Istanbul

I spent a month in Cairo three years ago, and my wife and I just spent a week in Istanbul. I can’t help but compare the two.

Economics: Istanbul is much richer than Cairo is. Cairo cannot afford traffic lights – and the only traffic cop I saw was in Tahrir Square, plus, he wasn’t doing a very good job – so traffic is chaotic, and crossing the street is an adventure in weaving in and out of the cars. (See here, for example.) Istanbul is like a city in America or Europe in this respect. We saw both traffic lights and the occasional traffic cop. We also spent some time in a “poor” neighborhood in Istanbul, and it didn’t seem especially poor to us, but more like a lower-middle-class neighborhood.

Both cities subsidize some things. In Cairo gas and food are subsidized (or were; I don’t know what’s going on right now). In Istanbul, I’m pretty sure the public ferries were subsidized because it’s hard to believe that the dollar we paid to cross from the European side to the Asian side covered all the costs involved in transporting us.

In both places there were stray animals, and in both places these animals were usually cats rather than dogs (presumably because of the Islamic dislike of dogs). The ones in Istanbul seemed better fed, however.

Religion: There were mosques everywhere we went, but in Europe there are churches and cathedrals everywhere one goes. The important thing is the degree of fanaticism that exists, and I have to admit that this is difficult to determine during a one-week trip. In Cairo there were men with sores on their foreheads, the idea being that they spent a lot of time praying with their heads on the ground. I didn’t see anyone like this in Turkey. Once while we were in a fairly conservative district, we walked by a mosque where one could see people praying, but there were plenty of Turks walking by who showed not the slightest inclination to join them. My wife also accidentally bought a newspaper (in Turkish) run by conservative Muslims, and when a worker in our hotel saw it, he insisted on taking it back to the store in order to exchange it for a more moderate newspaper.

Social practices: I was mostly interested in the prevalence of headscarves. In Cairo, at least 90% of the women were wearing headscarves, plus my wife got hassled the one time she went out on the street without me, even though she was wearing a headscarf. In Istanbul the percentage is much lower, plus my wife was not hassled at all, even without a headscarf. On the European side, where we spent most of our time, the percentage may have been about 20% or less, while on the Asian side, where one of my wife’s students said he had seen headscarves “everywhere,” the percentage was perhaps 30%.

This is a country that had a female prime minister a few years back (but then so did a backward place like Pakistan, so go figure). Today, though, an Islamic party is in control and seems to be making a point of harassing many secularists.

One thing I find interesting about the multiculturalists is that the liberals and leftists who are most likely to be grounded in the actual realities of countries like Egypt and Turkey are those who are giving advice about them to travelers. They cannot adopt the “West bad, everyone else good” attitude that most leftists seem to have, because it can be dangerous. They need to give advice that is based on the realities of the country they are giving advice about. In Egypt I was given a briefing by Westerners at the little school I went to, and one thing that struck me was their claim that in Egypt people don’t understand atheism and in fact only acknowledge three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. No Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Wicca, etc. In Turkey, the Lonely Planet’s Istanbul City Guide says that “Turkey is not ethnically diverse. This means that travelers who are Asian or black stand out as being different and can be treated unacceptably as a consequence” (p. 228). In both cases, liberals and leftists would be angry about how reactionary the people were in both these countries, if their guilt about Western imperialism weren’t distorting their vision so much.

Along these same lines, when I went through the Topkapı Palace - and note the undotted ı; Turkey is the land of the undotted ı - the inner leftist in me came out and all I could think of was how people were exploited under the Ottomans and how some women were kidnaped in order to turn them into concubines and how some men were kidnaped and then castrated in order to serve as guards. Plus, the people who suffered this fate were non-Muslim, because it was thought that to do this to Muslims would be wrong but that doing it to non-Muslims was perfectly all right. If there was ever an example of people who had a problem with how they treated the “Other,” this is it, but don’t hold your breath waiting for leftists to condemn it. If they condemn it at all, it will be under the pretext of attacking patriarchy in general and not Ottoman culture in particular.

Comments

[Mark Spahn]

That aversion to the Other comes from Allah himself (or whoever wrote the Quran). Look up Quran 48:29, 9:123, 98:6; there are lots of other similar quotes, especially about Jews.
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

[Mark Spahn]

Taking my own advice, I looked up Q48:29 at
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/048.qmt.html

"Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves. [cf. the Golden Rule] Thou (O Muhammad) seest them bowing and falling prostrate (in worship), seeking bounty from Allah and (His) acceptance. The mark of them is on their foreheads from the traces of prostration. Such is their likeness in the Torah and their likeness in the Gospel - like as sown corn that sendeth forth its shoot and strengtheneth it and riseth firm upon its stalk, delighting the sowers - that He may enrage the disbelievers with (the sight of) them. Allah hath promised, unto such of them as believe and do good works, forgiveness and immense reward."

Those "sores on their foreheads" are called
"zebiba" (= raisin), and are a mark of piety. When I first saw a photo of al-Qaeda's No. 2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri, that mark on his forehead looked like an Ash Wednesday mark, suggesting that a minion of the pope had infiltrated al-Qaeda at its highest level. But maybe not. These marks are intended to "enrage the disbelievers". Are you feeling enraged?
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)