The Drought.

Dear Family, Friends, and Interested Observers,

Welcome back to my jkbinturkey.blogspot.com website! After seven glorious weeks in the States, I returned to Ankara on January 11th. I am featuring some photographs from the holidays in this blog entry. I’ve spent the last two weeks wrapping up a lot of paperwork, and look forward to resuming the hardcore research on Monday.

I’ve experienced some successes and failures in the last two weeks. First, lets get the bad news out of the way. For the moment, research at the Title Deed and Cadastre General Administration (Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü) looks like a “no-go.” I went to the Title Deed archives on Monday and learned that the papers that are open to researchers date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, antedating my research period by several centuries. In addition, the nineteenth-century title deed receipts (tapu senetleri) that would be useful to my research are still used as valid legal documents and therefore for some reason are open neither to the general public nor to researchers. I’ll ply my connections, but I do not think there will be recourse to this problem. One consolation is that I will not have to make an arduous daily journey to the Title Deed Archives, which lie on the far south side of Ankara in the Yıldız neighborhood.

Although the documents keep flowing, I’m once again annoyed with the National Library. For the second time, it appears that a defter is wrongly numbered. I’ll look into the dates of the entries in defter #74 tomorrow to confirm that it is in fact defter #77. What sloppy record keeping.


At this stage of my research I will take steps to diversify my primary document base. I plan to look into two other potential sources available at the National Library, secondary studies of folk literature and nineteenth-century Ottoman newspapers. I will inquire to my contacts at the History Department of Gazi Osman Paşa University in Tokat to find out the best places to start looking. I’ve also just placed an order for ten master’s theses and dissertations at Y.Ö.K. (Yükseköğretim Kurulu – Higher Education Council), some of which cover the topic of Tokat folk literature. Consultation of Y.Ö.K. is a must for today’s Ottoman history researcher, as the works stored there show the range of research being conducted across the rapidly expanding Turkish university system. The website is also very user friendly (http://www.yok.gov.tr/).

On the brighter side of things, I’m happy to report that I’ve finished my grant applications for next year. I’ve also collated and revised several research bibliographies, a cumbersome task. Moreover, I’ve fixed my work and study schedule at TOBB Ekonomik ve Teknoloji University and have made inroads into my search for an apartment in Istanbul after March 15th.


I do have several respites from the grind of research on the horizon. In two weeks, my friends Scott and Hannah from U.W. will come to Ankara for a visit. I plan to take them to Küçuk Ev ("Little House"), a charming little bistro just down the street that features live traditional Turkish music. We’ll also hit my favorite mantı joint if we have a chance. After that, we will travel to Sivas, Tokat, and Amasya provinces. I had intended to make this trip anyway as I would like to familiarize myself better with the Sivas and the provincial centers of Tokat. As Scott and Hannah are up to getting a real taste of Anatolia, I see no harm in trying to kill two birds with one stone. I will visit Scott and Hannah in Israel for a few days in late March, where they are doing their own research this year.

In April, Jim makes a two-week trip to Turkey. I will be based in Istanbul by then, so we will begin with a rapid-fire tour of Dersaadet. We will then take the Pamukkale Express train to Denizli, to see the cascading limestone formations and to begin a journey along the Mediterranean coast from Fethiye to Antalya. He’s a little nervous about it, but I'm sure it will be a great experience for him. There is no place like Turkey in the spring.


I’m also working through the mundane struggles of everyday life in Ankara. This morning I woke up to no water. Sinan made the comment that it has not really rained in Ankara for two months, so this could be a long-term problem for us, as the reservoirs that supply the city are not being fed. The boy in the corner shop confirmed that there will be a two-day planned water outage ending tomorrow night. The other night I watched a documentary about the potential threat of desiccation in Konya Province. Sugar beet farmers (among others) are draining the aquifer flowing from the Toros Mountains in the south of the country faster than nature can replenish it. There is concern that eventually the water deposit debts could induce a reverse flow from Tuz Gölü (Salt Lake), the drainage basin of a large portion of central Anatolia. As the name of the lake implies, the waters of Tuz Gölü are highly saline and are becoming more concentrated as less fresh water flows into it. The fear is that a subterranean backflow will refill the aquifer at some tipping point in the future, and salt water from the lake will begin to contaminate wells across the province.

I’ve also been vexed by the bill payment process here. Gas, water, and electric bills can be paid one of two ways. The best way is to pay these bills online through a debit transaction to a bank account. However, I have not set up a bank account, so I must do things the old fashioned way. I go to a bank, take a number, and wait for the next available teller to pay the bill. This typically takes between twenty and thirty minutes. Last week, however, the teller could not bring the screen needed to pay off my electric bill, so I need to go back next week again to repeat the process.


Still, life in Ankara has its compensations. The weather over the last week has been absolutely gorgeous – partly sunny, mild, highs in the low fifties. It made for a nice jog this morning. Reality returns tomorrow, I guess, with a predicted high of 32 degrees and mixed precipitation. This is maybe a good thing, though, considering the drought.

I probably will not log another report until after Scott and Hannah visit in two weeks.

Best wishes,

jkbinturkey

P.S. Check out my link to sister Lisa's great new blogsite!