Turkey and EU

The idea of Turkey joining the European Union doesn´t seem very realistic to me. I don´t consider myself any expert on politics but it just wouldn´t suit Turkey. It would bring more complications than advantages and the main good thing would be the end of visas to travel to EU. But that for sure would take a very long time to happen, considering the Turkish borders and their own migration.

I think Europe is scared just of the idea of Turkey in EU and in order not to be scared, they would try to control Turkey a little in some ways and I can´t imagine that. The Turkish definitely wouldn´t like it and I doubt they would allow it. I can imagine EU having problems with some Turkish food, maybe some traditions, the Kurds question, the power of armed forces in Turkey (highly respected by its people), the chapter of Armenians would be reopened. And there are two more issues: People would be asking "Is Turkey Europe?" and second, of course, a muslim country in EU.

My impression is that Europeans don´t really want it and Turkish don´t really care about it. I actually think they would be better without EU, which is becoming more and more an organization making new and stronger borders than opening itself (as it was proved to me last month when Ahmet wanted to come here, and as I could also see when passing the Bulgarian-Turkish border).

The Turkish guys (and girls)

Before I first went to Turkey, I had this funny idea that all Turkish guys are very handsome and the girls are nothing special. Then one day in Eskişehir I opened my eyes and was like "but where are the handsome guys? Was it all just in my head?". And then I looked at the girls and thought "but hey, they are not so bad. Not at all!".

One thing about (young) Turkish people is that they are dressed much nicer than us (but who isn´t, right?). They like to take care of themselves, both girls and guys. Fashionable clothes, hairstyles, some nice bijouterie etc. Kinda reminded me of Portugal. Of course the clothes is cheaper there (as everywhere out of the Czech Republic) but should we really blame it just on it? I don´t think so.

Now the Turkish guys. Hum. Foreign girls often complain about how annoying the guys they met in Turkey were. Well, nothing like that happened to me. But first, I haven´t been to Antalya, Alanya or some highly touristic place like that. Yes, you are right, I´ve been to Istanbul but Ahmet was always with me. So basically the only experience I can mention is from Eskişehir (that has a wonderful lack of foreigners) where the shop assistants were trying to have some conversation with me. It was perfectly sufficient to answer to the question if I was erasmus there, something like "benim sevgilim burada okuyor" (my boyfriend studies here) and they were cool (especially when my ten centimetres taller boyfriend appeared there). Why I´m telling you this is because in many countries it would mean nothing, the fact that I have a boyfriend. For example here in Czechia we say "but boyfriend/girlfriend is not a disease". One more thing I loved in Eskişehir is that nobody was really staring at me although I am an obvious foreigner there (like everywhere). For example in Porto the people could be quite annoying, in Rio even crazy.

The Turkish travelling in Europe - that´s a funny chapture. The ones coming for the first time to my country are usually shocked by the relationships here. Like how normal it might be partners cheating on each other or how let´s say direct we can be when we meet someone we like. I guess Turkish girls getting together with European guys like Czechs (why??? Anyway...) hope that the guy is going to be less jealous, more open-minded etc. Well, it depends on the person. And Turkish guys in Europe, well, it seems they usually go with quite obvious targets and can get a little crazy. But you could say the same about other nations, too. And we all know that erasmus is not about getting a different study experience.

But there is one thing I love both about girls and guys: they are extremely nice. Really warm, always welcoming you with their arms open. They remind me of Brazilians in that which is amazing if you realize how different the cultures are. They always offer you to drink, eat or sleep at their place. And they have this ability to make you feel like at home in five minutes although you are actually visiting them in their dormitory.

"Don´t talk about religion and politics!"

Wow, one month since I haven´t  been here. Well, exams are over so here I come again.

Because I have a huge problem to talk about anything briefly, it is difficult for me to choose just one topic. I would simply love to talk about everything at once. But it´s impossible, of course, so let´s just see what will happen with the title I chose this time.

"Don´t talk about religion and politics" is a piece of advice mainly foreigners might give you when you might meet Turkish people. There are certain reasons for this advice but it just doesn´t work for me. If there is a topic that is supposed not to be discussed, a kind of taboo, you can be sure I will go for it as soon as possible. Usually I try not to offend the people of course but at the same time I´ve always loved provoking.

Since I got into this relationship of mine with Turkey, it was clear I couldn´t avoid (and I didn´t want to at all) informing myself about their religion. But what I´ve been doing is not just collecting information about islam, but trying to understand religion(s) in general. Why? That´s easy: because (as you certainly know) I come from the country with the biggest percentage of atheists in the world. So for me it is not difficult to understand that you are a muslim or christian, but the basic idea of you believing.

Before my getting involved with Turkey, I actually thought it would be easier for the Turkish to accept me because they wouldn´t be bothered by any other religious "competition". But wrong! As hard as it might be for me to understand believers, that hard it might be for them to understand how someone cannot believe. Still, you are always more accepted if you are a crazy European girl than if you are Turkish.

What called my attention on Turkish ID is the fact that their religion is mentioned there! I started asking myself how come. Like when and how they decide if to put "muslim" there or not. Do they ask me? Or do they ask just if I am let´s say a Turkish Greek?

The official numbers of muslims in Turkey are big. I was asking a couple of Turkish people who were fine talking about it (I guess it must be easier for them to talk to me as a foreigner about such things) and they confirmed me that every Turkish will tell me he/she is a muslim. But then how truly the person believes, how often prays etc., that´s a completely different story. Also, there are people, who don´t consider themselves true believers. It´s just to admit that and say it aloud in Turkey, is something that seems to be absolutely socially unacceptable.

As I mentioned before, this differs, obviously, from place to place. You can have strictly religious cities like the famous Konya, and on the other hand you can hear people talking about Izmir as about a foreign city because the people seem to care much less about religion than in the rest of Turkey. And surely, let´s not generalize so much - it depends on the level of education, on the family etc., etc.

The interesting thing about Turkey that you notice in every single book about islam, is that Turkey is seen as a kind of example, an exception. Their national pride (and nationalism) was enhanced when their biggest hero, that seems to be a kind of saint for them, Kemal Atatürk, founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. With that, a lot of reforms came (they accepted "our" alphabet, gave the right to vote to women - before France and other countries, by the way! -, changed the education system and many more) and there you can find the reason why nowadays Turkey is considered to be an exception among muslim countries: they decided to keep the religion apart from the politics. (That situation has been changing with the contemporary government but that´s  another chapture again.)

Now I will try to get back to the title.
Why shouldn´t you talk about the religion and politics with the Turkish (or why people say you shouldn´t).
I think that if you respect their belief (which I do, I respect everyone´s religion and the belief even more, I just might have problems with the religious institutions, but those seem to be represented much less in islam than in christianity, for example, which I find nice) and show them you can see there are too many prejudices and stereotypes especially against their religion, you shouldn´t have any problem to discuss even these topics (I mean you should wisely choose the people to discuss it with, too).

And the same can be said about their politics. Yes, you are right, don´t push much the case of Armenians (I myself must say it still confuses me and I don´t  really know what to think about it. This morning I had to smile when I read in Islám a islamismus by a Czech specialist that the Armenians made the French to proclaim officially and internationally that what had happened WAS a genocide and anyone who says the contrary might appear in some international court. Anyway, it´s all just playing with words, medias and history. You can manipulate it so easily. I for example don´t understand why we use the "soft" word "odsun" (transfer) for what we did with the Germans here after the Second World War.).

(I prefer not to comment the Kurds since I don´t consider myself to know enough about it.)

The history (and politics) is a funny thing, anyway. Every country teaches it differently, some teach more, some less. Some countries tend to make a nationalist from you already at the primary school. I don´t say which one is wrong and which is right. Let me study in all the countries of the world and I´ll tell you.

Still, I realized that the Turkish national pride is from a big part based on a certain feeling of injustice from the part of the West (mainly Europe, I think). And I can understand it. What the European big powers tried to do to them during the First World War, reminds me a little what they did to us in the Second one. The difference is that with Turkey they failed in a way that nobody expected and with us they succeeded. It´s just that noone really recognizes that victory of  theTurkish. So it´s up to them to recognize it.

Therefore, if you are not xenophobic (if you were, you wouldn´t be reading my blog for sure), if you can handle sensitive issues without offending people and if you are ready to listen, I don´t think you should be afraid to discuss these topics with Turkish people. To me, this helps to break the stereotypes and prejudices, which is something I love to do.

West or East

First I should say that it is a very common topic also for the Czech Republic, my homeland. We don´t really like to discuss it because we like to believe we are simply the centre. We also get angry when looking at the map, asking ourselves if Austria appears to be more eastern than us, why are they considered the pure West and we are considered the opposite? We all know the answer is our communist history. (Altough again - shouldn´t half of Germany be considered the East, too?)

This used to get me angry (and it still does) especially in Portugal (or better said among the Portuguese). I am going to be quite bad to them now, although not unfair, but if they are my friends, they know this opinion of mine.
The Portuguese happen to be geographically in the very west. Still, they are said to be the poorest West European country and I can´t forget my French professor´s reaction to my Czech presentation in Porto when I mentioned that our economy actually is stronger than the Portuguese one. She started laughing as if she heard the best joke of the year and commented that it is quite obvious because they are the poorest country of European Union (I guess she didn´t count some countries of the East).
Anyway, what I´m trying to say is that there is this very annoying disturbing thing of the Portuguese. They do realize they are a sort of poor neighbour to all the other West European countries and they just hate it, they feel inferior to them. And what do they do to feel better? They compare themselves to the East, so that they can feel superior to some others. The point is when they do it to my country which they know basically NOTHING about, and moreover their strongest argument is "you know, we have a great history! We had the greatest discoverers and we discovered this and this..!", I just stop listening saying "yep, nice, that was 500 years ago, do you mind?".

If you take Brazil, it´s something different, the Brazilians don´t really seem to care about that kind of shit. West or East of what? Europe? Come on, first you just become a gringa that most Brazilians simply consider rich and then you continue with that label as European, that´s it. (How much nicer the Brazilian way is!)

Finally getting to Turkey. To start, I´d like to mention I feel very sorry for my Turkish friends because of the prejudices foreigners have against them. It´s amazing. The harem, 4 wives, the sultan, the burqa, the camels and then a lot of crap coming with the prejudices against islam (like the women circumcision, cutting your hand or arm when you steal something etc.). After realizing this, I thought we are lucky because there are no such strong stupid prejudices against the Czech Republic. What do they say about us? Beautiful girls, quite easy, ugly guys, a lot of beer, people are kinda cold... Well, but aren´t they at least partly true?

Coming back to the West and East, it´s very interesting the way the Turkish see themselves. They like to believe they are both Europeans and Asians. I guess they are. They do have a juicy mixture of it. It amazes me how "Western" they want to be, or maybe how western they want to be considered, still, they can´t and don´t want to get rid of so many traditions of theirs. The amount of traditions they still keep is unbelievable, it feels like I can spend my whole life learning about them. It even made me think that my own country doesn´t have any compared to Turkey (I felt something similar when tasting Turkish food). The funny thing is that even if they try their best to become Europeans, they keep this deep suspiciousness to everything Western. In their eyes we represent the immorality, no sense for family, traditions, values etc.

So ok, you have just explained us they are more fond of the East, we can understand that, in the end they are muslims, aren´t they? - Oh, how wrong you are! You would think they are automatically friends with Arabs and Persians and whoever of the same belief, hum? No, the impression I got from the Turkish was quite the opposite. They don´t  like the Arabs because they make the muslims look bad and because they care too much about money etc.  And the Persians? Well, in Iran they mix too much politics and religion and that´s not exactly the Turkish style (they are republic and they are hell proud of it).

Now you know the reactions of some of you? Like "Petra, be careful, he´s a Turkish and a muslim!". So it also goes the other way around. It goes like "But Ahmet, be careful, she´s a European, so she can leave you any time, if you married her, she would divorce you the second day and she can cheat on you any time" and bla bla bla. So for them I´m simply a European. A person you should always suspect.

So in the end, where am I from?

Turkish wear

My friends commented I haven´t written anything new here in a while so here I am. And as you can see, I decided to write in English this time, I hope I won´t commit a lot of nonsense, linguistic or factual.

One thing that has been on my mind because everybody has been asking me about that, is to write about the kind of clothes Turkish people wear. Especially the women, of course. There have been too many silly jokes about the burqa etc.

From what I have seen, not only the clothes, but also the mood, the religiosity, the atmosphere change from place to place. Many people don´t realize that Turkey is a huge country and that brings big differences, too. I may just talk about the places I have been to, which actually is not much so far. I might mention places that some Turkish people told me about or that I read about (because I have basically become a collector of everything Turkish in my own country).

Let´s start with the most popular one: the veil or the headscarf.
I would say that a half of Turkish women wear it and a half don´t. That could be the case of Istanbul which is soon twice bigger (talking about the number of inhabitants) than my country. What happens there is something typical for all big cities: people from all over Turkey come there to look for better life, often from villages in the east and other parts of Turkey. Because it seems to me that the east of Turkey is considered to be quite different from the rest of the country, the people´s traditions tend to be stronger and their minds closer than the others´ ones. My guess is that especially because of these people Istanbul´s inhabitants might become more orthodox, which brings the headscarf.
I have the impression that in Eskişehir, which is said to be the city with the biggest percentage of university educated people in Turkey and you can actually feel that just walking around, majority of women don´t wear any headscarf. In fact, I found myself slightly surprised every time I saw a woman wearing it, especially if it was a young girl my age.
I saw a lot of scarfed women in Bursa and I imagine there must be almost 100% of them in Konya.
What matters, is to explain you how such a "Turkish headscarf" looks like and what kinds of them you can see. It is quite simple, they tend to cover their hair and look kinda like our grandmothers from the country (although some of the women are highly chic!). Some more orthodox ones prefer to wear a long coat (something like our "baloňák") that hides everything (I could see that in Istanbul in the summer).
Now, there are no burqas in Turkey and the Turkish won´t really laugh with you when you joke about it (together with the jokes about four wives, camels and the name of their present sultan). It appears to me they rather hate it as a stupid thing of the Arabs. When you see a burqa in Turkey, it is more than probable that the woman is Arab.

The clothes in general differs again. In some cities you should be careful mainly in summer what you wear and how much of your flesh is shown. I actually got quite fed up with that in Istanbul and Ankara. You should watch your cleavage and it´s good if your skirt or shorts reach your knees. But then you come to Eskişehir, go out with your new long skirt and feel like the biggest village idiot that is completely out. And oh, dear Mersin! I could walk in biquini on the street and nobody would care (I didn´t stay in the tourist part).

One chapture that called my attention mostly in November, was the clothes of Eskişehir´s nights. Oh boy, the girls were as glamorously dressed at least as the clubbing Portuguese and moreover, they looked more daring than Czech girls! I was looking at them, fascinated, not feeling so comfortable in my jeans, telling Ahmet that nobody would believe me that was Turkey if they saw it. Still, there was this interesting detail: a lot of legs around but no showing breasts. You neither can see, as it is so often here and it gets quite annoying, somebody´s ass looking at you from their trousers.

After this, I noticed some girls in there in fact dress in a similar way also during the day. And noone cares, the guys don´t bother them, simply everybody´s cool with it. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Erman said that if Turkey doesn´t join the EU, at least Eskişehir should (I loved it).

Hum, I think this is quite enough about the Turkish clothes, but if you have any questions, ask me. I just hope my Turkish friends and boyfriend won´t say this is a complete bullshit.

Má drahá babička

Ukazuju babičce fotky z Istanbulu. Na jedné jsou dva malí chlapečci ve svátečním oblečení s maminkou.
Já: "To sem fotila, protože prý zrovna byli na obřízce, a proto sou tak oblečení."
Babička: "Cože?! No to je hrozný!"
- "Co je na tom hrozný?"
- "No a to dělají jako kvůli náboženství?"
- "No, jo."
- "Hum, chudáci malí, to musí hrozně bolet a vždyť je to takový barbarský."
- "Proč by to bylo barbarský? Dělaj to i z hygienickejch důvodů a dělá se to i u židů."
- "Cože? I židi obřezávaj holčičky? To sem nevěděla.."

Pozn.: V Turecku se proboha žádná ženská obřízka nedělá. Navíc to nesouvisí s náboženstvím, ale s kulturou. A pokud se nepletu, týká se to především Afriky, a to její černé části.

Proč blog o Turecku

Zprostředkovat někomu zážitky z Portugalska, nebo dejme tomu i z Brazílie, mi v porovnání se snahou o to stejné z Turecka, přijde dost jednoduché, mj. proto, že latina je in a muslimové jsou všichni zlí teroristi. O to víc mě to mrzí, protože mě ta země fascinuje a občas mám pocit, že vlastně nemám s kým se o to podělit. Můj bratr například prohlásil, že co je to za zemi, když vám tam useknou ruku za krádež auta. Pořád nějak doufám, že si dělal srandu (taky doufám, že Vám nemusím vysvětlovat, že to se děje jen někde v arabských zemích, a s těmi já zatím nemám nic společného - prosím Vás, pro ty, co propadli tomuhle obrovskému omylu, Turci nejsou Arabové a arabštině ani vůbec nerozumí, patří mezi turkické národy a jsou na to patřičně hrdí).

Vadí mi, kolik existuje předsudků a stereotypů týkajících se Turecka, a nejspíš to je hlavním důvodem k vytvoření tohoto blogu. I když někdy jsou ty předsudky tak silně zakořeněné, že Vás lidi prostě neposlouchají, jak jsem si už všimla. Dalším velkým důvodem je, že jsem se ještě nikdy nesnažila porozumět tak odlišné kultuře, dostat se jí pod kůži, objevit ji pro sebe. Občas zažívám menší kulturní šoky, což je pro mě nové. Asi i proto mě to tak baví.