Reading some of my other friends’ abroad blogs has given me
a sense of blog inferiority. They all
seem to have much more profound thoughts about community and religion, and seem
to all oddly involve visiting orphanages in third world countries. Which make my posts feel a little
superficial. But at the same time, I am
writing these posts semi stream of consciousness, or else they won’t get
done. So, enjoy:
On Sunday we went to a local soccer game. Despite the fact that it was a pretty
unimportant game (still professional, but intracountry), there were huge groups
of fans from both teams constantly shouting cheers. There was a line of riot police separating
the two sections. The rest of the
stadium was filled with normal, but engaged fans. No one got up during play, but waited for
half time to get food. There was very
little selection for food, but sandwiches were not too pricy. There was plenty of empty space in the stadium,
and we got front row tickets for 30 Lira ($15).
The only odd thing was that there were next to no women. Women were allowed, but we saw a grand total
of two and a couple of little girls. It
was really odd.
Almost every weekday we have had somewhere around 4 hours of
class with 2 hours of break time scattered throughout. 2 ½ are history class, and the rest is music
class of some sort. It makes for very
long days. On Tuesday we had a field
trip to a music conservatory. They
taught mostly western style music. We
had a lecture on composition of western pieces inspired by Turkish classical
music (Turkish classical is different than Western classical and Turkish
folk). After that we wandered around
Taxim square (the main city center on the Asian side).
Wednesday we had a speaker from a Turkish classical music
conservatory to teach us about ney (Turkish flute, which I could not make a
sound on).
Today our TA Berkay told us about the protests that have be
going on in Turkey. The protests started
when a bunch of people occupied a major park at Taxim Square to prevent it
being destroyed by government forces. Anger
at the authoritarian style of governing that has become part of the current
prime minister’s legacy and the Islamic agenda meant that many people were
upset at the government already. The
park was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Berkay was one of these
protesters. This erupted when police set
fire to tents and shot tear gas directly into the crowd. Tear gas is supposed
to be shot up, so that the capsules break open in the air. Instead, the police used the capsules as
rubber bullets, shooting them directly at people and injuring them. They also used combinations of tear gas with
multiple different treatments. For
example, one mixture contained a gas neutralized by water; another gas was
aggravated by water. Some of the gasses
weren’t even approved to be used on humans.
This went on for days, and resulted to even residential streets and even
hospitals being gassed. Eight people
died, and the prime minister fully supported the actions of the police. But people kept streaming back into
Taxim. Berkay wasn’t sure what finally
ended the violence, but tensions are still high. The police force has grown into a small army,
and the people are still unhappy.
Another spark might set the country on fire again.
Hearing about the political activism in Turkey lends an odd
view of American politics at the moment.
Riding back on the tram from Taxim, we overheard a couple of Australians
commenting condescendingly about how uniformed Americans are, and how odd our
views on politics were. Though they were
being blatantly disrespectful in their tone, it brings up a good point. There were many in my generation who did not
realize the government had shut down.
Most Americans could not point out Syria on a map. A very disturbing street poll shows that many
Americans don’t know that Obamacare is the same thing as the Affordable Care
Act. It is no wonder that the
Australians are laughing at us! It is
one thing to hold debatable positions.
But to be so blatantly uninformed is embarrassing.
Looking back at my last blog post, I am really not sure how
much I agree with what I said about the vendors here. It really seems to vary. It is like I am playing a game without
knowing all the rules. But oh well. C'est la vie!
I have been talking with some friends studying abroad in
India about meeting up. It is making me
feel very cosmopolitan.
Good night
Andrea
No comments:
Post a Comment