Another Drought.

Dear Friends, Family, and Interested Observers,

Only two weeks left before I return to the States for good. I am looking forward to spending the rest of the summer in the Badger state. Istanbul is in the midst of a severe drought, and the water cuts have become more frequent and unpredictable. It's good to know that city officials do not consider it a crisis situation; the taps can be shut off at any time. On the bright side of things, it has been sunny and warm for a month.My research continues apace. Last Friday I was pleased to discover that six thick dossiers of documents, labelled generically under the heading "various subjects," will be of no used to me. The dossiers registered under my search term "Tokat," only because they refer to the 'Tokat' Hunting Lodge in the hills of the Beykoz district north of Istanbul. So, I'm off the hook for them, which cuts in half the number of documents I must peruse before I leave. Yes!

If anyone is interested, the Tokat Lodge hosted umpteen foreign embassy officials on weekends, and its employees were also always asking for raises. At one point, some rabble-rousers from the British ferryboat capitulation were in the crosshairs of local authorities for setting up a drinking tent on the premises. "Cricket" is spelled with both an initial kaf (ق) and a medial kef (ك). You won't find it in Redhouse, at least as I saw it spelled. I wasted ten minutes on that.

Last week I paid an afternoon visit to Pr. Mehmet Alkan. He is a very accomplished politial scientist at Istanbul University who has put out, among his many publications, a wonderful illustrated book on school reforms in Selanik (Thessaloniki, Greece). Mehmet Bey was my first Ottoman language teacher in Madison as a visiting fellow, and he encouraged me to specialize on the nineteenth century. He looks the same after seven years. I look older.

I had not strolled across the huge green university campus before. Since the university was founded as a theological seminary by Mehmed the Conqueror in the mid-fifteenth century, it is endowed with some fine stone architecture. Mehmet's office overlooks the Süleymaniye Mosque.

Brett Wilson (of Cunda fame) turned up at the archives last week. He now has long locks! Unfortunately for me, he will be doing much of his research this summer at other libraries in Istanbul, so I won't have him around to share tea breaks for much longer.

Now for another tasty morsel of Turkish pop culture. Here in the apartment we get channels the old-fashioned way -- via rabbit ear antenna. My favorite channel is the NBC affiliate. By day it is a boring business channel like CNBC, but at night it purveys U.S. network sitcom and crime drama fare. I'm now a fan of Prison Break.

My second favorite is Star, which provides the best Turkish reality programming. On Popstar Alatürka, Turkish musical giants such as "Baba" ("Father") Orhan Gencebay and the flamboyant, cackling Bülent Ersoy, among others, critique the performances of would-be phenoms of Turkish art music (sanat müsiği). It is like American Idol, except that the panel of judges is allowed to savage or laud the contestants for as long as they want.

My third favorite channel is Kanaltürk, which puts on reruns of the sitcom En Son Babalar Duyar (Fathers Hear Last) weekdays at 6:00 pm. In this show, one or more of a mother, three daughters, and a son get into some sort of dilemma which forces them to conceal key facts from the "traditional" shopkeeper father. When the father learns whatever the uncomfortable truth be in the end, his family rushes to catch him as he faints from heart palpitations. It's very sweety-sweet sitcom formulaic, but all the scenarios have a distinctive Turkish cultural veneer to them which I find fun.

However, Kanalturk really distinguishes itself by the polemical, "secularist" tone of it news broadcasts. The news savages the Islamist government wherever possible, and punctuates its editorial tact with claymation episodes featuring a bumbling, jaundiced Tayyib Erdoğan. It goes way beyond Fox News (which, by the way, now has affiliates in Turkey!) I think you'll recognize the character in the cowboy hat to the right of the screen.

I will make my next entry from the States!

Görüşmek Üzere,

jkbinturkey

P.S. Thanks, Lulu, for the belated birthday card. It took only four days to get here!