How to improve your Turkish - Part 2

If you haven’t been following this saga please click here to read Part One.

Just to be sure I waited dört (4) rather than üç (3) business days before I texted the bank (again) for a şifre for my university entry and dining hall card. Each day I tried it was no go. Still lacking a pin number with which to load money on my card, I took my lunch to work every day and sat alone while my colleagues went off to the yemekhane to enjoy a three course meal for only a few lira. Six business days after signing the second contract with the bank, having shown them my pasaport and yet another futile phone call to the central office at merkezi, I went to the local şubesi (again). At least now I knew where it was the walk wasn’t as long and tiring as the first time. Once there I was told I should be able to get a pin number because all my documents had been received by the other branch (a long hot walk down a hill, round a corner and so on). I told her (again) that I still couldn’t get a pin number because the bank needed to güncellenecek my phone number, although I still failed to understand how they could update information they didn’t have.

The only highlight of long hot walk to Fikirtepe was this fabulous mosque

built in 1985 featuring brilliant tile work on the minaret.

Not exactly Iznik but it works!

We both bit our lips and issued our individual language versions of the sound ‘hmmm’ while the teller fiddled with the computer keys. Suddenly she said “Oh, they haven’t recorded your phone number”, and asked me for it. Then she did some more mysterious things with the computer and printed out a form for me to sign. When I looked at it I saw it simply asked if I was me, myself, and if the phone number that I’d just told her was mine, was actually mine. I thought it was interesting that they needed my passport to allow her to ask me these questions, given my passport doesn’t include my phone number. This being Turkey however, there is bound to be some logic in there, somewhere. I hope. After I checked the number was correct and signed where directed, she scanned the sheet, sent an email somewhere and then went out the back to consult with the manager. I watched anxiously through the frosted glass as they talked but she quickly came back out and told me to send the text requesting a pin number one more time (tekrar).

I did so and quickly received a mesaj, a different one this time. At this point my Turkish failed me and I couldn’t understand it. I held out my phone to her and she quickly read it before telling me I was all set. “Gerçekten mi?” I asked. Could I really put money on my card now and go and eat at the personnel dining hall? Kesinlikle, she replied, I could even go outside right away and use the ATM to yaıtırmak some money but I declined. Even though she was absolutely certain it work, I felt it was too much to expect I could get my pin number AND deposit some money in the account on the same day!

Finally getting my pin number left me unsure as to whether I should laugh or cry so I just slunk out of the branch, slightly stunned. I had really thought I would have to resort to bringing lunch from home everyday for the next semester or two, while I waited for the problem to be sorted out.

Now, I wonder if I can sort out the problem I’m having with my cable television company…

here

My new radio show

Starting this Tuesday the 27th of August 2013, I will be presenting a five minute segment on Orient Express, a one hour show produced by Ahmet Toprak (Turkish Radio), featuring the latest in music, culture and news from Turkey. To listen to the show tune into KKUP FM 91.5 at 10pm (Pacific Standard Time). If you're already enjoying reading about my life in Turkey you'll get even more from listening to me. If you want your family and friends in the US to better understand why you are here, they'll enjoy the show too. For those who can't listen to the radio, podcast details to follow soon.

My local parks

Istanbul is a densely populated city sprawling over both banks of the Bosphorus Strait. It is a metropolis full of highrise apartments and office blocks. Nonetheless, Istanbullu (people who live in Istanbul) value their green spaces and make good use of them. In the event of an earthquake, these open spaces would be the only safe places to go.

Fenerbahce Park in the 1950s. From the Yapi Kredi collection of photographs taken by Selahattin Giz, exhibited at the Caddebostan Kultur Merkezi, September 2012.

 Late afternoon swimming in the Sea of Marmara off Fenerbahce Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooling down with a refreshing drink at Romantika Cafe

 

Smile for the camera

 

Göztepe Park. These are real fish.

Whirling Dervish topiary in Göztepe Park

 

 

Özgürlük park, which means Freedom Park in English, is my favourite park. In summer it plays host to Turkish music nights, traditional puppet shows, theatre performances and other special events. Year round there are weekly organic markets and people exercising, jogging and walking their dogs. At the moment local high school students are holding a three day event to remind us how valuable these green places are, to make it clear they believe the parks belong to the people.

 

The banner reads, “This is our park”.

 

Gallivanting around Galata

Imagine the time - more than twenty years ago. Imagine the place – Istanbul, Eminönü and the old Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn.

Fishermen in Karaköy, the new Galata Bridge in the background

 “Up on the terrace of the hostel, the six of us ploughed our way through three bottles of reasonable red wine and one or two bottles of remarkably cheap Black Sea cognac, before taking off on an inebriated wander through the city. After following the tram tracks from Sultanahmet all the way down past the now closed and silent buildings to the water’s edge, we kept Jane company as she waited for a dark skinned young boy to carefully pick out the plumpest of the rice stuffed mussels from his round tray. He handed them to her only after he had solemnly drowned them in freshly squeezed lemon juice. He, along with a growing number of Turkish men, dressed much like the touts I’d seen in Marmaris, watched attentively as she downed mussel after mussel.

After farewelling the large crowd that had gathered, we somehow ended up in a tiny Turkish bar under the Galata Bridge. The bar was only about twelve feet by twelve feet, with an incredibly low wooden ceiling and walls that made it look like a sauna. Even I could only just stand upright in the small space, and it was like being Alice and we were now in Wonderland. This feeling was reinforced by the tiny stools we had to sit on and the way the bar appeared to sway. Given the amount we had already drunk, it would have been natural to assume this was a side effect, but after a while I realised that wasn’t the case. The bar, like the bridge it was attached to, was suspended over the Golden Horn, and it really was swaying. Every time the water moved, so did we. The bizarre atmosphere became even more so when four enormous and frankly frightening looking Turkish men drinking beer at the table next to us decided to engage us in conversation. The lack of common language was no deterrent, and as time and more of the terrible watered-down beer passed, we discovered they were Turkish wrestlers. We spent hours playing a tortured form of charades as they mimed tales of their wrestling triumphs.

The next morning I was very hung over…”

That was an excerpt from my new manuscript ‘Where the Tulips Dance: Finding the Heart of Istanbul’. If you like what you read and you know a publisher who’d be interested, please put us in touch with one another. 

Now scroll down to see some of my latest photos from a walk starting in Karaköy and on through Galata before heading back to the Galata Bridge.

The über cool Julian Meinl cafe in Karaköy, where...

... fashion meets coffee.

     Continuing on with the trend of stylish inner city living, we come to the wonderful Doğan Apartments on Serdar-ı Ekrem Street. Built in 1895 in an Italian architectural style, the original owner was a man called Kazim Taskent. Today they stand as a reminder of Istanbul's long cosmopolitan history, but tragically they are named after his son Doğan, who died while skiing in Switzerland. 

     There are  51 apartments and two shops in the apartment complex. The blocks are built around a large internal courtyard, and they once boasted their own tennis court. Now the area where the tennis court stood is used as a carpark. Major restoration work was carried out in 2001 and the apartment block is now a popular location for film shoots.

 The Crimean Memorial Christ Church tucked away in a side street. This is a poignant reminder of the losses sustained by the English, Russians and many other countries in the 1850s. If you want to know more visit the Crimean War Cemetery on the Asian side of Istanbul just near Haydarpaşa Railway Station.

   

Back to everyone's favourite - Galata tower

 

Back at Galata Bridge where the same fishermen stood. We feasted on a dinner of calamari and sea bream. Sadly, the incredibly cheap Black Sea Cognac doesn't seem to be available any more so we had to make do with beer and raki.

How To Improve Your Turkish

If you want to know how to improve your Turkish, I have one word for you. Bureaucracy. Forget expensive courses and fancy textbooks. Just spend one day (or maybe a lifetime) trying to get anything of a bureaucratic nature completed, and you’ll be as fluent as any native born Turk. By the time you’ve asked the same person the same thing on yedi separate occasions (and received sekiz different cevap) or the same thing seven times to eight different people (and received numerous different answers) you might need psychiatric treatment, but your Turkish will be better. I guarantee it.

I recently started a new job at a government university. Uni jobs in Turkey come with a lot of perks, like discounted transport, cheap holiday accommodation and subsidised lunches. This being the 21^st century, the days of giving a man at a desk at the entrance to the personel yekekhane your staff number before tucking into a hearty meal have long passed. Now you need to have a university kimlik card, which not only acts as an identity card, it also works as a sort of credit card you can use to buy food and stuff on campus.

Now, getting the card is a great example of Turkish bureaucracy in action. The first place you get to practice your Turkish is in the office of the nice little man who does all the paperwork for your department. You carefully explain you want to get your university card and he writes down the name of the person you need to talk on a very small piece of paper. As he explains the location of the personel dairesi, you realise that learning prepositions really isn’t that difficult if you use mime at the same time.

After you track down the building and the right floor, you ask every one you meet as you wander up and down the corridors of officialdom, where you can find so and so’s office. By the time you locate it, using one of those pesky prepositions you didn’t know before, you can ask the question perfectly. Once you enter the office you practice saying Kolay gelsin, hoping your good wishes to the clerks in the room will make them want to help you. Maalesef, that is, unfortunately the only person who doesn’t smile back at you is the person whose help you need. After an unbearable 10 minutes of making your request over and over in the hopes she might say something to tell you she understands what you’re saying, the woman grunts at you and tells you to come back in 10 to 15 days. It’s not until you’re back out in the corridor again trying to find the exit that you realise the one word you didn’t really hear was iş. Adding this to what you did understand means you have to wait 10 to15 working days.

In Turkey, it’s better to think of 10 to 15 working days as closer to 20, just in case. When the 20 days have passed (give or take a bayram, that is a holiday day or two) you go back to the first little man who likes you now because you always say kolay gelsin and ask him about his tatil/hafta sonu/gece (holiday/weekend/evening). He rings the woman who doesn’t smile and you desperately (and obviously) eavesdrop on his end of the conversation. He speaks too quickly for you to understand much, but when he says the word çikmiş you initially panic. Luckily you realise he’s only using reported speech because although the card has been issued, he hasn’t seen it for himself. Thankfully he’s not using the miş tense because he isn’t sure that what he’s being told isn’t true.

After more instructions (and prepositions) you find the little bank kiosk next to (not behind as you first thought) the cafeteria. There a friendly man sits you down, asks for your TC Kimlik numerasi and to look at your ikamet. After showing him your government identity number and retrieving your residence permit from your wallet he has you sign something in four places. Even though your Turkish has improved a lot, it’s not that good yet, so you blithely sign away without reading anything. Then he gives you your lovely new university identity card with your photo on it, the one you had taken after going to the hairdresser. Where you practiced your Turkish. The nice man then goes on to explain a lot of things, in some detail, and at some length. After several goes you realise you need to get a şifre to activate the card. With a pin number you can put money on it and then buy things, like lunch for example, on campus. First he says you can get a şifre by texting the bank. This being Turkey he offers to do it for you and you agree. After thinking of and telling him a pin number not related to any of your existing account (hey, he seems nice but still!) he sends the message but maalesef, unfortunately, the bank won’t give you a pin number via a text message. You have to go to the bank, to a particular branch, for them to güncellenecek your mobile number. It doesn’t seem logical that they can update your mobile phone number when they don’t actually have it on record, but now is not the time to question his use of the word update. Instead you go back to your office to ring the bank for yourself.

By now you have plenty you can say in Turkish about the weather but the most important thing is that it’s stinking hot, and you don’t want to schlep down to the bank if you don’t have to. Instead you ring their central number and decide to take the easy way out by pressing 9 for English. When the nice young man speaks hesitantly to you in slow but correct English, you respond in kind. After all, you are an English teacher and it can’t hurt to be nice. Once more you go through the whole process with him, why you are calling and what he can do for you. First you send a text message (the same as the one the other guy sent) and once again you learn that a pin number can’t be issued over the phone (which you already knew). Then he tells you yes, you do have to go to the bank, and to that particular branch. When you tell him you have your university card, government identity number and residence permit to show at the bank, he tells you that will be enough. Just to make sure you ask him if you need to take your passport with you and he says no. You’re really happy when you hang up. It’s a win-win situation, he gets to practice his English and you get confirmation that you understood the man at the bank office on campus. It’s like taking Turkish lessons but without the hassles (and expense) of registering for a class!

Buoyed by your success you walk for 15 minutes in the heat of the day, trying to find as much shade as possible. You are pleasantly surprised, but hot, when the bank actually turns out to be at the address you were given. This isn’t something you can always count on in Turkey. Once inside you bask in the lovely cold klima, and slowly read the choices on the ticket machine. Finally you press the best option for an individual, bireysel muşteri and use your TC kimlik numerasi to get a number. Luckily you only have to wait a few minutes before you are at the counter, explaining that you’ve started a new job at the university. You show your new uni identity card and explain that you need a pin number. You tell the woman you tried to register by phone but the bank doesn’t have your mobile number on file. When you finish you smile expectantly at her.

She tells you you’re in the wrong queue. You follow her pointing finger and say hello to the five men already waiting to be looked after by one woman sitting at a row of four desks. You practice numbers by establishing who is last in line. By the time it’s your turn again it’s much easier the second time around to explain in Turkish why you’re here. The clerk has you sit and takes your university card from your outstretched hand. Next, she asks to see your passport. You tell her you don’t have it with you, and that the man at the bank’s central office told you it wasn’t necessary. Maalesef she says. She needs to see the actual passport or she can’t register your phone number and then issue you with a pin number. You tell her you know the number of your passport, you can give it to her. Maalesef she says with a sigh. You tell her foreigners can’t be issued with a residence permit unless someone in a government department somewhere has seen their passport. You ask her why not just accept your ikamet as proof of who you are? After all, other banks and departments do, although admittedly not all of them all the time. The same goes for the government identity number, you can’t get that unless you have a residence permit and you can’t get that unless, well you know… But maalasef (by now you have come to hate that word), unfortunately without your passport they can’t güncellenecek your phone number even though they never had it in the first place, you can’t get a pin number, so you can’t put money on your card and buy something, for example, lunch, which you should have eaten hours ago. There is some good news in all this. It turns out you don’t have to come to this particular branch after all. When you get your passport, you can go to any branch, even the branch a minute’s walk away from your home, and get your pin number there.

Excerpt from "Dancing Away the Sequins"

This is part of a longer essay which will be part of my next collection of essays.

In many traditional Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures women are responsible for ensuring the honour of the family. Men’s passions are uncontrollable and wild, and all women are Eve, the temptress with the apple. He cannot help but succumb so a man is never held responsible for his sexual behaviour. The guilt is attributed the same way whether the partners are married to other people, not married to anyone, or even if the act is non-consensual. If a man and a woman are left alone in a room together, he won’t be able to help himself but the sin will belong to the woman alone.

Using the same line of reasoning, dancing, which brings men and women together and shows off the curves of the woman, is also considered suspect. Like many things in Turkey however, the rules of conduct are not that simple. One the one hand, dancing as a part of folk tradition is highly valued in Turkey, and being a good dancer is much admired. In more traditional parts of the country like Cappadocia, kına gecesi, the Turkish equivalent of a woman’s hen night, are used to showcase the allure and value of young women of marriageable age. At these nights only women attend, so those wishing to find a husband give it their all. They sway and preen and energetically thrust their hips from side-to-side and move their breasts provocatively in front of eagle-eyed potential mother-in-laws. Each move is assessed and judged to determine how supple they are, how well their body is equipped to procreate through the sex act and whether their hips are suitable for child-bearing.

On the other hand, these same movements make what we in the West call ‘belly dancing’ a scandalous past-time for a good Turkish girl. It is known locally as oriental dance, and I go to a class with my Turkish girlfriend Selin every week. We go because it’s fun and good for our figures, but Selin’s grandmother doesn’t understand this. She is scandalised that her granddaughter would do such a thing. When Selin reminds her that I go too, her grandmother dismissively replies that it is not the same. What she means is because I am a foreigner, a yabancı, the question of morality doesn’t apply. This is the complete opposite of the way Fatma in Göreme thought about my behaviour, but then she lived in a small village where everyone knew everyone, unlike in a city where you have a degree of anonymity. More significantly, it points to the fact that being a yabancı woman means you always live with contradictions. At times you are required to be more upstanding than the most moral of Turkish woman simply because you are foreign. At other times you are forgiven any indiscretions just because you are foreign. Living in Turkey is full of such ironies. 

It is also ironic that the oriental style of dance is perceived as provocative and dangerously sensual by both Turks and Westerners. Just as being an actress was once equated with being a prostitute in the West, being a belly dancer in Turkey is considered no better than being a whore by some people. Older Turks strongly disapprove of oriental dance because it has connotations of wild abandonment, promise and seduction. These very connotations are what make the eyes of Western men glaze over with lust at the idea of scantily clad women offering themselves in a highly charged and sexual manner.

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If you liked this excerpt and you would like to know more about life in Istanbul and Turkey, you can buy a copy of my book directly from me in Istanbul for 30tl. Simply email me at pipkim.morrow@gmail.com and we can arrange to meet. If you aren't living in Istanbul you can buy a copy online by clicking on

Inside Out In Istanbul

A Short Stroll through Rasımpaşa, Kadıköy

Despite the heat I decided to prowl the less popular backstreets of Kadıköy today. These are just a few of the hidden gems I found.

I want to know how the artist got up there.

Living proof of one of the many minority groups that would have lived in the area.

This translates to "Solidarity Market. 5 August, 5.30pm. Everythig Free!" Being held opposite a local school. Education comes in many forms.