A new form of supplication

After an exhausting 12-hour day of seeing sites around Istanbul (Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, the Islamic and Turkish Art Museum, the Basilica Cistern, Topkapi Palace) I am too tired to write much. In any case, this isn’t intended to be a travelogue. Tomorrow it’s on to Izmir and some more touring as well as conversations, I suspect.

Meanwhile, inside Hagia Sofia today (just about the oldest, if not the oldest once-Christian church in the word) I discovered the 21st Century’s new posture of prayer and supplication:

It’s paying homage to the digital camera gods. Everywhere I looked today, I saw huge crowds, their arms lifted as if in some odd form of prayer, snapping photos with abandon. Istanbul has figured out the tourism industry big-time since last I was here in 1999. The multi-national throngs are overwhelming, but well-herded by the efficient cultural site staffs.

If 9/11 sparked any enduring fears about traveling to a Muslim country, you’d never know it from Istanbul.

Here’s a shot from inside the Blue Mosque:

The Blue Mosque

“Our culture is around the food”

"Our culture is around the food," said host Alptekin

So said one of our hosts, Alptekin, as our group of nine Denverites, fresh off jets and a bit bleary, settled into a five-course feast at a restaurant called Pirpirim. The place caters to groups like ours; a similar, larger delegation from Phoenix filled an adjoining table, and other large groups of foreigners were in evidence as well. The dinner was other-worldly on its own merits. But the contrast two three consecutive Lufthansa meals couldn’t have been starker.

A lentil paste, sauteed eggplant, marinated green beans, three different kinds of bread, one coated with  thin layer of spiced sauce and ground lamb. And then succulent pieces of chicken and beef from kebabs grilled over I know not what kind of wood. What a way to begin recovery from jet-lag.

The culinary revelation of the day was the dessert – a vanilla ice cream so rich as to be gelatinous, and a sweet cheese pie called kunefe. We waddled out of the restaurant, ready to begin meeting people and seeing sites tomorrow.

Today’s incident off Gaza

I awoke this morning, a day before departure, to the news that Israeli commandos had stormed a seaborne aid caravan bound for Gaza and killed at least 10 people. The caravan was organized and led by a Turkish humanitarian group. Some reports said people in the flotilla were unarmed. Details remain murky. Protests erupted in Istanbul and Ankara. Here is how Turkey’s biggest English-language paper (with ties to the Gülen movement) covered the story.

This will certainly affect conversations during our trip. I hope and trust it will not cause its cancellation.

Thoughts before departure

Back in early March I received an email message from a man named Ismail Akbulut, a Denver-based software engineer, introducing himself and his Multicultural Mosaic Foundation and inviting me on an “intercultural dialogue trip to Turkey”  from June 1-12.

The Mosaic Foundation, Ismail wrote, was “established by Turkish-Americans dedicated to help cultivate moral and cultural values in our society by promoting understanding, respect, dialogue and peace.”

Mosaic is affiliated with the Gülen movement, named for Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamic theologian now living in Pennsylvania. You can read about the movement on Wikipedia. In an online interview, Hakan Yavuz, a political science professor at the University of Utah, sums up the Gulen movement’s role in Turkey: