Tag: Ataturk

Twitter Ye Not

Erdogan1

If ever there was cast-iron evidence for limiting the number of terms in the top job, it’s the Prime Minister of Turkey’s current spat with Twitter, an unedifying squabble that makes Erdoğan look autocratic and self-serving. Is the Twitter ban on or off? Who knows? Are the tweets about Erdoğan accurate? Who knows? Twitter is in good company. Lazy censorship is the norm in Turkey. A ban on YouTube has been on and off for years. Facebook may be next. Erdoğan doesn’t like selfies. It’s all rather pointless as anyone with a little technical savvy can circumvent the ban with relative ease.

Something dangerous happens to those who sit at the big desk for too long. The seduction of power can be unhinging. Like the absolute monarchs of old, some start to think that they personify and embody the nation they’re supposed to serve and to insult them is also to insult the nation (something that is a crime in Turkey). Erdoğan doesn’t respond well to criticism and uses politically appointed judges to punish those who cross him. And it’s not just Turkey. This imperious tendency can happen even in so-called mature democracies. Think Margaret Thatcher and how she became more regal and dictatorial with every year of her reign. God knows how Her Maj coped with those weekly chit chats. Who was giving an audience to whom?

Wiser heads know when to leave the party. Take Nelson Mandela, a great example of a dignified exit and even the ever-shrewd Tony Blair knew when the game was up. Not so for our power-crazed Erdoğan. In 2011, he won an unprecedented third consecutive election making him the most popular and successful Turkish leader since Atatürk. But there was a problem. The Constitution barred him from serving a fourth term as Prime Minister and that historic victory could have been his swan song. But the wily old Erdoğan wasn’t about to let the small matter of a Constitution pension him off, he simply changed it.

In August, Turks go to the polls to choose a directly elected executive president and guess whose name will be at the top of the ballot paper? The chances are Erdoğan will win, maybe by a smaller margin, but with a majority nonetheless. I don’t expect today’s local elections to upset the political status quo either. I do expect more authoritarianism and more paranoia, a prospect that doesn’t augur well for political pluralism in Turkey. And so back to the Iron Lady. In the end, it was her own who got rid of her, not the electorate. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesson here for Erdoğan.

 

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It’s All Greek to Me!

My fourth guest blogger is Bodrum vetpat and dedicated pansy fan, Carole Meads. Carole offers keenly priced, top-notch holiday properties in the pretty and peaceful resort of Torba, just 4kms from Bodrum. Take a look here if you’re thinking of visiting this part of the world (no, I don’t get a cut!). Here’s Carole writing about her attempts to learn Turkish. We’ve all been there.

Carole

Six and a half years ago I decided to make this idyllic coastal part of Turkey my home, along with a good friend who reassured me that learning the language wouldn’t be a problem. The Turkish language has its roots in Central Asia and the written form dates back to the 8th Century BC. in Mongolia.  As part of Ataturk’s reforms in 1928 he changed the written form of the language from the Arabic alphabet to the phonetic form of the Latin alphabet. He hoped this would aid communications and simplify things for non-Arab speakers…

Sadly, for a first time new language student, grappling with a different word order is hard enough and then it gets complicated. The Turkish language is based on vowel harmony and agglutination. It has to sound right and words are built up into sometimes incomprehensible length in order to make a point! So armed with a library of grammar, phrase books and CDs we set about teaching ourselves but somehow it never came to anything. ‘Speak to the locals’ knowledgeable ex-pats advised. These attempts at communication were met with confused expressions, grunts or replies in perfect English!

We soon decided that living in Bodrum, learning the lingo was going to be no mean feat. To be fair we quickly picked up basic chat and essential phrases – we got by but as soon as the conversation went ‘off-piste’ we were flummoxed. Then eighteen months ago a minor miracle happened. We heard about a new Turkish course starting up locally and at a price which matched our “non working” status! By this time I had become convinced that I would never learn Turkish, my friend already having mastered a couple of other languages was not so easily put off and immediately signed up. Her enthusiasm spread, several of our friends joined up and eventually even I gave in and decided to give it a go.

Erhan our teacher can only be described as ‘saintly’. He painstakingly prepares idiot proof lessons, listens to our horrendous annihilation of his native tongue, laughs with us not at us, all the while trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of the English language and ex-pats.

These days I lurch between declaring that I will never be able to speak this damn language and catching the jist of overheard conversation as I sit crammed in amongst the locals on the Dolmus. They say you have lost about 90% of your ability to learn a new language by the time you reach nine years old. Having reached an age considerably past nine, perhaps I shouldn’t be giving myself such a hard time?