Happy New Year in a nutshell (or in a shoebox)

       

        Christmas and New Year’s Day have come and gone and we are firmly in 2014.  The Ankara weather has been dreary, day after day of gray skies, sometimes fog, now and then a bit of drizzle.  No rain, no snow – but roads nastily slippery as moisture enlivens the dormant oils.  Marie-Henriette reports seeing several accidents en route into the city yesterday, cars having spun and skidded, including a near miss for herself.

Winter began one month ago.  With a prediction of snow soon to come, I rushed to my local Shell station to have our snow tires installed.  Last year, it barely snowed so before I went I wondered aloud to our kapıcı (caretaker of our apartment building) if changing the tires would be worth the trouble.

“There’s already one meter of snow in the mountains,” Murat said.  “We’re going to have a rough winter.”

 

My parking lot on December 8

A few days later, the temperature dropped sharply.  I was up early to get started with a challenging course preparation.  The car was covered with frost.  I had to scrape it off – what a bother!  First I started the car, to warm it up.  But as I sat down, turning the key in the ignition, I noticed the beauty of the large frost flakes that covered the windshield.  Each large, complex flake was perfectly placed in an intricate tapestry.  I didn’t want to move.

The next afternoon, December 7th, snow began, and the following morning, we awakened to full sun and all Ankara brilliantly white.

 

Two cacti eye the snowy street

         

        In contrast, the political climate these days is not sunny, clear, crisp, and beautiful.  Instead, it’s like our New Year’s weather: nasty, slippery, with dormant oils awakened.  On December 17, we awoke to news of several dozen people hauled in for questioning on charges of corruption, including three cabinet ministers and their sons.  A raid on the home of the general manager of Halkbank, a state bank, yielded a few million cash dollars stuffed  in shoeboxes.   

 

        The prime minister, indignant at this assault on the integrity of his government, has blamed plotters, foreign and domestic, and he has used his considerable powers to block further investigations.  That charges of bribery and money-laundering might be true, or at least deserving of examination, seems not to be of concern.  Prosecutors and dozens of policemen involved in the probes have been removed from their posts.  Critics are denounced.  Even a middle-aged woman in Manisa was detained when she held up a shoebox  to protest while the prime minister was addressing a rally.  

        As we ordinary folk wait for explanations of who, when, how, and why, every day some new incident, declaration, or rumor compounds the mystery.  No one knows what lies ahead, but most hope that the rule of law, enshrined in the Turkish constitution, will be reaffirmed. 

 

         The Ethnographic Museum, with equestrian statue of

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

         One week ago Saturday, I treated myself to an afternoon downtown.  The coast was clear – no demonstrations; the city center crowded with shoppers, as usual.  I was having New Year’s cards printed at Fırat Color, the photo store in Kızılay I have gone to for over 20 years, a shop which miraculously has survived the transition from traditional film to digital cameras.  I had a few hours to kill, so I walked up to two museums I hadn’t visited for years, the Ethnographic Museum and the State Painting and Sculpture Museum.  The buildings, designed by Arif Hikmet Koyunoğlu in the 1920s, are distinguished examples of the First National Style, and dramatically sited on a hillside with a fantastic view to the west (even if the immediate foreground is marred by an unsightly jumble of miscellaneous buildings, roads, and railway tracks).

        In the language of Turkish museums, “ethnographic” = “traditional Turkish arts and customs.”  One will learn nothing about New Guinea, Mali, or Bali, not even about Bulgars, Greeks, Circassians, Kurds, or Arabs (all component peoples of the Ottoman Empire).    

        This afternoon, visitors are few, the staff somnolent.  The exhibits, even if well presented, are predictable – with the exception of several intricately decorated wooden doors and minbars (pulpits in mosques), some even from Seljuk times, 700 years ago.  For me, these are the highlights. 

 

 Woodwork (detail)

This museum was the resting place of Atatürk from his death in 1938 until 1953, when his grand mausoleum, the Anıt Kabir, was completed.  Photos of the funeral journey from Istanbul to this museum line the walls.  While I am examining the photographs, a man and his son rush in; the man positions his son by the place where Atatürk’s coffin once stood and takes a picture; and out they go. 

 

         The State Painting and Sculpture Museum

        The State Painting and Sculpture Museum shows works by Turkish artists of the 19th – 20th centuries.  The paintings are in the fashionable western European styles: realism (notably orientalist themes), impressionism, post-impressionisms of various sorts, and, in the final rooms, abstract art.  Much seems derivative and I walk through fairly quickly, but from time to time something catches my eye.   

 

     

        I love Osman Hamdi Bey’s orientalist painting of 1908, “The Arms Merchant” (“Silah Taciri”) -- above -- and I enjoy the great charm and upbeat message of Şeref Akdik’s 1935 “School Registration” (“Mektebe Kayıt”) -- below -- in which a village couple are signing up their three small children for school and everyone is visibly thrilled.  This is what the Republic is all about.   

 

And the large salon at the north end of the museum, furnished in late Ottoman style, is stunning. 

        I leave this museum feeling happy and satisfied.  I am tempted to continue on to the Cer Modern Arts Center, Ankara’s newest modern art museum, not far away behind the massive courthouse, but it is already dark and, more importantly, a phone call has come from Fırat Color: my cards are ready.  

        Best wishes to all for a Happy New Year 2014!