NOTEBOOK ON SOME TOPICS IN TURKEY YOU MUST PUSSY-FOOT
by Robert Colvile

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
April 10, 2007 Tuesday

"I have to warn you – there’s a 50 per cent chance that there’s a dead
cat in our flat." It wasn’t the welcome to Istanbul I was expecting,
but my hostess soon explained: the previous evening, she and her
flatmate had rescued a desperately unwell kitten they’d spotted
shivering on the streets.

Istanbul is a pretty lively place – more people than London, packed
into a warren of sloping streets on the banks of the Bosphorus. It’s
also home to an astronomical population of street cats, of which
theirs was a particularly adorable example.

Fortunately, she made a remarkable recovery and, now that she was going
to live, needed a name. One suggestion was to pay tribute to Turkey’s
Great Leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – why not "Mustafa Katmal"? This,
I was firmly told, would be a Very Bad Idea. The Turks venerate Ataturk
with a fervour that more strictly Islamic countries reserve for the
Prophet. Any insult to his memory – even naming a kitten after him –
would be a matter for the police.

They settled on the eminently English name of "Milly" – which,
conveniently, sounds like the Turkish word for "national". But
they weren’t joking about the "Father of Turks". In Turkey, his
reputation is protected by law; his picture hangs in every home;
"Principles of Ataturk" is a compulsory course at universities; even
YouTube was briefly banned after some Greeks posted a video labelling
him homosexual.

Then there is Anitkabir, Ataturk’s mausoleum in the capital, Ankara.

It’s an area half the size of Hyde Park, with a vast neo-Roman plaza
and memorial at its centre. You approach via the "Lion Road", a paved
path flanked by stone lions and live soldiers, intended, according
to the guide, "to make visitors ready for the presence of Ataturk".

All this is in stark contrast to the treatment of the Ottoman
sultanate’s relics of Mohammed, tucked away in a side room in
Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace. But it’s not without cause. Ataturk’s
accomplishments were immense – as a soldier in the First World
War, he repulsed the landings at Gallipoli, and later defeated the
occupying Allied and Greek armies (depicted in the Anitkabir museum as
cross-brandishing despoilers of women); as president, he revolutionised
Turkish society and created a secular, democratic, prosperous nation.

He wasn’t perfect, though. He liked his drink and his women, didn’t
have much time for opposition, and was harsh, to say the least, to
the Kurds, Armenians and Ionian Greeks. Anitkabir’s holy of holies
includes his last orders to the Turkish army, engraved in giant golden
letters, authorising it to intervene in politics to protect his vision
– as it has on several occasions.

Of course, discussing any of these issues in Turkey, or attacking
"Turkishness", is still taboo – best to swallow your tongue and follow
it with another shot of raki.

A stiff drink was also on the cards after a day spent tramping round
the rugged landscape of Cappadocia.

It is a wonderland of geology in action – volcanic rocks carved into
all kinds of extraordinary shapes by natural erosion. And by man.

Most remarkable are the 40 or so underground cities hewn beneath
the rock of the plains. Entire towns would disappear into them when
marauding tribes appeared, re-emerging months later when they’d
marauded off elsewhere.

You can tell the inhabitants were Christian, because they had an
astonishing propensity for carving out churches in the caves, many of
which still retain their thousand-year-old frescoes. I like to imagine
that the extraordinary ratio of churches to caves is a testament to
how fissile religion can be: the congregations splitting into rival
groups over the years, until the valleys were full of hermits, each
preaching solemnly to an empty cave.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress