Turban : Istanbul : : Mega-church : New York?

I remember on the first day I came to Turkey I asked if showing the soles of my feet was considered rude. I was given a (justifiably) bizarre glance. I learned after about 48 hours that making any sort of comparison between Istanbul and any Arab country was not only (justifiably) rude, but was pretty useless as far as comparisons go. I get the feeling, from how Istanbulites sort of deride Anatolia as the Turkish version of Fly-over states, that there is a red and a blue Turkey, and that I am firmly in the blue column by living and working with upper-middle class Kamalist white-collar turks, that if I want to make any Arabo-similes I better go to Diyarbakir.

Once I realized that Turkish people themselves go on vacation to Cairo to gawk at that huge dusty mess, I put that analogy to bed. Then, while talking about the IMF's sordid relationship with Turkey with a finance banker, AKP's role in the neo-liberal project ( I want to make a deck of neo-liberal goons playing cards, Reagan and Thatcher would be the king and Queen, Rumsfeld would be the joker because it fits his amateur philosophizing that there are "known unknowns, and unknown unknowns"), and the rise of consumerism and debt-culture after Turkeys one-party statism, I started making incessant analogies about how similar Mexico and Turkey are. This is of course Bullshit because I haven't gone farther into Turkey than Kartal and besides Istanbul I've been to a couple of truckstops on the highway headed towards Edirne (Bulgaria visa run), but no matter. The only trips I really took in Mexico were pretty touristy themselves (except for the roadblocks and class struggle me and Sarah saw for one night (I cowardly thought fireworks celebrating a saint were government forces storming the barricades)). But I mean, this analogy gets more mileage (finance banker said people use to rattle on about Brazil and Turkey as emerging market brethren, until oil prices left Turkey in the dust) because academics love analogies, and the Mexico Turkey one is really picking up steam . The way that an insulated overblown capital houses the countries corrupt oligarchs, intellectual class, and stars in almost all cultural output (books, movies, soap operas) makes Istanbul feel a lot like Mexico City. In fact, I can draw some more specific analogies (back me up Nick)

Bagdat Caddesi = Polanco

Nisantasite = fresita

haydi görüşürüz = ciao, nos vemos

CHP = PRI

Kadikoy (especially nazim hikmet culture center) = Coyoacan

Otogar's creepy brutalist architecture = Pantitlan estacion's creepy brutalist architecture (I will even give a pictoral example)

=

But then this week while having no less than 6 hours worth of conversations with Turkish white-collar workers (4 nurses, 1 doctor, 1 engineer, 1 factory manager, 1 computer anaylist) about religion I learned that when it comes to harboring a harmless guilt about being vaguely religious but not knowing enough about their own religion, not having read enough of the Quran, making new years resolution type promises to fast, and most importantly the trite anti-dogmatic claim that they believe in God but not in religion, Turkey is just like America. "I think if you believe in God, that is the important thing" "I really want to read more about it, but I just don't have time with my job". The self-righteous hatred of Erdogan's self-righteousness is hauntingly similar to living in Washington during the Bush years (I'm surprised you can't buy a picture of Erdogan in B&W with the caption "not my prime minister" from one of the skate shops in Kadikoy (by the way Kadikoy is one of those rare magical places on the face of the earth where you can listen to pop punk coming from a skate shop and the call to prayer coming from a mosque at the same time (long live secularism))). People here in Istanbul keep a circle of secular friends and are willing to socialize, but have (what seems to be, I don't want to assume) that harmless distance between themselves and the Turbanites ( I will say this about Arab countries defense, I really prefer the hijab to what looks like something that people wear on Naboo (iwww, I hate Star Wars references)). I think about the civil friendship my mom keeps with an Evangelist. Then there are other ways that Islam manifests itself in safe-commercialist outlets that is pure Americana. You can buy cheap paperbacks about the prophets life at the supermarket (but not with Islamic fonts or threatening forest green iconography, but like smiling toothy kids grinning). You can buy your sacrificial lamb for Eid al-udha prepackaged at Carrefour (none of the fun of having blood run in the streets). Kids learn how to read the Quran in Muslim school, and then forget by the time they are twenty (half-heartedly regretting having forgotten when they explain it). But then again, Turkey doesn't have tent revivals, mormonism, free scientology stress tests, Mega-churches, power crystals, amish, KKK, or yoga retreats (that I've heard of yet). It's interesting how culture insists on its irrational persistence despite the fact that "

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto."

Super interesting that these quirky differences persist when it comes to accommodating old practices into the grind of modern life. Someone told me that some people in Turkey squeeze in az-zuhr, asr, and maghreb into isha'a prayer so that they thought have to interrupt a day full of dropping of the kids at soccer practice, buying a new dishwasher, and making dinner. I wonder who has written the anthropological paper on how Turkish people, by waiting to become properly religious and pious until later in life when they finally make the Hajj, are able to find a symbolic act to justify putting off pesky things like not drinking beer, not veiling, or praying five times a day for most of their consumerist existences. It acts as the perfect empty gesture to ensure that they can defer the superego injunction of Islamic traditions until they retire and don't have anything better to do that grow a beard or dick around at the mosque all day (it's like a senior's rec center here in icerenkoy, everyone gladhanding and shooting the breeze before and after prayer). If only we had something like that in America, so I wouldn't have been annoyed for most of high school by indoctrinated teenagers who were taking virginity oaths and singing jesus freak on their acoustic guitars. There is something about pious old people that is much less annoying than pious teens. Maybe its sincerity.