Anatolia – Just Say it and it Sounds Like Music

Anatolia – Just Say it and it Sounds Like Music

     If you’d kindly look at a world map and pay attention to Turkey, you’d recognize that it’s a land mass that has been called a “land bridge” between Europe and Asia.  Thus, we have Eur-Asia, a geographical hour glass of sorts that has been a passageway and multicultural marketplace for millennia.  It’s historically known as, and sentimentally spoken of by the Turks as, Anatolia.

     We’ve had the distinct pleasure and honor to drop by for a couple of stimulating visits over tea with a retired Turkish lawyer who operates a small boutique hotel (bed & breakfast inn) perched on the side of a mountain and camouflaged by a forest of olive trees, fig trees, maple trees, flowering bushes and plant life.  He lives just up above us and I’d say his place must be what the Garden of Eden must have been like.

     He is a renowned historian of Turkish antiquity and culture, and we’ve been blown away by his ready knowledge of so many peoples - how they passed through this region as immigrants, refugees, or invading forces . . . with good intentions or imperialistic . . . and blended together into this amazing mosaic of cultures.

     The by-product of this cultural homogenization is that the people are so tolerant and don’t get their feathers ruffled about different looking people, and they take news about extremism and ugly things going on in the world around them with a grain of salt.  I came here slightly in defensive mode, expecting these Turks to be overly suspicious of outsiders and religiously extreme, but quickly learned that everyone is an outsider of sorts.  My own bias and suspicions were showing again.  At least in this part of the country, everyone blends, and everyone is welcome.

Our Greatest Fear is Fear Itself

     Thank you Franklin Roosevelt – I couldn’t have said it better.  Coming here and not really having a clear picture in my head of what we’d see and experience, I just defaulted to all the hype and concerns and girded myself with caution and wore it like a hazmat suit.  Why are we so afraid of other people, other colors, and other languages?  Why do we always think our ways of doing things is the best?  May I suggest that fear is the root of this.  We picture ourselves as the entitled know-it-alls, thinking we have the sole right to be known as the leader and that the world should always follows us.

     Here, we see everything working and living together.  In these two weeks here, shuttling to and fro along this Aegean coastline, city after city, village after village, we’ve only seen two women who were wearing the burka (the black covering that conceals all but the eyes).  We thought we might stand out as we walk through the market places, but no – they were the ones who looked different. They were probably visitors from the far eastern regions that do reflect the more extreme religious dress code.   The only thing here that set us apart from the masses is whenever we speak.  I liken this to the orthodox Jews you see in New York, but rarely seen anywhere else around the states.  They’re mainly in the eastern part of the US.  Here, in the westernmost part of Turkey, we are is much like being on the West Coast back home where anything goes.

     There are so many people groups that have influenced this land, including Roman, Greek, Arabic, European, Persian, Ottoman, and Turkman . . . just to name a few.  Around here in the villages, the majority of the older Turkman women wear either the full length trench coats and head scarves, or the MC Hammer pants with sweaters and headscarves.  Other women just wear scarves with what we think of as modest but regular street clothes.  The young women are trendy with skinny jeans, miniskirts or leggings, as a more cosmopolitan generation emerges. 

     Same for the men - the old village farmers wear dirty work clothes, Ben Hogan caps and rubber boots.   A lot of the older gentlemen who aren’t farmers are seen wearing slacks, sleeveless sweaters over collared shirts, and perhaps a suit jacket, and of course, the Ben Hogan cap.  Younger guys wear jeans, T-shirts, jerseys, etc.

Some philosophical musings from Les.    

  So, I say again, this is a mosaic of peoples, colors, shapes, sizes and attire.  The cultural traditions are just as varied and you can’t pin the tail on this donkey.  So why did I come here on the alert for those men we see every day on the nightly news?  Because all my information has come from the media, be it conservative or liberal, and we have to remember this one thing:  if news isn’t scary, if it isn’t glamorous or hyped up, it doesn’t fare well in the ratings.  Ratings draw advertising dollars which pay the bills and that always trumps what is reality.

     So I feel cheated, but it’s my fault.  I need to be more discerning who I listen to and what I buy into.  Fear begets fear, and we all need to be careful of our sources and not drink from the same cup of the fear merchants who sell their goods while waving the stars and stripes.  Isolationism and fear mongering is not patriotic.  Our nation is represented by a statue on Ellis Island that says we welcome all people into the bounty of our land.   True patriotism is about appreciating all peoples.  We exist as a nation of mixed colors, tongues, and traditions, and I hope we don’t try to undermine that.

     People say extremists will never get a foothold here, where history records so many attempts that have failed over the centuries.  Like the people of Turkey, our strength is our complexity.  Democracy and freedom are the means – not the end.  The end is diversity.  In a democracy, people are free to be different and unique.  Therein lies our strength.