Pups Lives!

Our favorite animal in our residential complex is a grumpy old dog we call Pups for lack of creativity. He would always be sunbathing or lying in the shade under cars in front of our building during the day. The first time he met each of us he barked but them after realizing we would scratch his head and stomach become calmly friendly, always trotting up with wagging tail and sniffing around any shopping bags we might be carrying to check if there was anything for him. Other neighbors seemed to like him as well, stopping their cars beside him to roll down their windows and scratch his head, asking How are you, my son? He was wholly harmless; the only physical altercation he got into in front of us was with a crazy-ass cat who sent him away yelping.
At night, though, he turn vigilante and enjoyed hiding in the bushes and then howling at anyone who passed by after curfew. Evidently this pissed off enough neighbors that one day last week, I heard him yelping and looked out the window to see two men in municipality polo shirts trying to get him out from under a car and into a grey hearse-like vehicle using one of those lasso-ended poles. He managed to give them the slip and run off just as a lady from my building came out asking what was going on, what were they doing. One of the men ignored her entirely and got behind the wheel of the hearse to drive it around to the other side of the complex; the other, left on foot to walk in the direction Pups had fled, just said brusquely that the neighbors complained and they didn't want to do this either but they had to. A little while later the hearse drove back past and out of the complex.
I asked the unhelpful complex security guard and then the very helpful employees of the mini market inside the complex if there was anything I could do to get him back and would they kill him. They laughed and said no, the neighbors had been complaining about his night howls so they'll just give him vaccinations (he had a tag on his ear already, but evidently old) and something to calm him down (??) and then bring him back.
My girlfriend was skeptical of this claim, and the fact that the phone numbers for the possibly Orwellianly-named municipal "Street Animal Rehabilitation Center" were not functional, along with news of police killing beloved street dogs for no reason in a nearby neighborhood, did nothing to allay concerns. The men from the municipality showed up a few days later together with a vet for something else and I asked them what became of the dog. As brusquely as usual, they told me that they hadn't caught him, he'd escaped. Then why haven't I seen him since the day you came? I asked, and they didn't bother to answer. I asked the super after a few more days of no Pups and he said yes the municipality took him but they just gave him vaccines and dropped him back off. He was back in the neighborhood, just hanging out behind the building nowadays but he would come back out front.
Why the contradictory stories? Was everybody lying in that weird Middle Eastern way where people think that they are softening the blow of a death by just denying it happened?
That was what I thought until last night when I heard a familiar howl from the woods behind the building. The area is inaccessibly fenced off, a shared backyard for the neighbors living on the ground floor, and in the dark and through the tree cover I couldn't see anything.
But then tonight, another howl and then, from our balcony, we watched as Pups came trotting over like nothing had happened to a neighbor's back door to where she (probably a she) had moved his food bowls, which used to be out front.
My theory is that Pups did indeed get away from the municipality and then our neighbor took him into her back yard to hide him from the Man and put a collar on him for good measure to show he wasn't a street animal that they had jurisdiction over. The super must have seen the municipality vehicle come and then seen Pups a few days later and figured they had caught then released him. My faith in the neighborhood is restored.
It would be nice if he could come out front so we could play with him again, but I suppose better that he is protected from the street animal gestapo. Maybe I will go downstairs and introduce myself to the neighbor and ask if we can go into her back yard to play with Pups. Play is a strong word--unfortunately he has no idea how to play fetch or inclination to chase flying object, but we could go give him a scratching.

Croatia wrap-up

We are back in Istanbul. For a pure baking-on-the-beach-and-exploring vacation experience Dubrovnik might be my favorite place I've ever visited. For starters there were no jellyfisgh and virtually no mosquitos and the tap water is potable.



The food was mostly excellent: my favorite was "the cheerful Bosnian," a rumpsteak wrapped in a tube around vegetables in a creamy sauce that I ate at a Bosnian restaurant improbably named Taj Mahal. The seafood was also good, though these whole prawns were a bit advanced for me, particularly the one that oozed black goo from its midsection, I now know a sign of being not so fresh.


Our favorite place was Lokrum Island, a short boat ride from the medieval walled city center. The city center and beaches near the ferry landing were very crowded with tourists, but everywhere in the city and on the island we went, just a few minutes walk and we would find ourselves completely alone. The perfect swimming cove we kept returning to, and mostly had all to ourselves:



Lokrum is heavily populated by peacocks and rabbits, though they seem despite drawing tourist love to be officially ignored as pests rather than attractions. Nowhere in pamphlets and guides are peacocks mentioned.

Notice anything missing from this guide to the city's birds found on the island?



When we tired of swimming and hiking and sunbaking, there was a half-build monastery on Lokrum with an airy cafe inside where we could play cards. When hungry, we picnicked on Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter Tea Party-style carved wooden chairs and table. They were all cut from a very aromatic wood that smelled halfway between pine and cedar.

Dubrovnik

We are in Dubrovnik, Croatia for a little vacation and visa refresher. You may recognize the old city as King's Landing in Game of Thrones. The show seems to have been a great boost to the city's tourism, as there are film location tours and souvenirs everywhere and I've already spotted Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister wax sculptures in shops.

Dinner of Dalmatian smoked ham and risotto stained black with cuddlefish ink.

The photo below is from the very nationalist Homeland War museum atop the ridge that overlooks the city. Dubrovnik was under siege by Yugoslav National Army in 1991 and 1992 in what they also call the War of Independence or War of Serbian and Montenegrin Aggression. The museum, a fort built by Napoleon's marshall in 1806-1812 that then served as a stronghold in the 1991 defense of the city (not the bullet marks behind me), has room after room of weapons from the war of independence and photos of Croatian soldiers looking brave (a disturbing number of them with a weapon in one hand and a beer toasting the camera in the other) and old ladies looking sad and the city's buildings and boats burning.

When we first arrived the weather was a perfect 80 degrees sunny and we were looking forward to just baking on the beach, but yesterday was rainy and cool and today looks to be the same, so it will be more culture tourism and soggy hiking until the sun returns.

Belgrade Forest

We spent about 5 hours walking in Belgrade Forest just north of Istanbul. It is shocking that there is an enormous park just a 30 minute bus ride from our apartment where, if you go past the picnic areas near the main road, you can go a very long way without seeing anyone. It will be a real pity when they turn it into a strip of giant convention centers after they complete the third bridge and third airport.

A dam, built, the plaque said, in 1797 by order of Selim III's mother. There are amazing aquaducts running miles from the reservoirs that used to supply the city with water, though we didn't hike past them today.

There were a few weird stretches of path lined with logs; we passed what seemed to be a little loggers' tent camp at one point.

It was somehow very satisfying to be on the city metro with hard earned mud of the feet.

Istanbul Modest

Yesterday we went to Istanbul Modest Fashion week, which is being held at Haydarpaşa train station, though unfortunately not in the grand old interior. Still I have to give them credit for creativity in repurposing a train platform as a runway.

Not pictured here but our favorite brand was http://www.mimya.com.tr
Great looking kaftans and mosaic-looking prints but unforunately up close almost all were rayon and elastine, not so nice in texture to actually wear.

Unforunately modesty does not seem to imply reasonable heels.

There were some kinda Victorian-modest designs mixed in with the Islamic-oriented stuff:

 A design team (from Indonesia or Malaysia, can't remember which) takes a bow. I wonder if there is controversy about gay men designing clothes for conservative Muslims. Didn't seem to be any and the male designers seemed to be like I would expect at any other fashion show.

 And the designer of those wedding dresses in the last runway photo:

After the runway show, some designers from various countries gave demonstrations on particular ways they liked to do up their hijbabs. Here an American-Palestinian blogger demonstrates. There seemed to be a big split between the pro- and anti-fastening pin hijabis.

The festival pamphlet said something about how there was a big problem in modest fashion that it was mostly localized without much by way of global trends. I guess the dark motive behind this kind of international festival and demonstrations of various hejab-tying styles is to create a more homogenous global style so that modest fashion giants can start bringing in H&M money.

On our way to the ferry after the show we happened by another market festival, this one for products produced by prison inmates from around Turkey. It seemed that they mostly produce wares that their regions of incarceration are famous for. So Bursa inmates produce towels, Kütahya inmates produce porcelain, etc. I wasn't clear on whether purchase here (prices were excellent) would be moral because it would go to a budget to improve prisoners' quality of life, or immoral because tantamount to supporting slave labor. I got just a döner from the market, and wish I had asked what exactly prison labor's connection to the spinning meat was: do they raise animals? Butcher and process?

These dresses from a prison in the Black Sea region were a bit cheaper than those at the fashion show:

UPDATE: apparently there were protests by anti-capitalist Muslims who didn't appreciate the commodification of piety: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/05/turkey-istanbul-islamic-fashion-week-splits-conservatives.html

Middle Eastern bathing habits

It has always been a mystery to me how Iranians and Afghans bathe. They go into the bathroom fully dressed, come out fully dressed in the same clothes. Afterward there is is water over the whole bathroom floor, even if the shower is partitioned off. Yet their clothes do not get wet. I had an Iranian roommate very briefly here in my previous temporary squat in Istanbul, a mutual friend of the apartment renter passing through town. Once I walked to and out of the bathroom in just a towel and he gave me grin and said Bah Bah, like "Well look at you!" I thought maybe he was hitting on me but I think he was just scandalized and perplexed by the way Americans bathe.
My current temporary squat has great roommates but black mold in the walls that is killing me with allergies so I am doing all my work in cafes. I may ask to stay with another friend. Just 6 more days until I get a place of my own to stay until September.

recent bombings

Avoiding civilian casualties or protecting civilians really doesn't seem at all part of the strategy of any of the parties in the now three-way war among the Turkish state, the PKK, and ISIS. TAK, the PKK subdivision responsible for the 2/17 and 3/13 car bombings in Ankara, has explained that the reason they killed 37 random mostly random people in the latter attack was that their operatives were trying to drive into a police outpost to detonate themselves but then were cut off on the street by a transit bus after the police spotted them, so the operatives were obliged to just blow themselves up and kill a busload of civilians. Oh well.

The press is now reporting that the suicide bomber of this morning's attack in İstanbul is Savaş Yıldız. Yıldız is a Turkish citizen known to have re-entered the country from ISIS territory in October 2015 and has been connected to the suicide bomber who kind of kicked off this whole shit show by killing a bunch of youth activists in Suruç last summer (they were part of the same cell originating in Adiyaman in eastern Turkey). The leftist opposition newspaper Birgün reported in 2 different articles back in November that he was traveling around the country freely using his govt insurance card at doctors' offices and pharmacies.


The author of the article above was arrested for insulting the president in December*, showing the government's priorities, whereas no greater effort was apparently made to catch Yıldız. There are now reports in the Turkish media that he used that same ID card in a pharmacy in Istanbul yesterday.
Fuat Avni, a mysterious Twitter whistleblower who seems sometimes to have insight into government plans, tweeted "'The plan of the path to the presidential system passing through chaos is being implemented. 'The more explosions the more support,' they are saying."

At risk of getting really pulled into the conspiracy theory realm, it is worth noting that a pro-govt newspaper article claims Yıldız was a former member of the leftist, super secular utranationalist DHKP-C back in 2007, which is at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum as ISIS, though it shares with ISIS the methods of assassinations and suicide bombings and the accusation of being heavily infiltrated by Turkish intelligence services. When DHKP-C conveniently killed a prosecutor who was investigated the death of a 15-year-old killed by a police teargas canister during the Gezi Park protests, for example, anti-government conspiracy theorists went nuts.

Geez am I becoming a conspiracy theory nut myself? The way allegiances weirdly cross and official stories and excuses never fully make sense (back in October PM Davutoglu said it a TV interview that the govt had a list of possible suicide bombers, "However, legal action cannot be taken until the realization of the criminal act" because Turkey is a nation of law; then they arrested a bunch of professors for signing a petition) could bring it out in anyone.

*The AKP Eyüp Municipality Women's Promotion and Media Unit Director İrem Aktaş tweeted that she wished the Israeli tourists who had been wounded in this morning's bombing had died. A few hours later she got her wish with one of them. I wonder if she will be tried for her insults.

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Savaş Yıldız has disappeared from the headlines; now it is Mehmet Öztürk from Gaziantep, also ISIS but with no connect apparently to Adiyaman group.

sanctions relief

A visit to the consulate finally got me the documentation I needed and I am pleased to report that bank access is restored. It was actually my first time ever going to the Istanbul consulate and I have to say I love its design, a kind of brutalist motte-and-bailey castle on a hill.

The consulate was moved here in 2003 from the grand old Palazzo Corpi, which was the first embassy building that the US purchased in Europe, back in 1906 when Istanbul was the Ottoman capital. The Palazzo Corpi is now a fancy hotel called Soho House. It seems to have been good timing for the move as four Al Qaeda truck bombs hit targets in Istanbul including the more exposed British consulate a few months later.
Palazzo Corpi circa 1915:


What I like about the architecture of the new building is that it keeps the main building safe without requiring the super hostile and intimidating blast walls, barbed wire, sandbagged machine gun nests etc. characteristic of consular buildings I've been to in Afghanistan and even Germany. You enter the fairly normal-looking building at the bottom, minded by Turkish guards with body armor but only handguns not crazy-looking weaponry, and after passing through security and walking down a hall, you take an elevator up the main building. Even within the main building, all the consular services are on a lower level with nice little outdoor space that is nonetheless segregated from the rest of the consulate.
I got to cut all the lines because I was the only US citizen, felt like a dick.

Compliance Purposes

I tried to log into my bank account online a few days ago and an error message popped up saying that my account was "suspended" and I should call customer service. After speaking with several useless representatives I was told that by an only slightly less useless representative who told me that I had to fax a notarized letter stating my current location. Because it is 1989.
I asked why this was necessary and she told me that it is because I am in a "high risk country." I asked what on earth that meant, why Turkey is considered high risk. It is just for compliance purposes, she told me, unable to elaborate. Oh, well that clears it right up. Of course, compliance purposes.

So I spent the next rainy day going to a notary, having the notary tell me that he couldn't stamp anything unless there was an officially stamped Turkish translation on the flip side of the page, going to the translator and falling asleep in her office chair while she took 45 minutes to translate a few sentences, going back to the notary and listening to his rant about how America is the most ruthless country trying to ruin Turkey. He walked off and I paid his ditsy flirty headscarved secretary with a 100 lira note and she didn't have change so called him back and he gave me a twenty from his pocket. The American doesn't leave without taking money, eh? He guffawed. You just charged me 80 liras for a rubber stamp and I'm robbing the Turkish nation because I ask for change? I didn't say, instead just nodded haha. America is the most ruthless country, he reminded me. Then his secretary asked me how she could improve her English and warned me that the stationary shop across the street was a real rip-off. I went there anyway and they were nice but the fax didn't go through; 2 hours later, after 9am New York time, it was finally sent.

Then, a few hours later, I got a convoluted email from Marcia at the bank office actually in charge of handling "compliance issues"; though she didn't even acknowledge receiving my fax, Marcia told me I needed a letter notarized at a US embassy if I was abroad. Apparently, the bank does not believe either my signed statement or that Republic of Turkey-accredited notaries are in fact located in the country of Turkey. I hope that the US consulate rather than embassy (where Marcia told me I must go) is an acceptable witness to my being in the country; Ankara does not seem like a particularly appealing travel destination these days.

So today I'm off to the consulate way up north in Istinye. The problem is that I entered Turkey with my Iranian passport, so the US consulate may also lack sufficient evidence that I am, in fact, in Turkey, and be unable to notarize my claim that such is the case.

I learned from Marcia that this is all because when in Iran I logged into my online banking account to check my balance. I didn't transfer any money to Iran, just checked my balance and logged out. Apparently that is a sanctions violation--and it must be a serious one if the nuclear deal didn't legalize it. Weren't Republicans making a big deal out of the Iranian government being able to pour money into Hezbollah and the Assad regime with its assets unfrozen by the deal? I guess the only thing bulwark left to protect American interests in the Middle East against the mad mullahs is that the latter aren't allowed to check the account balances for those unfrozen assets.

Before I go to the consulate, here is a review of the ways they could have detected that I am in Turkey and not Iran, if they had really dug deep into their detective work:
1) If they could trace my computer's IP address to Iran 2 weeks ago to know to block my account, they can trace my IP address to Turkey now
2) I called them, confirmed my identity by providing my card and PIN and address and last four digits of my social security number, and then told them I am in Turkey
3) I wrote them a notarized letter stating "I am currently in Istanbul, Turkey"
4) That notarized letter bore seals from Turkish translation and notary services and was stamped with the name ISTANBUL in large letters

nationalist tidbits

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.

Tehran to Istanbul

Breaking news while I've been navel gazing: government seizes Turkey's largest circulation newspaper and English-language affiliate, a week after shutting down independent TV news channel IMC, all on charges of supporting terrorism: http://www.todayszaman.com/national_court-appoints-trustees-to-take-over-management-of-zaman-todays-zaman_414040.html

My flight from Tehran left at 5am, which meant leaving my uncle’s apartment at 2am. I groggily composed a blog post in my head to stay awake and remember thinking that it would turn out beautiful. I don’t know if I have forgotten too much or if my judgment at the time was impaired but now that I’m getting down to actually writing the post I don’t see what I was so dreamily excited to post.

I sat silently for most of the trip, thinking I should start a conversation to help keep the driver, who was yawning and kept adjusting an air vent from which I couldn’t detect any hot or cold air blowing, awake. I kept thinking of things to say but the awkwardness barrier of starting with my rubbish Persian kept feeling too great. I am more timid now then on previous trips because of the unfortunate combination of higher expectations (since it was, fuck, a decade ago that I started studying the language) and lower abilities, as I am lazy about maintaining languages and haven’t spent much time in Iran or Afghanistan in recent years, and when I have been in Afghanistan I have spoken English more than Persian.

We had a weird semi-interaction for some time: I would watch his eyes in the rearview mirror as they started to droop and then he would catch me and sharply lock eyes with me and I would look away. Then I would nod off momentarily and then wake up to his eyes in the rearview and he would quickly look back at the road. Every time I woke up the smell of shit—at first I thought cow manure but then wait maybe human sewage—seemed stronger, and I would look out the window and see nothing but open country and wonder why the hell they had built the airport so far outside the city. Nothing but oddly manicured dirt with little grey somethings on it that ran parallel to the road. I thought it must be some kind of agricultural thing I didn’t understand and that was where the shit smell originated but finally, about ¾ of the way there, a track of metal bars started to lie atop the grey somethings and I realized they were concrete and it was the incomplete airport-to-city metro line that I had been eyeing. That seemed a sufficiently exciting topic that I struck up a conversation and yammered in my rubbish Persian about how much had changed in the past 5 years since I’d been here. As I spoke I still had some kind of self-conscious half-asleep idea that a great blog post was going to come out of the whole drive, but it seems I was mistaken.

Oh well I am to be working as a journalist for the next 6 months and it is good that I get myself in the habit of writing something anything every day. I am also testing my sea legs: I am writing this on the ferry to the Princes’ Islands to see if I can be productive on a boat. I will look for real estate on the islands, which are 45-90 minutes ride from the city center. If I do find a place on an island, I need to make the most of the long commutes. A long commute actually might be the very best thing for my research. If I got back home quickly after a bout of participant observation, it would be tempting to do practical things, check the email, have a rest, etc. before typing out fieldnotes and then never actually get to doing so. If I have 45+ minutes to do nothing but write at the end of a work day in the city, I can vomit all my notes in the best detail while fresh in mind and before doing anything else. We’ll see.

Maybe the thing that made me happiest to be back in Istanbul, and weirdly proud of Istanbul as if it were my own, was to see how happy and healthy the street cats look here compared to Tehran. In Tehran they are all covered in grime and move jitterily from hiding spot to hiding spot like rats, ducking at every (frequent) bang and roar from automobiles and construction. According to a filmmaker friend there is big award buzz about a documentary about cats in Istanbul that will be shown at the Istanbul Film Festival. TRAILER: https://youtu.be/noTLGoskNhA My filmmaker friend seemed perplexed that anyone would voluntarily sit through 90 minutes of that.

BUSking in Tehran

Here he is (on right) getting in trouble with the bus driver (in light blue shirt on left):

And a kid with an violin plugged into some kind of backtrack-producing machine that he slung from his shoulder:

The 18th Brumaire of Donald Bonaparte

I just looked it up on an online French Republican Calendar converter (of course it exists) and this upcoming election day is in fact going to be 18 Brumaire CCXXV! The parallels of The Donald to Louis Bonaparte as described by Marx, a buffoon with a ubiquitous name who gained the support of the rural underclass and the lumpenproletariat by entertaining them and playing to their prejudices, seem amazingly relevant but I have only found 1 article on the interweb that mentions the similarity: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/197905/brand-awareness
I think I'm the first to realize that Trump may be elected on the 18th Brumaire and should reread Marx and write an article about it.

5 years later

I’m in Tehran. I wrote this a few days ago but haven't been able to post it because this website is blocked and the Iranian authorities (and maybe Google, which continues to block gmail business accounts despite sanctions relief) have upgraded their anti-anti-filtering technology since last I was here. Tor browser no longer works and it seems people now have to use paid VPN services--paying for which would have been a hassle if I didn't have someone to pay for me from the US.

In the 5+ years since I’ve been here (see tehran09.blogspot.com) things have changed, and what pops out at me in rough order of how much I care:

1) high speed internet: Anything faster than 56kb/s dial-up speed internet was unavailable to the general public back in 2009, the authorities’ answer to the threat of “cultural invasion”. Now there are cafes everywhere advertising free wi-fi and I got a prepaid 4G SIM card with 1gb of data and plenty of talk and text credit for under $20.

2) inflation: The largest bill when I was last here was 50,000 rials, confusingly referred to at 5,000 tomans, which are not official currency but what everyone talks in. Now there is a banksnote printed 100,000 rials (referred to as 10,000 [tomans]) and notes called “Iran cheque” that are not officially currency but are treated as such and, just to add to confusion, are printed in big letters with their unofficial toman values of of 50 and 100 (thousand) and not their official rial values (i.e. 500,000 and 1,000,000 rials, respectively). After some early confusion I tried not to buy anything yesterday until I had a chance to spread all the bills out on a table and figure them out, for fear that I would accidentally pay 10x the price.

Along with economic inflation has gone physical inflation of the bills. The notes that are valuable enough (worth more than 30 US cents) to carry around are all too big to fit in my wallet. I guess I should just carry them loose in a dedicated jacket pocket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPB59bVSbck

3) EZ PAY cards: I will also carry around the cards they finally introduced as a unified form of metro and bus credit (about 10 cents per ride). Before you had to get one kind of (almost free) paper ticket for 1 kind of bus, pay cash on other buses, and use a different kind of cardboard ticket for the metro, which then only had 2 lines forming a cross. Now things are easier, though I still managed to screw up and not pay by swiping my card at a bus station before boarding the women’s area at the front of the bus. Having public transit divided between women-only and co-ed sections seems like not a terrible pragmatic choice to me; certainly doesn’t fix the root cause behind sexual harassment, but lets women do their commute without the constant threat of it.

The buses going north and south on Valiasr street have dedicated lanes (which I think they were just pissing people off by piloting 5 years ago) but seems to come by infrequently enough that every one is crammed to the gills. It is the same with Istanbul’s metrobus system and a source of much confusion to me: why go through the engineering feat of building a huge system of elevated roads across Istanbul only to send 1 bus down it every 12 minutes? My guess is that when I pose this to Istanbulites (I haven’t yet) their stock response will be corruption, but can’t corrupt companies profit from bus production and operation just as they can from construction? Maybe it’s just that whatever planners are calculating how frequently buses need to come are looking at maximum physical capacity rather than quality of passenger’s lives. Because on Istanbul metrobuses especially, every time I have ridden, whether rush hour or a weird off hour, I have been smushed.

Pollution and traffic seem about the same despite improvements in public transportation.

4) outlet stores: A lot of stores have popped up that look exactly like official outlet stores of companies like Nike, Adidas, Asus etc. complete with the sparse, carefully laid out floorplans of downtown NYC and Dubai shopping mall outlets, but I don’t think they are actually outlets. They all seem to have instagram pages and websites that aren’t actually connected to the corporations they claim to represent (Iran hasn’t signed the international intellectual property agreement that would make this illegal). For example http://filairan.com/ looks pretty legit but isn’t listed on the “Country Select” of the http://www.fila.com/ mother page.

Hasankeyf

They say humans have been living in the cave dwellings here for more than 10,000 years. Next year much of the area will be under water, part of the reservoir of a dam being built on the Tigris river.



The Byzantine-era citadel:

The remains of a 12th century bridge:

It was 105 degrees in the shade but inside caves I would guess 30-40 degrees cooler, so I had plenty of spots to sit and recover between bits of hiking.

Some caves are now used as lounging areas, others to feed livestock.

Local yokels gawk at me:

cash is king

In Istanbul, when you try to break a 100 lira note for a purchase of under 20 liras, they sigh heavily and send a loitering boy to another shop to get change. For reasons I have yet to understand, nobody has any problem breaking large bills here, as everyone seems to carry a thick wad of money. I put down a hundred note to pay for my kadayif with goat-milk ice cream this evening and the kadayifci produced first a wad of hundreds and fifties from his front right pocket, then fifties and twenties from front left, and then tens and fives from back right. Each wad looked about as thick as could be fit into a pocket.
Maybe people don't trust banks here. I will inquire at the tourist bureau, full of twenty- and thirty-somethings with nothing to do because no tourists are here (actually I saw my first obvious group today, Scandinavian women), where I have started hanging out whenever I also have nothing to do.

Every night, usually starting a bit after the evening call to prayer, comes the pop pop pop of fireworks thrown at police stations and armored vehicles and of tear gas canisters fired in retaliation. My second night in town, I was in a back seat of a packed minibus when pop pop pop sounded loud and close and then fireworks were exploding on the street few down the street, in front of a police station. The driver slammed on the breaks and standing passengers fell into a heap. He paused a moment then said, It's just fireworks, nothing will happen, and started forward again. Then two exploded very close to the bus and standing passengers tumbled forward again and seated passengers frantically jiggled windows closed. As the driver reversed toward a back street and alternative route, I caught sight of the insurgent, a skinny kid in skinny jeans and a black shirt. Then as we turned away he ran away and an armored police vehicle, nicked up as they all are from hurled rocks, passed us to give chase. I wonder what they do to fireworks to make them more grenade-like; I suppose there is a part of the firework that makes it fly before exploding that you can remove.

theories

The case of Turkey is a problem for the theories of Robert Putnam, Jurgen Habermas et al. who say that the key to everything good in democratic politics is for people to sit around chatting together. There are an incredible, unbelievable number of associations and unions and NGOs and school clubs, and much free time across the age spectrum is spent sitting in cafes or parks arguing. Twitter and Facebook are extremely popular (some charts here and here). And this vibrant public sphere is an echo chamber of bullshit.
The default logic is to look at a global event, figure how it can been seen by some stretch of the imagine to benefit one global power or another, and then leap to certainty that the event was entirely orchestrated by that global power. This is the logic used across the political spectrum, and lends itself to some remarkably creative theories, putting to shame even the contortions of a cleric explaining how nasty things are also God's will.
The only explanation for the rise/popularity/survival of one's political opponent, be it the AKP, HDP, ISIS, or Bashar al-Assad, is that they are a pawn of the US, UK, and/or Israel. Last night a friend explained to me how from the time of the first Gulf War the US had planned the rise of ISIS by stirring up Shiite opposition but then not deposing Saddam so he would crush them. The US then let sectarianism fester for a decade and then invaded knowing that a few years [and a few thousand US military deaths] down the road ISIS would emerge.
Nobody believes me that the US government is incompetent and bumbling about the world with little foresight, with political and corporate actors certainly taking advantage of opportunities presented to them but controlling very little. And when I point to ideological changes creating policies that are not consistent over time, e.g. the change from a realist Bush I administration that didn't depose Saddam to  a neo-con Bush II administration with dreams of democratization, I am met with knowing winks that whatever ideology outwardly appears to be, there is always a deep state within that state that remains constant and really orchestrates everything. (NB one need only go into a wikipedia wormhole clicking on links leading from the Susurluk scandal article to see that there have indeed long been crazy connections in Turkey between drug trafficking, pope shooting, cold war special forces training, Kurdish inter-tribal conflict.... which makes global conspiracy theories seem less fetched)
At any rate, the idea of disunity and inconsistency within world powers clashes unacceptably with the belief in their deity-like powers. Yesterday's friend and others, both Kurds and nationalist Turks, have told me with absolute confidence that if the US wanted to it could crush ISIS in a day, and so ISIS's survival must be part of an American plan. Of course there remains the problem of why the US would want ISIS to thrive. Sources vary in this regard: the US may want an excuse to properly conquer the oil-producing bits of Iraq and Syria. Or it wants to sell more arms to everyone in the region. Or it is afraid that a strong Turkey would undermine American regional influence and so is stirring up shit on Turkey's doorstep.

Certainly a skepticism toward official explanations is healthy and often lacking when you talk politics with Americans, but a public sphere that breeds an understanding of politics based fundamentally in conspiracy theories (substantiated only by retrospective rationalizations of how the powerful might conceivably have wanted events to happen) seems not so much better than culture of complacent fear of whomever your national media tells you is coming for you.

It's been a while since I've used a squat toilet

Diyarbakir is a different kind of hot than Istanbul. The city has one of those little airports, at least the civilian side of it is little, where you climb down a staircase and then walk to the terminal and I had soaked through my shirt by the time I reached the baggage claim. Military planes making sorties to bomb the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan take off from the same base and scream over the city. I'm the only one who stops and looks up like they're something noteworthy and I will try to break that habit.
The taxi driver cursed a double parker in Turkish and Kurdish and told me that such behavior made life unlivable and then blew through a red light to cut off a whole line of cars a few blocks later. He dropped me off in front of the municipality, which is BDP-run and so Kurdish language newspapers and calendar commemorating Kobani resistance are everywhere. A friend of a friend at the municipality sat with me and I was so happy to be speaking Turkish in a real conversation for a change that I blathered on my thoughts about ISIS and Obamacare  to excess but he liked me and he and his municipality coworker seemed to have nothing better to do that afternoon. Then we drove around and picked up fresh milk in a plastic bag and picked up and dropped off one of his 10 siblings and then he dropped me off with my host, Giyas.
I had forgotten how incredibly hospitable people are here--like Iranians except they don't spoil it by constantly talking about how hospitable they are. Actually I feel deeply uncomfortable with hospitality from poor people who refuse to take rent in a way that I didn't used to when I traveled and blithely took whatever I was offered as if by birthright. Over tea and nuts in the evening Giyas and his sister told me all about how hard life is for them and how she wanted to move to Canada with her husband.
I feel the kind of numb discomfort toward these stories and requests for help with migration or education or whatever that white bourgeois New Yorkers feel toward homeless people. I used to be genuinely interested and try to make friends but the gross inequality creates an inevitability  that he will write me on facebook in 6 months and ask again about migration or other help and I will send him a useless NGO or university link if I respond at all and just not want to deal because I have moved on and know it is a pipe dream for him anyway. Money exchange makes things cleaner. Maybe I will move to a cheap hotel with an internet connection and a shower that isn't just a faucet on the wall at waist level. spoiled

drums of war

Thank goodness despite my prediction there have been no terror attacks in Istanbul despite warning by Turkish intelligence that mass transit might be targeted. My suspicion is that this is because the tacit agreement not to escalate hostilities hasn't entirely broken down between Turkey and the Islamic State, since after a token attack on ISIS Turkey has focused most of its military strikes and police raids on anti-ISIS Kurds.
Since June elections has been a hung parliament, with the AKP having the most but not a majority of MPs, largely because of the success of the leftist pro-Kurdish HDP party, which had been mediating a cease-fire and peace process between Turkey and the PKK. If a coalition is not formed, there will be an early election called this fall. I think with an eye on this next election and adopting the old "if you can't beat 'em, disenfranchise 'em and round up their leaders" strategy, Erdogan, who would very much like a return to one-party AKP rule and a majority strong enough to rewrite the constitution to make his presidency even more powerful, has been ramping up nationalist rhetoric against the HDP. Erdogan demanded that HDP MPs' parliamentary immunity revoked, after which to be badass HDP leader Demirtas announced that the HDP would submit a bill to lift their own immunity and encouraged all other parties to do the same in the name of accountability (not happening). The rumors are now that a legal case will be opened soon to shut down the HDP (as happened to its predecessor Kurdish-left parties: HEP > DEP > HADEP > DTP).
Meanwhile in eastern Turkey violence is ramping back up. The PKK launched a suicide tractor attack on a Turkish police station the other day, numerous areas in the east have been re-designated "military zones", and even opposition Turkish newspapers are equating the PKK and ISIS and stirring up anxiety among genteel White Turks.

I thought the Kurds were the good guys

Increasingly credible reports are coming in that the Iraqi Kurds are engaging in ethnic cleansing, looting and razing Arab villages in their expanded territory to reverse the Arabification of the oil-rich area around Kirkuk that Saddam forced decades ago. This seems to follow a fairly typical pattern for US proxies in the War on Terror Era. In Afghanistan, the US allied itself with warlords who got money and weapons in exchange for producing Al Qaeda and Taliban enemies. When there weren't any Taliban at hand, the Taliban having disbanded and returned home or to Pakistan, the warlords called their local rivals Taliban and quickly realized that the good governance and human rights conditions nominally attached to American aid carried far less weight than prerogatives of killing or capturing "terrorists". And because American money allowed them to buy fighters and monopolize power and the opium trade (as they got to decide whose opium crop got raided), those warlords felt little need to compromise or share power with rival local factions. So the rival local factions actually became Taliban and civil war returned to Afghanistan.  Iraq over the past decade has shaken out into a similar story up to the rise of ISIS and ouster of Maliki. There was a glimmer that the "Sunni Awakening", in which previously marginal Sunni tribesman went on American payroll and joined the Shiite-majority government to fight jihadis, signaled a more inclusive and effective strategy of American imperial rule. But then the awakened Sunnis were used "like a tissue" and then tossed away, as one of them complained about 50 minutes in here, and the government went back to sectarian ways--Maliki controlled aid and oil money so why share power? Enter the Islamic State as an option for pissed off militarily-trained Sunnis.
So are the Kurds, who are now getting US and especially European money and weapons in exchange for fighting ISIS, following the same pattern? I was in Kirkuk in 2007 hosted by the head of the provincial council and at the time the Kurds were the largest local faction but were in a much weaker political position. Both peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan and mostly-Shiite Iraqi Army soldiers were stationed in Kirkuk, oil was sent south and money came from Baghdad, and Kurdish politicians talked very nicely about inclusion and brotherhood among Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Christians, and Kurds in the province.
Now that the peshmerga are in full control of Kirkuk, the Iraqi army having run away after IS took Mosul, and are the darling of Euro-American Warriors on Terror, why be nice any more? I hope that War on Terror Imperialism 2.0 will involve a strategy with more foresight then simply encouraging local proxies to kill American enemies, with a blind eye turned to whatever else those proxies do. War of Terror Imperialism 1.0 followed that strategy and created/inflated the once-illusive enemy it was supposed to defeat and encouraged the good guys who were supposed to be on our side to become kleptocrats and sectarians.
It remains to be seen how serious the diplomats interviewed in the first story linked are about expressing their concern to the Kurdistan Regional Government about ethnic cleansing. If there is an actual credible threat at this early stage that the US and Europe would cut back aid if the Iraqi Kurds pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign (as the roundly-ignored Leahy Amendment--see e.g. aid restoration to al-Sisi's Egypt--says the US is legally required to do), that aid is in fact conditional not just on killing IS fighters but on not repeating the kind of politics and allowed IS to emerge, it may change things.

Please ignore this next paragraph as it is the middle of a conversation inside my head:
Maybe this is a fuzzy argument walking a tight-rope that doesn't exist between double government--close management of the Iraqi Kurds affairs, such that they lose incentive to cooperate with their foreign patrons and/or become locally unpopular because of their collaboration--and indirect rule. Or maybe I'm just calling for an atypical form of indirect rule based not so much on enemy-of-my-enemy alignment between local and imperial power as on the local power finding a way to rule and consolidate power that doesn't involve the usual pattern of patronage to the local ruler's own group and screwing everyone else. Certainly it is an argument based on the assumption that War on Terror imperialism will continue, that the US won't decide to just counter terrorist by beefing up airport security and withdraw militarily from the Middle East. But I think that is a safe assumption.

In other news, Turkey has joined the fight against the Islamic State, shelling IS territory this morning in retaliation for an IS attack on a Turkish border outpost, and is going to allow the US launch strikes on IS from its air bases, though Turkish and American sources at the moment conflict on whether this is on the condition of the US creating a no-fly zone in northern Syria. I expect Islamic State attacks in Istanbul in the very near future, and will avoid crowded areas.

What are you doing? the jihadists ask PM Davutoglu.
I'm building a wall to keep ISIS members from passing into this side, Davutoglu replies.
All three are on the Turkish side of the border.
Haha, say the jihadists.