Turkish tall tales
Having recently returned from living and working in Ankara for a few years, I very much enjoyed the recent coverage of Turkey in ‘Strange Statesmen’ [FT376:4851, 377:46-51]. Living out there and experiencing the culture, two things were very clear: a distrust of non-Turks (especially the Brits – they still haven’t forgiven us for Gallipoli) and the love of a good conspiracy theory.
My wife was the member of various WhatsApp groups for ex-pats and social groups and it would often be on a Friday afternoon where warnings of potential dangers cropped up. The two most memorable were that Daesh had managed to obtain an earthquake machine and were preparing to set it off in Ankara that weekend (I even heard the locals in the supermarket discussing that one). I tried my best to assure my wife, but I think she got caught up in the local
hysteria. She refused to believe that such a thing doesn’t exist and how would I know anyway? The other was the destruction of a large facility in the city (I think it was a hospital in late 2017) where the authorities apparently knew it was full of enough asbestos to send a large cloud across the city but didn’t care. This even made the news headlines in the country at the time. Again, panic ensued
for a weekend, but it was never mentioned again.
Turkey is genuinely one of those countries of contrast – especially between the views of Ataturk, the father of the nation, and Erdogan. The psychological impact of the attempted coup in 2016 is probably not fully realised outside of the country; it didn’t help that the BBC only have staff based in Istanbul where it ended quite quickly, whereas in Ankara it went on for much longer. The Turkish Parliament was bombed while in session by planes of their own Air Force, while Erdogan himself only missed an assassination squad at his holiday hotel by a few minutes. Perhaps we should allow Turks some leeway for conspiracy theory; however, the level to which Erdogan has taken it to further his own ends has also led to the suspicion that he either orchestrated the attempted coup or allowed it to happen, underestimating how far the plotters were prepared to go.
My favourite Erdogan antidote summed the man up for me. His first job was selling Simit (a doughnut shaped Turkish bread) on the streets of Istanbul. However, he made sure he made a profit by buying up the old bread at the end of the day, warming it in the oven and selling it as fresh the next morning.
George Thompson
By email