Well, what can we say about Turkey? Probably a few things that are safer to say now that we’ve actually left. Turkey, like many countries with ancient cultures, is a bit of a contradiction. It’s really an older civilisation trying to come to grips with being in the modern world.
Up until the end of WWI, it was a world power as the islamic Ottoman Empire, with a corresponding sense of entitlement. At the start of the 20th century, the Sultan had realised that they were declining both as a regional power and as a cultural force, and started to try to bring the empire into the new century. Built a new palace, and started building relationships with countries that they had previously looked down their noses at.
Trouble was, with an old ruling elite, an established religion that was used to wielding power, an Arabic alphabet and calendar, and an islamic based law code, coupled with neighbouring powers like Russia, France, Germany and Spain that were being being broken apart by revolutions, and the move to democracy that was being demanded by the Turkish populace, the Sultan didn’t have the ability to change fast enough.
Ataturk organised a vote that abolished the empire and the power of the sultanate. With his status as a war hero, he had the mandate to make sweeping changes, which he did. Amazingly successful really, but not everybody of course was happy, especially if you used to wield power and made money from it. So really, Turkey has been seeking to change and modernise for the last hundred years or so, with resistance all along the way.
What we see today is a Turkey that has many modern attributes, and is trying to build infrastructure for it’s large population. However, at the same time, the current ruling elite is trying to cling to power using whatever means they can. They crush dissent. They censor the internet. You can’t access Wikipedia and many other sites that may tell you what is going on in the world. The more controls they impose, the more the people rebel. The more the people rebel, the more they crush the dissent. Usual story.
People cling to their old habits. They fling rubbish into the street with gay abandon. Food is cheap, but it needs to be, as housing can take up 90% of your wage. It will probably improve generation by generation, but the young people who demand gender equality, religious freedom, and marriage reform find their universities closed and barricaded. Seems that periodic demonstrations and riots are the norm. Armoured cars and police are everywhere.
We’ll watch with interest.
Took the Metro out to the airport. Reasonably easy run with one change, due to it being a Saturday morning, though we had to go through metal detectors before getting to the train. We were toting two suitcases each. ‘Please take out all your metal things’. You’re joking! You want us to unpack our suitcase on the concourse of the Istanbul Metro and show you everything that contains metal? Eventually she ignored me, and made Mandy show her the iPad and the iPhone, then let us pass. Don’t know why that kept her happy. Given that it was the Metro line to the airport, it was a bit of a farce.
At the airport we had to go through another security check to get in the door, but we walked straight up to the counter at the Internet Check In line, and bypassed the line with hundreds of people still waiting to check in. Mandy thought I was a genius. Through passport control and a third security checkpoint with little issue, then spent our last Lira in the traditional way on a coffee and a brownie at Starbucks.
Our gate was way down the end where buses are used to get you out to the plane. Noticed that planes to some destinations went through a full, fourth security check including a full examination and swabbing of carry on baggage and confiscation of bought water, but Singapore is obviously no threat, and they didn’t even want to see our passports at the gate.
A nice 777 Dreamliner for our 10 hour flight which we have to pretend is a night flight to readjust our body clocks.