Summer begins = car inspection

        Summer is here! A time for renewal. At Bilkent University, our spring semester ended in May, and graduation took place on June 11.

My barber, Ramazan, who goes under the professional name of Ramses, and who for unknown reasons has taken to calling me “Devlet Ağabey” (lit. “Older  brother State”; see note below), has already shed several kilos and has begun an exercise program.

I, too, have started my own summer exercise program, a brisk walk early in the morning,  while the air is still cool and the campus very quiet.

Our car has just passed its bi-annual inspection, always a traumatic moment because of its age – 34 – even if it is a sturdy Mercedes – and because the inspection carried out for several years now by TüvTürk, a private company, is serious, in contrast with the almost comic sign-offs of yesteryear. 

First step: car taxes had to be paid up. I went to the tax office in Ulus where, to my enormous surprise, not a soul was waiting. I walked right up to the window and paid.

        Big smile: “Are you related to Bill Gates?”  

        I have been asked this question countless times, although never before in a Turkish government office. Because I do have a brother named Bill Gates who happens to be in computer software, my answer always has to be qualified. 

        For a speedy return to my office, I hailed a taxi at a nearby stand. The driver had a beard and a skullcap, signs of a pious Muslim. Before I pulled the door shut, I noticed an empty Efes Pilsen beer bottle in the door’s compartment.

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

 “Where did that come from?” my pious driver asked.

A fellow taxi driver quickly whisked it away and off we went. 

Step two: inspecting the car. We left it with our garage while we were in Cyprus for a week. The garage promised to make necessary repairs, obtain the certificate for exhaust emissions (another cause of anxiety), and take the car to the TüvTürk inspection site. All would be finished by our return.

Except it wasn’t. The inspection was refused, not because of serious defects with the car itself, but because the registration card said the car uses “benzin” (gasoline) when it should have said “dizel” (diesel). This mistake must have been made four years ago, when the card had to be retyped to correct the color of the car, from “white” to “blue & white.” Two years ago, the problem was the presence of a tow-hook, not noted on the registration card. The garage removed the hook and the car passed, but the mistake about the fuel was not noticed.

Correcting a registration card involves a trip to the Emniyet Sarayı, the imposing central police station, where a large section is devoted to car matters – registration, driving licenses, etc., the only place in this city of nearly 5 million to take care of such business.  Typically dozens of men and a handful of women mill around nervously as they wait their turn. Fortunately, machines now give numbers for the line. This has revolutionized the process of waiting. Standing in an orderly line was not a Turkish cultural trait. In the old days, people would swarm the counter, pushing and elbowing and shouting to attract the attention of the civil servant.  What was a proper, well-bred WASP to do?  I always got there in the end, but it was always an experience to dread.

Marie-Henriette, the official owner of the car, by now an experienced veteran of TüvTürk inspections, managed to get the registration card duly changed without much hassle. Request submitted one day; card ready for pick-up the next. The following day, the third day after our return from Cyprus, she drove the car to the TüvTürk station, showed the new registration card and the inspection report, and the final, crucial approval was granted. 

The car is now good for two years!

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Language notes: 
(1) “Ağabey,” pronounced “abi,” is the typical way of addressing an older brother; also used, says my dictionary, “in addressing a respected man a little older than the speaker.” Devlet, meaning “state,” as a first name is rare, but familiar in today’s Turkey because of Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). 

(2) WASP = “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” Oxford English Dictionary: “A member of the American white Protestant middle or upper class descended from early northern European settlers.”  Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary: “Sometimes used contemptuously to refer to members of the dominant socio-economic class in the U.S.”