Diyarbakir, Deportation

I was in Diyarbakir for just 5 days, enjoyed speaking Turkish for a change with almost everyone and understanding snippets of Kurdish, and spent my last day and a half with Burhan and his family, returned from mourning in the village. His two boys are now 11 and 8 (or maybe 9) and it seems like their personalities were fully formed last time I saw them at ages 5 and 2 respectively. Yusuf, the elder, is quiet and sensitive and embarrassed and Hüseyn is insubordinate and bold. I remember 2-year-old Hüseyn was the one to hit and bite and 5yo Yusuf the one to complain to his grandparents back then, and now it seems even their eight-month-old sister Şehrizad (an unusually Persian name that Hüseyn picked from a picture book) has learned that it is particularly satisfying to smack and scratch at Yusuf for the reaction it elicits. To Burhan's chagrin the boys understand Kurdish but always speak Turkish except with their grandma who doesn't understand  it.

The evening I spent with them we ate particularly good chunks of garlicky lamb prepared by Gülistan, Burhan's wife who was endlessly curious about how romances and weddings work in the US without a hint of the usual judgment that I'm used to whether Turks/Kurds are asking Americans or the other was around. Then they took me to Ceylon Karavil Park, which advertises itself as "The Largest Shopping Center in the East" and according to Gülistan is owned by a rich Kurdish family in the Netherlands. It opened only about 6 months ago, one of several huge Dubai-style shopping centers that has sprung up amid the towering middle class housing developments on the freshly-paved outskirts of the city. Posters promised an aquarium opening soon.

Do they have these in the US? A series of little primers with cartoons on big topics like the Enlightenment and Logic, most explaining intellectual histories chronologically and it seemed designed for the intellectually curious rather than for those cramming for exams or looking for a how-to guide like those Idiot's/Dummy's series. A nice idea they must have them in the US but I can't think of a time I've seen books like this, particularly displayed prominent on a rack at the front of the store.

Back in Istanbul last night Kaveh, an Iranian who has been living here for several years and whose couch I'm currently sleeping on, got a phone call from a Spanish journalist friend. A Colombian colleague of hers had been arrested the previous day and she was worried that he was about to get deported. Nobody at the station spoke English and neither of the journalists spoke Turkish. So we walked to the nearby police station to meet them. I wore a white tracksuit because its polyester was the only thing dry, clean and full length I had after doing laundry two days ago. Why don't they believe in dryers in this country?
The Colombian was sitting in an anteroom at the station. The story was that he had previously been deported from Turkey for illegally crossing into Syria for a story. Since then he had gotten a new visa through the Turkish embassy in Bogota and been assured that the deportation order had expired and returned here. However when two days ago he went to renew his visa, he had been arrested and told that there was a deportation order in his name. Someone had forgotten to update his paperwork.
In the station there was also a very upset French woman who had been robbed and a very friendly and relaxed--considering she was in a police station--Uzbek prostitute in sweater and fur-lined coat who walked right into our conversation circle despite not knowing English and explained to me in broken Turkish she was there because some boys had stolen her bag (but the Spanish journalist had chatted with her the previous day and laughed when I relayed this story). The Spanish journalist had brought a diet coke and a tube of snack biscuits for her friend but he refused, saying stoically that he would eat when he was released or when the Turkish police offered him food, which they hadn't despite him being detained for 30 hours now. The Uzbek lady happily took the biscuits and coke off the Spaniards hand, along with two cigarettes with a cheeky grin when the Spaniard offered her one. I wonder if they would take a volunteer translator: it is ridiculous for them not to have 24 hour English translators in one of the most touristy districts in the country and the experience would provide amazing material for a book or film I think.
The police allowed us outside for the others to take a smoke and Kaveh told the story of his first cigarette: during the 1997 student protests in Tehran he was arrested and amid beatings and bouts of boredom (one of the nastiest things they did in the always-lit prison was to give you food not according to any schedule but whenever you asked for it which made you completely lose track of time) an interrogator had brought him to the bathroom, stuck his head in the toilet and then handcuffed him to the stall and left him. After hours standing there a soldier had come in and discovered Kaveh and asked if he wanted a cigarette. If he had asked me if I wanted to be fucking in the ass I probably would have said yes, Kaveh told us. Any kind of entertainment.
Eventually word came that the Colombian had to report to the foreigner affairs bureau of the police for final processing but that he could expect to be released. Kaveh went with him in the back of a police van and I went for a beer with the Spanish journalist. She was worried that they would make the Colombian sign a false confession in Turkish that he had broken the law before they released him that they could later use to prosecute him. She had been in similar situations of detention in Turkey and China. She had worked in China for 10 years and complained to me that foreign journalists here--her friend included--tended to be much less professional and have both a cavalier attitude and very little idea of how to navigate local problems. The Colombian hadn't even had a phone number for his consulate or thought to contact them; instead he had called her when arrested because she is known as  competent. She complained that she can't get her own work done because helpless journalists are constantly calling her to help them sort their problems, everything from legal cases to paying utility bills. And she's only been here less than 2 years and doesn't speak the language.
In China there was a professional organization of foreign journalists with standardized criteria for membership that held regular meetings and produced documents for newcomers to reference about getting visas, what to do if detained, how to protect fixers and sources, data protection, etc. Here when foreign press club members meet, she said, it is mostly to get drunk and slap one another on the back for bravery in going into Syria etc.
Kaveh got back home at about 2:30. They had sat around and watched TV and befriended one of the cops and thank god the Colombian hadn't had to stay in one of the squalid cells willed with prostitutes much rougher than the nice Uzbek and drug dealers and other toughs awaiting deportation. The statement they finally had the Colombian sign had no confession of wrongdoing and he was released. He told us through red eyes last night that he's fed up with this country and will leave no matter whether he is deported or not, but we'll see.

death in the family

I've been in Diyarbakir since Friday. Burhan, a veterinarian who was incredibly kind and helpful a few years ago in introducing me to his tribe for a photography project, had offered to host me. But when I texted him saying I would arrive in a few hours he responded that his father's brother's daughter had committed suicide and he had to go to their village. Last night he came back to Diyarbakir and picked me up from his hotel in a little van smelling strongly of cow and told me no hotel tonight we'd go to his new home. He recently bought a huge apartment with all brand new appliances and not one but two şark odaları--literally eastern room meaning a carpeted guest salon with cushions or low couches instead of chairs. Over tea and walnuts and a kind of not-too-sweet green grape fruit roll-up that I'd never had before and whose name I've forgotten we caught up after all the years and talk politics and family. On hearing about the suicide I had reflexively wondered if it was something sex/honor related but from Burhan's account it was completely unexplained. She hadn't seemed depressed, nothing traumatic had happened, she'd just taken her father's pistol and shot herself in the head. She was in the hospital for four days before dying. 17 years old. We had to get up early the next morning because her older brother was arriving from out of town at Diyarbakir bus station. They hadn't told him that she was dead, just that he should come back from university because she was sick. Burhan seemed surprised when I told him that where I come from we immediately tell people over the phone; the thinking here is that it's better they hear about it when together with loved ones than all alone and that telephone isn't an appropriate medium for the communication of such important information. There had actually been some debate as to whether to tell him at all or let him find out when he came home for vacation. But he was coming and Burhan wasn't sure whether he should tell the brother right away or let closer relatives do it when they got to the village, an hour away. Burhan overslept in the morning and he was waiting in the cold when we pulled up to the bus terminal. Burhan said a few words of greeting in Kurdish as he got into the back and I said hello and after a few minutes of driving Burhan said I was from America and the brother said welcome and then more silence. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me before seeing his face that if this is the usual way siblings are informed he probably already had figured it out. They dropped me off near my hotel and Burhan and I made plans to meet again when he's back from the village with his wife and kids, who stayed there with much of the extended family in mourning while Burhan came to Diyarbakir.

Book Fair

I went to a huge book fair on the generic outskirts of town. I tend toforget how gigantic the city is and how all the housing developments and malls along the outskirts look completely interchangeable until I get on the commuter bus and pass them by for an hour or two.
The venue was a massive set of interconnected warehouses and the visitors (at least the most visible ones) were mostly horrible children on school field trips. The variety of book stands was dizzying; literally: I got a headache and completely lost. Across from a children books stand with a bare-breasted woman on the cover of a graphic novel next to a Che Guevara poster was the Ministry of Religion's section and Muslim self-help books. Laz, Georgian, Kurdish minorities had their stands (a teach yourself Kurdish book was the only thing I ended up buying) and organizations with names with every permutation of Ataturk History Culture Organization had their biographies and icons. One kiosk had a giant sign "We are Ataturk's Soldiers." Their neighbors sold a Gallipoli battle board game. There was even a Falun Dafa kiosk and a Turkish woman in a bright yellow doing slow-motion meditation exercises. As I passed a couple random schoolgirls ran up to tickle her sides.
In two of the warehouses was an art fair with far fewer visitors. I have to admit the thing I remember best was a Campbell's Soup can labelled Ottoman's Condensed Kelle Paça (sheep's head soup).

I'm going to Diyarbakir tomorrow. It's been a few years and I am trying to refresh my memory about the city layout from Google Maps but what's left of the map in my head has landmarks of the breakfast and meatball places I liked, the adidas outlet and the cool little network of chambers I found in the ancient city walls with little sense of distances.

Acı Soslu Demokrasi

I was still at least a kilometer from Taksim Square when my nostrils began to tingle, then my eyes. Is there a protest up ahead? I almost asked a couple coming from there but decided that was a stupid obvious question. A few people I passed in the drizzle of rain were squeezing at their noses and a couple headscarved women had covered their mouths and noses, but other than the street kids who coughed deeply and rubbed at their eyes as they held out tissue packets toward me once I got to the square nobody seemed to acknowledge or mind. The cafes along Cumhuriyet Caddesi had packing outside and empty inside seating and the Syrian refugee families who now line the north side of Gezi Park--home to a string of restaurants and bus companies before redevelopment but now just concrete--sat as usual on the sidewalk with their children scampering about them. There was no protest in Taksim, no police presence even. And the gas didn't seem to get any stronger as I got closer to the square, as if they had bombed the city with so much that it had gone up into the atmosphere and was now drizzling down evenly and lightly across the whole area. As I passed the square toward Cihangir a stooped man in a gold hassled green Ottoman getup stepped out from one of the Turkish Delight shops and asked me Where are they squeezing? or Where are they fucking? Tarlabaşı? (sıkıyor or sikiyor I didn't hear--same meaning in this case) I said I didn't know. Maybe the protest was in Tarlabaşı and the wind blew the tear gas through Taksim down Cumhuriyet--I should check the news.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as hair removal poster boy

I saw this ad on the top right for hair removal products and recognized the photo from 2001 and took a screen shot. The caption says "those hairs won't fall out from just waiting". It has since made the news:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/04/turkish_hair_removal_ad_uses_al_qaida_s_khalid_sheikh_mohammed_photo.html
I wonder if the US government could sue for copyright infringement--if I remember correctly this was the official photo the DoD or whoever released when he was captured.