Solid Foundations

Breakfast in Turkey (at least, at the öğretmenevi) consists of olives, lunch meats, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, buns with butter, jam, and/or honey, cornflakes and milk, cake, and drinks. One can choose from juice, the delicious Turkish tea and instant (Nescafe) coffee. Real coffee (Türk kahvesi) is not served until 10 or 11, after you have breakfast as a solid foundation. This is why breakfast is known as kavhaltı, or, “under coffee”.

By the way, öğretmenevi means "teacher-house". These places used to be available and free only to teachers but the government decided they should be opened as hotels to the public. However, teachers get a sizable discount (I'm not sure how much, but apparently the rates are "quite reasonable"), and there are "teacher-houses" all over Turkey.

This week so far has been a crash course in Turkish culture, arts, beliefs, politics, diplomatic relations, language, and education system, with some Turkey/Fulbright-specific TOEFL thrown in. Needless to say, it has been hectic. Happily I can report that there is almost a universal optimism towards Turkey. The attitude I've perceived from our illustrious speakers is either a tacit or explicit one of, "Yes, there are problems, but we'll work through them! It will work out OK." Turkey, we are told, is a very relaxed culture. We'll see if that kind of attitude plays out throughout the year.

One of the most important people who came to speak to us thus far was the President Dr. Yusuf Ziya Özcan of YÖK, the Turkish Higher Education Council, the group that basically holds the beating heart of the Turkish educational system in its hands. To give one a sense of this man’s importance: he was followed in to and out of the room by no less than four TV news crews. It turns out he was bitten by the foreign language bug in his youth, and he was quite disappointed in what he called a personal and institutional failing to impart this to Turkish students. He expressed a really sincere excitement at having us Fulbrighters in his midst, though, to help remedy the "problem", and his enthusiasm was quite encouraging to us would-be English teachers. Important personal side note: he got his graduate degrees from U of C.

Another speaker of note was Prof. Talat Halman, a famous Turkish art and culture historian, the first Minister of Culture in Turkey (this man is currently 79), and whom I termed "The David Attenborough of Turkish Art". He was perhaps the most eloquent and entertaining interlocutor I've ever heard and seen, not unlike an even more engaging version of U of C's Prof. Robert "Bob" Richards with a keen Ottoman, rather than Greek, sensibility (i.e. Rumi rather than Sappho). Please, read about this prolific writer, translator, and lecturer on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tal%C3%A2t_Sait_Halman
...and that will give you the barest hint of how amazing it was to hear him read us Turkish poetry and teach us about love.

In my limited down-time, I have played Turkish scrabble, gone to a Turkish mall and gotten a Turkish cell phone, had my first Turkish coffee (in Turkey) and explored as much of Ankara as possible. I took the Ankaray and the Metro here today but my fellow wanderer and I did not have the courage to step inside a bus, let alone a dolmuş.

I wish I could distill the lessons learned about Turkey from this hectic week into a blog post, but I cannot. I certainly appreciate that the prestige and meticulous planning of the Fulbright program have afforded me this brief but extremely informative theoretical framework from which to look at Turkey--makes one feel much less like a stupid American. Then again, I’ve been in the Başkent Öğretmenevi bubble this whole time, mostly speaking English and only getting professional and extremely educated opinions on things from experts. Obviously what I’ve heard is not the whole story, but it is a very, very good one.