Sunday, August 2, 2009

I keep meaning to log on and write a few lines about what I'm doing and events in Russia and Turkey, but just haven't had the chance. Thank goodness I came back to Michigan this summer—I've been so busy trying to take care of business here ahead of this month's move to Montana, it really makes me glad I didn't spend any of this summer abroad (something I'd been vaguely considering in the months ahead of my flight back from Turkey this June).

Anyway, Michigan has been super this summer. My parents tend to spend their summers at their cottage in the west of the state, so the house I grew up in was fortunately empty. Basically, I've been in Ann Arbor since the end of June, but have made several trips out to Castle Park (near Holland), which is where my parents stay.

It's all been grand. In my spare time, I've been riding my bike all over town. It's actually my brother in law's bike, but he left it in my parents' garage years back. This summer I souped it up—getting it a great tune-up as well as new handlebars (I hate 10-speed handlebars, the ones that make you bend over), a bell, and a new light. I love riding through Burns Park, Ann Arbor Hills, and out past Gallup Park and my old high school (go Rats!) by the river. It's so incredibly beautiful, I can't believe how lucky I am to be here this summer.

One of the great things about being in Ann Arbor is that I can listen to WEMU on the radio, rather than online. I really like Michael Jewett in the afternoon, as well as other hosts like Jessica Webster, Wendy Wright, and Dr. Arwulf Arwulf when I get the chance to hear them. It's great to hear Michael G. Nastos again—he retired a couple of years ago, but is filling in for Joe Tiboni (Sundays at five) for the month of August.

It's strange being in a leafy suburban neighborhood for the summer after having spent so many summers in hot, noisy Eurasian cities. This year marks the first time I've been in the United States for the All-Star game (second week of July) since 2003, and the first time I've spend the entire months of July and August in the US since 1992.

In some ways, this feels a bit like the summer of 1992—the summer before I started working in Istanbul and after the four-month trip through southern and eastern Europe which had led to me finding a job in Turkey in the first place. That summer, too, was a cold one—it was a big El Nino summer, with plenty of rain and cold temperatures. This year, however, it's just fresh. A bit chilly in the evening, but nice without being too hot in the day time—and there's usually a nice breeze, too. Perfect.

I really enjoy the tranquility of both my parents' neighborhood in Ann Arbor and at the cottage. In Ann Arbor, I like sitting on my parents' back porch and listening to Tigers games (announced by Dan Dickerson, who grew up spending his summers two doors behind us at Castle Park, no less). If the Tigers aren't on, it's either WEMU or else I just listen to the sound of the wind blowing through the trees in the backyard—a very soothing atmosphere after the round-the-clock din of Istanbul. In my parents' living room or upstairs in my bedroom, I listen to records, which is another great treat about living in Ann Arbor. And even though Ann Arbor isn't what it used to be in terms of record shops, it's still the best place I know for buying new and used vinyl.

One bummer, however, has been that Ann Arbor's only newspaper, The Ann Arbor News, has shut down. The Ann Arbor News was the first newspaper to print a letter of mine (endorsing Gary Hart for president in 1984), and when I was in elementary school I took great pride in "dumping the Dope" and getting my name printed along with all of the other readers who had out-picked "the Dope," one of the Ann Arbor news sports columnists (they'd also send you a really cool "I dumped the dope" bumpersticker).

Ann Arbor, a center of culture and learning in the region, now has no newspaper. This is really too bad. 

It's been a heavy summer work-wise for a number of reasons. First of all, I've been using this house as a storage facility for my stuff all of my life. I've still got junk from high school in my room and in the basement, and a lot of stuff left from college. Since I went to live in Turkey right after college and didn't come back until I started grad school in 1999, I never really went through it. Indeed, when I moved back to the US after seven years in Turkey, I moved the majority of the things I was bringing back into my parents' basement since I would be living in a soul-sucking graduate dormitory (albeit a nice one, complete with working fireplace) for two years. Then, out at Brown, I bought new stuff, which I then moved to New York. When my gig at Columbia ended in June of 2008, I moved still more stuff out here prior to heading off to Russia.

In short, I was due to spend some time here and finally go through all of this.

Cleaning out my closet: my pre-move packing has unearthed some relics

As for the move to Montana, I've hired some movers and they're set to pick up my stuff on August 14. I've rented a car, and will drive out there with some of the rest of my stuff (the movers might not arrive in Montana until the end of August, so I wanted to have more than I could take on an airplane, but mainly I just thought it would be cool to drive from Ann Arbor to Bozeman). I'll be living in a fairly sterile-appearing university-owned apartment, but it's furnished, flexible, and a very good deal so I'm really glad to have it. It's really nice to have something like this available to me—probably makes a lot of sense, since probably a lot of the people who move out there to take up positions at the university are coming from far away.

Moving to Montana soon: a street in Bozeman last December

I've also spent a lot of time this summer preparing the class I'll be teaching at MSU. I've got a 2-2 load (two classes per semester, two semesters a year), but for the first semester I only have to teach one class. I wanted my first class to be a more general one in the hopes that I could meet more of the students that way, so I'm teaching the modern Middle East. In the second semester I think I'll teach more esoteric classes (I'm thinking now I'll teach one on modern Turkey and the other on Islam and Russia)—but hopefully I'll be able to get to know more students through the Modern Middle East course and in doing so maybe entice some of them to sign up for one of the other two in the second semester.

Finally, I've been doing a lot of reading and writing this summer. Mainly I've been working on my book project, but also have spent some time on a few projects: an article I'm working on, my final report for the NCEEER grant, and a number of Russian (imperial) newspapers I'm reading at the University of Michigan library.

Every once in a while I've been tempted to write something on what's going on in Turkey, the former USSR, or the United States, but then I've been drawn back into one of the many projects I'm trying to take care of now. 

One thing that annoyed me particularly was the Henry Louis Gates Jr. controversy—the fact that someone would be arrested in his own home really makes me angry. Even if Gates was being obnoxious to the officer, since when is being obnoxious an arrestable offense? Is it more of an arrestable offense for a black man than for a white man? And no mater what color skin someone has, what right does this cop have to arrest someone simply for mouthing off at him?

I'm also concerned about these three American tourists who have recently been arrested in Iran. According to news reports, four Americans were backpacking in northern Iraq and three of them went into the mountains on a camping trip. There, they allegedly crossed (accidentally, they say) into Iranian territory, where they were promptly arrested.

From what I've heard, it sounds like Iran was completely justified in arresting these people—crossing into the country illegally is definitely an arrestable offense. On the other hand, if these people were just innocent backpackers, then Iran should let them go once security forces have concluded their (reasonably fast-moving) investigation into the matter. I sincerely hope that we are not on the cusp of something that could be exploited by politicians in Iran and the United States to help foment a dust-up between the two countries. We certainly don't need another Iranian "hostage crisis," especially right now.

In Turkey, meanwhile, they've made bars, cafes, and restaurants smoke-free—a measure that was initially passed in parliament last year but put off until this summer (perhaps some people thought it was best to wait until after this spring's nationwide municipal elections, which were viewed this year as "midterm" elections of a sort in Turkey). Even though large numbers of Turks smoke, Turkish opinion polls indicate strong public support for the law. Indeed, most of the real chain smokers that I know in Turkey would love to stop and consider smoking a filthy, deadly, and expensive habit. They smoke because they're physically addicted, not because they think it's great to smoke. Others, meanwhile, grouse that the ruling AK Party's support for the law is indicative of a broad effort to rid the public sphere of both drinking (alcohol) and smoking—using the fight against tobacco to also take on alcohol, in other words.

In fact, politicians from the AK Party and its precursors (the Refah ("Welfare") Party and the Fazilet ("Virtue") Party have taken measures against drinking. I remember back after the Refah Party first won the mayoral elections for both the Metropolitan Istanbul Municipality and the municipality of Beyoglu (a large "borough" in Istanbul and one of the city's primary entertainment districts), the newly-elected mayor of Beyoglu attempted to ban the drinking of alcohol at tables that cafes had set out on the streets. This lasted for about 2.5 seconds. Today, after fifteen years of Refah-Virtue-AK party rule (the Republican People's Party won Beyoglu in the elections this March), Beyoglu is wilder and more alcoholic than ever.

Efforts to change the face of Beyoglu (which also included efforts by some folks in Refah to have an enormous mosque constructed where Taksim Park is currently located) have not succeeded, and during the term of the last Ak Party mayor in the district, Amsterdam-style brothels (complete with scantily-clad women sitting behind large windows) emerged (for at least a couple of years—they appear to have closed down sometime before September 2008) to compete with the bevy of legal and illegal brothels which have been a feature of the area for at least decades, perhaps much longer.

However, there have been some successes in fighting alcohol. Before the Welfare Party took over Istanbul in 1994, you could drink alcohol at city-owned cultural institutions, such as the Ataturk Cultural Center (the Ataturk Kultur Merkezi, or AKM) or at the restaurant at Yildiz Palace (where the western classical music was soon replaced with Central Asian-themed march-like funereal tunes). There had also been alcohol aplenty at the city-owned restaurants in the city like the Arnavutkoy tesisleri.

Increasing the duty and taxes on alcohol is another method that the AK Party could use to limit alcohol consumption. As is the case with taxes on travel outside the country, the government could easily portray the consumption of alcohol (especially imported alcohol) as a luxury that should contribute more tax revenue during a period of economic crisis.

Thus, while drinking could become even more expensive in Turkey, measures taken against simply drinking alcohol tend not to be very successful. Indeed, I see far more public drinking in Turkey than I do in either the United States or Russia (never mind places like Azerbaijan). Even in Arnavutkoy, where I lived this past year, I'd always see people drinking beer while they walked by the Bosphorus or fished in its waters, always while walking or standing on city-owned land.

RIP Corazon Aquino!