A French-American friend was passing through Istanbul a couple days ago with his girlfriend and invited me to join them and some Turkish friends-of-friends he'd never met. The spot the hosts had picked was a very fancy-looking restaurant inside of an odd little compound that included a night club and soon-to-be-opened craft brewery encircling a big courtyard.
The 4 new Turkish friends were secular elitist in that boring tone-deaf way, making easy references to Kurdist terrorists and the great leader Ataturk and how half the country voted for Erdogan just because they were stupid uneducated people. They, especially the two women at the table, seemed to like me less and less as the night went on specifically because of my familiarity with Turkish things. My friend and his ladyfriend would be talking about their first impressions and asking about stuff, for example the origin of the fez hat and where to get the best pickles, and I was sometimes better able to answer than the Turkish diners. "I'm scared of you," of the the women said laughing, and later asked me if I was a spy. The other chimed in that maybe I was trying to learn what "modern" Turks think, as part of a CIA mission I guess. Joking, but not fully. Just the fact of a foreigner knowing something about their country--however innocuous that knowledge: pickles and fezzes and a weirdo religious group--seemed to be vaguely threatening to them. And the latter woman got very offended when, after my French-American friend asked about male Turkish dance moves, I googled "adnan oktar dans" to bring up images of a bizarre televised cult's leader dancing with his surgically enhanced "kitten" followers. I thought the Turks at the table would get a laugh at me saying this was the ideal Turkish man to imitate but she said disapprovingly that she never would have showed Adan Oktar to a visiting guest, that was something an American would show a visitor [to embarrass the Turkish nation, I guess].
That kind of attitude is kind of incomprehensible to me, in the sense that I can't imagine having a response of discomfort when someone knew too much about American or having impulse to present the best face of my country to foreigners, sweeping, I dunno, Kim Kardashian under the rug.
On my taxi ride home last night from viewing an amazing bohemian apartment that I think I will rent, my driver told me that, years earlier, he had another American passenger who spoke English and what he remembered was that pride with which that passenger had declared "I am American." The driver wished that people would have the same pride in saying they are Turkish. Because Turkey is a very rich country; all its governments for decades has been robbing it but it still has lots of money--that means it must be rich, no? And as taxici who had been working in Istanbul for 30 years he could make a prediction with great confidence, which I might laugh at now but I should remember and recount at the conferences I attend when it comes true, that within 30 years Turkey will be the #1 country in the world. Yeah, a lot can change in 30 years, was that best response I could come up with.
The 4 new Turkish friends were secular elitist in that boring tone-deaf way, making easy references to Kurdist terrorists and the great leader Ataturk and how half the country voted for Erdogan just because they were stupid uneducated people. They, especially the two women at the table, seemed to like me less and less as the night went on specifically because of my familiarity with Turkish things. My friend and his ladyfriend would be talking about their first impressions and asking about stuff, for example the origin of the fez hat and where to get the best pickles, and I was sometimes better able to answer than the Turkish diners. "I'm scared of you," of the the women said laughing, and later asked me if I was a spy. The other chimed in that maybe I was trying to learn what "modern" Turks think, as part of a CIA mission I guess. Joking, but not fully. Just the fact of a foreigner knowing something about their country--however innocuous that knowledge: pickles and fezzes and a weirdo religious group--seemed to be vaguely threatening to them. And the latter woman got very offended when, after my French-American friend asked about male Turkish dance moves, I googled "adnan oktar dans" to bring up images of a bizarre televised cult's leader dancing with his surgically enhanced "kitten" followers. I thought the Turks at the table would get a laugh at me saying this was the ideal Turkish man to imitate but she said disapprovingly that she never would have showed Adan Oktar to a visiting guest, that was something an American would show a visitor [to embarrass the Turkish nation, I guess].
That kind of attitude is kind of incomprehensible to me, in the sense that I can't imagine having a response of discomfort when someone knew too much about American or having impulse to present the best face of my country to foreigners, sweeping, I dunno, Kim Kardashian under the rug.
On my taxi ride home last night from viewing an amazing bohemian apartment that I think I will rent, my driver told me that, years earlier, he had another American passenger who spoke English and what he remembered was that pride with which that passenger had declared "I am American." The driver wished that people would have the same pride in saying they are Turkish. Because Turkey is a very rich country; all its governments for decades has been robbing it but it still has lots of money--that means it must be rich, no? And as taxici who had been working in Istanbul for 30 years he could make a prediction with great confidence, which I might laugh at now but I should remember and recount at the conferences I attend when it comes true, that within 30 years Turkey will be the #1 country in the world. Yeah, a lot can change in 30 years, was that best response I could come up with.
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