Turkish Awakening (13 page)

Even if Bilis was undeterred by this experience and wished to continue down the state route, he would find it difficult,
and not just because of the decline of theatre in general popularity. In April 2012 the bizarre Battle of Erdoğan vs State Theatre unfolded, culminating in a polemic by the prime minister against theatre practitioners and a vow to privatise theatres. At a youth meeting of the AKP in Istanbul he claimed: ‘There is no such thing as a theatre being funded by the state in most developed countries.’

Why? Several Turkish papers – and indeed the
Guardian
in the UK – printed a story which sounded like the script of a badly written play but was plausible given the characters involved. The story was that Erdoğan’s youngest daughter had attended a performance at the Ankara state theatre in 2011 and had walked out of an interactive performance because one of the actors, Tolga Tuncer, had apparently picked on her for wearing a headscarf and chewing gum. Tuncer was summoned by the Culture Minister and told that actors ‘had no right to interact with their audiences’. Tuncer said he had no idea that the lady in question was Erdoğan’s daughter and he had only singled her out because she was chewing gum in the front row; it was, he added, an integral part of the play to involve audience members. In March 2012, the mayor of Istanbul responded with explosive anger to a Chilean play,
Daily Obscene Secrets,
which had been condemned by a religious playwright who had never seen it as ‘vulgarity at the hands of the state’, and demanded its closure. Following that, Erdoğan took the lead and vowed to cut funding to state theatres. Under his proposal, special provincial councils would follow the lead of a council already set up by the mayor of Istanbul, deciding which plays should or should not be shown in formerly self-governing state theatres. The response
from the theatre world was understandable outrage, but accusations of political interference and downright censorship fell on deaf ears. Erdoğan declared that the days of ‘despotic intellectuals’ lecturing the masses were over, and had very much the final word: ‘I am privatising the theatres. This is what I am going to propose: stage whatever play you want after privatisation, but you cannot get your salary from both the municipality and city theatres and then criticise the management. Sorry, but there is no such absurdity.’

If theatre is dead, then inevitably television must take its place. While the vast majority of Turkish television is vapid and depressingly irrelevant to real social concerns, there is a small but important corner of the
dizi
world which is rising to the challenge of tackling serious issues.
Hayat Devam Ediyor
(
Life Goes On
) is a primetime soap opera about an underage girl forced to marry a seventy-year-old man in Cappadocia, in central Anatolia. Underage marriage is a topic which is known about in Turkey but not usually part of public discourse. This particular series seems to be a labour of love by one man, Mahsun Kırmızıgül, a former Kurdish singer who has more recently become known as a serious film director. He sought the help of a women’s rights activist group called Flying Broom, which campaigns against underage marriage and has submitted reports to the Turkish parliament about girls as young as thirteen being forced into marriage in some parts of Turkey – far below the legal threshold of seventeen, or the ‘special dispensation’ age of sixteen. Flying Broom provided a lot of the data for the series, and it is to be hoped that a primetime soap opera will reach millions of viewers, far more of the population than activists can
influence.
Hayat Devam Ediyor
is undoubtedly melodramatic, involving many tears, arrests and recriminations, which will leave it open to criticism from cynics saying these are viewer-grabbing tactics. I don’t see this as a problem. The real-life situations are equally dramatic, and it is established by now that the Turkish public respond well to melodramatic TV – I very much hope the show gets a huge following. I watched one scene in which former ‘child brides’ have a group therapy session, voicing total mistrust of their families and men in general. It is not comfortable viewing but it is important that people take in the reality of what it must be like, beyond the sterile statistics that can be found easily if one wants to – five and a half million women living in Turkey had been forced into underage marriage in 2009, for example, and in May 2013 the women’s committee of the Turkish Lawyers’ Association went so far as to say that one in four marriages in Turkey involved child brides. Perhaps some of them will watch the programme and realise they are not alone. Perhaps others, as yet unaffected, will see this ‘tradition’ in a new light. Most of all, I hope men watch it.

The general trend in the soap opera world is not for socially challenging or controversial programmes, unfortunately. But this is the case the world over; popularity is achieved by familiar, universal themes of love, social and familial conflict, played out in recognisable settings by beautiful people. What is interesting is that Turkey has got the formula so right that everyone wants access to it. Beyond the current sphere of influence in former Ottoman areas, there is interest from even further abroad – the Far East and the Americas, most significantly. MIPCOM is a commercial
TV festival held at Cannes every autumn. In 2012, Turkish production companies represented at MIPCOM received interest from China and Korea, and American production company NBC Universal bought the rights of
Aşk-ı Memnu
in order to distribute it to Latin America, once the most prominent series exporter in the world. It seems that Turkey has triumphantly taken that title.

Turkish companies seem to be increasingly aware of the influence they have in the world. Like the Turkish soap opera industry, the national airline, Turkish Airlines, is a hugely important commercial ambassador for the country – it flies to more countries in the world than any other airline, carries around 39 million passengers a year and has made clever sponsorship choices with football clubs with its annual revenue of $13 billion. It has been interesting to watch the airline Ottomanise its image: first, the design for a new, Ottoman-style of uniform for flight attendants complete with kaftan and fez was ‘leaked’ to the public, only to meet with general outrage. Then, red lipstick and nail varnish for female flight attendants were banned – the same outcry ensued, and the airline quickly overturned the ban. Most controversially of all, the airline announced in early 2013 that it would no longer serve alcoholic drinks on domestic flights and eight international destinations, apparently because of lack of demand.

While I make no claim that these changes were instigated by the AKP, or are part of any kind of behind-the-scenes policy, it is interesting to see the Middle Eastward trend of the last few years in sectors as diverse as television and air travel. Just as Turkish Airlines is appealing to a hungry Arab
audience with its not-so-subtle image change, so are Turkish soap operas with their glamorisation of Ottoman sultans and reworkings of Arab love stories. These changes make commercial sense, but they are part of something bigger. Turkey seems to be managing the extraordinary feat of modernising with a retrospective twist.

After the Californian gold rush of 1849, a new American Dream emerged. As opposed to the old, Puritanical ethos which had inspired people to accumulate a modest fortune year by year, the new aim has been described by the historian H. W. Brands as ‘the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck'.

There are no equivalent gold reserves in Turkey, but there are infinite business opportunities, and people hungry and audacious enough to seize them in an economy developing at speed. Turks are a curious mix of big dreamers and risk-averse, middle-class plodders. There are nearly as many billionaires in Turkey as there are in France and Japan combined, and the number of lira millionaires in Turkey rose from seven thousand to more than fifty thousand in 2012. There are also many Puritan equivalents, the religious lower middle class, who are happy to ensconce themselves in traditional jobs like tailoring or shopkeeping, modest but secure. When big dreamers succeed, their success is all-embracing, attended by huge celebrity.

İbrahim Tatlıses (‘Abraham Sweet Voice') is a Kurdish Arabesque pop singer and alleged mafia king who has created a massive business empire from nothing. He is a hyperbolic example of the potential of Turkish entrepreneurship, a man
with very little education and boundless ambition who came from a working minority background, made shrewd decisions and manipulated his music celebrity to create a one-man conglomerate. ‘Ibo' is a national icon, loved for his unapologetically sentimental music and revered for his commercial success. His wealth has also made him serious enemies – in 2011 he survived being shot in the head, having been the victim of two earlier assassination attempts during his extraordinary career.

Aside from selling millions of albums in both Kurdish and Turkish, Tatlıses has acted in scores of films and has his own weekly chat show. In his hometown of Urfa, fans flock to the İbrahim Tatlıses Museum to ogle shiny waxworks of the great man. His businesses are varied, but the most famous are his eponymous kebab chain and coach company, both of which dominate the entire south-eastern region of Turkey, where Ibo fans abound. He has construction interests in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, and unsuccessfully ran for parliament in the 2007 general election. Despite this rare personal failure, he has political support when it counts – after the latest assassination attempt in 2011, Prime Minister Erdoğan visited Tatlıses in hospital before the latter was whisked off to Germany for treatment. Photographs and footage of this visit were widely circulated in the press to advertise a friendship that came as a surprise to everyone but the most cynical.

It might seem that Tatlıses has overcome extreme obstacles to achieve his success, and in some ways this is true – certainly in the case of assassins' bullets. However, his Kurdish background and lack of education were, in some ways, part
and parcel of his success. Formal education is not the natural springboard to mass celebrity; certainly in Turkey, people with degrees tend to follow reliable but unspectacular careers as engineers, technicians and lawyers. Tatlıses was originally a construction worker with nothing to lose and everything to gain, and that was a crucial part of his road to fame as well as sustaining his appeal in the long term as a man with whom millions of working Turks and Kurds could identify. He is, significantly, a rare example of a celebrity who thrives on his Kurdish identity. He has the devotion of a minority which accounts for nearly twenty per cent of the population, and the only Kurdish celebrity who rivals him in fame is Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK. From 1989 to 1991 public music performances and recordings in Kurdish were censored, so when Tatlıses erupted onto the radio waves again in 1991, it was a triumphant return, almost a personal celebration. He is the champion of a demographic who claim him as one of their own, but he has been very careful not to over-identify himself as a Kurd. He sings in Turkish and is loved equally as a Turk. He is also very popular in the Arab world and Iran – his music has been the ultimate vehicle to national and regional fame.

Tatlıses is a prominent reminder to Turks that you can have it all. Far from discrediting his business gravitas, his popular music persona has been crucial to the success of his commercial ventures – people have an emotional attachment to the man and his art which makes them loyal to his products. In America, celebrities sell perfume and produce designer clothes. In Turkey, they sell kebabs and bus tickets. Here, as nowhere else, success is not nuanced or compartmentalised – it
is achievable and desirable in all incarnations and combinations.

Turks may not all be such ambitious dreamers as Tatlıses, but there is a strong family ethos which inspires many of them not only to provide for their immediate relations but to accumulate wealth for future generations. Prominent family dynasties who hand down their wealth from father to son are minor gods in Turkish society; they are few, but mighty, and everyone knows them.

Back in the 1920s two major family businesses took root: the Koç and Sabancı holding companies, which between them now seem to run most of Turkey's business. They dominate the construction, energy and finance sectors in particular; they each have founded prestigious universities and run world-renowned private museums in a spirit of mild rivalry. The grandfathers of the current, managing generation both started from nothing; Hacı Ömer Sabancı started working as a penniless cotton picker in the early 1920s, while Vehbi Koç sold vegetables from a cart in 1917. They both built business empires so successful that today all of their grandchildren are billionaires, holding top positions in their respective companies at the same time as running side businesses of their own. None of these men and women or their children or children's children will ever need to work, but their role in carrying the baton of the family business is as symbolically important as the co-operation of any Turkish family.

The Koç and Sabancı families have had several decades to accumulate and consolidate their financial and social power. Families who came later to the game are not so fortunate, and very few family-based companies are allowed to achieve
such influence these days. The Doğan family, who founded their media and food company in 1980, are rumoured to have fallen foul of the government in the late 1990s and were fined 3.3 billion Turkish lira (£1 billion) for tax ‘irregularity'. This is the standard accusation levelled by Turkish authorities at individuals or organisations that are in disgrace for something else, and is a convenient way of financially hobbling an overly successful company. In the case of Doğan, the perceived reason was that their media channels did not depict the government favourably. Now, after the protests of 2013, Koç Holdings' taxes are being investigated, predictably enough, following the family's support of protesters and perceived animosity to the government.  

For the past few years Turkey has been universally described as an ‘emerging economy', and its natural entrepreneurial spirit has thrived – most visitors notice this buzz as soon as they arrive in Istanbul. Everyone wants an empire of their own, in some shape or form. From small kebab joints to massive banking syndicates, there is an energy and drive to business life here that is comparatively lacking further West. Turkey is a massive country, more used than most European countries to economic crises, and Turks have buckled down where others have whinged and rioted. Mass production in particular is thriving, though this has dwindled slightly from its heyday ten years ago as wages have risen. It is a very young country – sixty per cent of the population are under thirty, and they are busy getting married, raising families and spending money on a far greater scale than the older populations of Europe.

This unprecedented level of spending is partly due to concerted efforts to lower interest rates – at the time of writing
the interest rate stands at around six per cent, an all-time low. The current government has worked hard to achieve this, and is very sensitive to perceived threats. AKP ministers have repeatedly claimed – as during the Gezi protests of 2013 – that an ‘interest rate lobby' is jealous of Turkey's economic growth and seeks to drive up interest rates to cripple the Turkish economy.

While the six per cent interest rate is still high compared to the UK, for example, it is low for Turkey, so people are borrowing freely. Banks encourage this, pushing credit cards relentlessly onto a people who are not traditionally comfortable with owing large amounts of money. They are also not conventional savers, which is equally problematic for banks. Turks are hoarders, specifically of gold. The government is currently encouraging families to collect the vast quantities of gold hidden away under mattresses all over the country, and bank it for the good of the economy. The total amount is estimated at $302 billion (more than Ireland's gross domestic product) and comes from a tradition of storing tangible capital, which can be transferred into cash in an emergency. It is a habit fuelled by mistrust of conventional banking after decades of economic unpredictability due to hyperinflation and political drama, a mistrust which peaked in 2001 when the inflation rate rose to seventy per cent. More importantly, gold is a big part of Turkish culture – at weddings, births and circumcision ceremonies, gifts are always given in the form of gold coins or jewellery, and stored for future family life.

I found out the importance of gold by bitter experience, turning up to a traditional Turkish wedding with a generic wedding present instead of the requisite gold coin. To my
horror, the bride and groom stood by the door as guests left the reception, holding a large bag to collect the coins as they wished everyone goodbye with beatific smiles. With my wretched photograph frame in hand, I could not bear to join the queue; instead I found myself in a glass elevator escaping to the staff parking lot upstairs, probably seen by all the guests queuing below me.

The government is desperate for this stash of gold to ease the nation's current-account deficit of $60 billion. Foreign creditors are waiting, and the nascent boom must be sustained. The extent to which the Turkish economy is dependent on foreign investment and tourism was brought dramatically to light during the Gezi protests, when the lira fell every time Erdoğan talked about how negotiation with protesters was out of the question; as a consequence, the government was forced to sell nearly US$3 billion to keep the lira afloat. Hotels were left empty as tourists avoided a country which suddenly began to look more like its beleaguered neighbours, Syria and Egypt, and the government had to reimburse local businesses affected by the protests to the tune of fifty million lira. The protests exposed a more fragile economy than many people had thought, and the protesters' surprisingly successful boycotting movement threatened it even more. Major businesses like Garanti Bank and restaurants in the Doğuş Holding Group were boycotted because they were deemed to have links to people in government; Garanti alone lost a reputed $10 billion in the first few days of unrest.

Many Turks are pessimistic about the future and the protests have swelled speculation about an imminent crash. Having said that, the Turkish economy has been doing well
for years and Turks are slowly altering their spending habits, giving momentum to growth. Banks advertise their credit cards like sweets – delicious, harmless and readily available – and many people go for the bait. The average Turk has a clutch of credit cards which they flash impressively as they open their wallet to pay for their friend's lunch – a selection of cards still suggests wealth rather than debt. The proud owner won't use all of them, but the option to spend is always there. In fact, so great is the proliferation of credit cards that the government has had to step in to stop banks advertising them so aggressively. In July 2013, Erdoğan delivered words of wisdom: ‘Those credit cards, don't have them. If everybody spends as much as they [the banks] want, they would not even be able to earn that income. They could never be satiated.'

Turks are being offered more and more ways to pay for previously unrealisable dreams. Everything for sale, bar groceries, is available via monthly or even quarterly instalments. Since I have been living here, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of men undergoing hair transplants – they generally go in pairs, and I often see them wandering around on major shopping streets with matching hats or post-op headbands. Intrigued, I went online and discovered most clinics offering credit options for treatment, with links to specific Lebanese and Swiss banks in partnership with the clinics in question. I am sure there are two-for-one deals too, which would explain the pairings more satisfactorily than mere moral support. After a little more research, I found that certain companies offer special package deals to overseas clients which include the transplant procedure with short tourist
trips. Medical tourism is a huge business in Turkey, attracting Arabs in particular to come for cosmetic surgery, combining their visit with a skiing holiday or a few days wandering around the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. The most intriguing cosmetic speciality in Turkey is moustache transplant surgery, for men who want a more virile-looking moustache. Arabs are particular fans, probably inspired by the well-endowed upper lips of celebrities like İbrahim Tatlıses.

Despite the overenthusiasm of banks to give out loans, many Turks don't seem to have bank accounts, especially small business owners. Traders in particular always want cash, and do not declare their earnings unless absolutely necessary. It is the same with my landlord, who claims not to have a bank account, so I give him wads of cash every month like a drug dealer, to ensure that he avoids paying tax on the rent he earns. This has been a huge problem for Turkish governments past and present, so they build in tax to necessities like petrol – which costs five lira (£1.70) a litre, the highest price in Europe – so that people have no choice but to pay it. If a Turk does pay tax legitimately, he is effectively double-taxed when he fills up the car with extortionate petrol.