All About Town

Gunaydin! (good morning!) Iyi aksam! (good evening!)

This morning began with our final Turkish lesson. I wish I could tell you that I've mastered enough language to make m way around Ankara like a pro, but alas - I'm a bumbling fool. Fortunately for me, the people here are very friendly and I have 15 other fools with me. We're makingourselves understood, but it will be nice if we can pick up a bit more than "I want that one" and "How much for this?" before we leave! Our instructor, Umut, was wonderful. Tesekkuler, Umut!

Today we had two lectures: the first on culture logics of Turkey, and the second on identity politics. I found both lectures to be highly fascinating, and perhaps just a bit overwh

elming! Our first speaker has been doing research in London with Kurdish asylum seekers and spent a great deal of time discussing his work with the Alevi community. The position of such minority groups and the politics surrounding the issue is quite complex, and I found myself trying to understand the interests of various ethnic and political groups from inside the Turkish political spectrum - difficult to do when its government works differently than our own. Our second speaker spoke at length about the changes in government between 1923 and the 1980s that set up a modern Turkey in which various ethnic and religious groups seek to identify themselves simultaneously as Turkish, as Muslim, and as Kurdish/Georgian/Armenian and/or Sunni/Alevi/Baha'i, for example. She discussed the Islamic code and its influence in modern politics concerning the demonstration of religious observance in public space (the headscarf issue with women at universities) as well as the concept of the "millet system" and Ataturk's true intention for nationalism. I am humbly and appropriately confused... and fortunately I have an entire month to begin to sort all this information out. What I do know is that, according to our speakers and the other participants, if I think I've got a handle on this issue of national, ethnic and religious identity, then I've oversimplified it... and I'm wrong. So I guess "confused and questioning" is a good place to be.

During the afternoon, our group toured the Ankara Olgunlasma Institute (http://www.olgunlasmaenstitusu.com/english/okullar/ankara.html), a governmentally funded school for traditional Turkish art forms, such as ebru painting, embroidery, clothing, and ceramics. We watched a demonstration of ebru as an artist "painted" a silk scarf by dropping paint into a water/oil mixture in a long, shallow pan and then lay the scarf on top of the paint pattern so that the fabric could soak up the paint. The end result was gorgeous - check out the pictures. If you're wondering if I bought one as a souvenir, than you obviously don't know me. Read on!

Jet lag hit me hard today, so tonight was purposfully low-key: a nap, dinner at a nearby seafood restaurant, and a cool night breeze on the hotel patio. The

weather has been unseasonably cool for Turkey, but pleasant for us - 75-85 with some wind and a great thunderstorm yesterday... but the heat-wave is coming! Any takers on how much sunscreen I'll go through on this trip?