Elections, Ankara's Jews, an Iron Age fortress, and lots of rain

        “Are you voting this Sunday?” the taxi driver asked.  The elections are major, both for the president and for the meclis (= parliament).

        “Yes,” I said.

        “Who are you voting for?”

        We were in a taxi en route to a reception at the British Institute of Archaeology (officially, the British Institute of Ankara), 24 Tahran Street, to bid farewell to the handsome building it has occupied for over 40 years.  The Institute is moving not too far away; at the end of the summer, when the books are unpacked and offices set up, we will have the chance to admire its new premises.  

British Institute at Ankara: 24 Tahran Street 

        

     The traffic was dense and barely moving. It had rained earlier in the afternoon, and the downpours flooded the underpasses.

        “This would never happen in America,” the driver said.

        “Well, yes, it can,” we said, thinking of the disasters of Katrina and Houston. “It’s true, though,” I added, “that Americans like to plan for medium and long-term contingencies.”  The driver seemed satisfied that his opinion was confirmed.

        We never made it to the reception.  We inched forward as far as the entrance to METU (Middle East Technical University) and, seeing wall-to-wall cars ahead of us, we decided to give up and turn back.

        I didn’t want to answer the question about my vote.  In Turkey today, you have to be very careful about what you say to whom.  A certain level of caution becomes automatic behavior.  Nonetheless, the driver teased an opinion out of me.  It turned out we were on the same wave length, so our conversation continued harmoniously. 

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey

For the presidential race, there is good choice this time, as opposed to the previous election in 2014.  The main candidates opposing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president, are three.  Muharrem İnce, the CHP (Republican People’s Party) candidate, center-left, is energetically holding rallies and matching the barbed rhetoric of the president with skill and humor.  

Muharrem İnce

Meral Akşener, the leader of the newly formed rightist nationalist İyi (Good) Party, was the first to announce her candidacy, fearlessly stepping forward to take on the seemingly unbeatable president.  And she is a woman.  

Selahattin Demirtaş, the candidate of the Kurdish-focused HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party), is running from jail, where he has been held for over a year.  

All pledge to restore the balance of powers between the president, the parliament, and an independent judiciary.  Should Erdoğan win the election, the new system that grants the president significant power at the expense of parliament and other institutions will come into effect.

The taxi driver noted the wobbly economy, with its focus on construction instead of varied industrial production, and inflation. Indeed, with the free-fall of the Turkish lira against the dollar and the euro, prices of anything dependent on imports are shooting up.  Gas, for example -- so travel by car, bus, or plane and any products needing transport (virtually everything) will be more expensive. Today I read that onions and potatoes, the most basic and ordinary of food items, now cost well over 6 TL per kilo, four times more than one year ago. It may be too soon, though, for these price rises to affect the votes of loyal government supporters.  

        Last week, the holy month of Ramazan ended, followed by a three-day holiday. The campus was utterly quiet, a delight.  The World Cup began on the first day of the holiday, by sheer coincidence, also a delight. I do not follow football (soccer) normally, but every four years my dormant football-fan genes come to life and I watch as many matches as I can.  

Turkey and the USA didn’t qualify, but France is in the tournament and it’s always a pleasure to watch players like Cristiano Ronaldo when they perform at their best.  It’s odd, though, to live through this curious mix of religion (Ramazan), sports (World Cup), and elections (presidential and parliamentary). 

        Earlier in the month we attended a screening of “Hermana,” a documentary about Ankara’s Jewish community made by Enver Arcak, a graduate of our Bilkent University Archaeology Department. 

In a mere 30 minutes, the film recounts the history of the community and, through interviews with Jews who grew up here, people now living in Istanbul or Israel, gives a look at the texture of their daily lives and shows the fondness the emigrants retain for this city. “Hermana” means “sister” in Ladino, the Spanish used by Jewish people who came to Istanbul and Thessaloniki after being expelled from the Iberian peninsula in 1492.  In Ankara during the Republic (1920s on), this language began to be lost in favor of Turkish. 

Enver Arcak and one of the interviewees inspect a photo album

The interviewees are at ease in front of the camera, and project good humor as well as dignity -- a testimony to Enver’s skills in relating to people. He noted in the discussion after the screening how difficult it had been to find people to interview and then, as a non-Jew, to gain their trust.  He succeeded wonderfully.  We look forward to more films from him.

        Even earlier, in late May, Marie-Henriette and I joined a Friends of ARIT day trip to Çevre Kale, an Iron Age fortress located at Yaraşlı, near Kulu, 100 km south of Ankara. Geoffrey and Françoise Summers led the trip. They had surveyed the site in 1991, and recently, Geoffrey, together with N. Pınar Özgüner, published a reexamination of the site. 

Geoff Summers explains the site

        The fortress lies on a bluff above the plain, below Karacadağ, a small mountain. It has not been excavated, but the lines of the walls are clear. 

The view toward the south and east is commanding.  The fort is dated to the 7th-6th centuries BC, but abundant Hittite potsherds lying on the ground suggest the site was used by the Hittites as well, in the later 2nd millennium BC. 

        The morning was rainy as we walked up from the village to the site. The sun came out just as we sat down for our picnic lunch and stayed out the rest of the afternoon.  The hike around the site was glorious: the views, the hills, the clean air, the quiet.  I did not put on sunscreen or my cap, though, and that evening my face was bright red from the sun burn.  It took me several days to recover. 

        On the way back we stopped for tea at a large cafeteria-market at the crossroads where the north-south Ankara-Aksaray-Adana crosses the east-west road to Konya.  A huge thunderstorm let loose, with torrential rain and hail. I was drinking tea outside, but the canvas awning was not protection enough.  I was getting wet and hail was plopping into my tea.  I raced inside, getting wet even in those few instants, to wait out the storm before getting back into our bus. 

        We archaeologists who live in Ankara enjoy saying in late spring, year after year, with each tremendous outburst of thunder, lightning, and drenching rainfall, how well we understand why the Hittites had a storm god. 

        A Turkish colleague loves to say, “Summer does not begin in Ankara until July 1^st.”  How right he is!  We have one week to go. 

       

       

Ramazan, ID cards, and voting

            It’s Ramazan (Turkish for Ramadan), the Islamic month of day-time fasting.  I’m not Muslim, but even so, there are benefits. We eat Ramazan pide, the special bread of the season, and I enjoy güllaç, a glutinous milk-based dessert served only at this time.  Two Fridays ago we were invited by friends to a restaurant for iftar, the evening meal that breaks the fast.  The restaurant specializes in döner, meat cooked on a vertical spit.  We arrived 20 minutes early, but the restaurant was already full with families, seated at tables provided with a plate of dates and olives – the first things a fast breaker eats – and bowls of chopped tomato and cucumber salad, and shredded onions with parsley and sumac.  Waiters took our orders, and brought over a trolley of drinks (non-alcoholic).  We were seated under a large TV screen, which duly noted the iftar times throughout Turkey. There is almost a one-hour time difference between the east and the west.  Eventually Ankara’s time came, 8:12 pm, heralded with the call to prayer, and everyone started eating.  The waiters quickly and adeptly brought food to the many tables; getting food to all in short order requires skillful organization on the part of the restaurant.  We had lentil soup, then our plates of döner, and, for dessert, kedayif, the restaurant’s specialty, all delicious.  The four of us chatted away, eating in leisurely fashion; by the time we finished, the restaurant was empty.  The evening was balmy, so a stroll through the neighborhood was in order.

            At a corner nut shop I bought small portions of mixed nuts and salted peanuts at a nut to take home.  Turkey is a “kuru yemiş” (“dried fruit and nuts”) country, where excellent nuts are sold everywhere: walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, cashews, and peanuts, as well as leblebi (dried roasted chickpeas).  [France, in contrast, is not such a country.]  My non-Turkish appearance inspired the man at the cash register to speak to me in English. Because I have lived here so long, I don’t feel particularly foreign and have found it irritating when people speak to me in halting English.  Why are they singling me out?  Now, though, I’m less bothered.  If they want to practice English, why not? 

            In government offices, though, I would welcome attempts to speak English.  It might relieve the tension.  You wait and wait (these days with a printed number for your place in line, fortunately) and then you have to speak and reply with a certain precision.  You don’t want to blow it. 

A few weeks ago I was applying for a new ID card.  I came prepared with my biometric photo and, of course, my current ID card.  I arrived at the Public Registration Office (Nüfus Müdürlüğü) at 10:30 am and took my number. Fifty people were ahead of me.  I had nothing to read and, moreover, I had a lunch appointment.  I gave up and left. 

I discussed the matter with our secretary.  “You need to get there at 8:30 am, when the office opens,” she said.  “At the latest.”

Two days later, I got going early and arrived at 8:20 am.  This time I brought a folder of student papers to read.  Several people were already waiting, sitting in a long corridor outside the offices.  At 8:30 am, the office door opened and we filed in to get our automatic number.  Only 17 people were ahead of me.  Three counters were open, so the wait shouldn’t be too bad.  While I was perusing the announcements posted above the number machine, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t pay the fee in cash.  It wasn’t much, only 18.5 liras (= $4), but I needed to pay it in advance, either on-line or at a bank.  I double-checked with the man ahead of me in line, no. 17. It’s true, he said.  Panic! Where would I find a bank?  I would lose my place in line and have to start all over! 

I remembered seeing a hotel just across the street. They would surely know where I could find a bank. Fortunately, banks were clustered nearby.  But the banks didn’t open til 9:00 am and it was only 8:45.  Nothing to be done; I had to wait.  Eventually, receipt in hand, I returned to the Public Registration Office where, miraculously, my number hadn’t yet been called. The man just ahead of me, no. 17, was at one of the counters.  I had to wait only five minutes and then it was my turn.  Registering fingerprints for all ten fingers took some time, as each finger had to be pressed and rolled onto a little machine at least three times, but the woman doing this, who was doing this all day long, was remarkably patient.  I told her so and she smiled.  The entire procedure was finished in 15 minutes, and early the following week my new biometric ID card was delivered to me in person, at home.

One reason I applied for a new ID card was because I read in “Hürriyet,” a major newspaper, that ID cards more than ten years old would not be accepted as proof of identity at voting stations on June 24.  The nation-wide elections for president and parliament taking place then are, needless to say, of major importance.  It would be a shame to be turned away because of an out-of-date ID card.

Two students who expected to be working at an excavation north of Rome just showed up at my office to say they couldn’t get an Italian visa. 

“What happened?” I asked. 

In order to vote in advance, before going to Italy, they applied at the Public  Registration Office for a dispensation. This was granted, and the two students went to Ankara’s Esenboğa airport and duly cast their absentee ballots.  However, the Public  Registration Office had changed their place of residence to Italy.  The Italian Embassy then said, We can’t give you a visa here, because you are not residing in Ankara but in Italy.  You will have to present your documents in Italy.  

A dilemma.  

“At least you have voted,” I said. 

“Yes,” they said.  “At least we have voted.”

Somehow I don’t think it was much of a consolation.