Turkey and stuff

Many things happened in Turkey over the last week. The government and democracy once again stands on shaky ground. It’s just 8 months since the AK party was returned to power after gaining 47% of the vote following the threat of a coup by the military. The reason being that people suspect that the party seeks to turn Turkey into an Islamic state. The fact that many of its members were formally part of a hardline Islamic party (which was banned) was cited as one of many reasons for this. Then of course the AKP tried to lift the headscarf ban in public buildings and all hell broke loose.
This time instead of waving guns to try and oust the powers that be, the opposition is waving a petition in the constitutional courts, once again trying to cite that the government wants to destroy secularism and should be banned. A decision will be made soon.

Also this week the Olympic torch came to Istanbul. A friend and aspiring photojournalist was there to see the ensuing protests and arrests. Non of which were reported in any of the papers bar one little left wing one.
But the torch is no stranger to controlled press. The torch relay itself was cooked up by Nazi propagandists under Goebbels in preperation for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The current Olympics is being directed by the mighty Chinese press machine called: ‘the Capital Ethics Development Office’. Amongst other things, to ensure that China is shown in a favourable light, the office is producing anti spitting, anti swearing and anti litter campaigns. According to the office they have been successful. Spitting is down by 2.41 percent on previous years and littering down by 2.44 percent. Vunderbar. One wonders who has to count the spittle?

Also this week, Fenerbahce got further than any other Turkish team ever has in the UEFA football league. They are naturally ecstatic. I saw the game live from the stadiums press box where jounalists reported that never in all their years of football had they ever seen such brilliant fans. The support was absolutely deafening. And there was much arm waving, grinning and general Turkishness. My friend and former flatmate and colleague came to cover the match so I had my first visitor, which was great.

This weekend saw me run my furthest distance ever. 12km, which isn’t a lot compared to the other nutters. The Germans I run with were originally intending to run 18, but then decided to do 20km because they said they ‘don’t like uneven numbers’. Which, had my body not had been in total shock, would have made me laugh hysterically.

But fear not, I managed to slip a good few glasses of wine in, a dinner party at a lovely French guys house, a visit to a photography exhibition of Darfur and a little bit of clothes shopping. The clothes shopping has to stop. But it’s such a novelty to go to shopping centres which sell things that you’d like to buy. Was going to buy a teeny weeny pair of running shorts, but decided I would wait until I am fast enough to outrun any maurauding packs of Turkish men.

Work is tough going. Have now gone from being too busy to not being busy enough and am once again slightly unsure of what my role is. I think being cocooned in linguistic ignorance in the Czech Republic for the last 5 years has done nothing to help me with my personal development. But at least I don’t turn up to work with hangovers anymore so that’s something to be positive about. Tonight I am off to the cinema and then hopefully will have an early night.

I just heard that my friend Pavel from kuwait might visit next week too.