Turkish Awakening (4 page)

This would be a fair point, if it were not belied by more sinister elements, for example the rule that no licences will be given to shops or restaurants within a hundred metres
of either a school or a mosque. In urban areas, everywhere is within a hundred metres of either a school or a mosque. No new licences will be given, and there is widespread concern among shops, bars and restaurant owners who already hold licences that these will not be renewed when the time comes. The censoring of alcohol on television is the most distasteful part of the law for many secularists because it seems more like moral censorship than anything else, depicting the drinking of alcohol as a failing from which the public must be carefully shielded. Many Turks resent not so much the practical restrictions brought in by the government but the lecturing tone with which they are presented. The official attitude is that ‘we know better than you’, and Turks hate being patronised.

As a result of the table ban in Asmalı Mescit, which cut the revenues of restaurants by about seventy-five per cent (according to the owners I talked to), thousands of local residents, bar and restaurant owners and secular Istanbullus from elsewhere in the city came to protest, carrying chairs and banners, down the main shopping street of the city – İstiklal Caddesi. As with almost all demonstrations in this country (until the explosion of the Gezi Park protests), it had no effect whatsoever. The year following the table ban, police cordoned off the base of Galata Tower in Beyoğlu, where young people used to gather on summer nights to watch gypsy bands perform and have a beer. The beer element was crucial: the square was turned into a crime scene, taped off and out of bounds. Ousted revellers made a point of sitting on the street and drinking en masse, just outside the taped-off area, while a brace of bored policemen sat in a car within
it, watching them. As with the outdoor table ban, there was a nominal excuse for the decision which was not alcohol-related – in this case, the ‘noise’
caused by those drinking in Galata Square. Again, protests achieved nothing.

Turkish police are probably the most over-deployed police force in the world, certainly when it comes to mass presence at generally peaceful gatherings. They attend the umpteen protests that begin in central Taksim Square in droves, quite often outnumbering protesters, and impressively arrayed with riot gear, batons and water cannon. They pour out of trucks whatever the nature of the protest – colourful pro-LGBT marches, rallies against the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant Kurdish rights organisation), nationalists, religious anti-Kemalists, anarchic socialists, out-of-work teachers, theatre directors – you name it, the police have duly attended in their requisite riot gear. Sometimes they arrest people for simply being present at a protest, if it is deemed too politically threatening. They are a reminder both of Turkey’s violent past and of the lingering unease in the relationship between government and the Turkish people. Most of all, they show institutionalised paranoia.

In 2012, Taksim Square in central Istanbul, the traditional site for democratic public protest like Trafalgar Square or Parliament Square in London, was closed for massive ‘redevelopment plans’ which included a shopping mall and a replica Ottoman barracks. Every May Day, the square has been the venue for generally peaceful marches, where workers’ unions, opposition supporters and any disgruntled members of the public gather, sing and wave flags. In the past, there have been violent clashes with police but the years leading
up to 2013 passed without incident; I attended the demonstrations on May Day 2012, and the atmosphere in Taksim was not only peaceful but positively festive as people sang songs about Kurdish freedom in the morning sun. The planned construction of the mall served as an excuse to ban people from the square on 1 May 2013, and when they tried to gather in nearby Şişli, they were blasted with tear gas and water cannon by twenty-seven thousand police specially mobilised for the event. Public transport was suspended and the bridges over the Golden Horn were closed for the first time since the national state of emergency in 1978. The city reacted with horror to the crackdown, little knowing that this would be a pattern repeated again and again just a month later.

Police are more wisely deployed in Turkish football stadiums, especially when any of the big teams from the
Süper Lig
are playing – Galatasaray, Beşiktaş or Fenerbahçe. A month after my arrival in Istanbul I was taken, innocent as a lamb, to the now destroyed İnönü Stadium, home of Beşiktaş, to watch a ‘friendly’ between them and Karabükspor. How nice, I thought. I had never been to a football match before. On entering the stadium, I was extremely glad to have borrowed a black and white scarf from my friend, thus mixing in with the sea of frighteningly impassioned Beşiktaş fans massing for attack well before the match began. I was also glad to have a seat in their ninety per cent of the stadium, as opposed to being in the tiny wedge of seating reserved for brave-hearted Karabükspor supporters, who were surrounded by a protective net. At the end of the game, the net proved its worth: the Beşiktaş fans, rendered fuming, incoherent beasts of war by
a 2–2 draw with an inferior team, started tearing the plastic seats from under themselves and hurling them down onto the pitch, onto the heads of players (now surrounded, suitably for once, by riot police) and most particularly the referee. Anyone near the incarcerated Karabükspor fans was hurling whatever came to hand at the provident netting, a hail of chair shards and other missiles, as red flares flew through the smoke-filled air. It was a truly apocalyptic scene, on an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon.

I had never seen so many people acting as one, like a force of nature, with an elemental wall of sound to match, and I did not see it again until the Gezi protests. What was truly remarkable, however, was what these fans were actually shouting. My friend helped me decipher the lyrics of the Beşiktaş chant: ‘Eagle [Beşiktaş’s symbol], you are my life! Black and white blood runs through my veins . . . I would die for you, my only love!’ This powerful love elegy was being chanted lustily by thousands of sturdy, moustachioed men with fire in their bellies, as well as a few cans of Efes and an unquenchable thirst for the destruction of the unfortunate Karabükspor players. Their cries read like the love poetry of a lesser nation, yet they were delivered in hoarse unison to men paid monstrous amounts of money to retain a reasonable place in the league, or merely to entertain, as in the case of this far from friendly match. Plastered onto huge posters around the stadium were slogans like: ‘I would give up my mother and father for you, I swear to God.’

It was at that point that I understood that, for secular Turks, football is a religion – a cause, something to fight for, to worship – a bit like Turkey itself. United in their love
for the game, fans are divided by which particular team they support, like sects of the same religion backing rival caliphs. Beşiktaş represent the working man, Fenerbahçe ‘everyman’ and Galatasaray the educated man. It is imperative, when someone asks which of the big three you support, that you base your answer on a split-second assessment of the man asking the question. Fenerbahçe is the safest. Alternatively, giving the name of an obscure British team is accepted without demur as a foreigner’s privilege.

The participation of major football team supporters in the Gezi protests was crucial, especially the members of Çarşı, the main Beşiktaş fan club, whose slogan is
Herşeye karşı!
– ‘Against everything!’ Çarşı fans are notoriously anarchic troublemakers, no strangers to clashes with riot police in the aftermath of Beşiktaş games. During the first week of the protests, Çarşı members assumed natural leadership of the resistance down by the Beşiktaş stadium. One memorable night, they commandeered a bulldozer from somewhere and charged straight at enemy lines, scattering riot police everywhere. After that, they managed to steal one of the police’s water-cannon tanks. This was probably the glittering apex of their anarchic careers.

The peaceful counterpart to the football stadium is the even more male domain of the
berber
(barber) or
erkek kuaför
(men’s hairdresser)
.
I get a peculiar thrill from accompanying male friends here. There is an unspoken rule that, as a woman, I have no place within these hallowed walls, and I must admit to deriving satisfaction from watching foam-covered beards bristling in outrage as I cross the threshold, scandalised looks multiplied in mirrors on all sides. It feels as though
I have travelled back in time to a gentlemen’s club in Edwardian London and poked my head into a drawing room full of placid old men discussing cricket and decrying the latest antics of the Suffragettes. In fact, a more plebeian but barely updated form of this drawing-room scene can be found in any backgammon café or rather sweetly named ‘social club’, anywhere in Turkey. Smoky and drab, filled with the clunks of dice and the rasping commentary of sport on the telly, these are the sole preserve of wizened old men with much time on their hands and weighty issues to discuss. I have only glimpsed this anti-harem from the street; I would dearly love to go in one day and join in the topic at hand but I can predict the appalled silence that would fall like a guillotine and, frankly, I don’t have the nerve.

The
berber
is different; a place of work, it is bustling with men in white overcoats wielding trimmers and combs, customers pinioned beneath towels and the impending razor. Often I come with visitors from London for whom I have to translate, although I cannot resist abusing this power and instructing the barber to leave a modest goatee. By far the most dramatic part of the shave is the finale, when the barber jabs a stick of flaming cotton wool into his victim’s face to burn off fine cheek hairs, swiping mercilessly into ears and nostrils, and leaving a delicate whiff of hair
brûlé
. By the time a rough head massage and the dousing of hair in copious amounts of lavender cologne have been performed, the previously gung-ho English traveller is a perfectly coiffed shell of his former self.

The barber is yet another example of an old-fashioned tradition which is still very much going strong, regardless of
the invention of Gillette disposable razors and 8 a.m. office starts. Of course, not every Turkish man visits the
berber
every day, but there are a huge number of them about, and I have never seen one empty. Most are packed. Why?

The
berber
is basically a social club in another guise; for most regular customers, it is not so much the shave they go for but the camaraderie. It is a time-honoured, gently macho ritual: Turkish men like to groom themselves, but they like to do so in the company of other men: tea is consumed, politics discussed, wives complained about. It is another example of the wonderful Turkish appetite for sharing life with peers, a kind of unassuming assertion of the right to be sociable, a quiet stand against the individualism of our times.

Much of what is now, to the Western eye, old-fashioned, is for a Turk timeless, because it is rooted in a sense of community that is here to stay in the teeth of encroaching modernisation. Neighbourhoods in the middle of Istanbul still have a village-like feel; I remember being woken by the hoarse cry of a street seller on my first morning in Istanbul: ‘
Sarımsakçı geldi, sarımsakçı
geeeldiiii!
’ (‘The garlic seller has arrived!’) I had no idea what was being said at the time. A young man was slowly pushing a hand cart through the street, full of garlic as advertised, and interested old biddies were poking their heads out of windows above. Regular customers started lowering coins in baskets from fourth storeys, while the more sceptical waddled down in their brightly coloured
şalvar
(baggy trousers) to examine the cloves at closer range. A similar scene greets the arrival of the cucumber seller or the
hurdacı
(rag-and-bone man), who gathers unwanted old knick-knacks from anyone decluttering their home.

Some hawkers have hijacked technology in disturbing ways. I was alarmed one day to hear what I thought must be the police addressing someone – potential terrorists? – through one of those megaphones that, to a Londoner at least, mean serious trouble. Looking anxiously through my window, I saw in the street below a beaten-up van, decrepit megaphone perched precariously on its roof, colourful blankets piled in the back and inside a very portly old codger speaking incoherently through the handset: ‘Blankets fifteen lira only, yes sisters, fifteen lira, don’t miss them!’ Another unexpected arrival was that of the
deterjancı
(detergent seller), his truck piled high with unmarked bottles of Cif and Domestos decanted cheaply from wholesale containers.

Supermarkets are a relatively recent craze in Turkey, challenging a very strong culture of specialised something-sellers in the street, or the regular, ubiquitous farmers’ markets. For the average Turk, there is no suspicion or stigma associated with buying from an unlicensed, rickety cart, as there would probably be in London. For me, the change from Tesco Metro cashier to bellowing garlic farmer in the middle of the city was a glorious introduction to a more free-spirited, and indeed free-marketed, way of life. The culture of street selling encourages an atmosphere of community beyond anything else. The supermarket is synonymous with anonymity – packaged goods bagged by a bored, callow youth with no interest in who you are or whether you will come again. The garlic seller’s livelihood depends on his product and enthusiasm and repartee. He comes to you. He comes to the neighbourhood like the Pied Piper and unites Turkish housewives in the constant chore and joy that is preparing food for a large family.

Turkey is a wonderful mixture of opportunism and trust. One of my favourite domestic sights is heavily laden washing lines stretched from the windows of one house to those of its counterpart across the street – neighbours sharing and airing their laundry with not a blush on either side, an admirable arrangement of mutual convenience. There is a very blurred line between a Turkish family homestead and its surroundings; emotions, raised voices and curiosity spill over from beyond its walls in a way that you just do not experience in England or other chilly European societies. One’s home is decidedly not a private space but a box at the opera of suburbia, both viewing point and exhibit. It is an open door. Some expats find the lack of privacy here irritating, but it is an indelible instinct of the Turkish psyche to share, and in place of solitude you receive untiring kindness, (unsolicited) advice and the support of as many burly matriarchs as you could wish for. That this goes for the middle of Istanbul or Ankara as much as it does for a rural town speaks for itself.