resourcefulness, or getting rid of the rules

Resourcefulness: it’s what I say I love most about Turkish people.  It’s what I miss in the sterile communities I see in community development projects, even the ones I am helping to develop at MPC.  It’s what I feel is so often being trained out of us in our laziness - we have come to expect luxuries like cars and buses running on time and not having to wait in line at the bank and paying your bills online and reliably and ordering food and getting what you know you will get and expecting that there will always be ripe bananas and your favorite kind of yogurt at the grocery store.  

MPC and the Chicago Dept of Transportation ran a workshop last week on designing complete streets (I designed a fancy fact sheet, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, or just want to see how proficient I am becoming at lining up boxes of text in InDesign, check it out!).  Complete Streets sound like a great idea - make streets safe for all people by making sure everyone knows when and where they’re supposed to move.  '

Copenhagen Cycle Chic

But I have two major problems with them, I realized.  

1. Designing complete streets STILL means designing for cars, it just means designing so that the cars don’t hurt or kill so many people.  

2. There are way too many rules!   

This is the foundation of my frustrations these days.  Relegating everyone into their own spaces, their own channels marked with a dotted white line or a painted bicycle and arrow or a raised sidewalk and blinking white walking man in a crosswalk may contribute to life on the street, but it certainly won’t guarantee vitality.  And really, where else in the world will a broken sidewalk prevent people from walking down the street?  If there’s something worth getting to, people will get there.  

And so, perhaps the problem doesn’t really lie in crappy streets designed for four lanes of fast-moving traffic.  Of course, that’s an issue, but it’s a symptom of cities designed too strictly, of a lack of open spaces filled spontaneously by peddlers or musicians or little gardens, if only transient, cities where every space is zoned to such a detail that all dentist offices the country over are as sterile as the next, and you’ll never have the idiosyncratic hubs of commercial activity, of friendly competition that exists in the blocks in Istanbul for instance, where you find all of the teapot manufacturers, or bike shops.  (That’s a run-on sentence, but why not let a few of those slide, too, in appreciation of the frustration I feel with staying between the lines.)  

I’m wishing for something that runs counter to so many concepts taken for granted - we should be able to get from one place to another reliably, in a relatively straight line, we shouldn’t build factories next to elementary schools and enormous Big Boxes next to quiet historic neighborhoods.  Sure, these are things I want, too, but I think the rules have gotten out of hand.  Is there a way to get people to appreciate the unexpected?  

I’ve quoted him before, but I think a reminder of my dad’s wise words is warranted: “We need a language of enthusiasm for life's casual moments and spontaneous encounters."  Who’s with me for enthusiasm and spontaneity?  

turkish balance

There’s been a lot in the press lately about Turkey and a possible impending political shift.  Are we about to see a renaissance of the military or a political crackdown?  I can’t say either, or yes or no - although I’m reminded of how well I understood Turkish politics two years ago, when I was working at the Turkish Daily News.  I was there for the “headscarf issue,” the brief months when headscarves became legal in Turkish universities.  I was in the office and pretty confused in a large room full of Turks chatting and watching tiny tvs scattered around for the secret Turkish invasion of Iraq to catch up with the PKK, and I was also there for the removal of information about all of that from our papers after the request of the government and probably, although I honestly don’t remember, the sly “semi-official” Anatolian News Agency.  I was there for the big Ergenekon trials (the foundations of what’s come up these last few weeks), and the bombings in Istanbul that the PKK was blamed for but denied.  I won’t go into the details about that then, but in an email to my family after those bombings I wrote the best political analysis summary of the situation I have ever written, and will probably ever write.  

Atatürk overshadows dinner, Kadıköy, Istanbul

It’s hard for me to be interested in American politics - they’re too grand, too complicated, and probably too close to me.  Turkish politics were more immediate in a different sense, to be sure, since I was working at a daily paper.  But they were interesting because they were melodramatic, and because pride seemed so much more important than logic and games of pretense played in the US.  

But I don’t want to write about politics.  I want to write about the New York Times, and how well they have covered Turkey.  I tried to comment on the NYTimes website to compliment Sebnem Arsu, who does most of the reporting from Turkey, but comments were disabled.  I have long been impressed with how well she covers Kurdish issues - everything is complicated, and Turkey is in the American press infrequently enough that some background is needed in nearly every piece.  Arsu consistently does a great job of setting the stage so that the key recent events can be viewed in context.  She makes no accusations, in a country where blame often is being thrown wildly in all directions, it is nice to read her multiple possible truths.  

I was inspired to write this in response to a recent piece of hers from 20 February, “Arrest of Prosecutor in Turkey Exposes Tensions Between Secular and Religious Turks.”  There has since been a spate of arrests (this one’s from 2/22) of military officials - officers, even active ones in the most recent wave - accused of being part of the so-called Ergenekon group plotting to overthrow the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  These two men frighten me; they say they want Turkey to be a free, Western country.  And I believe them.  But they are also incredibly unpredictable, and the apparent motivations behind their every move are elusive.  

boys in Sulukule, Istanbul

This may very well be the beginning of an autocratic Turkey, the military losing its leaders to political justice.  I will admit that the military was frustratingly archaic in its insistence on upholding various dated, incredibly dated, elements of Atatürk’s Constitution from the 1920s.  So, I’m not married to the military nor the AKP as either progressive or traditional leading powers.  But, the atmosphere I sense from the media here in the US is also familiar - so, perhaps this will all blow over and the recently arrested military leaders will be released in silence in the near future and Turkey will return to its familiar, precarious balance of modern, traditional, free, and insular.  

why not indulge a bit...

in some Wade Davis explorations.  The main point of his TED talk is to argue against unilinear evolution, a now-long-buried anthropological theory that cultures "progress" from "primitive" to sophisticated as they become more like "us" - a thesis that could be a little disappointing in the wrong hands.  But, like Dave Suggs in his baccalaureate address at Kenyon graduation in 2007, Davis' TED talk is really about weaving stories into a rich tapestry of human traditions.  

So, why not indulge in dreaming of my dream job: National Geographic "Explorer in Residence."  Residence where?  the whole world, a world of beliefs and communities, and "ancient rhythms of landscape [...] played out in ritual," and of, as Wade Davis so passionately says, "raw human genius."  

What came to my mind when he said that phrase?  (Prepare yourself for a mental leap typical of myself...)

The street markets of Palermo and Turkey, held up by countless ropes and tarps lashed tightly to drainpipes and window grates and doorknobs on winding streets and dilapidated walls of bustling, dusty towns.  

(Cristina took this one)p.s. 

Let's move a little further east, and lament the fact that not everyone appreciates the basic genius of tradition and community ritual.  

Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer on trial in her country for taking photographs that "portray a negative image of the country."  The photos are raw, and intimate, and colorful - check out some of them in this BBC slideshow.  The charges carry a punishment somewhere in the ballpark of 6 months in prison or nearly 3 yeas of forced labor.  Officials say the photos "distort reality" and "portray the Uzbek people as backward.  She has been charged with defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions" (BBC).  It shocks me that so many people would rather look at smiling faces and see ignorance and degeneration instead of exuberance and that raw human genius (thanks, Wade) that keeps peoples worldwide alive and exciting.  

More of her photos here, but without captions or credits or anything.  

pimp my ride

Jan Chipchase reminded me of fun dolmuş rides in Turkey with these photos

Joe's NYC today also featured a decorated dash - apparently they're all the rage

Maybe I should take inspiration from these guys and personalize my bike.  How would Chicagoans react?  Saw a great old guy on his bike, juryrigged with all kinds of mirrors and trinkets and baskets and hooks, on a great, hard ride up the Lakefront this morning. 

In Urfa, Turkey: 

On the scorching hot minibus ride to Harran, we were surprised by a visit from Santa over the windshield:

And, in Van, my favorite vehicles in all of Turkey: