor, how come you cook in the kitchen like this?” She cracks me up, in Kyrgyzi cultural mind-set, I guess (not quite different than rural Turkish culture, really), she believes a professor has to have maids serving her wherever she goes. She will learn though, what our little commune consisting of 13 individuals, 8 adults and  5 children created over ten years, perhaps the most important 10 years of our lives. And for that commune, this professor could do anything. My heart is light, full of love, excitement, and pleasant anticipation....

TURKEY NOVEMBER 2013 -2- HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

11.8.2013

HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

Arrived in Istanbul. On Air Canada, on a flight sparsely sold out. I had two seats to myself, most people had four, those who were lucky enough to be assigned a seat in the middle four-seat section. I wasn’t that lucky, but couldn’t complain, either. The only remarkable thing about this flight was the design of the business class section. The seats were arranged in a Christmas tree fashion. Each seat having its own "cubicle" that made up the branches of the Christmas tree. The outward end of the cubicle had a foot rest, the inward end housed the actual seat. Thus, everybody had their own private cubicle with no opportunity for conversations with fellow passengers, I thought, since the way the seats/cubicles were situated put each cubicle on an oblique plane with any other seat/cubicle, which then put at least 2 yards distance between people. Communication then would require screaming across the aisles! The seats were designed such that, one could slide it forward toward the foot rest piece to complete a flat surface to assume a fully supine position late at night. No more connection with other human beings, though, I thought one more time. Perhaps I am a bit prejudiced, but I have this bias that business class customers are already confined from the rest of the common people, either by choice or situationally. Now more confinement from even peers... Having just read Ernest Hemingway’s “Haves and have nots”, I know there is a lot of loneliness in reaching the steps where one can afford business class tickets all the time. How far will the "haves" go for comfort, more differentiation, more luxury, more alienation before they see what the cost is, before they cannot tolerate the loneliness and lack of connection with other human beings any more...

After I returned from Turkey, I met with a group of friends in which there was a young man, who works in a private consulting company. As an insider from the business world, he gave us astonishing information on the business class flights. I could never ever imagine, a business class ticket may be sold for $75,000, yes, it is not a typo! Seventy-five thousand dollars. Imagine, how much profit is expected from flying a business agent across the ocean at that price... And business world keeps whining about their insurmnountable difficulties when it comes to debating whether we should help out single mothers with children or not when one business class ticket may put food in the stomachs of thousdans of hungry children for a year!

TURKEY NOVEMBER 2013 -1- TAXI DRIVER THE SURVIVOR

11/7/2013

TAXI DRIVER THE SURVIVOR

On the road again. Before even reaching the airport, a compelling story presented itself to me, I feel I should share with the reader. I arranged a shuttle to come pick me up from my house. My luggage is already on the stoop. As I am trying to get my final items together, I catch a glimpse of a red car pulling in onto my driveway. Usually what happens next is, the driver comes to the stoop and starts loading my luggage in the cab as I put on my coat and shoes inside. However, that doesn’t happen this time. The driver doesn't appear by the stoop even after I go out. I look toward the cab, trying to find an explanation. The driver is a woman. I don't even know why I am slightly surprised. I smile at her so does she at me. How could I know a nonstop chatter was waiting to burst just with the trigger of an exchange of smiles?

I will soon learn her name is Asila (of course i wouldn't publish her real name here just as I will change everything in this note just enough so that readers may not identify her). She is a redhead, most likely my age, my size, olive skinned; deeply set small eyes with her bangs giving her a mysterious appearance. Yet, the moment she starts chattering, two things become very clear: She is anxious, covering up her anxiety with her chattering. And, she might have a rough past; she has no teeth, is it just poverty or something else eroded her teeth too prematurely, something that endangers the children I see in my clinic day in day out, something that destroys families, lives, relationships, minds and bodies... Could she be a victim of methamphetamine addiction, on which I am specializing in a way?

For ten minutes she tells me how difficult it was to find my house and how she went the wrong direction and how police helped her find my place, on and on and on... In fact the address was so clear including the directions that I gave the call taker at her company. I am now intrigued by her enough that I want to learn more about her, who is she, where has she been, where is she heading? She has been working with this company for only the last 8 months. She tells me she likes it except for when people argue. She is in a way so personable, I can't understand why one would argue with her except for perhaps telling her "Can you please shut up?" if one doesn't care about "Who is this woman?". She tells me about a young woman for whom Asila was a bit late and took a wrong turn that made her even later, which made the customer even more upset. On top of all, she was also concerned that she was going to have to pay more than she had previously paid on this trip. Eventually, Asile decided to take over the extra charge and they settled down with what the young gal was willing to pay. Asila was still upset about it, though. A harsh sigh, almost a whip lash in the air, is clear indication that she has not forgiven her customer.

I ask her if she works days or nights, or both. She works only days since she can't see well at night. Her mother ordered her a pair of glasses that will help her see better. At age 50s, her mother ordering her glasses, how similar to the clients I see in my clinic. Constant “taking the wrong turn” both literally and metaphorically, how common in my clientele. In a way, as a child abuse pediatrician, I am feeling sad for this woman and want to not go any further with getting to know her better. But then, the anthropologist side of me is curious beyond measure. Furthermore, there is no stopping to her chattering anyway, whether I want to listen to her or not, I am doomed with no way out for another half hour!.

And, besides that, it is so clear she wants to talk, now that she's found a pair of caring ears to listen to her story, she goes on... Her mother is in her 90s with a painful physical condition on top of Parkinson's, which debilitates her mental faculties. Asila has to go to her mother every day to put on a narcotic pain killer patch on her in addition to giving her narcotic pain killer pills. Otherwise, her mom wouldn't remember taking them. She then throws in a fact about she, herself also taking narcotic pain killers. I feel uncomfortable asking her for what, she doesn't volunteer. With her usual chattering about everything but mentioning this just tangentially makes me wonder if what caused her loss of her teeth prematurely was replaced by prescription drug abuse.

I ask her if she has any children to change the topic. She does, a daughter very close to my daughter's age. She is out of state. I ask her what she is doing there. Instead of answering what I asked, she starts telling me about a very familiar story: The daughter has a child from a previous relationship, her boyfriend has two, and now they have a baby together. She doesn't have a car, when she needs to come visit her mom, Asila has to drive up north and bring her to Iowa. "It costs half a tank of gas you know", resentment in her voice. It will come back again and again when she talks about her daughter. I wonder if the daughter is the naughty one or the mother, or perhaps both, don't I see this intergenerational transfer of negative behaviors, they call it epigenetic nowadays.

At some point she volunteers that she is studying criminal justice and counseling at one of the online colleges. I get excited, "OK, perhaps, whatever happened in the past, she is holding onto life to recreate herself!" although in the back of my mind is also “Could this be wishful thinking?” To encourage her to talk more, I tell her, I work in a similar field and I work with social workers. She doesn't ask what I actually do, which is unusual for someone who indeed studies what she just said she is. Instead a frustrated if not angry "I detest social workers, they just took the children of some people I know and put them in foster care. And you know what the foster mother does? She tells this 6 year old girl she is an adult. She is now talking all about penises and vaginas. It is not her place to teach her these things, it is parents' job" comes out in one breath.

She is like a machine gun, clearly there must be more to this, looking at the emotional charge this should-have-been a benign conversation caused. I ask her how she knows these people. She tells me she let them stay with her for couple of months. It became four, she put a deadline, but before they left apparently social services got involved and they came to Asila's house to see the conditions of the house since the family resided with her after all. She volunteers "Well cleaning the house is not my thing. I clean it of course when it really has to be cleaned. They came and told me I was a hoarder and had a mental health problem. My mom laughed at this, she told me I had no mental problem" I hear the pain of the little girl in her. At this age, still looking up to her mother to understand herself? What led to her being stuck in whatever phase of her growth, who knows...

She then tells me she used to work at a major hospital as an administrator closely interacting with social services "They used to work with abused children..." Do I imagine the darkness that takes over her face when she says that? I ask her whether she retired, the most benign question I can think of to learn about why she left that very prestigious institution. The answer is simple: "They fired me!" Wow, almost brutal honesty. All I can say is "I am sorry." She continues "I got diabetes then. I was confused, I made mistakes and fell asleep at work one day. And there was this social worker...", she gave me the name, even, and went on and on and on that the social worker, younger than Asila, couldn't tolerate that people would go to Asila with their problems with their children "...because they needed a mother's point of view." It looks more and more she has created excuses in her mind to justify others being responsible for her failure in the past.

Concerns are chasing one another in my mind: "Narcotic pain killers, hosting a family whose children were abused/neglected, falling asleep at work (was she abusing prescription pain killers then, too, or was she under the influence of something else?) that led to being fired..." She declares humbly, "Since then I have been doing this and that. I like my job, it is good." I tell her it is great that she likes what she is doing, that is important as we turn left into the airport complex. I know, I scratched just the thinnest layer of what this redhead with no teeth has been holding in for how many decades. I wonder why she trusted me to open up like this? I wonder if she does this with every customer or did she trust me because I volunteered to sit by her in the front seat rather than sitting in the back seat, which would be my seat as well with male drivers. I wonder if this "session" will be of any help to her? I wonder if our roads will ever cross again? I give her a hefty tip and leave with a tangy taste in my heart. I look at her, it looks like there is the same tanginess in her heart, too....

TURKEY AUGUST 2013 -13- A STAGED TRADITIONAL TURKISH WEDDING IN OTHER WORDS MODERN KIR DUGUNU

8.12.2013 A STAGED TRADITIONAL TURKISH WEDDING IN OTHER WORDS MODERN KIR DUGUNU

Mission accomplished! The wedding is over, a great success, all went according to Melike's plans, and she is probably peacefully asleep in her husband's arms now as I type up these lines. I  replay everything in my mind over and over as I try to get all the details of the wedding in my blog:

Sunset at the wedding site

I am a "hala" (paternal aunt), enjoying Melike's happiness first and foremost, of course but also a relentless academic, who can’t avoid but look at everything around me through the eyes of an anthropologist, even if I am not one. Having spent significant chunk of my life in other lands, observing other cultures, I think, this has become second nature to me if not by training but by experience.  

My two brothers with their abla (older sister)

I am observing different sections of the attendees as much as I can identify their origins, their group identifications, and their potential paradigms through how they dance, what they like to sing, what they wear, how they address each other, whether they touch each other (if they do how closely) or not, whether they have eye contact or not, on and on and on... This will go on throughout the night. The wedding format is one of a "country wedding" or "kir dugunu" in Turkish. "Kir" is one of the expansive words in Turkish. In one context, it may refer to picnic place, in another to expansive meadows, in yet another to countryside, among other references to wild and natural spaces. 

With my two sisters-in-law before the wedding

When I first heard this term, kir dugunu, I was delighted (soon was clarified by others to be a false understanding) that it would be simple and natural, but still beautiful displaying the extraordinary beauty of the simple. The wedding unfolding before my eyes is indeed beautiful, but anything but simple and natural. I can’t help noticing and feeling disappointed that every single moment of the bride and groom's movements are either choreographed, or dictated by the cameramen, video-recording the entire wedding. It is as if the wedding is staged so that it is filmed, cameras primary, the wedding secondary. As a result of all of this, my poor Melike has to carry a photographic smile on her face throughout the night that will rarely leave its place to her natural, innocent, and beautiful wide variety of mimics and gestures. I wish, from the bottom of my heart the cameramen had left them alone and just recorded the entire night in its own flow and whatever spontaneity was left to exist.

Wedding ceremony conducted on a dedicated stage 

I recall my daughter telling me "country wedding" concept having become one of the "in" commercialization methods of tradition. Furthermore, I discover from Kezban that this fashion had started after one of the soap operas played with the kir dugunu concept in one of its sections that eventually led to a whole industrial sector springing out of nowhere, producing and pumping all kinds of goods and ideas to support and maintain the concept, thus, its market share. When I look at my surroundings with this new awareness,

With my youner brother and his wife

I can now see what kind of a new industry must be supporting all this totally scripted production. I am sad one more time that we are losing our authenticity and adopting American ways in every walk of life, at least in urban settings. Yet, I can’t help but wonder whether the Turkish society has yet again played a trick on globalization and interjected tradition into commercialization. One may certainly argue: is it commercialization of authenticity or authentication of commercialization? If anybody knows the answer to chicken or egg question, perhaps the answer to this question is within that mind, too

Some of the many delightful moments of the wedding involve meeting people from my past that I hadn't seen for decades.

My older brother and his wife, the parents of the bride

One of my high school friends approaches me at the beginning of the wedding with a tall, handsome young man, almost reminiscent of Bratt Pitt! It turnes out the handsome man is my friend's son Utku, who was also one of my patients at my practice until 4-5 years of age, until I left Turkey 16 years ago. He is now a confident, lovely man, who is comfortable telling me "as soon as I heard Resmiye would be at the wedding, I decided I would come, too!" His mother, who is one of the wedding organizers, just by chance, is also ecstatic with our reunion. She tells me "He grew up with stories of his 'auntie Resmiye'. I wasn't surprised when he perked up about coming to the wedding along with us when I told him, you'd be at the wedding", so heartwarming. I give him my card so that he may contact me when he comes to St. Louis to complete the last two years of his college studies at the University of Illinois. I am pretty sure, he will come visit us.

The groom's grandfather offering a golden bracelet as a gift to the bride: tradition prevails!

Some of my cousins from my father's side that I hadn't seen for a long long time, appear before my eyes. I discover the daughter of one of them is in New York City, whose mother also receives a card with my contact info to connect. I hope I can bring her in for a weekend visit, too. All in all, this trip to Turkey was full of a combination of tradition, evolving Turkish culture, and anthropology, which I didn't mind at all, in fact thoroughly enjoyed. I can't say, I was able to silence my inquisitive and analytical and somewhat critical mind as much as a trained anthropologist might have done, but all in all, in all that analytical observation, I still enjoyed my time in Turkey in this August of 2013, thoroughly.

One of spontaneous, caring emotional moments from the wedding, my mother teary and Melike connected with her

TURKEY AUGUST 2013 -12- DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY? WHERE IS IT?

8.11.2013 DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY? WHERE IS IT?

Between hannah festivities and the actual wedding of my niece, they left one day for resting! How thoughtful… We will start the day with a breakfast. One of the best parts of Turkish cuisine is its breakfasts. When I first moved to the USA, lack of access to proper Turkish breakfast items was a killer in terms of our adaptation to our new home. Our olives and various kinds of cheeses, with savory pastry and breads that go along with them were not easily available. Neither bagel and cheese, nor other sweet American breakfast items were cutting it for us. Until internet shopping was invented! Then, Turkish, Armenian, Palestinian food stores all over the country came to our help and America became truly home.

My maternal aunt Filiz, her daughter Muge, and grandson Bora had stayed at my brother’s house after the hannah night. Thus we made a plan to have breakfast at my mother’s/my house to start the day and left the rest to the spur of the moment. My aunt is a pharmacist, the only college graduate in my mother's family of their generation. Her daughter is a chemist, who is working on work place safety project, recently, I found out. Other than my core family, they are the only people I feel close to in my entire extended family, with whom I can share both intellectual and personal experiences. I got up early to make sure our breakfast was rich and healthy. Since nobody went to bed before 1-2 am the night before the breakfast started around 10 am and lasted until noon.

our breakfast table was something like this

After breakfast we start discussing what we could do for the rest of the day. When my brother Mehmet and his wife Kezban come up with the offer of going to Karaburun for a beach day, I am ready with my bag as Kezban will later put it "in 30 seconds". We leave home in 15 minutes to head to a beautiful beach, secluded by an island right across from it, dividing a wide opening to the Aegean into two narrow canals. The water is crystal clear. Behind the narrow beach is a cafe, where we claim a table for drinks and snacks, and shade. Kezban's sister Sehnaz and her husband Ertan and their two adult daughters join us at the cafe. Sehnaz and I have a unique history. I not only know her from our community organizing days through common friends, but and as a result of that I later on, became the pediatrician for her children, who are now sitting across from me, elegant, intelligent, beautiful women.  I first took care of Cansu, who is now a high school teacher and has become an activist herself! Later, I also took care of Goksu, her sister. They tell me the only reason they are at the beach is to see their "auntie Resmiye", that’s how they addressed me throughout their childhood.  It is such a delight to have political adult conversations with both of my girls that came to my hands as newborns and grew up in and out of my practice for years before I left Turkey. They leave with the promise that we will stop by at their summer house for a cup of coffee on the way back.

Karaburun as we are leaving for Izmir

I had also called my best friends, who have a weekend house in one of the villages in Karaburun, where they not only spend most of their summer days, but also almost all their winter weekends as well. I am delighted to see them join us at the cafe after I have my first swim reaching out half way to the island (couldn’t dare heading to the island by myself in the choppy waters). I call somebody a best friend when you don't see them for years, perhaps, but once you get together, you catch up in a few minutes and move on as if that space in time never existed. That is the kind of friends Yildiray and Aysegul are for me, whom I have known for 25 years; we raised our children (Umut and Zeynep) together for ten years until I left Turkey for the USA. Umut, now is a rising star at Siemens working in Austria, and an eternal brother to my daughter. Yildiray is a physician specializing in occupational health, his wife is a special education teacher for autistic children. Whenever I see them, I like to discuss with them the politics in Turkey, since I trust their interpretation of events to the fullest.

Yildiray and Aysegul, being part of the same activist movement I was in, three decades ago, have started organizing the farmers in the Karaburun peninsula, who will have a demonstration against the government and its policies, which is full fledge exploiting the environment and selling public forests and beaches, and islands to their supporters left and right. I am proud of my friends. They tell me all about what happened during the Gezi Park protests that spread to the entire country after the police attacked the peaceful environmentalists in Istanbul in late May. They tell me about waking up at 2:30 am following the Gezi Park crackdown with the noise protesters had created in their residential neighborhood. I asked why at 2:30 in the morning: because the youth is online until late at night and social media had mobilized masses with some lag time. Following the crackdown, the Turkish media, almost fully controlled by the government and its partners/supporters was in deadly silence until a week after the protests. The only communication mode and information source was the social media for a long time.

police brutality in ankara the capitol 

They tell me how they rushed outside to join the young protesters and started walking toward the main road. After a while they headed downtown Izmir to discover there were thousands and thousands of people on the roads. This was only the beginning... They tell me about their own observations of police brutality, how police were cornering people in small groups to be able to beat them up to potential death, if not that, surely to significant injuries. They tell me about men with bats in hand hunting for protesters, especially female protesters to beat up. They are believed to be fundamentalist religious warriors, paramilitia, supporting AKP, Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party. We talk about what little we could do from the USA to contribute to the protests. We discuss how creative the new generation that we, the generation of 68 and the next one had lost hope in due to globalization and consumerism's take over. As much as we appreciate their creativity, my friends are as much worried about the lack of political leadership to bring all this reaction under one banner to tackle down the current rule and bring true democracy to Turkey. Our discussions generate more questions than answers, of course... However, it is still refreshing to hear my thoughts and concerns reflected back at me by my trusted friends, which bring a heightened awareness and knowledge to the table, on my part.

police brutality on protesters

My brother and I talk a lot about Turkish politics, too. The so called "Ergenekon" crisis created by the government "came to an end" after many years of litigation before I left Turkey this time around. AKP created this conspiracy theory that the military, the academics, artists, journalists, the only common denominator among which was vocally opposing government policies had created a terrorist organization called Ergenekon and they were all were working on a plot to topple down the government. As a result of this theory, scores of men and women were incarcerated and kept in jail without a trial for years, some close to a decade. My brother tells me about the government agents hacking accounts of people and inserting provocative, conspiratorial files into their accounts to make them look like they were indeed part of a large conspiracy. He tells me, the defense had proven that there was electronic evidence that such material was inserted into accounts several years after the claimed dates of events (such as the files claimed to have been written in 2003 displaying the formatting of windows 2007, etc). Still, the judges were ignoring such evidence. This is how democratic Turkish political system is and free the judicial system is.  

In my disbelief about "How can that be?" after his initial frustration with me such as "abla, you have become too Americanized, how can you believe that law prevails in Turkey with so many violations to democracy?". After calming him down with "Ok, brother, explain to me how this can happen, since they do claim Turkish state is a state of law". He then tells me very familiar stories on: judges who did consider such evidence, being excused from presiding over the Ergenekon trials and being exiled to the most remote provinces of the country, their promotions being delayed; attorneys defending Ergenekon defendants being harassed, even being incarcerated with imaginary ties to Ergenekon, themselves, to deprive those defendants of their rights to an attorney; prosecutors recognizing all false allegations, keeping their charges to lesser ones also being exiled, on and on, and on...

academics convicted in ergenekon trial 

Ergenekon trials finally ended couple days ago, which led to another bout of demonstrations. Numerous individuals were convicted to a life term, couple of them to "two life term sentences" (!). Mehmet Ali Haberal, world renowned founding president of Baskent University in Ankara, was released due to a lesser conviction, for which he had had more than enough jail time during the stagnant trial process.Tthis is how democratic even the judicial system is in Turkey right now, under this government, which eliminated the separation between executive and judicial powers with the most recent fraudulent constitutional referendum. 

ergenekon convictions

Democracy? the west has been blowing AKP's whistle for a decade now claiming AKP is THE chance for Turkey to embrace democracy.... They either don't know AKP is abusing democracy as a tool for its own benefits, or are ignoring what AKP truly represents just because it serves the west's best interest, economically, for the time being. AKP represents Islamo-fascism as democratic and liberal Turkish people have been experiencing for a decade now, which the world has also witnessed during the last several months through government led, encouraged, applauded police brutality around Gezi Park and national uprising of late.

gezi park protests in turkey

We almost bring the sun down to the horizon with all these discussions, when my brother announces it is time to return home. Understandable since we will make two more stops before arriving home near midnight one more time. we first stop at Mordogan, a lovely fishing coastal town midway between Karaburun and the highway leading to Izmir. Kezban's sister Sehnaz and her family have a summer house at a complex in the middle of olive groves in Mordogan, where multiple family members as well as many friends of theirs from the activist movement of the 70s have secured a summer home for themselves. It is in summary, a truly communal community, the culture of which prevails over the rest of the residents. The main characteristic of the community is openness and sharing in every way. Dinner tables are set in front of homes, all of which face each other across 4 feet wide alleys. Sharing food, mezes, grilled meat, is the mainstay as well as raki toasts. The cultural reminders make me recall Nazim Hikmet, my most favorite Turkish poet's lines:  "sharing everything, everywhere, all the time, other than lover's lips...."

nazim hikmet's poems 

We pay a bayram visit to Kezban and Sehnaz's mother and father, who also have a summer home in the same complex. After enjoying a cup of Turkish coffee, each, we head to a fish restaurant. Every fish restaurant in Turkey is a festivity in and of itself. Most of them are very modest places, very consistent with the beautiful simplicity of beach life, preserved in places like Karaburun, Mordogan, Seferihisar, still resisting to savage commercialization of our beaches. The most spectacular aspect of each of these fish restaurants is their fridges in which the catch of the day is kept and displayed through transparent glass walls. My brother picks a huge six-pounder (over 2.5 kg) sea bass, which lives in the rocky shores of select coasts like Karaburun's. It is a beautiful creature, indeed and its taste, we will all testify to as “beyond this world”. I think of my dear friend Nukhet as I savor the fish, who would definitely say "it is mind-boggling" or "akla zarar", in Turkish. I smile, thinking, how world-wide even my free associations are... I concur one more time, I thoroughly enjoy being a world citizen, feeling at home in Turkey and Greece and Portugal and Guatemala and the USA, among other places I have been to, alike. 

After devouring a 6 lb sea bass, everybody is content