Last Days in Turkey

Here are some pictures from my last few weeks in Turkey. So much happened and I saw so many people, that it’s difficult to capture it all. But hopefully this gives you a sense of the end of my time there, as well as the very beginning of my new life in Italy.

This will be my last post on Turkey on this blog.

Ciao!

Whirling Dervish video

Yes, it’s a little sacrilegious, but I took some video of the Whirling Dervish ceremony…like EVERYONE else who was there. This performance was incredibly moving for me for a couple reasons. The first reason was because it was my last weekend in Turkey, and I was in Konya, which is where Rumi is buried, who is a great spiritual teacher for me. The other major reason was because there were two really young dervishes–one that looked about eight years old, tops. His faith and devotion at such a young age really moved me.

I included some footage here of him whirling in the first clip, and then a really lovely clip of the final set of whirling, which is the “divine marriage (with God)” set.

Finally, there is a clip of what I’ll call a Sema Blooper. If you look carefully, you’ll see the two younger dervishes resting near the border of the stage, and behind them, you’ll see a woman in a burqua, spinning on the edge of the stage, which is definitely not supposed to happen! The guards finally came and got her–she clearly has some issues–but it was so surprising to see in the middle of a sacred sema ceremony!

I hope you can feel at least some of the beauty of the sacred dance from these clips that I felt.

Amazing Turkish Dancing

Here are three cool dancing clips from a really popular dance troupe called The Fire of Antolia that played at our school for International Week (they were incredible!). The first one is a bit like Turkish river dancing, and the second two are really, really amazing, I think. Enjoy!

The Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans were initially nomads who migrated from the central Asian steppe to the Anatolian region and practiced a primitive shamanistic tradition. As they came into contact with more developed Islamic cultures, the Ottomans eventually converted to Islam as well.

As the Selcuk empire fell, Turkish Anatolia was divided into a collection of emirates (lands ruled by an emir, an Islamic ruler), called the Ghazi emirates. One of these emirates was led by Osman I, from which the name Ottoman is derived, and he extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlements towards the borders of the Byzantine Empire.

At this point, the Byzantine Empire was on the verge of collapse. The Byzantines were begging the Pope in Rome for help, but he refused aid unless the Eastern Orthodox religion reunited with the See of Rome. Though a reunion was considered, Eastern Orthodox clerics were too bitter about the reunion to allow it, and the Byzantine Empire continued to flounder. Osman I moved the capitol of the burgeoning Ottoman Empire to Bursa–a stone’s throw from Constantinople–and continually loomed over the Byzantines, waiting for the right moment to attack. As the Ottoman Empire began to expand into the Mediterranean and Balkans, the Ottomans took over almost all of the Byzantine lands in Anatolia, except Constantinople.

In 1453, Mehmet II (later known as Mehmet the Conqueror) reorganized a flailing military and state and made major history when he breached Constantinople’s walls on May 29th. He established the city as the new capitol of the Ottoman Empire and is considered one of the great heroes in Turkey–his name is still one of the most popular male names in the country. The Hagia Sophia–one of the most popular tourist detinations in Turkey–was instantly converted from a cathedral into a mosque, and all the religious instruments removed and mosaics painted over. Constantinople’s name was changed to Istanbul, and a new era began.

The conquest of Constantinople established the Ottoman Empire as the preeminent powers in the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe. While there’s too much to say about the Ottomans for a simple blog post, I’ll share some highlights about the Ottomans here:

• The Ottomans were ruled by a Sultanate until the fall of the Empire in 1922. 
• The Ottomans were able to acquire enormous wealth and power partly because they controlled many of the most used trade routes (most notably the spice trade routes and the Silk Road) as you can see from this map (Silk Road in red, spice routes in blue). The Ottomans charged a huge amount in taxes for passage through their lands.

• The Ottomans were quite tolerant of all religious groups living within their borders, including Byzantine Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Assyrians, and allowed them to practice their own religions and maintain their own legal practices alongside those of the Ottoman empire.
• The Ottomans conquered the Greeks in 1456, and Serbia, Bosnia, and several other territories were under Ottoman rule by 1478. The Turks commanded the Black Sea and the Aegean trade routes, and even threatened Italy and besieged Vienna in 1529. The siege was unsuccessful, and the Turks retreated out of the region. Basically the Ottomans struck fear into most of Europe until the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th, when Europeans began to win battles against the Ottomans as internal struggles in the empire weakened their prowess.  

• The Ottomans developed a rich culture over its reign, making contributions to poetry, architecture, calligraphy, carpet weaving, jewelry, music, dance, and minature paintings. Here is a miniature of miniaturists.
• They also developed a rich cuisine during this period, consisting of drinks and food that are still popular today: Turkish delight (lokum), Turkish coffee, salep (a milky drink made of orchid flour), baklava, shish kepab, doner (a popular meat dish cut from cones of rotating meat, see picture), raki alcohol, and ayran, a yogurt drink. 

• Some reasons why the Ottomans were so successful were because of their state-run education and judicial systems; their centralization of power; a transferrence of ruling power that transferred to one person, not two people; unity through Islamic ideology; a pragmatism that took what was best from other cultures and integrated it into their own; unity through the Islamic warrior code, which increased Muslim lands through jihad; a very strong military (primarily based on slaves); and alliances created across many different ethnic and religious groups. 

You can read a nice, concise history about the Ottoman Empire here, on a BBC website. Finally, we’ll answer another very important question: Why did the Ottoman Empire fall?

Historical Timeline of Turkey up to the Ottomans

A few of you asked about the Ottoman Empire and its role in Turkish history and culture. But to understand Turkey a little better, I think one should understand the previous cultures that swept through here as well.

One important thing to note about Turkey is that it’s surrounded by water, and that Istanbul (previously Constantinople) is located right at the entrance of the Bosphorus Strait, a strip of water that leads into the Black Sea, accessing more of Europe and Asia. All these potential sea ports made Turkey a really desirable place to settle. There’s way too much history to cover here, so I’m going to give you a brief overview of the different cultures and kingdoms that inhabited Turkey up until the Ottoman Empire. We’re going to skip all the prehistoric periods (from 500,000 B.C. to 2000 B.C.) and start with what’s considered the historic period, starting in 2000 B.C.

Remember that the term Anatolia refers to the peninsula part of Turkey that is on the Asian side.

• 2000 B.C. to 700 B.C. The Hittites: The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who migrated from the Black Sea region. Their civilation rivaled the Egyptians and Babylonians. Here’s a map of the Hittite Kingdom at its height, around the 1300 B.C. The name Hittites comes from the King James version of the Bible. Their religion was polytheistic, and in the Hebrew Bible, they are generally seen as descendants of the Biblican figure Canaan, a people that lived alongside the Israelites. The Hittite kingdom eventually fell to the Assyrians, the nearby kingdom in green.
• 860 to 334 B.C. Various Kingdoms: With the fall of the Hittites, a variety of other cultures had a brief dance in various regions in Turkey. The Urartian Kingdom from 860-580 B.C., the Phrygian Kingdom from 750-600 B.C., the Lydians from 680 to 546 B.C., and the Persians, from 546 to 334 B.C.
• 323 to 30 B.C. The Hellenistic Period: Alongside the Phrygian, Lydian and Persian kingdoms (which flourished mostly in central Anatolia) appeared the Greeks, who lived on the coasts of Anatolia, after escaping Dorian rule in the Dark Ages of the Aegean. At first, the Greeks cohabited relatively peacefully with the Lydians, and trade between the two cultures generated a renaissance for both groups. The Greeks first welcomed the Persians when they toppled Lydian rule. But when the Persians began imposing unpopular tyrants on Greek city-states, the Greeks rebelled, calling on their Greek kinsman for aid. In 334 B.C., a famous war occurred (documented by Herodotus, one of the earliest recorded historians). Alexander the Great defeated the Persians fighting under Xerxes the Great and liberated all the city-states, turning Turkey into part of a vast Greek empire for several hundred years.
• 30 B.C. to 395 A.D. The Roman Period, and 395 C.E. to 1453 C.E. The Byzantine Period: The Byzantine Empire is a modern term traditionally used to describe the Greek speaking Roman empire during the Middle Ages, with its capitol in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, and a major trade route passing through the region. Apparently there’s no real consensus about its start date, but one of the main differences is that it was a Christian empire which had broken its previous ties with its pagan Roman past. You can see a map of the Byzantine/Roman Empire below, which is not based on a specific time frame, but will give you an idea of its vastness, as well as its influence of much of modern day Europe and North Africa.

• 1071-1300 C.E. The Selçuk Period: Though their reign only lasted a few hundred years in Turkey, the Selçuks played a very important cultural role in Turkish history. The Selçuks were a Turk-Persian tribe of recent Islamic conversion, that eventually set up an empire that stretched from Anatolia through Persia (Iran) and was the target of the first crusade. The Selçuks had their origins in Turkic tribes from Central Asia, which had migrated to the Anatolian region. Once they settled in Persia, the Selçuks adopted Persian culture and language and made great contributions to Persian art, literature, culture, and language. If you’re familiar with the poet Rumi, he lived during this period (around 1200 A.D.) and this period gave birth to Sufism and the Whirling Dervish order. Selçuks are also regarded as the cultural ancestors of present-day Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. Though they existed alongside the Byzantines for over two hundred years, their borders were continually frought with the constant tension that eventually led to the weakening and fall of the Byzantine Empire. As the Byzantine Empire began to wane, its weakness was just enough to leave the highly coveted and protected city of Constantinople vulnerable to the right invader…and this takes us right up to the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, and our next post.

Is Turkey in Asia or Europe?

If you look at the map here, you’ll see that a little piece of Turkey is on the European side, snuggled up against Bulgaria. Istanbul straddles a strait called the Bosphorous, a.k.a. the Istanbul strait (see pic below), that physically separates the European landmass from the Asian land mass (often referred to as Anatolia), which is one reason why so many writers talk about how Istanbul is the place where “The East meets the West,” because it quite literally does.

Now if you want to get into a discussion about whether Turkey’s identity is European or Asian…well, that’s a very subjective and hot topic at the moment. Some Turks will say that Turkey is European not only geographically, but culturally, which is why it should join the E.U. Others will say Turkey is its own entity, a bridge between the East and West, making it both and neither at the same time–a status it should revel in, instead of trying to be one or the other. And still others will say that Turkey is Islamic (and perhaps becoming more so, with the current administration) and its culture lies in its Asiatic roots and current allies.

After living here for nine months, I tend to lean towards the second assertion. To me, Turkey’s European identity is something like the image below–a nation that runs parallel to Europe but never quite merges with it, observing Europe always on the horizon, perhaps with longing, curiosity, and some resentment, yet mostly content with its borders.

Senior Graduation

So, I got invited to a senior graduation party, and decided I should probably get dressed up a bit. I hoped I wasn’t overdressed in my black dress, black flats, and white scarf, but when two of my male students picked me up in suits, I realized I hadn’t dressed up enough. I’d forgotten to wear nylons, and I could have worn heels. Sigh.

My students showed up dressed to the nines (as is common in Turkey for special events), their hair coiffured in gravity-defying styles and their 80′s prom dresses all outfits they had likely bought for a wedding. I was a bit embarrassed.

Anyway, my students and I had a great time. I stayed after my colleagues left and danced with my students till 10:30. It was great. Here are some fun videos of Turkish dancing below.

Enjoy!

Me Lately

Here are some pics (with captions) of some special moments I’ve had lately in Turkey. Enjoy!

The Turkish Evil Eye…a.k.a. The Nazar

I’ll never forget the first evil eye amulet I receieved in Turkey. It was just a few weeks after my arrival in Turkey, and I was getting familiar with Turkish culture, specifically male-female relations. My housemate, Fielding, had accepted a dinner date with the creepy guy at the reception desk of our hotel. Wanting to protect her reputation, I told her she was foolish to go alone (I’d learned this much so far), and that I’d come with her to not make it look like a date. (We live in a small city, and I was concerned about the destructive gossip I’d heard so much about).

The guy took us to dinner, engaging in awkward conversation with us since he hardly knew any English. He’d brought his nephew along–who was closer to Fielding’s age–and rather than be put off that I’d broken up his date with Fielding, he paraded the two of us behind him through the city center as we followed him helplessly, since we didn’t know the bus system well enough to get home by ourselves.

I was about to call a colleague to pick us up when the guy dashed into a jewelry shop with a disturbing smile. “No, please!” we shouted, but he didn’t listen. Then he came out and handed us each a small bag. I opened it up, and inside I found my first evil eye amulet, a nazar boncuğu.

Turks are insanely superstitious about the evil eye, or nazar. The Evil Eye is basically a look someone can give you that will cause bad luck or misfortune. Countries all over the world believe in it, but I’m surprised at how pervasive it is, to the extent that there’s a nazar amulet on Turkish airplanes, public offices, on baby clothing, on car mirrors, room and home entrances, and subtly woven into all kinds of jewelry. I’ve had Turkish coffee fortunes read where a bubble represented a nazar–which meant that someone was giving me the evil eye. That meant I had to stick a finger into the bubble and pop it to protect myself, as well as wear my nazar jewelry more fastidiously.

I’m starting to feel like everything you do can nazar or get you nazared by someone else, because a student recently told me that if you compliment someone’s body part, you can nazar them (it’s also a verb). This incident made her a believer: She was in her house one afternoon, and a neighbor walked by with a “short” skirt on (it was probably cut below the knee). My student told her that she had nice legs, as the neighbor traveled on her way. A few hours later, the neighbor came back. Apparently she’d had some kind of injury and (cue spooky voice) had hurt the very leg my student had complimented. Now, my student refuses to compliment people’s body parts, unless they’re wearing a nazar amulet, and even then…

As with all superstitions, it makes me giggle. But…I’m not going to lie, I also have a little nazar amulet on my purse…you know, just in case.

For more about the nazar amulet, or to purchase your own “insurance” you can check out this website here: www.nazarboncugu.com  where I stole my pictures from. Yeah, I know…I stole pictures from a nazar amulet website. What was I thinking? I’m screwed.

The Ladino Community in Turkey Part 2 (read the post below first)

The Ladino, or Sephardic, community in Turkey also developed a unique language that still exists today. Ladino primarily had 15th century Castilian Spanish as its base, but also borrowed words from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and even French. The current Ladino language has two basic dialects which reflect the regions the Jews fled to after the expulsion from Spain. “Oriental” Ladino was spoken primarily by Ladinos in Turkey, while “Western” Ladino, emerged from Jews who escaped to Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Romania. Many Ladinos fled to South America as well.

You can hear a one-minute sample of Ladino here. While I don’t know which version of Ladino this is, the Spanish roots are really clear. Try listening–it’s fascinating!

During the Nazi regime, most Ladino speaking communities in Europe were destroyed. Turkey, however, maintained a neutral stance during the war, and was therefore able to accept many Jews fleeing from Nazi occupied countries, as well as protect the community protected by her neutral walls. Shortly after Israel gained independence in 1948, thousands of Ladino Jews fled to Israel, and as a result, Israel now has the greatest population Ladinos, somewhere around 200,000 who still speak or understand a very limited and basic version of the original language.

In Turkey, the Ladino population is now around 20,000 to 22,000, with the majority still in Istanbul and the rest in the touristic (and more Western) cities of Izmir, Adana, Ankara, Antakya, and Bursa. For the most part, Ladino Jews speak in Turkish, and the Shalom newspaper primarily prints in Turkish, but one page is printed in Ladino, and a monthly supplement in Ladino as well.

There are now eighteen active synagogues in Turkey. The photograph in this blog is of the Neve Shalom Synagogue, in Istanbul, Turkey. The caption next to the photograph states, “Entry to the synagogue is always through the rear where elaborate security measures are in place (e.g., three sets of steel doors).” This reflects the awful reality that several Jewish sites have been targeted by Arab terrorists, including three on this synagogue in 1986, 1992, and 2003, with over 35 fatalities.

The Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews in Istanbul works to preserve the history and heritage of the Judeo-Spanish community in Turkey. The official website of the Museum can be found at http://www.muze500.com. You can also visit that website for a more extensive history of the Ladino community.

There’s so much more to go into–I really barely scratched the surface here. But I have so many friends and family members with Jewish heritage, that I thought this would be a really rich topic to delve into. Please let me know if I made any historical mistakes that I need to correct, but more than anything, I am so happy to share a really special part of Turkish and Jewish history.